“Not ‘people.’ Civilians. You don’t kill civilians.” Guerrero’s voice.
Fuck ’em. If they got in his way, it was just their bad luck.
“You are a soldier, not a killer …”
He wasn’t sure that he liked the new voices in his head, or that he knew what to do with them, but he felt different. And he knew what he would do.
When this job was over, Aubry Knight would leave the Ortegas. And he would go with Guerrero, and become a part of what he was. There was something there that was more than Aubry Knight had known before, something that he hungered for.
The wings folded quietly, taking him into a descent arc. At the last instant he spread them again, gathering air to cushion his landing at the side of the swimming pool. The moon was low in the sky, and cast a pale silvery light. Ahead of him was a man-shaped silhouette. A guard. He whipped his machine pistol into position. The instant it sighted, it fired an almost silent burst. The guard tumbled back as if smacked in the head with an I beam.
Aubry dragged him out of sight, and continued on.
Guerrero had taken out his guard, and Chan had taken hers. They had both used knives—in the days following that first encounter, they had made peace, and Guerrero had shown Chan more about knife fighting than the Mongol had ever dreamed of.
As Guerrero disabled the patio alarms, Chan made silent hand signs to Aubry. Cover the house.
Aubry slipped between the sliding glass doors, entering a long, low stainless-steel kitchen. He was on the upper level. What he wanted was the bedroom.
The head of the Conquistadores was a Spaniard named Dominguez. Homosexual, bonded to a professional jock named Piccoli. Piccoli was said to be dangerous. The word was: Kill at a distance.
Why? The man was at least partially a bodyguard to Dominguez, but also a former champion of something called Nullboxing. As far as Aubry knew, that was some kind of karate stuff, and he wasn’t impressed.
He would stick to the plans, though.
Stick to the plans, show Guerrero that he could be trusted, and then adios Ortegas, once and for all.
A short, quiet thump to his right. Someone had bumped into something. Knight and Guerrero looked at Chan. She made a “sorry” gesture, and they waited, listening in the gloom, waiting for the last echoes to die. The house guards were dead. The alarms were disabled. There were three bedrooms to clean out. Decapitate the Conquistadores. And get the hell out.
Aubry reached his target, the second bedroom on the left. His starlight lent the room an eerie amber glow. The bed was awry—had Dominguez and Piccoli had a last backdoor tussle? He hoped so. It would be a shame to blow a man to hell without giving him one last chance to—
And then something hit him savagely hard, on the shoulder. He tried to roll with it, and felt another, numbing blow on his chest as he spun.
Aubry’s pistol flew from his hand as he took a step back, and dropped to the ground, gasping to himself as something whistled over his head with killing velocity.
Piccoli. The fucking Nullboxer. He was awake, but had only had time to roll out of bed, behind the door. Shit.
There was a whumphing concussion from elsewhere in the house. As Piccoli leapt back in, the alarms blared to life.
The game was up. He could only hope that the mission had been accomplished. He had other fish to fry. He scrambled for the pistol, and Piccoli was there first, kicking it under the bed.
Damn that had been fast. One of the fastest movements he had ever seen. But there was no time to appreciate it. Aubry swept the lamp off the bedside table, hurling it at the man, for the first time forcing him to respond. Piccoli blocked with his forearm, eeling out of the way. Aubry was right behind the lamp, and on him.
All he knew, knew, was that he couldn’t take this terrific man at kicking distance. He had to get close.
His momentary advantage turned to shit as Piccoli’s arms wound around him, jerking him off balance, exerting enough leverage to drive the air from Aubry’s lungs in an explosive gush.
He wrenched Aubry’s left arm up, and hammered it down across a knee. If Piccoli had found the correct leverage, it would have shattered that arm like kindling. But Aubry’s father had disciplined him severely in his youth, taking him through the paces of the Rubber Band exercise with merciless precision. Even if Aubry had slacked off in the last few years, he retained more strength and flexibility than most men dreamt of. He twisted, his shoulder screaming in its socket, and got just enough bend into the arm so that when it smashed into Piccoli’s knee he felt pain, and shock, but the arm didn’t break.
