Deus Ex: Black Light (31 page)

“No, it’s not—” began Kastillo, but he never got to finish his sentence. Without warning, the hatch leading from the rear end of the cargo wagon suddenly distorted in its frame as a massive impact slammed into it from the outside.

Chen and Kastillo went for their weapons by reflex, just as the hatch broke free of its mountings and was torn away. Ducking to stride through the low entrance came a massive augmented man, with unblinking crimson eyes glaring out of a dead, immobile face. Other figures were advancing up behind the invader across the flatbed cars beyond, but Chen only registered them as fleeting glimpses of shadow.

He raised his revolver and fired, just as Kastillo pulled his FR-27 flechette rifle to hip height and did the same.

The cyborg moved fast for his size, heavy footfalls clanging against the deck of the train car as he deliberately crashed through a support rack, sending containers spinning to the floor. Chen was sure he landed a round in the intruder’s chest, but it might have been a feather for all the effect it had. “Contact, contact!” he shouted, activating his infolink. “We’ve been boarded!” Static hissed back at him.

Kastillo was closer to the intruder, and he tried to put shots into the hulking cyborg’s head, but the rounds went wide. Then their attacker was on the agent, ripping the rifle out of his grip and smashing it to pieces against the wall. With his other hammer-sized fist, he slammed Kastillo back against a window, the toughened glass breaking with the force of the impact. Blood streaming from his nostrils, the agent reeled, dazed and disoriented by the powerful blow.

Chen couldn’t see Vande; was she still in the carriage with them? He had no time to look around for her, as the cyborg turned his attention in the tech’s direction, flexing his thick fingers as he stormed toward him.

The revolver bucked in Chen’s grip as he loosed off more shots that did as little to halt the intruder’s advance as the first one had. Whatever dermal armor the attacker had implanted in him was as tough as tank plate.

“
Trottel
,” snarled the cyborg from the side of his mouth. The word was foreign to Chen, but he could tell by the almost-sneer on that dead-eyed face that it was one of contempt. There was a black-and-steel blur as a fist came out of nowhere and the cyborg punched Chen so hard he left the deck and flew back with the force of impact.

The tech felt his ribs shatter, and the searing pain as jagged spars of broken bone pierced his lung. Tumbling to the floor, agony washed over Chen as he tried to drag himself away, back toward the next car. “Vande!” he cried. “I need some help here!”

The mech glowered at him, then turned away, stalking back to where Kastillo was slumped semiconscious against the wall. Other intruders in black anti-scan oversuits were filing in through the entrance.

The cyborg’s hand opened wider than it should have, fingers extending to envelope Kastillo’s face. Then it tightened, crushing the bones in his skull with deliberate, exacting slowness.

How did they make it on board without any of us knowing?
Chen forced himself not to surrender to fear, trying desperately to grasp the sudden shift in events.
How did they find us?
The tech tasted blood in his mouth as a cold wash of dread reached deep into him.
This is a setup! We were sold out…

Then Chen felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up to see Vande standing over him with a silver pistol in her hand. “This isn’t going to end well,” she said.

* * *

The third car down from the locomotive was dead center of the train, and by Jensen’s reckoning, the most secure place to load the cargo of proscribed augmentations. He shouldered open the door at the forward end of the carriage and saw the stacks of familiar black hard case containers, the same ones he’d seen at the manufacturing plant in Milwaukee Junction. Each was held in place by magnetic locking clamps that would keep the cargo secure until it reached its destination.

The Sarif Industries logo was on every one of them, a mute testament to David Sarif’s endless desire to tinker with human enhancement technology. Jensen wondered about what had motivated the man. Sarif had always been an enigma, determined to chart his own course, outwardly a man with ethics, a genius with principles… Or had that all been for show? Jensen never once doubted that his former employer
believed
that he was doing what was right – but it seemed less important to Sarif what others thought of his intentions. His vision of an improved humanity, of a world where people could determine their own evolution, had been seductive in its own way… until you looked down into the gritty details and started asking the hard questions. If you could make a person run faster, think quicker, live longer, it wasn’t difficult to make them more dangerous as well.

