Dead Man Running (7 page)

‘Nai,' he croaked. ‘Climb the rope! Quick!'

Nai needed no further encouragement. Her hands and feet still glued together, she crawled up the garrotting wire like a caterpillar. The ache in Six's arm dimmed as their speed levelled out at Mach 2 and the weight fell to less than a hundred and fifty kilos.

‘Kyntak. Can you hear me?'

‘Poisoned me,' Kyntak said. ‘I'm hallucinating. Feels like I'm flying.'

‘That's not a hallucination. Can you move your hands?'

Kyntak's hand closed into a fist. But it happened too slowly. Six doubted Kyntak would have the strength to ascend the rope on his own.

‘Okay,' Six said. ‘Just hold on to me.'

Keeping a tight grip on Kyntak, he heaved on the rope, spun upside down, and wrapped his feet around it. Then he opened his hand, swung the right way up again, and clenched his fist around the rope again, a little higher than before. He'd climbed about half a metre.

‘I feel sick,' Kyntak said.

‘Don't worry. Another thirty of those and we'll be at the top.'

Kyntak moaned.

Six swung, kicked, let go, swung again, grabbed. Another half-metre. Swing, kick, drop, swing, grab.

Up above, he could see Nai crouched on the wing of the ChaoCorde, trying to wrench open the emergency exit door.

‘Nai!' Six yelled.

She looked down at him.

‘Help pull us up!'

She turned back to the door.

Worth a shot, Six thought. He flipped upside down again, trapping the rope between his shoes. The fog whipped by beneath him.

‘Can't trust her,' Kyntak said. ‘You're lucky she didn't cut the rope.'

Six remembered Kyntak's earlier words.
I might decide you belong in a body bag.
‘I don't trust anyone any more,' he said, and pulled on the rope again.

It took almost three minutes for them to climb the rest of the way to the top and swing up onto the wing. When they got there, Six saw that the emergency exit door was missing. Through the hole he could see terrified passengers strapped into their seats, oxygen masks covering their faces.

He unhooked the rope from his belt and carried Kyntak in. The roaring of the wind was somehow louder in here, combined with a fuzzy beeping and a recorded voice which said, ‘Warning, the cabin is depressurised. Warning, the cabin is depressurised. Warning . . .'

‘Nai!' Six shouted, scanning the seats. There was no sign of her.

There was an empty seat nearby. Six put Kyntak down on it and ran up to the cockpit door. Nai would be in there – she knew how to fly a plane. He'd seen her do it before.

Landing at a ChaoSonic-controlled airport would mean death for all three of them. If the pilots were still in control, that's where they'd be headed. But if Nai was choosing the flight path, Six had no idea where she'd go. A disused runway? A busy highway? Retuni Lerke's secret hideout? Wherever it was, Six doubted it would be good news for any of the passengers. He had to get the plane to land somewhere near the Deck, where he could summon backup. That was the only way he and Kyntak would be safe. He threw himself at the door, shoulder first.

Wham!
The door didn't even rattle. It was bolted shut, and there was no keyhole to pick – the lock was electronic.

Six was about to try to kick the door in when someone grabbed him from behind and dragged him to the ground. He threw a fist upwards, but hit empty air.

‘Help me!' someone yelled.

Six heard approaching footsteps and felt hands grab his arms. The passengers, he thought. They think I'm a hijacker.

He stopped struggling. ‘It's okay,' he said. ‘I'm trying to save you!'

A pointy-toed shoe thudded into his gut. Another one whooshed towards the top of his head. He twisted his neck aside so the kick hit his shoulder.

‘Hey! Back off!' Six roared. ‘I work for the Deck!'

‘What the hell's a deck?' he heard someone ask.

The sentence left Six horrified. The Deck had changed location and lost agents – had it become so secret that no-one even knew it existed? Could people have forgotten all the good it did so quickly?

The answer came in the form of a foot, stomping down towards his face. Six pulled his arms inwards, crossing them over his head. The two people who'd been holding his wrists crashed into one another, and the man who'd been about to break Six's nose was pushed aside in the confusion. Six jumped to his feet and spun around. He kept his arms high, like a boxer, but kept his hands open, palms facing the passengers. He didn't want to fight them.

‘I'm not a hijacker,' he said. ‘But there's a girl in the cockpit who –' He hesitated. If Nai was in the cockpit, wouldn't the passengers have seen her go in? Shouldn't they be helping him kick down the door, not restraining him?

She's not in there, he realised. She's somewhere else on board.