Aubry torqued savagely, and his right elbow crashed into Piccoli’s jaw. The man’s head snapped back, and Aubry wrapped both arms around the man’s waist, burying his face in the juncture between ear and shoulder, knowing that if Piccoli could work himself free, the man would hammer him to death.
He sank his teeth into the hard rubbery flesh of Piccoli’s neck. Crushing, tearing, savaging even as Piccoli screamed and convulsed, fists hammering for Aubry’s kidneys, knees desperately seeking his groin. Aubry bore down, grinding flesh and whipping his head from side to side. Piccoli’s blood filled his mouth. With a final, maniacal spasm, Piccoli tore Aubry loose and hurled him across the room.
Aubry had never felt anything like this before. This was a level of physical power beyond his dreams. And yet—
When Piccoli rose, hand to his neck, gore seeping between his fingers, there was something new in his eyes.
Some small, quiet animal within Aubry awakened him to the knowledge that Piccoli … this man, this champion … was afraid.
Piccoli leapt like a beast, his hands knives, his feet sledges. Blood slimed his neck and shoulders, and his scream was no longer a human sound.
He must have hit Aubry a dozen times in the next three seconds. The universe was filled with fire. Depth charges burst behind Aubry’s eyes, and he heard his own ribs crunch, felt the sudden drain of his strength, knew sudden despair.
Something shifted in Aubry’s mind. Suddenly, everything slowed down, and although his own movements were caught in the same torpor, he saw with great clarity, and greater calm. Piccoli surged in: Aubry dropped to one knee, and drove his fist into Piccoli’s groin. The man’s eyes rolled up in shock. His breath froze in his throat. He fell, scrabbling like a crab with a broken shell. Aubry slammed that fist into the vulnerable crotch again, and again, ignoring his own pain and exhaustion, oblivious of everything except the blind, irresistible urge to destroy this incredible human being.
And then a hand clasped his shoulder—he turned, and Guerrero was there, looking down at Aubry, and what he had wrought. Guerrero’s face was lit by some tearing inner conflict.
Piccoli made a bubbling sound. The man was broken, mewling like a half-dead kitten, in diminishing echoes. Blood pumped out of his neck, then slowed to a trickle. And his eyes, yellow in the darkness, flickered as if searching for some elusive Truth. Then the light went out.
Aubry gasped. He stood unsteadily, the shock of the battle finally overwhelming him, swaying on his feet. His left arm throbbed, probably dislocated. His knees hurt. His face felt like it had been torn half away.
Smoke filled his nostrils. The house was burning.
Guerrero still stared at him, and what lived in the depths of those small, dark eyes was unknowable.
Aubry’s world spun. He heard someone, a stranger, say something in his voice. “Did I … did I do right?”
It was, absurdly, a child’s voice. Why he needed an answer, or approval, from this or any man was something that he couldn’t answer.
Guerrero pulled him toward the door. “Come on—soldier,” he said.
The unit was moving out. Distantly, he heard a whooping, as if the local authorities were finally responding to the alert.
Chan, eyes cold, watched as Guerrero and another man carried Aubry to the edge of the cliff. There was a nylon zip line set up there, and Aubry regained control enough to hook himself onto it. Waves cra
shed on the rocks below.
Consciousness wavered. The villa was burning. Guerrero smiled at him. “Step off, soldier,” he said.
And behind Guerrero, Chan. The bitch’s knife was out.
Aubry couldn’t speak, couldn’t say anything, and Guerrero’s hard smile turned into an O of shock as Chan closed with him.
“Bastard,” Chan hissed.
And that was the last thing that Aubry Knight remembered, as he slid off the cliff and down to the foam and the toylike boats below.
12
JULY 27, 2033
Aubry shook his head, hard, as the sounds and colors of an earlier year suddenly fragmented, shredded, fluttered away like multicolored streamers in the wind, leaving him with a calmer, more familiar …
Somehow less disturbing reality.
