“I can handle it,” Sarah shot back.
“You gunning for cyborg of the year?”
Sarah held quiet, head just visible above the foam. “The hawkeye,” she said.
Judson shook his head and left her field of vision. He returned with a round metallic object, held it over Sarah's head and tapped the shell. It split in half, flipping open to reveal two linked hemispheres which resembled nothing more than a giant set of eyes.
“This little beauty has full sensory perception, high bandwidth, quantum encryption, and a range of fifty klicks. When not in use, the hawkeye recharges using the host's body heat.” As he spoke, slender wings inflated over the eyes. Once full, the thing lifted off Judson's hand and floated around the room.
“I want it.”
Judson just shrugged, snagging the hawkeye out of the air. “You got the dough, I'll do the work. But no refunds if you wig.”
Sarah smiled and closed her eyes. The foam encased her. As the anesthesia kicked in, she floated off and Judson got to work.
Her consciousness frayed at the edges, then burned like paper over a flame. She sank into darkness, coveting this final moment of expectation.
Once more and I'll be whole.
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
“Welcome to EMPYRE,” Dillon said, his tone reverential.
Frank tried to process the words as he registered the room's occupants. He knew each face—but not from the back alleys and third world cesspools where he plied his trade. These were famous men and women. People who shouldn't be in the Company's basement. Sam Hansen, secretary of homeland security, sat at the table's head. To his right, Barbara Cox flicked a pen around her finger. What the hell was the head of the NSA doing here? Lieutenant General Mike Stanton from the Defense Intelligence Agency and Richard Humphrey from the State Department filled out the seats.
“You're all here for me?” Frank asked.
“As I said, you were expected,” Andrew replied.
“Guess I'm not getting fired.”
“Take a seat, Frank,” Dillon said.
Frank quickly recovered from his surprise. His shell of cynicism locked back down. “So, what's the game here? Some kind of interagency initiative?” Frank turned to Andrew as he settled in. “I'm not a team player, Dillon.”
“No initiative here,” Hansen said in a deep baritone. The voice didn't match his slight frame. “EMPYRE stands outside the normal chain of command. Here, we operate beyond the mandate of our agencies. Or, more accurately, we combine our respective abilities to further broad ends.”
“Broad ends covers a lot,” Frank said.
“It certainly does,” Hansen replied.
“We're the secret within the secret,” Andrew said.
“So what do you want from me?” Frank asked.
“That remains to be seen,” Stanton barked. He leaned forward, the panel of medals on his chest catching the light. EMPYRE's members shared a brief conspiratorial look.
Frank didn't catch the move until it was too late. The leather of his seat cushion melted under him, seeping over his legs and solidifying instantly, locking him to the chair. Frank raged at himself, trying to jerk free, but the material only cinched tighter, constricting his thighs. Finally, he settled down, drew in a breath and relaxed into the constraint. He looked up to see that Andrew had pulled a needle gun from his jacket.
“Not really your style, Dillon,” Frank said contemptuously.
“Things change,” Andrew whispered.
“The fuck could I have done that you'd want me dead?”
“You uncovered our dirty little secret,” Barbara Cox said, her pen never stopping its twirl over her thumb.
“Not so little,” Humphrey snorted.
Realization swept over Savakis, freezing out his anger. He stared into the middle distance, trying to digest it. “Phoenix.” It was all he could say, and it came out in a whisper.
“I told them you wouldn't quit, Frank,” Dillon said.
“You knew? All along?” Frank sputtered.
“Of course we knew,” Cox said. “Phoenix is our asset.”
“We are the fire from which Phoenix was reborn.” Hansen's baritone rumbled through the boardroom.
Frank's shock settled into a slow acid churn. “Phoenix is no god. He's a fuckin' terrorist.”
Barbara's pen stopped mid-spin. “I told you he wouldn't see it,” she said to Dillon. “Let's end this and get back to work.” She motioned toward the needle gun in Andrew's hand.
