James Swallow - Deus Ex - Icarus Effect

Down on the stage, Taggart began with some carefully rehearsed platitudes, and from the shadows, Anna heard someone make a spitting noise. “Yeah, that’s enough from you, Billy.” The voice was young and male.

She went to low-light and a figure in a bulky jacket and baseball cap became clear in one of the low, dense seats. With a wave, the youth cut off the sound feed from the auditorium and turned to face her. “Let me guess. You’re D-Bar?” He was a youth, no more than nineteen, slouching and cocksure.

“Wow,” he replied. “You’re more of a looker in the real.”

“Whereas you are far more disappointing.” She backed off a step. “I’m not in the mood for games, kid.” Automatically, she started to profile him in her thoughts. He had an accent that didn’t fit; it had a European twang, maybe French-Canadian.

D-Bar stood up. He was gangly, and the puffed-up jacket hung badly on him, making him look even thinner than he was. A collection of data goggles and audio buds lay in a complex tangle around his neck. “Kid? Oh, come on, Agent Anna Kelso. Book by a cover and all that static? And here I was thinking you were a professional…”

She looked around the room, searching for anything that screamed out ambush , and found nothing. “Fair point,” she conceded. “It’s just that the name ‘Juggernaut’… well, it conjures up a different kind of person than you.”

D-Bar nodded sagely. “Oh, I hear you. I get that a lot.”

“Where’s the rest of the ‘we’ you mentioned on the phone?”

He tapped his hat, and she saw what looked like a minicam clipped to the bill. “Watching. If you try to ice me or anything, they’ll wideband the pix to every screen in a five-block radius.”

“Cute trick.” It was likely a threat he could make good on; Anna had read up on the Juggernaut Collective’s impressive hacking expertise. It was a matter of public record that they had bankrupted two Fortune 500 companies, crashed the Syrian intelligence agency’s mainframe, and brought the Seattle traffic grid to a standstill. “Maybe I should just arrest you, then. I could use a win right about now.”

That got her a flash of real worry; but then the youth shuttered it away. “You don’t want to do that, Anna. We’re the good guys, yeah? Like you. Serving the cause of justice and all that stuff.”

This time she snorted. “Now who’s being patronizing? You expect me to buy into the whole ‘white hat’ hacker thing? Juggernaut are information terrorists. You’re not Robin Hood, you’re a cybercriminal.”

D-Bar gave a mock shudder. “Ooh, yeah. Don’t you think things always sound cooler when you put the word ‘cyber’ in front of them?” He gave a short, nasal laugh. “Okay, so we rob from the rich and we keep it. Can’t deny. But what we also do is oppose inequality.”

“By breaking the law?” she snapped.

“We’re the thorn in the side of heartless megacorps who wanna turn the world into their personal chum-bucket!” he insisted.

“What, is that your recruitment speech?”

D-Bar chuckled. “I don’t have to recruit you. You’re already on our side.”

“Don’t count on it.” Kelso licked her lips, an earthy taste in the back of her throat. Her hands tightened as her annoyance built. “You’ve got ten seconds to tell me why the hell I am here, or I’m dragging you out in cuffs.”

“I thought the choice of locale was, y’know, ironic .” When he saw the hard edge in her gaze, he paled a little. “Okay, okay. Look, for a while now, we’ve been bumping up against the edges of something…” D-Bar paused, feeling for the right word. “ Shadowy . There’s a group out there. An organization with a long reach and a lotta patience. They’ve been systematically using info-war and assassination to target midlevel corporates—”

“Isn’t that what you people do?” she broke in.

The youth’s eyes flashed. “Juggernaut doesn’t kill people, lady. And if you let me finish, I was gonna say it’s not just corporations getting the knife. Other free groups like us are going dark. These bad guys are taking people down with blackmail, extortion, entrapment, absorption…”

Anna’s patience was wearing thinner by the moment. She folded her arms across her chest. “And this concerns me how?”

“The Tyrants,” D-Bar sounded out the name, and she couldn’t stop herself from reacting to it. “Yeah, that get your attention? The Tyrants are their attack dogs, Agent Kelso. This… group, whoever they are? Those black-ops bastards are doing their dirty work for them.” He leaned closer. “We’re both looking for the same thing. We’re both asking the same question.” She was silent for a long moment, her irritation warring with her curiosity. Finally, she gave it voice. “What do they want?”

Knightsbridge—London—Great Britain

Saxon felt cool, clammy concrete against his back and he rolled slightly, his head swimming, clearing from the effect of the stun-dart.

He heard a woman’s voice, distant but light and playful. Gradually, he leaned up from where he lay and caught sight of a short, unfinished corridor stretching away from him. He was inside the hidden spaces behind the picture on the wall, under the stark light of a fluorescent bulb. At the edges of the shadows around him, he glimpsed Barrett, Hardesty, and the Russian woman. Hermann was nearby, slowly pulling himself into a pained crouching position. The chamber they were in was no bigger than the conference room, but it was sparse and had the feel of a place one might use for a purpose that needed a little space, like a sparring court. Or an interrogation room.

Hermann tried to get up, but that drew a guttural, negative noise from Barrett. “You stay right there, son,” he told him. The German frowned and ran a hand through his short, dirty-blond hair.

The woman at the far end of the corridor was talking to Namir, and in that moment he knew who she was: the wife. He didn’t understand Hebrew, but he recognized the rhythm of it. Their voices had the casual, easy pace of two people who knew each other intimately. Saxon closed his eyes for a moment and tried to marry the voice he heard with the Jaron Namir he knew from firsthand experience. Just as with the picture on the landing, the two things refused to mesh. He was listening to a warm and personable man, a father joking with the mother of his children, not the stone killer he knew from sorties into the deep black. Saxon had seen Namir kill men in the time it took him to blink, and do it calmly and cleanly. He wondered how he could be both of those people at once.

A child called out and the wife stepped away. After a moment, Namir came back down the corridor and Saxon saw Hardesty grin in the darkness, in anticipation of something.

Namir saw it, too, and drew a handgun, throwing the American a flat look. “Scott. Go see to Laya and the children, would you?”

The sniper’s face fell. “I thought—”

“Do it now,” said Namir. “I’ll handle this.”

There was a moment when it looked like Hardesty might argue; but then he grimaced and walked away. Saxon heard the sniper call out and a child laugh in reply; then the hidden door closed and the sound died.

Namir worked the slide of the automatic pistol and ejected all but one round into the palm of his hand, then pocketed the bullets.

At last, Saxon spoke. “What’s going on?”

“One of you is disloyal,” Namir said, without looking at them. “I know which. And the other needs to prove himself.” He gestured with the gun. “So, two birds and one stone.”

“One bullet, more like,” Barrett noted dryly.

Hermann gave Saxon a fierce look. “I am no traitor!”