Deus Ex - Icarus Effect (7 page)

parade ground. Other times, they were burned things, shapes of red and black flesh on charred bones.

They didn't blame him or forgive him. They just watched.

Sometimes, in those moments when he couldn't be sure if he was dreaming it or if he was seeing the real thing through a veil of painkillers, they

would be in the room with him. Sitting on the beds, smoking a cigarette, sipping from a cup. And the shadow was with them. In the room,

watching him like they did.

Saxon had lost men before. He wasn't a stranger to it. But he wasn't used to the idea of being a survivor, of being the only survivor. It gnawed

at him.

One day he drifted back to the surface of consciousness and found the shadow sitting in the chair next to his bed. Saxon knew he was real

because he could smell him. The shadow smelled like rich, strong tobacco, and the scent triggered a sense-memory in the depths of Ben Saxon's

mind. He remembered being a boy, maybe five or six years old, his grandfather taking him through the streets of London past impossibly old

buildings, to a gilt-edged hole-in-the-wall shop, all paneled with mirrors and advertisements for cigars. A man in there, selling packets of raw

pipe tobacco, and the strange exotic textures that smelled like the air of distant lands.

The memory evaporated and Saxon blinked. The shadow was a man, a few years his senior, but intense and muscled, with an angular face like

carved wood. Rugged, handsome after a fashion ... but hard with it. Saxon sensed that about him more than anything, like a ghost aura. The

shadow was a soldier and a killer.

"You ..." he managed, licking dry lips. "You're the one ... pulled me from the creek bed."

That earned him a nod. "You would have died" said the other man, the trace of an Eastern accent threaded through his words. "That would

have been a waste."

Saxon eased himself up a little, blinking away the last of the fog from his chemical sleep. "Thanks."

"I did it because it was the right thing to do," he went on, fixing him with an intense look, his right eye a striking silver-blue augmentation.

"And, it seems, because fate deemed it right."

Saxon shook his head. "Never believed in that stuff myself."

"No?" The man drew out a cigarette, offered one that Saxon refused, and then proceeded to light his own with an ornate petrol lighter. "I am a

great believer in the notion of 'right place, right time, right man,' Mr. Saxon." He took a long drag. "And that is you, at this moment."

Saxon noticed the man's arms for the first time; they were like images from old medical textbooks, skinless limbs packed with dense bunches of

artificial musculature over steel bones. Top-of-the-range, mil-spec cyberlimbs. For a moment, he measured himself against the stranger,

wondering if he could take him on. Saxon concluded that at best, they might be evenly matched.

He looked away, glancing around the ward. They were alone. "Who are you?" He studied the man for a moment. He was wearing a nondescript

set of black fatigues completely bereft of any identification tags or insignia. He was also unarmed ... but then he showed a kind of careful poise

that made Saxon suspect he didn't need a gun or a knife to be lethal. "Are you Belltower?"

"I have a far wider remit than Belltower Associates." He smiled and exhaled. "You wouldn't know the name of my ... group. And that's exactly

how we like it to be. I suppose you could call me a freelancer, if you really felt the need to hang a label."

Deep black. Saxon had crossed paths with men like this before, in his time with the SAS. Soldiers whose missions were so far off-book that they

didn't exist on any official documentation, groups that simply did not show up on the radar. He had to admit, he was intrigued. If a unit like that

was operating in the Australian conflict zone, what did it mean? Was this man even fighting for the same side as him?

"My name is Jaron Namir," he said, at length. "We share a similar past, you and I. Both of us have worked under, shall we say, special

conditions for our respective homelands."

The accent suddenly clicked with Saxon and he placed it. Israeli. Which makes him, what? Former Mossad? Someone who got out of there

before the war with the United Arab Front flattened everything?

Saxon tried to keep the tension he was feeling from showing. This man knew who he was, and he'd revealed key information about himself, or

at least laid out some false trail; that meant there was a good chance Namir never intended to let Saxon live.

"I wonder, would you let me make an observation?" Namir went on. He asked the question with all the certainty of a man who knew he would

not be refused.

Saxon watched him carefully. "Feel free."

"You're wasting your potential here. Belltower offers a good career for men like us, I don't dispute that. But the chance to really accomplish

something? To make a difference, to bring order to a chaotic world? Belltower can't do that."

A chill ran through the soldier's veins. "You're trying to recruit me?"

Namir studied him. "I read the after-action report on the failure of Operation Rainbird. You survived against very long odds, Mr. Saxon. I am

quite impressed." He stubbed out the cigarette. "I could use someone with your skill set. I find myself a man down after a recent incident, and

you make a good candidate. Interested?"

"Maybe if you told me who the hell you are."

"I told you, the name would not—"

"Try me."

Namir gave a shrug. "I am field commander of a non-aligned special operations unit known as the Tyrants. We are an elite, independent, self

financing group dedicated to maintaining global stability through covert means."

