Deus Ex: Icarus Effect

by Swallow, James

  As if on cue, the sniper called out to him. "Hey, limey! Thanks for the help, man. No matter how this plays out now, you've done the job for us! I'm gonna ice you, leave you here for the cops ... Namir gets the group to finesse things a little, and by the evening news cycle, it'll be like you pulled the trigger yourself."

  He edged along one of the shelves. "You reckon? You missed the mark, mate. Taggart's still breathing!"

  "Doesn't matter!" he shot back. "We got a contingency for everything, Saxon. Don't you get that? The plan goes ahead, no matter how much the little people try to screw with it..."

  Another bullet ripped through the shelves close to Saxon's head and he ducked. The son-of-a-bitch had a T-wave scope, peering through the cover. Unless he could get out from under, close the distance, nothing the soldier could do would keep the sniper from making the hit sooner or later.

  He glanced up. The balcony overhead was a few feet from the top of the tallest bookshelf; he could make it, but the moment he moved, Hardesty would cut him down. He needed a distraction.

  Saxon leapt up onto the top of a study desk and the sniper saw him, swinging his rifle around to draw a bead. Saxon raised the Diamondback and squeezed the trigger; as good a shot as he was, even with the aim point enhancements in his optics, Hardesty was in three-quarter cover and essentially untouchable.

  The massive crystal chandelier above him was a far larger, far easier target to hit. A great bowl of frosted glass and brass workings suspended from a metal chain, it dated back to the opening of the Palais almost a century earlier. Saxon's shot destroyed it utterly, the fragile antique exploding under the impact. Hardesty cried out in alarm as the chandelier came apart and crashed down around him.

  Glass pealed as it shattered and collapsed, and Saxon used the moment to his advantage. Discarding the spent, useless revolver, he rocked back on his augmented legs and applied power to a sprinting leap that took him scrambling up the bookcase, careworn old volumes tumbling to the tiled floor as he kicked them free. Reaching the top of the stack, he swung for the rail running the length of the balcony and snagged it with his cyberarm. The metal fingers locked on and he hauled himself up with a hissing grunt of effort. He was rolling over and down as a bullet strike cut a divot of marble from the balcony at his side, sending chips of stone scattering like shrapnel.

  Hardesty dashed from his cover, changing position, seeking a better angle. The long sniper rifle wavered at his hip, a spear made of black iron.

  It was exactly the move Saxon knew he would make; the man wasn't one to take a fight on the terms that were offered to him, that was his weakness. Hardesty always wanted an engagement his way, and sometimes that wasn't how things worked out. Saxon, by contrast, had learned through hard experience how to play the hand he was dealt.

  He gave a book cart a savage kick and it spun across the floor, cutting off Hardesty's escape route; then he mantled a desk and came diving down on the man, leading with his augmented arm.

  Hardesty brought up the sniper rifle to block him and Saxon punched the gun in the breech, hearing a satisfying crunch as the mechanism inside broke under the impact. He followed through and brought the other man to the ground, sweeping in with a punch that knocked Hardesty's sunglasses from his narrow, hairless face.

  Saxon forced the weight of his forearm across Hardesty's throat and pressed down with all the power he could muster. He heard a strangled yelp die in the other man's mouth, and the sniper flailed, bringing up his hands in what for a second looked like a gesture of surrender, palms open, fingers spread.

  Then the shape of Hardesty's right hand bifurcated and reassembled itself, little finger and thumb sliding back, middle fingers opening in a fan until the hand resembled some kind of strange insect; at the same moment, a slot across the palm of Hardesty's left hand grew a wide, flat dagger-tip of sharpened steel.

  He slammed the palm-blade into Saxon's gut, but the jacket protecting him deflected the first few stabs, the tip skipping off the articulated panels of armor embedded in it. Hardesty snapped the spider-hand around Saxon's throat and contracted it. He stabbed again, and this time the blade plunged through into the flesh of Saxon's belly.

  Pain shot through the soldier in a hot, burning surge, and he let it drive him. Saxon's free hand scrambled for purchase and caught Hardesty as he tried to twist the blade. The sniper pushed back and the men shifted, staggering, caught in a lethal embrace.

