Deus Ex: Black Light

by James Swallow

  “Pritchard!” he shouted, reopening the infolink as he guided the jeep into the jet’s turbulent slipstream.

  “Oh, now you want my help with something?” snorted the hacker. “I’m in the airport monitors right now, I see you. What exactly do you think you’re doing?”

  “Stop this thing!” he snapped. “Shut down the jet!”

  “In the next twenty seconds? It’s tempest-hardened, EMP-shielded. I can’t hack that remotely with the gear at my disposal…”

  The jeep’s wheels screeched as it bounced over the runway, and Jensen spotted the hatch on the prow reopen as the mercs on board rolled out the autocannon. Bright flares of tracer fire cut back toward him, a lucky shot cracking off the headlights.

  “How do I stop it?”

  Pritchard came back immediately. “The cargo pod! There’s an emergency ejection control on the flank, if you could reach it…”

  Jensen spotted the black-and-yellow striped panel next to a series of handholds and locking points. It was close – but he would only get one shot at this.

  Pushing the jeep as fast as it could go, he yanked the steering wheel to the right and cut under the cargo jet’s tail as the aircraft began to pull away. He didn’t allow himself to think of the speed or the insane risk of what he was doing, and instead Jensen lost himself in the pitch and moment of the act.

  The jeep bumped the side of the jet and lost traction. A front tire split and the vehicle flipped into a roll – but by then Jensen had leapt the gap and slammed into the side of the cargo pod. Wishing he’d chosen the same mods to his cyberlimbs as Magnet, he hung on grimly as the jet crossed the takeoff threshold and the nose undercarriage began to lift away from the ground.

  With all the force he could muster, Jensen punched the emergency release panel, ripping right through the mechanism. He tore out whatever circuitry he found inside, hoping that it would be enough. The screaming wind tore at him, the force of it trying to tear him free of the fuselage. Dimly, he sensed the heavily-laden aircraft clawing its way off the ground as it came in sight of the end of the lengthy runway.

  Then there were a series of loud bangs, gunshot-sharp, as the clamps holding the cargo module in place abruptly released. The pod detached as the jet lifted and Jensen went with it. Suddenly relieved of its extra weight and mass, the cargo plane shot upward at a steep angle, its engines shrieking as the pilot struggled to regain control of it before it tipped into a lethal stall.

  The pod dropped like a brick, falling twenty meters back to earth to land in the crash pan of dense sand beyond the end of the runway. Jensen let go as it went down, trusting his Icarus implant to stop him from being broken apart.

  There was a blur of gold fire, a numbing series of painful shocks as he hit and caught air again, before – mercifully – everything went dark.

  * * *

  The next thing he remembered was someone slapping him across the face, and Jensen blinked back to awareness, unsteady and disoriented.

  “There, see? He’s not dead.” Vande peered at him with an unreadable expression on her face, while at her side Jarreau stood watching Jensen under hooded eyes, his bulky night-vision goggles perched high up on his forehead.

  Jensen was sitting up in the back of an ambulance, and the air inside the vehicle stank of blood and chemicals. Crammed in there with him on the other gurneys were three more members of Task Force 29, all of them with injuries of varying severity. A pale-faced paramedic worked silently on the agents, with a look on his face that said he was petrified by what was going on.

  Jensen stiffened and got up, pushing past the others as he stepped out of the vehicle. There were warning indicators blinking in the corner of his vision, but his augs were still in working order, and he suddenly felt the driving need for a breath of fresh air.

  “I told you to stay put,” Vande said to his back.

  “Yeah.” Jensen shrugged. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

  He looked around. There were regular cops and emergency crews all around, most of them glaring at the Task Force agents in an angry stand-off as Jarreau’s operatives forcibly kept them away from the fallen cargo module. As he watched, the squad’s big quad-engine cargo carrier VTOL came down from the sky on plumes of thrust, extruding thick cables from its belly, each one ending in a magnetic grapple plate. A pair of agents gathered them up and set to work clamping them to the cargo pod so it could be lifted off.

