Relentless

by Jonathan Maberry

  Darmana stared at her blank screen and then up at the man.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said weakly. “We’re not going to budge until—”

  “Shut the fuck up,” said Stafford. The words froze Darmana to the spot.

  “Wh-what did you—?”

  “Shut your mouth and listen to me,” said Stafford in a voice pitched loudly enough for everyone to hear him. “You have one chance left—just one—to stop this bullshit and get back to work.”

  Darmana looked around and saw the doubt and confusion on everyone’s faces. And she saw it transform into alarm and then fear. She turned back to see that the man in black had stepped forward. Behind him, the other two men pushed off from the SUV. One turned toward the onlookers, and the other came over to stand close to the knot of protesters. These men did not smile. They didn’t speak.

  Another pair of men got out of the vehicle and produced cell phones. They held them up with the lenses facing the crowd.

  “Livestreaming now, sir,” said one, and the other said he was as well.

  Darmana glanced down at her phone, but it still said NO SIGNAL. That made no sense to her. How could her phone—and all the other phones—be jammed and yet allow the two men to livestream? It was a kind of technology she didn’t understand. And a chill began creeping up her spine. Something bad was about to happen, but she couldn’t imagine what. Why would these people video anything? It seemed the opposite of what thugs like this would want.

  She looked up into the eyes of the tall, silent man standing close to her. At his face. At his eyes. Moments ago, he’d looked calm, detached, uninvolved with the corporate drama being played out, letting Stafford do all the talking. Now the man’s eyes were filled with life, with strange lights. His mouth trembled as if he were fighting back laughter, but there was a fever brightness to his eyes. Sweat beaded on his cheeks and upper lip. Once more, Darmana glanced down to see if he had any weapons, but he was unarmed.

  The man who called himself Stafford patted the taller man’s shoulder. He spoke in a language Darmana didn’t recognize. She thought it might have been German, but she met so few foreigners except the upper management, and they were usually French or British. She had no idea what the man said.

  What filled her mind was what happened immediately after.

  The man in black began trembling. Shuddering. Only a little at first, the way someone would if they felt a pecong walk over their grave. But the shudder grew instantly worse, and within moments, the man in black looked like he was being electrocuted. Or having an orgasm. There was a strange and appalling ecstasy on his face, twisting otherwise handsome features into a parody of pain or lust. Or both.

  She looked past him and saw that the same thing was happening to the other black-clad men. All three of them were having some kind of fit. Their faces flushed as if their blood pressure were spiking. Foamy spit bubbled out from between the lips of the man in front of her.

  Darmana backed up. First a single step, and then more, backpedaling as the fit grew more violent. Then all of a sudden, those tremors stopped, and the whole street in front of the factory went dead silent.

  For two full seconds.

  The men in black stared at her and through her and at nothing, and she saw to her horror that the tall man’s eyes had changed. The whites had turned a dark, vibrant red.

  Blood eyes, she thought with the odd clarity of someone in terrible danger. He is a demon.

  And that was her very last thought. Then, or ever.

  The man in black struck her with such shocking, hideous speed that she never saw his arm move. She did not truly feel the blow that caught her on the side of the jaw. Shock buffered her mind from hearing the sounds of her jaw shattering, just as it masked the wetter snap of her neck vertebrae. She was dead before her heart took the next beat.

  She crumpled to the ground, unable to hear the high and terrible screams of the rest of the protesters. Of the crowd of townsfolk who’d gathered to watch.

  Or of the shrieks of horror and agony that followed as the three men in black moved through the village like a monsoon wind, killing everyone Darmana had ever known.

  Stafford stepped over her corpse and walked over to the car, leaned against it, produced a silver cigarette case, and removed a filterless Roth-Händle, which he lit with a gold lighter. He dragged in a deep lungful, held it to feel the bite, and then exhaled. The blue smoke swirled in the air as all around the screams rose and rose.

  He glanced at the two men with cell phones and drew a hand across his throat, telling them to cut the feed. They did.

