"I've heard the conspiracy theories, but until now I never thought they could be true. But that's how they want it, right? They stay in the dark,
pull the strings, and no one knows it. They decide what wars are going to happen, who gets elected ... And now they want to control the right to
evolve!"
Namir studied his cybernetic hand. "Is that so wrong? Think about it, Anna. Think of how the free spread of augmentations has changed the
face of our species, the divide it has created between 'cog' and 'natch,' the metal and the meat. Think of how it has changed you. Anyone can
make themselves into a killing machine with the right hardware and enough money. Wouldn't things be better if there were controls,
boundaries, regulations?" He leaned closer. "You know that rules exist for the good of society." Namir opened his hands. "All we're doing is
putting them into place."
For a moment, his words cut deeply; but then she pushed them away. "And it doesn't matter how many freedoms you have to kill to get there,
does it? Because you believe you're right."
He frowned at her tone. "Your young friend Patrick came around, once he had an understanding. I hoped you might, too, I really did. Saxon ...
he won't change ... I thought you were smarter than him."
"I'm glad to disappoint you," she spat.
Namir watched her for a moment, before he spoke again.
"You wonder why you're still alive. It's more than just Saxon. There's something I want to know." When she didn't answer he took her chin in
his hand. "Who is Janus? What did he show you?"
The limousine swung around Building C, where the council chambers were located, and pulled to a halt on the gravel drive in front of the United
Nations Assembly Hall, the white pillars rising up across the entranceway behind it. A handful of Swiss security staff stood on the upper steps,
while Belltower guards waited at the drive. Standing in a line before the nearby library, a group of reporters trained their camera drones on the
vehicle as one of the guards opened the rear door, allowing Elaine Peller to exit; the Humanity Front's media relations staffer and personal
assistant to the founder stepped clear and addressed the hovering cameras.
"Mr. Taggart will make a short statement. He will take no questions."
As she finished speaking, Isaias Sandoval was the next to step out; his thin Hispanic features were perpetually set in a nervous frown, and
today was no exception. Despite what they had been told by the authorities, Isaias had been awakened in the predawn light by what could only
have been an explosion out on the bridge near their hotel. He was still smarting that his employer had outright refused to take his advice about
postponing the meeting with the UN science board.
William Taggart followed him out into the bright light of the day, smiling warmly and sparing the cameras a fatherly nod and a wave. The face
of the largest pro-humanist movement on earth appeared, as ever, impeccably groomed and perfectly at ease; and yet he never seemed to lose
the cool sense of intent, the quiet, scholarly charisma that made so many people listen to him.
Taggart stepped around to the front of the limo and nodded again. "My friends," he began, "it fills me with hope to be here today, to talk to
these good people and present our point of view to them. At no other time in human history have we found ourselves at so delicate a juncture,
when the very nature of what we are is under threat by scientific avarice ungoverned by any moral code or-"
It happened with unnatural speed and violence, with a fierce, controlled power that could have come only from the union between human will
and machine strength. A muscular figure in a security officer's jacket slipped out from behind one of the Belltower patrol vehicles and punched
the closest guard with such force that he spun and bounced off the hood of the car. The man swept in, pivoting on one leg to kick away a second
Belltower trooper, the heel of his boot smashing the gold visor across his face. He dropped, blocking the falling blow from a crackling electro
prod as a third man tried to tackle him; the attacker rose back just as quickly, brutally snapping the man's arm against the direction of the joint,
putting him down in a screaming heap.
All this in less than a few seconds, every motion and attack powered by nerve-jacked, hyperaccelerated reflexes and brute-force cybernetics.
"Get back in the car!" Sandoval was shouting, grabbing at Taggart's suit jacket, pulling him toward the rear of the vehicle. On the steps, the
Swiss police officers were rushing forward, pistols out. Taggart stumbled against the limo, panic in his eyes, catching sight of Peller as she
fumbled at the door handle.
Taggart's personal guards were two thickset men, both of them ex-military, trained and strong with it; but they were still only men, neither of
them with a single augmentation, as the Humanity Front's founder demanded of his staff. For all they could do, they could not match the speed
of their attacker.
