Third Transmission (16 page)

That would make them as bad as Lerke was. And there was no guarantee that it would work.

Even as a superhuman, Six often felt helpless – in fact, it seemed to happen to him more than to normal people. But he'd never felt so weak as he did when faced with the power of Nai's blind faith in her demented father.

Six walked into his office, plopped down on his chair, and started typing. The mission report was short, because this mission wasn't over yet. He had completed his initial task, by planting the beacon inside the device Chemal Allich had built, but he still didn't know for certain where it was being sent. And he didn't know where the girl was, the one who'd been Allich's guinea
pig. And even once he found Port B, he still had to follow the radioactive trail.

He had a long way to go before this case was closed.

Six printed off the document, switched off his computer, and locked the office door behind him. Then he went looking for King.

There must be something I can do, he thought. Maybe I could make Lerke angry somehow, manipulate him into doing something that would scare her ...

But the thought of going anywhere near Lerke made Six's chest tighten, and the idea of intentionally exposing his sister to her father's madness was no better.

His phone rang. He answered it. ‘This is Six.'

‘Six, it's Jack. How's things?'

‘Fine. What's up?'

‘I wanted to know if you got the beacon into the machine.'

Six frowned. ‘Why? Isn't it transmitting?'

‘Well, I'm not receiving a signal from it.'

Six rewound his memory. He'd seen the beacon stick to the girl, he'd seen her go into the machine. ‘Perhaps it didn't activate.'

‘It was already active when I gave it to you. It was working fine until 19:17, and then it went dead.'

When the girl was transmitted, Six thought. He said, ‘What's the range of those things?'

‘They're monitored by satellite,' Jack said. ‘I should be able to pick it up from anywhere in the City.'

‘Maybe Port B is in a lead-lined room,' Six suggested.

‘That doesn't make sense – the teleport wouldn't be able to receive a signal there.'

Six turned a corner and saw the QS approaching, escorted by five Spades. ‘I've got to go,' he said. ‘Don't worry, I got an address while I was there – 710 Shuttle Way. Maybe we won't need the beacon.' He hung up.

The QS met his gaze as she approached.

He felt the tendons in his wrists tighten up. Only three weeks ago the Spades had tried to arrest him. And when he ran, they had tried to shoot him.

But they were very professional. Now that the arrest warrant had been rescinded, they treated Six no differently to any other agent.

Just the same, Six hoped that the QS would walk right past him without stopping. He had no time to deal with –

‘Hello again, Agent Six,' she said, beaming.

Six nodded, and moved to pass her. She stepped into his path.

‘How did the mission go?' she queried.

‘Preliminary success,' Six said.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Probably Jack again.

‘Excuse me,' he said, and again tried to walk past. Again, she blocked the way.

‘Answer that,' she said. ‘I'll wait.'

‘Don't you have work to do?' Six asked.

Her smile grew wider. ‘Worried it might be something private? Someone you'd rather I didn't realise you'd
spoken to, telling you something you might not want me to know?'

Six sighed. He took the phone out of his pocket. The caller ID read
pay phone
.

He snapped it open and held it up to his ear. ‘Yes?'

‘I know she's watching,' a voice whispered. ‘So it's very important that you keep a straight face when I tell you this.'

A cold feeling trickled into Six's guts. He glanced at his watch, like the caller was wasting his time. The QS watched him, still smiling.

‘Uh-huh,' Six said.

‘The Queen of Spades is Vanish,' the caller said. Then he hung up.

Six held the dead phone to his ear as the hairs on his arms all went rigid. He tried to keep his face from contorting into a horrified stare, and he strained to avoid looking at the Queen of Spades.

‘Uh-huh,' he said again into the phone. ‘Five minutes, maybe ten.'

He thought of how quickly she had cancelled the arrest order after Six had returned to the Deck. He thought of the look in her eyes as she'd watched him every day these past few weeks. He thought of how her icy demeanour had been replaced by a chillingly friendly one.

He thought of her smug smile.

Six's instincts screamed at him to run, and he tried to shut them out. If he made any sudden or suspicious
movements, the five Spades would act. And Six couldn't defend himself against five of them at once. Clubs, Diamonds and Hearts were tough, but the Spades were even tougher; they had to be, in order to police the rest. If Six tried to run, or attack Vanish, they would jump on him, restrain him, and probably knock him out.

And then Vanish would know that Six knew. And Six didn't like to think what Vanish would do next.

‘Okay,' Six said. ‘See you soon.' He pushed the disconnect button and slipped the phone back into his pocket.

‘Anyone I know?' Vanish asked.

‘No,' Six said. His heart hammered against his ribs. ‘I've got to go.'

Vanish's eyes narrowed. ‘What's the rush?'

The best liars, Six knew, were the ones who lied to themselves. They inflicted the delusion on their own minds first, and then when they spoke to others it sounded completely genuine.

I don't know that this is Vanish, he told himself. It's just the Queen of Spades, getting in my way, bugging me, wasting my time as well as hers.

‘What's the rush?' he repeated angrily. ‘Were you there in King's briefing before, or was that your twin sister? There's a nuclear warhead hidden somewhere in the City, maybe with ChaoSonic, maybe with the rebels, maybe with someone even worse. It's my job to find it. That means thousands, maybe millions of lives are in my hands.'

He leaned towards Vanish, fists clenched at his sides. ‘The City is falling apart around us – if you weren't so busy stalking me, you might have noticed.'

Then he shrugged. ‘But hey, if telling you about my phone conversations is a higher priority, that's fine. I'll make sure a copy of my call logs is on your desk within the hour – if we survive the nuclear apocalypse, of course. Excuse me.'

