Deus Ex: Black Light (35 page)

“So now I owe you one.”

“I wasn’t going to bring it up so quickly, but since you mention it… yes.” Vega heard the smile in Quinn’s voice. “Janus is a real believer in
quid pro quo
.”

“We’ve got that in common, then.” Vega expected Jensen to show the same wary attitude he had exhibited back in the old movie theater when they first met, so what he said next came as something of a shock. “I’ll do it. I’ll work with the Juggernaut Collective.”

“Oh.” Quinn’s reaction showed that he had thought the same thing as Vega. He recovered quickly. “Good. Smart choice, Adam.” Quinn forced a chuckle. “We don’t have a secret handshake or anything, but you won’t regret—”

“I already do,” he broke in. “But I’ve gone as far as I can, and like it or not, I need a new edge. You people are it.”

Vega turned to see Jensen walking away and she couldn’t stop herself from calling out to him. “Hey. Wait…”

He met her gaze. “Ask me.”

“What brought you around? Before you didn’t want anything to do with us, now you’re signing on just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “What changed?”

“
I have
,” he said, with grim conviction. “I reached my limit. I’ve had enough of the Illuminati. The disregard they have for everyone who isn’t one of them.” He shook his head. “Harrison Stacker. Henry Kellman. Raye Vande. Vasili Sevchenko. Netanya Keitner…” Every name Jensen uttered seemed to weigh down on him. “And thousands more. Dead, because of them. I’ve had enough of watching people pay the price for some superior bastard’s idea of what makes the world work.”

Vega gave a slow nod. Every word he said resonated with her own motivations for becoming part of the Collective. “Welcome to the party,” she told him.

Jensen turned up his collar and glared out into the rain. “One last thing,” he said, not looking at either of them. “If you cross me… if Janus lies… we are done.”

Vega watched him vanish into the sheeting downpour and frowned. “He means it,” she said.

“Of course he does,” said Quinn. “That’s why he’s the one we need.”

The high-pitched tone brought DuClare from the perfect repose of a deep sleep and dragged her up into wakefulness. She rolled over on her wide bed, pulling a snarl of ivory silk sheets with her, blinking owlishly. The black hands of the antique ormolu clock on the far wall were at four and two.

Resting atop a table across the room, the high-end custom vu-phone she habitually carried was glowing brightly atop the charging plate where she had left it, pulsing different colors with each melodic chime of its alarm.

DuClare frowned. She had turned the device off before retiring alone to her apartments that night, and left strict instructions that she not be disturbed. Exiting the bed in an angry fashion, she pulled on a kimono and stalked to the table. Her fingertips were about to touch the device when the bedroom windows suddenly flickered. She turned, alarmed, to see the synthetic-laced glass shimmer as pixels gathered into an image on its surface. Like most of the panes in her rooms, the windows could double as screens or mirrors depending on the commands given to the apartment’s pet AI, but they only responded to spoken orders and then, only ones given by DuClare herself. The vu-phone fell silent as the incoming communication linked from it to the window-screens.

Then her sleep-slowed thoughts caught up with her and she remembered what had happened on the jet a few days earlier. DuClare folded her arms and tried to keep a sour expression from her face, as once again Lucius DeBeers projected himself into her personal space without seeking permission.

“Lucius,” she began, before he could speak. “It’s very late here. What is so important that it couldn’t wait until morning?”

Visible across the glass, with the glittering lights of the city laid out behind him, DeBeers resembled a stern portrait of the man come to life, but still trapped in two dimensions. That was the illusion, though. He was a world away from her, and once more he was demonstrating that there was no space she inhabited where he could not enter, night or day.

“
The work doesn’t run to your schedule, Elizabeth
.” His tone was cold and clipped, the usual warmth of his manner turned surly. “
Perhaps if you were more aware of that, this situation would be less problematic.
”

DuClare guessed that he knew full well she had no idea what he was referring to. It was another tactic to put her off her mark. “If this is about the D-Project—”

“
No
,” he snapped. “
The situation in Detroit. I am only now learning the full scope of this. Actions on the ground have been totally disrupted. It is a mess, Elizabeth. An utter mess.
”

“What have we lost?” She hated asking the question, hated looking to him for information. It made her seem weak, which was exactly what DeBeers wanted.

