Authors: Jack Heath
He’d reassembled all the new data in his head to get what he finally believed was the complete picture. Vanish had been a criminal many years ago, rich enough to afford a new body to
transplant his brain into. Presumably it was a desperate measure. His crime syndicate must have been falling down around him, perhaps because some not-yet-extinct form of law enforcement was closing in on him, but more likely because he’d trodden on the turf of a criminal empire with more manpower. He’d dumped his old body somewhere with most of his brain missing in order to fake his own death. He had probably mutilated it so the surgery wasn’t obvious. He wouldn’t have wanted the people looking for him to know what he had done.
So he starts recruiting again
, Six thought.
Goes somewhere new. Hires a load of soldiers and at some point begins injecting them with nanomachines. Now he has an elite force: better fighting through chemistry. He changes bodies a few more times, using the technique as a disguise rather than a last resort.
Something clicked in Six’s mind. He remembered the list of senior ChaoSonic officials who had been captured by Vanish, and who had the stolen ChaoSonic information for him after being released. He remembered that there had only been one at any given time. He had assumed that they were coerced into working for Vanish because he had tagged them with his nanomachines, and that he had only needed one at a time because they were so well placed within the company—but now Six had a much more frightening thought. Each and every one might have been Vanish himself. He had started stealing not only bodies, but also identities. He used his assistant/brain surgeon to represent him anywhere he was supposed to be in person. Niskev Pacye was currently filling that position, but there must have been others before her.
Hiss.
The valve in the corner opened, releasing some more oxygen into the room. Six ignored it.
So ChaoSonic chokes the vestigial government and rises to power
, he thought, continuing his mental timeline.
The Takeover. Vanish
stays in hiding and keeps sending his soldiers out on missions, but starts stealing exclusively from ChaoSonic because they now have a virtual monopoly on everything. And sooner or later, they notice him and try to hunt him down. Presumably they managed to get one of their own operatives into this force—and that would be why he showed up as a potential buyer for Earle Shuji’s robot army. Robots are more loyal than people.
Anyway. ChaoSonic lures him into a trap and captures him. He scratches on his own face so he can’t be connected to any of his previous crimes, and to make his appearance so memorable that later no one will suspect a normal-looking man of being him. Someone in his team, probably one of Niskev Pacye’s predecessors, takes the initiative and uses the locator in Vanish’s own nanomachines to find him, then storms in with a bunch of troops. They decimate the ChaoSonic forces to send a message, then Vanish changes bodies again, while ChaoSonic searches for a hideously scarred man they’re never going to find.
Fast-forward thirty years, and Vanish is well established. He’s got his new assistant, his own private army, a fistful of credits, and a century of experience. So what made him go to the Lab eight months ago?
Project Falcon?
Six thought.
Was he interested in replacing his army with a team of super-soldiers, each carrying my designer DNA?
It was possible, Six supposed, but this was after they had gone to see Shuji, not before. Wouldn’t Vanish rather be investigating the bot angle? Particularly when one of his troops had betrayed him before: Project Falcon made them strong and fast, but not incorruptible.
Six took a quick breath.
Of course! At this point, Vanish no longer treats the body-swapping as a defense against ChaoSonic. He sees it as his defense against age—his road to immortality.
Breaking into the Lab was only indirectly linked to Project Falcon. What
Vanish really wanted was Chelsea Tridya’s formula! He’d heard about its ability to slow the rate of cell division and mutation, and figured he could enormously extend his own life span without having to switch bodies.
It would have been a ruin when he broke in, Six thought. Sevadonn dead, Crexe and the soldiers gone, Nai taken away by Kyntak and Six. The inside of the tower was smashed and burned. But they didn’t know that the clone was in there, too—Vanish found him and took him. He would have been furious to find the drug missing…but only until he discovered the self-replicating telomeres in the clone.
So he spent the next few months planning a way to get Kyntak and/or Six to his facility. Kidnapped Methryn Crexe as bait…
The thought of never going back to the Deck and leaving his fate a mystery to his friends was bad enough. The idea of letting a madman steal his identity and wear his face for the rest of eternity was far worse.
He tried to flush the image out of his head. This wasn’t helping. He wasn’t going to die. Not here. Not now.
