Remote Control (10 page)

Six opened the double doors to the stairwell and pressed them against the magnetic discs in the walls so they stayed open. He looped the fire hose around the guardrail on the stairs twice, knotted the free end into his belt, and placed the filing cabinet about a meter from the rail. He kicked the window opposite the doors until its hinges snapped, and then pried it out of the frame, leaning it against the wall next to the unconscious Spade.

The plan was to climb into the window frame and tug on the hose until it ran out of slack, dragging the filing cabinet under
the guardrail and causing it to fall into the stairwell. Fire hoses were always frictionless so they could unspool quickly, so his pulley should work smoothly. When it reached the bottom, Six could simply jump out the window. The cabinet would slow his descent to a safe level as it was lifted through the hollow in the center of the stairwell. He could untie the hose when he was close enough to the ground to fall safely, and then he’d get as far away from the Deck as he could.

Six still had his parachute on his back, of course—and he would have much preferred to use it. But BASE-jumping from a window was often fatal. The parachute usually became caught on the building and didn’t open properly, leaving the jumper to fall to his or her death. Six would need more momentum than he could build up by just leaping out the window. The pulley-assisted abseil was by far the safest option.

Six paused in his preparations and listened. He thought he’d heard a scuffle—the sound of a carelessly placed shoe in the corridor behind him. He peered into the fluorescent light.

Nothing. It was empty, and he couldn’t detect any further noises from beyond the corner. He climbed into the window frame and prepared to pull on the hose, sending the filing cabinet down into the stairwell.

“Agent Six of Hearts!”

The voice had been artificially amplified. Six’s first thought was that it was being channeled through the Deck’s PA system. But it was coming from outside the building. He leaned out into the void and looked down. Fog and darkness. He looked up and fell back through the window in surprise, landing with a thud on the floor of the corridor. A fighter jet had taken off from the roof of the Deck, and was descending towards the window. Six could
feel the heat from the blazing thrusters as they burned fuel to keep the plane in the air.

A halogen spotlight snapped on, blinding him, and he ducked below the frame of the window.

“
Agent Six of Hearts
,” the loudspeaker boomed again.
“You have ten seconds to stand down. I repeat: You have ten seconds to stand down.”

Six heard the clattering of boots and the clicking of safety catches being adjusted. He turned and saw that there were Spades rounding the corner of the corridor, guns raised.

“
You have nine seconds
—” the voice began. But Six heard no more; he was already racing down the stairs.

He heard the chattering of gunfire as the walls of the stairwell raced past in a blur. The guardrail hummed and pinged as bullets sparked off it, and chunks of brick and plaster plummeted through the hollow in the center like dusty raindrops. Six gave up trying to put his feet on the stairs—he just jumped from one landing to the next, his right hand sliding down the rail to keep himself from falling into the well or crashing into the walls. The fire hose twisted in the air above him; he was lucky that he hadn’t knocked the cabinet into the stairwell yet, or it would be slowing his descent. The Spades were crashing down the stairs a few flights above him, but he was widening the gap every second. One person could go down stairs more quickly than twelve at the same time.

The gunfire had stopped—they could no longer see him. But Six knew that this was only temporary. There would still be guards on the other side of every stairwell door, plus the ones in the lobby, and now that the QS knew where he was she would know where to concentrate all her forces.
Perhaps I can still make
it to the sewers
, he thought.
But I’d have to leave the stairwell somehow and get across to
—

He skidded to a halt on one of the landings. A desk had been put in his path, lying on its side, with fire doors propped up against it—a crude roadblock, designed to stop him from going any farther down. He was on the third floor, only fifteen meters from the ground, so he prepared to jump into the stairwell and free-fall the rest of the way, but then he remembered that he was still tied to the fire hose, and therefore the filing cabinet on Floor 11. He reached to untie the knot…

“Freeze!” Once again, he heard the sound of guns being cocked. Lots of them.

Six looked to his right, into the corridor extending from the landing. He didn’t bother doing a head count. The number of Spades pointing guns at him exceeded thirty. Too many to fight. Too many bullets to dodge.

“Hands where I can see them,” the leader said. A badge on her shoulder read
Queen of Spades.
She tapped her earpiece with her free hand. “All units to Floor 3. Air support, return to base. We have the suspect.”

Six let go of the hose, leaving the knot tied. “You’re making a mistake,” he said as he put his hands up.

