They crashed to the floor, Sarah's legs still locked in the foam. She lay crushed into him, face to face. Eyes wide with shock, he stared at her. Blood frothed from his mouth. Sarah tried to pull away and couldn't.
“Not necessary,” the man gurgled. “Not to hurt ...you.”
“Who are you?!” she screamed, terrified and jacked on adrenaline.
The man's eyes rolled back. The blood geyser ebbed to a steady flow. He went pale white.
“Nobody. I'm nobody.” With that he faded. Sarah lay on top of him, gasping for breath.
Zachary Taylor watched from a dark banquette as Sarah emerged from the clinic and pushed through the bar. She was holding up well. She didn't run—didn't panic. Instead, she walked slowly, not marking herself. Only the eyes gave her away. She slipped through the bar quickly so no one could get a real look. When she had gone, Taylor pulled a secure com-link from his pocket.
A voice crackled over the link, tone shifted from the encryptionware. “Phoenix.”
“She's in play with your package on board,” Taylor whispered. “Peters is now patient zero.”
“Excellent. Cancel the supplier's contract.”
“Done. Peters killed him.” The dead man was a soldier—like Taylor. One day, Taylor's own life would be canceled with the same callous precision—but that was the nature of the game. No escape now.
“Did she learn anything?” the voice crackled.
“The man had no information to give.”
“See to the rest.”
Taylor clicked off. He rose and headed for the exit as he made another call.
“Language?” the voice on the link asked.
“English,” Taylor responded.
“We cannot lock your signal. Please state the location and nature of your emergency.”
“I'm at the clinic behind Harry's in the mall.”
“Nature of the emergency?”
“Two men have just been killed.” Taylor's voice rose on a wave of panic befitting one who had just seen his first murder—an event too far back in his past to be retrieved. “It's—it's terrible. You need to get someone over here! I saw her do it!”
“Who?”
“Some skin junkie. They worked her and she just flipped. Lost her mind and killed them. She came after me, but I got away.”
“Do you know her?”
“No—well, a little. Oh God, it's terrible.”
“Sir, please.”
“Right. Don't know her name—but she's staying at the Burj al Arab.”
“Please stay where you are, sir. Officers are approaching the scene.”
“Yeah, okay. Right.” Taylor killed transmission.
Within seconds, the bar erupted in a cacophony of incoming com-links, the patrons receiving a barrage of voice and data messages. Inside info had gone mass market in Dubai and no one wanted to be caught up in a murder investigation. Taylor slipped into the flood of patrons racing for the exit.
He was long gone when the investigators appeared.
6
QUEEN MAUD LAND, ANTARCTICA
Finding Ryan Laing had been a real bitch.
Frank had hunted men before, but he'd done it civilized—through cities and scrapers, down alleys and into dark places. Nothing like this shit. An hour here and even the memory of darkness vanished. Freezing light beat down. The glacier spread before him, a vast wasteland. In the distance, he could just make out the jagged black fangs of granite that Ryan Laing called home. Bat-shit crazy, all this outdoor crap, as far as Frank was concerned. His jungle lay far from here.
Even the trip had been a bitch. Going low profile made life tricky. Frank had wanted to drop into Antarctica gun-heavy. He'd been told in no uncertain terms that EMPYRE didn't operate like that. A mass op required the sharing of information, and that EMPYRE did not do.
While Frank understood, he hated the delay going solo necessitated. Laing gave him a bad feeling—like he was in for a serious brawl. Frank couldn't pin the extent of the rogue operator's tech, but if it was hard enough to take out Echelon, it was hard enough to be a real pain in the ass. A head-on fight would probably end badly.
So Savakis had gone undercover, blending into the odd crew of climbers milling around Santiago, Chile, conning and bribing their way to Antarctica. He didn't like them. They were a tight clique, totally shut-in. Beyond their obsession, they saw little. He felt their need, though, raw and strong. That distant stare, the longing. A junkie's stare. He watched their awkward haggling to get transportation.
