Third Transmission (5 page)

‘No,' Six tried to say. Then the world went dark.

ANALYSIS

Six woke suddenly. He gasped. Choked. His torso shuddered upwards.

‘Easy, Six,' Ace of Diamonds said. She put her hands on his shoulders, holding him down. ‘Deep breaths. You're safe.'

‘Where am I?' he coughed. The bright lights hurt his eyes. Something hard and cold was underneath him. His heart rate gradually slowed.

‘You're back at the Deck,' she said. ‘In the basement. You've been out for two hours. How do you feel?'

Six grimaced. He was sore all over. ‘My back hurts.'

‘I'm not surprised – there's a hole in it.'

‘Right.' He shut his eyes again.

‘Sorry about the slab,' Ace said. ‘I would have found you a bed, but I didn't want any fibres to get into your wounds. Kyntak thought you might have hit your head in the helicopter, and if there's brain damage, I have to deal with that before I treat your physical injuries.'

‘Is Kyntak okay? His hand …'

‘He's fine,' Ace said. ‘He neutralised the burn with seawater right after pouring it on you.'

Six stretched out his arms and legs, lifting them slightly off the slab. The thin cotton sheet draped over him shifted against his skin.

He blinked. ‘Am I naked?'

‘Sorry. I had to check there were no other flecks of acid on you, or they could tunnel right through your bones while I was treating the major wounds. But you're clean.'

Ace wasn't the only medical specialist at the Deck, but she was the only one who treated Six these days. She was just nineteen, but she was very capable, and he liked it how she didn't act as if he was a superhero, or a freak – she treated him just as a patient. Maybe it was because she'd seen him unconscious and wounded and defenceless, seen his blood and his insides. She had seen that underneath his skin, behind his abilities and his past, he wasn't that different from everyone else.

She held up a clipboard. ‘I'm going to ask some questions to check your mind hasn't been impaired. Okay?'

‘Sure.'

‘Can you tell me your name?'

‘Agent Six of Hearts.'

‘Not your job title, your name.'

‘It's the only name I have,' Six said.

‘Really?' Ace raised her eyebrows. ‘I never knew that about you.'

‘Then how would you have known if I was wrong?'

She seemed to take that as rhetorical. ‘What did King call you when he was raising you?'

Six shrugged. ‘It's not like he ever introduced me to his friends.'

Ace scribbled on the clipboard. ‘Date of birth?'

‘I was never born.'

She sighed. ‘Just tell me your age.'

‘Almost seventeen,' Six said. ‘If you start from when I first escaped from the Lab.'

‘This test really isn't designed for people like you.'

‘There aren't many people like me,' Six said.

‘True. Where are we right now?'

‘The basement of the Deck,' he replied. ‘You just said that.'

‘Was I telling the truth?'

Six looked around. White tiles, grey morgue drawers. Ace was in her lab coat, her blonde hair tied back under a white scarf. ‘Yes,' he said.

‘Good. What's my title?' she asked.

‘Ace of Diamonds.'

‘How long have I worked here? Be as exact as you can.'

‘Ten months, one week, five days. The hours and minutes would depend on what time it is.'

‘Long-term memory's fine,' Ace said. ‘What was your last mission?'

‘Infiltrate the CNS
Gomorrah
, steal the payload, exfiltrate undetected.'

‘A minute ago, when you said your back hurt, what did I say?'

‘“I'm not surprised, there's a hole in it.”'

‘Good.' Ace scribbled again. ‘Spell the following word backwards:
espionage
.'

‘Espionage?'

She nodded.

‘E-G-A-N-O-I-P-S-E,' Six said.

‘Divide 53 by 31.'

Six thought for a moment. ‘One point seven zero nine six seven –'

‘I'll stop you there,' Ace said. ‘Roll over.'

Six frowned. ‘To test my coordination?'

‘The brain test's over, dummy,' Ace said. ‘Your head is fine. I'm going to apply a regrowth salve to the wounds on your back and your arm.'

‘Dummy?' Six said, rolling onto his front. ‘Can you divide 53 by 31 in your head?'

‘Can you apply the salve behind your own shoulder-blade?'

‘No,' Six conceded.

‘Then shut up.' Ace pulled on some gloves and picked up a bottle from her work bench. ‘I'd like to anaesthetise you again, but I can't. The new muscle mass and skin are using your own cells as a template to grow, but it's still basically a transplant, and sometimes the body rejects it. So I need you to let me know if you feel any nausea or chest pain. Everything else is normal.' She squirted some foam onto her hands from the bottle. ‘Basically, I'm saying that this is going to hurt.'

‘It already did,' Six said.

‘It's going to hurt again.'

‘That's okay.'

‘I wasn't asking permission,' Ace said. ‘Just warning you so you'll keep still. Otherwise your flesh will grow back wrong and you'll end up losing more.'

‘Get on with it.'

‘Okay.' She patted the foam down into the holes on Six's back. There was a soft crackling sound, like milk on rice cereal. Six clenched his teeth. It wasn't as bad as the acid, but it was close. Like someone had reached into the wound with tweezers and was stretching out the fibres of his muscles.

‘What were you looking for?' Ace asked. ‘On the ship, I mean.'

‘Are you distracting me?' he asked.

‘Apparently not.'

Six shut his eyes. ‘I was looking for canisters containing the weaponised strain of the SARS virus. I was supposed to steal them before ChaoSonic could use them to wipe out the population of the South Coast.'

‘Did you find them?'

‘No.'

All Deck medics had the same security clearance as their patients, and were allowed to know most details of their missions. Just the same, Six now realised that Ace was the first doctor Six had ever agreed to answer questions for.

She squirted some more foam onto her hand, and rubbed it into the wound on Six's bicep. Six winced.

