Deus Ex: Black Light

by James Swallow

  “Hey, that’s not how it is…”

  Jensen slowly shook his head. “There’s a reason I came looking for you first. It’s because you’re the weak link. Don’t get me wrong, you did your job at Sarif just fine, but you’re a follower… you always have been. It’s why I always gave you the soft jobs.” He paused to let that sink in. “So tell me who wanted the pass card. Who put you up to it?”

  Hearing it stated in such flat, blunt terms pulled all the resistance out of Henry like an exhaled breath. Who the hell am I fooling? he asked himself. I’m just a washed-up mall cop out of his league.

  Henry polished off the last licks of his bourbon. “This comes back to me, I’m in the shit,” he muttered. “Wilder’s changed a lot since he went off the chain…”

  “Don Wilder?” Jensen took that in. “Huh. Figures it would be him. Always thought he was too good for the job.”

  That got a nod from Henry. Wilder had been security pit boss on the day shift at the main Sarif Industries office, and while the guy had the instincts of a hawk, he had the manners of a hyena. The rumor around the locker room was that before working at Sarif, he’d quit a job with the Illinois Department of Corrections just ahead of an investigation that would have seen him fired – but that was all hearsay. Henry had never liked the man, and had always been intimidated by him. Now that truth lodged itself in his thoughts, he found himself talking. “It was Don’s idea. I mean, we were both on the outs and we knew that there was no more money coming from Sarif. And with everything else that was going down, we had nothing in the tank. ‘No lifeline,’ he said.”

  Both of them knew about the high-security storage areas in all the Sarif Industries facilities, and while neither man had direct access, they guessed that the content would have to be valuable. And to be honest, Henry had liked the idea of giving David Sarif the finger for leaving his employees to twist in the wind.

  “You knew my pass card would get you into those places,” said Jensen, laying it out. “How’d you get around the voice code?”

  “Don said he knew someone who could deal with that. Said she had the tech and everything.” He shook his head. “I never met her. Just got paid up front. A finder’s fee.”

  “You owed anything?”

  Henry shook his head again, afraid to lie out loud. There was still some money coming his way, the last of the cash Don had promised after the thefts were done.

  Jensen leaned closer, and his voice dropped to a low register. “Do you have any idea what you opened up for him?”

  “I dunno, Don said it was a stock of nu-poz. I didn’t question it!”

  “Weapons,” Jensen replied. “You helped him get his hands on military-grade hardware.”

  “Oh no.” Henry felt the blood drain from his face. He’d always suspected it could be something like that, but he’d never had the guts to look too hard at things. “You gotta believe me—”

  The sharp chime of a vu-phone cut Henry off before he could say anymore, and by reflex he pulled the device from his pocket. The number was unlisted, but he immediately knew who it was. Jensen must have seen the answer on his face, because he reached out and plucked the phone from his hand, triggering the call.

  “Where the fuck are you at?” said the familiar voice through the phone’s speaker, all snarls and arrogance. “You were supposed to be here ten minutes ago. You keeping me waiting, asshole?”

  Henry managed a lame reply. “Sorry, Don… Something, ah, came up.”

  “What did I tell you about names on the phone, stupid?” There was a spitting noise, and when Wilder’s voice returned his tone was sly. “Ah, don’t worry about it. I sent someone to bring you your cut. It’s all good.” Then the line went dead.

  “What did he mean by that?” Henry began, looking to Jensen.

  But the other man had stood up, stepping away from the bar, his hand slipping into the pocket of his long coat. Henry spun around to see what had alerted Jensen, and there in the tavern’s open doorway were three men in yellow-gold gang colors, all of them grinning, their pupils dark with drug-effect dilation.

  “It’s payday,” said one of them, bringing up a drum-fed machine pistol with a wicked, hungry sneer playing across his lips.

  * * *

  Jensen hadn’t expected to cross paths with the gang-banger called Cali again, but there he was, large as life and twice as ugly, clearly doped up beyond all reason with whatever cocktail of drugs was the choice of the MCBs. It was the only way the man could still be standing. A day or so before, when they faced off at the manufacturing plant, Jensen had left Cali with ruined legs and figured that would be the last he’d see of him. He hadn’t reckoned on the enthusiasm the Motor City Bangers had for elective cybernetic augmentation.

