The Lab (Agent Six of Hearts)

  THE LAB

  Jack Heath

  For Kate, who always believed in me

  The city is spreading. Soon only numbers will be pure.

  —“High Ground,” Tim Freedman, B. Fink (Black Yak)

  Nobody’s perfect.

  —Unknown

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PROLOGUE

  MISSION ONE

  SIX OF HEARTS

  ZERO METERS PER SECOND

  THE DECK

  CHAOSONIC

  THE WATCHER

  MISSION TWO

  CHANGING FACE

  UNDERCOVER

  THE PERFECT KILLING MACHINE

  ONLY HUMAN

  IF YOU WANT TO LIVE

  BREAKOUT

  NO ONE EXPECTS THE MAGNET

  DEBRIEFING

  MISSION THREE

  NO CHOICE

  THE SEAWALL

  PRISONER OF THE LAB

  FLYING HIGH

  TOTAL DESTRUCTION

  DOUBLE DEALING

  MISSION FOUR

  LONG LIFE

  SENDER J. LAWSON

  NO ONE MUST ESCAPE

  AN EMPTY DECK

  MISSION FIVE

  TO BOLDLY GO

  SHADOW MAN

  THE CHILD WITHIN

  ALL HEART

  ON THE RUN

  A LONG WAY DOWN

  CRASH LANDING

  THE PERFECT SOLDIER

  THE NEXT GENERATION

  EPILOGUE

  Preview

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  About the Author

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  This was not a normal day.

  The infant watched from behind the polished glass as the blurred madness continued in the Outside. The Watchers were moving faster than usual, faces shiny, eyes wide. Many of the lights had gone out, but the ones in his glass enclosure were still burning brightly, above and below him.

  Shapes flitted around in the Outside. He sucked in another breath of the oxygen-rich water and observed.

  Now I am watching them, he thought. And no one is watching me. He giggled and clapped his hands together, and for a moment his enclosure glittered with bubbles.

  The Outside darkened slowly. The Watchers had all vanished. Grey shadows were creeping over everything. Control panels wavered in the haze. Floor tiles wobbled unsteadily and vanished beneath the inky fog.

  Soon the Outside was shrouded in black. The smoke draped itself over the enclosure like a charcoal blanket, and the darkening landscape rippled out of existence.

  The water began to get hotter. The infant began to breathe faster.

  Anger and fear surged through his veins. He clenched his teeth, narrowed his eyes, and panted roughly, releasing small bubbles of oxygen from his little lungs. He thumped on the glass with his tiny fists and kicked it with his stubby feet. His limbs slammed against the glass with strength that denied his size, making the enclosure rattle in its supports. The baby felt the vibrations and sensed he was close to escape.

  He beat on the glass with his palms, harder and faster, desperate now. The water was becoming painfully hot—his skin was stinging and it was getting harder to breathe. The glass shook more and more. The baby gave the glass one mighty kick, and the enclosure broke out of its supports. It slid off the support pillar and fell into the void. Now completely weightless, the baby inside screamed with excitement.

  The enclosure slammed down onto the tiles. The baby covered his naked head as glittering slivers of glass mingled in the air with the sparkling water and fell together, splashing and shattering like rain. As the last pieces of the enclosure tinkled to the floor, the baby took his first breath of air.

  Smoke filled his lungs. He choked and coughed, mouth open wide, his tongue poking out and his little body shaking. He struggled to stay upright on his hands and knees, and spat some broken glass out of his mouth. Water and blood trickled from his lips as he raised his hands in the air, trying to find a handhold, something to climb up to or lean against. But his hands found nothing, and he fell forward.

  One of the panels behind him exploded. Shards of plastic hit the floor around him, and the smoke in the air was lit for a few seconds. The underbelly of the cloud above was pierced by thousands of tiny sparks. He lifted his head off the floor and gazed up in awe.

  This was the real world.

  The baby’s prison lay in pieces underneath him, and as the smoke became thicker he began to wish he was back inside. But he couldn’t go back—and he couldn’t stay here. There was a way to hide from the black cloud above him. There had to be.

  He stood up and walked forward clumsily, until the sizzling black mist swallowed him up.

  MISSION ONE

  SIX OF HEARTS

  He was still searching for the USB when the first alarms sounded. The defused lock on the roof must have been found by security. The soldiers would be here any minute now, searching for him.

  Fine. The sooner his mission was over, the better. He foraged through the office with renewed urgency.

  All the LCD screens in the room began to flicker as they shut themselves down. He could hear steel doors sliding closed, magnetizing, locking. Voices shouting. He blocked out all distractions, as he had trained himself to do, and continued searching through the desks.

  They probably don’t know where I am yet, he thought. I’ve got at least thirty seconds before they figure that out, then another thirty before security gets here.

  Plenty of time.

  The fluorescent light above his head flickered and went out, but he could still see. The skylight he had entered through only moments before was open, and cold grey daylight oozed through like a thin and wavering lifeline. Splintered rays slashed out from the broken glass on the floor.

