Third Transmission (23 page)

The air was already paper-thin. If the explosion didn't happen soon, they were dead. But if it did come soon, Ace would get second-degree burns all over her arms and hands.

Six squeezed his eyes shut, reached behind his back with his left hand, grabbed his right bicep, and pulled. Pain knifed through his right shoulder as it popped loose of its joints with an ugly crunch. The sound was magnified by the enclosed space.

‘What was that?' Ace whispered.

‘Nothing,' Six replied. He pulled the jacket off his loose shoulder and passed it to her. ‘Put this on. It'll protect your arms.'

‘Thanks,' she said. Six felt her moving in the darkness, slipping into the jacket. ‘How chivalrous.'

‘You're welcome.' Six grimaced as he realigned his shoulder and forced the joint back into place.

The thumping outside had stopped. Six pressed his ear to the door, and heard only silence. Had the explosion gone off already? No, the metal was still cool. Then what –

There was a piercing mechanical shriek, and Six slammed his hands against his ears. He recognised the noise. It was a power drill. The Spades were drilling through the hinges of the safe.

‘Damn it,' he hissed.

‘Six,' Ace gasped behind him. ‘I can't breathe.'

And then there was a rumbling sound. The drilling stopped, and the rumbling became a thunderous crescendo. And suddenly the safe was rattling and shuddering, and when Six inadvertently pressed his palm against the floor it was white hot. There was a booming sound, like the Spades' fists times a million. And then somehow Six felt that they were upside down and the air burned his lungs and his stomach lurched and Ace was screaming something and then he blacked out.

ON THE RUN

Because of the darkness, it took Six a moment to realise he was awake. His head felt like it had been squeezed in a vice. He could taste blood from a cut on the inside of his cheek. His dislocated and relocated shoulder was dislocated again, and he couldn't feel his right hand at all.

I'm breathing, he thought. How can I be breathing?

‘Ace,' he whispered.

Silence.

‘Ace!'

Panic squeezed his lungs. He reached out with his good hand, bumping the wall, and felt his way around the metal until he touched something that felt like hair.

‘Ace,' he said again. ‘Are you okay?'

He found her face and prodded it. It was warm, but slack and unresponsive. He touched her eyelids. They were closed.

No, he thought. No, no, no!

He could see that her mouth was open, but there was no visible sign of breathing –

Wait. He could see. Where was the light coming from?

He turned to the left, and saw a single tiny star of light. He reached out for it, and realised it was in the corner of the safe, where the door met the wall.

The hinges. The Spades had drilled through one of the hinges, creating an airway. They had probably saved Six's life. Maybe they had saved Ace's too.

Six braced his back against the wall and started kicking the door. It took four strikes before the other hinge broke and the door fell open, hitting the ground with a dirty
clunk
. Light from a streetlamp poured into the safe, momentarily blinding him. He turned back to Ace, and as his eyes adjusted he saw an ugly purple bruise swelling across her brow.

He grabbed her ankles and dragged her out of the safe – he wouldn't be able to do CPR in a tight space like that. But as the light fell on her face her eyelids flickered open.

Her pupils focused on him. ‘Morning, Six,' she murmured. ‘What are you doing here?'

Six didn't realise he'd been holding his breath until he let it go. He hugged her tightly. ‘You're okay,' he said. ‘Wait – spell
espionage
backwards.'

‘I know how to spell espionage backwards,' she said. ‘I wrote the damn test.' She looked around. ‘Where are we?'

Six turned to scan his surroundings. He couldn't see the Deck anywhere; the safe must have been thrown clear by the explosion . . .

Or not. He looked down, and saw that they were standing on a mountain of blackened rubble. The safe
was half buried in a pile of twisted steel and crumbling concrete.

This
was
the Deck.

The only thing standing between ChaoSonic and total control of the City was now a puzzle of stones crunching under Six's shoes.

‘Game over,' he muttered to himself. ‘We lose.'

There were people moving in the distance. Evacuated Deck agents, probably. Six wanted to go over and check that they were all right – but he couldn't leave Ace.

‘Can you move?' he asked.

Ace tested her limbs. ‘Yeah, I think I'm okay.' She stared at the people on the horizon. ‘Are those the other agents?'

Six looked again. Uh-oh. ‘No,' he said. ‘They're Chao-Sonic. Let's get out of here.'

They ran, stumbling at first, but quickly recovering their balance. The ChaoSonic troops didn't seem to notice them, content to pick through the wreckage.

A few blocks away from where the Deck had stood they found a car – a grey Equator 79. Six felt bad about stealing it, but his car had been buried under the rubble – along with every other vehicle in the underground car park.

The Deck was gone. Six hadn't really absorbed that fact yet. He knew it, consciously, but it hadn't registered. There was no emotion as he thought about it. Just plans and strategies for the immediate future.

Six picked up a thin stone and wedged it between
the door and the window of the car. Then he dipped a broken piece of chain-link fence into the gap, searching for the locking mechanism.

‘You want to tell me who those guys were?' Ace said. ‘The ones posing as Spades and pointing guns at you?'

She'd recovered surprisingly quickly – quick and alert, showing no signs of shock. Fourth in her squad for firearms training, Six reminded himself, first in the vehicular course. She was tough.

‘The Spades have been compromised,' Six said. The door came open with a click. ‘Vanish has taken control.'

Ace didn't get in the car. ‘Wait – what? The body-stealing guy?'

‘Yes,' Six said. ‘Get in.'

Ace didn't. ‘We have to go back,' she said.

‘No we don't,' Six said. ‘We have to get as far away from him as possible.'

‘
I
have to go back,' Ace insisted. ‘I have to find my stepmother, and warn her.'

