Sean Ellis - Callsign - King

The corner of the man’s mouth twitched into something that might have been a smile. “I see your point. The name’s Graham.”

“Better. Elaborate a little.”

Graham spread his raised hands a little wide, gesturing at his surroundings. “This is my house.”

King cocked his head sideways. “See, that just makes me want to kill you even more. But as long as you keep answering truthfully, you’ll keep breathing. Now, here’s the important question, and don’t screw this one up. Where can I find Sara Fogg?”

“She’s working in the research laboratory. It’s in the subbasement, but you won’t be able to access it.” Graham thought a moment, and then added. “I can take you there.”

There was a scratch of static in King’s ear as Deep Blue initiated contact. “King, I’ve run a facial recognition program on him and matched him to a file photo that’s almost thirty years old. His name really is Graham-Graham Brown. He’s American, born in New Jersey. Made a small fortune gambling, and then made an even bigger fortune on the stock market. He seems to have had an uncanny ability to predict trends, even in a down market. He’s also a notorious recluse, and pretty much vanished from public life in the 1980’s.”

“Roger,” King answered, subvocalizing. He then waved the P220 in Graham’s direction. “Graham…Brown is it?”

The other man’s eye twitched ever so slightly, but that was the only indication of dismay at having been correctly identified.

“You must have been a hell of a poker player back in the day,” King continued. “But if you’re trying to bluff me now, it will cost you everything.”

“I never played poker. It’s a game of deceit. I prefer to deal in mathematical probabilities. But I do always play to win…Mr. Sigler.”

It was King’s turn to hide his dismay. “Cards on the table, then. You’ve tried very hard to have me killed Graham, and that makes me a little cranky. So, take me to Sara and don’t do anything stupid.”

“As you wish. I’m going to stand up now.” Graham waited a beat, and then lowered his hands in order to push himself up from the sofa.

“Is there anyone else here?”

“Mr. Fulbright-I believe you know him-is in a room down the hall. Miss Carter is in the laboratory with Dr. Fogg.” As an afterthought, he added: “And the flight crew for my Gulfstream is in the coach house.”

“None of your Alpha Dog mercenaries running around?”

Graham offered a bitter smile. “No, more’s the pity. I prefer not to have dogs in the house, but I can see that perhaps it would have been a good idea.”

King gestured with the gun. “Lead the way.”

Graham eased past King and moved to the exit. As he followed, King keyed his mic. “Anything else you can tell me about this guy?”

“Nothing current,” Deep Blue answered. “But his disappearance coincides with the emergence of the metacorporation. It’s conceivable that he’s responsible for creating the AI that’s behind it all.”

King offered a noncommittal grunt but said nothing more as he followed the silver-haired man down the hall to the staircase landing. They descended in silence and made their way to the elevator foyer where Graham pressed a button to summon the car. As the double doors slid aside, King made a point of holding the P220 to the base of Graham’s neck.

They filed into the empty car where Graham pushed a button marked SB1. King noted that there was also an SB2. “What’s on the bottom floor?”

“That’s the computer room,” Graham answered, disinterestedly. “It’s easier to keep them cool down there.”

King made a mental note of that. He also noted that, despite Graham’s earlier assertion that King would be unable to access the subbasement without his help, there hadn’t been any visible security measures.

The brief vertical journey ended and the doors slid open to reveal a large room rendered in sterile white and stainless steel. Graham raised his hands and waited for a signal from King. “I did what you asked, Mr. Sigler. Are you going to kill me now?”

“Don’t tempt me. Out. Take me to Sara.”

Graham nodded slowly. “Right this way.”

The silver-haired man took a step out of the elevator, and then suddenly threw himself to the right, out of King’s line of sight. King squeezed off a round, but was a fraction of a second too slow. And even as the pistol twitched in his hands, he realized that Graham had told another lie. Fulbright wasn’t sequestered in a room on the second floor; he was standing twenty feet away, aiming a pistol at the elevator’s sole remaining occupant.

Before King could do anything to stop him, he fired.

His liquid body armor stopped Fulbright’s bullet from piercing his heart, but the impact was like getting hit in the chest with a baseball bat. King staggered back, rebounding off the wall of the elevator car as Fulbright fired again and again.

The rogue CIA agent was trying for a headshot.

King twisted to the side, and blindly squeezed off a volley from the P220. Fulbright was already gone. Struggling to breathe past the pain in his chest, King pushed off the elevator wall and stormed out, hoping to catch his foe off guard.

Instead, he found Fulbright standing behind Sara, his smoking pistol held against her cheek. “You know how this works, Sigler. I don’t give a shit whether you live or die, so you can trust me when I say that the only way you and your girlfriend are going to get out this alive, is if you put down your weapons. But if they don’t hit the floor in about five seconds, I promise I will pull this trigger.”

King’s eyes narrowed as he studied Fulbright across the distance. “Five seconds? One Mississippi…”

“What the hell are you doing?”

King fired the P220.

The. 45 caliber ACP round whispered past the suppressor and plowed into the barely exposed side of Fulbright’s head. The CIA man spun away, the pistol falling unused from his nerveless grip.

Sara gaped at King in disbelief. “Nice shooting.”

“Thanks. Where’s Graham?”

Sara glanced around, but the silver-haired man was gone. Then she was in his arms, unable to hold back the tears. “He said you were dead, but I never believed it. I knew you’d come for me.”

He hugged her tight. “Not even God could stop me. Okay, well maybe God, but-”

“It is you!” This incredulous exclamation was from another female voice, and King glanced up to find Felice standing a few steps behind them. “You sure know how to make an entrance.”

King gave her a tight smile. “I know how to make a pretty good exit, too. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

Felice nodded eagerly and strode toward the elevator doors. Sara seemed unwilling to let go of him, but he gently loosened her grip while still holding her hand in his. “Let’s get you home, Dr. Fogg.”

But suddenly his legs were swept from beneath him and fell backward, crashing heavily onto the floor. The impact sent a wave of pain through his body, aggravating a host of scrapes and bruises that had not yet begun to heal, and for a moment, he could only lay motionless, struggling to breathe. That moment was long enough for his attacker to gain the upper hand.

A hideous specter materialized above him; a familiar face-Fulbright’s face-on one side, and on the other, a swollen mass of destroyed flesh, weeping blood and serous fluid. His hands sought out King’s throat and closed, shutting off the flow of blood to King’s brain and the exchange of air to his lungs.

King clawed at Fulbright’s choke hold, but could not gain an iota of relief. Dark spots started to swim across his vision, but through the descending night, he saw Sara hammering at the rogue agent’s face with her fists in a desperate effort to free King. Nothing worked. Fulbright was almost certainly mortally wounded, certainly suffering incomprehensible pain, but none of that mattered. There was no trace of sanity to be found in his remaining eye, but the force empowering his grip was singular in nature. He wanted King dead, and nothing would prevent that.