He flexed his fingers. Examined his hand. His hands were thicker now, more muscular. Stiffer. Scarred, and possessed of weapon-nature. His body was heavier, with perhaps sixty pounds of muscle that he had not carried at the age of seventeen. Armor plate.
He missed that young man, with his simple vision of the world, his simple needs and drives.
“What,” Guerrero said quietly, “did you see?”
“What happened to me?” Aubry said, rubbing his palms against his forehead. The world was still seen through a filter. He needed an aspirin.
“You are in an Optima-Two learning environment. Everything that you do, everything that you hear is intended to access you on the deepest levels possible. The couch you rest on is wired, with contact points every half-inch. The room is constantly bathed in subthreshold sound, with holographic subliminal flashes. When you saw me, it triggered a deep-regression memory surge, that’s all. You are being observed, and your reactions recorded. All of it is going into a profile. We will use it to program you for your mission.”
“But … Guerrero. I saw you die. I saw Chan …” His voice sputtered to a halt.
Guerrero smiled. The silver dollar appeared in his hand, and rose and fell, rose and fell, as hypnotically as if the intervening years had never existed at all.
“I’m not really here, Knight,” he said, grinning. “I was a high-level trainer. The army had invested millions in me. Because I was also an active field operative, they recognized that I was likely to die on a mission one day. So, my memories were flushed, and stored. After I died, they created a simulacrum, for training.”
“So … you know that you aren’t real?”
“I’m dead, Knight. How can I be real?”
That stopped Aubry for a moment.
“By the way,” Guerrero said. “Records showed that Chan died three months after the São Paulo raid. There are implications that you might have had something to do with that. Preliminary bonding had begun between us—I think that you were beginning to make initial Paternal Imaging transfers. You had already established a bond with Chan, which I interrupted. Tell me—did she kill me?”
Aubry was startled. “Didn’t you know? I mean, yes, she stabbed you in the back, as you rescued me after the São Paulo raid.”
Guerrero nodded, thoughtfully. “I thought so. My last memory dump was before the raid—I don’t know anything that happened during it—my body was never recovered. The story is that I died heroically. Chan’s lower lip actually trembled as she reported it.” He paused. “Why did you kill her?” There was genuine curiosity in his voice.
Aubry’s mind ranged back, over the intervening years. And with the perspective that only time can offer, he recognized new motivations in old and half-forgotten actions. “You changed my life,” he said simply. “The Ortegas were a place for me to hide. You offered me a place to grow. After São Paulo, I was going to take you up on your offer—” He paused, eyes narrowing. “You do remember that, don’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Chan killed you because you shamed her, took her down in front of the others. She took away my passport.”
Guerrero seemed to think for a moment, although Aubry had the distinct feeling that the pause was for his benefit. After all—Guerrero existed only as a computer image now. Where the human brain is limited by the speed of chemical reactions, Guerrero thought at the speed of light.
“I think it is more than that. We have a record that your father died, in front of you, in an alley in Los Angeles. Is this accurate?”
Aubry had to swallow past a hard lump in his throat before he could say yes. His voice seemed foreign.
“I think that you have spent your life looking for your father. For a family. And when Chan killed me, it awakened memories of your inability to protect him. Your own fear. So you bided your time, and you killed her. I think you’ve been killing as a way of easing your own sense of impotence. As a way of compensating for your inability to save your father. As a means of gaining the approval of a man who is dead.”
“That is bullshit.”
“Is it? Aubry—have you ever had … little talks with your dead father? Ever tried to justify your actions to him?”
“No …” he lied.
What about me? Warrick laughed. You’ve never gotten past me. And here you are again, talking with another dead father.
Aubry lowered his face into his hands. “What are you trying to do to me?”
“I am trying to give you a chance to survive.” Guerrero paused. “You know … this is the first time I’ve dealt with someone I knew … before I died. It is interesting.”
