James Swallow - Icarus Effect

"Sounds like a Las Vegas magic show."

The youth chuckled and discarded the empty can. "Yeah, I guess. The Tyrants certainly have a way of making people vanish, that's for sure."

He came closer, became more animated. "You know the story of Icarus? Guy and his dad build a set of wings, guy gets bold and flies too high, too close to the sun, guy gets dead. Same idea. It's a sociological thing, see? A normative process created unconsciously by a society in order to maintain the status quo, keep itself stable." D-Bar talked with his hands, making shapes in the air. "Whenever someone threatens to do something that will upset the balance, like flying too high… the Icarus Effect kicks in. Society reacts, cuts them down. Stability returns." He sighed. "That's what the Tyrants do. They enforce that effect for their masters, only they don't wait for it to happen naturally. They choose whose wings are gonna be clipped, if you get me." He jabbed a finger at the air. "These creeps, they're all about power. Anyone who threatens them, anyone who makes waves, gets dealt with."

"Threatens them how, exactly?" said Anna.

"You know what they say; if you wanna make enemies, try to change something. People invested in keeping things the same don't like it when you make waves." He fished in his pocket and pulled out a data slate. "Look at this. These places and faces mean anything to you?"

Anna glanced down and images scrolled past her: a highway accident in Tokyo that claimed the life of a cybernetics researcher; a string of missing-persons reports from a Belltower law enforcement detachment in Bangalore; the violent mugging of a senatorial aide in Boston; an augmented teenager killed by police snipers in Detroit.

At first, she saw nothing that registered with her; then a face she recognized from her own investigations passed by-Donald Teague, an advisory staffer at the United Nations, shot dead in Brooklyn by unknown assailants. An eyewitness report talked about an ambush of Teague's car and three men in black combat gear, and of the almost military precision with which the kill had been made…

She blinked, and for a moment the dark memory of a day in Georgetown pressed in on her thoughts, threatening to overwhelm her. Anna stiffened, forcing the recall out of herself. She read on. There were other points where the files connected to those she had discovered on her own. Men and women from corporations, government figures, those with international or UN connections like Teague. All of them either dead, missing, or assaulted. She halted on one image in particular; Senator Jane Skyler, caught by a stringer's camera six months ago as she was wheeled through the doors of a private D.C. medical clinic. Matt Ryan's blood was rust-red on her expensive silk blouse.

"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.