Frank acted like the outsider that he was. The climbers didn't accept him. They wouldn't, he suspected, until they saw him on the rock. But they did let him tag along. Getting to the continent proved interesting.
With a couple climbers, he found a pilot willing to make the flight—for a fee. That the pilot and his plane were Southern Air Transport gave Frank a good laugh.
Southern Air Transport was the longest-running front in the Company's history. In the mid-twentieth, it was part of Air America, the CIA-controlled airline. At one time, Air America was the biggest airline in the world, shuttling supplies, running guns—whatever the CIA deemed necessary. Over the years, Air America had dwindled. Now the Agency hired out—contracting with private military firms for their combat needs. Made deniability easier. Still, Southern Air Transport remained in operation. The flyboys were only too willing to dump a payload of climbers into the wasteland.
What did surprise Frank was the ancient plane they used. The whale lumbered onto the runway in Santiago and Frank thought they were fucking with him. No such luck.
Halfway into the fifteen-hour flight, they reached the point of no return. No matter what, they needed to land on the frozen continent to refuel.
The touchdown—wheels on blue ice—rattled Frank's fillings. The plane slipped down the makeshift runway and finally skidded to a halt. Frank couldn't have been happier to get out of that fucker.
And then Antarctica hit him like a ton of bricks.
White on blue, and blinding sun. Stark, sparkling clarity. No particles to fuzz the view. Vertigo hit Frank. He'd never imagined a place so . . . big. As the climbers packed their sleds for the ski into Queen Maud Land's peaks, Frank prepped his Sidewinder.
Named after the desert snakes of the Mojave, the Sidewinder was next-gen all-weather transportation. Frank had brought the best; there was no room for a fuck-up this far from civilization. The Sidewinder's seat and engine case sat atop a slender tread that ran perpendicular to the vehicle's forward motion. Getting comfortable in the saddle, Frank engaged the engine. As it hummed to life, the machine threw coils of its tread forward, moving over the ice in long, J-shaped strides. This distinctive, slithering lope offered increased traction. The Sidewinder's wide weight distribution also diminished Frank's chances of plummeting down a crevasse.
He accelerated toward the saw-tooth ridges in the distance, black spikes drilled into the white. As he gained speed, freezing wind lashed him.
Fuckin' deranged, he thought, living in this wasteland.
No wonder EMPYRE hadn't been able to find Laing. Who would believe the man who changed the world would hang here? Frank still wasn't sure he'd located the bastard, but his nose told him the track was good.
EMPYRE had run down all the hard leads and come up empty. So Frank went tangential. He caught his marks by their vices. Every man had one. As far as Frank was concerned, vice defined the human condition. Some fucked. Some slapped derm patches. Some liked to watch. Sarah Peters had mentioned that Laing was a rock climber. Not very juicy, but Frank figured that was a good place to start.
In the backwater atoll of hard-core mountaineers, Frank had found mention of a man with an elusive past who ticked off previously unclimbed mountains in a blistering succession.
Now, Frank just had to find the fucker and get off the ice in one piece.
DUBAI CITY, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Sarah couldn't hold it all in her head. It was too much, too fast. Her ordered existenc
e had careened into a wall of violence and disintegrated. She knew only to run—to flee. But what had happened? Had she killed the man in the clinic? Even within the flighty pump of fear, guilt washed over her. She pushed it away. No time.
She couldn't return to the hotel. Too easy to track her there. No, she needed to hunker down somewhere quiet and hack her way out of this mess. She just needed time. Her body ached. It felt like Jud had implanted a cuckoo clock in her head.
Oh, God, Judson. Dead.
Sarah pushed through the mall, trying to hold her cool. She could handle this. Maybe she wasn't a field operative like Ryan, but she'd been in tougher spots than this. Just a mellow ride out of the city, a few hours in the flow and she'd work her way out. No problem.
Then life got a lot worse. Sarah usually ignored the pop-up holo ads that peppered public facilities. Everyone did. They were just part of the clutter in a world polluted with product placement. Get pegged and the ad tracker would throw up holo on holo trying to pull you into a store, buy a gadget, eat at Joe's, whatever. Usually, Sarah pushed through them, oblivious. But not today.