  “You get all that?” he asked.

  “Every bit,” said one of the men.

  “Sweet.”

  Michael Augustus Stafford pulled his cell phone out, punched a number, and when it was answered, said, “Looked great from my end, boss. I think this’ll play well in your next ShowRoom gig.”

  “Excellent work,” said Mr. Sunday. “The buses of replacement workers will be there first thing in the morning.”

  “Right-o.”

  Stafford ended the call and smiled. He loved days like this. Made him glad to be alive.

  CHAPTER 23

  INTEGRATED SCIENCES DIVISION

  PHOENIX HOUSE

  OMFORI ISLAND, GREECE

  Dr. Jane Holliday sat with Church and Bug at a small table in the lab.

  The rest of the staff were busy working, but they knew better than to pester the boss and two department heads. There were glances thrown that way, though, and even some unapologetic eavesdropping.

  “The problem is,” said Doc, “that we know too much and not enough.”

  Her masses of blond hair had spilled out of the bun and hung unevenly around her face, making her look like she’d just come in from riding a horse on a windy heath.

  Bug snorted. He was bleary-eyed and unshaven. “Welcome to Rogue Team International, where that is on everyone’s page-a-day calendar for any day ending in a Y.”

  “You’re not wrong,” said Church. His only concession to the long hours since Ledger had gone off the radar was that he’d taken his suit jacket off and tugged the knot of his tie loose. He still looked immaculate.

  They had cups of coffee and a plate of cookies. Church was nibbling on his fourth vanilla wafer, and no one else seemed interested in cutting into his supply. Doc had a bunch of animal crackers laid out like a parade and was biting off bits of each animal but not eating any whole cookies. Bug sat there, slowly unscrewing double-filled Oreos and eating the cream. Only when he finished the fillings did he begin eating the cookies.

  “Ron Coleman and Isaac are studying the cybernetic implants on the patients we brought from Croatia. Right now, there seem to be several kinds of implants. Some have neuro chips, and there’s research suggesting that the chips are designed to interface with add-on gear like a targeting helmet, exoskeleton, or even drones. And there are implants that Coleman is certain will trigger the release of different kinds of chemicals. Some of these chemicals are natural to the body, so the implants regulate those. Dopamine, for example. Or they can sync with a med pack prefilled with drugs. Modifications of modafinil and armodafinil, for sure. They act as selective and atypical dopamine reuptake inhibitors; and then there’s adrafinil, which serves as a prodrug for modafinil. And a prodrug is a compound or medication that, once administered and metabolized into a pharmacologically active drug, controls and improves how the drug is absorbed, distributed, metabolized, and excreted. And we also found experiments with other eugeroics—the norepinephrine–dopamine reuptake inhibitor solriamfetol, and pitolisant, which acts as a histamine receptor antagonist and inverse agonist.”

  “Interesting,” said Church.

  “And there are other compounds referenced that we haven’t found details on yet. One in particular is R-33. There are notes saying that it’s promising, that tests are showing it to be stable for field use, though of limited duration. And a list of side effects, including possible heart traum
a. But we have a ton of stuff to go through, and there’s the encrypted stuff, so maybe it’ll be in there.”

  “So,” said Church, “hit me with your most compelling theories. What is it you think we’re learning?”

  Bug and Doc exchanged a long look, and then shrugged.

  Doc said, “These naughty boys are planning something very big and very bad that will involve cybernetically and chemically enhanced PMCs.”

  “Probably top-tier Fixers,” said Bug. “They’d be the ones most solidly under Santoro’s control.”

  “His cult of killers,” agreed Doc.

  Church tapped crumbs from his cookie onto his plate. “To what end? Enhanced military contractors are hardly a new idea. We’ve taken down at least nine groups with that agenda.”

  “We have,” said Doc, “and two of those were since I’ve been your chief mad scientist, but it’s remarkable, perhaps significant, that much of the R&D for those older cases is included in what Top brought back.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Bug. “The Jakoby stuff and all?”

