James Swallow - Deus Ex - Icarus Effect

“My daddy was a mean son-of-a-bitch, but he was right about one thing,” Barrett laughed. “He used to tell me, Mess with the bull, son, and you get the horns—”

Saxon channeled the last of his effort into resisting the crushing embrace. “Shut the fuck up!” He snapped, jerking his head forward and down, butting the other man on the bridge of the nose. Barrett cried out in pain and for a fraction of a moment, his grip loosened.

That was all Saxon needed. He got his hands free and snatched at the twin bandoliers over Barrett’s shoulders. His fingers found the pull-rings on the yellow-and-black Shok-Tac concussion grenades hanging there, and he yanked hard.

“You stupid…” Barrett immediately released him and staggered backward, clawing at the live grenades. Saxon let himself fall and rolled toward one of the cargo racks.

A massive, earsplitting blast of light and noise tore through the confined space, deadening Saxon’s hearing into a painful, humming whine. Barrett was on his back, blown into a collapsed pile of storage panniers, coughing up blood. Trails of red oozed from his ears, nostrils, and the corners of his eyes.

Saxon forced himself to stagger away, breathing hard, lurching toward the tail section. It was hard to focus. He had to reach the helo. The weapons locker. And then… And then what? His plan was sand, crumbling, falling though his fingers. There was nowhere he could go.

A shadow shifted in front of him, caught by the light cast from the glow strips on the low ceiling. Saxon half turned; the endless shriek in his ears stopped him hearing the approach of a new attack.

Half-blind and enraged, Barrett came at him, grabbing Saxon from behind and locking his hands behind his head. He applied agonizing force, pressing into the bones of Saxon’s neck. The American shouted, and Saxon heard the words more than he felt them. “You think that’ll stop me? You think you can stop me?”

Saxon hit back with elbow strikes, but the viselike pressure was unceasing. He cast around, knowing that death was close. Not here. Not like this. Not yet.

Fitted into the curve of the wall was a cargo hatch, used for loading when the jet was on the ground. It was just within his reach. Ignoring his better instincts, Saxon kicked out and broke open the control cover with the heel of his combat boot. Barrett saw what he was doing and pressed tighter, but Saxon was committed now. This was how it would end.

He kicked again and struck the hatch release panel. Immediately, red strobes and a warning Klaxon activated as the door’s mechanism stirred into life; but in the next second all sound was lost as a screaming thunder of air tore across the cargo bay. The hatch began a slow march open, revealing a growing sliver of fathomless black sky beyond.

The jet shivered and the nose dropped abruptly; up in the cockpit, the aircraft’s autoflight system would have detected the loss of cabin pressure and immediately attempted to compensate by descending to a lower altitude. Barrett lost his grip and flailed, colliding with a support pillar. Saxon fell against a stowed cargo net and grabbed on to it, the polar cold through the hatch ripping at the skin of his face. Across the threshold, a dash of moonlight glittered off the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

How high are we? How far from land? It was impossible to know.

“Ben” Namir s voice hummed through his skull. “You can’t escape. I’m not going to let that happen.” As he said the words, the hatch juddered to a halt, half open, and then reversed, sliding toward closure.

If he stayed here, he would die. Saxon knew it with utter certainty, the same pure clarity of thinking that had come to him in the Australian wilderness. He would die, this would end, and there would be no justice for Sam and Kano and the others.

Saxon threw himself at the gap and leapt into the darkness.

Dundalk—Maryland—United States of America

When Lebedev returned to the communications tent, the videoscreen was still active, the same display of smoky digital mist hazing a vaguely human shape. Not for the first time, he wondered what Janus really looked like—if he or she was someone he knew out in the real world. Part of him was always disappointed that the shady hacker could not trust the New Sons enough to drop the mask; but then, these were difficult times, and not everyone had millions of dollars at hand to ensure their own security.

“How is our new recruit?” asked the nonvoice.

Lebedev sighed. “We shouldn’t have pushed her so hard, so fast. She’s having trouble assimilating it all.”

“Anna will come around,” said Janus. “She’s resilient. She just needs to see it for herself. Let her process.”

“We need her.” He ran a hand through his hair. “God knows, we need every ally we can get.”

A moment passed before Janus replied. “Her skills will be of great use to the cause, Juan…”

He frowned. The hacker sounded distracted. “Is something wrong?”

There was another pause. “Forgive me. I’m monitoring another… situation at the moment. Go on.”

“We’re running out of time,” Lebedev went on. “If we’re going to disrupt this thing, it needs to be soon.”

“Agreed. I’m working on another approach to access the Killing Floor as we speak. But it’s risky.”

Lebedev smiled ruefully. “We have to try, my friend. And we can’t fail. If we do, the future will never forgive us.”

“You re wrong,” Janus replied. “If we fail, our enemies will make sure no one will ever know we existed.”

Thirteen Kilometers East of Newfoundland—North Atlantic

He never felt the impact when he hit the rolling surface of the sea. It was the only mercy he had; perhaps it was the shock of the fall, perhaps his battered body shutting down for a brief moment in some attempt to protect him from greater trauma.

At first, Saxon saw only flashes. The silver of the moon on the wave tops below him. A flicker of light from the jet as he spiraled away from it, the navigation lights in the dark.

Then he was in the cradle of the shouting winds, snared by gravity. He couldn’t see the ocean rushing up to meet him, and for long moments Saxon felt himself disconnect from the real. He could have been floating in the roaring darkness, lost in the starless space.

The cold embrace leached the heat from his bones; Saxon squinted through the windburn and made out what he thought was the surface of the water, coming up fast, dappled by the moon’s glow.

He extended his arms like they had taught him in parachute training, making his whole body an aerofoil, trying to slow himself as much as he could. And then, when he couldn’t chance it any longer, he triggered the high-fall augmentation implanted in the base of his spine.

The device stuttered into life and cast a writhing sphere of electromagnetic energy about him, lightninglike sparks flashing where the field interacted with the air molecules. The implant ran past its tolerance limit, but Saxon retriggered it, cycling the device over and over. He felt it go hot, smoldering and heavy like a block of newly forged iron embedded in his back. The high-fall was never designed to do the job of a parachute; it was a short-span, low-duration technology, a mechanism spun off from safety implants for racing drivers, firefighters, steeplejacks.

He screamed as it burned into him, and the blackness engulfed everything. For a moment, at least.

Then he was in the frigid rise and fall of the waters, the salt brine smothering him with every new wave. He spun and turned, numb from the waist down. Warning telltales displayed in the corners of his optic field, function indicators for his cyberlegs showing red. He choked and shivered, feeling the weight of the augmented limbs pulling on him, robbing him of all buoyancy.