James Swallow - Deus Ex - Icarus Effect

“And there’s more we don’t even know about,” D-Bar told her. “The ones who were leaned on instead of getting roughed up or murdered. The ones who buckled, who did what they were told to.”

“Assassination, extortion, coercion…” Anna said aloud. “The Tyrants are behind all these incidents? How could they be doing that? They would need global reach, unparalleled access to secure information—”

The hacker seized on her words. “Ah, now that, that we do know something about. The group, the guys with their hands on the leash of the dogs… they’ve penetrated hundreds of agencies. They got a spy network that spans the world.” He nodded to himself. “That Skyler thing, fer’ex. How’d they explain away the shooters knowing exactly where and when to find the senator?”

Anna frowned. “The FBI investigation turned up evidence that one of Skyler’s maids was paid off by the Red Arrow triad.”

“Pled innocent, though, right? Then what?”

Kelso recalled that the woman had died in prison, killed during a violent scuffle. Like so much about the Skyler hit, Anna had never accepted what had become the official version of events.

D-Bar went on. “The Tyrants got their info someplace else. I reckon you’ve probably been thinking that for a while, but you don’t wanna go there, do ya?”

She glared at him. He was perceptive—she had to give him that. “If you’re so goddamn clever, say it.”

“I can do more than that,” he told her. “I can show you. We can show you the truth about what you’ve suspected all along. That the Tyrants have a source inside the United States Secret Service.”

“It’s not possible,” Anna said, without conviction. A chill ran through her. The very real possibility of someone being compromised within the agency made her feel sick inside.

D-Bar studied her carefully. “We came to you, Agent Kelso, because we can’t prove any of that. But you can.”

She shook her head. “I can’t do anything. Even if you’re right, I’m suspended.”

“I’ll get you back inside,” he told her, with absolute, unshakable confidence.

“All right.” It was a second before Anna realized she had spoken.

Knightsbridge—London—Great Britain

Namir gave him a room at the top of the town house, in the converted attic where white pine floors ranged up to tall, arched windows that looked out onto the London skyline.

Saxon left the lamps off and cracked open the window a little, letting in the night air along with the steady rush of the traffic out on Kensington Gore. The distant rattle of a police aerodyne reached his ears, and he saw a saucer-shaped advertisement blimp caught like an errant cloud, drifting east toward Mayfair. The glow of the video billboards flanking the airship reflected off the rooftops, strings of commercials for high-end fashion, cybernetics, and consumer electronics raining silently down over the city.

The night was uncharacteristically warm, and as soon as he had settled in the room, Saxon stripped to the waist and found a place to sit cross-legged by the freestanding mirror, checking himself over in every place that Gunther Hermann had laid his punches and kicks on him. He had a collection of ugly bruises, shallow cuts, and minor contusions, but nothing that could have been a broken or chipped bone. Saxon ran his flesh hand down the length of his cyberarm, checking maintenance seals and actuators. He made a few practice moves; the arm felt slightly off-speed.

With a grimace, Saxon filled a tumbler of water from the filter carafe on the nightstand near the wide, shadowed bed; then he loaded a fresh dose of neuropozyne into an injector pen and took the shot in his arm.

He drained the glass as he stood at the window. What the hell just happened? he asked himself. For a moment, it seemed as if he was hanging over the ragged edge, that everything he was or could be was about to be snuffed out in an instant; and then the gun and Gunther’s life had been in his hands.

Were the rounds in the pistol really blanks? If I had pulled the trigger, put a shot between the German’s eyes, what would they have done? It chilled him to consider a different truth from the one Namir had laid down as he took the weapon from him. Saxon’s disquiet should have been silenced; he had passed a test down there in that room. In some strange way, he had bonded with the rest of the Tyrants.

So why doesn’t it sit right? He almost asked the question out loud.

Saxon glanced up and saw the airship drift overhead. Up there, a woman’s face was lit by rainbows of color, showing off a cascade of diamonds around her wrist. Her mouth moved and a marquee of words appeared in sequence on smaller video-screens all around her. What master do you serve?

He blinked, uncertain if his eyes were playing tricks on him.

The woman on the screen, flawless and fashion-model perfect, was looking right at him, as if the billboard was a window through which she was peering. Over her shoulder, he saw a virtual skyline mimicking the view from the tenth floor of the Hotel Novoe Rostov.

What master do you serve? she asked once again. The words shifted and changed like drifts of sand, transforming into a string of numerals. The groupings matched an international sat-comm code.

Before he was even fully aware he was doing it, Saxon reached for his gear pack and recovered the spare vu-phone he kept for emergencies. It wasn’t the slick, cutting-edge device the Tyrants had given him, just a store-bought disposable. He entered the digits and thumbed the DIAL key. A string of swift tones sounded from the earpiece, followed by a hum as the line connected—

Behind him, the bedroom door clicked open, and he spun from the window, cutting the call short, letting the phone drop.

In the light cast from the airship’s advert-screens, Yelena Federova resembled some kind of shadow-wraith, a creature made out of flesh and darkness straight from fable. She stalked silently toward him, her black-and-steel legs catching the glow. Her eyes were hooded and he could not read them. Slowly, like a knife being drawn from a sheath, a low smile crossed her lips. The sullen glower that characterized her neutral mode of expression was gone, and instead Saxon saw an echo of the predatory thrill Federova had shown in the Rostov’s lobby, after cutting down three men in as many seconds.

It came to him that he had failed the test. She had come to kill him, quietly and discreetly. Sparing Gunther’s life had marked him as weak; he was going to be cut from the pack…

She halted a few steps from him, and then, with care, Federova pulled at the tabs holding the ballistic-cloth blouse closed over her chest. She let it fall free to the floor; beneath she wore nothing, and Saxon’s gaze was drawn to the rise of her breasts, a small ebon cross hanging in the valley between them. Her tawny skin was marred only by the scarred disc of an old bullet wound. Then she shrugged off her short breeches and crossed the rest of the distance, her hands reaching for him.

Saxon let her draw in, let her find her own way; and when their lips met, hers were as cool as fresh water. Together, they drifted out of the light and into the shadowed corner, descending into darkness.

U.S. Secret Service Headquarters—Washington, D.C.—United States of America

At this time of the evening, the building was sparsely populated; but then, cops never slept, and the agents of the Secret Service were no different. There would be more than enough people still on duty or working late to steal a march on their investigations, others preparing details to deal with VIP escorts while the demonstrators were in town. More than enough of them to make this a difficult endeavor for Anna Kelso. Everyone on her floor, at the very least, had to know about the cover story Temple had put in place—Kelso’s so-called medical suspension. She knew that others would have been told everything, and how those people would react if they saw her here… It would not go well.