“If I were, you wouldn’t have tried to run,” the QS said icily.

All you did was run.
His brother’s voice echoed through Six’s head.
All you ever do is run.

I’m sorry I let you down, Kyntak
, he thought. Part of him was relieved that he wouldn’t have to risk his life. Now that he had been captured, he might spend the rest of his days in a cell, safe and alone. But he was immediately horrified that such thoughts had
entered his head. He had failed, and now Kyntak was as good as dead. Even if Vanish didn’t dissect him, ChaoSonic would.

“Take out the sword slowly,” the QS said, “drop it, and kick it over here.”

The katana glided smoothly across the linoleum, and the QS stopped it with her boot.

“Now the pistol,” she said, gesturing at the AM-77. “With your right hand—keep your left in the air.”

Six took out the tranq and dropped it. It clattered to the floor.

Seventy-nine kilograms
, said a voice in his head.
Without the katana and the pistol, you only weigh seventy-nine kilograms.

“Now the Eagle,” the QS said. “You know the drill.”

Six pulled the Eagle automatic off his back and dropped it to the floor. Now seventy-six kilograms.

“You’ll regret this,” Six said as he kicked the rifle across the floor.

“Are you threatening me?” the QS hissed. “Not a smart move. Now the other gun on your belt.”

“It’s a lock-release gun,” Six said. “It’s harmless.”

“You think I’d send you to your cell with a lock-release gun? Take it off.”

The gun clattered to the floor. Now seventy-four kilograms. The Spades behind the QS watched Six impassively, weapons still raised.

“What’s that around your arm?”

“Detasheet,” Six said.

“Plastic explosives?” She raised her eyebrows. “Planning on some sabotage, Agent Six?”

“I can’t take it off one-handed,” Six said.

“The detonator, then,” the QS said. “Turn out your pockets.”

The detonator and the locator bounced onto the floor. A little less than seventy-four kilograms. He kept Jack’s mobile phone concealed in the palm of his hand and slipped it discreetly back into his pocket.

“You’re violating the Code,” Six said, walking slowly towards her. The fire hose tightened behind him. “I have done nothing wrong.”

She stepped backward. “Stop right there. What’s that behind you?”

“A hose,” Six said. “I was going to use it to climb out the window.”

One of the agents snorted, and the QS raised her eyebrows. “Untie it,” she said, “and drop it.”

Six reached slowly behind his back and started to untie the knot, keeping a firm grip on the end of the hose. He tugged, and felt that the slack had almost run out.

“I’m very disappointed in you, Six,” the QS said as he worked. “You had an outstanding track record.”

“I’m disappointed in you too,” Six said. “You normally get your man.”

He pulled the hose with all his might, and jumped backward.

The filing cabinet—now almost ten kilograms heavier than Six—was pulled into the stairwell and fell. Even as the Spades opened fire, Six was dragged backward and sucked up into the stairwell, a human counterweight for the cabinet. He held the hose tightly with both hands and shot upward past flight after flight of stairs.

The Spades reached the landing, and some started racing up the stairs in pursuit, but Six was rising faster than they could
climb. A few others stayed on the landing and fired up at him, spitting bullets wildly into the stairwell. Six dodged by shoving off guardrails on his way up and rebounding from wall to wall, adding to his upward momentum with every push. When he was almost halfway up, the filing cabinet appeared out of the darkness above. He punched it as it swept past him, breaking the lock on the bottom drawer and spilling hundreds of papers and files into the well. The gunfire stopped abruptly as a blizzard of flying paper concealed Six from view.

Six looked up again, squinting against the air rushing past his face. In only a couple of seconds he would reach the top floor, where the hose went over the rail for his improvised pulley. He gave one last shove off a rail, increasing his speed so much that the last few flights of stairs were a blur as they shot past him, and curled his body into a ball. He squeezed his eyes shut. Vision would only confuse him for the next few seconds, and this trick was difficult enough already.

When he hit the rail that was acting as the pulley, his guts lurched as the momentum dragged him over the top with a snap. He let go of the hose. Flying horizontally now, still curled up like a cannonball, he rocketed through the double doors, crossed the corridor with the sleeping Spade, and shot out of the window he’d opened earlier.

Six opened his eyes. Grey fog rained down from the night sky all around. The Deck was already vanishing into it behind him. He spread his arms as if they were wings, keeping his legs straight and his feet together as he flew into the darkness.

