James Swallow - Deus Ex - Icarus Effect

When Saxon looked up again all the screens were dark.

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 her mind.

“Whoever you are, you’re not Matt Ryan. So I’m hanging up—”

“That would be a mistake,” said the voice. “I spoofed the caller ID so you’d pick up. Because I’m guessing right now that you’re not in the mood to talk to people. Not after what happened at the pier.”

Her throat went dry. “What pier?”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid, Agent Kelso. I really hate it when people do that.”

“Then show me the same courtesy,” she snapped, her patience wearing thin. “Who the hell are you and what do you want? Answer that or get lost.”

Anna heard a faint sigh. “ You can call me D-Bar. And like I said, I wanna talk to you.”

“We are talking.”

“Well, when I say I want to, I really mean we want to. And not over an open line. In person.”

She drifted back toward the closet, reaching for the pistol. “Uh-huh. And who is ‘we’?”

“A group you may have heard of. We call ourselves the Juggernaut Collective. We’re kind of a big deal.”

Anna’s hand froze on the gun. “If you know who I am and what happened out at the pier, then you know the last thing I’m going to do is talk to a terrorist.” She should have disconnected, right then and there; but instead she waited.

“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Yeah, trite, maybe, but true.” The sigh came again. “Look, let’s cut to the chase, ’cos I’m not sure how much longer I can keep this conduit secure. You went to that wannabe Widow and her crew and they gave you some scraps. But the fact is, she’s a bottom-feeder and she was never going to get you what you need. We can. We’re looking for the same thing.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“The Tyrants. Do you want to know who they are or not?” Anna said nothing, and after a moment the voice returned. “I’ll take your silence for a yes. Check your messages. If we see anyone but you, that name will be all you’ll ever get.” The connection cut with a click; a moment later, the vu-phone beeped. In the message cue was a street address in downtown Washington, D.C., and a meeting time two hours hence.

In the bathroom she paused to splash a handful of cold water on her face. Two hours; that barely gave her enough time to throw on a fresh set of clothes and bolt out the door.

And she was tired. The events in New York, the time in the cells, the nervous tension of the flight home… The fatigue from all of it was exerting a heavy, tidal drag on her. She couldn’t afford to do this half-awake. She couldn’t afford to miss something.