Read Remote Control for Free Online

thought was that she might be a machine. The only sentient being who’d ever overpowered him, besides his superhuman brothers, was Harry, his robot. But the hand was as warm and yielding as flesh.
    “He wants you to shoot before you think. To decide on instinct, so he will have the upper hand. It seems like a game, but it’s not. He’s trying to put you off balance because he knows that’s the easiest way to beat you. He aims to deceive. ”
    Who? Six thought. Vidar Dehayt? Methryn Crexe? He tried to speak through the palm of his captor. She responded by pulling harder against his face.
    “All hell is about to break loose,” she continued, “but you can survive it, if you’re careful. He knows you. He knows the assumptions you’ll make. So assume nothing.
    “I’d tell you to go home. But I know you wouldn’t listen. So don’t go in the front door. Go back to the apartment you just passed, go inside, and enter the closet. There’s a hole leading to this apartment.
    “Don’t trust your instincts today, Six. Think before you act.”
    The hand left Six’s mouth, and he fell to the floor. Landing feetfirst, he whirled around to see…
    …an empty corridor, gritty and gloomy, with pale dust stirred from the floor by a faint breeze.
    After searching the immediate area and finding no trace of the mystery woman, Six decided to take her advice. Alarmed as he was by the fact that he seemed to have been overpowered by a ghost, he realized that if she’d wanted to hurt or kill him, she would have done so when she had the chance. If she’d wanted to exploit him somehow, she would have given more specific and suspicious advice than “think before you act” and “don’t go in the front door.”
    The last possibility was that she was trying to help him, for whatever reason—and Six lost nothing by changing his search route slightly.
    He went inside the apartment she had suggested. It was unremarkable—glass and grit on the floor, wallpaper yellowing at the edges, a boarded-up window on one wall, and a single lightbulb above his head. There was a dirty sledgehammer lying in thecorner, surrounded by brick dust. Perhaps someone had planned some renovations that never took place.
    The closet door was leaning against its frame rather than attached to it. The closet was empty except for one crinkled shirt, with a large coffee stain, on a coat hanger. Six slid it gently aside and saw that there was indeed a hole—about one meter square and presumably made with the sledgehammer—leading to the next apartment.
    And through it, he saw the face of Methryn Crexe.
    The former Lab boss was sitting on a rickety wooden chair, facing the door to the apartment, with a Hawk 9-millimeter pistol in his hand. Crexe hadn’t seen Six yet. His eyes stared straight ahead at the door. His gun hand was perfectly still.
    Was this what the mystery woman had been trying to warn him about? Six thought. He wants you to shoot before you think , she had said. It seems like a game, but it’s not.
    Why would Crexe want Six to shoot him? And why lie in wait in a room of this ancient apartment building? Crexe would probably know that Six abhorred killing, and that he was hesitant to use lethal force, even in self-defense. But would he stake his own life upon that?
    He wants you to shoot, she’d said. None of this made sense.
    Six thought he heard a distant rattling sound. He took his eyes off Methryn Crexe for a moment to look over his shoulder, but the apartment was still empty.
    Could be Kyntak , he thought. Could be the other agents on the floor below. Could be just the wind, or the building shifting.
    Crexe didn’t seem to have heard the noise. His knuckles were white around the grip of the Hawk.
    Six leaned forward very slowly and put one leg through the hole in the closet, keeping his Owl trained on Crexe the whole time. His foot touched the dirty concrete without a sound. He slipped his torso through the hole into Crexe’s apartment.
    Six