He considered trying to pull his hand through the copper clamp—it might be possible if the bones dislocated or broke. But he could safely assume that Kyntak had tried that, and he had a head start of at least nine hours, depending on how long Six had been unconscious.
Hiss.
Six wondered if there was some way he could use the oxygen valve—but he couldn’t think of anything that didn’t involve getting off the table first. Dead end.
The roller-door slid open again. Six looked towards one of the wall mirrors and saw Vanish’s face through the widening gap. He rested his head back down against the pad.
“I haven’t decided which of you to use yet,” Vanish said. A soldier entered with him and stood impassively in the corner. “You’re both very similar from a medical and health standpoint. So I’ve decided to use the opportunity to run a few tests first.”
“Whose body are you wearing now?” Six asked. “Just out of curiosity. Who died so you could wear their face? Another ChaoSonic official?”
“You can’t make me feel guilty.” Vanish laughed. “It’s every man for himself in this City. I was given the intelligence and the tenacity to survive, and I don’t believe it was wrong of me to use them. If I hadn’t started taking bodies, I’d be long dead by now. That makes it justifiable homicide. Call it self-defense, if you like.”
“If you didn’t feel guilty,” Six said, “you wouldn’t feel the need to twist logic into a moral defense of your actions. Inside, you know you’re preparing to kill two innocent people to save your own worthless skin.”
Vanish laughed again. “Worthless? I am the only living link to pre-Takeover times—the City’s oldest person! I’m a national treasure! What have you seen or learned in your sixteen years that gives you more right to live than me?” A syringe appeared in his hand, this one full of a shimmering golden liquid. “If it makes you feel better, think about all the people I won’t have to kill once I’ve taken your body. In a way, you’re saving their lives.”
He jammed the needle into Six’s arm, and Six winced. “Since you asked,” he continued, “I can’t remember the name of this body’s previous owner—I rarely remember their names unless I need their identities. I have it written down somewhere, I think. He was a music teacher. I chose him because he played rugby on
the weekends, and I wanted the strength.” He smiled. “I suspect it hasn’t prepared me for a Project Falcon body, though.”
“More nanomachines?” Six asked as Vanish withdrew the needle.
“No. This is accelerant—my own formula. Mostly a mixture of epinephrine, NENB, and mateine. It decreases reaction time and increases strength. You’ve seen it work on my soldiers. It should take about a minute to kick in fully.”
Six’s jaw dropped. Mateine was just caffeine, and epinephrine was basically synthetic adrenaline; neither of them would do him any serious harm. But NENB was a dangerously strong stimulant. “Won’t that also cause brain damage?”
“The possible side effects include dehydration, addiction, paranoia, and exhaustion once it wears off,” Vanish said calmly. “It can also suppress the immune system, but we have ways of combating that. The nanomachines don’t secrete very much into the bloodstream, though, so there’s rarely any permanent damage.”
“But you’re not giving me nanomachines,” Six said. He was already feeling queasy. “You’re giving me a pure dose!”
“Yes,” Vanish said. “I’m hoping that your extraordinary metabolism will give you greater resistance than my soldiers have to the negative effects. But I obviously want to test it before taking your body rather than after, just in case I’m wrong.” He shrugged. “If it kills you, I’ll just take Kyntak’s body instead of yours.”
His voice seemed to be getting slower and deeper. The room was getting brighter. Six’s mouth felt dry.
“I’m going to send in an opponent for you to fight to test your accelerated reflexes,” Vanish said. “It’ll be recorded so that I
can watch it later. Then I’ll come back in and examine you for damage.”
He gestured to the guard and the door slid open. Six felt the accelerant course through his veins. Every muscle in his body tingled with energy. He tried to lunge at Vanish, and he felt the copper clamps bend a little. Vanish and his guard walked out the door, but it didn’t slide shut.
Six tried again, bracing his arms against the table and pulling his wrists against the clamps. The table groaned encouragingly, but nothing moved. Six felt his heart palpitate in his chest. The accelerant was making him feel sick. But he knew that was his best chance to escape. The door was open and the soldier he was supposed to fight hadn’t arrived yet.
He tried to pull his legs against the clamps. The sinews in his ankles were crushed against the copper, but the accelerant numbed the pain.
He froze as he heard heavy footsteps outside.
Thud, thud, thud.
