Remote Control Read Free

he’d never told them what he was, or perhaps because he was a better agent than they could ever be. But most of the glances directed at him across the lobby were halfway between respect and fear. Respect because he was stronger, faster, and smarter than them; fear for the same reasons.
    Six had liked it better when all the other agents had dismissedhim as a jerk. The worst he’d had to suffer then was their basic courtesy. Now all the Hearts knew his secret. And he was fast becoming a symbol of the ongoing fight against ChaoSonic’s stranglehold on the City.
    Six supposed that many of the other Deck agents would feel honored by such a reputation, but he didn’t like it at all. In his experience, the more people who knew about him, the more who wanted to kill him. ChaoSonic was a double threat to Six; they would study him and experiment on him for being one of the Lab’s creations, and they would execute him for being a Deck agent. But the danger which scared Six the most was the one closest to him—the Spades.
    The Deck was divided into four sections: the Hearts, who did the fieldwork; the Diamonds, who managed research and design; the Clubs, who trained new recruits; and the Spades, who monitored the rest of the Deck, watching it for signs of corruption. Six knew that the Spades wouldn’t take kindly to him if they ever learned of his origins. He would be seen as nothing more than a weapon of ChaoSonic, and would probably be “shuffled”—locked up in the Deck’s cells alongside the hundreds of Code-breakers he had caught. The King of Hearts would probably suffer the same fate. He had been protecting Six for sixteen years.
    The irony wasn’t lost on Six. He and his colleagues at the Deck had dedicated years of their lives to resurrecting the world of pre-Takeover times, protecting its values and enforcing its laws. But while the present-day City seemed to have no place for him, in the lost world of pre-Takeover times, things would be far worse. He would be considered a scientific monstrosity.
    But he didn’t think he was in any immediate danger. ChaoSonic didn’t know who he was, or where he was—Kyntakhad wiped the Lab computers clean eight months ago, erasing their records of Six’s DNA and the hidden location of the Deck. Methryn Crexe, the director of the Lab, was safely shuffled so ChaoSonic couldn’t get to him. While ChaoSonic probably suspected Deck involvement in the collapse of the Lab, they would never know for sure. And excluding monitoring of e-mails and phone calls, the Spades relied mainly on the two Jokers for their intel, so Six was relatively safe. Neither Kyntak nor Grysat, the other Joker, would turn him in.
    As usual, Grysat was sitting behind the reception desk, fiddling with his cuffs as he watched the agents come and go.
    “How’d the mission go, Six?” he asked cheerfully.
    “Well, thank you.” Six looked at his watch. It was 07:49:13. “Buzz me in, please.”
    Grysat complied.
    The elevator doors slid open, revealing polished mirrors gleaming in the incandescent lighting. Agent Two was standing in it, leaning on the aluminum handrail.
    Six had been rude to Agent Two from the day he joined the Deck to the day Two was kidnapped by the Lab. Six had been rude to everybody. It was nothing personal. But Two had never held it against him.
    “Hey, Six,” he said. “Successful mission?”
    “One hundred and four arrested,” Six said, “no casualties, and a few hundred thousand in the Potential Funds Intake.” The elevator doors swished shut.
    “Pretty standard, then,” Two said, deadpan.
    “Substandard. Kyntak sang all the way home.”
    Two laughed. “Is he any good?”
    “Either his DNA isn’t perfect after all, or he’s living proof that musicianship isn’t genetic.”
    “Does that mean you’re just as bad?”
    Six shrugged. “I have the sense not to try.”
    Ping. The doors slid open on the fifth floor.
    Out of efficiency rather than urgency, Six sprinted along the