Deus Ex - Icarus Effect (13 page)

A fan of green laser light issued out and scanned the hallway, catching Saxon by surprise. The machine caught sight of his drawn weapon and

reacted instantly. Ceramic panels opened up to allow the vanes of a pulsed energy projector to emerge. "Mandatory warning delivered," it said.

"Deploying deterrent."

A throbbing wave-front of force hummed from the robot and blasted down the corridor. Saxon went down as the pulse threw freestanding

tables and flower vases into the air with the force of the discharge. The rush of the knockdown effect was powerful, like the undertow in an

ocean wave.

He leapt from where he had landed, firing as he went. Bullets sparked off metal and inlaid wood, marring the elegantly worked surface of the

machine. It fired again, dislodging pictures from the walls, blasting open the doors to empty rooms.

Saxon's free hand closed around a cylindrical object on his gear vest and he tugged it free with a jerk of the wrist. By feel alone, he found the

primer tab and pulled it. The weapon buzzed in response and Saxon threw it hard, diving for cover behind a damaged door.

The Type 4 Frag-k grenade clanked off the casing of the robot and bounced to the carpet beneath it; a moment later the explosive core

detonated, blasting the machine off its supports and into a smoking heap.

Bursting from cover, Saxon raced through the cloud of cordite smoke and the humming after-note of the explosion. He took down the door to

the corner suite with a kick from the heel of his tactical boot and pushed through, leading with the Hurricane.

Inside, the room was wide and devoid of angles, all soft furnishings and bowed windows. A thick layer of metallized plastic sheet—doubtless

some kind of sensor baffle—coated the window glass, bleeding out all the color and warmth of the dawn rising over Zubovskaya Square. Saxon

found the power feed for the baffle and disconnected it.

Off to one side, folding panels opened out into a range of rooms bigger than the house Saxon had grown up in; on the other side of the suite, a

second bedroom had been gutted to accommodate the racks of a compact server farm, an orchard of data monitors, and a complex virtual

keyboard.

A man in a dark jacket rushed Saxon from a doorway leading to the bathroom, the lethally compact shape of a Widowmaker shotgun in his

hands. The machine pistol in Saxon's ready grip chattered and the thug took the burst in the chest, crashing backward onto the tiles in a welter

of blood. He ejected the clip, slammed a fresh load into place, and crossed into the bedroom.

Mikhail Kontarsky, his face lit by sheer animal panic, recoiled from the keyboard console and fumbled for a nickel-plated heavy-frame

automatic pistol lying on top of one of the server pods. Saxon brought up the muzzle of the Hurricane and aimed it at Kontarsky's chest. "Don't,"

he told him.

The Russian wasn't the man he'd seen in the briefing picture anymore. That grim face and distant gaze were gone, replaced by raw terror. He

gave a brittle nod and held his hands to his chest. "Please," he began, his voice heavily accented. "You must not stop me."

Something in Saxon's peripheral vision shimmered, and he realized that beneath the panes of complex, scrolling data on the screens, there was

a recognizable shape, the ghost-image of a human face, peering out through layers of static. "He's here to kill you, Mikhail," it said. The voice

was toneless, sexless, flattened into a brittle machine-timbre that was utterly anonymous; the only thing that could be considered any kind of

identity was a data tag showing a name, Janus.

"You told me I would have more time!" Kontarsky spat, his lips trembling. He gave Saxon a pleading stare. "Please, I have to finish what I

started, or—"

Saxon took a warning step forward. "Touch that console and it will be the last thing you ever do, Minister."

"Mikhail" said the video-masked figure. "This is bigger than you. We need the data on the Killing Floor, you must complete the upload—"

Saxon sneered and put a burst of rounds through the big screen, silencing the voice. Kontarsky howled and stumbled backward. "Enough of

your pal." He grabbed the man by the collar and dragged him forward, propelling him out of the room.

"No." There were a dozen other monitors in the gutted bedroom, and screens in the main part of the suite; each one flickered into life, repeating

the image of the static-shrouded face. The word repeated over and over as each one activated. "No. Not yet."

"It's over," Saxon told him, ignoring the voice.

A flash of resentment and defiance crossed Kontarsky's face, and he struggled in Saxon's grip. "You're not here to arrest me ... You're not a

policeman! What authority do you have?" The moment passed just as quickly, as the man's eyes fell to the machine pistol. "Please, I beg of you.

Do not kill me. I only did what I thought was right!"
"He is not a criminal" insisted the voice. "You cannot judge him."

Saxon's jaw stiffened. "You're part of a global terror network!" he spat. "You're part of Juggernaut! And the people you sold out to are

responsible for the deaths of my men!" The anger was coming back, and he felt the burn of it. "Operation Rainbird." He snarled the words at

the cowering man. "You know that name? You know what happened out there? They were soldiers, doing their jobs—it wasn't even their damn

war!" Saxon clubbed Kontarsky with the butt of the gun and sent him stumbling into the door frame. "Now move! I'm taking you alive! You can

answer for what you've done!" He glared at one of the screens. "Are you watching this? Because we're coming for you next."

"N-no, no, no ... That's not true," Kontarsky stammered, turning to the monitor. "Please, Janus!" he implored the video-ghost. "Help me ..."