Today, she stopped short. The ad before her, an impossibly lithe woman cooing over a bottle of perfume, flickered out. When it snapped back in, Sarah stared at her own image. She spun around—every holo in the mall showed the same image. Her thousand faces floated in full three as the holos emitted the beep-beep-beep of an emergency override.
A voice rose up through the holo's mouth—her mouth. “This is an emergency cut-in. Have you seen me? I am wanted in connection with a police matter. If you spot me, do not attempt to detain. Please contact the authorities immediately.”
Sarah watched her own mouth speak the words, repeating them in language after language. It made her skin crawl. In the Emirates, crime was unheard of. For a cut-in to be authorized, the situation had to be dire. Sarah drew her head down, sneaking furtive peeks at those around her. Mistake. Hands pulled com-links from pockets.
She broke into a run. Another mistake. Three security men flashed in, skittering around the Chanel gallery. Fast-response shock troops. The UAE maintained absolute safety with a hard-core no-tolerance policy. Any lawbreaking and the shock troops came in. Run and they shot to kill. Breathe wrong and they shot to kill.
Equipped with mechanized exoskeletons, their blocky armor didn't slow them. Instead, the troops saw Sarah and kicked into high, loping gaits. Impossibly high, the exoskeletons augmenting their strides. They rocketed down the mall's corridor, gaining on Sarah.
She pushed harder, knowing it was hopeless. But fear kept her moving. Fright sparked flight. She whipped around the corner, only to see another team coming at her. Sarah ducked left, timing the move perfectly. The troops behind her crashed into those oncoming. The resulting mangle left the men scrambling and gave Sarah a crucial lead.
She sprinted hard, whipping into a long, narrow hallway. The high-rez sign over her advertised a water park.
“Shit!” She cursed herself, pulling up short. But there was nowhere to go. A trooper sprinted down the corridor, closing fast. Sarah whirled and ran. She slipped through the entrance, the ticket taker yelling at her. Behind her, the trooper blasted through the barrier. Sarah saw her chance and took it. She whirled left, pushing her way to the waterslide.
The slide curved and twisted the full ten stories down to a massive pool. Sarah cut through the line of people, shoving up to the front. Any anger from the bathers around her dissipated on seeing the trooper. Everyone pulled back to let him pass.
Reaching the slide, Sarah dove in headfirst. Immediately, acceleration took hold. The trooper behind her dove in as well. Spinning wildly, Sarah could see that he was gaining. Fear pumped white hot.
The trooper pulled his Glock 60. He struggled for aim, the bulky gun plinking off the slide's shell. He fired wild shots, the explosions sending shock waves through the tight space. Above her, the slide exploded, the bullet missing her by centimeters. She caught a jagged view of white-blue sky before rocketing past. While her tat might block a bullet's puncture, the force of its impact could well be enough to kill her. A direct hit would certainly end any chance of escape.
The trooper stopped firing wild. Instead, he concentrated on steadying himself. He slowed his spin, managing to get his feet facing down. He steadied his gun between his legs and waited for a clean shot.
Sarah lengthened into a dive position, trying to eke out every extra bit of speed. Lying with her back to the floor and facing backward, she could see the trooper nearing, his gun leveling. Through the flashing rush of speed, she thought she could make out his finger tensing around the trigger.
The next moments meshed into a single stomach-flipping wrack. Just as the gun discharged, the bottom fell from Sarah's world. The slide had shifted to near vertical. Sarah plunged—speed warping her vision—the bullet flying high.
The trooper followed her down. The acceleration caught him off guard as well—which saved Sarah's life. He lost the gun in his struggle to find center. Three stories—fast fall. And the trooper gained, his hard skin armor offering little friction.
The trooper crashed into her. They melded into a tangle of arms and legs, one struggling for purchase, the other for escape. Speed allowed neither.
And then it was over. The slide spat them out several meters over the pool. Locked together, they crashed down, Sarah taking a good bit of the impact on her side. Water ate their speed even as the two continued to struggle—and sink.