  “You were almost killed chasing down that plane,” said Jarreau. “What the hell was going through your mind, man?”

  “Adapt and react.” Jensen shrugged, searching his pockets for a cigarette and his lighter. “I get bore-sighted on things,” he admitted. “Focus on a target to the exclusion of everything else. It’s not one of my better qualities.”

  Jarreau shot Vande a wry look. “I know someone like that.”

  “You can’t smoke here,” Vande insisted. “There’s fuel—”

  “So sue me.” He lit up and took a long drag. It helped.

  Jarreau showed his teeth in a wide smile. “You gotta be fearless or stupid, Jensen. Still, we got a result and that’s better than nothing at all.”

  “What about Sheppard and the jet?”

  “Gone,” said Vande. “He’s no fool. When they lost the pod thanks to you, Sheppard’s crew cut their losses and fled for the Canadian border. There’s still a chance we might be able to catch them before they leave the country…” She trailed off, her grim tone showing how unlikely she thought that outcome was.

  The VTOL took the weight of the cargo module, and with a whine of engines, it hauled it off the ground and into the air. Moving with ponderous slowness, the flyer carried the damaged pod away toward the east. Jensen took an involuntary step after it. “Where’s that going?”

  “Headquarters in Lyon pulled some strings, called in a transporter rig from the Army,” Jarreau explained. “Mendel’s gonna drop it off. They’ll ferry it to a military base, and everything in that pod will be decommissioned and melted down for scrap.” His grin faded. “Shit. Headquarters will call this a win, but it don’t feel like one.” He nodded toward a line of body bags lying on the runway near the hangar, where MCB and Task Force dead lay side by side. “We paid for it.”

  Jensen nodded. He knew full well how that felt, and he could see the need in the eyes of the two agents to get after the men responsible for the deaths of their comrades. But all too often payback had to take a backseat to the needs of the mission at hand. “So what happens now?”

  “We’re packing up,” said Vande. “The barge crew are clearing out as we speak. I’m going to escort those damned augs personally, right into the furnace if I have to.” He heard the venom in her tone. “I am so done with this bloody city.”

  “As for you… there’s about a dozen different state and federal charges you could be arrested for,” Jarreau told Jensen, “but I got enough paperwork as it is. So let’s say we’re all on the side of the angels and call it even here.”

  Vande turned to walk away, then hesitated. “Franklin, the man I left with you… You saved his life back there when you could have just cut and run. That’s something.” Then she strode away, back toward the rest of the team.

  “That’s the closest you’re going to get to a compliment from her,” noted Jarreau.

  “And all I had to do was nearly kill myself.” Jensen took another draw on his cigarette. “How is Interpol gonna deal with all this?”

  “I got a badge that says ‘Read This and Weep’ on it. I’ve done this before. We’ll piss off a lot of locals, but by tomorrow we’ll be nothing but a bad memory. Don’t worry, we’ll keep your name out of it.”

  “Sorry about your men,” Jensen offered. “I know how it is.”

  “Yeah, I read your jacket. You got the experience…” Jarreau nodded toward the runway, changing the subject. “And clearly, you have the skills. If you’re interested, Task Force 29 is always hiring.”

  In spite of himself, Jensen gave a low chuckle.
“Are you actually offering me a job?”

  “We need people who can… adapt and react.”

  An odd impulse Jensen couldn’t quite explain pushed at him to respond, but he fought it down. After a moment, he shook his head. “I’m still figuring some things out,” he added, and he realized there was more truth in those words than he expected.

  Jarreau accepted that with a nod. “Your call, man. My advice? You’d best get outta here before one of your old DPD buddies recognizes you. I’m guessing they won’t look the other way.” The agent shouldered his rifle and set off after Vande.

  Jensen ground out his cigarette on the asphalt and found his way toward the shadows.