The fighter jet seemed to have obeyed the order to return to base. Six was finally beyond the reach of the Spades. Satisfied that there was no aircraft nearby, and aware that he was falling faster and faster, he pulled the cord on his parachute. The chute exploded
into shape above him, snapping his torso backward as his falling speed was cut ten kilometers per hour.

Six reached upward and found the control handles hanging above him. Unlike a hang glider, a parachute couldn’t have a control bar because it had to be folded into a backpack. But this chute had handles that performed a similar function. Six pulled the right-hand one, and the chute swept into a seventy-degree turn above him. He looked at his watch: 18:19:49. Time to head to the rendezvous point.

He pulled the parachute into a swoop and flew into the night.

Hiss.

Kyntak awoke, startled—first by the noise, second by the pain in his arm, and third by the realization that he had been sleeping.
How many hostages fall asleep after only a few hours of capture?
he asked himself.
Why am I so tired? How long have I been here?

The hissing stopped after thirty seconds, as before. The room became silent once more.

Kyntak prodded his wobbly tooth gingerly with his tongue.
How am I going to get out of here?

The door slid open and this time Kyntak saw it happen. It was so seamless that it looked less like a door opening than the entire wall sliding a meter to the left. Kyntak figured that this was probably exactly what had happened.

“It’s a good system, if you have the space,” the man said as he entered. The guard had been replaced by a woman with vivid red eyes. She was wearing what looked like hospital scrubs; Kyntak wondered if she was the on-site medic. She was pointing a Hawk 9-millimeter at the floor. “It can only be opened from the outside, and it can withstand three hundred fifty kilograms of pressure on
any square meter of it from in here.” The man stood in the corner. “No one’s getting out that way.”

“Is there a dumbwaiter?” Kyntak asked. “Not for escaping in, of course; I’m hungry.”

“Really?” the man asked. The curiosity in his eyes looked as hungry as Kyntak felt. “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”

“Uh, I had breakfast at four-thirty,” Kyntak said. “
AM
.”

“How long can you usually go without eating?” the man asked. “And how large is a typical meal in kilojoules?”

The woman had approached the table, and was pointing the gun at Kyntak with a two-handed grip, keeping it safely out of reach above his hand. “Why is she doing that?” Kyntak demanded. “You think I need to be threatened for info on my eating habits?”

A syringe had appeared in the man’s hand. “Just a precaution,” he said, removing the plastic cover. “Stay still; I’m going to draw some of your blood.”

They’d done that a few times already, Kyntak thought, judging by all the puncture marks in his arm. Was there some way they could tell he wasn’t Six? Their blood samples should be the same.

“Are you feeding a vampire in the cell next to mine?” he asked.

“We’re keeping you weak by draining your blood,” the man said as he pushed the needle into Kyntak’s arm. “Enough to keep you tired and hungry, but not enough to put you into hypovolemic shock. That’s why your arm hurts. It means you won’t have the energy to try to escape. Do you feel cold?”

Hiss.

“Most supervillains would be happy with just the ultrastrength roller-door, and maybe a stupid nickname,” Kyntak said. “Speaking of which, who are you?”

The man kept watching the needle. “They call me Vanish,” he said.

Kyntak blinked. “Seriously?”

Vanish nodded.

“Wow, scary.” Kyntak strained against the clamps on his wrists. “Why are the clamps made of copper? You’re too cheap for steel?”

“Copper is an excellent conductor. I can fry you at the touch of a button. Also, while it’s more than strong enough to hold you, it’s more ductile than the walls, the floor, and the ceiling, all of which are thick glass. Even if you managed to get off the table, you couldn’t use the clamps to break the walls.

“Your records show uncommon ingenuity. I felt that just the door wasn’t enough for a hundred percent certainty. Hence the oxygen burst once every two minutes through the valve above your head, instead of an air duct. And hence the blood draining.”

He smiled his curious smile. “I take no pleasure in making you uncomfortable. But you won’t be here for much longer.”

The syringe was nearly full. Kyntak’s head was starting to ache and his vision was sparkling—symptoms of blood loss, he knew. “How much money did you ask for? I just want to know what I’m worth.”

“To them, you seem to be worth a hundred million credits,” Vanish said. “But to me, you’re priceless.”

“If you hadn’t already stolen all of my blood, I’d blush,” Kyntak said.

“You’ll feel better if you sleep,” Vanish said, glancing at his watch. “I have a ransom to collect.”

