Deus Ex: Black Light

by James Swallow

  Jensen watched the rocking motions of the VTOL and the locomotive, timing the moment to the last possible second; then he was away, dropping the distance to land in a three-point fall on the midline of the engine. He found a grab bar on the hull and gripped it tightly before wind shear could tear into him.

  The black-on-black VTOL whispered away, the hatch sliding shut until it was nearly invisible. Jensen watched it dip below a tree line and then it was gone.

  Using the grab bar and others that followed a line astern, Jensen moved hand-over-hand toward the rear of the engine. He counted seven more wagons beyond – a crew car, three cargo wagons, a pair of flatbeds and a tail-end caboose. From his vantage point, nothing seemed awry, but the jamming of communications and the fact that the VTOL’s low pass hadn’t immediately drawn someone’s attention did not bode well.

  Quinn’s words echoed in his thoughts. Exactly how Thorne and the Task Force fitted into this byzantine chess game wasn’t immediately clear to Jensen, but what he did know for sure was that the stolen Sarif tech was too dangerous to be allowed to get out into the world. The only goal that mattered to him right now was making sure those mil-spec augs were destroyed. The rest of it he would figure out along the way.

  The tech was David Sarif’s secret legacy, and somehow Adam Jensen had taken on the mantle of responsibility for it. So be it, he thought, recalling his words to Pritchard. One last job for the boss.

  * * *

  There was a skylight in the roof of the next car along. Jensen hopped the gap from the engine and got the vent open as a low bridge loomed up out of the night. He dropped through and into the crew car a split-second before it whooshed overhead, red indicator lights across its length lighting up the air.

  Drawing his pistol, Jensen advanced up the length of the wagon. Air was rushing through the train car, but not from the open skylight. He searched around and came across a ragged wound in the floor. A rough oval slice was missing from the deck, and through it Jensen saw a blur of dark ground whipping past. Discarded next to the damage was a laser tool and a heavy battery pack. He dropped into a crouch and tapped the edge of the hole. The metal was still hot to the touch.

  A dull thud sounded from the rear of the wagon, and Jensen’s head snapped up. He raised the Zenith and advanced, closing in on the source of the noise. There was little illumination in the crew car, and oddly cast shadows fell everywhere, but he could see no places for anyone to be hiding.

  Ahead was the door that led to the first of the cargo wagons. Jensen lowered his gun slightly and started forward again. It was exactly what his attacker was waiting for.

  From the corner of his vision, Jensen saw a hazy orange shimmer as light warped and bent around an invisible form. He spun as the cloak of twisted radiance fell away from the helmeted figure in black, getting a momentary glimpse of four magenta-hued lowlight lenses set in a featureless blank mask.

  The thermoptical camouflage dissipated and the figure threw itself at Jensen, a bright dagger snapping into place across the knuckles of their hand like a switchblade. Acting on pure reflex, he brought up his arms to block the stabbing motion and turn it aside. Artificial arms clashed with a dull clatter of polycarbonate and Jensen’s hand jerked. He let off a shot into the ceiling, the report of the pistol lost in the noise of the train as it thundered through a tunnel.

  Darkness descended, lit only by pulses of light from passing warning lamps as they flashed by. In the strobing, staccato glow, Jensen and his attacker twisted and fought in dangerously close quarters. The wide dagger blade hummed as it cut through the air toward his throat time and time again. With each swing, Jensen tried to extend away, but there was nowhere to retreat to. Instead he went on the offensive, bringing down the butt of the pistol on the brow of the helmet. He smashed one of the quad-eyes and the attacker flinched; Jensen guessed they were neural-jacked straight into the overlapping mech-optics, and although there would be no pain effect, it was hard for anyone to have their eye – real or not – crushed and not shrink from it, even for a moment.

  He saw the opening and took it, landing a maximum-force punch in his opponent’s throat, the impact shocking through the armored ruff around their neck. That wide blade came at him again, but he parried it and shoved his attacker off-balance.

  The figure in black shot out a hand and tried to pull him close, grabbing at his tactical rig, looking for a gap between the armor plates to put the tip of the dagger. Jensen kept up momentum, knowing that to lose it would be to end this mission before it had barely started. They stumbled together in a ragged shuffle and crashed into the connecting door. The hatch slid open behind them and the fighters swung around into the next carriage.

