James Swallow - Deus Ex - Icarus Effect

Namir sighed. “I wish I could make it clear to you how lucky you are, Ben. Recruitment into the Tyrants is not a reward that just anyone is given. You need to be superlative. You need to be more than just a fool with a gun.” He walked a little farther into the room, and Saxon stiffened as he felt the floor shift slightly beneath their feet; the jet was banking, turning eastward. Namir went on. “You were on the radar a long time before I came to you in Queensland. We have ongoing dossiers on many potentials. Our missions have a high level of attrition. Fatalities like Joe Wexler are a regular occurrence.”

“Get to the point!” snapped Saxon.

“Oh, I will. But you have to see the big picture first.” Namir nodded to himself and pointed. “You were in the prime percentile, Ben. All that was stopping you were your… shortcomings. We freed you from that.”

“What?” He could feel the dark answer coming; on some level, he already knew and he didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want it to be true.

“Wexler… It took his wife’s death to bring him into the fold. Now, Gunther Hermann, he was a very different subject. Much more direct. The group made certain problems he had in Germany go away, and in return he was in our debt. Not that what he owed mattered. He came to the Tyrants willingly, eyes open. But you?” Namir cocked his head, weighing Saxon up. “The man I wanted for my team, the man I know you can be, he was being held back.” He nodded again. “Throughout your entire military service, first to King and Country, then to Belltower, you’ve been shackled to some kind of outdated moral compass. You have a dream of being the ‘good soldier.’ And while other men have had that beaten from them by harsh reality, you hold on to it, Ben. Against all odds, you hold on. That’s why you never rose in rank. We’ve both been leaders of men. And that means sometimes you have to send men to die, and do it without flinching.”

“I’d never make my men take a risk I wouldn’t take myself!” he shot back.

“Indeed,” Namir allowed. “That’s your failure. You’ve been abandoned by every family you had. Your parents, your nation, your army, your employer… And yet still you refuse to see the callous truth. You’re blinded by your own hope.” He smiled. “I took that from you. I broke those bonds because I thought it would make you stronger.”

“The falsified data for the mission… You had it substituted for the real thing!” Saxon’s muscles tensed. He wanted to strike out, but he had to know the full dimensions of the betrayal. “How?”

“We have assets inside the Belltower corporation. It wasn’t difficult.” He sighed. “Those men, they were a hindrance to you. They had to be sacrificed. It was a test. If you perished there in the desert alongside them, then you had no place with us. But if you came out alone…”

“I tried to save them!” Saxon shouted. “Duarte… I could have saved his life!”

“He was expendable,” Namir countered. “They all were. I gave Hardesty the order to break Rainbird because I needed to know. I wanted to see if you were willing to live, Ben. If you had the courage to survive.”

Saxon’s voice was low and hard. “You heartless fucking bastard…” His hand slipped toward the pocket where the Buzzkill was concealed; but the weapon would be barely an insect bite to the Tyrant commander, with dermal armor sheathing what there was of his flesh.

“Survivor’s guilt. That, and your instinct to be loyal to a man who saved your life.” Namir studied him. “The psych profile said that was all I needed to control you. But these things are so hard to determine. The human mind is a chaotic system. And as much as men are exactly the animals you expect them to be, sometimes they are not.” He frowned. “I don’t need to ask you to choose. I can see the answer in your eyes. You can’t let go. Hardesty was right. You don’t have the strength to kill cold.”

“I’m pleased I can prove you wrong.” With a blink, Saxon shifted vision modes, getting ready.

Namir drew a wicked-looking combat blade from a sheath on his belt. “You are going to fight for it, aren’t you?” he asked. “At least show me that courage. Let me know my faith in you wasn’t entirely misplaced.” Saxon drew the stun gun and thumbed off the safety catch. The other man laughed. “Oh, that’s a choice you’ll regret,” he sneered.

Saxon met his gaze. “I’m not going to use it on you.” The reflex booster kicked in and he brought up the nonlethal weapon, firing two rounds into the flat, glassy surface of the main display console. The stun darts, thick shells the size of a shotgun cartridge, discharged a powerful surge of voltage on impact; the console erupted in a violent shower of sparks and acrid smoke. Surge buffers in the ops room tripped, plunging it into darkness, but Saxon was already seeing the space in low-light mode.

Namir reacted, sweeping in with a lunging, lethal attack that Saxon dodged by a hair, the blade cutting the air near his face.

The stink of burnt plastic reached the fire sensors in the ceiling and immediately triggered a carillon of buzzing alarms. Saxon snatched at a monitor screen and tore it from a desk, with a snake nest of cables trailing behind it. As puffs of fire-retardant powder began to rain from safety nozzles overhead, he slammed the display into Namir’s head with such force that the screen shattered and the Tyrant commander staggered back under the blow.

Saxon took the moment and vaulted over a workstation and into the corridor beyond. As he ran, the familiar itch in his jawbone arose, Namir’s voice issuing out of his mastoid comm. “ All call signs, ignore the alarms” he snarled, “ Gray is rogue. Intercept and terminate!”

Dundalk—Maryland—United States of America

“Hello,” said the voice, bereft of anything that could make it possibly seem human. “I’m pleased to see you are unharmed.”

Anna glanced at the videoscreen set up inside the army tent, and then back at Lebedev, who stood near the door flap, watching her reaction. “What’s this? More games?”

“Some of the people we work with prefer to keep their identities a secret,” he noted. “Isn’t that right, Janus?”

“I’m afraid so, Juan,” said the voice. “It would compromise not only me, and Juggernaut, but also your lives if I were to tell you who I am.”

Anna folded her arms and gave the hazy shape on the display a level stare. “After all that stuff about conspiracies and distrust, you’re playing the need-to-know card?” She shook her head. “If I know anything, it’s that the less truth you have, the less trust follows. You could be anyone. You could be working with the Tyrants or the… their masters.”

“You find it hard to say the name, don’t you?” On the screen, the digital shadow shifted slightly. “Illuminati. A layered word, heavy with meaning and counter-meaning. You don’t want to believe. It’s an understandable reaction.”

“Our colleague here has been opposing them for a long time,” said Lebedev.

“How did you get mixed up in all this?” Anna demanded. “What’s your angle? Are you in it for the kicks, like D-Bar, or for the greater good like him?” She inclined her head toward Lebedev.

“Neither,” came the reply, and for a moment Anna thought she sensed something like melancholy under the words. “I found Juggernaut and became one of their circle. I’m doing this for the same reason as you, Anna. Because they killed someone who was important to me.”

It didn’t sound like a lie; but then with all the layers of digital masking in place, she wondered if she could ever read anything about the ghost-hacker.