Deus Ex - Icarus Effect (15 page)

workstations.

"Yelena?" Namir inclined his head toward Federova.

The woman's hand blurred as she pulled a weapon from a pocket, a boxy plastic handgun lined with a yellow-and-black hazard strip. She

turned it on Hermann and pulled the trigger.

A thick dart buzzed from the muzzle and hit the German in the neck; Saxon heard the hum of a tazer discharge and Hermann moaned, his body

going rigid. The younger man fell, his watch cap falling from his head.

"What—?" Saxon looked up as a second dart struck him in the chest. He had an instant to register the bite of the contact needles in his skin

before a second stun charge lashed into him.

The Ohama Center—Washington, D.C.—United States of America

The message brought her to the doors of the conference center, the fading light of evening lit by the glow from inside the glass-and-steel

building. A gallery of holograms formed a promenade from the street to the main doors, each of them moving through cycles showing venue information and events listings.

She moved closer, her senses sharpened and acute; for the moment, the fatigue gnawing at her had been beaten back. Kelso knew she'd pay for

it later—but for now she was focused and alert.

Over the entrance, a banner announced the name of the seminar that was about to begin: No Better—The Myth of Human Augmentation. She

immediately recognized the title. The ebook that it was based on had been hovering around the top ten of the Picus Network best-seller list

forever, along with its various audio and video versions, not to mention the frequent references to it on the chat-show news circuit. She glanced

up to see the face of the author smiling down from one of the holoscreens. William Taggart's warm, fatherly eyes watched her from behind a

pair of understated glasses, wearing the same expression of compassionate concern that graced the back cover of every copy of No Better, and

every flyer for his lobby group, the Humanity Front.

Taggart had founded his organization with one goal in mind—to disabuse society at large of the idea that human augmentation technology was a

positive development. As Taggart's people would put it, cybernetic implants served only to dilute a person's humanity, making them less than

what they were instead of more.

Anna found the Humanity Front's rhetoric a little hard to take, though. The augmentations she possessed had improved her, and that was

something she'd never been in doubt about—and when she thought about the facets of her life that made her feel less human, her implants

weren't at the root of it. She frowned and pushed that thought away.

Smartly dressed young men and women were handing out flyers to the attendees and anyone who walked within arm's reach. Anna noted that

a fair few of them were sporting simple mechanical prosthetics in place of limbs. These were people who had taken to what some called

"disaugmentation," freely giving up cybernetic implants in an attempt to move back to being fully human again; the only thing was, losing an

augmentation wasn't like getting a gang tattoo removed or ditching your piercings. She didn't know quite how to take someone who'd made that

choice willingly. Maybe life with a basic leg prosthesis was easier, with less maintenance to deal with and no weekly regimen of neuropozyne

doses to keep the nerve contacts crisp, but Anna wasn't buying it.

Here, though, she seemed to be in the minority. A lot of the downtowner crowd were filing in to hear Taggart give his lecture, and after having

heard the man on television, Anna had to admit he had charisma enough to hold your attention, and the kind of academic gravitas that many

people admired. Along with plenty of his supporters, he was here to make his voice heard at the National Science Board meetings, to continue

his campaign to decry augmentation; he would doubtless be a fixture at the pro-flesh demonstrations taking place over the next few days.

As she entered the conference center atrium, as if on cue, a recording of Taggart's voice issued out of a hidden speaker. "Some people believe

augmentation is the wave of the future. That replacing part of yourself with machines will make you superhuman ... But the truth is, for

every part of yourself you sacrifice, you are less than you were before. That's why I created the Humanity Front. Tonight, Fll tell you why

you should be apart of it, too."

Anna scowled slightly. The name made Taggart's anti-aug crusade sound like a paramilitary group, and Anna wondered if that might have been

a deliberate choice. Some of the people who shared Taggart's views did a lot more than write books or give speeches; episodes of violence

against augmented humans fanned the flames of a new breed of intolerance. Groups like the militants of Purity First were more than happy to

twist Taggart's message toward aggressive ends.

There were more than enough people who couldn't afford augmentation in the States and elsewhere—and she doubted any of them could have

paid the extortionate ticket fee for the seminar either—as well as those who felt threatened by the new technology, just like they were by

anything unfamiliar to them. The Humanity Front was selling itself as two things: a caring group out to show augmentees the error of their

ways, and a force for retaining the status quo. Anna wondered if men like Taggart would ever understand that you couldn't put the genie back

in the bottle.

"Can I help you?" A tanned young guy sporting a blandly neutral prosthetic hand stepped up to greet her. He gave her a once-over,

immediately spotting her cyberoptics, and his expression became almost pious. "Everyone is welcome."

Over his shoulder, a shimmer passed through one of the holograph banners, the text changing. A new string of words formed: Kelso. Upper tier.

Section G. Box 3. She gave him a tight smile. "Actually, no. I know exactly where I'm going."

Anna had her hand on the butt of the Zenith as she entered the skybox. It was well appointed, with an excellent view of the stage below. The

house lights were just starting to grow dim, and as the door closed behind her, William Taggart stepped out into the pool of light cast from

above, to a tide of applause. She hesitated; the skybox's illumination was low and there were deep shadows everywhere.