He put them down as they blocked him, both bodyguards striking together, trying to split his focus. In one hand he had a heavy-frame
revolver, and he used it like a club, shattering the nose of one man in a gout of bright blood. The other of Taggart's guards took a shattering
strike to the knee that broke bone. His gun didn't clear its holster; instead, a following hit spun him into the dirt.
Taggart was at the door, Sandoval's hands on his back, shoving him toward the armored safety of the limo's interior.
Isaias turned and the killer was there, his face twisted in a grimace, cold augmented eyes that still held a spark of very human anger. "No,
please don't!"
Kicking the door shut, the assassin threw Sandoval to the ground and leveled the revolver at William Taggart's head.
The target raised his hands in a gesture of self-protection.
All around there was screaming and shouting, the buzz of the drones, the clatter of weapons snapping into fire mode—but Saxon didn't hear
that. The only thing that reached him was Taggart's question.
"D-did they send you?" he stuttered. "Was it them? Did they send you?"
The Diamondback's hammer clicked to the ready and he held the aim. The moment stretched like tallow, becoming long and fluid, extending
away. All it would take would be the slightest pressure on the trigger. One shot and one kill, and it would be done.
He had no reason to care about William Taggart's life. Men like him detested what Saxon was, thought him to be less than human. How much
pain had the Humanity Front and their radical cohorts in Purity First caused for people like him?
And how much more blood would be shed if he did this? How much more persecution and death would come from this one man's murder, here
and now? Was that a fair trade for Anna Kelso's life?
"Fuck!" Saxon's curse exploded from his lips and he let the gun drop. He couldn't do it. He could not let himself be Namir's weapon in the
Illuminati's secret war.
Confusion flooded Taggart's face. "Who ...? Who are you?"
And then another voice echoed in his skull. "You gutless prick. I knew you'd choke when the time came."
From the corner of his eye, Saxon saw a shimmer of sunlight off the lens of a rifle scope, up on the roof of the library building. "Sniper!" he
roared, grabbing a handful of Taggart's jacket and pulling him down behind the limousine. His cry was drowned out by the crack of a heavy
caliber shot.
Taggart fell out of the sight line, the hum of the round buzzing scant centimeters from Saxon's cheek; in the next moment he heard a wet thud
and a strangled cry.
Turning, he found the
Peller woman on her back, a blossom of red growing on her chest, blood staining the white gravel beneath her. Her
sightless eyes stared up into the cloudy sky.
Saxon spun and aimed his gun toward the rooftop, but Hardesty was already moving, vanishing into the library. Amid the confusion and the
chaos, he vaulted the hood of the car and ran for the windows of the building, scattering the reporters like panicked birds.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Palais des Nations—Geneva—Switzerland
Building B was the library, the archive, and the League of Nations Museum, closed today because of security concerns over the meeting and as
such empty of visitors. Saxon broke in through a ground-floor window and blinked his cyberoptics through their scan modes, sweeping the big
chamber for motion. Lines of high bookshelves formed shadowed lanes running the length of the building, and above a balconied area contained
the glass cases of the museum exhibits and the interactive hologram tour guides.
Hardesty and Saxon found each other at the same moment; the sniper was moving with the Longsword rifle at his hip, and in one fluid
movement he swung it up to his shoulder and fired.
Saxon vaulted to the floor, landing in a tuck and roll as a heavy rack of books exploded into confetti. He was in the worst place he could have
been. Hardesty had the height advantage, looking down from the second floor, and the range to make the high-powered rifle work for him;
Saxon had a revolver with a single bullet.
It wasn't just the lay of the land that was working against him. Outside, the Swiss police were gathering their wits and he had maybe a minute
before they would pile into the library, mob-handed. And he knew one thing for certain; if he was going to find Anna Kelso, he would have to go
through Scott Hardesty to do it.
As if on cue, the sniper called out to him. "Hey, limey! Thanks for the help, man. No matter how this plays out now, you've done the job for us!
I'm gonna ice you, leave you here for the cops ... Namir gets the group to finesse things a little, and by the evening news cycle, it'll be like you
pulled the trigger yourself."
He edged along one of the shelves. "You reckon? You missed the mark, mate. Taggart's still breathing!"
"Doesn't matter!" he shot back. "We got a contingency for everything, Saxon. Don't you get that? The plan goes ahead, no matter how much the
little people try to screw with it..."
