Daniel Suarez - Daemon

“Let’s just say she’s unlisted. But you can probably find her. Tell her that she can get in direct contact with me at that e-mail address. Tell her that I found the back door in Sobol’s game. If she doubts my identity, tell her that I was there when Sobol phoned Sebeck at the funeral.”

Merritt saw a policeman walking along the Mall not far away. He squeezed the piece of paper in his hand. Then sighed and turned back to Ross. “I want something, too.”

“Okay. What?”

“Give me that DVD.”

Ross popped the DVD out of the player and then hesitated. “Agent Merritt, I wouldn’t watch this if I were you. Your squad burns to death on camera. It’s very disturbing.”

Merritt hesitated, too. His hand wavered. Then he took it. “They say you’re a master con artist. I promise you: if you caused the death of my men, I’ll hunt you down. No matter how long it takes.”

Ross met his gaze. “I would expect no less.”

Merritt slipped the disc into his coat pocket.

“Don’t show that video to anyone. Not yet. If the Daemon knows you’re on to it, it will kill you.”

“Yeah, I’m shaking like a leaf.”

Ross headed toward the bus stop.

Merritt limped after him. “When do I get to see this irrefutable proof?”

“I’ll contact you.”

They reached the bus stop shelter, slathered with advertising posters. Ross peered down the street to see a bus—any bus—coming down the block. He turned to Merritt again. “I’ll show you everything I know about the Daemon.” He looked seriously into Merritt’s eyes. “I think your republic is in danger, Agent Merritt. I don’t know who else to turn to. Please realize I came to you because I saw that video, and I know you are a courageous man. That’s what your republic needed at its founding. And it’s what it needs now.”

Merritt felt the rush return. Love for his country swelled within him. Was he being naïve? He had always wanted a grand purpose. He avoided eye contact for the shame he felt in having his buttons so easily pushed.

The bus squealed to a stop. The doors opened. Ross turned without a word and merged into the line of commuters. In a few moments he was aboard.

Merritt watched the bus pull away, still wrestling over whether or not to alert the police. He committed the bus number and license plate to memory.

Had he really just let the FBI’s Most Wanted man go? He withdrew the DVD from his jacket pocket and looked at it. It bore the handwritten title Sobol’s House.

To Merritt, something had never seemed quite right about the Daemon hoax. Something about it just seemed too tidy. In his heart he had always had doubts, but after the deaths of his men it seemed self-serving to question the simple story. High-tech experts had declared the matter resolved.

But months ago in Sobol’s mansion, Merritt had seen and heard things no one had ever satisfactorily explained.

He looked around at the oblivious commuters waiting for their buses. He limped back the way he came. There was physical therapy to do. He would be ready for what was coming, and this time he would not fail his country—whether or not Ross was behind it all.

As Merritt moved away through the crowd, he didn’t notice the six-foot-tall bus stop poster framed behind graffiti-carved Lexan. It boasted a medium close-up of Anji Anderson, all business, arms folded, set against an infinity background. She glowered at passersby from above the logo of her network news show, News to America. The tag line read:

“The Most Trusted Name in News…”

Charles Mosely walked across the sunny corporate plaza and cast a glance back at the Lexus sitting curbside a hundred feet behind him. He wasn’t comfortable leaving his ride behind—but then again, The Voice was able to kill the engine at will, so it probably didn’t matter.

A few corporate drones in business suits lock-stepped across the plaza, briefcases in hand. Mosely realized that he must look like one of them.

A fountain occupied the center of the square. It was a dancing display of computer-controlled water jets, recirculating hundreds of gallons per second. Mosely walked around it, just now noticing how many things must be controlled by computers. It wasn’t intelligence, but then again most things in life didn’t really require intelligence.

Gleaming twenty-story high-rises stood on either side of a four-story medical plaza. He walked straight toward the green-glass medical plaza.

The logo over the glass doors read:

fMRI Partners

This was the name The Voice had given him. The landscaping and architecture were impressive. Somebody had put in little grass-carpeted mounds topped with cherry trees. It was pricey real estate. The whole district was dotted with fancy corporate towers. It was not a place where he had had reason to spend time back when he lived in Houston, and the police in these neighborhoods were always crazy suspicious of brothers. Still, he hadn’t been stopped on the way in. Must’ve been the suit and the white-guy car. For the first time he considered that classism might trump racism.

Mosely approached the glass doors and was about to push when they slid away noiselessly to either side. A blast of refrigerated air washed over him. The hot and humid outside air collided with it, creating a mini squall line at the entrance. He stepped straight through and into a minimalist corporate lobby. The doors hissed closed behind him. His heels clicked as he crossed the tiled lobby floor.

The company logo was repeated in bold letters on the back wall behind the receptionist’s desk. The desk itself was the typical front-office bunker designed to look like a welding accident. The receptionist was a creamy-skinned blonde in her twenties who had either been born gorgeous or been modified to be that way. Didn’t matter to Mosely. She was the prettiest woman he’d seen in years.

She was speaking on a wireless headset and smiled at him, mouthing I’ll be right with you. Her red lipstick almost burned images onto his corneas.

He glanced around at the high ceiling, spotlights focused on jutting peninsulas of brushed steel. It was like a car showroom without the cars. No chairs anywhere in sight, either. Welcome. Now get the fuck out.

In a moment she hung up. One could never really tell with headsets, but she focused her gaze on him and smiled. “Mr. Taylor. You’re expected. Please go right in.”

Twin blond wood doors opened automatically in the wall beyond. They revealed a hallway that shared distant architectural relations with the lobby.

Mosely stared at the opening for a moment, then turned to the receptionist. “Listen, baby, you want to explain just what the hell I’m doing here?”

“Well, for one thing, I don’t like being called ‘baby’ any more than you’d like to be called ‘boy.’”

“That’s just it, though. I feel like I’m a ‘boy’ brought down here to the plantation house.” He leaned close. “You know what goes on up in here. You wanna help me out?”

She regarded him coolly. “Here’s some help: you’re expected through those doors.”

Mosely straightened. “A company girl.” He started for the opening. “That why they pay you the big bucks?”

She watched him warily.

Once he passed the threshold, the doors closed behind him with a click , sealing him in. He just smirked. “Mosely, you dumb ass.” He kept walking down a nicely appointed hallway. It stretched a good fifty feet. There were no doors to either side, just tasteful artwork—ink drawings with as few lines as possible. He approached the set of double doors at the far end of the hall, and—as he expected—they opened noiselessly to admit him.