  Saxon's fingers slipped on the palm-blade, his own blood preventing him from getting a solid grip; at the same time, Hardesty was inexorably tightening his own hold on the soldier. Warning icons flicked into view at the corner of his cone of vision, projected directly onto his retina by his implanted health monitor. Oxygen levels were dropping; he was getting dizzy. Had he still had organic eyes, Saxon would have been on the verge of a gray-out.

  "You won't win," spat his opponent. "I will fucking gut you!"

  Holding on to Hardesty was like trying to keep his hands on a snake, the other man writhing and shifting, doing everything he could to break free of the soldier's grip. Saxon had the strength but not the agility to match him; and if the sniper disengaged, he wouldn't be able to close to combat range again.

  Finish it now, he told himself, before it's too late.

  With a roar of effort, Saxon dropped his cyberarm and snagged Hardesty's wrist. Twisting his grip violently, he bent the other man back and yanked the hand with the palm-blade against the direction of the joint. The ball socket squealed and snapped back, forcing the dagger-tip up and away.

  Hardesty's dead eyes widened as he suddenly understood what Saxon was going to do. For a moment, they pressed against each other, strength against strength; but it was a fight that the American was never going to win. Saxon had the weight, the power, the stamina.

  Ignoring the pain singing from his knife wound, Saxon locked his gaze with the other man and slowly, relentlessly, forced the blade into the base of Hardesty's jaw, jamming it up though the roof of his mouth in a spatter of blood. The spider-hand juddered and snapped open, and a flood of air filled Saxon's starved lungs.

  Hardesty tried to speak, but all he could do was emit a froth of pink fluid from his lips. With a last grunt of exertion, Saxon shoved him away and the sniper spun backward, clipping the edge of the balcony. His body tumbled over the rail and fell to the marble below, landing in a heap.

  At the far end of the library, the main doors slammed open and smoke grenades entered the space, trailing mist behind them. Figures in combat armor moved behind the smokescreen, the thin red threads of targeting lasers sweeping ahead of them. Saxon heard voices calling out commands in French.

  He grimaced at the pain from the cut and ran for the window; beyond were the grounds and a mission as yet incomplete.

  Location Unknown

  When the cell door opened again, Anna vowed she would be ready; but to her horror it wasn't Jaron Namir who slid open the metal hatch. She found herself staring at the bigger man she'd seen in the corridor before, the one with the buzz cut and the thuggish swagger. He surveyed the small chamber with a predatory eye; Anna saw that the scarring down one side of his face was the puckered tracery of burn damage. His jawline seemed off somehow—until she realized that his jaw was actually a prosthetic of plastic pseudoflesh. She wondered what could have damaged a man so brutally; but he carried his ugliness like a badge of honor. The mercenary wanted people to see the mutilation, as if it were an act of defiance.

  His nostrils flared around the brass bull-ring through his nose, and he grinned, ducking slightly as he entered the room. "Lawrence Barrett, at your service," he said in a mocking tone, spinning out his drawl in parody of a Southern gentleman. "Pardon me if I'm the bearer of some bad news."

  It was all Anna could do not to back away as he approached. She still felt woozy and unsteady on her feet. Her hands gathered behind her back and she watched him come closer, waiting for the right moment, fighting down her panic.

  Barrett cocked his head. "Your v
alue has taken a dive. Seems your pal Saxon didn't hold up his end of the deal." He grunted in amusement. "He gave you up. How about that?"

  Despite herself, Anna felt a sudden, sharp jolt of emotion. She tried to ignore it. She was on her own here; she'd been on her own all along, from the very start...

  "I know you," Barrett said, studying her. "Yeah. Washington. The Dansky kill. You were there, right?"

  Anna's blood ran cold, her thoughts snapping back through the reports she'd read and reread about the incident in Georgetown, the data on the faceless figures who had ambushed the limo. He was one of the killers, part of the same team as Hermann.

  Barrett kept talking. "Couldn't let it go, could you? Why'd you women always do that, huh? Never leave well enough alone?" He was looming over her now, close enough that she could smell his breath.