"A rogue cell?" Saxon frowned. Like any other, the spec ops community had its own share of urban legends, and in his time he'd heard stories of

so-called rogues, operators who had dropped off the grid and gone into business for themselves; but the idea had always seemed a little too far

off the beam to be truthful. Saxon had never believed anyone could run alone out there in the thick for too long, not without backup. "Tyrants ...

That name doesn't exactly have the ring of righteousness to it."

"I beg to differ," said the other man. "The true meaning of the word stems from the Greek turannos. It was only later the name gathered its

negative connotations ... In its original form, the term describes those who take power by their own means, instead of being awarded it through

birthright or elective. That is what we do, Mr. Saxon. We take power from those who abuse it. We restore the balance."

"Out of the goodness of your heart?"

"Belltower's failures cost you the lives of the men and women in your unit," Namir said, his tone becoming grave. "Are you really ready to go

back to them, knowing that? Be honest with me, Mr. Saxon. Are you ever going to trust your employers again?"

Saxon closed his eyes, and for a second he saw the ghosts. "I have a responsibility. I signed a contract..."

"One that is near to ending." Namir made a dismissive gesture. "We can deal with that. If only a piece of paper is stopping you, believe me, I

can make that go away." When Saxon didn't answer, he got up and straightened his fatigue jacket. "This offer won't come again," he said. "And

if you decide to go looking for us after the fact, I warn you ... there will be consequences."

Saxon looked down at his hands, one scarred flesh, the other scratched steel. Everything Namir had said about trust, about Belltower—all of it

was as if he had plucked the thoughts straight from his mind. Each day that had passed here, each day he sat surrounded by his ghosts, every

passing hour was eroding something deep inside him, and in its place it left only a cold hollow. That, and a slow-burning, directionless desire to

claim a blood cost back from the people who had murdered Kano, Duarte, and the others.

"We can give you what you need, Ben," said Namir. "The Tyrants help their own."

When Saxon said the next words, they seemed to come from a very great distance. "I'm in."

CHAPTER THREE

Pier 86—New York City—United States of America

Kelso pulled the black microfleece hoodie tighter over her head, grimacing into the cold wind sweeping in from the Hudson River, her nerves

ringing like struck chimes. She moved like she had purpose, ignoring the urge to look over her shoulder, negotiating the debris and cargo

containers placed across the width of the pier in what seemed a casual fashion; in fact, the junk had been arranged to provide bottlenecks to

stop anyone from rushing the big ship moored at the 86 from the shore. In the bleak light of the evening, the vessel was a wall of gray steel

curving up and over her head, frozen there like a wave cast in metal. Chains of fairy lights hung down from rusting gantries, flapping in the

breeze, and while the upper deck was mostly dark, she could hear the sounds of people running around up there, and the occasional crunch of

metal on metal. They had a regulation-size basketball court made of scrap iron and chain link on the deck—she'd seen it in the distance as she

crossed the bridge over 12th Avenue—and there was a game on, lit by bio-lume sticks and fires burning in oil drums.

Ahead she glimpsed the name of the venerable old vessel. Image patterning software in her Sarif optics picked out the letters defaced but still

standing clear of the go-ganger tags painted over them: Intrepid.

Anna kept walking, approaching the covered gantry that extended up into the hull. Once upon a time, this old warship had sailed the world,

projecting American sea power in the Pacific, Cuba, and Vietnam; fate and rich men had saved her from becoming a billion razor blades, and for

a while the aging aircraft carrier had stood at dock, hosting stories of old wars, even serving her nation once again when the towers came down.

But that was almost thirty years dead and gone, and recession and stock crashes had sent the old warhorse into darkness. The relic planes that

had once stood on her decks were gone, sold off to collectors, and the ship itself had been left to rust. But like so many things, the people at the

fringes of the city had found a use for her.

Anna had paid enough bribes to get the word of the day that let her on board. From the aft of the hangar deck, the sounds of a hammer-speed

DJ resonated down the echoing hull. Between here and there, the place they called "the wet market" blossomed like a multicolored fungus,

dozens of makeshift stalls selling pirated datasofts, old tech, and recovered cyberware alongside oil-can cook plates crackling with hot fat and

pungent foods from India, the Caribbean, or the African Federation. There was no law at the 86, but the New York Police Department tended

to let things lie, providing that the residents kept themselves to themselves and made sure that any bodies washed up inside New Jersey's

jurisdiction.

Anna skirted past the marketplace and found a corroded set of ladders that led up to the next level. The corridor she emerged in was gloomy. It

smelled of rust and seawater. Following lines of peeling lume tape, she ascended again and emerged somewhere near the bow. A large section of

the forward deck had been cut away and in its place there were a couple of jury-rigged geo-domes made of smart fabric. The sea smell gave

way to the faint whiff of ozone and battery acid.

Inside the dome there was a parade of cowboy electronics; server frames modified like hot rods, chugging gasoline generators and fat trunks of

cable snaking from fans of solar panels or military-issue satellite antennae. Monitors and holoscreens lit the space with cold blue illumination,

and here and there, faces rendered ghost-white glanced up at her from laptops or gamer pits.