And David Sarif was not the kind of man who would put aside a compelling technological idea just because it could have applications for war as well as peace. Jensen hesitated, looking down at the mechanical hands that had taken the place of the flesh-and-blood ones shattered two years earlier. He had never been given the choice, the chance to decide if he wanted to remain a flawed and broken human or become augmented with systems that had not only remade him, but forged him into a walking weapon. Not for the first time, a bitter kernel of resentment toward his ex-boss burned in his chest.

Jensen moved on; it would never be the time or the place to dwell on that. The moment of clarity he so badly wanted was still beyond him, still out of reach.

The hatch at the far end of the cargo wagon hissed open on its hydraulics and he snapped back to the moment, bringing the Hurricane TMP-18 to his shoulder in a firing stance. Jensen heard the low-pitched thud of a Shok-Tac stun grenade detonating, then the wild clatter of bullets bouncing off metal. Before the door was fully open, he saw two people come rushing through the gap, wreaths of cordite smoke gathering in with them.

In front was one of the operatives he’d seen before at the TF29 staging post on the barge, the field technician with the cocky smirk. The man wasn’t smirking now. Pale and bleeding, he was moving in great pain. Shoving him through the gap in the door was Jarreau’s cold-eyed second-in-command, the blonde woman he called Vande. She had a gun in her hand and a clinical, determined look on her face.

Vande hit the control to close the door again before Jensen could make out who was coming after them, and then she barked a command at the tech. “Get it done!”

“I…” The tech –
Chen, that was his name
– coughed wetly and spat blood. “Ah shit, I don’t think I can—”

Vande came to him and poked him in the face with her silver-plated semi-automatic, cutting him off in mid-speech. “I gave you an order! Do it now or I will put you down before they get the chance!”

Chen nodded weakly, staggering away to a control panel on the wall, dragging an override module from a pouch on his bloodstained gear vest.

Jensen took a breath.
What the hell is happening here?
Every other Task Force agent he had seen on the train up until this moment was dead, and his fear that he had arrived too late to warn Jarreau’s people seemed to have been borne out – but now here was the team leader’s second, threatening one of her own men at gunpoint.

His thoughts raced. From the moment Vande had entered the cell on the barge, Jensen had been wary of the Interpol agent. At first he thought it was natural animosity spinning out of their first encounter on the roof of the Sarif manufacturing plant, but now he was wondering if there was more to it. Whereas Jarreau had been willing to give Jensen the benefit of the doubt, Vande had made no secret of the fact she disliked him on sight, and pressed for his arrest. He never got the sense it was a
good cop, bad cop
thing. Vande’s contempt was the real deal.

But was it something
other
than a gut feeling on her part? Did she really know what he represented, what he’d done?

The replay Jensen had seen in Wilder’s memory buffer confirmed without question that TF29 had been penetrated by the Illuminati, and he knew how they worked. The shadowy cabal wouldn’t just have people at the highest levels, they would place their agents on the ground as well.
They’ll have a traitor in the room
.

He stepped out from behind the racks of black crates, holding the machine pistol on Vande. “Nobody move.”

The woman saw him and spun around, drawing a second pistol by reflex. Vande’s eyes widened as she recognized Jensen’s face. “
Verdomme
…” The momentary surprise switched to annoyance and she pivoted, one gun aiming toward Jensen, the other in the direction of Chen and the door. “How are you here?” Vande demanded. “You’re a part of this? I should have known!”

“Guns down!” he snapped.

Vande swore at him and shook her head, the air of wintry calm she had shown back in Detroit evaporating into real anger. Her gaze flicked to the technician. “
Chen
! Do it! Access the lockdown,
now
!”

“No!” Jensen took a step toward Chen, but Vande blocked his way.

Still holding one of the guns on him, she fixed Jensen with a hard glare. “Don’t test me. Come any closer and I will ruin that pretty head of yours.”

