Deus Ex - Icarus Effect

by James Swallow

  "One bullet, more like," Barrett noted dryly.

  Hermann gave Saxon a fierce look. "I am no traitor!"

  Saxon got to his feet. "Are you serious? Disloyal how, exactly?"

  Namir tossed the loaded pistol onto the floor between them. "I'll explain it to you if you live past the next five minutes."

  "You actually expect me to—" Hermann never let him finish. The German was swift and he came up hard, striking with that armored fist of his

  in a short, hammer-blow punch. Saxon barely had time to deflect it.

  He was aware of the others drawing back and away as Hermann moved in and came at him again. This time, Saxon was a half second too slow

  and the metal-clad fist clipped him across the shoulder. Even a glancing impact was enough to rob him of a little balance and Saxon shifted his

  weight. Even if he wasn't sold on this sudden, enforced bout of trial-by-combat, the younger man certainly was. Hermann glared at him, sizing

  him up; the way he did it made it clear to Saxon that the German had given plenty of thought to how he would fight him if the opportunity

  arose. He had a sudden mental image of Gunther taking him down, stripping his corpse for parts to bolt on

  to himself like a hunter taking the skull and pelt of a kill.

  Saxon dodged the next punch, and the next, but then his luck ran out. Hermann connected with a heavy strike to the sternum that rattled

  Saxon's rib cage and ghosted the taste of blood up his throat. The other man glimpsed the flash of pain in his eyes and for the first time since

  he'd met him, Saxon saw something approximating a smile flicker briefly over the German's face. He came back in like thunder, a flurry of fast

  kicks and faster punches that Saxon had to work to deflect, never once getting the chance to attack in turn. The young man's nerve-jacked

  speed was far in advance of Saxon's own reflex booster, maybe a custom model or something the Tyrants had granted; it didn't matter. Trying

  to match Hermann blow for blow wouldn't work.

  Instead, Saxon let the other man's overconfidence take the lead. He let his guard go loose, and the hammer-blows started to land. Finally,

  Hermann connected with a punch that sent Saxon reeling, down to the concrete floor.

  He blinked away pinwheels of pain from behind his eyes. Hermann went down in a looping sweep, grabbing for the pistol; he took his gaze off

  Saxon in that moment, chancing that his opponent was winded. His mistake, then.

  As the German snatched up the weapon, Saxon rocked off his augmented legs and collided with Hermann, sending him reeling toward the edge

  of the light cast from the overhead bulb. The hand gripping the gun came up and it turned into a wrestling match.

  For long moments they both strained for the superior position, but Saxon had the power, and the will to take the long road. Finally, with a

  savage twist of his wrist, he pulled the pistol away and elbowed Hermann hard in the throat, putting him on the ground.

  Saxon weighed the gun in his hand.

  "You gonna do it?" asked Barrett.

  At the periphery of his vision, Saxon saw Namir shift slightly, his hand moving out of sight. Hermann looked up at him, silently furious.

  "No," Saxon said at length. "I'm not going to do it. Because there isn't any bloody traitor, and I don't play games like this. I'm a professional." He

  flipped the gun over and held it out, butt first, to Namir.

  The Tyrant commander took it with a nod. "The right call, Ben. If you had pulled the trigger, I would have shot you myself."

  Hermann got up slowly. "Then both of us would be dead."

  "Rounds in the gun were blanks," said Barrett. "We've done this before. We ain't stupid." A

  smile crossed his scarred face. "You did good there. You got steel. I'm impressed."

  Saxon frowned. "A test?"

  "In a way," said Namir. He nodded to them all, and when he spoke again his tone was all command. "We've got another assignment, in America.

  We fly out tomorrow, so make the most of your downtime tonight and be sure to prep your gear."

  "That's it?" Saxon took a step after him as he walked away. "You got nothing else to say?"

  Namir glanced over his shoulder. "What do you want, Ben? A membership card? You both proved yourselves. You're part of the Tyrants. Until

  death."

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Ohama Center—Washington, D.C.—United States of America

  "We don't have all the answers." Anna watched the hacker as he crossed to the minibar behind the skybox's line of seats and did something to

  the lock to make it open, fishing inside for a slender can of Ishanti. He popped the cap and drained the energy drink in a single, long pull. "Ah.

  Better."

  Beyond the sound-screened window, she saw William Taggart bow slightly as something he said earned a round of applause from his audience.

  The resonance of the clapping was distant, like faraway waves.

  "What do you know?" Anna demanded. "I'm tired of your games."

  "Games haven't even started yet," said D-Bar. "Not for you, anyhow." He sighed. "Let me put it another way ... You ever heard of something

  called 'the 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 particu
lar; 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.

  The groupings matched an international sat-comm code.

  Before he was even fully aware he was doing it, Saxon reached for his gear pack and recovered the spare vu-phone he kept for emergencies. It

  wasn't the slick, cutting-edge device the Tyrants had given him, just a store-bought disposable. He entered the digits and thumbed the DIAL

  key. A string of swift tones sounded from the earpiece, followed by a hum as the line connected—

  Behind him, the bedroom door clicked open, and he spun from the window, cutting the call short, letting the phone drop.

  In the light cast from the airship's advert-screens, Yelena Federova resembled some kind of shadow-wraith, a creature made out of flesh and

  darkness straight from fable. She stalked silently toward him, her black-and-steel legs catching the glow. Her eyes were hooded and he could

  not read them. Slowly, like a knife being drawn from a sheath, a low smile crossed her lips. The sullen glower that characterized her neutral

  mode of expression was gone, and instead Saxon saw an echo of the predatory thrill Federova had shown in the Rostov's lobby, after cutting

  down three men in as many seconds.

  It came to him that he had failed the test. She had come to kill him, quietly and discreetly. Sparing Gunther's life had marked him as weak; he

  was going to be cut from the pack ...

  She halted a few steps from him, and then, with care, Federova pulled at the tabs holding the ballistic-cloth blouse closed over her chest. She let

  it fall free to the floor; beneath she wore nothing, and Saxon's gaze was drawn to the rise of her breasts, a small ebon cross hanging in the valley

  between them. Her tawny skin was marred only by the scarred disc of an old bullet wound. Then she shrugged off her short breeches and