He found a resident index and discovered Wilder’s ex-wife listed there as a current owner-occupier, despite the fact she had been killed in the Aug Incident over eighteen months ago.
Apartment 8-12, noted Jensen. One of the Executive Suites. Where does an out-of-work security guard get the cash for a place like that?
* * *
He rode the elevator to the seventh floor. The apartment directly below Wilder’s was locked and vacant, but a high air vent allowed Jensen to gain entry without forcing the door. He crossed the echoing, empty room, noting that the apartment could easily have swallowed the entire footprint of his old place in the Chiron Building.
Jensen slipped out on to the balcony, and leapt up from a standing start to grab the edge of the floor above him. Working slowly and in near silence, he swung his body up, his augmented arms taking the weight, until he could hook his leg over the other balcony and pull himself up. Jensen heard the micro-motors in his damaged shoulder complain, and ignored it.
A conversation was taking place inside Apartment 8-12 – or, to be more accurate, an argument. Don Wilder’s raised voice cut across another reply filtered through the buzz of a video feed.
“For cryin’ out loud! You’re such a tough guy but you got nothing but excuses to give!” Jensen crouched on the balcony, peering into the sullen lighting of the room beyond. Wilder was pacing back and forth in front of a wall screen, gesturing with a shiny black cyberarm that he hadn’t possessed during his time at Sarif Industries. In his other hand he had a stranglehold on a half-empty bottle of Red Bear stout.
On the screen, Jensen could make out the broad, dark face of the leader of the Motor City Bangers. Magnet was sneering. “Man, who the fuck you think you are? Don’t talk to me like you is in charge here.”
“You think you are?” Wilder shot back. “Your chumps have a simple job to do and they can’t even handle that. Kill a man or two. It’s not that hard to understand.”
“MCB don’t work for you, asshole,” said Magnet. “This? It’s a whatever, a courtesy call. I got her the computer like she wanted, so that’s all good. As for you? Out.” He gave Wilder the finger and cut the line.
The other man swore violently and took a long, angry swig of beer. “I am having the worst goddamn day!” he said to the air.
“You’re just getting started,” said Jensen, stepping into the room with a pistol in his hand.
NINE
RAVENDALE – DETROIT – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
There was a flash of emotion over Don Wilder’s face, a micro-expression that anyone other than Jensen might have missed. Fear. Despite the blank, glassy gaze of his twinned cyberoptic implants, the shock of seeing his former boss right there in the spot he doubtless thought was his safe place was clear.
But then it was gone and Wilder’s expression became one of careless false humor. “Well, damn. Jensen, here you are. Come in, then. Take a load off.” He waggled the beer in his hand. “Can I get you a cold one?”
“Put down the bottle and keep your hands where I can see them,” Jensen replied, keeping his semiautomatic leveled in Wilder’s general direction.
The man shrugged and obliged, unconsciously flexing the black plastic cyberarm as he did so. The action reminded Jensen of how he’d behaved after first getting his aug limbs. Like the optics, Wilder’s replacement arm was new, and if Jensen was right, their make was Sarif Industries.
“When did you get that arm and the eyes?” said Jensen. Considering how human augmentation technology was being heavily regulated since the incident, the fact that he’d come across two people in the space of a few hours with brand new mech augs couldn’t be an accident. “Take it off the top for yourself?”
“You like ’em?” Wilder flexed the arm in a bodybuilder pose, stepping slowly around the table in the middle of the room. “Better than yours, I reckon.” He paused. “How’d you find me? I mean, I paid off some hacker punk to trash the SI employee database, erase the ID files of everyone on the security detail… make it look like it all got lost in the incident, y’know?”
“You forgot that I know your face,” Jensen told him. He moved slightly, keeping a good distance between them. “Did you really think you were going to get away with this?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Wilder said, with a shrug. “Look, if you ain’t gonna put that gun away, then I suggest you leave. Last I heard you went missing up north. I don’t know what happened to you there but it’s nothing to do with me… You don’t want me to call the cops, do you?”
