Third Transmission (29 page)

There was a panel on the floor in the corner of the chamber that looked like it might be removable. A
trapdoor, maybe. Perhaps if he could get it open, he might be able to –

00:02.

And then Six was blasted into a billion pieces.

He died instantly.

His fiesh was transformed into dust, and then sucked into the vacuum ducts in the ceiling of the chamber.

00:01.

Then the Semtex on the window exploded, shattering the glass and ?lling the chamber with white-hot light, and outside, the top blasted off the tower and the rest of it started to sink towards the centre of the earth, like a rocket taking off backwards.

MISSION
FOUR

Day –868

LIVING ECHOES

00:10.

‘Got to go,' Six said. He switched off the earpiece. The magnets were slowing to a halt, and the X-ray cameras had stopped crackling.

00:07. This is going to be close, he thought.

ZAP!

Six howled as a blinding shock sizzled through his entire body. For a second he was blind and deaf and could smell smoke, his every sense overloaded with white noise and furious agony.

And suddenly it was gone. Six staggered forwards, and his forehead thunked against the glass.

There was no Semtex attached to the other side.

What the hell? Six scanned the glass, his vision still fuzzy.

No Semtex. None attached to the rocket, either. No guards among the seats.

He'd done it. He'd travelled through time.

Six bent over and vomited onto the floor, a steady stream of everything he'd eaten over the past day and a half – a day and a half that hadn't happened yet. His
homemade soup looked much the same coming up as it had going down, a thought that made him gag even more.

When Allich's prisoner had been transmitted, he'd heard a woman's voice saying ‘
Scan complete
'. He'd expected to hear it this time, too. Why hadn't he? Had it just been for show?

Then he realised that another version of himself probably
had
heard it. He was a copy, a facsimile. The real Agent Six had just been blown to smithereens. Or would be, two years, four months and twenty days from now.

Six touched his wrist with his index finger. His pulse was fast, but regular. He stared at his hands. Normal. He ripped open his shirt and stared at his chest. There was the usual assortment of scars. Nothing more, nothing less.

The insides of his nostrils burned from the vomit. He stood up and looked at the clock on the computer servers. He had seven hours to get to the building Sammers and his troops had seized. He was right when he was supposed to be.

‘We can't save the City if we're dead,' Six said.

The cell was silent for a moment. Sammy and King looked at each other. Six stared at the drawing of Allich's machine on the wall.

‘The guy we have locked up,' Kyntak said. ‘He already knows what we're going to do with him, doesn't he? Even though we haven't decided yet.'

‘Yes, I imagine he does,' Sammy replied. ‘Makes you feel kind of helpless, doesn't it?'

‘Welcome to my world,' Six said.

King said, ‘Kyntak.'

‘Boss?'

‘Get him out of here,' King said, nodding towards the unconscious soldier. ‘And tell the other agents to prep the wounded for transport and gear up for evacuation.'

‘Got it.' Kyntak picked up the soldier and carried him out.

Six rose to his feet. ‘I should help them.'

‘Sit down, Six,' King said. ‘I need to brief you on your next mission.'

Six nodded. ‘Destroy Allich's machine.'

‘No,' King said. ‘Use it.'

‘Use it? For what?'

‘To send yourself back in time.'

Stunned, Six said, ‘Why?'

‘Two years ago, you couldn't ?nd the warhead that Sammers stole,' King said. ‘By the time you got there, it was gone. Now the question is, was it missing because you went back in time and took it? Or because someone else did?'

Sammy's eyes were wide. ‘You're right!' he said. ‘Six can steal the nuke in the past, and bring it to the present – then we don't have to search the whole City for it!'

Sammers spoke inside Six's head.
Little child? They sent a mere infant to halt the work of God?

He shivered. ‘That's crazy,' he said. ‘I can't redo a mission in the past.'

‘Why not?' King said. ‘Allich has a working time machine. You know where the warhead will be, and when. You have all kinds of information you didn't have the first time around.'

‘But even if I knew how to use the machine,' he said, ‘the Tower is a fortress. And this time there's no party to gatecrash. How would I get in?'

‘Pod-drop,' King said. ‘Should be strong enough to penetrate the roof. We have a pod-equipped jet at the Fallena airport. Kyntak could pilot it.'

‘I don't know the codes for any of the doors inside the building,' Six said.

‘I think I can help you there,' Sammy said. ‘The security system is designed to keep people out, not in, right? So all the master controls are on the inside?'

Six nodded.

‘So just choose any old numbers you want, like your birthday or your bank PIN. Then, when you're in the past, you can reprogram the doors from the inside so they'll accept those numbers in the future.'

‘How will I get out again? Won't there be guards?'

‘No guards, no cameras,' Sammy said.

‘Why?' King asked.

Sammy winced. ‘That's complicated.'

‘Try me.'

‘Let's say Allich sees a walrus with a euphonium appear in the machine,' Sammy said, ‘If that happens, she knows that at some point in the future she will have to find a walrus and a euphonium and send them back in time. Because if she doesn't, someone else will. And she doesn't want anyone else to have access to her machine.'

King said, ‘But if she doesn't monitor what comes out …'

‘Then she can put in whatever she likes,' Sammy finished. ‘Right. She gets to keep her free will.'