‘So the mission wasn't exactly a success,' Ace said.

‘It wasn't exactly a failure,' Six replied. ‘Someone stole the canisters before I could. So even if whoever it was got off the ship before it sank, ChaoSonic doesn't have them. The people of the South Coast are safe – for now.'

‘You mean until ChaoSonic goes back to shooting at them with regular weapons.'

‘Yes.'

‘Do you know who took the canisters?'

‘No.'

Ace was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘Since I've known you, you've fought robot-making sociopaths, power-crazy businessmen, body-swapping kidnappers, and the private armies they each commanded. Whoever has the SARS – is it likely to be anyone tougher than them?'

‘I guess not,' Six admitted.

‘Then you'll find them, and you'll stop them. No problem.'

Six smiled. ‘Thanks, Ace.'

She peeled off her gloves. ‘Put some clothes on. You're done.'

He suddenly realised that his wounds had stopped hurting. ‘You distracted me after all.'

‘You're welcome,' she said, patting his shoulder. ‘By the way, King wants to talk to you.'

‘I was going to visit him anyway,' Six said as he pulled on his shirt.

‘Hope I never see you again,' Ace said. It was a joke she made every time. Six wondered if she said it to all her patients, or just him.

‘You too,' he replied.

Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Six's shoes clacked against the floor.

The Deck had started to look a little decrepit lately. The floors hadn't been cleaned in a while, and a skin of dust had grown over some of them. One in every four ceiling lights was dead, and a third of those remaining flickered and fizzed. Upstairs, there was a window Six had broken in his escape from the Spades three weeks ago; the empty frame was now covered by a plastic sheet.

While Six and Kyntak had escaped from Vanish, it had only been a partial victory. Not only was Vanish still on the loose, but he had managed to empty out all the Deck's hidden bank accounts. Six had since donated more than 90 per cent of his considerable wealth to the cause, and he knew he wasn't the only one – King had put in a few million credits, and the Queen of Spades, of all people, had donated quite generously – but it wasn't enough. The Deck was functioning at only two-thirds of its usual capacity, and routine maintenance had been the first thing to go.

And it's my fault, Six thought. Vanish didn't want the Deck, he wanted me. I cost the Deck a hundred million credits.

Six knocked on King's door, and glanced up at the camera above it, giving it a clear view of his face.

‘Come in, Six.'

The door buzzed as it was unlocked. Six twisted the handle and walked through.

King looked troubled. He was scratching the back of his clean-shaven scalp with one hand, and drumming his fingers on his desk with the other. And Six could see why. The Queen of Spades was standing next to him, a cold smile on her face.

‘Six,' the QS said. ‘How lovely to see you.'

Six ignored her. ‘You wanted to talk to me?' he asked King.

‘I did,' King said. ‘Something's come up – your mission report from the
Gomorrah
will have to wait. Tell us everything you know about Doctor Chemal Allich.'

Six was uneasy. The QS was in charge of monitoring the Deck for corruption. Three weeks ago, she had dispatched all the agents at her disposal, the Spades, to find and arrest Six. She later claimed that she had received an anonymous tip-off that Six was working for ChaoSonic. But Six suspected that she might know about Project Falcon, the experiment that had created him. If she could prove he was a genetic weapon created by ChaoSonic, she would have him locked away forever.

She had rescinded the orders. But for the last three weeks, it felt like every time he turned his head, she was there. Watching him.

Six said, ‘Why is she here?' She couldn't arrest him for being rude.

‘Because it's my job to observe all Deck activity,' the QS said. ‘Am I making you uncomfortable? Is there something you'd like to tell King, something you'd rather I didn't hear?'

Her smile grew wider. Six's guts twisted.

‘Six,' King said sharply. ‘Chemal Allich.'

Six took a deep breath. ‘Allich is a physicist working for ChaoSonic. She designed the South Coast Tower eleven years ago, and has been working there since it was built. Two years, eight months and four days ago, I was dispatched on a recon mission to the Tower because large quantities of various chemical agents were being delivered to it from all over the City, and it had the highest power consumption of anywhere on the local grid. I was sent to find out what Allich was working on.'

Six glanced at King. King gave an almost imperceptible nod.

‘King of Hearts was the agent in charge,' Six continued. I hope I'm doing the right thing, he thought.

‘What was Allich building?' the QS asked.

‘A wireless matter-transmission device,' Six said.

Her eyes widened. ‘As in a
teleport
?'

‘Yes,' Six said. ‘I entered and left unobserved, and I collected plenty of pictures of the WMTD to give to the Diamonds, as well as copies of the trial results. Mission successful.'

‘And what did the Diamonds determine?' King prompted.

‘That the WMTD technology was not a threat. First, it would be impossible to conceal. Each end of the transmitter, each port, is a room at least 8 by 8 by 8 metres. And of that space, 60 cubic metres are occupied by a 2.1 petabyte supercomputer, which runs at 14 megawatts – more than twice as much as a high-speed train. The rooms themselves need to be built with molecular precision out of polyolefin materials. The whole setup takes months.

‘In short, we don't need to worry about ChaoSonic smuggling a port into the basement of the Deck and then transmitting in a platoon of soldier bots to kill us. They could only use the machine to send cargo to places they could freely go already.'

Six paused. King and the QS waited.

‘Second,' he continued, ‘it doesn't actually transmit matter. Port A scans the cargo, then sends the data to Port B.
Duplicate
cargo is created from banks of chemicals and elements at Port B.'

‘Like a fax machine,' the QS said.

Six frowned. ‘A what?'

‘Yes,' King told her. ‘But after the transmission, Port A destroys the original object by stripping it into its individual molecules and storing them in its banks. So it's like a fax machine and a paper-shredder combined.'