That didn’t sound like a soldier.
Six’s eyes widened as it appeared in the doorway, familiar features shining in the light, silvery eyes gleaming.
“Harry?” he asked.
The door slid shut and the clamps popped open. The strap around Six’s neck slithered away into a hole in the table. He rolled off and fell slowly, as if he were on the moon. He landed on his feet and stood up.
“Harry?” he repeated. “Is that you?”
The bot didn’t reply. It stood stock-still, staring impassively at the wall.
Six remembered Earle Shuji telling him that Niskev Pacye had approached her to buy bots. She had known the address Vanish used for deliveries. And Six remembered that she had seemed nervous, as if she were hiding something from him.
Now he knew what.
Vanish has a prototype bot too
, he thought.
If he’d sent a human soldier for me to fight, I’d have won, accelerant or no accelerant, and then I might have been able to coerce him or her into opening the door. There’s no chance with a robot. It can’t be threatened, bribed, or reasoned with.
The oxygen valve hissed above him, but it seemed to take longer than before. His heightened consciousness stretched the sound out—from a burning fuse to a hissing snake.
He bounced restlessly on the balls of his feet, feeling the accelerant sweep into full effect. With every thrust he seemed
to hang in the air, as though he were moving in real time but the universe had slowed to a crawl. Gravity barely seemed to touch him. His hands curled into fists that felt tougher than ever before. But his tongue was burning and his already sensitive retinas stung with the light blazing through his dilated pupils.
The robot still hadn’t moved. Six assumed that it was waiting for a radio signal from Vanish. Probably less time had passed than it seemed, considering his accelerated thought processes.
He braced a foot and a hand against the table and gripped one half of a clamp with the other hand. He pulled with all his might and felt his turbocharged muscles strain. With a shriek that seemed to last forever, the copper tore at the base, and Six fell slowly backward. He drifted towards the wall and smacked into it, clutching his prize: a thick, square blade. It glinted reddish-bronze in the bright light.
Six waited.
The bot waited.
Then it lifted its arm and fired at him with its builtin Swan.
Six launched himself sideways into the air as bullets streaked around him. The accelerant had pumped so much power into his reflexes that he could actually see the bullets coming—fast and blurry, but visible.
The first few rounds hit the glass wall behind him, drilling holes into it and sending fine cracks spiraling outward. The glass was too thick to shatter, and there was a layer of metal behind it—probably steel, Six thought, like the door. No way out there.
As he fell behind the table and smacked onto the ground, he couldn’t see the bot, which stopped firing immediately and walked towards the table.
Thud, thud, thud.
The first time Six had met Harry, he’d challenged him to
combat. But Harry had been in a nonlethal mode. He couldn’t use his gun. This was a far more dangerous situation.
Six didn’t know how many bullets remained in the clip of the Swan, but he suspected it would be more than he could dodge—and the bot might be capable of reloading.
He had two plausible strategies. One: Keep circling the table in a crouch, never giving it a clear shot. Two: Charge. Shuji’s bots were programmed to use hand-to-hand rather than gunfire if their opponent was closer than two meters.
The thumping footsteps had stopped. Six listened carefully.
The table groaned noisily, then lurched to one side with a sickening crack. The bot ripped it out of the floor with both synthetic arms and held it above its head, cords with loose wires trailing to the floor. It threw the table towards the wall. To Six’s eyes it seemed to drift as slowly as a cloud before slamming into the glass with a shower of sparks.
With an earsplitting
thunk
, the table landed on its side, propped up against the cracked wall. Now nothing separated Six from the bot except a flat square of plastic on the floor with a few tufts of shredded steel poking up from it, where the table had been attached.
The bot raised its gun and Six lunged forward, stopping just inside the two-meter mark. The bot swung a fist at him; Six ducked underneath it. The bot’s arm whipped over Six’s head like a helicopter blade.
I know things about this bot that Vanish may not know
, Six realized.
Like the code that shuts down all its systems. What was it—something that sounded like Latin?
“Cerfitipus talotus!” he shouted triumphantly.
The bot punched him in the stomach.
Six doubled over and slid backward across the floor.