He pushed past Vanish. This time she – make that
he
– didn't stop him.

Six resisted the urge to turn his head and see if they were still watching him. Ten more steps to the end of the corridor. Eight, seven, six ...

No noise behind him. They weren't following him, but they hadn't left yet either. Four, three, two ...

As soon as he had turned the corner, Six slumped against the wall. His hands were shaking and his legs felt weak.

Vanish had infiltrated the Deck. He had been here for three weeks, learning its secrets, watching its operatives, immersing himself in the system. Who knew how many agents he'd compromised, how many secrets he'd sold – and what kind of apparatus he might have set up to protect himself.

He could have recruited his own operatives, slipped them into the ranks of the Spades. He could have a dozen agents loyal to him, walking around in the Deck right now, ready to execute his sinister plan ...

‘Six.'

Six whirled around, a shock of adrenaline fizzing through his body. But it was only Ace, walking down the corridor towards him. She had scrubbed off her makeup, and changed into jeans and a T-shirt. Her hair was wet.

‘I wanted to ... Six? Are you okay?'

Six hesitated. Could he trust her? Of course, he realised. She's been here a lot longer than three weeks. She's clean. ‘No,' he said. ‘I'm a long way from okay. We've got a big problem.'

And then alarms pierced the air – a roaring klaxon that seemed to come from every wall. The sound was suffocatingly loud and close. Six stared down the empty corridor, frowning.

‘Is this the problem?' Ace shouted.

‘No,' Six yelled. ‘I think that –'

And then the alarm suddenly stopped and the lights flickered off, leaving them in complete darkness.

Ninety seconds earlier, Grysat was frowning at a security monitor. On it, a black twelve-wheeler truck was easing to a stop just outside the main entrance to the Deck.

According to the computer, the driver had punched in the correct code to get through the outer gate. But the Deck didn't own any trucks like that. There were no operations scheduled that would require one to be rented or stolen. And he was not expecting any deliveries.

Therefore, he thought as he watched the driver clamber out, this guy could be trouble.

He cleared his throat, and the dozen agents in the room turned to look at him. ‘We have unknowns approaching the entrance,' he said. ‘I want everyone to go to your defensive positions.' He hit the button that opened the lift doors.

False alarms were common in the Deck, but the agents didn't question him. Half ran towards the stairwells, the other half shuffled quickly into the lift. A skinny woman with a nose-stud hung back.

‘Someone should stay with you,' she said.

Grysat shook his head. ‘Get in the lift, Agent Four.'

And then Agent Four's face exploded off.

The bullet had broken the sound barrier, so Grysat was spattered with Four's blood before he even heard the gunshot. He wasted a quarter of a second watching her fall forwards onto his desk before he looked behind her and saw the soldiers storming through the front door with their guns already pointing at his head. He heard the lift doors sliding closed behind him and snapped out of his trance, reached down under the desk, grabbed his Eagle automatic and raised it up, clicking the safety off, all in one smooth motion.

Protocol dictated that he shout ‘Halt,' ‘Freeze,' or ‘Drop your weapons'. He didn't, partly because there wasn't time, partly because he didn't think they would take any notice, but mostly because he'd just seen his friend's head burst.

Teeth clenched, blood boiling in his veins, Grysat jammed his finger down on the trigger. The Eagle shuddered in his hands as he swept the barrel from left to right, one neat slice of firepower through the soldiers. Marble shattered and glass cracked and holes burned into the wood. The noise was deafening.

But the soldiers were unharmed.

Every single bullet had crumpled against a piece of body armour, as though there were magnets behind the Kevlar, drawing the shots in.

Grysat didn't stop to wonder how that was possible. He prepared to sweep the gun back across them, tear them to pieces before they could get inside –

– and then a round slammed into his chest like a freight train colliding directly with his lungs.

When a bead of mercury is sealed inside a hollowed-out bullet, it becomes even more lethal than a hollow point. As the doctored round is fired, the mercury will slide to the back of the bullet. Upon impact, the momentum will make the mercury explode forwards out of the tip, shattering into millions of tiny particles.

Mercury is very, very toxic, but that doesn't matter much, because at that velocity, it becomes solid. Anyone hit with one of these rounds will have his or her insides torn apart by the mercury particles.

This was why Agent Four's face had blasted outwards. And this was what was happening to Grysat. His back was a bloodied colander of tiny exit wounds. His heart
and lungs were in pieces. A chunk of his spine was missing.

Grysat didn't know any of this. But he knew that he was dying.

He suddenly noticed that he was lying on the floor, but he didn't remember falling. Then he didn't remember getting shot. Then he didn't remember getting up this morning, or getting a job at the Deck, or his mother's smile when she was alive.

They say your life flashes before your eyes, he thought. But in reality it does the opposite. It disappears, huge chunks at a time.

He heard the soldiers running towards him, boots clomping against the floor, but he heard it as if it came from a long way away.

He felt like there was something he had to do, but he couldn't remember what. It was something important, though.

The alarm. He had to sound the alarm.

The button was on the floor under his desk. His hand was inches from it.

He tried to lift his arm, place his hand down on the button. But the blood wasn't pumping anymore; his shoulder muscles were very weak and he was starting to get dizzy and suddenly he was blind, too.

Okay, so he couldn't lift his hand. But maybe he could slide it.

Muscles burning, brain aching, he dragged his arm slowly sideways. He couldn't feel anything anymore,
and couldn't tell where the button was. And then he heard the shrieking of the klaxon and realised that he'd done it.