The passengers were hovering just out of reach. Now that he was on his feet, none of them was willing to be the first to attack.

‘I'm sorry,' Six said. ‘I've made a mistake.'

‘Damn right you have,' said a burly man in an onion-brown jacket, and then he was running at Six, head down, like a furious bull. Six jumped back towards the cockpit door, pressed both his feet against it and then launched himself over the charging man, landing on the other side of him as he crashed headfirst into the door.

Six pulled down the tray table from a nearby seat and smashed his fist onto it, snapping the hinges. Then he wrenched it free and held it above his head to block a punch from a man in a sleeveless shirt. When he heard the crack of the fist connecting, he gave the table a mighty shove, pushing the man off balance. Swinging around, he slammed the table into somebody's ear, and then he'd made enough room to sprint past the other passengers, back to where he'd left Kyntak.

When he was halfway there, movement caught his eye. Nai was standing next to the empty emergency exit. Her hands and feet were still joined, but she'd managed to wriggle through the straps of a parachute pack, which was now sideways across her torso.

‘Nai,' Six said. ‘Wait!'

‘This isn't over,' she said, which would have sounded more threatening if she hadn't had a ripcord clenched between her teeth. Then she hurled herself out the door into space, and was gone.

There must be other parachutes somewhere on board. But by the time he found them, Nai would be long gone.

He'd lost her. Again.

There was a crash behind him and some of the passengers screamed. Whirling around, Six saw that the cockpit door was now open and the co-pilot was standing in the doorway, cradling an automatic rifle.

‘Don't move, Agent Six,' he shouted.

Six glanced up at the cameras in the ceiling. People might have forgotten the Deck, but clearly ChaoSonic still remembered him.

The passengers dropped to the floor, covering their heads.

‘I have orders to take you in,' the co-pilot said. ‘Preferably alive.'

So they can kill me themselves, Six thought. Great.

‘Don't be dumb,' the co-pilot continued. ‘Strap yourself into one of the seats, put your hands on your head, and let me cuff them. Don't make me shoot you.'

Six knew that he wouldn't last long in ChaoSonic custody. But he wouldn't last long with a chest full of bullets, either. What could he do?

The co-pilot said, ‘I'm going to count to three.'

ChaoCordes travel at six hundred metres per second, Six thought. This one is travelling east by north-east.

‘One.'

He'd first fired Nai's crossbow at the hull eight minutes and fifteen seconds ago.

‘Two.'

So we've travelled 297 kliks, Six calculated, and 298 kliks east by north-east of the warehouse where I led Nai is . . .

‘Three.'

‘Lake Cariboo!' Six shouted, and even as the co-pilot was squeezing the trigger Six was grabbing Kyntak's arm, dragging him out of his seat.

A bullet whizzed through the air above him. He dove towards the emergency exit and pulled Kyntak out after him. They both bounced across the wing and plunged into the void.

Almost immediately, Six lost his grip on Kyntak's wrist. He twisted around in the fog, the freezing wind pummelling his face and chest, searching for his brother.

‘Kyntak?' he yelled.

A distant reply: ‘You'd better have a plan.'

‘Try to relax. Loosen all your joints and muscles, otherwise the force of the impact will be concentrated into your internal organs.'

‘Relax?' Kyntak demanded. ‘We're nine thousand metres up! We're going to survive this by being “relaxed”?'

Yes, Six thought. We are. You only have to fall three hundred metres to reach a terminal velocity of 195 kilometres per hour. It doesn't matter how far above that height you jump from, you're going to hit the ground at exactly the same speed. People had survived falls of more than ten thousand metres onto snow and grass and cars. Six was confident they could survive this. But it was going to hurt like hell.

‘Spread your arms and legs to increase wind drag,' he shouted. ‘At the last second, try to land on your feet and fall sideways onto your calf, thigh, butt and shoulder to divide up the force.'

The fog was getting thicker – Six figured he must be about two hundred metres above the ground, where the air pollution settled. He couldn't see the water yet.

‘Take a deep breath,' he added. ‘We're going to stop a long way under the surface.'

The air caught in his throat. What if the lake wasn't there any more? What if sometime in the last four years ChaoSonic had emptied it, or covered it with artificial land? But there was something below. Something dark and forbidding and huge. It could have been water. Could have been blacktop. If it was the latter, Six and Kyntak might still live through the impact – but it would shatter the bones in their legs.

Six braced himself. Then he remembered that this was the exact opposite of what he was supposed to do, and he let his limbs go slack around him. The water – it was water, he could see that now – rushed up to meet him.

