Deus Ex - Icarus Effect (17 page)

"All right." It was a second before Anna realized she had spoken.

Knightsbridge—London—Great Britain

Namir gave him a room at the top of the town house, in the converted attic where white pine floors ranged up to tall, arched windows that

looked out onto the London skyline.

Saxon left the lamps off and cracked open the window a little, letting in the night air along with the steady rush of the traffic out on Kensington

Gore. The distant rattle of a police aerodyne reached his ears, and he saw a saucer-shaped advertisement blimp caught like an errant cloud,

drifting east toward Mayfair. The glow of the video billboards flanking the airship reflected off the rooftops, strings of commercials for high-end

fashion, cybernetics, and consumer electronics raining silently down over the city.

The night was uncharacteristically warm, and as soon as he had settled in the room, Saxon stripped to the waist and found a place to sit cross

legged by the freestanding mirror, checking himself over in every place that Gunther Hermann had laid his punches and kicks on him. He had a

collection of ugly bruises, shallow cuts, and minor contusions, but nothing that could have been a broken or chipped bone. Saxon ran his flesh

hand down the length of his cyberarm, checking maintenance seals and actuators. He made a few practice moves; the arm felt slightly off

speed.

With a grimace, Saxon filled a tumbler of water from the filter carafe on the nightstand near the wide, shadowed bed; then he loaded a fresh

dose of neuropozyne into an injector pen and took the shot in his arm.

He drained the glass as he stood at the window. What the hell just happened? he asked himself. For a moment, it seemed as if he was hanging

over the ragged edge, that everything he was or could be was about to be snuffed out in an instant; and then the gun and Gunther's life had

been in his hands.

Were the rounds in the pistol really blanks? If I had pulled the trigger, put a shot between the German's eyes, what would they have done?

It chilled him to consider a different truth from the one Namir had laid down as he took the weapon from him. Saxon's disquiet should have

been silenced; he had passed a test down there in that room. In some strange way, he had bonded with the rest of the Tyrants.

So why doesn't it sit right? He almost asked the question out loud.

Saxon glanced up and saw the airship drift overhead. Up there, a woman's face was lit by rainbows of color, showing off a cascade of diamonds

around her wrist. Her mouth moved and a marquee of words appeared in sequence on smaller video-screens all around her. What master do

you serve?

He blinked, uncertain if his eyes were playing tricks on him.

The woman on the screen, flawless and fashion-model perfect, was looking right at him, as if the billboard was a window through which she was

peering. Over her shoulder, he saw a virtual skyline mimicking the view from the tenth floor of the Hotel Novoe Rostov.

What master do you serve? she asked once again. The words shifted and changed like drifts of sand, transforming into a string of numerals.

The groupings matched an international sat-comm code.

Before he was even fully aware he was doing it, Saxon reached for his gear pack and recovered the spare vu-phone he kept for emergencies. It

wasn't the slick, cutting-edge device the Tyrants had given him, just a store-bought disposable. He entered the digits and thumbed the DIAL

key. A string of swift tones sounded from the earpiece, followed by a hum as the line connected—

Behind him, the bedroom door clicked open, and he spun from the window, cutting the call short, letting the phone drop.

In the light cast from the airship's advert-screens, Yelena Federova resembled some kind of shadow-wraith, a creature made out of flesh and

darkness straight from fable. She stalked silently toward him, her black-and-steel legs catching the glow. Her eyes were hooded and he could

not read them. Slowly, like a knife being drawn from a sheath, a low smile crossed her lips. The sullen glower that characterized her neutral

mode of expression was gone, and instead Saxon saw an echo of the predatory thrill Federova had shown in the Rostov's lobby, after cutting

down three men in as many seconds.

It came to him that he had failed the test. She had come to kill him, quietly and discreetly. Sparing Gunther's life had marked him as weak; he

was going to be cut from the pack ...

She halted a few steps from him, and then, with care, Federova pulled at the tabs holding the ballistic-cloth blouse closed over her chest. She let

it fall free to the floor; beneath she wore nothing, and Saxon's gaze was drawn to the rise of her breasts, a small ebon cross hanging in the valley

between them. Her tawny skin was marred only by the scarred disc of an old bullet wound. Then she shrugged off her short breeches and

crossed the rest of the distance, her hands reaching for him.

Saxon let her draw in, let her find her own way; and when their lips met, hers were as cool as fresh water. Together, they drifted out of the light

and into the shadowed corner, descending into darkness.

U.S. Secret Service Headquarters—Washington, D.C.—United States of America

At this time of the evening, the building was sparsely populated; but then, cops never slept, and the agents of the Secret Service were no

different. There would be more than enough people still on duty or working late to steal a march on their investigations, others preparing

details to deal with VIP escorts while the demonstrators were in town. More than enough of them to make this a difficult endeavor for Anna

Kelso. Everyone on her floor, at the very least, had to know about the cover story Temple had put in place—Kelso's so-called medical

suspension. She knew that others would have been told everything, and how those people would react if they saw her here ... It would not go

well.