Dillon turned from her and focused on Frank. “Big picture,” he said.
“The fuck kind of game you playing? Where's the big picture in waxing a Mexican president?”
“That one death paved the way for sweeping reform in Mexico—and the ascension of a new leader intent on keeping his northern neighbors happy.”
“The pulse attack in Germany? Thousands died when the city grid shut down,” Frank shot back.
“A pinprick that burst the German economy,” Dillon replied. “The terror it sparked fueled a run on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and pushed the country into a recession.”
Richard Humphrey pushed in. “With Germany struggling, American interests in the European theater jumped a notch.”
“And Tibet?”
“Low-level conflict between China and India is in our best interest,” Stanton said. “EMPYRE solves problems the politicians don't have the stomach to handle. We're a necessary evil. Necessary to further American interests.”
“I find all this hard to believe,” Frank said, turning to Dillon, “considering the source.”
“Fair enough, Frank,” Dillon said. “From a man like you, we probably deserve that. But times have changed.”
“Echelon is gone.” Hansen let the words hang in the air.
“We're picking up the pieces,” Humphrey said, his high-toned voice adamant. “There's no all-seeing eye anymore. To achieve our ends, we found a new path.”
“We looked into the past to find techniques that would shift the game with minimum financial, political, and military exposure,” Dillon said.
“Terrorism?” Savakis whispered, unbelieving.
“Let's call it ‘targeted destabilization,'” Stanton responded.
“Call it what you fuckin' like,” Frank shot back. “Doesn't change the body count.”
“EMPYRE's strikes are surgical,” Humphrey said. “Researched extensively, planned down to the wire.”
“Who's choosing the targets?”
“The best,” Hansen replied.
“The fuck does that mean?”
“It means we borrowed from our predecessor,” Andrew said.
Dillon looked around the room, getting nods from the other members. He waved to a wall screen. A surveillance image of a brown-haired woman rezzed out. “Sarah Peters. She was a data rat for Echelon. Especially capable at pattern recognition.”
“And now she's here?”
Hansen shook his head. “She started working freelance a couple years ago. Taking any gig that paid. We saw her talent and bought her out. Exclusive contract.”
“And she just up and told you she was Echelon?”
Barbara smirked. “Yes. It was the only piece of information she gave us free of charge—as she was the one who destroyed Echelon in the first place.”
“No shit.”
“Sarah and another operative named Ryan Laing took Echelon offline and zeroed out the tech that made the system possible.”
Frank chuckled at that.
“Something funny?” Barbara snapped.
“My kind of people,” Frank said. His hands inched toward Dillon's weapon. In the heat of conversation, the move went unnoticed. “But why would she tell you?”
“EMPYRE had locked on to Laing,” Dillon said. “He took down Echelon using some kind of artificial intelligence. We found markers in the flow that pointed to him, and led us to believe he was a threat.”
“Peters found out,” Humphrey conti
nued. “She told us about her past—about Laing's past. In exchange, we pulled his termination order.”
“We couldn't risk losing Peters,” Hansen said. “Her analysis is too good to disrupt. It makes our—endeavors—possible.”
“You're saying we have two people to thank for the Echelon crash?” Frank asked. No one responded. His laughter bounced off the concrete walls. “I fuckin' love it.”
His casual laugh softened the mood in the room. Dillon took his eyes off Frank, and Frank pounced. His right arm snapped out, grabbed the needle gun and yanked it free. Andrew fell back stunned, disarmed before he could react.
“Interview's over,” Frank said, his legs still pinned into the chair.
Silence gripped the room.
“I told you he was our man,” Dillon said. In slow succession, each member of EMPYRE nodded. Andrew's hand slipped over the table. Frank trained the gun on him, ready to fire. Dillon touched a key and Frank's restraints loosened. He hopped out of the chair, backed into a corner of the room and considered his options.
“You've got the job,” Dillon said.
“I'm not your man, Dillon. You know that.”
Andrew stood, arms raised. “We need muscle—a street fighter.”