  "What... do you want?" she managed.

  He showed her a cruel smile. "Namir reckons you know some things. You wouldn't talk to him." Anna swallowed, her throat tight with the pain where the other Tyrant had held her as he questioned her about Janus. "I'll bet you're gonna talk to me, though," Barrett went on. "Once we get better acquainted, 'course."

  She knew what would come next. Barrett bent down slightly, reaching up with the heavy, thick digits of his cyberarm, closing the distance between their faces; and that was when she hit him.

  Anna put every ounce of force she could muster into the swing from her balled fist, bringing it around in a fast haymaker. Even as she threw the punch, she was stepping into him, snatching at the bull-head belt buckle at his waist. She had only once chance to strike; with Barrett's heavily muscled, augmented frame, if he landed any kind of return blow on her she would be done.

  Her fist hit him on the cheekbone and slid up to strike Barrett in the eye. The brass sobriety coin, held between her index and forefinger, ripped across his skin and dug into him, the blunt edge ripping at the scarred flesh. Pain ignited in a dull, burning shock through her knuckles, and the force of the landed punch was so much that she felt her thumb dislocate behind the coin. Anna followed through by slamming her kneecap into Barrett's crotch; she was rewarded by a concussive grunt from the big man.

  He flailed, clawing at his face and the blood streaming from his eye. "Damn, bitch!" Barrett struck out blindly and she was almost felled by a black metal hand that snatched at empty air near her head.

  Anna threw herself past the mercenary toward the still-open door to the cell, but Barrett was faster than she had anticipated, and he was turning, reaching for her.

  He grabbed the trailing hood of her top and snagged it, pulling hard. For a second, Anna was yanked off balance, but then she wriggled free and slipped out of the hoodie, half running, half stumbling out of the cell.

  Barrett made a wordless noise of anger and came after her, his face lit with fury. She caught a glimpse of his expression and knew that the man would beat her to broken if he got hold of her.

  Anna slammed the heel of her fist into the door control, and it slid shut—but not fast enough to prevent Barrett from getting his forearm through after her. The cyberlimb thrashed right and left, bending in angles that would have been unnatural for a human arm. "I'm gonna make you pay for that, you cop whore!" he shouted. The hatch jammed in place, and she could hear Barrett snarling as he tried to force it open. "You got nowhere to go!"

  She ignored him and broke into a run down the narrow, windowless corridor, frantically searching for anything that could tell her where she was, and more important, how to get away. The corridor split, and one branch ended in a steep metal staircase. Anna took it, two steps at a time, and felt a faint vibration through the frame, like humming engines.

  Then she was emerging on the next level, a wider corridor lit by bright daylight through wide rectangular windows. Anna lurched toward the windows, shaking her head to force herself to concentrate, fighting off the last dregs of the sedative in her system.

  The floor shifted slightly beneath Anna's feet, and the abrupt understanding of exactly where she was hit her like a shock of cold water. Out the windows, she could see the blue-green of Lake Geneva ranging away, on the far shore the Rue de Lausanne highway and the suburbs north of the city. She was on a boat, racing away from Geneva at a steady rate of knots.

  Anna glanced around, desperately trying to map this new information onto her current predicament. The vessel was a large one, an opulent three-hundred-foot megayacht, one of the many that circled the lake in the employ of the wealthy who made the resorts between here and Montreux their homes. The smoky-colored sandalwood paneling and elegant brass details all around conflicted sharply with the stark steel and gray of the lower decks where the Tyrants had been holding her.

  If she stayed here, they would kill her. Perhaps not at first, not until they had been able to wring every last morsel of information from her, no matter how trivial; but her death was certain if she did not escape. With the boat, they could take her anywhere, north to some isolated location in the Swiss mountains, south into France, or perhaps nowhere, adrift on the lake and isolated from any prying eyes until they decided to pitch her overboard ...

  Clutching her injured hand, Anna hurried toward the stern of the yacht, alert for any sign of danger. She still had the brass coin, gripped in her clawed, bloody hand.

  A sound from belowdeck reached her as she moved away; a howling snarl of effort and the shriek of a mechanism forced open against its tolerances.