The trooper's weight dragged him down. He pulled Sarah with him. She fought against him in the white froth. The trooper managed to pull a blade from his thigh holster. He slashed Sarah's throat, the cut drawing a gush of blood. Sarah's vision clouded. The pain shocked her into gulping a mouthful of water. She threw a hand over the cut, probing wildly. The body tat had held, the knife only puncturing the epidermis. Desperate, she squirmed to get free, but couldn't break from the trooper's grasp.
Unable to swim with the weight of his suit, the trooper took Sarah down. Her body arched and jerked in a spasmodic need for air. The trooper hit bottom. Getting his feet under him, he pushed up with all the force his exoskeleton-jacked legs would offer.
The rebound almost snapped Sarah's neck. Even the trooper had misjudged the force of his push. He catapulted out of the water with Sarah wrapped in his arms. High in the air, Sarah just caught the screams of the bathers surrounding them. Then they fell. The whirling spiral ripped Sarah from the trooper's grasp. The two crashed back into the water, but this time, she was free.
She watched with dazed wonder as the trooper sank. He sprang off the bottom again, gunning for Sarah. She thrashed and the trooper missed a clean grab. Instead, his shoulder plate hit her in a sidelong impact that ripped any remaining air from her lungs. The trooper continued his arc. He sailed into the air and out of the massive pool, landing in a heap amid sunbathing tourists.
The blow stunned Sarah into cold shock. She sank, even as the flow of blood from her throat eased. Darkness edged in, reality dimming around her. No! This wasn't how she'd go. Not her—not without a fight. Every fiber of her being railed against the darkness reaching out for her. Maybe it was the internal thrust of energy, maybe just the implant finishing its post-op reboot, but she found herself able to flow-jump.
She had no address, no lock point—only one place she knew—one place the flow's tide would take her. The one place she had promised never to return to. Ryan's flow-link and the blue water enveloping her meshed. She thrashed through both and screamed into the void.
—Ryan!
QUEEN MAUD LAND, ANTARCTICA
The razor line of blue sky extended across the horizon, cut only by the jagged fangs of granite before him. Ryan Laing sat on a jutting pinnacle of rock, suspended out over the overhanging face he'd just climbed. Above him, the summit ridge loomed. Shaped by ravenous winds, dry snow had formed into impossible fins, wild flights of fancy made real.
Laing gazed out, lost in the view. He'd lived vertical for days, unwill
ing to slip back into the world below. One more night on the rock, then he'd resupply.
Lost in this world, his dreams found weight, imagination augmenting reality. Ancient Norse myths cycled through his fantasies. He dreamed, eyes open, of Fenris, the wolf that would usher in the end of the world. Laing sat on the wolf god's fang, its flank sealed under the ice. With the slip of its chain, the wolf's mouth would snap shut and it would rise—drawing the world to the end times. To Ragnarok.
A speck of movement pulled Ryan from his dream. Below him, in the valley of white. People coming. He looked away. This was better—living cool and free. Living liminal.
Then, the iced peace within him splintered. Laing's mind exploded—a white-hot flash that sent him reeling. He tried to comprehend the pure, raw magnitude of the incursion. He tried to push it away. The drones within him bristled and stilled, bristled and stilled. A single word rose and crashed through him.
—Ryan!
As quickly as it came, the transmission degraded to white static. Laing slumped to his side, gasping. The scene around him regained resolution.
—Sarah?
No reply.
It was her. Had to be, but something was wrong with her tone—there was less hate in it, and more fear. He slipped into the flow and tried to reengage the link, but it fizzled—as if signal jammed. Worry caught him up, and maybe guilt. As if he didn't have enough already. Responsibility for Sarah's slide into body mod weighed heavily on Ryan. Maybe she would have found another means to turtle out the world. But she had chosen to follow his path.
He probed the link further, but it was stone dead.
—Fuck you, Sarah.
He knew she wasn't receiving, but the anger gripped him. He was done with the guilt, the responsibility. Done with her. So he was a coward. So what? He'd earned the right. If she wanted to sever their link permanently, fine with him.
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