  “How much of it is material likely stolen from us during the hack a few years ago?” asked Church.

  “A bunch,” said Bug. “A lot more than I thought had been taken at the time. There’s even a good chance—call it 99.9 percent—that some of this was stuff stolen by Artemisia Bliss.”

  Church chewed for a moment in silence. Bliss had been a protégé of Doc’s predecessor, Dr. William Hu. She’d been a brilliant research scientist, analyst, and strategic thinker … but she’d gone badly astray. Church had fired her and then had her arrested for theft of data and technologies obtained after the takedowns of some of the more dangerous groups and cartels the DMS faced. Then Bliss faked her death and reinvented herself as a firebrand among the anarchist crowd. This new persona, Mother Night, had done a lot of damage, had broken into one of the most secure bioweapons storage facilities, and tried to release the Seif al Din pathogen—the single most dangerous bioweapon Church’s teams had ever faced—at a science fiction convention in Atlanta.

  “But don’t get me wrong, Mr. Boss Man,” said Doc, “there’s a lot of new science here, too.”

  “Some of that’s based on stolen R&D, too, though,” said Bug. “I’m finding fingerprints—and what amounts to computer watermarks—on lots of the data files. Stuff looted from the Department of Defense and maybe forty other places, including a lot of universities. Their mainframes are so easy to hack they might as well not even try to use encryption. Though there’s stuff here from some private corporations … stuff that was much better protected, and from companies that I’m pretty sure aren’t in any way tied to the Kuga brand.”

  “What’s the rest?” asked Church.

  “Totally new stuff,” said Doc.

  “Without a doubt,” said Bug.

  “Tell me,” Church said.

  “There are three areas these bad boys seem to be focusing on. First is surgically implanted technologies. True cybernetics.”

  “Ah’ll be bahk,” said Bug in a fair impersonation of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  “Second area,” continued Doc, “is a new generation of body armor that’s really a kind of exoskeleton. In their notes, they refer to it as a CR, shorthand for combat rig, and there are references to several models or perhaps generations of it. K-14, K-57, K-79, and so on. Most recent generation is the K-110.”

  “I’m guessing the K is for Kuga?” ventured Bug.

  “That’d be my guess, sugar,” agreed Doc. “And I have to tell you boys that if these jokers decided to go straight and simply patent this stuff, they’d probably get rich as Croesus selling it to the various official military or private military markets. We’re talking billions. Some of this is really freaking awesome.”

  “Because they have an actual evil master plan,” said Bug. It was only partly a joke, and no one laughed. “Besides, some of these innovations are based on stolen science. Sure, the finished product may be new, but anyone can reverse engineer it and see what came out of other labs.”

  “There’s that,” conceded Doc. She flipped open a folder and showed a schematic for a bulky exoskeleton. “See this? I ran an image and data search, and what did I find? This is a variation of the Guardian XO full-body exoskeleton by the Sarcos company. It was marketed as the first battery-powered industrial integrated robot, which means it has machinery run by software but integrates with the driver’s commands. It augments operator strength but doesn’t inhibit freedom of movement. The difference is that the Sarcos one is used mostly for industrial work—lifting and so on. But see here? Those fittings are for machine guns, I’m sure of it. And see these specs handwritten down there? That’s for add-ons made from Kevlar and also bullet-resistant clear polymers. Protection and visibility. Kuga’s guys took the industrial version and weaponized it. I ran the numbers on the armor, and it will create a protective shell that allows more than two hundred and fifty degrees of visibility while keeping the driver safe from anything up to armor-piercing rounds. My guess is that they’ll rig a double-capacity backpack. One side for batteries, the other for belt-fed ammunition. You put a Fixer in one of those and he can walk into any building and do an incredible amount of damage. With a minigun or a grenade launcher? Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit, but that is some scary, scary stuff right up in there.”

  “This is adapted to military,” said Church. “Did you find anything designed specifically for combat?”

  “Oh yes,” said Doc. “A lot of that, and it’s pretty goldurn scary, too.”

