Dead Man Running (11 page)

He slammed his fist against the wall, engaging the push-release latch in the hidden door. It swung open and Six raised his gun, his finger on the trigger as something inside screamed –

‘Don't kill us,' the woman in the cupboard said.

There was a child wrapped around her leg, a boy. He had one hand stuffed in his mouth, muting his own terrified shrieks.

‘Please,' the woman said. Her sweaty hair was glued to her forehead. ‘Please don't kill us.'

Six lowered the gun, staring. Who were these people?

The boy's chin had the beginnings of a cleft, like the woman's, and his hair was walnut-brown and curly. Like Jack's.

Six thought of his earlier words.
You wouldn't quit the Deck just to save your own life.
He'd just found something Jack cared about more.

‘I'm sorry,' Six told the boy. ‘I thought you were a serial killer.'

The boy looked up at him uncomprehendingly, still squealing around his fist.

‘It's okay,' Jack was saying. He pushed past Six and scooped up the child. ‘Shhh, it's okay. These are friends.'

‘Friends?' the woman repeated, staring at Six's gun. He immediately holstered it.

‘Wow,' Ten said, looking at Jack. ‘You
can
keep a secret.'

‘If it's important,' Jack said. He put his arm around the woman. ‘If you don't mind, we'd like you to leave.'

There was an uneasy silence in the car on the journey back. Six was typing on his e-reader's touchscreen; one of the few consolations of having Ten drive him everywhere was that he could update his case notes on the move.

Jack has family
, he wrote.
Kid at least five years old. Must have been born about the time Kyntak and I were searching for Nai. Jack never told anybody – to keep them safe.

Was it so hard to believe? Six had worked at the Deck for years without letting anyone find out that he was a genetically engineered super-soldier. But he'd kept that secret by refusing to interact with anyone. Whereas Jack had been the warmest, friendliest guy at the Deck. How had he been able to say so much without ever mentioning the most important part of his life?

Can strike him from list of victims. But doesn't affect assessment of motive. DT wanted him dead.

I know it's not Nai, Six thought. The killer's too tall, his shoulders are too broad, his voice too deep – definitely male. But he's connected to me, and so is she. Maybe she'll know something about him I could use.

‘Okay,' Ten said finally. ‘I'll come with you.'

Six frowned at the interruption. ‘Come where?' he said.

‘To the bottom of the ocean.'

‘Uh, no thanks,' Six said. ‘I'll go on my own.'

‘I wasn't offering.'

‘I don't care. You're not coming.'

‘I am.'

A new tactic occurred to Six. ‘I've been at the Deck since before you have. I outrank you. I'm
ordering
you not to come.'

‘I was told you'd say that, and instructed to ignore it,' Ten said. ‘Frankly, I'm surprised it took you this long.'

Six ground his teeth together. ‘You've been assigned to protect me, right?'

‘Yep.'

‘Don't you think the best way of doing that would be to locate Double Tap as quickly as possible? And don't you think the quickest way to find him is for you to stay in the City and do research and conduct interviews while I follow this lead that will probably turn out to be nothing?'

Ten said, ‘That would be true if Double Tap was the only risk to your life. But you haven't factored in hypothermia, asphyxiation, shark attacks and everything else that can happen at the bottom of the ocean. I'm supposed to protect you from those things too. That's why every scuba diver has a buddy.'

‘You're not my buddy,' Six growled.

‘Damn right,' Ten replied. ‘I'm your bodyguard, like it or not. You're going nowhere without me.'

‘I'm superhuman. I can take a lot of damage that you can't. If you follow me to every dangerous place I visit, you might die. Don't you get that?'

‘Yes,' Ten said. ‘I absolutely do. So you'd better be sensible, or else you'll have that on your conscience.'

‘Don't you have a family?' Six asked. ‘A wife and kid, like Jack? Parents, maybe? People who depend on you?'

‘That's the point,' Ten said. ‘I can't go home to Harriet and tell her another agent is dead because I disobeyed orders. The guy she married wouldn't do that.'

Six realised that he hadn't expected the answer to be yes. Ten had seemed like the kind of man who lived alone, eating reheated soup and never really tasting it. Six didn't want to see where that thought was heading, so he shook it off.

‘What if your blind obedience got me killed,' he said, ‘because I was too busy looking after you to watch my own back? Could you tell your wife that?'

‘Won't happen,' Ten said. ‘I told you before – I'm very, very good at this.'

Six wondered if he could grab the steering wheel, crash the car and escape on foot, leaving Ten trapped in the wreckage.

‘You haven't tried bribing me,' Ten said.

‘I'll give you ten thousand credits to leave me alone,' Six said immediately.

‘No thanks.'

‘See? That's why I didn't try bribing you.'

‘I'm just noticing that you've tried ordering me, you've tried escaping from me, you've tried threatening me, but it never occurred to you to offer me anything in return for doing what you want.'

‘What's your point?' Six asked.

‘No point,' Ten said. ‘Just offering a little perspective.'

Six wasn't sure how to respond to that. They drove the rest of the way in silence.

It was nearly midnight by the time they got back to the Deck. Ten parked the ute among the HMVs and APCs, and they both walked over to the lift. Six pushed the button for King's floor. Ten pushed the button for the negative eighth.