But the image's attention was on Saxon. "Do you know what you are doing, mercenary?" He thought he detected a faint edge of reproach in

the words. "Do you know what master you serve?"

The question made Saxon hesitate and he shot Kontarsky a hard look, hauling him up to his feet, pushing him forward into the middle of the

room. The man staring back at him was pale with fear, his eyes betraying no duplicity, no deception. "I don't know anything about your men,"

he whispered. "You must believe me!"

And for a moment, Saxon did. He was a good judge of liars; he'd met enough of them in combat and elsewhere, and he knew the look of a man

too afraid to lie. And if "Rainbird" meant nothing to him, then—

"Green light."

Saxon heard the voice over the general comm channel a split second before the plastic-coated window crackled with fractures. Hardesty's bullet

entered Kontarsky's head through the nasal cavity, blasting bone and brain matter across the wood-paneled walls. His body fell, jetting red,

collapsing across a rosewood table.

When Saxon looked up again all the screens were dark.

CHAPTER FIVE

Silver Springs—Maryland—United States of America

The autocab let her out at the curbside outside her apartment block, and Kelso glanced back to watch the driverless vehicle nose its way back

into traffic, the sensor antennae along the hood of the car feeling the air. The fare from the airport had claimed the last of the money on the

discretionary credit chip Temple gave her. The flight back had passed in a blur, Anna's gaze turned inward, passing the time with the ebb and

flow of the same emotions over and over again. She felt disgusted at herself for her weakness, angry at getting caught, sad at the thought of

letting Matt down, numb and furious, full of regret and fear.

But mostly she felt hollowed out inside. All the work, everything she'd done in the endless days and weeks of her clandestine investigation, now

was unraveling all around her. She had destroyed her career for the sake of something that only she seemed able to see, for a truth that no one

else wanted to face.

As she walked the short distance to the lobby of the building, the question echoed in her mind. Was it worth it?

Inside, she thumbed the entry pad to her apartment and ignored the glow of the messaging system, dropping the packet she had carried all the

way from the 10th Precinct on the sofa. In the living room, the television activated automatically, blipping to the local Picus News affiliate

preset. The screen showed a report about the upcoming National Science Board caucus on human augmentaion; the conference was getting a lot

of heat from the pro-human, antienhancement lobby, and it seemed like every day a new busload of protestors arrived in the capital.

She ignored the low burble of the screen and fished out her vu-phone, leaving it on the countertop in the small, plastic-white kitchen,

mechanically moving through the motions of swigging milk from a carton in the refrigerator. The apartment was dim; the sunny magnolia colors

did little to lift the tone of the gloom leaking in from the dull, low cloud smothering the sky.

Anna grasped the carton in her hand, her fingers deadening with the cold. Was it worth it? The question hammered at her in the silence.

A grimace crossed her face and she went to the alcove where her laptop sat inside an old cedar bureau. The computer woke at her touch, and

she pulled her federal ID from her pocket; the machine automatically pinged the arfid in her badge, but the data chip did not reply. Instead, a

small panel opened on the screen. The text it contained was a paragraph of legal boilerplate reiterating what Temple had told her in the holding

room, but the meaning was clear. Access denied. Clearance revoked. Even the most basic level of entry into the agency network was sealed off

from her.

She sat in the dimness, lit only by the glow of the screen, and began to wonder what else had taken place while she was in New York. Temple

had reamed her files, that much was certain ... but had he sent agents to her home as well? Anna looked around. She saw nothing out of place.

A sudden impulse pushed her up from the chair where she sat, and she crossed to the closet. Inside, hidden behind the hanging clothes, the

safe-locker she'd installed back when she moved in was visible, the door still sealed shut. She typed in the entry code and found the contents as

she'd left them. A box of what little jewelry she had, some cash and papers—and in a separate section, a short-frame Zenith 10 mm automatic,

two full ammo clips, and a small flash drive.

Anna took the gun and checked it before loading. The weapon was legal, licensed and clean. If anything, the flash drive was the more dangerous

item; inside it was an encrypted copy of everything she had worked on, every bit of data gleaned along the road to this moment.

She turned the memory module over in her hand. All that work, all the lies and secrecy, the nights she stayed late at the agency offices digging

into files she should never had accessed, the legacy of the stims she'd taken to keep awake, to keep going ...

Was it worth it?

A chime sounded though the apartment, and Anna flinched in surprise. The house was announcing a call on her vu-phone. She left the gun and

the drive on a shelf in the closet and went to the handset.

The caller ident read Matt Ryan. Anna had been maudlin about deleting his name and number from the phone's memory. It was a foolish, silly

thing, but she'd kept putting it off; perhaps on some level she was denying the reality of what had happened six months ago on Q Street.

She gripped the handheld, her knuckles turning white around the silver casing. Slowly, Anna raised it to her ear, tapping the answer pad. "Who

is this?"

The voice at the other end was electronically distorted, all trace of identity bled out. "You and I need to have a talk." Kelso's training

instinctively kicked in; she tried to listen through the masking filter, looking for the cadence and pattern of the voice, profiling the speaker in