James Swallow - Deus Ex - Icarus Effect

Was it the secrets? It seemed foolish to consider it; as a spec ops soldier, he’d spent most of his career working in the dark… but with the British Army and then with Belltower, he’d at least had some grasp on what he was risking his life for.

In the humid night air of the field hospital, Namir had offered him a second chance. He had offered the opportunity to make a difference, but more than that, Namir had offered Saxon trust.

Or perhaps, just the illusion of it. There were other operations going on, he was certain. Tyrant missions that he wasn’t supposed to be aware of; he knew for a fact that Federova and Hardesty had been deployed to the United States, Japan, and India on untraceable black-bag jobs. Once more, any question about who chose their targets or what they were was not going to be answered.

Do you know what master you serve?

He decided then that for the moment, the questions the shadowy hacker Janus had posed would go no further.

Namir turned from the window. “It’s clear to me that we’ve reached an important juncture here.” Hardesty, Federova, and Barrett abruptly stood up, with Saxon and Hermann reacting just a second later. For a moment, the ghost of a cold smile danced on Hardesty’s lips.

“About time,” said Barrett.

Namir nodded to the big man. “Open the study, will you?”

Barrett nodded and crossed to the wall where The Flute Player hung. He whispered something Saxon didn’t catch and a seam opened on silent hydraulics. The wall retracted into itself to reveal more rooms beyond. Saxon caught sight of a dark, windowless space, weapons racks, and 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, I’ll 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.