Dead Man Running (10 page)

Abandoning stealth, Six ran for the front door. He wasn't going to let the man who'd killed his friends get away. When he got there, he tried the handle. Locked.

Six knew how to pick a lock – use a bent paperclip to lift each of the pins, then apply anticlockwise pressure with a tension wrench until it turns. He could do it in less than ten seconds. But that was too slow.

Six reared up and smashed his foot into the left side of the door, where the hinges would be. The frame splintered apart and he charged through the gap, gun raised. The bullet wounds in his chest ached. He ignored them.

The hall was empty. Six swung left and right, looking for movement. There was none. He rounded the corner into an old-fashioned sitting room – and came face to face with another man. He had a gun pointed at Six's head.

Six took aim at the gunman's face, his finger tightening on the trigger. He hesitated. His eyes widened.

‘
Jack?
' he said.

LIKE HE'D SEEN A GHOST

Jack's flesh was a lifeless grey, his eyes round and staring.

This was what had happened to the body, Six realised. It was stolen so it could be Revived.

As his undead friend staggered towards him, arms outstretched, Six whirled around and kicked the gun out of his hand. It clattered to the floor.

Six knew he couldn't shoot Jack, Revived or not. So he dropped his own gun and grabbed Jack's wrists, keeping the poisoned rings away. He spun Jack around and wrestled him to the ground.

‘Six,' Jack yelled. ‘Goddamn it, it's me!'

Six froze. His face isn't damaged, he thought. The exit wounds are gone. And Ace said the Revived can't use guns. He looked at Jack's hands. There were no rings – he'd imagined them.

‘I thought you were dead,' Jack said.

Six stood up. ‘I thought
you
were dead!'

‘What the hell is going on here?' Ten asked, entering the room behind Six and staring at Jack.

‘Well, no-one's dead,' Jack said as he clambered to his feet. ‘But it was a close call.' He looked at Six. ‘How can you be here?'

‘I'm a copy,' Six said. ‘King rebuilt Allich's machine and printed me out again. What's your excuse?'

Jack's look of shock and horror was fading, to be replaced by a familiar grin. The colour returned to his cheeks. ‘Six,' he said. ‘You're alive!'

Six frowned. ‘I know. But how –'

Jack launched himself towards Six and wrapped him up in a hug. ‘You're alive!' he said again. ‘I can't believe it!'

‘I saw you get shot in the head,' Six said, pushing him away. ‘How is this possible?'

‘I've been investigating your murder for months!' Ten said. He sounded angry.

Jack looked abashed. ‘Um, yeah,' he said. ‘Sorry about that.' Backing away towards the kitchen, he said, ‘It's kind of a long story. I'll put the kettle on.'

‘We don't have time for tea,' Ten said.

‘I'll make coffee, then,' Jack called. ‘It'll actually save time, because the caffeine will make you do everything faster.'

Six chuckled in spite of himself.

Jack's kitchen was far neater than his office at the Deck had been. The stovetop was freshly wiped, the plates were perfectly aligned on the drying rack. Maybe a clean home helped him feel less like he was at work. Or perhaps he just hadn't been living here long enough to let things fall into disorder.

Six and Ten sat down on some bar stools near the bench as Jack rummaged noisily through the cupboard, dug out a jar of instant coffee, and spooned some into three mugs.

‘I don't want one,' Ten said.

‘So,' Jack said to Six, ignoring him. ‘When you died, I was . . . distraught. We all were. No-one could believe it. But it wasn't until Queen was killed that I started to get
scared
. What if someone was assassinating Deck agents? Then Sammy died, and I became sure of it. I figured that anyone capable of murdering Six would have no trouble killing me. So I decided to fake my own death.'

‘Why not just quit?' Ten asked.

The kettle clicked off as the water boiled.

‘Because I had no idea why the killer was doing this,' Jack said. ‘There was no guarantee that quitting would get me off the hit list – but I could be sure of losing the Deck's protection. Sugar?'

Six shook his head. Ten said, ‘I don't want anything.'

Jack poured him a cup anyway. ‘I figured the only way to be completely safe from the killer was to let him think he'd killed me. So I set a trap.'

‘What kind of trap?' Six asked.

‘A dummy,' Jack said. ‘I stole one from a department store, hollowed it out, filled it with blood packets and then used prosthetic makeup to make it look like me.'