‘So you think there'll be no cameras and no guards,' Six said.

‘Yes. Near the machine, that is. And I imagine there'll be a passageway that leads directly from the machine to the outside of the building,' Sammy said. ‘So time travellers can leave unobserved.'

‘Why can't I enter through that passageway?'

‘Because it'll have one-way doors at both ends.'

‘Okay,' Six said. ‘I pod-drop into the Tower. I use the machine to go back two years. I walk out through this passageway. I sneak into the building Sammers has seized. I steal the nuclear warhead. Then what?'

‘You go back to the machine, and send yourself back to now,' King said. ‘That way the warhead won't even exist in between then and now. We don't have to worry about anyone else getting hold of it.'

‘How do I get back into the Tower?' Six asked.

King and Sammy looked at each other. Then they turned back to Six.

‘Improvise,' King said.

‘Remember that two years ago her security wasn't as full-on as it is now,' Sammy added.

Great plan, Six thought. Just great. ‘And after I've “improvised” a way in and used the machine,' he said, ‘then what?'

‘Bring the warhead back here so we can dismantle it,' King said. ‘You should be able to get out using the same passageway.' He looked at Sammy. ‘Right?'

‘Right,' Sammy said. ‘There are a couple more things you should know. One: the machine might make mistakes when it's recreating you.'

Six's eyes widened. ‘What? What kind of mistakes?'

‘I don't know,' Sammy said. ‘But think about the time-soldiers for a minute. Even if they only exist for a few hours, their hair and fingernails get longer, they lose flakes of skin, the cells inside them age and a few of those cells die. If the machine replicated the soldiers perfectly when they were sent back in time, then they would already be a few hours older than they should be. And then they'd keep ageing, getting older and older each time they went back. But that's a paradox, because in reality the transmission only happens once.

‘So instead, Allich's machine must be
slightly
inaccurate. It replicates its subjects with errors, cancelling the paradox. My point is, when you arrive, you should examine your body and make sure there are no visible alterations. But there probably won't be, because you're not going to be in a loop like the soldiers are.'

‘What about the side effects?' King asked. ‘Repeating words, staring sideways?'

‘Same deal,' Sammy said. ‘Six won't be in a loop, so they shouldn't be an issue.'

‘What do I do if there are alterations?' Six demanded. ‘Errors in my body?'

Sammy shrugged. ‘Go to a hospital, I guess.'

Worst mission ever, Six thought. ‘What else do I need to know?'

‘Two: avoid meeting yourself in the past,' Sammy said.

That hadn't even occurred to Six. ‘Why?'

‘Because if you had ever met another version of yourself, you'd definitely remember it. You've never met another version of yourself, have you?'

Six thought of meeting Kyntak in the Lab. And then Sevadonn, out on the street. And then the clone, locked up in Vanish's basement.

‘Actually,' he said, ‘it seems to happen a lot.'

‘Not clones of you,' King said. ‘
Yourself
.'

‘No,' Six admitted.

‘There you go,' Sammy said. ‘So meeting yourself would create a paradox. Which means that it won't happen. Which means that if you try to make it happen, something will stop you. Maybe a piano will fall on your head, killing you instantly. Or maybe one will fall on fourteen-year-old Agent Six's head, erasing his memory of meeting you. Whatever it is, it's not likely to be good. So avoid yourself. Got it?'

Walruses, euphoniums, falling pianos, Six thought. Sammy must watch a lot of cartoons. ‘Anything else?' he asked.

‘Just one more thing,' Sammy said. ‘Have you ever heard of the multiverse theory?'

Six nodded. ‘The idea is that there's an infinite number of universes, side by side, each slightly different so that everything that is possible exists in one of them. Right?'

‘More or less,' Sammy said. ‘I think the theory is a load of crap, but until an hour ago I thought time travel was impossible too. So when you arrive in the past, check that you're in the right universe. Otherwise there's no point going to steal the warhead – it may not even be there.'

‘How do I find out?' Six asked.

‘When you arrive in the past, you'll probably be wearing or carrying something that's at least three years old. I'd suggest tracking down the same object in the past, and making some kind of mark on it. Then check if an identical mark is on the version you're carrying.'

‘And if there isn't,' Six said, ‘then I'm in a parallel universe?'

‘Probably.'

‘So what do I do then?'

‘Come right back,' Sammy said. ‘A version of the multiverse theory states that the universe is constantly splitting into all of the various possibilities. Every time anything happens with an element of chance, any time a
coin is flipped or a dice is rolled, every possible outcome is created in a separate reality. If that's true, then the longer you stay there, the further away you'll get from the reality you know. So go straight back to the time machine and come back to the present, or else you might find yourself in a universe without King, me, the Deck, or anything else you recognise.'

‘Aren't the lives of people in a parallel universe worth anything?' Six asked. ‘Shouldn't I try and save them from the nuclear warhead anyway?'

‘No,' Sammy said. ‘Remember, that City has its own version of Agent Six defending it. You thought it would be hard avoiding yourself in the past when both versions of you are in the same building – try it when there's three of you.'

‘Is that it?' King asked.

‘That's it,' Sammy replied. ‘Good luck, Six.'

Six said, ‘First we have to get the agents out of here. Are there any explosive charges in the cell block?'