In short order, he gave her a clipped précis of the failure in Michigan. Valuable assets dead. The target package lost, presumed destroyed. Worse still, these events would have a knock-on effect that would damage activities in Europe. Materials needed to achieve certain ends would now be unavailable.

“
This forces us to source new resources from alternate suppliers
,” he concluded. “
That disrupts our timeline.
”

“We’ll manage,” she said, affecting a tone she hoped would mollify him. “I’ll accelerate our other plans to compensate.”

DeBeers sniffed. “
I have my doubts.
”

DuClare paused, once more pushed off-balance by his words. “We talked about this, Lucius,” she said firmly. “Commitments have been made…”

“
On a great many fronts
,” he broke in. “
And yet there are failures like this.
”

Slowly, her deferential manner eroded. Did he expect her to accept the blame for something barely within her control? It was impossible to account for every single variable. DeBeers knew that better than any of them.

She felt a moment of clarity snap into place. The relationship they had shared, the private conversations, had he done it all just to draw her in and fake a closer confidence? To position her as a receptacle for any failed actions on his part?
How dare he!
If so, then Lucius DeBeers was vainer than DuClare had given him credit for.

“
More errors of judgment like this will not be tolerated
,” he concluded. “
From
anyone.
You realize that?
”

The threat hung in the air. She nodded. “Perfectly. I’ll see to it,” promised DuClare, and before he could say any more, she went to the vu-phone and silenced it.

The image of DeBeers vanished from the windows and with a jolt of sudden anger, she picked up the device and threw it violently across the room. It struck the antique clock and both shattered into pieces.

Awake now, propelled by her irritation, she strode to her study and activated her tablet computer with a swipe of her finger. The White Helix files she had been studying were patiently waiting for her, each one labeled individually under a sub-code that connected it to a particular individual. “Open file designation: Black Light,” she told it.

On the screen, a dead man’s face looked back up at her.

Random clusters of dead code and forgotten information came closer, falling into rough orbit around one another until some final point of critical mass was exceeded, and abruptly they merged into a kind of island in the open void of deep data-space.

Three avatars coalesced one by one, standing atop the temporary patchwork of the synthetic landscape, each looped in via the lines of a neural subnet linkage. The connections were vague, temporary things written to live only brief lives in the virtual world. It was important to the Collective’s continued existence that no trails be left, out in meat space or equally here in the unreal, for their constant foe to latch on to.

“I am monitoring,” said the cube of azure crystal. It turned gently on one apex, catching the reflected light of the myriad data trains running high above them. “We need to be quick. One gathering was risky enough… two only invites danger.”

“So talk, then.” The words came from the only human-like simulacrum in the data-space, the artfully neutral avatar as featureless as ever.

“Where’s our fella with the deep pockets?” The sardonic comment emerged from the slowly transforming silver icon that drifted between them. Letters grew from one into another, spelling out nonsense words in Cyrillic.

“He’s otherwise engaged,” said the cube. “What do you have to tell us?”

“Jensen has agreed to join us,” said the metallic symbol. “I honestly had my doubts, but what do I know?”

“You should have believed me,” said the human.

“Fine,” came the reply. “That’s a ten-spot I owe you.”

“This is good news.” The cube’s flat, mechanical voice robbed the statement of any potency. “With Jensen in play, we can increase the tempo of our operations. We can redeploy Saxon and Kelso, and some of the others.”

“One step at a time,” warned the human avatar. “The Collective is at a critical juncture. The last thing we should do is overreach.”

“So which way do we push our new recruit?” said the icon.

The human figure cocked its head. “This is the start of the next phase in our war,” insisted the avatar. “But we still have far to go. The heart of the enemy’s infiltration of this so-called Task Force is in Eastern Europe. We need to target the unit operating in Prague to root it out at the source.”