  * * *

  Thorne sat back in the passenger seat of the rented Navig sedan and brushed a stray thread of hair out of her eyes. A cold sense of satisfaction welled up inside her. She had been proven right. From the start, her evaluation of this operation had been correct and now the dead lying on an airport runway proved it. Still, it was ashes in her mouth, just another reminder that her superiors would never truly respect the skills she brought to the game.

  The inset screens displayed on her laptop monitor showed the exact opposite of what had been planned for. Instead of a quiet exfiltration from the city, a massed gun battle had drawn the attention of the police force, civilians and the media. And now the materials that she had been tasked to secure were in the hands of a group that Thorne had no direct control over. From most points of view, the operation would have been considered a failure.

  But there were degrees of misfortune, levels of random chance that her masters were willing to accept – even encourage. What looked like chaos to an outsider was actually the end result of careful manipulation. Management, for want of a better word. It was, after all, the greatest skill Thorne’s masters possessed. To control the uncontrollable, to influence and guide the elements that appeared impossible to govern.

  And now her recommendation – for the deployment of a covert operational unit rather than the use of local proxies – would play out. It had taken wasteful effort to reach this point, however, and she despised that.

  Too many plans working within other plans, she told herself. All those old fools and their schemes. They never saw it from down here on the ground, and she knew they wouldn’t care even if they did. Her masters delighted in reminding their agents that they took the long view – but that was easy to do when one was looking down at the world from an ivory tower. For those who did their dirty work, it was often difficult to see anything beyond the immediate situation.

  She glanced across the upper level of the parking garage where she had sequestered herself, looking across the freeway to the airport buildings clustered around the runways. Sirens reached her as more police units came racing toward the area, and she paused, thinking about her exit route. The Interpol team’s VTOL had passed over just a few moments before, and already its path was logged, considered and its final destination predicted.

  She sifted through digital footage stolen from the airport’s multiple monitors. It had been difficult to remain in the network and stay undetected after things started to fall apart. At one point, she noted that there was a second intruder in the system, and Thorne had been forced to cloak her virtual presence with a shrouding subroutine to make certain she wasn’t discovered.

  She quickly found what she was looking for. Images of the action on the runway, caught through a window by a distant security camera inside the main passenger terminal. The footage was grainy and difficult to read, but there were a couple of moments where the monitor had captured the impression of a man’s face behind the wheel of a speeding vehicle.

  Leaning in, she studied the face for a long time, considering the lines of it blurred by pace, the dark shields over the eyes, the determined aspect.

  “What makes you special?” The question slipped out of her, spoken aloud before she realized it. Frowning at herself, Thorne closed the lid of the laptop computer and turned away, reaching up to punch in a code on the encrypted transceiver module sitting on the dashboard.

  As the device went through the process of making a connection, her gaze turned inward. By now, the scouring programs she had left in the Yukon Hotel’s security net had done their jobs. Aside from one inconvenient corpse, there would be no evidence that she had ever stayed there.

  The transceiver beeped and she told it her name. Momentarily, a silky male voice made itself known. “As was predicted, the smuggler failed to extract the materials. Our optimal result did not occur.” The words seemed to come from all around her, but she knew that was merely an artifact of her implanted communications link. “Your assignment to facilitate the transfer remains incomplete.”

  She resisted the urge to tell her masters that this was the very outcome she had warned them about. “The chance of a successful extraction was only thirty percent, but I am confident I can still secure the materials, if that remains the primary objective,” she stated. “For the record, there were added complications. Another active vector entered the scenario, the fugitive Adam—”

  A sigh sounded across the distance, cutting her off. “That is not your concern. Naturally, there are multiple vectors in action at your current nexus. You are not the only asset in play.”

  She frowned at that, but said nothing. More games, she told herself. Her next words were tight and emotionless. “I await instructions.” If they were treating her like an automaton, she would behave like one.

