Crossover (10 page)

The world was still
spinning around him. The best he could manage was a crawl, toward
the noise at a painful pace. Bile rose in his throat. He choked it
back down.

There was probably
another way into these lower floors. The Taur could arrive at any
minute. But if he could shut off the machine, it didn't matter what
the beast did to him.

By the time he reached
the door to Byre's room, he was less dizzy. He stood. Pushed the
door open.

It was like travelling
back in time for real. Byre stood exactly where she had before, her
knuckles white around the two metal cylinders, her eyes wild with
excitement and fury.

'Six,' she said. 'I'm
not going to lie – I'm surprised to see you.'

Six ignored her and
staggered over to the console. A timer was counting down from 48
seconds. A readout told him that she had set the machine to blast
her 81 years into the past. He reached for the shutdown lever.

It wasn't there.

'Given what happened
last time,' Byre said, 'I thought it was safest to remove the
emergency shut down switch. Now I'm glad I did.'

Six couldn't believe
it. He had failed. The machine couldn't be stopped. And now he was
going to die.

He hoped Kyntak had
made it outside the blast radius.

'For what it's worth,'
Byre said, 'I'm sorry. I know you'll cease to exist when I kill the
founding members of ChaoSonic. But they've done much, much more
harm than good.'

Six was barely
listening. Kyntak had told him that the blast would be proportional
to the spacetime distance – the further Byre tried to go back, the
bigger the explosion would be. If he could change her destination
to something more recent, perhaps only this building would be
destroyed. He and Byre would die, but probably no-one else. The
Taur might survive the blast, thanks to its thick, leathery
hide.

However, if he touched
the controls, Byre would overpower him. He was in no condition to
fight her off. He would have to wait until the last second, when
she would be afraid to let go of the cylinders.

The timer read 24
seconds.

'I have a rule,' Six
said. He had to shout over the roaring of the magnet. 'I don't kill
people.'

Byre's eyes narrowed.
'Conveniently, killing me wouldn't stop the explosion.'

'But if you die because
of your machine, and I didn't warn you, then that counts.'

Byre said nothing.

'So this is me,' Six
said, 'warning you. You're not going back in time. Kyntak says it's
impossible. We're both about to be blown to pieces.'

'The machine will
work.' There was no doubt in Byre's voice.

11 seconds.

Something snarled. Six
whirled around. The Taur had appeared in the doorway.

'Kill him,' Byre
said.

The Taur's molten eyes
fixed on Six's. It squeezed through the door and reached out for
him–

Six ducked under its
grabbing arms and twisted one of the dials on the console. The
readout changed from 81 years to 22 years to ten months to two
months.

'What did you just do?'
Byre shrieked.

Six couldn't reply. The
Taur had grabbed him by the throat and was lifting him up. He heard
the cartelage in his Adam's apple creak. Everything was getting
dark.

The Taur had turned
away from Byre. Away from the machine. With his last shred of
strength, Six hugged the monster, using it a a giant inhuman
shield, burying his face in its tough flesh–

And
then –
KABOOM
–
the air was painted white.

* * *

Soren Byre landed in a
heap. She was somewhere dark and loud. The floor was metallic. It
shook under her fingers.

She stood, swaying
unsteadily. She had felt the first fraction of a second of the
explosion, but then it had disappeared – or rather, she had. The
explosion hadn't happened yet. She was in the past.

Things fell from the
ceiling around her. Objects skittered across the floor. She had
transported herself into the midst of an earthquake. Somewhere,
somewhen.

She turned, looking for
a way out, and saw a figure running toward her. Fleeing, perhaps.
Did that mean the way out was behind her?

The boy's face came
into view. It was Agent Six of Hearts. His clothes were different,
and the holes in his head were gone, but it was definitely him.
Somehow, he had travelled through time with her.

'It works,' she hissed,
delighted to have proven him wrong. 'It works!'

And then something
plunged into the back of her head, and she knew nothing more.

Acknowledgements

I'd
like to thank fellow writer Sam McGregor, whose enthusiasm
for
Crossover
was
a huge driving force without which it might still be
unfinished.

I'd also like to
thank Dean C Moore, MJ Levitt, Charlene Mei Abad, Holden Marceaux,
Jezieboo, Rheann33, Zuzuthezombie and all the other Wattpad users
who provided encouragement and feedback.

I asked Jeremy
Gallant a bunch of dumb physics questions, and he was kind enough
to give me some smart answers. Mistakes and implausibilities are
mine alone.

As always,
thanks are due to Venetia Major, Barbara Davidson, Ian Heath and
Tom Heath. Your support keeps me going.

About The Author

Jack Heath is
the award-winning author of six novels for young adults. He lives
in Canberra with his wife, their dog and several
chickens.

His
Agent Six books include
The
Lab
,
Remote
Control
and
Third
Transmission
. For more adventures starring
Ashley Arthur, check out
Money Run
and
Hit
List
.

These books are
available from Pan Macmillan in Australasia, Scholastic in North
America and Usborne in the United Kingdom.

Keep
reading for a sneak peak of
Hit
List
!

Hit
List

Practice. It
would take practice, but it could be done.

He moved around
the empty room in circles, aerosol can in his hand, dodging
invisible bystanders. Occasionally he paused, and stepped back with
his head bowed, as if to allow someone to walk past.

The motions were
easy. The more difficult part was maintaining an expression of
faint surprise and curiosity – eyebrows up, head slightly tilted,
lips curled into a lopsided grin. Like he'd spotted an old friend
on the opposite side of a crowded room, and was going over to say
hi. His intention was to look non-threatening, yet unapproachable
to anyone in his path.