  He paused for a split second and then grabbed the USB off the table. Even if it’s the wrong one, he thought, there’s no time to keep looking.

  He couldn’t leave the way he’d come in—the guards would be on the roof waiting for him. Placing the USB in an airtight pocket case, he sprinted towards the door.

  If I had been in charge of this facility, he thought, I would’ve just contacted security via radio, and not sounded the alarm. Now I know that they know I’m here—whereas they could have caught me by surprise.

  Unless… He faltered momentarily as he headed towards the door. Could it be a trap? Had they sounded the alarm just to lure him into the open?

  He shook his head. No. If they had already known he was here, he would be dead by now. In any case, he thought, he had no choice but to leave this way.

  So do it. Hurry.

  He slipped quickly through the door.

  The bells and sirens were louder out here: pounding, buzzing hoots that shook the floor.

  A long hallway stretched out ahead, leading to a sharp corner at the end. It was lit only by crimson emergency lights glaring down from the ceiling, reflected in the waxed floor tiles.

  The instructions from King’s mission brief echoed through his mind as he ran.

  The central corridor is the only way of getting from the laboratories and offices to the administration and the exits. You will have to use it.

  This was the most dangerous part of his route—there was nowhere to hide if they found him in this corridor. However, the security doors at each end were open. This was the only way through without clearance.

  Go. Quickly.

  He ran along the tiles, sneakers gripping the surface, steadily picking up speed. The corridor must be about two hundred forty meters long, he guessed, but only about six meters wide. That’s one thousand four hundred forty square meter
s of floor space. Given the corridor is about five meters high, that’s a volume of seventy-two hundred cubic meters.

  Good, he thought. It matches the blueprints I studied.

  A few seconds later, he only had about sixty meters to go, and he was still picking up speed. He was like a dark shadow, flitting silently through the red glow.

  Suddenly a squad of seven guards rounded the corner ahead of him, moving in his direction.

  The guards wore fiberglass helmets and Kevlar body armor. They were all armed with Eagle OI779 automatic rifles and steel truncheons.

  They hadn’t seen him yet. But soon they would.

  Seven people in a corridor six meters wide, he thought. No way through, and I can’t pass them on either side. Can’t risk trying to slide between them and knocking them down—they don’t look light and their boots are armored. I can’t go back—I’d be a sitting duck. All the exits are this way.

  Can I go over them? It’s worth a shot…

  Even as the guards saw him and shouted, he was swerving. He hit the wall with his left foot and pushed up, landing on the ceiling with his right. One of the angry red lights fuzzed out as it crunched beneath his sneaker. Two more steps and he was on the other side of the ceiling; one more and his left foot was on the opposite wall. Then he landed on the floor again, spun around, and kept sprinting with the squad of guards behind him. Flight time: 2.1 seconds.

  He could hear the guards turning behind him, shouting in alarm, wondering what the phantom flitting over their heads had been. He’d moved so quickly they hadn’t even had time to take their guns out of their holsters. Once again, he blocked out all distractions.

  The mission was paramount.

  On the north side of the front entrance to the facility is a water processing plant—it provides most of the drinking water for the surrounding seventy square kilometers. The dam and processing plant are legit—they’ve been on the site longer than the suspects have. As far as we can tell, all the Code violations happen in the main facility—that’s where they design the drugs, maybe manufacture them, too. Try not to interfere with the dam or anything in the water processing building—that’s none of our business.

  Trouble is, the plant isn’t far from the building, so it actually makes up part of the fence, and there’s plenty of security guarding the perimeter all around the area. The entrance on the north side will be your best bet for escape, particularly since they won’t be able to chase you in vehicles if you go via the dam. There are steps on either side of it, so once you reach the bottom, you can follow the Leshuar River out of the enemy territory.

  He could see the front entrance up ahead—a squat kiosk surrounded by humming digi-cams. The whole foyer was deserted; the security staff had presumably been called in to look for him. Not wanting to press his luck, he didn’t even slow down.

  The sun was rising in front of him, a blazing white smear behind the locked glass doors. It’s a strangely clear day, some corner of his brain thought. It’s weird to see daylight through the fog, let alone the actual sun. I need to get northside, so if the sun is there at this time of day, I’m facing east, and north is on my left. Still matches the blueprints. Excellent.

  He turned left, and felt cool, fresh air on his lips. He was facing another short corridor leading to the exit, but between him and the outside world there was a barbed-wire fence, with two guards behind slightly darkened glass (reinforced and bulletproof, he guessed). Behind the wire was a grassy field, a fresh green relief from all the red darkness. The field sloped down away from him, below a grey sky. He couldn’t see what lay beyond.

  He sprinted towards the fence and, about six meters from the gate, he jumped.

