Deus Ex - Icarus Effect (31 page)

He kicked again and struck the hatch release panel. Immediately, red strobes and a warning Klaxon activated as the door's mechanism stirred

into life; but in the next second all sound was lost as a screaming thunder of air tore across the cargo bay. The hatch began a slow march open,

revealing a growing sliver of fathomless black sky beyond.

The jet shivered and the nose dropped abruptly; up in the cockpit, the aircraft's autoflight system would have detected the loss of cabin

pressure and immediately attempted to compensate by descending to a lower altitude. Barrett lost his grip and flailed, colliding with a support

pillar. Saxon fell against a stowed cargo net and grabbed on to it, the polar cold through the hatch ripping at the skin of his face. Across the

threshold, a dash of moonlight glittered off the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

How high are we? How far from land? It was impossible to know.

"Ben" Namir s voice hummed through his skull. "You can't escape. I'm not going to let that happen." As he said the words, the hatch juddered

to a halt, half open, and then reversed, sliding toward closure.

If he stayed here, he would die. Saxon knew it with utter certainty, the same pure clarity of thinking that had come to him in the Australian

wilderness. He would die, this would end, and there would be no justice for Sam and Kano and the others.

Saxon threw himself at the gap and leapt into the darkness.

Dundalk—Maryland—United States of America

When Lebedev returned to the communications tent, the videoscreen was still active, the same display of smoky digital mist hazing a vaguely

human shape. Not for the first time, he wondered what Janus really looked like—if he or she was someone he knew out in the real world. Part of

him was always disappointed that the shady hacker could not trust the New Sons enough to drop the mask; but then, these were difficult times,

and not everyone had millions of dollars at hand to ensure their own security.

"How is our new recruit?" asked the nonvoice.

Lebedev sighed. "We shouldn't have pushed her so hard, so fast. She's having trouble assimilating it all."

"Anna will come around '," said Janus. "She's resilient. She just needs to see it for herself. Let her process."

"We need her." He ran a hand through his hair. "God knows, we need every ally we can get."

A moment passed before Janus replied. "Her skills will be of great use to the cause, Juan ..."

He frowned. The hacker sounded distracted. "Is something wrong?"

There was another pause. "Forgive me. I'm monitoring another ... situation at the moment. Go on."

"We're running out of time," Lebedev went on. "If we're going to disrupt this thing, it needs to be soon."

"Agreed. I'm working on another approach to access the Killing Floor as we speak. But it's risky."

Lebedev smiled ruefully. "We have to try, my friend. And we can't fail. If we do, the future will never forgive us."

"You re wrong," Janus replied. "If we fail, our enemies will make sure no one will ever know we existed."

Thirteen Kilometers East of Newfoundland—North Atlantic

He never felt the impact when he hit the rolling surface of the sea. It was the only mercy he had; perhaps it was the shock of the fall, perhaps

his battered body shutting down for a brief moment in some attempt to protect him from greater trauma.

At first, Saxon saw only flashes. The silver of the moon on the wave tops below him. A flicker of light from the jet as he spiraled away from it,

the navigation lights in the dark.

Then he was in the cradle of the shouting winds, snared by gravity. He couldn't see the ocean rushing up to meet him, and for long moments

Saxon felt himself disconnect from the real. He could have been floating in the roaring darkness, lost in the starless space.

The cold embrace leached the heat from his bones; Saxon squinted through the windburn and made out what he thought was the surface of the

water, coming up fast, dappled by the moon's glow.

He extended his arms like they had taught him in parachute training, making his whole body an aerofoil, trying to slow himself as much as he

could. And then, when he couldn't chance it any longer, he triggered the high-fall augmentation implanted in the base of his spine.

The device stuttered into life and cast a writhing sphere of electromagnetic energy about him, lightninglike sparks flashing where the field

interacted with the air molecules. The implant ran past its tolerance limit, but Saxon retriggered it, cycling the device over and over. He felt it

go hot, smoldering and heavy like a block of newly forged iron embedded in his back. The high-fall was never designed to do the job of a

parachute; it was a short-span, low-duration technology, a mechanism spun off from safety implants for racing drivers, firefighters,

steeplejacks.

He screamed as it burned into him, and the blackness engulfed everything. For a moment, at least.

Then he was in the frigid rise and fall of the waters, the salt brine smothering him with every new wave. He spun and turned, numb from the

waist down. Warning telltales displayed in the corners of his optic field, function indicators for his cyberlegs showing red. He choked and

shivered, feeling the weight of the augmented limbs pulling on him, robbing him of all buoyancy.

The ocean toyed with him, and then grew bored. Saxon began to sink, and he couldn't find the strength to fight the icy embrace of the waters.

All his defiance, his determination ... it was bleeding away, second by second.

Then he saw the lights below, rising. The waters parting as something as large as a truck broke the surface. He saw a shiny, beetlelike carapace,

an arch of what might be shell. Just beneath the water, ropes of steel moved past his damaged legs, ensnaring him.