Six thought of the video, and how still Jack had been in front of the TV. He thought of the moment of blackness between Jack's message and the lights coming on to reveal him on the couch.

‘It was
you
who took the body away,' he realised. ‘The killer left it on the floor, and you came back to pick it up later. To hide the evidence.'

Jack nodded. ‘I couldn't risk the killer finding out from somebody else that the body wasn't real.'

‘Double Tap,' Ten said. ‘We call him Double Tap.'

‘Why did you record the video message?' Six asked. ‘Why not just position the dummy on the couch, leave, and come back periodically to check whether he'd shot it yet?'

‘Because I didn't just want the killer – Double Tap – to think that I was dead,' Jack said. ‘The Deck needed to think it too. If they thought I'd just disappeared, they'd start looking for me. Whereas if they thought Double Tap had murdered me, they'd be looking for
him
. That way I could come back once he was caught.'

‘How did you know he was coming that night?' Ten asked.

‘I didn't,' Jack said. ‘I recorded that same video message and set up the dummy every night for a month and a half before the killer showed up.'

‘Wow,' Ten said. ‘That's . . . dedicated.'

‘My life was at stake. I figured it was worth the effort.'

‘Did you see him?' Six put in. ‘The killer?'

Jack shook his head. ‘I was gone by the time he arrived, and he was gone by the time I came back.'

Six exhaled. If only Jack had thought to set up a –

‘But I got some video of him,' Jack said.

Six's heart beat a little faster. ‘Have you got it here?'

‘Sure.'

‘You don't mean the video message?' Ten asked. ‘You mean from a different camera?'

‘The TV had its own webcam,' Jack said. ‘I left it recording just in case the footage could be used to identify the killer.'

There was a computer in the adjoining living room. Jack switched it on and started navigating through the folders.

‘I'm afraid it's not all that useful, though,' he said. ‘If it was, I'd have sent it to the Deck already. But since – ah, here it is.'

Jack appeared on the screen. No, not Jack – his dummy, sitting on the couch. It looked less real to Six now, perhaps because it was a front-on view, or perhaps because this time he knew it was fake. The face was a serviceable approximation of Jack's, but the dimples in the cheeks were too firm and the colour in the irises was too flat.

Jack skipped ahead in ten-minute increments and then ten-second ones, and then suddenly Double Tap was there, standing behind the dummy, gun raised. Ten inhaled sharply.

Six stared at the face. As before, it was covered in a stocking, giving the killer a mannequin-like appearance. Ironic, Six thought. Double Tap looks more like a dummy than the dummy does.

‘Average height,' Jack said. ‘Average weight, no visible facial characteristics. Like I said, not that useful.'

‘What about his clothes?' Six asked. ‘Can you adjust the brightness so we can see them?'

Jack fiddled with the video player settings until the scene was drowned in a ghostly light. Most of the killer's body was concealed by the dummy, but Six could see his shoulder, his hand and part of his chest. He was wearing nondescript black gloves and a black shirt under a black jacket. Nothing useful.

Jack hit play and the dummy's head exploded, showering the camera lens in blood. Through the murky slop Six could make out a flash of light as Double Tap shot the dummy in the chest and then slunk away into the shadows.

‘See?' Jack said. ‘A waste of film.'

Six said, ‘When we were looking for a connection between the three victims – you, Queen and Sammy – we thought there might have been something you each knew that would lead us to the killer. That's why we came here. We thought you might have something written down here that Double Tap wouldn't have been able to find and destroy. Do you know what that something might be?'

There was a long pause.

‘This might be nothing,' Jack began, ‘but the message I recorded was true. The Deck's seismic sensor at the bottom of the ocean really is losing power.'

‘So?' Six asked.

‘So after I'd explained that to the camera five or six times, it occurred to me that maybe it wasn't just losing it. It was being
drained
. It's up to the Diamonds to monitor that kind of thing, so Sammy probably knew about it. And he was pretty close to Queen – he may have mentioned it to her.'

‘You think someone's stealing our electricity?' Ten looked doubtful.

‘Only incidentally,' Jack said. ‘I think they've planted a bug which is using the seismic sensor to access the Deck's database, and it's draining some electricity in the process.' He glanced at Six. ‘And remember, Double Tap seems to have a lot of classified information – such as the agents' home addresses.'