“How?”
“It is easy to find the opening in someone’s armor. Any place where need exists, there is the potential for dependency. I think that all your life, you’ve been searching. Your father was a good man, but he died and abandoned you, and you became a criminal. Luis Ortega was an evil man, but you bonded to him. Then you bonded to me. I think that you wanted the possibility of military service—a healthier alternative, a healthier ‘family’ if you will. I died. You bounced back into the Ortegas.”
“But I remembered you,” Aubry said. “And … something else.”
“What?”
“I remembered people’s attitudes toward me, when they found out about the Nullboxer. That I took out Piccoli, unarmed. Streetfighting. I didn’t have any real training. ‘Streetlethal,’ that was what they called me. And I started dreaming. I mean—what if I could be a Nullboxer? Make money. Do something legit.”
“Please your first father.”
Aubry found a little smile. “Yeah, maybe so.”
“And that dream festered. Years later you left the Ortegas, and actually tried Nullboxing. And began to succeed. Luis reached out and destroyed your dream, set you up on a charge of rape and murder. You isolated yourself emotionally, and became numb. You lived only to kill Luis. You met your future wife, Miss Cotonou. She is both the mother of your child—and the mother you never had.”
“Shit,” Aubry muttered. “This is happening a little too fast.”
“We don’t have much time,” Guerrero said. “Most of the programming will occur on a subconscious level—but I think it’s fair for you to know what we have in store for you.”
Aubry nodded. “All right. Go on.”
“Conjecture here. You met this man Warrick. Can you describe him to me?”
“Weird.” Aubry shook his head, laughing. “He was half crazy, I think. His sense of time never worked right. But he taught me things … and reawakened things. I started remembering the joy of using my body. Not just the utility, the joy. I remembered the Rubber Band, an exercise my father taught me.”
“Another father figure. All right. Aubry, according to our reckoning, our testing of you, you are at a critical phase in your development. It makes you ideal for our purposes—which is tragic, in some ways.”
“Why?”
Guerrero paused, his image actually freezing for an instant, before regaining full liquidity. “This is difficult. I have my imperatives, set by the program parameters. I exist to serve American interests—in this case an organization called STYX. On the other hand, I ha
ve my own personality. And must, in order to do my job. Aubry, you have been a child all your life, living in reaction to the world. The point—one point—at which we become adults is the point at which we take complete responsibility, and determine our future. In one case after another, you have allowed external circumstances to control you. For all your strength and skills, you are remarkably passive.”
Aubry could only shake his head in weak denial. Then the truth of it sank in, and he muttered, “What the hell do I do?”
“Listen to yourself,” Guerrero said. “You are asking a dead man for advice. You will trust anyone, or anything, but yourself. Tell me, Aubry. Look at me.”
Aubry looked at Guerrero, and realized that his eyes were beginning to mist. What was this room doing to him? Where was he, what was …
“Aubry Knight, what do you want?”
He heard those words, and felt in some insane way that no one had ever said them before. And that had to be crazy, didn’t it?
And the crazier thing was that he didn’t have an answer.
And God, oh God, he wanted one.
13
JULY 29, 2033
Aubry Knight lay asleep. The apparatus scanning his body traveled slowly over its swollen territory, over the concavities and protuberances of his nudity.
On the other side of a glass wall, the apparatus that evaluated him had broken him down into a series of images—some of flesh and bone, some of heat and nerve. His organs lay in relief. The flush of each long, tortured breath ran through his body like a tide.
Gagnon looked at the numbers and studied them, put her attention on them as a means of keeping her attention off, or away from, Koskotas and his golem of a bodyguard.
“What do you think?”
“Preliminary mapping is complete. He responds to the Guerrero simulacrum, but that was predictable. What are the strategic reports?”
“Four plans still operative. We update every two hours. The Cape Town scenario was compromised. The backup team’s escape route was narrowed—one of the men might have been left behind. Worse yet, the man would have to know beforehand that he was a sacrifice.”
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