James Swallow - Icarus Effect

It was all Anna could do not to back away as he approached. She still felt woozy and unsteady on her feet. Her hands gathered behind her back and she watched him come closer, waiting for the right moment, fighting down her panic.

Barrett cocked his head. "Your value has taken a dive. Seems your pal Saxon didn't hold up his end of the deal." He grunted in amusement. "He gave you up. How about that?"

Despite herself, Anna felt a sudden, sharp jolt of emotion. She tried to ignore it. She was on her own here; she'd been on her own all along, from the very start…

"I know you," Barrett said, studying her. "Yeah. Washington. The Dansky kill. You were there, right?"

Anna's blood ran cold, her thoughts snapping back through the reports she'd read and reread about the incident in Georgetown, the data on the faceless figures who had ambushed the limo. He was one of the killers, part of the same team as Hermann.

Barrett kept talking. "Couldn't let it go, could you? Why'd you women always do that, huh? Never leave well enough alone?" He was looming over her now, close enough that she could smell his breath.

"What… do you want?" she managed.

He showed her a cruel smile. "Namir reckons you know some things. You wouldn't talk to him." Anna swallowed, her throat tight with the pain where the other Tyrant had held her as he questioned her about Janus. "I'll bet you're gonna talk to me, though," Barrett went on. "Once we get better acquainted, 'course."

She knew what would come next. Barrett bent down slightly, reaching up with the heavy, thick digits of his cyberarm, closing the distance between their faces; and that was when she hit him.

Anna put every ounce of force she could muster into the swing from her balled fist, bringing it around in a fast haymaker. Even as she threw the punch, she was stepping into him, snatching at the bull-head belt buckle at his waist. She had only once chance to strike; with Barrett's heavily muscled, augmented frame, if he landed any kind of return blow on her she would be done.

Her fist hit him on the cheekbone and slid up to strike Barrett in the eye. The brass sobriety coin, held between her index and forefinger, ripped across his skin and dug into him, the blunt edge ripping at the scarred flesh. Pain ignited in a dull, burning shock through her knuckles, and the force of the landed punch was so much that she felt her thumb dislocate behind the coin. Anna followed through by slamming her kneecap into

Barrett's crotch; she was rewarded by a concussive grunt from the big man.

He flailed, clawing at his face and the blood streaming from his eye. "Damn, bitch!" Barrett struck out blindly and she was almost felled by a black metal hand that snatched at empty air near her head. Anna threw herself past the mercenary toward the still-open door to the cell, but Barrett was faster than she had anticipated, and he was turning, reaching for her.

He grabbed the trailing hood of her top and snagged it, pulling hard. For a second, Anna was yanked off balance, but then she wriggled free and slipped out of the hoodie, half running, half stumbling out of the cell.

Barrett made a wordless noise of anger and came after her, his face lit with fury. She caught a glimpse of his expression and knew that the man would beat her to broken if he got hold of her.

Anna slammed the heel of her fist into the door control, and it slid shut-but not fast enough to prevent Barrett from getting his forearm through after her. The cyberlimb thrashed right and left, bending in angles that would have been unnatural for a human arm. "I'm gonna make you pay for that, you cop whore!" he shouted. The hatch jammed in place, and she could hear Barrett snarling as he tried to force it open. "You got nowhere to go!"

She ignored him and broke into a run down the narrow, windowless corridor, frantically searching for anything that could tell her where she was, and more important, how to get away. The corridor split, and one branch ended in a steep metal staircase. Anna took it, two steps at a time, and felt a faint vibration through the frame, like humming engines.

Then she was emerging on the next level, a wider corridor lit by bright daylight through wide rectangular windows. Anna lurched toward the windows, shaking her head to force herself to concentrate, fighting off the last dregs of the sedative in her system.

The floor shifted slightly beneath Anna's feet, and the abrupt understanding of exactly where she was hit her like a shock of cold water. Out the windows, she could see the blue-green of Lake Geneva ranging away, on the far shore the Rue de Lausanne highway and the suburbs north of the city. She was on a boat, racing away from Geneva at a steady rate of knots.

Anna glanced around, desperately trying to map this new information onto her current predicament. The vessel was a large one, an opulent three-hundred-foot megayacht, one of the many that circled the lake in the employ of the wealthy who made the resorts between here and

Montreux their homes. The smoky-colored sandalwood paneling and elegant brass details all around conflicted sharply with the stark steel and gray of the lower decks where the Tyrants had been holding her.

If she stayed here, they would kill her. Perhaps not at first, not until they had been able to wring every last morsel of information from her, no matter how trivial; but her death was certain if she did not escape. With the boat, they could take her anywhere, north to some isolated location in the Swiss mountains, south into France, or perhaps nowhere, adrift on the lake and isolated from any prying eyes until they decided to pitch her overboard…

Clutching her injured hand, Anna hurried toward the stern of the yacht, alert for any sign of danger. She still had the brass coin, gripped in her clawed, bloody hand.

A sound from belowdeck reached her as she moved away; a howling snarl of effort and the shriek of a mechanism forced open against its tolerances.

She broke into a run.

Ariana Park-Geneva-Switzerland

A four-wheel ATV veered off the pathway as Saxon reached the Space Memorial, the Swiss civil police officer in the saddle leaning into the turn to bring the quad bike back toward his target. Riding in the jump seat behind him, a second lawman brought up a pump-action MAO shotgun and fired twice at the fleeing mercenary.

Saxon heard the low hum of the thick tangler gel-rounds as they passed near him. The semifluid was a biodegradable hyperglue compound, a nonlethal man-stopper that adhered to anything, and a single hit would be enough to arrest any plans of escape he might have.

He dove into a deliberate tumble, letting the curve of the shallow hill roll him down and away from the metal spar of the memorial sculpture.

The ATV came after him, the rider following Saxon over the blind rise.

The Swiss officer met a strike from nowhere as Saxon suddenly reversed his motion and came running back to meet them as they crested the hill. His powerful cyberleg hit the rider in the chest and took him from the saddle. Uncontrolled, the quad bike spun out and pitched the cop with the shotgun into the grass.

Saxon grabbed the rider and dragged him into a sleeper hold. Using his knee to pressure the man against his grip, in seconds his target had blacked out and Saxon was running again.

The other policeman was on his feet, working the slide to pump a new round into the shotgun; Saxon heard him calling out over the police band, requesting backup. He was on him before he could fire, the two men colliding in a crunch of impact that drew a howl of pain from the other man.

For a moment, they wrestled over command of the shotgun, but then Saxon got the angle and shoved hard, slamming the butt of the weapon into the officer's faceplate. It shattered and he cried out again.