Third Transmission (12 page)

She nodded. ‘Standard readings. Heart rate up a little, but otherwise completely normal.'

The girl, ‘TM4', walked to the back of the stage. She took a yellow envelope out from under the folds of her gown, and put it down on the bench. Then she walked back to Allich. There was no fear in her face, but Six
thought he saw thinly veiled despair. He had the sudden impression that this was not a willing volunteer.

‘Who has the card?' Allich asked.

A guest held it up, and passed it to the front. Allich took it, and slipped it into an envelope identical to the one on the bench. Then she passed it to the girl, who put it inside her gown where the other one had been.

Six frowned. Why was the subject getting the card? Shouldn't Allich keep it? Perhaps there was more than just congratulations scrawled in there – he should have looked closer.

‘Incredible, isn't it?' the tanned man sitting next to Six said.

It took Six a moment to realise that the man was talking to him. ‘Yes,' he replied. ‘Chemal has really excelled herself this time.'

The man smiled. ‘It's strange – in a way, the rest of the demonstration is a formality. We already know she'll succeed. But she has to do it anyway.'

The rest of the demonstration? Allich was going to send the girl back!

‘I left my brief at the office,' Six said. ‘Where's Port B again?'

The man frowned. ‘I'm sorry?'

‘The other end of the transmission,' Six explained. ‘Where's she being sent?'

‘Oh, right,' the man said. ‘To 710. Not far.'

Six blinked. The address of the Tower was 792 Shuttle Way, South Coast. If Six had understood the man
correctly, Port B was at 710 Shuttle Way – just down the street. But, he realised, that was just outside the zone that ChaoSonic had flattened looking for the warhead. It fit.

‘Uh, thanks,' he said. That was way too easy.

The man shrugged. ‘No problem.'

Down on the stage, Allich was leading the girl back towards the glass chamber. The girl was staring at her bare feet.

Six leaned over to Ace. ‘I just found Port B.'

‘How?'

‘I asked the guy next to me.'

Ace stared. ‘You're kidding.'

‘I don't kid,' Six said.

‘Do you still need to plant the tracker?'

Six felt a rush of pity for TM4, being sent back and forth down the same street, blasted to atoms and then fused back together, over and over, again and again. She'd done it so many times that she'd even learned all Allich's lines – and she wasn't resisting anymore. Six wondered how they'd forced her to submit. She was physically healthy, which meant either that she had been their captive for a very long time, long enough to heal all the bones they had broken, or that they'd threatened someone close to her.

Six wished he could jump down to the stage, grab her, and carry her out of the building. She didn't deserve to be torn apart and reassembled again. But there were too many guards, too many witnesses. He probably
wouldn't make it out of the building. And while he was willing to risk his own life to save her, he had other moral imperatives.

If he died, Ace would be unprotected. The Deck might never find the nuclear warhead. And the side of good would lose its best soldier.

Six put the hollow cigarette back in his mouth. He lit it, trying not to inhale the noxious fumes. Then he blew as hard as he could. The transmitter was visible only for a split second, a silver glimmer in the air, before it stuck to TM4's hospital gown and turned white.

The girl looked up into the crowd. Not surprised, not hopeful, just like a reflex.

Now Six would be able to track her, and stage a rescue later. And the Deck would be able to find Port B, even if Six didn't make it out to tell King what he had learned.

‘Excuse me.'

Six looked towards the aisle. One of the security guards was standing there, looking at him.

‘There's no smoking in here,' the guard said.

Six raised a haughty eyebrow and dropped the cigarette into his wineglass.

‘Thank you,' the guard said. He moved on.

Down on the stage, Allich had stuck the syringe into the girl, depressed the plunger and given her a shove towards the chamber. The girl stumbled forwards into the airlock. Then she stepped into the centre of the chamber – willingly, but sadly. As though she'd long
since accepted her fate. The CT scanners started popping and cracking, and the MRI magnets whirled around in their hinges.

Six didn't want to watch, but he couldn't take his eyes off the scene. His skin was stretched tight over his knuckles, and his toes were curled inside his shoes.