  She broke into a run.

  Ariana Park—Geneva—Switzerland

  A four-wheel ATV veered off the pathway as Saxon reached the Space Memorial, the Swiss civil police officer in the saddle leaning into the turn to bring the quad bike back toward his target. Riding in the jump seat behind him, a second lawman brought up a pump-action MAO shotgun and fired twice at the fleeing mercenary.

  Saxon heard the low hum of the thick tangler gel-rounds as they passed near him. The semifluid was a biodegradable hyperglue compound, a nonlethal man-stopper that adhered to anything, and a single hit would be enough to arrest any plans of escape he might have.

  He dove into a deliberate tumble, letting the curve of the shallow hill roll him down and away from the metal spar of the memorial sculpture. The ATV came after him, the rider following Saxon over the blind rise.

  The Swiss officer met a strike from nowhere as Saxon suddenly reversed his motion and came running back to meet them as they crested the hill. His powerful cyberleg hit the rider in the chest and took him from the saddle. Uncontrolled, the quad bike spun out and pitched the cop with the shotgun into the grass.

  Saxon grabbed the rider and dragged him into a sleeper hold. Using his knee to pressure the man against his grip, in seconds his target had blacked out and Saxon was running again.

  The other policeman was on his feet, working the slide to pump a new round into the shotgun; Saxon heard him calling out over the police band, requesting backup. He was on him before he could fire, the two men colliding in a crunch of impact that drew a howl of pain from the other man. For a moment, they wrestled over command of the shotgun, but then Saxon got the angle and shoved hard, slamming the butt of the weapon into the officer's faceplate. It shattered and he cried out again.

  Saxon snatched the shotgun and used the gel-round to put him down; the fat plug of bright pink resin frothed and foamed, expanding into a gooey, stringy mass that only a tailored solvent could dissolve. The lawman swore in a torrent of violent, gutter French to Saxon's back as he made for the stuttering ATV, where it lay upended on the lawns.

  The quad bike was still operational, and Saxon flipped it, gunning the motor. As he set off down the slope, the vu-phone in his tac vest buzzed. He slapped at the device, opening the channel. "What have you got, Janus?"

  The reply was relayed to the mastoid comm. "A possibility. You must understand the situation is fluid and there's a lot of virtual traffic in this quadrant—"

  "Save it," he snapped, leaning into the handlebars, fighting to control the pain from the
wound in his gut. "The Swiss cops are throwing a net over this city and I don't have long before they take me down. I need answers now!"

  "I understand'," said the hacker. "Cross-referencing the code name 'Icarus' with known Illuminati holdings and surrogates yielded a large number of returnsbut only one of consequence. Statistically, it's your best shot at locating Anna Kelso, if she's still alive."

  Saxon took the ATV across a service road and out across the railroad running parallel with the parkland. "Go on." In the distance, he could heard the rattle of approaching police helicopters.

  "A vessel, registered to the DeBeers Foundation, a private yacht owned by a corporate interest Juggernaut has long suspected to be an Illuminati front."

  "Icarus is a boat? Namir must be using it as a secondary command post..."

  "Exactly. And it's currently five miles from your present location, heading northeast at four knots. I'm sending you an image now."

  Saxon toggled the brake and the quad bike skidded to a halt. "How the hell am I going to get out there?"

  When Janus spoke again, there was a hard edge under the hacker's words. "Listen to me. I can't help you with this anymore. I've already gone well beyond my own ... limits in order to assist you. There's a marina on the far side of the botanical gardens, close to your location. I suggest you appropriate some waterborne transport there and attempt to intercept the Icarus."

  "What limits?" Saxon demanded, with a wince. "You know who these people are, Janus. You know what they are capable of. You can't back off now. You're in too deep. We all are."

  The line was silent for a long moment, and Saxon began to wonder if the hacker had cut the connection and gone dark for the last time; but then the response came again. "I have done questionable things." The strange non-voice wavered, static lacing the tones, pushing them back and forth between male and female, high and low. "It's disturbing."

  "I know what you mean," said Saxon with feeling.

  "I'm trying to make amends. I don't know if I can do any more ..."