Third Transmission (33 page)

Six unbuckled the Semtex. His fingers trembled over the timer.

It was Chemal Allich's voice in his head now.

Choice is an illusion. And Tiresias takes the illusion away. That's its curse.

Six pushed the button. The timer was set for twenty minutes. He dropped it into Sammers' backpack, and zipped it up.

On the other side of the row of databanks, Sammers said, ‘Let us pray.'

SAVIOUR

The fourteen-year-old boy slammed the gearstick into fifth. The car screamed down the street, the engine drowning out the horns of other motorists.

There hadn't been such a thing as a driver's licence in decades – ChaoSonic only cared about selling cars, not road safety. Just the same, the sight of a teenager behind the wheel was unusual enough that the cockroaches might try to pull him over if they saw him go past, especially given his speed.

He would have liked to slow down, be less conspicuous. But according to King, he had less than eighty-eight minutes to save the City.

If this video is genuine, and the nuclear warhead is operational, then it could kill every single person on this continent. There's not a second to waste, Agent Six. Go.

No time for a full briefing. No time for a plan. Just get in, get the bomb, and get out. Any way he could.

Agent Six of Hearts swung the wheel, and the tyres shrieked against the blacktop. ChaoVision Headquarters was at the top of the hill. There were hundreds of cars coming the opposite way, speeding
away from it – not that it'll do them much good if that bomb goes off, Six thought. Even if they escaped the fallout, they'd drown when the Seawall collapsed.

His phone was ringing. He touched the speaker key. ‘What?'

‘Six, it's Two.' The other agent sounded on edge. ‘I've mobilised a half-dozen Hearts to back you up. They can be onsite in ten.'

‘I don't need backup,' Six snapped. He swerved to avoid a lumbering 4WD.

‘You can't do this alone!'

‘Watch me.'

‘Listen to me –'

‘No,' Six said. ‘
You
listen. Sammers has twelve soldiers in there. They're heavily armed, and he's carrying an APFSDS cannon. They're all prepared to die for their cause, and they've got a bomb with a higher yield than anything anyone has used in a century.'

‘That's why –'

‘That's why you can't send in a bunch of Hearts. They'll be outnumbered and outgunned and they'll screw it up. We'll all die. On my own, I've got a chance of sneaking in under the radar.'

There was a pause. The road was jammed with cars up ahead – Six drove the car up onto the footpath to get past them.

Finally, Two said, ‘We'll be waiting outside when you've got the bomb.'

‘Good,' Six said. He hit
end
.

Eighty-seven minutes. He spun the wheel and swerved back down onto the road.

CVHQ was just ahead. Satellite footage from half an hour ago showed thirteen people breaking in the front doors, using lasers to slice holes through the huge sheets of glass to get to the handles. Eleven of those people had been present on the video, one was dead on the floor, and the remaining one was the cameraman, most likely. This meant that all the hostiles were in the server farm on the top floor – but they'd almost certainly chained the front doors of the building shut behind them.

Six could probably pick the locks. But that would take time. Time he doubted he had.

He hit a key on his phone, and it dialled his last called number.

‘King.'

‘It's Six,' Six said. ‘Have you tracked down the schematics for CVHQ?'

He heard the clacking of a keyboard. ‘Got them onscreen,' King said. ‘What do you need?'

‘Are there any security stations on the top floor?'

‘No,' King said, after a pause. ‘Just the server farm and a reception area.'

CVHQ was growing larger in the windshield. Six swooped the car sideways around a truck abandoned in the middle of the street.

‘So the hostiles won't be able to see anything happening in the lobby?' he asked.

‘Probably not. Why?'

Six flattened the accelerator against the floor. The car roared forwards, thick wheels bouncing up over the kerb. Six felt his brain rattle around in his skull, but he kept his foot down.

The front doors of CVHQ were 20 metres away. Now 12. Now 3.

SMASH!
The glass exploded into a million shimmering needles as the car plunged through. The chains smacked into the windshield, cracking it, doorhandles still attached. Six slammed his foot down on the brake, and the tyres squealed as the car slid sideways across the lobby floor inside.

Six was rocked sideways as the car shuddered to a halt. Outside his window, the last fragments of glass were tinkling to the floor.

He grabbed the phone out of the holster. Pressed it to his ear as he shoved the car door open.

‘King,' he said. ‘I'm in.'

Sixteen-year-old Six was staring at Sammers and the circle of disciples. They were on their knees, heads bowed, hands pressed together. Every few seconds, Sammers would speak softly – always some phrase about ‘the final reckoning', or ‘the day of judgement' – and then the disciples would murmur in unison, a short phrase that Six couldn't make out.

They were still very close to the nuke. But he was
running low on time. He didn't know if he would find another opportunity to take it before the younger Agent Six arrived. And the other me
must
find it missing, Six thought.

The disciples' eyes were closed. It would have to do.

Go. Now.

Six crept out from behind the cover of the databanks. His eyes never left the circle of soldiers.

Left foot, right foot, left, right. Inching closer to the desk with every step. His teeth were clenched so tight his jaw ached.

‘May thy will be done,' Sammers said.

The disciples chanted their strange response.

Six had reached the desk. He stretched out his hands and placed them fat against the sides of the cone. Then he lifted the warhead.

It wasn't as heavy as he had expected. An object capable of ending so many lives should be much harder to carry. Six held it with both hands anyway – dropping it would alert the murmuring madmen or, worse, crack the casing and spill plutonium onto his feet.

Six walked backwards away from the desk, still watching the disciples, holding the bomb close to his chest.

