Third Transmission (18 page)

Two more minutes, Nai decided. Then she would call Lerke and tell him she was aborting the mission. He would understand.

The fire door opened.

A Deck agent marched through, cradling an Eagle automatic. Nai instantly drew her Hawk 9 mm pistol, took aim at his head, rested her finger on the trigger – and then the QS entered behind him. She smiled, in a way that Nai found unsettling. Two more Deck agents followed her. Spades, Nai gathered from the insignias on their fatigues.

‘You're late,' Nai said, reholstering her weapon.

‘I ran into your brother,' the QS said.

‘Literally, I hope. Like, with your car.'

The QS raised her eyebrows. ‘How interesting. You two don't get on? I would have thought you'd have lots in common.'

Nai grimaced. She wasn't interested in talking about this. ‘You know why I'm here.'

‘Yes. Do you?'

Nai hated mind games. ‘Just give me the disk.'

‘There's no disk.'

Nai felt a chill wash through her. She wondered if she could reach her gun and shoot all three Spades before one of them got her. Probably not. ‘Then what are we trading?'

The QS put her hands in her pockets. ‘You.'

Nai had no idea what that meant, but she didn't like it. Maybe she could still get what her father wanted. In her experience, threats were more powerful than negotiation. ‘Hand over the disk,' she said. ‘Or I'll kill you.'

‘Oh really?' The QS looked amused.

‘I could take down those amateurs,' Nai said, gesturing at the Spades, ‘with my eyes shut and my hands cuffed behind my back. The only reason you're still alive is that my father vouched for you. Give me the disk, or I'll slaughter you and bring him back your lying tongue.'

‘Your father sold you to me,' the QS said. ‘You're going to be my next body.'

It took Nai's brain a fraction of a second to process what she'd just heard, and realise what it meant. Vanish, she thought. The QS was not who she appeared to be.

Nai's guts started to feel like she was in a lift whose cables had snapped, and she was plummeting into the darkness.

‘He traded you to me,' Vanish said, ‘in exchange for Six's life.' He eyed her curiously. ‘How does that make you feel?'

Father would never do that to me, she thought. He's lying. Her hands tightened into fists.

‘Feels good,' she said. ‘I thought you were a highly trained Deck agent. Now I know you're just a crazy old man in an unfamiliar body. That'll make it much easier to kill you.'

‘You can answer my questions later,' Vanish said, drawing a pistol from the folds of his coat. ‘Right now, you're going to put your hands on your head and turn around.'

‘Guess again,' Nai replied. Her heart was racing, caught between fear and fury. If Vanish thought he
could just wander in, interrupting her mission and spouting slander about her father, and then start giving her orders, he was dead wrong. Emphasis on
dead
. He would pay for this.

But not today. She was outnumbered, unprepared and barely armed. It didn't matter how Vanish had tricked Lerke into sending her there. Sometime soon she'd be training a sniper rifle on the back of Vanish's skull from 10 kliks away, but what mattered right now was getting out alive.

‘I'm going to count to five,' Vanish said. ‘And then I'm going to shoot you with this tranquilliser pistol.'

She had no tools. No weapons except her gun, which was out of reach behind her back. No backup to call. Nothing she could do but talk him out of it.

‘But I'd rather you did as I asked,' Vanish said. ‘The tranq dart might leave an ugly scar. One.'

‘Last chance to surrender,' Nai said, heart racing. ‘You don't know what I'm capable of.'

Vanish smirked. ‘Actually, I do. That's the whole point. Two.'

‘I'm wearing a tracer,' she lied. ‘My father will find me.'

‘Like I said, he gave you to me. He's not going to come looking. Three.'

‘You're lying!' she screeched.

‘Last chance,' Vanish said. ‘Four.'

Fear won out over fury. ‘You don't want to do this.'

‘Pretty sure I do,' Vanish said. ‘Five.'

The gunshot was deafening as it boomed around the car park.

Nai staggered backwards with shock, even though no bullet or dart had hit her.

Instead, she saw a splash of blood hit Vanish as the chest of the Spade behind him burst outwards. Vanish spun around, pointing his pistol towards the stairwell. A huge soldier was clambering down the last flight of stairs, assault rifle raised. Two more rounds spat out of the barrel, and the other two Spades went down, one with a blown-out stomach, one with a shredded neck.

Nai didn't know if this new threat was after her, or Vanish, or both or neither. She just turned and ran, sprinting away into the darkness with hardly a sound, hoping to get away from the carnage before a stray round hit her.

She heard Vanish's tranquillliser pistol fire somewhere behind her, twice, three times – not at her, but at the giant – and then she heard an engine rumbling up ahead. She dived aside, concealing herself behind a pillar as a big black truck rattled down the ramp into the car park, headlights cleaving through the darkness. It roared past her at a reckless speed, nearly scraping not only her pillar but the ceiling above it. It was huge in the enclosed space.

Nai turned to watch it as it thundered towards the stairwell door. What the hell was going on?

The truck braked sharply, twisted sideways, and drifted across the concrete like a rally car around a tight
bend. As she turned to watch, Nai caught a glimpse of Vanish as the headlights swept across him – he was standing over the bodies of the dead Spades and the big soldier, from whose neck two tranquilliser darts protruded. Vanish's stolen eyes were hard and unafraid. His lips were drawn back in a snarl.

The driver jumped out of the truck, firing a Vulture shotgun into the air as he landed. Chunks of the ceiling rained down in a grey blizzard, screening Vanish from view.