Could that be how the killer was getting his intel? A bug on the ocean floor? Six rotated the idea in his head, examining it from all sides. His theory that Double Tap was a Deck agent had some holes in it – one being that agents didn't have access to one another's files. This might explain how the killer had been able to track down Sammy and Queen's houses.

‘So if we shut down the sensor,' Ten said, ‘we might be able to cut off his access, too.'

Jack nodded.

‘Or I could go down there,' Six said.

Jack and Ten looked at him.

‘If I can get a look at the bug, I might be able to work out who planted it.'

‘How?' Ten asked incredulously.

Six shrugged. ‘I won't know until I see it. But people always leave traces behind.'

‘I meant, how will you get down there? Do you have any idea of the depth? The pressure?'

‘I can handle it.'

‘It's not about what you can –'

Interrupting him, Six asked Jack, ‘The fake blood in the dummy – how did you know the Deck wouldn't test it and find out it wasn't yours?'

‘It
was
my blood,' Jack said. ‘It took two weeks to withdraw enough to fill the dummy's head and chest.'

Six knew what massive blood loss felt like. More than once he'd been drained of so much that he'd nearly gone into hypovolaemic shock. He thought of the headaches, the burning muscles and the tongue dry and cracking with thirst – and then he tried to imagine feeling that way for a fortnight.

Jack was tough enough to put himself through that. But that was exactly why his story didn't quite add up.

‘You're loyal,' Six said. ‘Brave. You're not a runner. You wouldn't quit the Deck just to save your own life.'

‘Are you kidding?' Jack said. ‘Double Tap is scary.'

‘That's exactly why you'd stay. To protect the others.'

Jack looked Six in the eye and said, ‘You're wrong. I've always been more cowardly than you thought.'

Six had been Jack's friend long enough to know when he was lying. But why? What was stopping Jack from saying why he really ran? What wasn't he telling them?

Six thought of how loudly Jack was speaking and how much noise he'd made preparing the coffee. The hairs stood up on the back of Six's neck. There's someone else in the house, he realised. Listening. What if Double Tap got here just before we did? What if Jack's lying to us to save our lives?

‘Okay,' Six said, keeping his voice calm. ‘I understand. But now that we've found you out, you're going to come back and work for us, right?' He rose slowly to his feet.

‘What? No,' Jack said. ‘Not with a serial killer still on the loose.'

Six glanced at Ten and circled the fingers of his left hand around his right wrist. All Deck agents were trained to recognise dozens of different hand signals, including
follow me
,
freeze
, and the numbers one to thirty-one. This signal meant
enemy
.

Six cupped his hand behind his ear.
Listen.

The enemy is listening.
Ten's eyes widened.

‘What are you doing?' Jack demanded. He had never been a field agent, and must not have learned the signals.

‘Nothing,' Six said, drawing his gun. ‘If you change your mind about coming back to the Deck, call me.'

Still looking at Ten, Six pointed a finger at Jack. Then he clenched one hand around his own throat.
Hostage
.

Ten stood and drew his own gun. ‘We should probably get out of your hair,' he said.

‘You should,' Jack said. ‘You should put your guns away too.'

Six glared at him and held a finger to his lips – a signal even Jack should recognise. But trying to stop him from talking had always been a futile venture.

‘Seriously,' he continued. ‘What are you doing?'

If the killer is here, Six thought, why is Jack sabotaging our chances of finding him? We're his only hope of survival – Double Tap will kill him as soon as we leave. Surely he must know that.

‘It's for you,' Ten told Jack. ‘For protection.' He tapped his gun against the table.

Clever, Six thought. He's made it sound like we're just giving weapons to Jack, so the killer won't know we're on to him.

Six started edging towards the door – not the one they'd come in through. If Double Tap was listening, he'd be close by. Ten was right behind him.

‘Okay,' Jack said. ‘I know what you guys are thinking. But there's nobody here. It's just us.' For the first time, Six thought he saw fear in his eyes.

And then there was a soft creak from the other side of the door.

Six wasted no more time. He couldn't let Double Tap get the jump on them, not again. He pulled the door open and stormed through, gun barrel first.

A study. Swivel chair, desk, bookshelves.

Empty.

Six crouched to look under the desk. Nothing but a dusty power board.

Jack was running after him, desperately shouting, ‘Wait! Don't go in there!'

Six ignored him. I heard someone, he thought. I
know
I did. And this room is smaller than it should be.