Down on the stage, Taggart began with some carefully rehearsed platitudes, and from the shadows, Anna heard someone make a spitting noise.

"Yeah, that's enough from you, Billy." The voice was young and male.

She went to low-light and a figure in a bulky jacket and baseball cap became clear in one of the low, dense seats. With a wave, the youth cut off

the sound feed from the auditorium and turned to face her. "Let me guess. You're D-Bar?" He was a youth, no more than nineteen, slouching

and cocksure.

"Wow," he replied. "You're more of a looker in the real."

"Whereas you are far more disappointing." She backed off a step. "I'm not in the mood for games, kid." Automatically, she started to profile him

in her thoughts. He had an accent that didn't fit; it had a European twang, maybe French-Canadian.

D-Bar stood up. He was gangly, and the puffed-up jacket hung badly on him, making him look even thinner than he was. A collection of data

goggles and audio buds lay in a complex tangle around his neck. "Kid? Oh, come on, Agent Anna Kelso. Book by a cover and all that static? And

here I was thinking you were a professional..."

She looked around the room, searching for anything that screamed out ambush, and found nothing. "Fair point," she conceded. "It's just that

the name 'Juggernaut'... well, it conjures up a

different kind of person than you."

D-Bar nodded sagely. "Oh, I hear you. I get that a lot."

"Where's the rest of the 'we' you mentioned on the phone?"

He tapped his hat, and she saw what looked like a minicam clipped to the bill. "Watching. If you try to ice me or anything, they'll wideband the

pix to every screen in a five-block radius."

"Cute trick." It was likely a threat he could make good on; Anna had read up on the Juggernaut Collective's impressive hacking expertise. It

was a matter of public record that they had bankrupted two Fortune 500 companies, crashed the Syrian intelligence agency's mainframe, and

brought the Seattle traffic grid to a standstill. "Maybe I should just arrest you, then. I could use a win right about now."

That got her a flash of real worry; but then the youth shuttered it away. "You don't want to do that, Anna. We're the good guys, yeah? Like you.

Serving the cause of justice and all that stuff."

This time she snorted. "Now who's being patronizing? You expect me to buy into the whole 'white hat' hacker thing? Juggernaut are

information terrorists. You're not Robin Hood, you're a cybercriminal."

D-Bar gave a mock shudder. "Ooh, yeah. Don't you think things always sound cooler when you put the word 'cyber' in front of them?" He gave a

short, nasal laugh. "Okay, so we rob from the rich and we keep it. Can't deny. But what we also do is oppose inequality."

"By breaking the law?" she snapped.

"We're the thorn in the side of heartless megacorps who wanna turn the world into their personal chum-bucket!" he insisted.

"What, is that your recruitment speech?"

D-Bar chuckled. "I don't have to recruit you. You're already on our side."

"Don't count on it." Kelso licked her lips, an earthy taste in the back of her throat. Her hands tightened as her annoyance built. "You've got ten

seconds to tell me why the hell I am here, or I'm dragging you out in cuffs."

"I thought the choice of locale was, y'know, ironic." When he saw the hard edge in her gaze, he paled a little. "Okay, okay. Look, for a while now,

we've been bumping up against the edges of something ..." D-Bar paused, feeling for the right word. "Shadowy. There's a group out there. An

organization with a long reach and a lotta patience. They've been systematically using info-war and assassination to target midlevel corporates

—"

"Isn't that what you people do?" she broke in.

The youth's eyes flashed. "Juggernaut doesn't kill people, lady. And if you let me finish, I was gonna say it's not just corporations getting the

knife. Other free groups like us are going dark. These bad guys are taking people down with blackmail, extortion, entrapment, absorption ..."

Anna's patience was wearing thinner by the moment. She folded her arms across her chest. "And this concerns me how?"

"The Tyrants," D-Bar sounded out the name, and she couldn't stop herself from reacting to it. "Yeah, that get your attention? The Tyrants are

their attack dogs, Agent Kelso. This ... group, whoever they are? Those black-ops bastards are doing their dirty work for them." He leaned

closer. "We're both looking for the same thing. We're both asking the same question." She was silent for a long moment, her irritation warring

with her curiosity. Finally, she gave it voice. "What do they want?"

Knightsbridge—London—Great Britain

Saxon felt cool, clammy concrete against his back and he rolled slightly, his head swimming, clearing from the effect of the stun-dart.

He heard a woman's voice, distant but light and playful. Gradually, he leaned up from where he lay and caught sight of a short, unfinished

corridor stretching away from him. He was inside the hidden spaces behind the picture on the wall, under the stark light of a fluorescent bulb.

At the edges of the shadows around him, he glimpsed Barrett, Hardesty, and the Russian woman. Hermann was nearby, slowly pulling himself

into a pained crouching position. The chamber they were in was no bigger than the conference room, but it was sparse and had the feel of a

place one might use for a purpose that needed a little space, like a sparring court. Or an interrogation room.