“Sure. You can tell them how you had Henry Kellman murdered to keep him quiet,” Jensen spoke over him. “Or was it just that you wanted to keep the rest of his money for yourself?”
Wilder paused, rocking on the balls of his feet. Finally, he let his hands drop. “You know, I heard a rumor you were back in Detroit but I thought it was bullshit. Stupid me, huh?” His tone turned mocking. “Adam Jensen, the bullet-proof man. David Sarif’s attack dog.” He sniggered. “Gotta say, you’re looking a little worse for wear.”
Jensen ignored the comment. “The hardware that you helped the MCBs to steal. You’re going to tell me where it is, right now.”
Gradually, Wilder let the false good humor slide off his face. “Or what? You’re gonna shoot me in cold blood? I don’t think so—”
“Don’t test me.” Jensen aimed the compact CA-4 pistol directly at the other man’s head and cocked the hammer. “It’s been a long day and I’m a little short on patience.”
Wilder backed away a step, his hands coming up again. He almost stumbled over a low armchair. “Okay! Shit!” He swallowed hard. “Look, Kellman, that was something that had to happen, he was a drunk and he couldn’t be trusted… You know that. You know he had no guts.”
“Explain it to me,” Jensen growled.
“You weren’t here, you didn’t have to live through all the aftermath.” The other man let out a heavy sigh, bitterness and anger clouding his next words. “Kellman got the pass card, yeah, so we took advantage. Believe me, there were more than enough interested parties. They came to us.”
“Who did?”
“I’m not telling you that. More than my life is worth.” Wilder shook his head. “Anyhow, I don’t care about her name, just the color of her money. But there’s connections there, man, like you wouldn’t believe.” He fluttered his aug hand in the air. “Up way high.”
“I can imagine,” Jensen prompted. “Keep going.”
The other man shrugged. “Be realistic. You’re just one guy with an overdeveloped hero complex. You’re not gonna stop these people from getting what they want, you or those spec ops assholes from Task Force 29…”
“Task Force?” He seized on the name, understanding immediately. “You mean the crew at the manufacturing plant?”
A derisive snort escaped Wilder’s mouth. “See? You don’t even know who the players are! You got no idea what you’re messing with.” He shook his head. “Bad enough I got those pricks from Interpol sniffing around, but now here you are busting in like the Lone Ranger! Don’t you know to leave well enough alone, Jensen? The deal’s already been done. This time tomorrow, the hardware is going to be somewhere over the Atlantic, halfway to who-gives-a-shit. This is my endgame, man. Time to cash out and retire.”
“Those are military weapon prototypes we’re talking about,” insisted Jensen. “Dangerous black market hardware. Did you even consider for one second how many lives they could destroy?”
Wilder rolled his eyes as he circled the table. “Oh, spare me the bleeding heart routine. How many guys have you put down? How many deaths are you responsible for?” Jensen stood his ground, his aim never faltering. “What, you don’t think that the rest of the security detail knew?” Wilder shook his head. “You’re no angel. You’re no better than me.”
There was a truth in the other man’s words that cut deeper than Jensen expected, and his lips thinned into a hard line. Wilder saw it and knew he had touched a raw nerve.<
br />
“You know, for a second there I actually considered cutting you in,” he continued. “But you’d never have gone for it. You ain’t honest enough to admit who you really are.” He smiled coldly. “In a way, you’re just like poor old Henry. Hollow inside. All that shit about the Mexicantown shoot back in the day, and what happened with that stuck-up witch Reed…? I heard about it all.” Wilder pointed at him with the fingers of his cybernetic hand. “You let it rule you, Jensen. It made you weak.”
Then in an instant, the action like a magic trick, Wilder’s hand snapped backward at a 180-degree angle and the forearm behind it bifurcated, revealing the narrow mouth of a pulsed energy projector hidden inside the mechanism.
Even as Jensen’s finger squeezed the trigger of his pistol, the kinetic wave from the pulse projector blasted outward with the force of a chained hurricane. Hit squarely by the shock effect, he was catapulted back through a glass partition and into an anteroom.