Kyntak looked up as Vanish entered his cell. This time, the red-eyed woman didn’t stand in the corner; instead, she stood beside the table and held her gun close to the left side of Kyntak’s head. Vanish walked to the other side of the table, holding a syringe and two large vials filled with dark-red liquid.
“I’m going to return some of your blood,” he said, pocketing one of the vials and removing the cap from the syringe.
Kyntak said nothing.
“I’ve more or less condemned Six to death,” he explained, jamming the needle into the lid of the vial he was still holding, “or serious injury, at least—which means it’s probably you I’ll be using for the surgery. So it’s safest if I start bringing your stats up slowly.”
Kyntak didn’t ask what surgery Vanish was talking about. He threw his head to the left, stretching his neck strap. The gun was just out of reach of his teeth.
Vanish stayed back. “Kyntak, you’ll live longest if you cooperate with me.” He signaled to the woman, who stepped back. Her gun was still pointed at Kyntak’s head but was now above his hand. He stretched his fingers up but wasn’t even close to reaching it.
The phrase hadn’t worked. Shuji’s bots must have had individual shutdown codes.
The bot lowered its arm to shoot again, and Six scrambled to his feet and dived forward. He reached the two-meter perimeter just as he heard the bot’s internal safety catch click off. The bot immediately lowered its arm and lifted its leg, aiming a kick at
Six’s chest. Six stepped aside at the last moment, letting the metal and plastic foot swish into the air beside him. He wrapped his arm around it and twisted. The bot lost its balance and slammed face-first into the floor.
Six aimed a stomp at the bot’s head.
Maybe I can damage some of its eyes
, he thought. But the bot swiped an arm out at Six’s other ankle, and he had to jump over the blow. The stomp missed. Six stepped back, and the bot rose to its feet. Six kept the two-meter distance—close enough so it wouldn’t use the gun, but far enough away that punches would fall short and he would see kicks coming.
The bot lunged forward, and Six ducked back. It swung a kick in his direction, and he sidestepped. It feinted a right hook, and Six dodged again.
It’s figured out my strategy
, Six realized.
And now it’s trying to drive me into the corner farthest away from the door.
He threw a punch at the bot’s head, which connected. The accelerant didn’t completely mask the pain in his knuckles, and the bot seemed unharmed. It drove an elbow towards his ribs, and he had no choice but to retreat farther.
Six drove his copper blade forward, and it scraped through the plastic shell covering the bot’s metal chassis, but did no more damage—the bot just shoved him backward. His eyes widened as he hit the wall and the bot aimed a skull-crushing punch.
And then, in his moment of necessity, Six came up with a plan. He ducked to one side, and the bot buried its fist in the glass where Six’s head had been. While it was extricating itself, Six leaped up and tore the oxygen hose from the seam between the wall and the ceiling. The long-dried glue made a sucking sound as it was ripped away. Six immediately jammed his thumb over the valve, just as it opened.
He could feel the pressure building up against his thumb as the steady flow of pure oxygen looked for a place to escape. He held the hose tightly as he approached the bot again. It started towards him, but as soon as its rear foot left the ground, Six kicked it in the chest and it stumbled backward. Without giving it time to recover, Six drove a fist into its abdomen, ignoring his aching knuckles. The bot tried to kick his head, but Six ducked under its leg and charged forward, pushing it back farther until it was pressed against the door.
Six kept his forearm against the bot’s chest, pinning it against the glass-covered metal. His face was so close to the bot’s that he could see synthetic irises spinning in its silvery eyes. The bot tried to claw him off, but he grabbed its arm and pressed it against its chest.
He couldn’t hold it much longer, and the pressure against his thumb was becoming unbearable. He held the hose up to the door and released the valve. In the same instant, he slashed the copper blade down against the bot, creating a shower of sparks.
He jammed the hose into the groove he’d made in the robot’s chest, and some internal mechanism squealed with protest as the oxygen combusted and the sudden heat expanded and softened the metal. The bot drove a plastic fist towards Six’s head as its internal cooling mechanism kicked in.
Six ducked the blow and, before the metal could harden again, drove his copper spike into the bot’s exoskeleton.
It didn’t go right in—the blade stopped just a few centimeters after punching the chassis. Six released the blade and it fell to the floor as the bot twisted its torso, trying to land a blow on Six.
The stabbing didn’t appear to have done any serious damage to the bot. Six put his foot on its chest, slammed it back against the door, and hoped his plan would work.