  Cali was wearing torn, bloodstained cut-offs that revealed his newest enhancements. From the knees down, both his shattered legs had been replaced by shiny, gold-plated augs that ended in skeletal, claw-like feet. They matched the designs of Cali’s twin cyberarms, and he was grinning like he’d been reborn, his weak flesh replaced with glittering metal.

  He came stiffly through the door of the tavern, followed by a gangly kid with a pump-action MAO shotgun and a third ganger carrying a giant, heavy-caliber pistol that was far too big for his skinny frame. All the MCBs drew down as one, and Jensen knew this was not a robbery, not a show of force, but an execution squad.

  Jensen shoved Henry away, down toward the bar, launching himself in the other direction as he tore his pistol from the holster beneath his coat. Lightning-fast, Jensen fired three rounds as he dove, and at least one shot clipped the kid with a big semi-automatic. But Cali and the shotgunner were already firing, filling the air inside the bar with hot, screaming lead, and Jensen took multiple hits across his shoulder and upper arm that slammed him off course. Jensen spun and fell across tables and chairs, crashing to the floor among a rain of broken glasses and spilled beer. Pain shocked through the muscle-machine interface in his bones, the ripple effect of the impact over the polycarbonate implants like a kick in the chest. He took a wheezing breath, tasted blood.

  “I know you!” Cali was whooping and laughing as he sprayed rounds from the machine pistol across the room, cutting down the other drinkers who were too slow to take cover or flee through the fire exit.

  Behind the bar, Jake perished as a shotgun blast blew him back into a rack of liquor bottles. He toppled out of sight in silence, his sightless eyes looking at nothing. The gunman who had ended him hunted for Henry Kellman, who was scrambling desperately across the floor between the legs of the bar stools. The MAO barked again and Jensen saw Henry go down in a bloody heap.

  “Done, man, let’s jet!” shouted the punk with the shotgun.

  “No!” bellowed Cali, as his weapon ran dry. He ejected the drum mag and let it clatter to the floor, jamming a new load into the ammo port. “Where’s that hairy-faced fucker? I’m gonna smoke him!”

  It registered distantly with Jensen that he wasn’t actually the one the MCBs had come to kill, but Cali had no intention of leaving without taking his scalp as a bonus. Jensen lurched forward, coming back to his feet underneath a circular table bolted to the floor. Ripping the table’s central support free, he took it up with him like a battering ram and slammed it into Cali before the ganger could finish reloading. Without stopping, Jensen used the broken table to flatten the shooter against the wall and knock him down. Cali’s gun went spinning away, and Jensen pivoted before the second thug with the shotgun could track to him. Blind-firing once again, he hit the other gang member and sent him staggering away, out on to the street. The kid with the big pistol had already fled without firing a shot.

  Jensen went to Henry, who lay face-down in a puddle of blood and cheap Scotch. “Kellman!” he snapped, turning him over. “Can you hear me?”

  He was wasting his breath. A ragged gouge cut by a close-range shotgun blast had torn away the right side of Henry’s head, killing him instantly. Whatever he had known about Don Wilder’s part in
the break-ins was lost – Murdered to keep him silent, Jensen thought. It didn’t matter that Spector’s Tavern was way outside MCB turf, or that a shooting here might have some serious gangland blowback. Magnet’s crew were only interested in making sure Kellman never talked.

  Beside his body, Henry’s vu-phone was smashed beyond recovery. That meant Jensen’s immediate sources of information had now narrowed to just one. Rising to his feet, he strode back to where Cali was struggling to extract himself from a mess of broken chairs and splintered wood. He tried to talk, but Jensen punched him hard enough to knock the ganger to the edge of unconsciousness. Then, grabbing one of Cali’s brand-new metal-clad ankles, Jensen dragged him across the ruined bar and out through the fire exit, into the dimly lit alleyway beyond.