Chen coughed again and then the device in his hand let out a loud chime. “Got… it…” He wheezed and spat. “Activating…”

Jensen expected to see the mag-locks holding the SI crates release, but instead Chen’s actions activated a different system. Armored metal slats dropped down over the windows and restraint clamps clunked into place around the access hatches at either end of the cargo wagon. Vande hadn’t ordered the tech to open the containers; she’d ordered him to seal them inside the train car.

Chen’s labored breathing was coming in ragged, panting heaves and he dragged himself across to the far side of the compartment. He almost collapsed atop a low crate beneath one of the shuttered windows, giving Jensen a bleary-eyed look. “This guy?” he gasped. “You don’t have… a ticket for this trip.”

Heavy blows echoed on the other side of the sealed hatchway, quickly followed by gunshots ringing off the metal door. Then there was silence, and Vande dared to take a step toward it, listening intently. “They’ll be through as soon as they figure out how to bust in here without blowing the train off the track.” Her guns remained steady.

“I took out a team in the front carriages,” began Jensen. “They had a laser cutting rig. Odds are your friends on the other side of that hatch will have one as well.”

“My
what
?” Vande’s eyes narrowed. “You appear out of thin air with a weapon in our faces and you’re implying I’m in on this attack?” She grimaced. “I have shot people for lesser insults than that.”

“It’s true.” Chen gave a weak nod. “I’ve seen it.”

“I came here to warn you,” said Jensen. “After what happened at the airport, I uncovered a new lead… a woman called Jenna Thorne. Know the name?” He subtly activated his CASIE implant, using the aug’s built-in lie detector to monitor the two TF29 agents for any sign of recognition. The software registered nothing. “She’s Homeland Security, but that’s just a cover. My guess is she’s working for the people bankrolling the smuggling network that TF29 have been chasing. They want this hardware, and after you guys stopped them airlifting it out of Detroit… they’re taking a more proactive approach to recovering it.”

Vande risked a glance over her shoulder. “This Thorne… she’s one of them?” A thin wisp of white smoke curled from one of the lockdown clamps around the hatch, and the metal began to turn red-black with heat. “You were right. They’re burning their way in.”

“Yeah.” Jensen made a judgment call and let the Hurricane’s muzzle drop. Had he been wrong about the Interpol agent? Wherever Vande stood in this situation, he would find out for certain in a few minutes. “So I guess we’re in this together.”

To his surprise, the TF29 agent lowered her pistols and set about reloading them. “Our comms are being jammed. We’ve already missed a check-in, so Jarreau will have someone on the way to find out why… but they won’t reach us in time to make a difference. If you really are here to help, Jensen, I hope that means you were smart enough to bring some back-up.”

He shook his head. “Just me. But there’s an aircraft on station nearby; if I can reach them, I might be able to get us out—”

“And let this be stolen again?” Vande gestured at the crates. “No. These intruders are professionals – we retreat now and they win. They’ll have a pick-up already dialed in, count on that. And after all the blood we shed to get this junk, I’m not about to just hand it over.”

“What about him?” Jensen nodded at Chen, who grew paler by the moment. “He needs medical attention.”

The tech managed a weak grin. “I can’t l-leave Raye when she so desperately needs me.”

“You’re an idiot,” Vande told him.

Chen’s opportunity to reply was lost in the next second. The only warning was a brief clattering of metal on metal from across the side of the train car, close to where the tech was slumped. He reacted in alarm, but far too slowly to make any difference to what happened next.

A ball of fire tore through one of the shutters and the reinforced glass behind it, filling the front section of the cargo wagon with a brief torrent of heat and shrapnel. The blast – most likely from a remote-detonated explosive pack – ripped across Chen like a blowtorch, searing flesh to ash and bone to blackened ruins. He was dead before his body struck the deck.

A flurry of bullets followed as the shadow of a hulking shape appeared outside the great tear ripped in the side of the carriage, firing blindly into the interior. Vande was down, knocked aside by the backwash of the detonation, but Jensen was far enough away to hold his ground, and he let off three-round bursts, out through the ragged hole and into the howling darkness flashing past beyond it. He hit something, because the shooting stopped, although Jensen knew the respite would be only momentary. Over the scream of the wind, he could hear the sizzle and buzz of the metal latches around the sealed door melting into slag.