Another bullet ripped through the shelves close to Saxon's head and he ducked. The son-of-a-bitch had a T-wave scope, peering through the
cover. Unless he could get out from under, close the distance, nothing the soldier could do would keep the sniper from making the hit sooner or
later.
He glanced up. The balcony overhead was a few feet from the top of the tallest bookshelf; he could make it, but the moment he moved,
Hardesty would cut him down. He needed a distraction.
Saxon leapt up onto the top of a study desk and the sniper saw him, swinging his rifle around to draw a bead. Saxon raised the Diamondback
and squeezed the trigger; as good a shot as he was, even with the aim point enhancements in his optics, Hardesty was in three-quarter cover
and essentially untouchable.
The massive crystal chandelier above him was a far larger, far easier target to hit. A great bowl of frosted glass and brass workings suspended
from a metal chain, it dated back to the opening of the Palais almost a century earlier. Saxon's shot destroyed it utterly, the fragile antique
exploding under the impact. Hardesty cried out in alarm as the chandelier came apart and crashed down around him.
Glass pealed as it shattered and collapsed, and Saxon used the moment to his advantage. Discarding the spent, useless revolver, he rocked back
on his augmented legs and applied power to a sprinting leap that took him scrambling up the bookcase, careworn old volumes tumbling to the
tiled floor as he kicked them free. Reaching the top of the stack, he swung for the rail running the length of the balcony and snagged it with his
cyberarm. The metal fingers locked on and he hauled himself up with a hissing grunt of effort. He was rolling over and down as a bullet strike
cut a divot of marble from the balcony at his side, sending chips of stone scattering like shrapnel.
Hardesty dashed from his cover, changing position, seeking a better angle. The long sniper rifle wavered at his hip, a spear made of black iron.
It was exactly the move Saxon knew he would make; the man wasn't one to take a fight on the terms that were offered to him, that was his
weakness. Hardesty always wanted an engagement his way, and sometimes that wasn't how things worked out. Saxon, by contrast, had learned
through hard experience how to play the hand he was dealt.
He gave a book cart a savage kick and it spun across the floor, cutting off Hardesty's escape route; then he mantled a desk and came diving
down on the man, leading with his augmented arm.
Hardesty brought up the sniper rifle to block him and Saxon punched the gun in the breech, hearing a satisfying crunch as the mechanism
inside broke under the impact. He followed through and brought the other man to the ground, sweeping in with a punch that knocked
Hardesty's sunglasses from his narrow, hairless face.
Saxon forced the weight of his forearm across Hardesty's throat and pressed down with all the power he could muster. He heard a strangled
yelp die in the other man's mouth, and the sniper flailed, bringing up his hands in what for a second looked like a gesture of surrender, palms
open, fingers spread.
Then the shape of Hardesty's right hand bifurcated and reassembled itself, little finger and thumb sliding back, middle fingers opening in a fan
until the hand resembled some kind of strange insect; at the same moment, a slot across the palm of Hardesty's left hand grew a wide, flat
dagger-tip of sharpened steel.
He slammed the palm-blade into Saxon's gut, but the jacket protecting him deflected the first few stabs, the tip skipping off the articulated
panels of armor embedded in it. Hardesty snapped the spider-hand around Saxon's throat and contracted it. He stabbed again, and this time
the blade plunged through into the flesh of Saxon's belly.
Pain shot through the soldier in a hot, burning surge, and he let it drive him. Saxon's free hand scrambled for purchase and caught Hardesty as
he tried to twist the blade. The sniper pushed back and the men shifted, staggering, caught in a lethal embrace.
Saxon's fingers slipped on the palm-blade, his own blood preventing him from getting a solid grip; at the same time, Hardesty was inexorably
tightening his own hold on the soldier. Warning icons flicked into view at the corner of his cone of vision, projected directly onto his retina by his implanted health monitor. Oxygen levels were dropping; he was getting dizzy. Had he still had organic eyes, Saxon would have been on the
verge of a gray-out.
"You won't win," spat his opponent. "I will fucking gut you!"
Holding on to Hardesty was like trying to keep his hands on a snake, the other man writhing and shifting, doing everything he could to break
Deus Ex - Icarus Effect Page 32