The rocket was starting to hum again; warming up, Six guessed. Inside the chamber, the X-rays had stopped shooting, and the MRI was slowing to a crawl.

‘
Scan complete
,' an automated voice said.

The girl inside the chamber looked baffled for a moment. Then a smile crept across her lips.

Has something gone wrong? Six thought. Allich doesn't look worried.

Then the girl's smile faded. Her eyes widened in alarm. Her head whipped from side to side, like a cornered animal. Then she ran over to the window and started pounding on it with her fists. Six could see her mouth moving, and the flecks of saliva appearing on the glass, but he couldn't hear her screams.

Ace's breathing had accelerated. Glancing across, Six saw that her expression remained blank, but the tendons in her wrists were bulging through her skin. Like him, she didn't want to see this.

The hum from the rocket was higher and louder than before. Instead of wind rushing through the room, this time the air itself seemed to shudder and vibrate like the strings on an electric guitar. Sending used up more energy than receiving, Six figured.

The girl smacked her palm flat against the glass, and she stared up at Six. Help me, he saw her say.

I will, Six thought. I promise.

Then there was another explosion of light, and suddenly she was gone. The tube was empty – even the saliva and the handprints on the glass had disappeared.

It was as if she had never existed at all.

EXFILTRATION

Allich picked up the girl's yellow envelope from the bench. She tossed it into the crowd like a Frisbee. A group of people reached up, trying to catch it. There were smiles on everyone's faces – visible excitement that was almost childlike. Six frowned. What was the point of this?

Something that always fascinated him about truly monstrous people, whether they were murderers, torturers or terrorists, was how many of them seemed so ordinary. When they weren't inflicting suffering on others for pleasure or money or power, they were watching movies they'd seen before, sharing home-cooked meals with friends, or going on family holidays to artificial island resorts beyond the Seawall. For every raving homicidal nut like Straje Sammers, there were ten sociopaths who could pass for normal.

Everyone in this room had just seen a girl get blasted to bits – and they looked as if they couldn't be more delighted.

Do they think about it? Six wondered. When these people are doing ordinary things like shopping for
groceries or helping their children with homework, will they be thinking of the innocent girl who mouthed ‘Help me' before the machine they financed ripped her apart?

Or do they compartmentalise? Can they separate the person from the monster so well that it's like two different beings, taking turns at controlling the one body?

Ace leaned towards Six. ‘There's nothing more we can do,' she whispered shakily. ‘You think now might be a good time to get out?'

Six looked around. No-one else looked as if they were ready to get up. Everyone was looking intently at the envelope. Leaving now might be suspicious, but he knew that the longer they stayed, the higher the risk they would be exposed.

‘Yes,' Six said. ‘But not together. Pretend your phone is ringing, and go out to the foyer to answer it. I'll make sure no-one is following you, then I'll come out after sixty seconds. Got it?'

Ace nodded. She stood up, and started fumbling with her purse, exactly like someone whose phone was ringing in a situation where it should have been switched off. Six watched her move towards the entrance to the ballroom.

She took the phone out of her purse and held it to her ear. ‘This is Sera,' she whispered, placing a finger in her other ear as she walked.

The guards by the door barely glanced at her – they just stepped slightly aside to let her through into the
ballroom. Good, Six thought. The security is built to stop intruders getting in, not out.

The sixty seconds he had promised Ace felt like sixty minutes. He watched guests tear open the yellow envelope and stare at the contents. It looked like another card, similar to the one that had been passed around before.

Six would have liked to know what they were doing, but he wasn't going to risk his or Ace's life to find out. He stood, smoothed down his suit at the front as he had seen some of the guests do, and walked towards the ballroom.

The guards by the door eyed him.

‘Bathroom?' Six asked as he approached.

‘On your right,' one of them replied.

Six stepped back into the ballroom. It somehow seemed smaller without all the people in it.

Ace was standing in the centre, still whispering on her phone. ‘He's not being discriminated against,' she was saying. ‘Just tell him that I expect all my staff to live up to their commitments.'