He walked, he
paused, he sidestepped, he kept walking. The only sound was the
wind, keening at the broken window in the attic.

There were
rumours that this house was haunted – rumours he reinforced at
every opportunity. It would be inconvenient if someone purchased it
and moved in. So he spent many of his nights turning
battery-powered lights on and off in various rooms, throwing things
at the walls to produce sudden thumps, and playing a battered
violin in the attic. Whenever the real estate agent brought
prospective buyers around, they found fresh bloodstains on the
floorboards, made from a foul-smelling syrup of red wine and
barbecue sauce.

He didn't like
to be disturbed. And he would disturb as many other people as it
took to avoid it.

The walls of the
room he was in were covered in mirrors. Every step of his
complicated waltz was mimicked by the dozens of doppelgangers that
surrounded him. He stared at them, trying to see himself as others
would. They stared back, each with an equally suspicious
gaze.

A twitch of his
fingers, and the aerosol can vanished up his sleeve. A flick of the
wrist, and it was back in his hand. He rehearsed this over and
over, watching the can disappear and reappear as he walked. It's
there. It's gone. Now you see it, now you don't.

With his other
hand, he loosened his collar, scratched his neck, ran his fingers
through his hair. These motions would draw eyes away from the can,
allowing it to come and go unobserved.

After a few more
circuits, he came to a sudden halt in front of one of the mirrors.
There was a picture taped to it – a teenage girl, on the footpath
outside her school, unaware that she was being
photographed.

He stared at her
for a long time, memorising every detail of her features. Then he
closed his eyes and visualised them. Oak-brown hair, green irises,
teeth not quite crooked enough to require braces. Narrow shoulders.
Unpierced ears.

He opened his
eyes again. Her hair was darker than he'd pictured, but otherwise,
everything was very close.

The girl was a
chameleon, often hidden behind clever costumes and prosthetic
make-up. If his plan was to work, if he was to have his revenge, he
would need to recognise her instantly. He'd need to know her face
as well as he knew his own.

He reached out
and touched the photo, tracing the curve of her
cheekbones.

'Ashley,' he
whispered. Then he walked back to the other side of the room, and
starting weaving through the imaginary throng once again. Practice
makes perfect.

~

The guard stared
down at the grubby pass card. 'The thing is,' he said, 'you're not
on the personnel list.'

The girl
blinked. Wiped the grime off her palms. 'Sorry?'

'Your pass is
valid,' the guard said, uncomfortably. 'But I've got a list of
people to let through, and you're not on it.' Plus, he thought, I'm
not sure I've ever seen you before.

The girl offered
him a wry grin. 'Does that mean I can go home?'

The guard
sighed. 'Well . . . '

'I know, right?'
the girl said. 'You're not supposed to let me in – it's against
regulations. But if I leave, they're one worker short for the day
and the foreman will say it's your fault. You could call him up
here to sort it out, but then he'll blame you for wasting
everyone's time.' She scratched her hair under her cap. 'Course, if
he'd done a proper headcount in the first place, there'd be no
problem.'

The guard
wondered how long the girl had been working down in the mines.
Couldn't have been more than a couple years – she looked younger
than his niece, although the tattoos on her neck made her at least
eighteen. He looked at the pass card again. It was definitely
legit.

'How
about
I
call
him?' the girl said, fumbling through the pockets of her overalls.
'That way –'

'No,' the guard
said. He jerked a thumb towards the mouth of the tunnel. 'Go
on.'

The girl
shrugged. 'Sure. Have a good day.'

The
guard watched her walk away into the blackness. Then he stepped
back into his station, sat down in the swivel chair and picked up
one of the wedding magazines his fianc
é
had left out for him. The
interesting part of his day was over.

~

'Benjamin,' Ash
whispered, stripping off the overalls to expose a patchy grey suit,
made from the same fabric as her cap. 'I'm in the outer
tunnel.'

'What took you
so long?' His voice was crisp and loud in Ash's ear, thanks to the
new earphones they had bought. No more obvious wires on her neck –
the plugs contained batteries with 48 hours between recharges, and
were coated with rubber that matched Ash's skin colour exactly.
Benjamin was on a boat half a kilometre off the shore, but she
could hear him as clearly as a chiming bell.

'There was a
list of miners,' she replied. 'But the guard was convinced by the
pass card anyway.'

'You're
welcome.'

Ash snorted.
'Come on. It's not like it was hard for you to make, with the
laminating machine and the new-edition Photoshop.'

'Hey, you need
more than just the equipment,' Benjamin said. 'You need the skill
to use it. Did I say "skill"? I meant "genius".'

'Are you done?'
Ash asked, distractedly. She was walking as fast as she dared down
the steep, uneven slope. Iron tracks had been bolted to the ground
so mine carts could carry debris out of the shaft, and the wooden
slats would have made good steps – but there was a sodium bulb
bored into the roof every five metres, and Ash was sticking to the
edge of the tunnel to stay out of the light. Her camouflage was
only effective in dim conditions, and she never knew when a mine
cart might rattle up out of the gloom.

'Yeah, I'm
done,' Benjamin said. 'If you need anything, you know where to find
me.'

'In my
ear?'

'Like
always.'

The lights
flickered momentarily as someone further down the tunnel switched
on a jack hammer, diverting a sizeable chunk of the electricity.
Ash was glad of the din – now she would be inaudible as well as
invisible. The noise of the bit repeatedly striking the sandstone
was like the clanging of a demented school bell.