Momentarily dazed by the assault, Jensen tried to shake off the blurring of his vision as a strident, high-pitched beeping reached his ears. He rolled to one side, catching sight of a mine template fixed to the bottom of another low-slung armchair, the blue glow of a Pulsar electromag charge in the discharge slot.
“Stay down,” sneered Wilder, just as the powerful EMP lit off and Jensen was wracked with pain. Lightning-like sparks crackled all over his augmentations, making him shake and convulse uncontrollably. His limbs became dead metal, unresponsive and immobile.
Jensen tried to lean up and failed, his sight filled with jagged sheets of false color and error messages as his augs spun through one failed reboot cycle after another.
He saw Wilder approaching, his cyberarm reshaping itself as it reset. “Cool toy, huh? When I saw it, I just had to get me one.” He bent to scoop up Jensen’s gun from where it had fallen. “But it’s non-lethal, though, just like that EMP. What a shame.” Wilder checked to make sure there was a round in the pistol’s chamber. “Thanks for leaving that key card behind, man. That made me rich! The buyer, she gave me a vox synth to spoof the locks…” He paused, pressing a small metallic disk to his throat. “That opened a lot of doors.” An artificial emulation of Jensen’s own voice echoed through the room. “Clever, huh?” Wilder toyed with the device. “Of course, you ruined it all by actually blundering into everything, but I’m gonna deal with that right now.”
Jensen put all the effort he could muster into moving his right arm toward a jagged shard of glass lying just out of reach of his fingers, but nothing happened.
Wilder cocked his head and mumbled words too soft to register; the man was using an infolink’s subvocal pick-up to talk to someone else. The buyer, Jensen guessed.
The conversation didn’t stay hushed for very long. “What?” snapped Wilder. “Are you kidding me?” he asked to the air, gesturing with the pistol. “I got him right here. One shot and—” Wilder winced as a voice that Jensen couldn’t hear cut him off. “Fine. But I want a bonus for my trouble! He knows me and that complicates things.” He nodded again and let the gun drop. “Okay.”
“Trouble with… the boss?” Jensen forced out the words.
“She must like you,” Wilder spat, grabbing a telephone handset off a nearby shelf. “Whatever.” He dialed 911 and then he pressed the voice-shifter to his neck again. “Yeah. Police.” Jensen heard his own voice once more, the strange disconnection of it making his head swim. The throbbing pain from the aug implants in his skull meant it was hard to concentrate. “I want to turn myself in. My name is Adam Jensen. I hurt a bunch of people at Spector’s Tavern. I’ve got a gun.” Then Wilder hung up and tossed the pistol into the shadows. “That ought to do it. Unlike in the rest of this town, the cops around here will actually come looking.”
Jensen shifted slightly, the first tingles of feeling returning to his fingertips; but Wilder was standing over him.
“Lights out,” he grinned, and his boot came down with pain and darkness close behind.
WEST SIDE – DETROIT – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
When awareness returned, it wasn’t gradual or easy.
Jensen snapped awake, as if a switch had been tripped inside his head, and his first breath of air came back with the taste of rust and damp.
He was lying on a folding cot in a wide metal compartment, which was otherwise empty except for a skeletal chair and a wireless remote camera unit fixed to the discolored wall with a blob of epoxy glue. Jensen righted himself, staring at a sealed hatchway that was the only way in or out. His new circumstances had the unpleasant ring of the familiar about them. Waking up in a cell was nothing new to Jensen, and it never boded well.
He looked around. If this was police holding, then the Detroit PD were even worse off than he thought. He was missing his weapon, the contents of his pockets, his coat and tactical gear, and there was an unpleasant buzzing sound in the air that made his teeth itch.
“Terrific.” Jensen scowled as he located the source of the sound. “This again.” Clamped around his arm was a metallic bracelet that was the twin to the one that had been fitted to him at Facility 451. It made his augs feel leaden and heavy, as if they were moving in slow motion. He tested his infolink for a carrier signal, but got nothing back but white noise.