Cold. Dark.

Can't breathe.

Six swam towards the surface, grabbing the water above and pulling it down as though it were raining money and he was stuffing his pockets. He couldn't see and his ears were ringing from the impact, but he was pretty sure this way was up.

His head breached the surface unexpectedly. He blew the water out of his nostrils and inhaled, as he looked around for Kyntak.

Lake Cariboo was a theme park, of sorts. The lake was ringed by an artificial beach, where rich patrons would go to drink at a pine-log bar, paddle in the shallows and later, lie on floral-patterned towels under a giant spotlight that was supposed to represent the sun. The sand was dyed yellow and sprinkled with plastic shells. In Six's time, the locals had called it ‘Fake Lake'.

Kyntak was nowhere to be seen.

Six rotated in the water, scanning the horizon. There were jetskis zipping across the choppy water and some people dangling fishing lines from the deck of a yacht – Six doubted that there were any fish living in here, but perhaps that wasn't the point.

There. A white splash in the water, a thrashing arm. Kyntak was already nearly a hundred metres away from Six, swimming for the shore on the opposite side of the lake.

Six gave chase. Kyntak's freestyle had always been superior to his own, but perhaps the tranquillisers would hinder him. Six pounded the water with his palms and feet, hoping to reach the shore before his brother got away.

Why is he running from me? he wondered. Does he think I'll arrest him on the Deck's behalf?

Someone was yelling something from the yacht. Six ignored them. If they'd seen him hit the water, they probably thought he was an extreme-sports junkie whose parachute hadn't opened. He should get out of here before someone called ChaoSonic security.

Kyntak was climbing out of the water up ahead. Six gritted his teeth and paddled harder, draining strength reserves he hadn't known he possessed.

The pier was made of iron, painted to look like wood. As Six reached the ladder he lost sight of Kyntak, and when he reached the top, his brother had disappeared.

The old Kyntak would have waited on the water's edge to make fun of Six's inferior swimming ability. But the old Kyntak seemed to be long gone.

Six looked across the pier, at the gleaming pylons and ice-cream stand, the dummy gannets on the roof –

Someone tapped his shoulder. He whirled around.

‘Stay away from me,' Kyntak said, and shoved Six back over the edge into the water.

HOUSE OF MIRRORS

It wasn't unusual to see lunatics walking the streets of the City. Since few people could afford insurance and drugs were mostly self-prescribed, a plague of mental health problems had been spreading since Takeover. Six had once given a fifty-credit note to a beggar on the street, only to watch her slowly and carefully eat it in front of him.

The one who'd caught his eye now as he stared out the window of the decelerating train looked like a recently fired businessman. He was wearing a crumpled but once expensive suit, and his frizzy hair was congealed with stalagmites of gel. He was even wilder than most of the City's homeless – shouting, gesticulating, staring like a startled cat. The other commuters at the station weren't looking at him. Maybe, Six mused, they think he won't see them if they don't see him.

Or perhaps they were wary of being noticed by ChaoSonic security. He counted five operatives working their way through the crowd towards the madman. They were in plain clothes, but it was obvious who they worked for. Their suits and haircuts were implausibly generic and none of them had made any effort to hide their ear-pieces. Six wondered what this man had done to incur ChaoSonic's wrath.

The train stopped and the doors slid open. A flood of passengers poured in just as an equal number tried to leave, creating a human traffic jam.

Six knew that ChaoSonic employed ‘pushers', guards who would shove the backs of commuters as they approached the doors, making sure that the maximum possible number of people was crammed into each carriage of the train. Officially, this was done so that more people could get to work more quickly. Unofficially, it was to make public transport so unpleasant that citizens would use cars, which they would have to buy from ChaoSonic and fill with ChaoSonic petrol.

But there was no sign of the pushers right now. They only worked in peak hour.

The crazy-looking man managed to squeeze through the doors just as they were closing. The train pulled away from the stop, leaving the operatives behind on the platform.

There were only three empty seats on the train. Six was sitting beside one of them. No-one had wanted the seat next to the teenage boy with lakewater dripping off him and a hole in his hand.

‘I'm going to sit here,' the man announced, and perched beside Six. The other two passengers near free seats looked visibly relieved.

The man didn't notice Six's hand – he seemed to be fascinated by his own. He pinched the skin between his tendons, stretched it up and let it go again. After a pause, he repeated the action. Six looked out the window as the tunnel wall flashed past. The man followed his gaze.

‘So intricate,' he said. ‘The things the human mind can produce.'