All that she pushed aside as she went in through the front doors. In her head Anna was going through the same warm-up techniques she used

for undercover work; it was peculiar to do it here and now, but she was pretending to be something that she wasn't—an agent with a right to be

there.

The security guard at the desk gave her a wan smile. Anna cursed inwardly; he knew her, in a nodding kind of way. She had hoped someone

else would be on duty tonight.

"Agent Kelso." His face showed faint confusion. "I'd heard you were taking some medical leave?"

She smiled back at him, playing into the moment. "That's right. But I've got to drop some paperwork off for the guys picking up my caseload."

"I'll need you to sign in." He offered her a touch pad, and she ran a stylus over it in a quick scrawl. Anna couldn't help but glance over her

shoulder, back out to the parking lot where her car was waiting. She thought about running.

A soft beep sounded from the guard's panel. "Thanks."

She was through the security arch before it caught up to her that she had been allowed in without question. Anna resisted the urge to reach up

and touch the badge in her pocket; whatever D-Bar had done to it on the drive from the conference center had worked.

The elevator took her to the seventh floor, and all the way up she fought back the twitchy sensation in her fingers, folding her arms, unfolding

them, shifting her weight from foot to foot. The dose she'd convinced herself she needed, the shot of stims that had propelled her through her

confrontation with D-Bar, was waning. She could sense the dark clouds of the comedown encroaching, like a thunderstorm just over the horizon.

Anna blinked; her eyes were tired and gritty.

When her phone hummed in her pocket, she almost jumped. Quickly she thumbed the wireless headset from the dock on the back of the

handset and inserted it in her ear; she wasn't about to let D-Bar access her mastoid comm. "Talk to me," she said.

"Are you there?" asked the hacker. "1 ghosted you via the entry subnet, blanked the sign-in as soon as you were through. Can't go any

further without your help, though."

"Working on it," she replied. "Now shut up and let me concentrate." Anna muted him as the elevator let out a melodic chime and the doors

opened. She stepped out, and for a second, force of habit took her in the direction of the main office bullpen. Across the tops of the open cubicles,

the desks and glassy partitions, dimly lit by glow strips and the occasional active monitor screen, she saw her work area. A bright orange

storage crate was on top of it, crammed with her personal effects. She thought about the marksmanship plaque, the photo of her and the rest of

the team after the Anselmo case bust, and fought down the irrational urge to risk discovery in order to salvage those little, trivial mementos.

Then she saw Agents Tyler and Drake walking between the desks toward her, and Anna's purpose snapped back into sharp, cold focus.

Chiding herself for the moment of inattention, she turned on her heel and went back around the elevator bank, heading away. The corridors

leading to the server room on floor seven went past the conference areas, and they were all dark and unlit. Anna hoped that Tyler and Drake

would enter the elevators, but they were coming her way, their conversation reaching her. They were talking about the Redskins game, both

men dour and serious about matters of yardage and field goals.

Fear bubbled up inside her, threatening to flood out into panic. She pressed it down, and her hand found a door. Anna slipped into an empty

conference room and closed the door behind her, pressing her back to it. She held her breath.

It seemed to take forever for them to pass, the echo of their mundane discussion hanging in the air; then they were gone, and she was moving

again.

The server room needed another identity pass, and Kelso showed the sensor her badge. The door opened with an obliging click and she was

inside.

"I'm there," she said, toggling the mute on the headset. On the drive over, D-Bar had told her what to look for. From her pocket, she fished out

a data rod the size and thickness of her thumb.

"You know what to do," D-Bar said, his tone a mix of eagerness and annoyance.

"Here we go." She found the correct input socket and slid the rod home. A sleeping monitor screen immediately flashed into life, and a cascade

of information panels unfolded across it.

In her ear, the hacker muttered under his breath. "Wireless link established. Greentooth is handshaking ... Okay, here we go ..." He cursed

and she heard the distant rattle of a keypad. "Damn it. You know, this would be a lot easier if I had both hands free."

Anna eyed the door. "What can I say? I'm the cautious type."

On the drive from the conference center, D-Bar had brought out a customized laptop from his backpack; the thing had the shell of an off-the

shelf business machine, but even her inexpert gaze could tell it was tricked out with multiple hardware modifications and bespoke black-market

tech. The airstream casing was ruggedized and covered with laser etching and decals; it reminded her of a racecar.

She pictured D-Bar out there in the parking lot, hunched over the keyboard in the passenger seat, watching the feed as his machine talked

through the rod's encrypted wireless link to the Secret Service mainframe. Before she had left him in the car, Kelso had asked the youth to

show her his right hand; with a flick, she'd snapped a cuff around his wrist and tethered him to the steering wheel. After all, she was putting a

lot of trust in the Juggernaut hacker, and there was nothing to stop him from copying what he needed from the secure server and leaving her to

take the rap.