As soon as he was out of sight behind the row of servers, he unzipped his own backpack, placed the warhead carefully inside and zipped it up again. He wouldn't try to disarm it in here. He'd wait until he was outside.

He slung the backpack onto his shoulders, and started threading his way through the aisles of servers towards the door. He went the opposite way from the hostages, so if he was spotted, he wouldn't draw attention to them –

– the chanting had stopped.

‘How dare you!' Sammers roared.

Six whirled around. The cult leader was right there, pointing the APFSDS cannon at Six's chest.

‘How did you get in, heathen?' Sammers demanded.

Six was about to jump aside, out of the line of fire, when he saw a disciple taking aim at his chest from a few metres to his right. If he dived right or left, the disciple would shoot him. If he ran forwards or backwards, he would get an Armour-Piercing Fin-Stabilising Discarding Sabot through his chest.

Got to stall him, he thought.

‘I was here before you were,' Six said. ‘I knew you were coming.'

Sammers' eyes narrowed. ‘No-one knew we were coming.'

‘I did,' Six said. Another disciple had appeared to his left, and two more behind Sammers. He wondered momentarily where the other eight had gone. Turning his head, he saw that none were standing in the aisle behind him – presumably so Sammers could fire without hitting them. The aisle was clear all the way to the wall at the opposite end of the room, 40 or 50 metres away. But if Six tried to run, he'd be dead before he hit the ground, impaled and bullet-ridden.

‘Where's my purification device?'

‘You'll never see it again,' Six said.

‘You are an incarnation of the devil,' Sammers whispered. ‘Here to halt the Lord's work.'

‘There's no such thing as the devil,' Six said. Make him mad, he thought. It's my only shot. ‘You're not anyone's saviour, and there's no afterlife waiting for you,' he continued. ‘You're just a lunatic. But if it makes you feel any better, it's not your fault.'

Sammers' eyes blazed. ‘
You
are a liar and a heretic, filled with hatred. Have you no faith?'

‘See, you can believe any crazy thing you want,' Six said. ‘I don't care. It's when you start forcing your beliefs on others that I have a problem. Like, for example, trying to murder everyone on earth because you think they're sinners. Or brainwashing your children.'

King's voice in Six's head.
Sammers' father was the leader of a doomsday cult.

‘What did you just say to me?' Sammers hissed.

‘Children,' Six repeated, and suddenly he wasn't speaking to Sammers at all. He was speaking to Nai.

‘Small children believe everything they're told,' he said. ‘Particularly if it's their parents doing the telling. They don't have the mental aptitude to defend themselves against nonsense. That's why it's not your fault – when your father started filling your head with rubbish, you believed every word he said.' He paused. ‘So I don't hate you. I feel sorry for you.'

‘My father was a saint!' Sammers screamed.

‘He was berserk,' Six shouted. ‘And now here
you
are, trying to destroy the world, because –'

Six just had time to twist his torso out of the way as Sammers pulled the trigger. There was an enormous
crump
of displaced air, and the heavy depleted-uranium spear shot out of the barrel at over 1000 metres per second. And as it rocketed past, Six grabbed the shaft with one gloved hand and squeezed it as tightly as he could.

His shoulder dislocated again, but he barely heard the crunch over the roaring of the wind in his ears. The g-forces almost broke his neck as the APFSDS swept down the aisle, dragging him behind it. There was a chattering of machine-guns behind him as the disciples who had been on either side of him opened fire on reflex, and then shouts of agony as they hit each other.

The metal rod was smooth and hot in his fist. Six could feel it trying to slide forwards out of his grip. No, he thought. Not yet.

The wall was approaching rapidly. The servers were flitting past like fan blades. Six squinting against the blasting wind.

Now!

He let go of the spear and fell to the floor, sliding along with leftover momentum. The rod slammed into the wall in front of him, and the stupendous force became heat instantly. The wall exploded outwards, chunks blasting into the night sky and falling out of sight. Six scrabbled desperately at the slippery floor as he slid over the edge.

His fingertips snagged the jagged side of the wall as his legs tumbled out into the darkness. He yelped as his injured shoulder took most of the impact, but he managed to hold on. He glanced down, watching his body fail in the fog-stained air. He peered into the shifting darkness below. Something moving. What the hell was that?

He knew he had to drag himself back up. Sammers and the disciples would be coming.

He swung his good arm up onto the ledge. Pulled. Clambered over the precipice, and stood.

Sammers was storming towards him. Unable to reload the APFSDS cannon fast enough, he had thrown it aside and was drawing a pistol.

‘You will be punished for your blasphemy,' he howled.

Six stood with his heels on the edge and turned his head, looking back down into the void. Then he turned back to Sammers.

‘I really doubt that,' he said.

Sammers had almost reached him – he tugged at the slide of his gun as he walked, jacking a round into the chamber. ‘You will be ascending early,' he said, raising the barrel until it was in line with Six's eyes.

Got to time this right, Six thought. He said, ‘Hey, Straje.'

Sammers' left eye twitched. ‘What?'

Six allowed himself a slight smile. ‘Look behind you,' he said.

Sammers didn't look. So he was completely unprepared when the first of a fourteen-year-old boy slammed into the side of his head. And before Young Six could see him, Old Six stepped backwards off the ledge, and fell into the black.

The sudden silence was refreshing. He could feel the breeze billowing through his clothes.

He didn't fall far. He landed face down on the nose of a jump-jet hovering 5 metres below. He'd seen it when he looked down, dangling from the precipice – but he wasn't sure why it was here.

To his right, the hatch buzzed open. He crawled across and climbed down into it.

Harry watched in silence as he sat down.