His cadence was clear and exact. Six guessed that he'd been educated at one of ChaoSonic's more prestigious schools. What had happened to him between then and now?

Perhaps he'd made an enemy somewhere who had later become his boss. Or maybe he'd been in the wrong department at the wrong time and had been made the scapegoat for a dip in profits. The City was littered with similar stories.

This wouldn't explain his apparent lunacy. But Six had once heard that the only sane response to an insane world was to go mad.

The man didn't seem bothered by Six's silence. ‘I'm Nadel Panuros,' he said, extending his hand. ‘Well, I'm not, but I think I am.'

The name sounded familiar to Six, but he couldn't place it. Ignoring the man any further might aggravate him, and Six didn't want to call even more attention to himself. ‘Scott Macintyre,' he said, choosing the alias at random.

‘Nice to meet you,' Panuros said. ‘Well, me. Because we're all me, aren't we?' His pupils were as huge and dark as ball-bearings.

Six wasn't sure what to say. He was struggling to focus on the conversation – his mind was still reeling from his encounter with Kyntak and Nai. He had found both his siblings and then each had fled from him. As for finding out who was reanimating the dead, he was no closer than before.

Panuros kept talking, as though to himself. ‘When I go back, they'll ask again,' he said. ‘I'll tell them how to get in. But what I don't understand is why they want to know.'

The train was pulling up at the next stop. Six was alarmed to see another group of guards hovering on the platform. Apparently Panuros was important enough to warrant pursuit by a ten-man team.

Can I do nothing while they take him? he asked himself. Is there anything I
can
do? He turned to look at Panuros. ‘What do they want with you?'

‘Does it matter?' the man asked.

Six pulled off his cap and put it on Panuros's head. He draped his jacket over the crumpled business suit. ‘Talk quietly,' he said. ‘Don't look out the window. Pretend you know me.'

The doors opened. One of the guards came in and started scanning the seats.

‘Over here!' Panuros called. The guard whirled around.

Six turned to face the window immediately, heart pounding. There was nothing he could do now.

‘I'll have to ask you to come with me, sir,' the guard told Panuros.

Another guard reached the train doors and stood between them to stop them from closing.

‘Does it matter?' Panuros said again, louder this time, as though he was talking to the whole carriage. ‘Does any of this matter?'

The guard looked uncomfortable. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘It's very important.'

Panuros isn't a suspect, Six realised. They work for him. They're his bodyguards.

Panuros was staring at the back of his hand again, still plucking at his skin. ‘Pinching's not working,' he muttered. He raised his hand to his lips, and took a bite out of it.

Six yelped and shrank away on the seat. Other passengers gasped, got up, crowded towards the other end of the carriage.

Panuros shrieked in pain, blood dribbling from his mouth. The bodyguard grabbed him and hauled him to his feet. Panuros didn't struggle as he was manhandled towards the door.

‘Thanks for the loan,' he said, and tossed Six his cap. Six caught it. The rim was sticky with blood.

The guards looked at Six suspiciously. Six's look of shock must have been enough to convince them that he was just a bystander, because after a moment's hesitation they bundled Panuros out the doors and let them close.

‘You're wet,' Ten said.

‘Yes,' Six said. ‘Do you have the Double Tap files?'

‘Why?'

‘Because I have information that may be relevant to your investigation, but I need to see what you've got so far to be sure.' He glared at Ten, who didn't look impressed.

‘I meant,' Ten said, ‘why are you wet?'

‘I jumped out of a plane and landed in Lake Cariboo.'

Ten's office looked like he hadn't finished moving into it – or perhaps the previous occupant hadn't finished moving out. Boxes were stacked against one wall and several picture hooks were stabbed into the other.

Six didn't approve of photo frames in offices. If an agent was looking at photos of their loved ones then they were wasting the Deck's time. And if they weren't looking at the pictures then they'd wasted the Deck's time putting them up. Just one more thing not to like about Agent Ten, Six thought.

‘You're not supposed to be doing missions on your own,' Ten said. ‘I'm meant to be looking after you.'

Six grimaced. King had assigned him a babysitter? Didn't he trust Six any more?

‘I don't need your help,' Six said. ‘You need mine. Give me those files.'

Ten looked Six up and down, as if seeing him for the first time. ‘Everyone says back when you were alive, you were a really nice guy. Maybe the machine put you together wrong.'

‘Nobody likes saying bad things about dead people,' Six said. He held out his hand.

Ten opened his desk and produced a flash drive. He held it out, but when Six reached for it, he pulled it back.

