Weapons. Equipment. Armor. All secure. He zipped open a gear pouch to check the contents and hesitated; something inside was emitting a
soft glow. Hardesty and Hermann were busy with their own checks, so Saxon reached inside. His gloved fingers found the lozenge shape of the
disposable phone; the morning they had left London, he had stuffed it into his kit and thought no more about it. He was certain he had
deactivated it. Turning the device to conceal it from the others, Saxon tapped the screen.
An error display told him the vu-phone's digital mailbox was full. He scrolled down and found hundreds and hundreds of text messages, all of
them sent from the number he had seen on the side of the advertisement blimp, all of them the same five words: What master do you serve?
Uneasy, he hit the mass delete tab, opened the phone's case, and disconnected the battery before concealing it once again.
"Will we need electronic support for this engagement?" Hermann was asking, loading heavy-gauge rounds into the magazine of a Widowmaker
tactical shotgun. Hardesty's tone was dismissive. "Namir said digital interdiction is being handled by other assets, so don't fret about getting caught on camera.
Just do what I tell you." He sensed Saxon looking at him and met his gaze. "You got a question, too? Make it fast."
"Ninety seconds to deployment" called the pilot. "Thermograph can't get an accurate read ...At least ten-foot mobiles inside target
structure"
Saxon glanced out the window and saw the flicker of lights below, the soft glow of streetlamps amid patches of darkness. He looked back. "We
can do this without collaterals. Cut the power, go in quiet, hit the mark, and extract."
"Like a ghost, huh?" Hardesty snorted. "It's funny. You bitched to me that I didn't have the stones to get my hands dirty in Moscow, but here I
am going in at the sharp end and suddenly you wanna soft-pedal it?" He gathered up his FR-27 assault rifle, securing the ammo magazine in
place. "How about that. All of a sudden, you're gun-shy."
"This is different. There are civilians in there." The helo dropped into the low grass with a bump and the engine note fell as the rotors went to
idle. Through a stand of trees Saxon could make out the house.
Hardesty shook his head. "There's only targets." He pulled a lever to let the hatch slide open and thumped Hermann on the back. The German
vaulted out into the darkness. Hardesty went next and Saxon followed him, but he'd barely taken a step before the other man placed the flat of
his palm on his chest. "Where you going?"
"Namir-"
"Is not in command of this engagement," Hardesty replied. "I am. And I'm telling you to wait here and hold the landing zone. Y'know, in case a
troop of Girl Scouts tries to sneak up behind us, yeah?" He gave a snort and set off.
Saxon stood there, watching the two men melt away into the shadows, his hands tense around the grip of his rifle, a nerve jumping in his jaw.
For a second, his finger rested on the FR-27's trigger. A single three-round burst would put that son-of-a-bitch down ...
Then the moment faded, and the lights in the house went dark. He caught the faint sound of breaking glass and what might have been a
woman's scream.
Kelso left the Falcon at the side of the road and crossed a stretch of scrubland to the wall of the estate; she'd been to Temple's place once before,
back when he'd just taken the job as department head. It was after the Anselmo case had broken, and in celebration their new boss had held a
barbecue to toast the team's success. It seemed like a century ago, a warm summer day with good food and a few beers, Matt there with Jenny
... Back before the first time Anna's career had gone off the rails.
She shrugged off the memory and scrambled up over the wall, concentrating on the moment. Temple would have security, she decided, some
kind of alarm system—
Anna caught sight of the house as her head came level with the top of the wall, and in that moment she saw every light in the building die. Her
fingertips touched a sensor strip on the top of the bricks, but no alarm sounded. Whatever had killed the power had given her a way in. She
took the opportunity and scrambled the rest of the distance, dropping to the gravel drive. There were a few cars parked outside the three
story house, mostly high-end sedans and a couple of SUVs. The house belonged to Temple's second wife and she was old money; Anna recalled
office talk about how she liked to play the hostess, gathering movers and shakers from the D.C. community. The whole city ran on that kind of
networking; Anna was disgusted that Temple could send her off to be disappeared, then stroll home for some overpriced wine with his spouse's
cronies without breaking stride.
She moved closer, using the cars as cover. Her hand strayed to where her service weapon would have been holstered and she grimaced. After
the van crash, she hadn't thought to steal Agent Tyler's firearm or stun gun. Going in unarmed made her feel naked and supremely vulnerable.