The wall slid smoothly aside, and Vanish and the woman left. Kyntak tried to keep his eyelids open, but the light from the walls seemed to be becoming brighter, and he had to squint
against it. The sound of his brain straining for blood was roaring in his ears, and there was a throbbing behind his eyeballs.

Six
, he thought as reality faded away to make room for uneasy dreams.
Where are you?

People gawked from a safe distance as Six swung in to land. It had taken him a while to find a street wide enough so that the parachute wouldn’t become tangled on the buildings on either side and long enough for him to take a slow descent and a run down after landing, but not so large that there was much traffic. On the road he’d finally chosen, the streetlamps were the only illumination for the asphalt and the pedestrians; there were no headlights to be seen.

Six pulled both handles to keep the canopy level. The chute cast a curved shadow onto the street as it dipped below the lamps, a shadow which shrank and darkened as he neared the surface.

He hit the ground running, at first with only cursory taps against the road and then with the force of a sprint as the parachute sank farther and he was once again bearing his own weight. After a few seconds the tilt of the parachute caught the still night air and dragged back against him. He skidded into a landing crouch immediately, and the black canopy rolled lightly over his head.

Once he was sure that the last folds of the parachute had sunk to the ground, Six pulled it off and started to fold it, trying to ignore the stares of the pedestrians.
It’s not every night that someone falls out of the sky in front of them
, he supposed.
I wish my life were like that.

He wondered what he would be doing right now if he wasn’t superhuman. Would he be watching television or playing video
games if he had been born to normal parents in a quiet neighborhood, instead of grown in a vat under Retuni Lerke’s watchful eye? Would he have a day job at a ChaoSonic fast-food outlet? Would he be in the local under-eighteen soccer team?

It was pointless to daydream. Like it or not, he was Agent Six of Hearts. Fast, strong, smart. A tough career that was only getting tougher. Too few friends, too many enemies.

He would never lead a normal life. In fact, the way today was going he’d be lucky to see another sunrise. But the people staring at him could live the way they did because there were people standing up for them. Six, his colleagues, and other people like them. There was some comfort in that. He could never experience normality, but he was part of it. He helped to make it possible.

It was 18:24:18, only thirty-five minutes before the drop-off, and he still didn’t have a plan. He didn’t even know whether Grysat had managed to deposit the bugged money into Vanish’s account before the Spades had locked down the Deck. And the downside of his miraculous escape from the QS was that he’d lost almost all of his equipment: the AM-77, the Eagle, the lock-release gun, and the katana, not to mention the detonator for his Detasheet.

The silk canvas slipped out of his hands as he tried to stuff it into the backpack—it seemed to be caught on something. Looking up, he saw that a sneaker-clad foot was pressed down on the corner of it.

“You’re standing on my parachute,” Six said, glaring up at the teenager.

“This is my parachute,” the teenager said, arms folded across his jacket.

“Sorry,” Six said, standing up. “I didn’t see your name
on it when I landed in front of all these people, thirty seconds ago.”

“Hey, Thriek,” a teenage girl said, approaching. “What’s this loser doing with your parachute?”

“Says it’s his,” the boy said, curling one hand into a fist. “I think he’s trying to steal it.”

Six stared at them both for a moment. Then he looked at the group of approaching teens, the girls either staring at their hands in boredom or giggling, the boys all wearing bluntly indignant expressions. Then he burst out laughing. He couldn’t say why for sure—the ridiculousness of his day suddenly hit him.

“You think this is funny?” Thriek demanded. “Are you disrespecting me?”

Six laughed even harder.
If they only knew
, he thought.
So this is how kids my age are supposed to act.

His next burst of chuckles caught in his throat. Kids his age. Normal kids. He looked around at them. Caps, sheer jackets, loose grey jeans, button-up sneakers.

“Hey!” Thriek yelled, walking across the parachute towards Six. “What do you think you’re staring at?”

“A wardrobe,” Six said, a faint smile on his lips. He gave a mighty tug on the chute, pulling it out from under the approaching teenager.