There was a sudden beeping sound.
The robot looked down foolishly at its torso.
Six was hurled backward across the cell as the thirteen hundred grams of C-4 detonated, the primary force of the blast exploding out of the exhaust valve beside the robot’s spine. Half of the roller-door was smashed out into the corridor, leaving the other half shaking on crooked tracks. The glass on the walls and ceiling splintered under the pressure, sending pricks of light out all over the cell. The noise exploded through the enclosed space. Six slammed into the rear wall shoulder first and watched with accelerant-enhanced vision as the robot tumbled lifelessly through the air, surrounded by spinning shreds of glass, like a planet among the stars. Its back was twisted and melted, and its luminous eyes had faded to a dull grey.
Then everything hit the floor—the roller-door, the robot, and the million chips of glass. It all came crashing down in a deafening symphony of shrieks and crunching thuds. Then there was silence. Six was alone with the ringing in his ears.
“Don’t get in the way of the exhaust valve,” Six muttered to himself. “Thanks, Shuji.”
Vanish paused, the needle above Kyntak’s flesh. “Did you hear something?” he asked the red-eyed woman. Kyntak turned his head towards her. She was still pointing the gun at him. He aimed very carefully.
The woman yelped as Kyntak’s tooth hit her in the ear at a speed of ten meters per second. She dropped the gun and it fell towards Kyntak’s shoulder. He threw his torso up into the air and the gun bounced off his collarbone, landing in his left hand.
Vanish dropped the syringe as he jumped back to get out of Kyntak’s range. But Kyntak wasn’t aiming at him. He fired four shots into the mirrored ceiling in quick succession. They ricocheted back down; the first one missed the table altogether, and the second narrowly avoided his bicep. But the third and fourth punctured the clamp around his other arm, and Kyntak ripped his wrist through the fractured copper like it was paper.
The red-eyed woman was reaching for her Eagle but Kyntak shot the magazine, making it unusable. He swung his free arm over to his gun hand and slapped the release button. The clamp popped open with a
clank
, and now both his arms were free. Vanish and his assistant lunged forward to hold Kyntak down. Kyntak lifted Vanish up with his right arm and threw him over the table, onto the woman. Kyntak sat up and slammed his right hand on the button operating the right knee clamp, and the gun butt on the button for the left.
Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank.
His legs were free. He rolled off the table and dropped into a firing crouch.
Vanish had recovered quickly. His jeans had apparently concealed a gun, which was now trained on Kyntak’s heart with a perfectly steady hand.
“Drop it,” Kyntak said.
Vanish laughed. “I think I’m the one with the advantage in this situation,” he said.
“I have Project Falcon reflexes, agility, and strength,” said Kyntak. “There’s nothing to stop me from killing you.”
“But you’re weakened,” said Vanish. “Hungry, thirsty, exhausted. Not enough oxygen is reaching your brain. I’m healthy and alert, and I’ve had eighty years of marksmanship practice. And if you kill me, there’s no way out of this room.”
“Eighty years?” Kyntak snorted. “Yeah, right. You must really cleanse, tone, and moisturize. You can tell your incompetent assistant to radio out and get this door open, or else I’ll take a few shots at you.” He kept his gaze level. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I will. And I’d rather hurt you than her.”
“You’re bleeding,” Vanish said, and suddenly Kyntak knew it was true. His wrist hurt, and there was a warm wetness on his forearm. “You shot yourself,” Vanish continued. “The bullet went right through the clamp and hit your wrist. Or maybe the pieces of the clamp were sharp, and you cut yourself on them. Either way, you’re already weak and getting weaker.” He smiled. “Kill me and you’ll bleed to death in this room. Get back on the table and I’ll stitch you up.”
He was right. Kyntak could feel his arm becoming numb. The gun was starting to tremble in his grip.
“What’s more important, Kyntak?” Vanish asked. “Your dignity or your life?”
Kyntak smiled. “I’m going to die anyway. But I’m keeping the sights on you as long as I can lift this gun—because I know that inside you’re scared to death.”
Vanish’s smile faded. “I can save your life, Kyntak. And I want to. I wanted both the Project Falcon kids, but Six is probably dead by now, so you’re all I’ve got.”