James Swallow - Icarus Effect

"Where have you been?" he asked.

"Taking the air," Saxon replied irritably. He studied Hermann for a few moments, trying to take the measure of him; but it was impossible to get a read from those eyes. They were dead, like a shark's.

"You have something to say to me?" said the younger man. The challenge was clear in his manner.

The question came before he could stop himself. "How many people died in that house tonight?"

"All of them." Hermann didn't show the slightest flicker of concern.

"And you don't have a problem with that?"

"Why should I?" He put down the cleaning rod in his hand and studied Saxon. "You heard what Hardesty said. They were targets. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Collateral damage."

Saxon's jaw set at the man's matter-of-fact tone. "That's how you see it, yeah? Black and white? Hardesty says kill and you do it, like a good little dog?"

A tiny flicker of emotion crossed Hermann's face. "I am a soldier. I follow orders."

Saxon shook his head. "I didn't sign up for this. Not to butcher civvies."

"What did you expect?" Hermann replied, confusion in his tone. "Did you come to the Tyrants expecting to keep your hands clean? That is not what we do." He tapped the table with an iron finger. "I had thought a man of your experience would have no illusions, Saxon. We do the worst of deeds in order to protect the world from itself. Because no one else can."

"And who gets to decide?" he shot back. "Don't you ever wonder about that? About who calls the shots?" Saxon leaned closer. "You were GSG 9, right? German police, antiterror unit. When you followed orders then, you were following the law-"

Hermann snorted softly. "When I was with them, the law was a rope around our necks. It kept us from making any progress." He shook his head. "Do you know what Namir said when he recruited me in Berlin, what made me decide to go with him? He told me that the Tyrants did not concern themselves with laws. Only justice. The group erased all my connections to the police force and I was happy they did." He nodded.

"What we are doing is right. The ends are justified."

Saxon tried to find an answer that didn't stick in his throat, but before he could frame a reply the door opened and Barrett entered. He shrugged off his combat armor and gave them both a level look. "Miss me?"

"It's done, then?" said Hermann, his conversation with Saxon dismissed. The other man was almost eager to hear what had taken place in

Detroit. "Were there any complications?"

"Nothing we couldn't take in stride," said the big man. He glanced at Saxon. "That cop you were so worried about? Namir broke him in two."

Barrett helped himself to a beer from a cooler and drained it in a single pull.

"What about the people being held there? By Sarif?" said Saxon.

Barrett smiled thinly. "Oh, we handled them." He paused, massaging a contusion on the side of his skull. "They weren't that pleased to see us, though…" He made a face. "Some folks, huh? No goddamn gratitude."

Saxon glanced out into the hangar. "Where's Federova?"

The other man folded his arms. "Well, now. Would have been back here with me and the boss, but 'stead she's still out in the field." He aimed a finger at Saxon. "Cleaning up your mess."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Barrett gave a shrug of his shoulders. "You tell me. Barely got our cargo secured from Sarif before Hardesty is on the horn to Namir, bitchin' a blue streak."

"We achieved our objective," Hermann insisted. "Temple was terminated."

Barrett kept his eyes on Saxon. "Heard you let one get away."

"Bullshit," Saxon insisted. "Hardesty's just covering his own arse."

"Whatever you say, man." Barrett shrugged again and walked away.

Silver Springs-Maryland-United States of America

Kelso knew even as she did it that she was making a mistake. How many times had she seen criminals caught in the very same situation she was in now, and for the same reason? She knew better. The smart play was to fade away, get out of the city, and keep on going.

That wasn't what she had done. Anna kept her head down and walked in the places where the streetlights didn't shine too brightly, staying to the shadows. Instead of fleeing, she followed a basic, animal instinct to return to where she felt safest. Home.

Maybe now she understood those criminals a little better than she had when she was on the other side of the badge. For most people, it was counterintuitive to just cut and run. She understood that impulse; the raw need to go to ground. She tried to convince herself she was being smart-after all, no one would expect her to go back to her apartment-but she knew that wasn't it at all. She couldn't just leave. Not yet.

From the road she had glimpsed the spherical shape of a police monitor drone squatting on the lawn, the clusters of eyes on the robot ceaselessly scanning the area. The device's face-matching and body-mapping software would be programmed with her biometric profile, and she'd be made in a moment if she strayed too close. Instead, Anna detoured around the back and got in through a damaged window near the trash bins on the ground floor. For once, she was pleased that her landlord had reacted with his characteristic slowness in fixing the problem.

She took the stairs to the fourth floor. Another sensor, this one the size of her fist, was attached to her front door. A built-in holograph projected

Police Line-Do Not Cross across the threshold.

Anna's luck was holding; she recognized the security sensor as a model the Secret Service also used. She frowned as she thought of Matt Ryan.

He had been the one who showed her how to spoof them. From her pocket, Anna pulled a piece of foil paper taken from a discarded cigarette packet and a vu-phone she had picked from the pocket of a man at the metro station. She gently plastered the foil over the sensor's antenna and worked at the phone, cycling its on-off function. After a few moments, the sensor went dark; Ryan had explained to her that the devices could be put into a reset mode if they were swamped with microwave signals, like those from a cellular telephone-it was a hit-and-miss hack, though. She unlocked the door and had it shut behind her just as the sensor reactivated. Moving slowly so as not to disturb it, Anna advanced into her apartment.

The lights came on automatically, dim enough for her to see her way around but not so much they would be seen from the street; the television chirped as it activated, casting a blue glow across the open-plan apartment.

Anna's gut tightened. The place had been turned over, likely by the agency, and while they hadn't wrecked it, it was still in great disarray. It seemed as if they had opened every cabinet, every drawer and box, searching for… what? Some evidence to back up the accusation that she was colluding with terrorists?

The light from the screen illuminated the open door to her bedroom. Even from here, she could see they had got into the wardrobe and found the safe. Her files were gone, just as she had known they would be. Anna thought about the flash drive in her pocket, the one Temple had pressed into her hands. That was all she had now, every other piece of her painstaking secret investigation now lost. She hoped it would be enough, if only she could find someone to entrust it to.

A part of her wanted to fall into her bed and give herself over to sleep. She was exhausted, and the shock and fatigue from the day's events were threatening to overwhelm her. Anna's gaze was drawn to the dark rectangle of the open bathroom door. For a long moment, she fought to ignore the thoughts of what was inside the mirrored cabinet over the sink. She tasted earth in the back of her throat and swallowed hard.

It took a lot of effort to go straight to the bedroom. From the closet, she took a sturdy daypack and circled the bed, gathering up items of clothing from where they had been piled, filling the bag with everything she would need to leave and not look back. Returning to the living room, she finally allowed herself a look into the bathroom. In the reflection of the mirrored cabinet she saw the frosted glass window over the bath, the light from the street shining through it.