  She produced another folder, and this one had schematics, pages of materials analysis and other data, and some glossy photos. Church picked one up and studied it. It showed a soldier wearing a series of complex braces around his legs, torso, and arms. There were wires and coaxial cables in bundles running from servos to battery packs.

  “This is based on the ONYX system,” he observed. “They developed the lower-body exoskeletons to help combat soldiers carry or pull heavy loads.”

  “They also reduce fatigue,” said Doc, nodding. “But see how it’s been modified? It’s been expanded out to support hips, lower and mid-back, shoulders and arms. The effect is—if their notations are correct—a 320 percent increase in physical strength coupled with far greater endurance. A soldier in that rig could do a fifty-mile hike faster and with less energy drain than a regular soldier could hike fifteen miles on the flat and carrying no battle rattle. We’re talking enhanced endurance, especially over uneven terrain and inclines, better handling of heavy weapons, and it guides orthopedic alignment to help evenly distribute weight and maintain skeletal system alignment to avoid overstress and pressure injuries.”

  Church shuffled through the photos and paused on the last one. This showed the same basic exoskeleton sheathed in sleek black armor that hid the vulnerable materials and kept the bundled cables from being a nuisance to the man in the suit. A notation in the corner indicated that this was a K-110 prototype. And below that the word Production? With a question mark.

  “This concerns me greatly,” he said, setting the photo down and turning it around for them.

  “It should,” said Doc.

  Bug picked it up. “Yeah, this scares me, too. Just the thought of our guys running into even one of these…”

  He didn’t finish but shivered, which was eloquent enough.

  “And,” said Doc, “there are two more things. We found four separate mentions of something called G-55. At first, I thought it was another product line, but it seems to be part of some upcoming project, or perhaps a location. Not really enough to go on, and it may be nothing. Does it mean anything to you, O Mighty Sage?”

  “It does not,” said Church. “What’s the other thing?”

  “Well,” said Doc, “all through the records, there are references to something called AO. Again, no clue as to what it stands for, and there’s little contextual help, since it’s usually just a reference like, ‘For AO?’ and ‘AO Parts List.’ Like that. But
it shows up in almost every document—mostly handwritten on printouts—connected with the exosuits and other potential field combat tech.”

  “AO,” mused Church. “That’s not particularly helpful.”

  “I’ll put Nikki on it.”

  Nikki Bloom ran the pattern recognition team within Bug’s department.

  “Have to tell you boys,” said Doc, “every time I see those two letters, it gives me a nasty little itch right between my shoulder blades. Like someone’s out there in the tall grass lining me up nice and proper in the crosshairs.”

  “I’m quite familiar with that feeling,” said Church.

  “Are you getting that feeling now?” she asked.

  “I am.”

  With that, he stood and left the lab.

  CHAPTER 24

  IN FLIGHT OVER THE SOUTH ATLANTIC

  The cabin steward, a slim Genoese woman who was a bit older than the others in the flight crew, stood in the galley with the curtain drawn. Her fingers touched the crucifix beneath her uniform as she peeked out through a narrow gap in the blue cloth. The first-class passengers were mostly dozing. Beyond them, most of the overhead lights were off, though a few travelers had their faces lit by whatever screen they were watching. The big 250-seat Airbus A330’s engines, running on autopilot, were a constant heavy drone that lulled most people to sleep.

  Midway along the aisle, there was a large service dog curled on the floor, partly under the seat, but occasionally leaning his big white head out to look up and down the walkway. Beside him was a blind man. Older, heavyset, wearing sunglasses with very dark lenses. He wore earbuds, but when the cabin steward passed by on her rounds, she noticed that the headphone cable wasn’t plugged in. It merely dangled. When she leaned over and asked if he needed help finding the jack for the music, he turned to her and—she was positive—looked at her.

  That had been a very odd moment. Over the thousands of flights she’d worked since joining the Alitalia team, she’d encountered countless vision-impaired passengers. She could always tell whether they’d been born blind, had lost sight due to age or injury, or were merely legally blind.