Saxon's mind filled in the gaps; he imagined a massive nautilus coming up from the seabed to gather him into its tentacles, the giant monstrous

thing festooned with glaring, sodium-bright lamps.

He blacked out for the second time as it pulled him toward it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Dundalk—Maryland—United States of America

Through the dirty glass of the window, Kelso watched the lights of Baltimore turn dim as the sky grew lighter, losing herself in the passage of

the clouds overhead and the never-ending wash of the water against the concrete pilings out on the old, abandoned docks.

Sleep, when she'd been able to snatch a little of it, was a fitful and troubled thing. Anna couldn't settle. She dreamed about skies full of

squawking ravens, and vast black wings that wheeled and turned in the sky, blotting out the watery glow of a sullen sun. In the end, Anna

stayed awake, keeping to the margins of Lebedev's compound while the men from the New Sons worked at tasks she could only guess at, and

D-Bar's hackers pored over the sealed files in the stolen flash drive. The inside of the warehouse looked exactly like what it was—a staging area

for an antigovernmental terror group—and it ground against all Kelso's training as a federal agent to stand among it and do nothing.

So she went to the windows and watched the march of the morning approaching. Looking out at the distant city, Anna wondered who was out

there, looking for her. Drake would be leading the capture team, she imagined. He would have considered it a personal slight that her escape

had happened on his watch. Sorrow crossed her face. What are they saying about me? She didn't want to know the answer, didn't want to

imagine the looks in the eyes of the men and women who had served with her. All of them would believe the lie about the death of Ron Temple

and the murders

at his home. They would hate her.

She wanted so much to run, to give in to the base impulse that tensed in the muscles of her hands. But out there, she would be prey. If

Lebedev's stories were true, she had nowhere to go. Even if they were not, the fact did not change. Anna Kelso was alone, and she had been

forced into a single choice she did not want to make.

Trust or distrust.

But that was the corrosive nature of any conspiracy; it played on the fears inherent in all human beings, the terror of having your secrets

known by the unknown, the vicarious thrill of keeping a sinister secret yourself. These people, this group Lebedev called the Illuminati... What

they were doing lived in darkness, and the part of Anna that was still an officer of the law wanted to see them dragged screaming into the light.

She found herself back at the army tent, and ducked beneath the door flap. The place was empty, but the comms gear and the big screen were

as live as they had been hours earlier. The snow of static on the monitor shifted slightly as she came closer, as if her presence were a breeze

disturbing a scattering of leaves.

"I know you can hear me," she said. "I want to ask you something."

After a few seconds, the static settled into the familiar pattern of dispersion she'd seen before, the phantom no-face. "I will help you if I can,

Anna ," said Janus. "But please understand that I don't have all the answers "

"These people ... the Illuminati. The Tyrants. Back in D.C. there was something that D-Bar said to me, a phrase that I couldn't get out of my

head." She sighed. "He talked about something called 'the Icarus Effect.'"

"Ah, yes. A sociological construct, originally conceived in 2019 by Doctor Malcolm Bonner of the University of Texas. It's a very interesting

theory, a societal echo of something that occurs in nature. Imagine a pack of animals, among which is a single individual exhibiting signs of

nascent evolutional superiority. Not common superiority, that is, but a marked difference from the norm. A rare excessive." The ghost-face

shimmered. "The individual's renegade nature threatens the stability of the pack. The others close ranks against it. Expunge or terminate it.

Stability returns, and the pace of evolution is slowed to a more manageable scale."

"We're not talking about animals here," Anna insisted. "This is about people."

"Indeed. But the principle is the same. Like brave but foolhardy Icarus, those who dare to go beyond the boundaries will fall to their

deaths."

"But who gets to choose where those boundaries are?" she asked. "This group Lebedev talked about. I thought the Illuminati were just a

historical curiosity, some kind of pre-millennium modern myth. But you expect me to believe that they're still around, and they've set

themselves up as the ... the stewards of humanity?"

"I couldn't have put it better myself" Janus allowed. "They have been here for a very long time, Anna. They believe that gives them the right

to run the world, and so they do not wait for the Icarus Effect to play itself out. They induce it wherever and whenever they deem it

suitable. The Tyrants are one of the tools they use."

A chill passed over her. "How ... how many times have they done this?"

"You mean, is this the first time they have manipulated global events to their own design? Oh, no. As I said before, the Illuminati have

actively taken control of human history in this manner on many occasions. They have a long, long reach. World wars, disasters, famine,

assassinations, cover-ups ...all have been set in motion to deliberately retard the advancement of society when it threatened to go too far

beyond the borders they created. We can't be allowed to fly too close to the sun, do you see?" Anna thought she detected bitterness in the

artificially distorted voice. "Imagine a vast steel hand enveloping the world. We must wear the invisible chains they have fashioned for us,