Deus Ex: Black Light (27 page)

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.”

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 strings 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?”

“
On Fort Street heading east. A couple of miles from where you are…
” There was a pause as the hacker suddenly caught on. “
Wait. I can get into the traffic grid… I could reroute it, maybe for a brief detour…
”

Jensen vaulted up from his seat as the train pulled into the crossover station at Cobo Center. “Bring it to me,” he snapped, getting angry shouts as he barged through the workers clustered by the doors and sprinted across the platform.

* * *

“What the hell is wrong with these signals?” Ignoring the atonal chorus of horns sounding from the cars lined up behind him before the crossroads, the driver leaned forward and looked up at the traffic lights hanging over the street. They remained resolutely stuck on red, just as they had for the last two minutes, and showed no signs of shifting.

The other paramedic sitting across from him in the ambulance’s cab gave an airy shrug. “First that ‘Road Closed’ sign pops up outta nowhere, then this?” She looked away. “I dunno, at this rate we ain’t ever getting to the end of our shift.”

A sedan pulled out from the queue behind them, rolled past and jumped the lights, clearly unwilling to keep waiting. The driver got a slew of invective from the woman in the sedan, and then it was gone – but movement caught his eye as a man in a dark long coat stepped purposefully off the curb and came right up to the side door.

Before the driver could react, the door was wrenched open and the man in the coat raised his arm. A black blade grew out of his knuckles. “Out,” he said simply.

“Oh shit!” The driver threw up his hands and scrambled out of the vehicle, his shift partner doing the same. “Look, man, just take the rig, okay? We don’t want any trouble—”

The man with the blade didn’t wait to listen to his words. He leapt into the seat vacated by the driver and stepped on the gas, peeling out in a screech of tires.