She caught the sound of glass breaking and froze. Something wasn't right; a power outage should not have lasted more than a few seconds.
Anna glanced over her shoulder, and in the distance she could see the next house over, the lights still on.
Her head snapped back as she heard gunshots, twice in quick succession. She guessed they were 10 mm rounds from a pistol. The gun sounded
again, and this time she saw the reflection of a muzzle flash through a ground-floor window. A woman screamed and a shotgun answered.
She blinked her optics to low-light mode; they had the Eye-See vision-enhancement package, the law enforcement variant, and while they were
not as powerful as military-grade cybernetics, they were enough to throw the view of the house into an ashen pattern of green and white. Anna
kept to her cover as two figures burst out the front door, stumbling in panic as they tried to flee—a woman in an evening dress and a man in a
sports jacket. They raced across the drive, the gravel crunching under their feet.
A shimmering thread, invisible to the naked eye, fell from a first-floor window and drew swiftly across the ground until it crossed the woman's
back. There was a hissing snap and a cloud of ink-dark mist blew from her chest. The man turned in fright and took a second round in the
sternum. Both of them were dead before they hit the ground.
Anna dared to peer over the wheel well and saw a shadow move away from the window, a rifle slung in a casual carry.
For a moment she considered turning tail, heading back to the car; but she was too deep in now to give up. Anna waited as long as she dared,
and then stole toward the house, staying low as she threaded her way in through the front door the dead couple had left open.
Inside, the horribly familiar smells of spent cordite and blood reached her nostrils. A man in a suit lay against the staircase leading upward, his
eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Anna felt for a pulse; there was nothing.
She moved on, hugging the walls, finding her way into the open lounge. More of Temple's guests were here, some of them caught still sitting in
chairs with glasses of wine in their hands, others shot in the back as they tried to run. Anna saw the telltale patterning of close-range shotgun
blasts.
On the floor above, a floorboard creaked and she froze. She very clearly heard a shuffling footstep; then in the next second, a strangled, pained
gurgle and the heavy fall of a body.
Cold certainty gathered in her thoughts. An assassin—or more than likely, a team of them—were stalking through Temple's home,
systematically executing everyone they found. It could only have been the Tyrants; the brutality and prec
ision of the attack bore all their
hallmarks. Above, she heard the creaking again. They were sweeping the house, floor by floor. She had little time; once they had completed
their search, they'd double back and look for stragglers.
She scanned the corpses again; he wasn't among them, and if Ron Temple was anything like the man she thought she knew, he would have had
a plan for something like this. He was methodical to the last.
The house hadn't changed much since she had visited it, and she concentrated, pulling up her memories of that day. Temple had shown Matt
around; she remembered him mentioning something about the basement...
Anna found a doorway in an alcove, behind a privacy curtain. In the dark, it would be easy to miss. Slipping inside, she followed the weakest
sliver of light her optics could detect, and with care, descended a shallow set of steps. She blinked back to a normal vision mode. There, half
hidden behind a few wine racks reaching from the concrete floor to the low ceiling, was a work area. A desk, a monitor, a rudimentary office. It
was cool down here, and the carnage above seemed miles away.
She was two steps into the room when she heard a faint breath. "Temple," she whispered. "I know you're here."
There was a gasp of surprise, and he gingerly emerged from behind the desk, a small pistol in his trembling hand. "You ..." he whispered. "Are
you ... Was this a test?" Temple's face was a mess of conflicting emotions. "Did ... Did I fail?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" she hissed, throwing a worried look at the stairs. If the hit team heard them, it would be all over.
He kept muttering to himself, thinking aloud. "No ... No, it's not that. It's you. It's all your fault!" Temple rose up and aimed the gun at her.
"You should be dead! How did you get away?"
"I had help," she admitted, holding her hands open to show she was unarmed.
"That's why they're here ... Because of you, you stupid bitch! They know! You compromised me and they know it! I'm worth nothing now!
Nothing ..." He choked off in a sob. "Oh god. Everyone is dead. They're coming for me ... They're cleaning house."
Temple's self-pity grated on her and she stepped toward him. "This is the price you pay for betrayal. I'd kill you myself if I could, but that
would let you off easy!"
