Dead Man Running (13 page)

Original Six had only been standing out on the street for a minute when Ten's car cruised around the corner. Six pulled the door open as it slowed down and jumped in.

‘What did you need to get?' Ten asked. If he was angry at being abandoned, he didn't show it.

Six held up a cap, which he'd snatched from the wall hook on his way out. ‘My lucky hat.'

‘I never knew you had a lucky hat.'

‘Why would you? We only met two days ago.'

Ten looked suspicious and exasperated, but didn't ask any more questions. ‘Well, I'm glad you got it,' he said. ‘We'll need all the luck we can get.'

BEHIND ENEMY LINES

Getting from the City to the ocean was always tricky. ChaoSonic monitored all air traffic, so anyone flying over the Seawall was likely to get shot down. There were cameras all the way along the wall, so anyone trying to climb it would be stopped long before they could get to the top. And anyone who tried to dig through or underneath it would have to deal with the incredible pressure from the water on the other side.

Six had done all of these things at one time or another, and the Deck owned a radar-invisible helicopter for missions such as this. But today he didn't just need to get to the ocean – he needed a speedboat once he was there, to get to the seismic sensor. And all the boats in this area were controlled by ChaoSonic. He and Ten were going to have to pass as ChaoSonic Security operatives.

‘Except we don't have the uniforms, IDs, weapons or transport to pull that off,' Ten said. ‘This is all stuff we're going to have to steal from a truck that's already on its way to the docks.'

They were parked alongside the kerb on a street near the Seawall. Most of the vehicles rumbling past were semitrailers piled high with shipping containers. Up ahead, Six could see the checkpoint they were going to have to get past.

‘Why doesn't the Deck keep some stolen gear on hand?' Six asked.

‘Can't. ChaoSonic has got tougher since your time – they do regular inventory checks, and if anything's not accounted for, they detonate it remotely.'

‘You mean deactivate,' Six said.

‘Nope. Detonate. Every ChaoSonic gun, every vehicle, every uniform, every access card has an explosive charge built into it, big enough to kill or maim the user. So we're going to have to acquire these things en route.'

‘And then dump them before they blow up.'

‘Correct.'

‘How often do they do these inventory checks?'

‘Every day, at 6 pm. But that's not our real problem.'

Six sighed. ‘What's our real problem?'

‘The operatives we steal from will notice that their gear is gone. As soon as they do, they'll call ChaoSonic and ask them to hit the switch. Kaboom, we die.'

‘Can we cut off their communications?'

‘Sure, if we had an EMP – which we don't. And even if we did, it would also fry all the things we're trying to steal.'

‘We could broadcast white noise on their channel, stop them from getting through.'

‘Maybe, but the signal will be encrypted. You'd have to get within two metres of them to hack their channel.'

‘What about knocking them out?'

‘Well, I have some darts, but we'd have to get the operatives out of their truck to use them. And if they have to leave the truck, they'll call it in. Then when ChaoSonic radios back to check they're on schedule again, they'll want passwords we don't have. Kaboom.'

There was a pause.

‘Okay,' Six said. ‘Let's go.'

Ten looked surprised. ‘You're giving up?'

‘No, I meant let's go do it. Turn the car around – we need to get back to the bridge.'

‘But we don't have a plan.'

‘I
always
have a plan,' Six said.

‘And
I'm
telling
you
,' the operative said, staring at her colleague, ‘that it's impossible.'

‘It's not!' the young man insisted, a wicked gleam in his eyes. He looked, the operative thought, like someone who enjoyed telling people things they wouldn't believe.

‘Somebody did it,' he said. ‘Like, two years ago. They took a guy who'd had his head chopped right off by a snapping safety cable, and they –'

‘They resuscitated him,' the operative said, wringing the steering wheel. Who had rostered her onto a shift with this lunatic? ‘That's different. Resuscitation is not the same as necromancy.'

‘Sure it is. It's bringing the dead back to life.'

‘No, it's
keeping
someone alive. The headless guy, they got him hooked up to a respirator and a pacemaker and everything less than a minute after it happened, and they'd stitched his head back on within the hour. He was never technically dead.'

‘How could you possibly be alive with your head cut off?' the young man said.

‘Well, he survived, didn't he?'

‘Because they brought him back. From the dead. Listen, I know what I saw, all right? Living people don't walk like that.' The young man was digging through the glove compartment, possibly looking for a phone or a laptop or something else with a web browser to corroborate his theory.

Thump.

The two operatives looked at one another.

‘You hear that?' the young man asked.

‘Sounded like something landed on us.'

‘Maybe someone's chucking stuff off the overpass.'

‘Maybe. Sounded heavy, though.' She eased the truck over to the kerb and put the handbrake on. ‘We'd better check the roof's okay.'

He fumbled for his radio. ‘You want me to call it in?'

‘Yep.'

The young man was about to comply when the radio stuttered to life in his hand.

‘Vehicle 4, this is HQ, Vehicle 4, this is HQ, over.'

The female operative snatched the radio out of her colleague's grasp. ‘HQ, go ahead.'

‘This is a yellow alert. Deck agents are active in your area.'

The young man's eyes widened. He looked up at the roof and unholstered his pistol.

‘Exercise extreme caution,' the radio continued. ‘You are authorised to fire on anyone who approaches your vehicle until the alert is lifted. Please confirm orders and authorisation code.'

‘We're at yellow alert, and we're allowed to shoot anybody who approaches us,' the woman said. ‘Our authorisation code is Butterfly 660.'