‘Your step –' Six hesitated. A horrible feeling was growing in his gut. ‘Your stepmother works at the Deck?'

‘She got me the job,' Ace said.

‘And your father's been missing for how long?'

Ace stared at him. ‘Two weeks.'

Six's knuckles were white over the top of the door.

‘Who is she?'

‘Queen of Spades,' Ace said.

Six's throat closed up. There was no good way to tell her. Maybe Kyntak or Grysat or Agent Two could have come up with some phrasing of this terrible news that made it seem less terrible.

But they weren't here. Six was.

‘Your parents are dead,' he said. And Ace fell to her knees, gulping for air like she was drowning.

Ace's father had been an artist.

He made sculptures out of old car parts and sold them to ChaoSonic offices to put in their foyers. He had a false tooth, slightly greyer than the others, so he always put a gold cap over one on the other side of his mouth to distract the eye.

He'd knocked out the tooth as a teenager, landing on his face after falling off the fence surrounding an abandoned textile factory. Since then his jaw clicked noisily as he ate, and the discomfort of those within earshot delighted him. His full name had been Vinn Tad Dante.

Ace told Six all this during the drive, staring straight ahead, eyes dry and cold. He'd asked her to tell him about her parents, figuring that nothing he said would distract her, so it was better to get it all out. But now he wasn't sure if that had been a good idea.

Ace's stepmother, the Queen of Spades, had married Dante when Ace was only five years old. Six had only known the QS as a cold, suspicious enforcer of what she
saw as the law. But as Ace spoke, he got to hear about a different side of her.

Her name had been Sirah Wen Tallim, and she kept it when she married. Because her husband worked from home and had raised Ace there, Tallim had made it her mission to give Ace as much life experience as possible. She had taken her stepdaughter all over the City, to museums and historical monuments and obscure corners of the continent where people spoke in strange languages. At the time she'd been a science teacher, so she was able to take Ace on short trips on the weekends and long ones in the school holidays. She often marked her students' work while Ace sat next to her on the train, watching the red pen scratch across the paper as they rattled towards some unknown land.

‘I hated it,' Ace said. ‘The constant travelling was exhausting, and it felt like I never had any free time. But looking back, I can see she did the right thing – I never would have learned anything sitting around at home watching TV.' She swallowed. ‘And I never thanked her.'

Six said nothing. Rotting brickwork and crusty signposts rolled past the windows.

They were driving to Six's house. Ace hadn't lived with her parents for a couple of years, but her home address was probably written down somewhere among their things. It was likely Vanish would have found it, and there was a chance he would come after her. He would do anything to keep his new identity a secret.

‘I wanted to take her on a trip.' Ace's hands fidgeted
in her lap. ‘She took me on so many, it felt like I should give something back. And I thought it would make her feel welcome in our family. But I never made the time.'

‘She wouldn't have taken you to all those places if she didn't feel welcome,' Six said. It felt clumsy. Was that a good thing to say? He had seen a lot of grief, but he never knew how to deal with it.

‘I guess,' Ace said.

They had tried to call King. No answer. They'd tried Kyntak. No answer. Queen of Hearts. No answer. Jack. No answer.

Six had been about to start dialling agents he barely knew when he realised that the Deck had had its own transmission tower. The mobile phone of each agent sent signals via that tower so they couldn't be intercepted. The Spades had an independent communications network, offsite, but neither Six nor Ace had access. With the Deck gone, they couldn't contact anyone. They were on their own.

Six felt ill thinking about it. The Deck had been more than just a building. It wasn't just his workplace. It was a symbol of deflance, independence, freedom from ChaoSonic rule. It was his whole community. It was his whole life.

‘Why blow it up?' Ace asked, wiping tears from her eyes. ‘Who are the time-soldiers working for?'

‘ChaoSonic,' Six said darkly. ‘It's always ChaoSonic.'

‘But we hunt down code-breakers,' Ace said. ‘And so does ChaoSonic security, in their own selfish sort of
way. They never liked us, but why would they suddenly want to wipe us out?'

That was it. Six's eyes widened. ‘Exactly!' he said.

‘Exactly what?'

‘We have the same goals, we fight the same people!'

Ace stared. ‘Was that supposed to make sense?'

‘With the Deck gone,' Six said, ‘ChaoSonic will need something to replace us! The security force they've got won't be enough.'

‘So why would – oh.' Ace's hands tightened into fists. ‘ChaoSonic didn't hit us,' she said. ‘Chemal Allich did. Because with us gone, ChaoSonic will need a bigger, better police force. They'll want to buy her time-soldiers.'

Six punched the steering wheel. ‘And then they can do whatever they want,' he said. ‘They'll have their own private army of invincible psychics.'

‘We have to stop them,' Ace said.

‘We will,' Six replied. ‘King gave me my next mission before we left the cell block. I'm going to blow up their time machine.'

‘And Vanish?' Ace asked. Her gaze was hard. ‘What are we going to do about him?'

‘If he survived the explosion,' Six said, ‘we'll think of something.'

They parked the car a few houses down from Six's, on the other side of the street. Six doubted that Vanish or ChaoSonic would figure out which car they had stolen and trace it here, but he was taking no chances.

‘Nice house,' Ace said as they got out of the car.

‘That's not it,' Six said. He pointed. ‘That's it.'

‘Oh. Nice house.' Her voice was less convincing the second time.

‘It's safe,' Six said. ‘That's what counts.'

Ace looked apprehensive as she walked up the drive. The house was small and flat and had sheets of armour on the roof. All the windows were blacked out. It was particularly ugly, Six knew, but it was secure. He disarmed the door and walked in.

‘I've sometimes wondered what your house would be like,' Ace said as she crossed the threshold.