The latches around the hatch clanked open in sequence and the door creaked open. Jensen half-expected to see Agent Thorne or Dr. Rafiq step through, but his first sight was of a different, but still familiar woman.
The operative from the roof, the one with the short blonde hair, came into the cabin followed by a big, dark-skinned guy with shoulders broad enough to fill the doorway. Jensen caught a glimpse of others moving around in the area beyond the hatch, seeing equipment and monitor screens before it was shut again.
Both of them were wearing the same matte black combat outfits he’d seen earlier. There was nothing to indicate what they were or who they worked for. All Jensen had was the name that Wilder had dropped during their confrontation.
He had nothing to lose, so he decided to throw it out there. “Tell me something. Does the Detroit Police Department know that Interpol are working on their turf?”
The big guy snorted, but said nothing, inclining his head in a way that gave the woman permission to speak. So he’s in charge and she’s the number two. Jensen filed that away for later consideration.
“You should be glad we picked you up before they did.” There was that European accent again, which chimed with the Interpol connection. “The police have a BOLO out for you in connection with that shootout across town. And then there’s the matter of a Federal alert, something to do with a situation in Alaska.”
“It’s not how it looks,” Jensen offered.
“It rarely is,” rumbled the man, and Jensen picked out a southern twang to his words. He produced a pocket secretary and set the device into playback mode. An audio file of Wilder’s faked emergency call sounded out across the compartment. “Of course, that ain’t you,” said the big man. “Our techs saw through it. But the locals wouldn’t have known any better. So you want to explain why someone left you to take the fall?”
Jensen eyed them. “Remind me of what laws it is you’re breaking by holding me here? What due process you’re ignoring? Or is that just how Task Force 29 operates?” He was fishing for a response, and it worked.
The woman stepped closer, looming over him. “You want to talk about your rights? I think you gave up any claim on legal protection when you threw in with smugglers and killers. You don’t get to run this time, Mr. Jensen. Yes, we know who you are, and we know who you’re working with.”
“Is that so?” It was a bad sign that they had his name, but he didn’t let it show. “And who is that, exactly?”
She leaned in. “Here’s what I think happened. I think you and your friends from Sarif Industries decided to make bank by putting mil-spec weapons on the underground aug market, but you didn’t reckon on them double-crossing you. Now you’re out in the cold and you’ve got nothing t
o show for it.”
“We know your access code was used,” said the man. “And when the DPD picked up Kellman’s body, it wasn’t hard to piece together the rest.”
Jensen gave a snort. “Except you’re looking at it all wrong. I wasn’t in on this deal. I’m trying to stop it.”
“Like a good policeman?” said the woman. She shot the other man a wary glance. “But you haven’t been that for a long time, Jensen. Funny thing… we found your police record easily enough, but your employee files from Sarif Industries are all corrupted. I wonder how that happened?”
“You know these guys?” The man held up the pocket secretary so Jensen could see it and tabbed through a series of pictures, watching him closely for any reaction. The shots were of unfamiliar faces, men in combat gear whose profile suggested they were mercenaries.
Jensen shook his head. “Never seen them before,” he replied truthfully.
That wasn’t the response that the woman wanted, and her expression soured. “Who is running this transaction?” she demanded. “Give us a name and we’ll cut you a deal. We don’t want some burnout ex-cop like you. We want the people with the money.”
The corner of his lip quirked up at the insult. “And what would you do with that name? Report in to your bosses? Or go put a bullet between someone’s eyes?”
“We’d bring them down,” said the big man, and Jensen sensed that he meant every word of it. “That’s what we do. You could say our unit has a… a broad remit.” He paused, then reached for the chair resting by the far wall, planting it backwards in front of Jensen so he could sit and look him in the eye. “I read your file. I reckon I get you well enough. Cop with a code, right? Someone with principles.” He gestured around. “Only you’re in the real world, and it don’t have much room for that kinda thing.”
Deus Ex: Black Light Page 18