Thriek yelped as he fell, landing on his backside. One of the girls standing nearby laughed, and Thriek roared as he scrambled to his feet and charged at Six, who stepped neatly to one side and grabbed Thriek’s collar as he passed, pulling the teen backward. Wrapping his right arm around Thriek’s elbows and holding the boy’s arms behind his back, Six grabbed the wrists of Thriek’s jacket with his left hand, and it slipped neatly off him. The boy thrashed out of Six’s grip and swung a loose fist at his head, which
Six ducked easily as he picked up the jacket. As he put his left arm into the sleeve, he grabbed Thriek’s ankle with his right hand and the boy fell to the ground. Six crouched down and pulled off Thriek’s jeans, which were baggy enough to come down easily. He put them on over his own jeans, then took off the kid’s sneakers and grabbed his mobile phone.

Thriek scuttled off into the darkness as Six put on the shoes, his friends following close behind.

Six needed to know whether the ransom money had been bugged and put in Vanish’s account. The easiest way to find out was to call Grysat. The Spades would be listening. He’d have to try to make it innocuous. He typed the number into Thriek’s phone and hit
CALL
.

“Yes?” Grysat’s voice was strained.

“Hey, man, it’s Steve,” Six said, hoping Grysat would recognize his voice. “How’s it going?”

There was a pause. “Oh, hi!” Grysat said finally. “Sorry, believe it or not I was actually expecting a call from a different Steve. How are you?”

“I’m good,” Six said. “Are we still on for dinner at seven?”
(Are we going ahead with the trade?)

Grysat sighed theatrically. “I’ve been held up at work,” he said. “I would’ve told you, but there’s something wrong with all the phones and they can’t dial out.”
(The Spades are monitoring all the calls, and the Deck agents can’t make any.)
“But the others should still be going, so you’re welcome to go without me.”
(I’ve paid the money; you can still make the trade.)

“That’s a shame, man,” Six said. “I mean, yeah, I’ll go, but I wish you could come too. Are you okay? You don’t sound all that good.”

“I think I might’ve come down with something,” Grysat
said, “but it’s probably just a twenty-four-hour bug.”
(The Spades will give up and leave soon; we’ll be okay.)

“Get well soon, buddy,” Six said. “Good luck at work.”

“I’ll be fine. Enjoy your dinner.”
(We’re safe. Get to the rendezvous point.)

“Yeah, see you around.” Six hit
END
.

He was relieved. Grysat had managed to pay the money before the Spades had put the Deck in lockdown. Six didn’t know what shape Kyntak would be in. He could have been tested, tortured, or had samples of himself sold to ChaoSonic for analysis. And Six didn’t know how easily he could track down Vanish after the exchange was made. If ChaoSonic had been searching for him for as long as Shuji had suggested, he doubted that his luck would be much better.

And he didn’t know how he was going to clear his name with the Spades. But Six had no doubt that if the money hadn’t been paid, he would never have seen Kyntak again.

452nd Street was one of the oldest streets in this part of the City, but it was barely a street anymore. So many bridges had been put over it that it was practically a tunnel. It had been rebuilt and redirected around new buildings so many times that any resemblance to the straight line it had once been was completely lost. And eventually it had become so blocked by new infrastructure that ChaoSonic had stopped keeping it uninterrupted—there were hundreds of trenches and skyscrapers that broke it along its length, each causing a dead end and a new beginning in the street. Because of this, the spot where it hit the Seawall was essentially a T-intersection made of three cul-de-sacs—the street running alongside the wall made the top of the T, and an eighty-meter
chunk of 452nd Street made the bottom. All three points were now blocked at the end by buildings. There was nowhere for cars to get in, and pedestrians entered and exited either through the subway at the center of the intersection or through one of the surrounding buildings. High above the road there was a monorail leading back to 449th Street, but while it was still connected to the massive labyrinth of monorail lines which patterned the City, business hadn’t been good enough for ChaoSonic to keep sending carriages to the spot. The T-shaped intersection was known as “the Timeout.” It was frequented mainly by the citizens who worked in the surrounding buildings, but there were a few cafes on the corners, luring outsiders into the area for strong, bitter coffee. And the activity didn’t stop at night. Three floors of one building were taken up by Insomnia, a nightclub that slashed refracted blue lasers against its tinted windows and pumped bass-drenched beats into the Timeout from dusk until dawn.

Six had been on enough surveillance and reconnaissance missions to know that tailing someone in a nightclub was all but impossible—so if he was going to observe the Timeout and wait for Kyntak to be dropped off, behind those tinted windows might be the best place to do it. And the nightclub had two entrances, one inside the Timeout and one outside. Insomnia was probably the least conspicuous way into the intersection.