“For what?”
“For purposes we'll discuss with you when it suits us,” Cox replied.
Frank panned over the faces in the room for a long moment. “It's Phoenix,” he said. “You don't trust him.”
“Phoenix is well tethered,” Cox said.
“More bullshit . . .” Frank wanted to push further, but Dillon stepped in, drawing his attention.
“Okay, Frank,” Dillon said. “No bullshit. Phoenix is ours. EMPYRE created him. Or recreated him maybe. And EMPYRE is a terrorist organization. We use terrorism like a surgeon's scalpel, advancing American hegemony with every cut. Power through the targeted application of fear. That satisfy your bullshit meter?” Andrew let the words settle.
“And you came up with this?” Frank stared at Dillon. “You put these people together, convinced them to bloody their lily-white hands? You found men who would kill innocents for you?”
Andrew could not hold Savakis's gaze.
“There was another—” Cox stuttered into the silence.
Before she could finish, Dillon regained his composure and pushed back in. “Look around you, Frank. Echelon is gone. It's every man for himself—every nation stands alone. And I'll be goddamned if the United States doesn't come out on top. You really give a shit where EMPYRE comes from—or do you want in on the fight?”
Frank studied the soft faces before him. Under their cold analysis, under their game play, the fear rippling through them was palpable.
In the Echelon century, the CIA, along with the other organizations represented at this table, had become mere societies populated by the scions of wealth—one step up from Skull and Bones or the Bohemian Club. With Echelon, the tangled web of human need always smoothed out, leaving the people before him to do a tad of spying and take long lunches.
That was the world Frank had barged into all those years ago. He had never submitted to the Company's country club sterility. His hands started dirty and stayed that way. Frank Savakis had left a trail of smudged fingerprints on everything he touched.
He gazed at the people before him. He should be horrified, he knew that. But all he felt was a cold vindication for a lifetime of hard decisions, of doing what had to be done. Finally, Frank could play by the rules he'd grown up with. That lure was too strong to ignore.
“Okay,” Frank said, lowering the gun.
Around the room, the tension eased.
“That's good, Frank. That's very good—” Dillon began.
“Because we have a problem,” Humphrey chirped.
“Our data rat is out of sorts,” Andrew said.
“Peters.”
“She's slipping, Mr. Savakis. Her analyses are growing erratic. We've run psych profiles and we're...” Cox hunted for the right word, “. . . concerned.”
“You think she might do to you what she did to Echelon.”
“We think she's borderline,” Cox replied. “But, in the end, she's just an analyst.”
“It's the other we're concerned about,” Hansen said. “He's the wild card we need to deal with before we can ascertain Peters's continued viability.”
“Continued viability,” Frank parroted with a laugh. “Just cut to the chase. You want Ryan Laing.”
“On a platter,” Andrew Dillon said.
“Alive if possible,” Cox interjected. “His AI could be very helpful to us.”
“So set Phoenix after him,” Frank said.
“Phoenix is a valuable asset we don't want involved in this,” Dillon said, shaking his head. “Laing is very dangerous and, Frank, you are—”
“Expendable?” Frank shot in.
A long second passed before Dillon continued. “I was going to say that you are the best. But, yes, you're also expendable.”
5
DUBAI CITY, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Consciousness returned grudgingly. The anesthesia's lingering effects weighed Sarah down. Her limbs were lead heavy. After long moments of concentration she found the will to crack her lids. But the darkness refused to submit. Black enveloped her—she couldn't break free. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, chalk dry. She tried to move an arm and found she couldn't. She tried the other—nothing.
A hot surge of adrenaline whipped her up to the brink of hysteria. The operation had gone wrong! Jud had fucked up the implant and severed her spinal cord. Endorphins pumped through Sarah in stabbing beats as claustrophobia settled in. She tried to scream, but couldn't open her mouth.