‘Where are you going?' Six asked, pleased that Ten would apparently be leaving him alone for a while.

‘To say goodbye to some people,' Ten said. ‘Don't you do that before missions?'

The memory hit Six as suddenly as a train – his first and last kiss with Ace, the warmth of her arms locked around his shoulders, the scent of her skin.

‘No,' he said.

‘But what if you don't come back?'

‘If I said goodbye to somebody every time I might die, I'd never have time to get any work done,' Six said.

Ten shook his head. ‘You need to lighten up,' he said. ‘Where are
you
going?'

‘To get a dive suit.'

‘Oh, great. Pick up one for me, too.'

‘Get your own.'

Ten shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.' Then he chuckled. ‘Get it? “Suit yourself”?'

Six sighed. The lift stopped at King's floor and he got out. Ten was still laughing when the doors slid closed.

‘This sounds like a very thin lead,' King said.

‘I've chased thinner,' Six replied.

‘That I can't argue with.'

They were in the armoury. King was wandering through the rows and rows of helmets and Kevlar vests and assault rifles, head up, eyes roaming from side to side. If he'd had a trolley, he would have looked like he was supermarket shopping. Occasionally he paused to throw something back to Six, who was already carrying a lock-picking kit and a small pouch of nitroglycerin.

The armoury at the old Deck had been next door to Jack's office, which made sense, since he was the one weaponising gadgets and gadgetising weapons. The new armoury was on the top floor, opposite King's office – Six found himself wondering if that was a coincidence, or if King's personal paranoia had influenced the design.

It was bigger, too, and better stocked. Six had never seen so many weapons in one place. He wondered where the money had come from to buy all this – perhaps it was stolen from ChaoSonic bunkers.

‘You'll be going too deep to use normal air canisters,' King said. ‘Air has too much nitrogen in it, and under enough pressure, it will reach toxic levels in your bloodstream. But pure oxygen can be just as fatal. You'll need heliox – a mixture of helium and oxygen – 2400 litres should do.' He hefted three aluminium canisters. ‘But I'll give you 3600, just in case. This canister is seventy per cent helium, this one is eighty per cent, and this one's ninety.'

Six strapped the canisters to his back. They were heavy, but it wouldn't be so bad under water.

‘Ace told me you were investigating a poisoning,' King said. ‘Where'd that come from?'

‘A man on the train,' Six said. ‘Said his name was Nadel Panuros. He was talking gibberish, and –'

‘Did you say Nadel Panuros?'

‘Yes. Why?'

‘That's ChaoSonic's Deputy Chief Financial Officer,' King said. ‘He's been trying to get his hands on us for months.'

And now he's eating them, Six thought.

Suddenly he remembered where he'd heard the name before. In Six's time, Panuros had been a partner in one of ChaoSonic's property development divisions. Six guessed he must have impressed some important people to get promoted so many times in four years.

‘Can you think of anyone who might want to poison him?' Six asked.

‘That would be a very long list. He's got influence in every department of the company. There must be thousands of people who've been fired, turned down for jobs, or had their budgets slashed by him.'

‘Maybe I'll be able to trace the poison back to somebody,' Six said.

‘His death would leave quite a power vacuum,' King said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe you should take a look at the Deputy Deputy Chief Financial Officer.'

I will, Six thought. After I get back from my dive. ‘I'll need a harpoon gun,' he said. ‘Ten mentioned sharks.'

‘Uh . . .' King turned a corner and found a rack of Tasers and grappling-hook launchers. He dug out a harpoon gun and threw it over.

Six touched the cruel barb to check that it was sharp before hooking the gun onto his belt.

‘What kind of dive suits do you have?' he asked.

King picked up a rubbery black bundle of hollow limbs. ‘Just this kind, but they're good. Practically untearable. Keep the wrist and ankle straps loose until you're in the water, then tighten them. That way some water will get trapped inside and heat up until it matches your body temperature. The material converts pressure into warmth, so the deeper you go, the less cold you'll be. The water in the suit should provide some padding, too, just in case you don't land on your feet on the ocean floor.'

Six took the suit. ‘What if I land on my head?'

‘Then you'll probably drown,' King said. There was a pause. ‘Oh. You want a helmet?' he asked.

‘That's what I was getting at, yes,' Six said.

King pulled a motorcycle helmet off a hook. ‘It's not watertight, but the oxygen mask will fit underneath it. You could still break your neck, though, so try to land on your feet.'

Six's relationship with King had never been a warm one. King wasn't the type to leave his emotions exposed. If other people could see how he felt about something, they could use that knowledge to manipulate him.

Just the same, they'd always trusted one another. King had known that Six would do everything he could to protect the Deck's interests, and Six had known King would keep him out of harm's way whenever it was possible to do so.

That dynamic seemed to have shifted. Six didn't feel like King was at all worried that he wouldn't come back from this perilous journey.

It's because I'm a copy, he thought. The real Agent Six died four years ago, and King mourned him. Now there's nothing left to feel. I'm not real to him. He felt a pang of sadness at this realisation. But, like his father, he wasn't the type to show it.

‘Weights,' he said. ‘I'll need a weight-belt to get down there.'