Hunt You Down

by Christopher Farnsworth

  I can’t see. My hearing’s shot. I can’t call out to Sara without giving away my position. We could wait down here for hours as he stalks around the rows and picks us off.

  Patience has never been my strong suit.

  I crawl as fast as I can to the back of the room. Then I haul myself into a crouch, like a sprinter starting from the blocks of a track meet, and I begin running down the aisle at the end of all the racks.

  Gun up, clearing each row as fast as possible, finger on the trigger, ready to pull at the first sight of a man in black.

  I get to the end of the room. Nothing. I double back and do it again. Each time, expecting a bullet to come out of nowhere and kill me.

  I’m just past where I find Sara, half hidden behind a row of shot-up servers. She has her gun out as well.

  We manage not to kill each other.

  Then, working together, we clear the rest of the room.

  Empty.

  He’s gone.

  *

  Like I said before, Iceland is usually a peaceful place. People leave their kids unattended on the street, their keys in their cars.

  So the police aren’t terribly happy about us bringing a war zone to their nice, quiet country. There is a fully armed antiterrorist strike force waiting for us when we finally reach the surface. They have their weapons out and aimed at us from a firing line just inside the lobby.

  Mr. Magnusson called them. He will not smile at us again at any time during our visit.

  We are not idiots, so we have already placed our guns on the floor of the lobby and our hands on our heads. Then we spend an uncomfortable amount of time zip-cuffed on our stomachs after that, even though, again, we are technically the victims here. But nobody is taking any chances.

  While we’re waiting for this all to get settled, I pull the facts from Magnusson’s head. He went to the bathroom, where he spent a long, uncomfortable time, until he heard gunfire. He called the police, who responded with overwhelming force. Nobody wants a repeat of what Anders Breivik did in Norway. He and the other staff hid in his office until the cops arrived and pulled them out.

  The ninja, whoever he was, is nowhere to be found.

  I’m grateful to see that he shows up on the security feeds, at least. It turns out to be what keeps us from going to jail. After the police examine the video, they realize that we are . . . well, not exactly innocent, but at least acting in self-defense.

  Fortunately, the cameras do not show us cracking open Downvote’s server and downloading its data. The angles are all wrong for that. We tell the police—and Magnusson—that we got bored waiting for him and went looking around. Magnusson doesn’t want to buy it. He pushes for us to be charged with something—anything.

  “Millions of dollars in damages!” he shrieks. “God only knows how much data was lost! Our clients—and my people—me—we could have been killed!”

  I don’t really blame him for flying apart. This is no kind of fun, even when you’re trained for it. There’s a high, sharp buzz saw of rage and helplessness cutting through his mind every few seconds, tearing any composure he might have into pieces.

  Sara, however, invokes the power of Stack’s money and lawyers. That focuses his thoughts again pretty quickly.

  Because here’s the other thing the security video shows: ordinarily, it should have been impossible for the ninja to get inside the data center after Magnusson left. All of those redundant security measures, right?

  Except he walked right in. Magnusson, on his way out to the bathroom, left the outer door blocked open.

  Presumably so he could hurry back after taking a piss.

  Magnusson’s outraged protests die in his throat as we all watch the video: he blocks the door open and scurries out of view. The ninja walks in through the lobby entrance, totally casual. A security guard approaches him slowly—and then the ninja pulls out the H&K, and everyone in the lobby goes diving for cover. The ninja walks through the open door, on his way downstairs looking for us.

  “Security is your top priority?” Sara asks. “John, didn’t you hear Mr. Magnusson say that before? Along with something about how no unauthorized personnel can access the facility?”

  Magnusson chokes out an apology to Sara, but I’m not really listening.

  I keep watching the video, looking for some other clue. The ninja is obviously linked to Godwin and Downvote, but I have no idea how. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have to guess. I’d just know, from his own brain. Instead I have to stare at a screen and hope he holds up a sign.

  A few minutes pass as he fights with me downstairs and shoots at us. Then the lobby security cameras show him walking calmly out the front doors again, just moments before the police storm inside. It’s almost as if he was invisible to them. Hiding in plain sight. Walking away in all the confusion.

  It looks, in fact, a lot like a trick I might pull.

  *

  In the end, the police let us go. Nobody is particularly happy about it, but we do have permits for our weapons, and there is no Icelandic law against being shot at.

  It is much later as we drive back to our hotel, even if the sun is still out.

  In the passenger seat, Sara opens her bag and shows me the hard drive.

  “We got almost all of it. Unfortunately, he came looking for me before the transfer was completed. I barely had time to disconnect and hide.”

  “Do you think he was after the server too? Trying to wipe it before we could get it?”

  I know this is what she thinks, because I can read it at the top of her mind. But I’m trying to be polite.

  “Yeah,” she says. “But if he was, he did it the hard way.”

  I get an image from inside her head, a memory: the Downvote server box, shattered and riddled with bullet holes.

  “He shot it up?”

  “Either by accident when he was aiming at you, or on purpose,” Sara says. “The site is still up, though. I already checked. It must have switched to another server automatically. And we have no idea where that one is. With any luck, we got enough data for Aaric to track him down before I had to pull the plug.”