"You can't know what it was like ..." Temple looked down at the pistol and studied it, turning it toward himself. "They'll find me ..."
"No!" Anna lunged at him and backhanded the man across the face. For a moment they wrestled, and then she knocked the gun away, sending
it skittering out of reach under the wine racks. "I need you alive, you bastard. We have to get out of here!"
"And go where?" He met her gaze and Kelso saw a side of the man she'd never seen before. He was falling apart before her eyes. "You can't run.
You can't hide." Temple snorted. "What do you think is going to happen, Kelso? That you'll get your day in court like all good citizens? They
won't let the Killing Floor be exposed!"
"The what?" She'd never heard the term before.
He wasn't listening. "We are already dead!"
"Not yet," she said. "You're my proof."
He went to the desk and tore through the papers scattered across it. "You want proof? Here. You came back for it, so take it" Temple thrust
something into her hands, and she realized it was the flash drive he had taken from her back at the office. "See how far you get!" He was
blinking back tears.
Somewhere above them, she heard the crunch of broken glass. Anna grabbed Temple's arm and twisted it. "I don't give a damn what you say.
You're coming with me. Move!"
She went back to low-light mode as they emerged into the kitchen. Temple gasped at the carnage and she saw him lurch toward a knife block.
He pulled out a butcher's blade and cradled it in his hands, his breathing fast and shallow.
Across the room, a door opened onto the garden beyond. Anna heard movement in the lounge and she made for the exit. Her hand closed
around the latch and she tested it: locked.
From the other room came a metallic click and an egg-shaped object rolled over the threshold, rattling as it came to a spinning halt on the tiled
floor of the kitchen.
"No—!" Temple cried out just as Anna's mind caught up to what she was seeing; she rocked off her feet and slammed her shoulder into the
door, wood splintering around the lock and frame. It came open as the grenade detonated with a shriek of combustion. A churning wall of heat
and gas picked her up and threw her the rest of the way, sending Anna spinning into the soft, damp grass outside. She rolled as a torrent of
glass and splinters rained down on her. Smoke and flame gushed from broken windows and the cracked doorway. Temple was still in there. Too
late now.
Anna pulled herself to her feet, the hot stink of the fire choking the air around her; the blast had to have ruptured a gas line. Without looking
back, she took off toward the trees flanking the house. As she sprinted away, two figures in matte black combat gear emerged from the smoke,
panning their weapons this way and that.
Saxon swore as the explosion from the house caused his night vision to flare out, and he switched modes to ultraviolet. Crouching on one knee a
short distance from the silent helo, he peered down the sight atop his rifle and tapped his comm pad. "White, this is Gray. Respond."
"Don't get your panties in a bunch " came the terse reply. "We're on the way out. Prep for dust off."
"That's your take on covert action? Blow the shit out of something?"
Hardesty ignored the comment. "If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you. Meantime, keep your eyes open. We got a possible runner, heading
your way. Intercept and execute, if you can handle that."
Saxon cut the channel without bothering to answer. Rising from the ground he came forward, the rifle at his shoulder, sweeping back and forth.
He heard the woman before he saw her, a moment before she emerged from the tree line. She was running across open ground, the last stretch
before the rear wall of the Temple estate. On reflex, Saxon pulled the FR-27 tight to his shoulder and flicked the fire selector to single shot; at
this range, he couldn't miss. The assault rifle would put a titanium-tipped flechette round directly on target, enough to tear open an unarmored
human body.
Then she saw him and stumbled, staggered, almost lost her balance. Saxon's finger was on the trigger. The smallest application of pressure and
she would be dead; an unarmed woman, a civilian, executed in cold blood.
She stood, frozen, waiting for the kill shot to come.
Ben Saxon was not an innocent. There were more than enough deaths that could be laid at his feet, kills he had made in the heat of battle and
through cold, calculating aggression. Lives he had ended from afar, and some so close he heard the escape of their final breath. But then he was
a soldier, and that had been war. But this ...
The realization crystallized for him. What he was doing now went against every moral code Saxon believed in.
He let the rifle barrel drop slightly, and the woman saw the motion. In a few moments, she was at the wall and scrambling up over it. Conflicted,
Deus Ex - Icarus Effect Page 17