Apparently oblivious to Nai's presence in the darkness behind him, the driver marched forwards into the curtain of falling dust, and disappeared. Nai was just wondering whether he was coming back, whether it was safe to make a run for the ramp, when he reappeared, dragging the unconscious form of the huge soldier. As the dust and smoke cleared behind him, Nai saw that Vanish had disappeared, presumably aware that his pistol was no match for the driver's Vulture.

The driver rolled up the rear door of the truck, lifted the soldier, and dumped him on the floor inside.

Nai wasn't sticking around to watch any more of this freak show. She ran. Her feet barely seemed to touch the ground as she hurtled up the ramp and out of the Deck into the grungy daylight.

Time to go see my father, she thought. He needs to know what just happened.

The cells were not as Six had last seen them. The guard station was crammed with Deck agents, all Spades, who had assault rifles trained on Six and Ace before the door was halfway open. Past them, Six could see that the face-card agents, the Kings, Queens and Jacks, had set up a command centre in one of the empty cells. A few agents stood outside the cell, another layer of defence – and another agent stood watching the prisoners who'd been forced to share a cell.

‘Identify yourselves,' one of the Spades in the guard station yelled. The barrel of his gun was pointed at Six's forehead.

‘Agent Six of Hearts,' Six shouted, hands raised.

‘Agent Ace of Diamonds,' Ace said.

‘Who's he?' the Spade demanded, pointing at the unconscious giant.

‘Neutralised hostile,' Six said. ‘Here to be processed and interrogated.' He wondered if the Spade was a real agent, or if he was one of Vanish's henchmen.

There was a pause as the agents called up Six and Ace's profiles on a screen, and checked that their faces matched. Ordinarily, an agent's identity would be verified with fingerprint scans and blood tests as well as facial recognition. This was makeshift security – the Deck wasn't running at full capacity.

The Spade who'd spoken looked at the screen, looked at them again, and then waved them through. The others lowered their weapons, but didn't put them down. Sooner or later, someone less welcome than Six
or Ace was going to try to come through that door – and they would be ready.

As Six walked towards the command centre, he realised that it wasn't the only cell that had been cleared out. The three cells before it had been seized to house the wounded and the dead.

Six stared at the rows of bunks, horrified. There were agents he'd worked alongside, mouths open, staring at the ceiling as the doctors swarmed around them. Their clothes were black and shiny with blood, and they were breathing in shaky gasps. Some had limbs missing – messy stumps, covered with bandages that were already darkening with arterial blood.

There were barely enough beds for the wounded, so the dead had been piled up against the walls. There were at least a dozen of them. Males and females of every age. Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds.

And even a Joker. Six staggered back against the wall, dropping the giant, and feeling the blood drain out of his face. Grysat was slumped against the floor of a cell.

‘They need me,' Ace said quietly. She walked in, grabbed a roll of bandages and joined the fray, leaving Six outside in the corridor.

‘Six,' someone said. Six couldn't tear his gaze away from Grysat. The receptionist's eyes were open, staring through the wall to a point a million miles behind it.

‘Six,' King said again. He was standing in the cell that had become the command centre. His gaze was unflinching. ‘Get in here.'

Six nodded and walked forwards, legs shaky. He saw the Queen of Hearts, sitting on a chair in a corner with her elbows on her knees and worry in her eyes. The King of Diamonds, who usually refused to use his codename and was therefore known around the Deck as Sammy, was pacing from side to side, biting the nails of one hand and twisting the air into intricate shapes with the other. There were a dozen other people Six didn't recognise – agents from other departments, he supposed. Six noted that the QS was absent – where was Vanish? What was he up to?

Six wanted to tell King what he'd learned about Vanish. But there were strangers in the room, and they were armed – and some of them were Spades. If they worked for Vanish, they would fight to protect his secret. And then more people would die.

Kyntak was leaning against a wall, face pale. He forced a smile at Six. ‘Hey, bro. What's up?'

‘People trying to kill me,' Six said. ‘You?'

‘Same old.'

‘Are you injured?' King asked Six.

‘No,' Six said. He pointed at the unconscious soldier outside. ‘And I've got a prisoner for you.'

King nodded. He turned to one of the agents. ‘Clear another cell, put Six's hostile in it.' Looking at Six, he said, ‘How long will he be unconscious?'

‘A while,' Six said. ‘Ace of Diamonds hit him pretty hard with a crowbar.'

‘Suits me fine,' King said coldly. ‘Tell me everything you've seen.'

It took only a couple of minutes for Six to recount everything he had observed since getting back to the Deck. The alarms, the power failure, and the lone, unarmed soldier. The brief fight, and Ace's life-saving intervention. He got the feeling that he wasn't providing much useful information.

King frowned. ‘Unarmed, you say?'

‘No weapons at all,' Six said.

‘That's not true of the others,' King told him. ‘They've all got guns, and judging by the damage, they're loaded with some kind of fragmenting or hollow-point rounds. I've told all my agents to shoot on sight before they get their limbs blown off. That goes for you too.'

Six nodded. ‘What casualties have we sustained so far?'

King was silent for a long time. Then he said, ‘Thirteen confirmed dead, twelve wounded, eight unaccounted for.'

Six stared at him, shocked. The Deck only had fifty-four personnel. If King was right, that number had just dropped to twenty-one.

‘They've crippled us,' Six said. ‘This is ChaoSonic, it's got to be. They've declared war.'

‘Sir?' It was one of the agents King had sent to clear a cell. ‘The prisoner is secured.'

‘Let's wake him up,' King said.