  Then something occurs to her. “So who was he?”

  I pause. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it out loud. “I don’t know,” I say.

  She gives me a look. “But you were there. You should know everything he did.”

  “I should, yeah.”

  She lets that sit for a moment, waiting for me. More or less patiently.

  I decide that the truth is the only way to go.

  “I couldn’t read him,” I tell her. “At all.”

  “What? What does that mean?”

  I rub my eyes. I can feel irritation and confusion bubble up from her. It doesn’t help my headache. “It was like a blank space. Nothing there.”

  “And that’s never happened before?”

  “Never.”

  “Never?” I don’t need my talent to pick up on her skepticism.

  I turn and look at her. “No. Never,” I say flatly.

  “Come on, surely there have been times you couldn’t read someone. I mean, didn’t you just tell me that it’s not always easy to figure out what’s going on inside someone’s head? That’s there’s a lot of stuff in there?”

  “It’s not the same thing,” I say as I struggle to explain it, both to her and to myself. Yes, there have been people who are difficult to read. People who are just smarter than I am, as I’ve said, or people who are much, much stupider. People whose thought processes are deformed by some kind of mental illness, like that patient back at the jail. There have been times I’ve been overloaded with information, and I’ve had to work to pick out the relevant bits. There are people who are adept at guarding their thoughts, like Cantrell. He would mask his secrets behind well-rehearsed mental routines, like shopping lists or memorized scenes from dirty movies. And there have been times when a head injury or a concussion has muffled the usual stream of thoughts all arou
nd me.

  But this was completely different. At all of those times, I could still pick up something. I may not have understood it, or read it as clearly as usual, but there was still something there. Even if it was just static. There was a response.

  Not with this guy. “It was like—if you went to enter a search on Google, and the Internet was completely down,” I tell Sara.

  “I didn’t think that was possible for you,” she says.

  “Me either,” I say. I try to find some way of telling her how completely alien this was for me. “He was in the building. He was just a few feet away from me. But if I hadn’t seen him—with my eyes—I never would have known.”

  She tries to stifle a small note of amusement. “Yeah, that’s how it is for most people. All the time. It’s called being normal.”

  That’s not how I would describe it. A dozen different words go through my head. Blind. Deaf. Ignorant.

  Helpless.

  Out loud, all I say is “It’s not as much fun as I thought it would be.”

  ///18

  I Prefer the Honesty

  I watch Sara dance in the midst of a knot of impossibly beautiful Icelanders, their bodies caught like sculptures in the strobe, some kind of electronic-techno crap pumping out of the club’s speakers. I am not much of a music critic—to me, it’s all just noise. But even I can say that this barely qualifies. It’s more like a porn soundtrack as the people on the floor writhe and twist and contort themselves. Only the presence of clothing is preventing actual pregnancies out there.

  Sara was too keyed up to lock herself up in her hotel room, and despite my arguments, she insisted on going out. Reykjavík is known for its nightlife, so she had lots of choices for entertainment. She also said she didn’t need a babysitter or a bodyguard, but I decided to tag along anyway. I’ve been watching the crowd all night, running through the surface thoughts of everyone here on the off chance that Godwin has more hired help waiting for us. We are unarmed, because the police confiscated our weapons. (With a polite promise to return them on our way out of the country, which they hoped would be very soon.)

  So far, from what I can see, nobody wants to do Sara any harm. Well—at least not intentionally, although some of the positions they’re picturing don’t look very comfortable.

  Sara bounces up to me after shoving her way through the crowd of drunk Icelanders. The alcohol in her bloodstream fizzes in her brain, and she lands almost facedown on the bar.

  “Whoa,” she says, pushing herself back up with a big happy grin. “More vodka. Now.”

  “Not sure that’s a great idea.”

  “Oh come on,” she says. “Don’t be such a Gloomy Gus.”

  I can’t help it. I laugh. “A Gloomy Gus?”

  “You are always, like, such a downer,” she says, enunciating her words very carefully. “Seriously. Is your life that bad?”

  I laugh again, but for a different reason this time. “You’ve definitely had too much vodka. You don’t remember what happened today?”

  She waves that off. “Of course I do,” she says, impatient. “I’m not talking about that. People start shooting at you and you’re practically happy. I mean, you’re always walking around with the weight of the world.”

  “You should see what I see.”

  Another hand wave. She barely hears me. “Right, right,” she says. “People have dirty minds. What else is new.”

  I take another quick scan of the crowd. “You want me to tell you what people are thinking right now?” I ask. “You want to know what a dozen of those men in this bar thought when they saw you go by?”

  It comes out a little uglier than I intended. But Sara shrugs it off. “Nothing to do with me,” she says. “It’s in their heads. Let them think what they want. That’s their world. It doesn’t have to be a part of mine.”

  “You manage threats for a living,” I snap back at her. “You cannot believe that. What if one of those guys tries to make himself a part of your world?”

  She smirks at me, and there’s a sudden clarity behind her eyes, despite all the vodka. “Then he probably won’t like the result,” she says. “But until then, it’s not my problem.”