‘On one condition,' he said.

Six raised an eyebrow.

‘You don't leave this building without me,' Ten said. ‘Until we've found out who killed you.'

Six smiled bitterly. ‘Deal.'

Ten dropped the drive into his open hand.

‘It was Nai,' Six said. ‘Possibly working for Retuni Lerke.'

Ten's eyebrows shot up. ‘Nai, your sister? And Lerke, your father?'

Anger hardened in Six's chest. Lerke had only written Six's genetic code, while King had spent sixteen years raising him. The idea that Lerke had any right to be called his father was sickening.

‘We're talking about the same people, yes,' Six said.

‘And you think Nai might be Double Tap?'

Six hesitated. Physically, Nai was capable. Psychologically, he wasn't sure. She'd certainly killed before, probably in cold blood – but
eighty-nine
people? With no apparent motive? He didn't want to believe his sister could do that.

‘I'll let you know,' Six said finally. ‘Once I've seen the list of victims and when and where they died.'

Ten nodded. ‘Okay. That's on the flash drive. Do you have any way of tracking her down?'

‘How good are you at hacking phone records?'

‘What do you need?'

‘A gun shop phoned her at 9:49 this morning,' Six said. ‘5465 East Bay Avenue.'

‘Sure. I can get her number from that.'

‘When you do, text it to me. I'll call her and find out if she did it.'

‘How?'

‘I'll ask.'

‘In all my years as a Deck agent,' Ten said, ‘that has never worked.'

‘She's a killer, but she's not a liar. She told me straight up that she'd killed me – she'll tell me if she killed the others, too.'

‘You sure?'

‘Yes.'

Ten bit his lip. ‘She's a family member.
And
she's your killer. Can you be objective?'

‘Yes,' Six said.

‘Can you be objective about whether or not you can be objective?'

Six looked at him. ‘You play all the word games you want. I've got work to do.' He opened the door.

‘Don't leave the Deck without me,' Ten reminded him.

Six frowned. ‘You said I could once we knew who killed me. And we do – it was Nai.'

‘I said until we've
found
whoever killed you. And she's still on the loose.'

‘You said found
out
,' Six corrected.

Ten half smiled. ‘Really? That's not how I remember it.'

‘I have photographic recall,' Six said, which was only a slight exaggeration.

‘That won't hold up in court.'

‘There's no such thing as “court” any more.'

‘It's a figure of speech.'

Six clamped his teeth together. ‘So you're going to follow me around everywhere until Nai is behind bars? Is that it?'

‘Of course not,' Ten said. ‘Just everywhere outside the Deck.'

Six let the door fall closed. ‘I can lose you,' he said.

Ten put his feet up on his desk. ‘You don't know me very well yet, but you will soon, obviously. And one of the things you'll realise is this: I am very, very good at my job.'

‘So am I.'

‘Great! We'll make a good team.'

There didn't seem to be a way to win this. Six said, ‘Just stay out of my way,' left.

It was a long walk to Ace's office. A hundred and fifty steps to the lift, two minutes waiting for it, one minute descending, and then another hundred steps to the morgue. Too much time to think. Too much time to let the dread stew in his stomach. When he got there, he stood outside her door for a long time, one hand pressed against it, trying to work up the courage to knock.

This is ridiculous, he told himself. People try to kill you every day. You shouldn't be scared of your ex-girlfriend.

Just thinking the word
ex-girlfriend
made him feel squashed. He knocked on the door.

‘Come in.'

He walked in.

Ace was loading a glass tube into a centrifuge. She looked up. ‘Oh. Hi.'

Six held out his bloody hat. ‘A crazy guy started eating himself on the train.'

‘What else is new?' Ace said, deadpan.

‘He was important enough to have ChaoSonic bodyguards, and based on the dilation of his pupils, I think he'd been poisoned with something. I'm hoping you can tell me what.'

Ace took the hat. ‘Any other symptoms?'

‘Confusion. Hallucinations, maybe.'

‘Was he sweaty? Sensitive to light?'

‘Not that I could tell.'

Ace looked doubtful. ‘I'll have to test for a lot of different things. Is this to do with your murder case? Or Double Tap?'

Maybe both, Six thought. Maybe neither. ‘Probably not.'

Ace sighed. ‘Give me a couple of days,' she said. ‘Okay?'

‘Thanks,' Six said. ‘I really, really appreciate it.'

He'd hoped some extra gratitude would count as an apology for his rudeness before. But if Ace had forgiven him, she didn't show it. She just turned back to her centrifuge and kept fiddling.