The cube’s rotations slowed. “Who is in command there?”

“This man.” A pane of information grew out of the darkness surrounding them, showing stolen fragments of a personnel file. “James Miller. We’ll need to determine if he is corrupt, or merely the unwitting tool of others.”

The silver icon flickered and changed again. “We’ll need to get our boy out there, then. How do we do that?”

“With care.” The human avatar gave a ghostly nod. “I believe Adam Jensen is our best option in this scenario. I see how he thinks. I
understand
him.” The figure paused. “Now we have him in the fold, he will help us bring down the Illuminati… or he will perish in the attempt.”

Jensen watched Pritchard roll the server rig off the stage and into the back of a minivan. Packed in with all the other hardware from his hideout, it barely fit, and the battered vehicle sank low on its shocks as he slammed the rear doors shut.

“You sure that thing will run?” he said, as the hacker came around the front.

“I’m abandoning the building,” Pritchard told him. “Even if I have to push this myself.” He shook his head. “You would think that the MCBs losing most of their gun hands would be a good thing for the areas outside the police-patrolled zones… but instead it’s just stirred up a different kind of anarchy. As hard as it is to believe, Magnet and his goons imposed a violent sort of order. Now every block in Downtown is picking a fight with the next.”

“Where are you gonna go?”

Pritchard eyed him. “I’ve got other places in Detroit. Better that you don’t know where, Jensen.”

“You have no idea, do you?”

He gave a rueful nod. “I have no idea.” He reached into his jacket and produced a pocket secretary, offering the slim digital pad to Jensen. “Here. You should have this.”

Jensen took the device, turning it over in his hands. “A farewell gift?” he said dryly. “Francis, I’m touched.”

Pritchard scowled back at him. “As I’ve come to realize how utterly unreasonable you can be, I know there’s no point trying to convince you to steer clear of Juggernaut.” He pointed at the pad. “So this is all I can do to stop you from getting killed too quickly. On that device is all the data I’ve gathered over the past two years about everything that we have experienced – the Aug Incident, Sarif, Humanity Front, the conspiracy, all of it. Everything from the day those mercenaries broke into Sarif Industries until right now. If you’re determined to throw your life away on this crusade, there may be something in there that can help you.”

“Thanks, Pritchard,” he said, and this time he meant it.

“Don’t get maudlin,” sneered the hacker. “I’m not doing this because we are friends. I’m doing it because I believe if anyone can hurt the people behind these acts, it’s you. I just don’t think you’ll live to tell the tale.” He shook his head, as if he were considering a puzzle that had no solution. “You’re a lot of things, Jensen, but you’re not an idiot. Think for a second, and be honest. Why are you
really
determined to do this?”

The answer came to him without pause. “Because someone has to take a stand. And like I told you before, I don’t have anything left to lose.” He stuffed the digital pad in his pocket. “I do nothing, and I’m complicit in it, you get that? That’s how they’ve got this far. Because too many people looked the other way.”

“They? The
Illuminati
?” Pritchard couldn’t say the word without sneering.

“What they call themselves isn’t important. It never was.” Jensen shook his head. “The only thing that matters is that we have to
stop them
. Fight them right to the bloody, bitter end. If not, then one day we wake up and we’re living in their future instead of ours.”

“You make it sound like the end of the world,” said Pritchard.

“Not yet,” Jensen told him, as he walked away, “but you can see it from here.”

First off, my thanks must go to Mary DeMarle and Rayna Anderson for our collaboration in creating the original version of Adam Jensen’s ‘missing time’ narrative, which this novel draws from. Along with Mary and Rayna, much appreciation is also due to the rest of my colleagues at Eidos Montréal on the
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
team – among them Jean-Francois Dugas, Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, Jason Dozois, Rees Savidis, Taras Stasiuk, Mark Cecere, Leanne C. Taylor, Jeffery Campbell, Daniel Dick, André Vu, David Anfossi, and many more.

Thanks to my editors Alice Nightingale, Natalie Laverick and Hayley Shepherd at Titan Books for their patience and enthusiasm.