There was a pause.

‘Please repeat authorisation code,' the radio said. The voice sounded confused.

‘Butterfly 660,' the woman said again.

‘That code is not recognised. A containment team is on its way to your location.'

‘What? No!' the woman said. ‘That's the right code!'

‘You will comply with all instructions, or your equipment will be deactivated.'

‘What the hell does that mean?' the young man asked.

The woman was already tearing at the straps on her armour. ‘They think we're spies. They're going to blow us up!'

She kicked the door open and jumped down onto the asphalt. There was a thud as the young man did the same on the passenger side. ‘Dump your gear!' she yelled to him. ‘Weapons, armour – anything issued by the company!'

She threw away her phone and her company ID as she ran away from the truck. Her holster wouldn't come unclipped from her belt, so she ripped off the belt and tossed it. She turned back to see how her colleague was doing – and saw that he was facedown on the road. What the hell? Had he fainted?

And then she saw the teenage boy crouched on the roof of the truck. He had a dart rifle in one hand and a radio transmitter in the other.

She put her hands up.

He shot her anyway.

‘Relax,' Six said.

Ten was sitting rigid as a totem pole, hands clenched into fists by his sides. Even under the stolen armour, Six could see that he was nervous. And if Six could see it, the checkpoint guards would too.

‘I can't,' Ten replied. ‘There must be thirty soldiers up there.'

‘Then try to
look
relaxed. You're going to get us killed.'

‘That's not helping.'

Up ahead, the boom gate was rising. A guard waved a car through, and the gate descended again. All the traffic edged forwards. Six and Ten were three vehicles away from the front of the queue.

With their shell-like armour and goggled eyes, the soldiers looked insectile, almost robotic. Six had always called them ‘cockroaches'.

Ten was breathing fast and deep. Six wondered what ChaoSonic had done to him that had led to him joining the Deck, and had left him with this paralysing fear of them. But now probably wasn't the best time to ask.

‘You got any kids?' Six asked.

‘What?' Ten sounded distant. ‘No. No kids.'

‘Tell me about your wife, then.'

‘You trying to distract me?'

‘No,' Six lied. ‘We're supposed to be ChaoSonic soldiers, reaching the end of a long journey. It'd look weird if we weren't talking about something. Tell me about your wife. Harriet, right?'

‘Well, she's about a hundred and sixty tall,' Ten began shakily.

‘I don't care how tall she is. How long have you been married?'

‘Four months last week.'

‘How'd you meet?'

‘She was connected to a case I was working on.'

Six raised an eyebrow. ‘Flirting with witnesses? That's a bit unprofessional.'

He shook his head. ‘Not a witness – just a friend of the vic. She used to call me every week to ask if there was any news, even though I told her I'd phone her if I had anything. After a few months I started to get the feeling that she was calling me because she had no-one else to talk to, so I started calling her – I figured if I couldn't solve the case, I could at least make her feel better. And so we talked, and talked, and after a couple of years of getting to know each other, I asked her out.'

‘A couple of years? That's a long time,' Six said, although he had no idea whether or not it was. Two more vehicles had gone through the gate. The guard was questioning the driver of the car in front of them.

‘Yeah, well – it's not that I wasn't sure,' Ten was saying. ‘I knew she was the one, I just didn't know if she knew it yet.'

The guard waved the car through. Six eased the truck forwards into the spotlight, and rolled down the window.

‘I've never really dated,' he said to Ten. ‘But I think –'

‘Authorisation code,' the guard said, holding a microphone up at Six.

‘Butterfly 660,' Six said. He turned back to Ten. ‘But it sounds like you're a very lucky guy.'

‘I am,' Ten said quietly.

Perfect, Six thought. This conversation couldn't sound any less suspicious.

A green light winked on the microphone as the password was approved. ‘Move along,' the guard said.

Six nodded to him and eased the truck forwards through the opening boom gate. The rifles that had been trained on them were now pointed at the vehicle behind them instead.

Six rolled the window back up. ‘Good job,' he said.

Ten said nothing.

There was an enormous tunnel bored into the Seawall, sloping upwards into the darkness, with a massive iron door hanging above it. Six knew that if there was a sudden rise in sea levels and water started pouring down the tunnel, this door would slam shut so the City wouldn't be flooded. There were thermite charges in the sides, which would be triggered when it closed, melting the iron and welding the door shut forever.

Six drove the truck into the tunnel. If there was a tsunami in the next four minutes, he and Ten would drown in this pitch-black cavern.

The rumbling of the engine reverberated against the walls. It was like being inside the oesophagus of a purring lion. Up ahead, in the twin beams of the headlights, Six could see barnacles scabbing the walls.

‘I can smell the sea,' Ten said, his eyes wide.

Six nodded. The ocean had an odour long forgotten by most citizens, who'd been children when the Seawall was built, and had been trapped within it since. Rediscovering the cold, sweaty scent as an adult never failed to hypnotise them.

There was a bright dot up above. They were getting close to the exit.

‘Check the cabin,' Six said. ‘We can't leave anything behind that might lead them to the Deck.'

Ten picked up the radio transmitter and the dart gun. They'd loaded all the dive gear into the back of the truck with the two unconscious operatives. They'd have to get it all out when they reached their destination.

The roaring of the sea suddenly became louder as the truck lurched out into the daylight. Six could see the water smashing against the Seawall, over and over, wearing away the concrete a millimetre at a time.