  The guards looked up, alarmed, as he whipped above their heads. Before they could open their mouths to shout, he had slammed into the fence. No sooner had he hit the wire than he was climbing, scrambling up as swiftly and carefully as a spider. He was over the barbed wire before a second had passed, without having touched a single spike. Hitting the ground on the other side, he rolled forward and dived down the slope he found in front of him, out of sight of the guards behind the glass.

  He froze for a moment against the cool soil. No sound of gunfire, vehicles, or any kind of pursuit. He was safe—for the moment.

  Standing up and dusting himself off, he looked around. The field was flanked by thick forests to the left and right. Farther down the slope in front of him, he could see the dam, a grey slab in all the green.

  He knew that all the “nature” around him was an illusion. He was on the edge of a park, designed to make the viewer feel as if he or she lived in the days before ChaoSonic and Takeover, when there had been bubbles of city inside vast horizons of hot desert, grassy fields, and lush forests, instead of one sprawling city with freckles of artificial nature trapped inside it. ChaoSonic felt that nature parks would keep the population docile and compliant. Maybe they were right.

  The spires of the facility towered behind him; he could still hear the alarms. By now the owners of this facility had probably realized that he was an agent of the Deck, and that they were facing exposure if he got away with the USB.

  Time to leave, he thought.

  The dam is a full-scale one, about four hundred meters vertically. It’s made of concrete with a steel framework inside; there are service stairs on both sides. There’s a spillway at the bottom—a narrow tunnel that goes deep into the riverbed, so excess water can escape into an underground storage tank and the riverbank doesn’t flood. There aren’t any guards, but there will be some kind of barrier—a way of sealing off the dam in the event of an emergency.

  Be careful. The officials in this company are rich, smart, and ruthless—there’s no way to guess what they’re capable of.

  He set off towards the huge grey monolith at a fast jog, considering King’s information. It seemed to be accurate; the dam, at least, was about four hundred meters high, one hundred fifty wide, twenty thick. There were rusty chains dangling all over it like thinning bronze hair, which might once have been used to lift things to the upper section of the Leshuar River. Water was cascading from the top of the dam and slamming into the river far below, causing its width to bulge before settling into a cleanly cut flow farther downstream.

  He ran towards the stairs.

  When he reached them, he looked down. They were as straight as an arrow, made of stainless steel, and they stretched all the way down to the bank of the river below. There was no guardrail on either side. There had to be about two thousand steps, he estimated. Each was about thirty centimeters across, fifty centimeters wide, and twenty centimeters deep. Total distance to the bottom: about six hundred meters horizontally, and four hundred meters vertically. All together, about six hundred thousand cubic meters of steel.

  He began to run down the stairs. The metal hummed beneath his sneakers as they slammed down into the frame, making it vibrate.

  After only a few seconds, the trees above were out of sight. He paused for a moment, checking his surroundings uneasily. He was about twenty meters below the top of the dam—a hundred steps down. There was still no sign of pursuit.

  This is easy, he thought. Too easy. And that’s a very bad sign.

  Why weren’t they following him? He had millions of credits’ worth of incriminating data on the USB in his jacket—blueprints for deadly weapons, toxic drugs, names of dealers, and locations of manufacturers. Why weren’t they trying to stop him?

  Maybe the USB was blank. Maybe he’d picked up the wrong one, or they had known he was coming and put a dummy one in the right location.

  Maybe the whole thing was a setup.

  He looked down. The stairs still seemed to be humming, even though his feet weren’t moving. Was there some machinery operating inside the dam, or was the water causing the rumbling beneath his feet? He looked around, then paused.

  He was standing still. But the stairs were moving beneath him.

  It only took him a moment to work out what was happening: The
staircase was retreating back into itself. The steps were sliding backward until they pressed up against the dam, becoming bricks in a flat steel tower. The route he had taken down was steadily vanishing.

  There will be some kind of barrier, a way of sealing off the dam in the event of an emergency.

  I guess I’ve found it, he thought grimly.

  There was no way back up. And in a matter of seconds, there would be no way down.

  He began sprinting down the staircase, even as it continued to slide into itself. His feet pounded the stainless steel beneath him. Moments later he was about sixty meters from the top of the dam. Now ninety—more than four hundred steps gone.

  But that wasn’t fast enough—the wall behind him was advancing steadily, and there were very few steps left between him and a three-hundred-meter free fall.

  The cliff face of stairs was very close on his heels now. He had only seconds to decide what to do. Should he grip the wall behind him and try to hold on? No chance—without handholds that was impossible. Should he try to jump back up the dam and grab the top? That was a hundred-meter vertical jump, with no run-up or preparation. He was strong, but not that strong. Could he keep running? The wall would push him off the staircase any moment now.

  They do seem keen to kill me, he thought. At least this means that the USB is probably genuine.

  There was nothing else to do.

  He jumped.

  ZERO METERS PER SECOND

  He could feel the pause, the short moment of hesitation before free fall. Time stood still for a moment as he saw the dark river again, a slippery, writhing snake three hundred meters below.

  Then he fell.