Was it minutes she spent in that panic? Hours? Hard to tell. Finally, her body began to tire. Tension eased and she forced herself to calm. She extended her consciousness, willing herself to acknowledge each piece of data available to her. She clenched and flexed. Her muscles worked. Unless this was some sort of phantom limb deal. She pushed that thought away.
A tickle in her nose pulled her out of the fear. She worked her nose around, realizing there was something hard running up both nostrils. She breathed deeply—pulling in cold, sterilized air. Breathing tubes! She wasn't paralyzed, but locked in the surgical foam. The realization swept over her in a gushing flood of relief.
She worked her arm against the foam, managing some movement. She stretched and scratched. After an eternity, her index finger poked free to the operating room's cool air. She then tried to move her torso and made some progress, but it would take hours to work free.
Where was Jud? Why had he abandoned her? She let her strained muscles relax, and took deep breaths. At the moment of complete relaxation, she felt it.
A neural tingle. Must be a glitch in her system—maybe from the drugs. Then it came again—flickering sensory input. Not from her own eyes or ears, but from others that rezzed cleaner. The hawkeye! Judson had installed the link successfully.
Sarah relaxed further, letting her consciousness abandon her physical being and refocus through this other. In a jarring vision snap, the operating room resolved before her—a translucent image hanging in the black of her own internal perception. She saw the room, and her own body encased in foam. Surgical instruments lay on a tray at her side, bloody.
Sound! At first scratchy and distant, then evolving to pure tone. The clarity startled her. It was Judson's voice. And it didn't sound good.
“Please!” he squealed in obvious terror. “I did what you asked. It's all installed. The trigger's operational. She's your fucking weapon now.”
Sarah couldn't figure out how to shift the hawkeye's view. Judson stumbled into the frame, crashing backward into the tray of surgical instruments. The instruments flew everywhere, clattering to the floor. A scalpel sliced the finger Sarah had managed to work free of the foam. She barely felt it, lost in the hawkeye's feed. Judson sprawled out next to the body encased in foam.
My body encased in foa
m, Sarah reminded herself.
Jud's eyes teared. “No!” he yelped. “Please, you don't have to do this. I did everything you asked!”
Sarah watched the feed, unable to believe that the event was occurring right next to her. A man stepped into the frame. He moved with cold grace, looming over the fallen giant. Judson tried to skitter away, but the man raised his right foot and kicked him in the nose with practiced assurance. A sharp crack as the man's heel crushed Jud's nasal bone. Blood spurted, engulfing his lips and neck. Sarah watched his eyes dance with fear, then settle into dull shock.
The man stooped down. He wore a dark suit that blended with the color of the walls. His left hand reached out, touching Judson's cheek. The giant quivered. Sarah watched the man cock his right hand. She tried to scream a warning, but nothing came. The man's hand shot forward in a spear punch, crushing Jud's larynx with a hollow pop.
The giant choked out surprise, then terror, then nothing. His eyes glassed over. Sarah watched. She felt her own death looming in that slim figure now standing to look down on her. He pecked at the pad and the foam around her softened.
Through her fear, her pumping heart, her nausea, she scratched for a plan—for something that would save her. The gash in her finger stung—and her heart leaped. She wrenched her fingers loose and gripped the scalpel. A chill ran through her as the surgical foam drained away.
The man stood over her. Sarah kept her eyes closed. She continued to watch through the hawkeye, not sure what would happen when her vision meshed with the machine's.
Black suit. Medium height, medium build, a face so easily forgotten that she couldn't find a distinguishing feature to center on. She locked on the man's smile—cold and cruel.
He leaned over her, his breath hot on her face. “Sarah Peters,” he said.
Her fear almost stalled her out. No! She wouldn't die here—not now. Not without a fight. She gripped the scalpel and, with the man's face almost on hers, she struck. The blade found the man's neck. Blood gushed.
Sarah opened her eyes to the bloodbath. After seeing through the hawkeye, her own vision felt like a pointillist painting. She coughed on the man's blood and tried to push him away. He caught the side of the operating table and pulled her down with him.
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