  She is utterly calm. Totally confident. It takes me a second to recognize the feeling that shoots through me. Envy.

  “Well, it’s always my problem,” I say. It sounded a little less petulant in my head.

  “Yeah, and you know what? They’re always going to be there. No matter what you do.”

  I thought she was an adrenaline junkie. A lot of people in this line of work are. They want to go up against the big threats. They like the high stakes of protecting another life. Nothing is routine when there’s a chance that someone could die if you don’t do your job right.

  Now I see that I was wrong. She is not an addict. Sure, she loves the thrill. She would be an utter wreck if she didn’t get some reward out of the jolt that comes from facing down an imminent threat.

  But that’s not what keeps her going, at her core. I can see it there, a tiny little sun blazing at the center of her mind. She’s a genuine optimist. She believes. Believes in her capability to handle the world. Believes that it will get better, with applied effort. Believes that Stack is worth saving, and by extension, so are the people who will benefit from his genius.

  Looking at that tiny little sun, basking in its warmth, is like a holiday on an alien planet for me. For an instant, I wonder what it would be like to live there.

  “So what do you suggest?” I ask. I genuinely want to know.

  She leans in close, still smiling. “Let’s dance,” she says.

  And she spins back out onto the floor. A dozen people watch her, all filled with lust and admiration and simple joy, just from being near.

  I can’t help smiling too.

  But I don’t dance.

  *

  I’m almost ready to relax, to let my guard down. It might be the vodka. But then I catch a ripple as it runs through the crowd. It somehow feels like an echo, reverberating through dozens of different skulls at once. The same basic idea, with the same emotional response, washing over the crowd like a wave.

  I realize that the tone I just heard is not another electronic beep from the DJ’s speakers. It’s the sound of every phone in the club pinging with an alert from their social media services.

  All of the Icelanders cast their perfect features down to the screens in their hands. Their sharp cheekbones are illuminated by the light.

  I check my phone. Nothing. This is not a good sign. Iceland is almost as wired for social media as the United States. A club full of young people— this is basically Godwin’s target demographic. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before we came in here.

  (And of course, I really do know what I was thinking when I came in here, too anxious and hopeful, thinking with my dick as usual. Stupid.)

  I am already moving toward Sara, trying to get to her in the center of the crowd, which has stopped moving to the music. There are already ugly looks being thrown.

  Just not in my direction for a change.

  I grab one of the phones away from a young man who’s looking at it in disgust. He squawks something in his native language, but I’m already moving deeper into the crowd.

  It’s Sara. Or, it’s close enough. Another Photoshop composite.

  She holds a stack of Icelandic currency with a big smile on her face. It’s on fire.

  This one was for European audiences, so it’s a little more sophisticated than the meme that Godwin invented for me.

  Icelanders are a pretty laid-back group, as a whole, I think—you have to have some emotional stability to deal with the weather alone—but they are sensitive about their economy. Back when the big collapse hit, Iceland had overextended itself by buying businesses all over the world, gaining billions in debt, and eventually defaulting on pretty much all of it. They took it a little more seriously here than we did in America, where everyone got to keep their jobs. There were mass protes
ts and bankers and politicians went to jail.

  I don’t read Icelandic, but the message on the phone has hit a hot button in the minds of everyone around me. Something about Sara being one of the rich American bankers who profited off their country’s humiliation.

  She’s suddenly Public Enemy Number One out there. The crowd closes around her like a fist.

  I drop the stolen phone on the floor as mine suddenly beeps with a text message.

  I took a bit of time with this one. Just for her. See how she likes it.

  Godwin.

  I start shoving my way through the sweating dancers, trying to get closer. Nobody wants to move. Some mental persuasion helps them. I don’t think about the repercussions for myself. I serve up pain in every flavor: broken legs, back spasms, stomach cramps, cattle prods, whatever it takes to get them to move.

  I am about a dozen feet away when I finally see Sara again. She’s at the center of a scrum of young men, all of them shouting at her in Icelandic. “Útlendingur!” someone screams. I don’t know the language, but the intent sings out from their minds.

 

  There’s a big, heavily muscled dance-floor god looming over her, pushing and shoving at her. She has her hands up. Her expression is patient. She tries to back away, but the crowd shoves her forward again. The big guy forms a fist with his right hand.

  I’m firing up something painful for him—maybe a nightmare, maybe a seizure—when Sara saves me the trouble. She dodges his slow, clumsy punch and knocks his arm aside with a sharp block.

  He bellows and swings again. And she beats him stupid.

  She is magnificent. No other word. Hand-to-hand, she takes the guy down like she’s swinging an ax into a tree. Openhanded blows to his neck and gut. Kicks to his knees and ankles. Six-plus feet of Icelandic outrage falls to the floor in pieces.

  That gives the other men in the mob pause. I can feel their anger start to break apart, quicker than back in Houston. That rage. That surrender to a bigger, simpler feeling. It starts to wash back as they see that there might be a personal consequence for their actions, that their victim is not as helpless as they thought.