  “The secondary option you suggested has been approved by the Council. Additional operatives have been deployed to Detroit and they will arrive within the hour. Rendezvous with them at Location Gamma and take field command of the group.” The voice in her head paused, taking a breath. “There is no more margin for error. If transfer of the Sarif materials cannot be achieved, our plans in Europe will be impeded, and we will be forced to seek alternative options. That is unacceptable. Are we clear?”

  “Clear,” Thorne repeated. “I’ll report in when it’s done.”

  DOWNTOWN – DETROIT – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  Jensen found a seat at the back of the augs-only carriage on the MiTrain Express from the airport, and did his best to fade into the background as it sped back into the city. With his collar turned up and his head down, he was just another passenger.

  At this time of night, the train was half empty. His only companions were a group of dirty, work-worn laborers heading home after a late shift at one of the deconstruction yards out in Dearborn. Jensen could see the smoky, ill-lit site from his window, a vast scar in the landscape that went for miles. Dozens of city blocks out there had been lost to fire and chaos during the Aug Incident, and now the area was being systematically razed by one of the big conglomerates – FiveLine or Santeau, he wasn’t sure which – so they could move in and remake it as they saw fit. The irony that the augmented were the only ones who were willing to work in the dangerous conditions out there seemed lost on the rest of the world. Dust, thick and gray, covered the visibility jackets and hoodies worn by the workers, and Jensen listened with half an ear as they griped amongst themselves about their poor pay and the low quality of the company-mandated neuropozyne doses they were given.

  With the dust on them, the workers seemed like washed-out charcoal sketches of real people, faded and ghostly things. In their eyes he saw the fate that the city was sharing with them. Augs like him were being ground down, slowly and carefully being erased from the world. He imagined that there would be little place for people like them in whatever would come next. Jensen dwelled on thoughts of what the future would bring and he didn’t like what he saw there.

  A low buzz sounded through the bone of his jaw and his teeth clenched in response. “Jensen, it’s me,” said Pritchard. “I’ve found something you need to be aware of.”

  He straightened, pushing away the fatigue that was pressing down on him. “Let’s hear it,” he told the hacker.

  “A red flag went up on one of the search str
ings I left in the Police Department’s data net. Our former colleague Donald Wilder was named in an incident report that went live a few minutes ago.”

  Jensen frowned. After Wilder had shot him and left him to be arrested, any hope of finding the former security guard had vanished along with the man. But had Wilder really been arrogant enough to stay in the city, rather than take the opportunity to make tracks? Pritchard’s next words answered that question.

  “He’s quite dead, according to the police officers who found him in a hotel bathroom uptown. The statement from the evidence tech who logged the report says he was shot and killed no more than an hour after I lost contact with you in Ravendale.”

  “What hotel?”

  “The Yukon. Far too exclusive for someone like Wilder.”

  He nodded in agreement. “Anything in the report about leads?”

  “There’s the rub. Apparently the Yukon’s booking records and security monitors suffered some kind of breakdown…” Pritchard’s acid tone made it obvious how little he believed that explanation. “Long story short, there’s nothing there. I took the liberty of taking a pass over their network myself to make sure they weren’t hiding anything, but it’s been scrubbed. A very professional job, I might add.”

  “Somebody is tying up all the loose ends,” Jensen said quietly, voicing his thoughts. “Kellman’s dead, the MCBs are out of the picture… and now Wilder turns up a corpse.” He paused, thinking it through. “This is standard Illuminati operating procedure. When something doesn’t go how they want it to, they sanitize everything and fade away.”

  “Indeed,” agreed Pritchard. “I’m looking at the file on Wilder’s remains right now. His body is in an ambulance heading to Medical Center, but not for the morgue. Somewhere along the line, it was flagged as ‘infectious material’. His corpse is going to go straight into the furnace.”

  “What?” Jensen’s thoughts raced. If the people in the shadows wanted Wilder’s body destroyed, that could mean that even in death, he carried some information of value. Jensen remembered the new augmentations he had been sporting, the pulse-gun arm and the high-spec optics. An industrial furnace would reduce them to molten slag. “Where’s the ambulance now?”