She looked at Six. ‘I've got to go,' she said. ‘Call me tomorrow.'

Six made a mental note never to trust her again – she was too good at this.

They started walking to the checkpoint they had entered through. ‘Who was that?' Six asked, still in character.

‘Just my PA,' Ace said. ‘You wouldn't believe what one of the junior associates is trying to pull.'

‘It wouldn't be Andon Hathey, would it?'

‘How did you guess?'

‘Well, I was chatting to ...'

Six kept talking, but without giving much thought to his words. He was listening to one of the guards near the theatre door behind him, who had just answered his phone.

‘Say again?' the guard was asking.

His phone crackled. Six couldn't quite make out the words.

‘Can you repeat your name, sir?'

Another short squawk from the phone. Six imagined the voice saying
Ciull Yu
.

The checkpoint was just ahead. They could make it if they ran – but the guards would never let them through if they blew their cover.

Maybe he was worrying about nothing. Maybe the guard was talking to someone else about something entirely unrelated. Ciull Yu should still be unconscious behind the dumpster, under the influence of the gas.

‘Can you describe the man who attacked you?' the guard said.

Damn it, Six thought. Someone must have found him, woken him up. Either that, or Yu has an innate resistance to sevofluorane.

‘We're in trouble,' Six murmured to Ace, interrupting himself.

‘What?' Her eyes widened. ‘Why?'

‘I think the real Ciull Yu is awake, and has found a phone.'

‘Excuse me,' the guard said behind them. Not talking to the phone anymore.

‘You ready to run?' Six asked.

‘There's too many of them,' Ace said, staring at the checkpoint guards. Vulture shotguns strapped to their backs.

‘Excuse me, sir,' the guard said, closer now. ‘And madam.'

‘We're not going that way,' Six whispered. ‘We're going to the fire door, on your left.'

Ace nodded. ‘Just say when.'

‘Ready,' Six said, ‘set ...'

The guard put a hand on Six's shoulder. Six whirled around and slammed his fist into the guard's jaw.

‘Go!' he yelled.

The guard drew his pistol as he fell backwards. Six ducked, and shoved the guard's gun arm upwards. The guard pulled the trigger, four times,
blam-blamblam-blam
, probably not because he thought he would hit anything, but to alert the rest of Allich's security force.

In his peripheral vision, Six saw the seven guards from the checkpoint turn as one to face him. He hoped Ace was running for the fire door – he didn't have time to look.

The guard he was grappling with wasn't letting go of his pistol. Six bent the guard's wrist downwards, so the knuckles nearly touched the inner wrist, and his grip loosened. Six wrenched the pistol out of his grasp, and clubbed him across the brow with it.

The guard hit the floor, hard, face first. He wasn't getting up again.

Six turned. The checkpoint guards had started running towards him. They were nearly at the threshold to the ballroom.

One-handed, Six ripped the Vulture shotgun off the unconscious guard's back, pumped a shell into the breech, and aimed up at the wire that connected the chandelier to the ceiling. He pulled the trigger.

Boom!

The recoil nearly blasted him off his feet. He had hoped to sever the wire, making the chandelier fall to the floor and block the path of the checkpoint guards. Instead the entire chandelier
exploded
into a storm of glass and sparks, which seemed to fill the room instantly. Six saw the seven guards duck and cover before he scrunched his eyelids shut, stopping the tiny, razor-sharp snowflakes from scratching out his eyeballs.

The noise of glass raining down onto the floor was piercing. Eyes still closed, Six turned to face the fire door, and started running towards it.

Tap-click
. The sound of a safety catch being clicked off, back near the theatre entrance. The other guard. Apparently the glass shockwave hadn't reached that far, and he was taking aim at Six.

Eyes still closed, glass fluttering down onto his hair, Six crunched the numbers coming from his remaining senses. The sound came from about 14 metres away, the guard had been roughly 190 centimetres tall, Six's
pistol felt like it weighed 1200 grams, give or take ten. No wind, no other combatants.