  * * *

  Cali came to, moaning and coughing, trying and failing to sit up. That was the thing about recent augmentees with new limbs, they instinctively thought the tech would work just the same as their old organic arms or legs, that they would be able to start walking normally from the moment they got off the operating table. Jensen knew from long, bitter experience that it didn’t work that way. No amount of painkillers could change the fact that it hurt like hell and it took months of physical rehab just to learn how to move again. That the ganger had come out looking to make trouble instead of healing up spoke volumes about his bravado and stupidity.

  “Fuh…” Cali managed, trying to assemble a curse. “Fuh… yooo.”

  Jensen holstered his pistol and listened for the sounds of sirens. Cass Corridor was on the edges of the zones still patrolled by the embattled Detroit Police Department, so there was a chance the cops were on their way. “Pritchard? Monitor the DPD alert frequencies. Warn me if they get close.”

  “Will do,” said the hacker over the infolink. “I’m also running down anything I can on the whereabouts of one Donald Wilder, ex-employee of Sarif Industries…” Pritchard had listened in on the whole conversation with poor Henry, but Jensen suspected that Wilder would not be easy to locate. He was too smart to leave a clear trail, and that meant using other means to find him.

  Jensen put a boot on Cali’s chest and pressed down, making the gang member choke. “You like the metal, huh?” he asked, nodding toward the signature gold limbs. “I wonder how you’re gonna do without it.”

  With a flash of motion, Jensen extended the nanoblade in his forearm and sliced cleanly through the mechanical core of Cali’s right shoulder. In a gush of white processing fluid, the aug broke off and rolled away, the fingers clutching at air. Without pausing, he moved, putting his boot on Cali’s other shoulder. The ganger cried out as Jensen took Cali’s left arm and bent it back the wrong way at the elbow joint. He gave it a savage twist and the bearing gave way.

  Jensen tossed the ruined mechanical limb down the alley, then went to work on Cali’s new legs. He stamped through the left knee joint, severing vital myomer muscle feed lines, finally dropping into a crouch and extending the blade again. It made short work of the other leg, and at length Jensen took a step back. Lying there, limbless and powerless, Cali rocked back and forth, screaming at the top of his lungs.

  “Where’s Wilder?” Jensen demanded. “Tell me now. Otherwise, I’ll leave you here for the cops, the local meatheads… or whatever finds you first. Understand?”

  Predictably, Cali’s responses followed a path from threats to refusals to insults, then back to dire warnings of retribution from the MCBs. It was only when Jensen put the nanoblade at the gang member’s throat that he started to bargain and plead with him. And eventually, as the skirl of a police siren sounded close by, he came up with the name of a street across the city in the Ravendale district.

  “Got a possible location,” said Pritchard, refining his search with the new information. “An apartment complex, with a residence there registered in the name of Wilder’s ex-wife.”

  “Copy that.” Jensen turned his back on Cali and strode away, ignoring the man’s renewed cries for help.

  “You’re just going to leave him there?”

  “He’ll get the same chance they gave Stacks,” said Jensen, and he kept on walking.

  RAVENDALE – DETROIT – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  It was almost possible to believe that the Aug Incident hadn’t taken place here. On the surface, everything in this neighborhood seemed in order – no homeless and dispossessed crowding every shadowed alleyway, no darkened buildings without life or power. As Jensen walked quickly, his collar turned up, he allowed himself a moment to look around and take it in.

  Ravendale had been the site of massive urban renewal in the 2020s, and the corporations that had taken control of it then had never let go. Jensen saw bright holographic signage promising safety and prosperity beneath the company banners. Tai Yong Medical’s abstract logo was everywhere, and he wondered if there was any part of this protected enclave that the Chinese conglomerate didn’t own to some degree. He grimaced, wondering how David Sarif would have felt seeing his old business rivals with such a foothold in ‘his city’. For his part, Jensen knew that whatever sense of security Tai Yong projected was false. Beyond the edges of the Ravendale district and the other protected zones, the rest of Detroit was barely hanging on. The city was on the verge of turning feral, and if that happened there would be no stopping its self-destruction.

  He shook off the thought as he approached the apartment block where Wilder’s bolt hole was located. A sculpted rectangle of glass and steel, it climbed twelve floors into the night sky, glowing with soft amber illumination.

  Pritchard had already scouted the location via cyberspace, conducting a virtual recon of the building that didn’t show up any good methods of entry. Jensen resolved to tackle the security quickly and directly. It was imperative for him to reach Wilder’s apartment on the eighth floor without triggering any alarms – Jensen knew that the man would have an escape plan, and that he would flee at the first sign of danger. The element of surprise was Jensen’s only advantage.

  A pair of ubiquitous Big Bro security cameras were set in the ceiling of the lobby, constantly scanning back and forth across the room for any signs of intruders. Jensen hesitated behind a low planter and watched the sweep patterns for a few moments, waiting for the brief moment when the cameras slipped out of synch with one another. Chancing the use of his cloaking aug would be too risky – the lobby was long and he’d need to be fast, risking disruption of the invisibility effect. Timing was the key.

  Jensen blink-set a countdown clock in the corner of his optic display, and when the numbers began falling, he bolted from his cover. Without missing a step, he ran to a spot beneath the first of the cameras just as it swept back toward him. Another count of three more seconds before it moved away again, and Jensen sprinted the rest of the distance, barely making it into the corridor beyond as the second monitor looked his way. The camera caught a glimpse of black coat-tail, but he was in.

  “What was that?” A voice, tired and bored, issued out from a security room across the hall. Jensen heard the sound of a chair scraping on the floor as someone stood up, and he was at the door as it opened inward.

  He saw a thickset man in a rumpled security uniform through the widening gap, but didn’t give him time to react. Jensen slammed the heel of his hand on the door, forcing it back to hit the unwitting guard in the face.

  The man stumbled back, shouting out. “Hey, you can’t be in here…” Belatedly, he caught up to what he was looking at and his hand dove at a holstered stun gun.

  But Jensen was ready and he was faster. He pushed in, snaking his arm around the guard’s throat, tightening the hold in a matter of heartbeats. The man tried to say more, but all that emerged from his lips was a dry gasp.

  Jensen carefully applied more pressure to the sleeper hold, feeling the resistance ebb out of the guard. Too tight for too long, and he could kill this guy; too loose and he risked him breaking free. “Don’t fight it,” Jensen told him.

  The stun gun clattered to the f
loor and at last the guard went slack. Jensen lowered the unconscious man into a chair, kicking the door closed as he did so.

  Next to a TV running the Picus News channel, a bank of monitors showed points of view from all the Big Bro cameras on every floor of the apartment block, and Jensen spotted the shadows of small, drum-shaped security bots rolling back and forth on trike wheels. Acting quickly, he brought up a systems display and a brief smile crossed his lips. The guard had left the console logged on to the security mainframe, immediately getting Jensen past the first line of digital resistance.

  He cast a wary eye over the network display, and set to work running a quick-and-dirty intrusion of the system. Jensen wasn’t in the same league as career hackers like Frank Pritchard, but he knew enough to brute-force his way through a data net. Bouncing an intercept from the input/output port, he guided a cursor to an API node, then through a redundant directory, edging closer to the vital registry he was targeting with every step.

  He was two nodes away when the system’s diagnostic subroutine triggered, redlining the intrusion. The computer began a rapid back-trace, closing the gate on Jensen as he swiftly ran out of room to maneuver. Failure would mean every alarm in the building going off, and the end of his clandestine entry.

  Jensen pushed on, taking the risk. At last, he connected to the registry and triggered a capture function. As the program co-opted the command data, the seeker trace enveloped it – one percentage climbing, another falling, with success going to whichever executed first. Jensen’s hands left the keyboard and he got ready to run; but then the registry flashed green and the network warning fell silent. In the next second he was looking at command authorities for the cameras and the patrolling robots, and with a few deft keystrokes he ordered the systems to ignore him.

  Jensen blew out a breath and leaned back. On the Picus News feed, he saw the permanently friendly smile of anchorwoman Eliza Cassan as she covered the day’s headlines. She looked the same as she had when he confronted her in Montreal, only to learn that Cassan was no more human than the intelligent network running this apartment building. Was she the same Eliza he had spoken to, the secret AI with all its questions and uncertainties? Or was that just another model, a freshly rebooted upload of the same software forced back into the same patterns as its original? The thought came too close for comfort to Jensen’s own circumstances, and he dismissed the question, returning to the mission of the moment.