  Jensen had barely a quarter-second to grasp a snapshot of the interior – bodies and blood on the floor, another pair of black-suited assassins at the far end of the rail car among racks of crates and boxes – before his opponent reared up and butted him across the bridge of his nose with the helmet. Pain ripped across his face and one of his eye shields grew a jagged crack.

  The other attackers reacted, one dropping into cover, the other releasing a burst of automatic fire from a silenced SMG. Caseless rounds whined and sparked off the racks along the walls, and Jensen used the distraction to knock his close-quarter attacker away, finally gaining the distance he needed. Jensen fired and the figure in black dropped to the deck.

  The others came storming toward him, firing as they went. A hail of bullets tore up the interior of the cargo wagon, ricochets shrieking as they bounced off bins of scrapped equipment and other hardware on its way to be melted down.

  Jensen put his shoulder to one of the racks and gave it a hard shove, dislodging a metal basket of splintered ceramic armor inserts. It landed with a crash on the deck, upending its contents, and he went with it, using it as momentary cover before launching himself at the other two attackers. He had to close the distance to them, use the confines of the cargo wagon’s narrow width to stop them raking him with more bursts of gunfire.

  They were shoulder to shoulder as he dove at them, blocking his advance. Jensen swept up and threw forward his arms, as if he were about to punch both men at once – but instead he deployed the nanoblades hidden in his aug arms at maximum extent, and followed all the way through with a stabbing attack. The blunt edges of the monomolecular weapons skipped off hard polymer chest plates and found purchase in the seams of the Kevlar bodysuits beneath. Any cries of pain they gave were lost, trapped behind their soundproof helmets, and they collapsed atop one another, rapidly bleeding out.

  Grim-faced, Jensen stepped back and studied his bleak work, spotting the bodies of three of Jarreau’s operatives who had died where they fell. In death, there seemed little difference between the two sides of the fight. Each were darkly clad, fearsome but efficiently anonymous in aspect.

  Proxy soldiers, he thought, recalling something David Sarif had once said to him, a lifetime ago. All run by faces in the shadows. The thought sat badly with Jensen, and inevitably a question rose that he had no answer for. A question that had been playing on his mind since his reawakening.

  Who is running me?

  TWELVE

  US ARMY RAIL TRANSPORT 995 – MICHIGAN – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  Vande gave Chen the same look she always did – as if he was something that she’d scraped off the bottom of her boot – and she walked away down the cargo wagon. “I’m going to go check on the other team,” she told the tech.

  “Missing you already,” he said. Chen couldn’t help it, the ironic comment came automatically. He heard Kastillo, the other TF29 agent in the carriage, give a low snigger.

  “You know every time you talk to Vande like that, you’re just annoying her a little bit more,” he noted. “Knock it off, before she strangles you in your sleep.”

  “Can I help it if I have a crush on our second-in-command?”

  Kastillo rolled his eyes. “You know everyone else just thinks you have no idea when to shut up, right?” />
  “It’s part of my charm,” Chen insisted.

  “No, it’s not—” began Kastillo, but he never got to finish his sentence. Without warning, the hatch leading from the rear end of the cargo wagon suddenly distorted in its frame as a massive impact slammed into it from the outside.

  Chen and Kastillo went for their weapons by reflex, just as the hatch broke free of its mountings and was torn away. Ducking to stride through the low entrance came a massive augmented man, with unblinking crimson eyes glaring out of a dead, immobile face. Other figures were advancing up behind the invader across the flatbed cars beyond, but Chen only registered them as fleeting glimpses of shadow.

  He raised his revolver and fired, just as Kastillo pulled his FR-27 flechette rifle to hip height and did the same.

  The cyborg moved fast for his size, heavy footfalls clanging against the deck of the train car as he deliberately crashed through a support rack, sending containers spinning to the floor. Chen was sure he landed a round in the intruder’s chest, but it might have been a feather for all the effect it had. “Contact, contact!” he shouted, activating his infolink. “We’ve been boarded!” Static hissed back at him.

  Kastillo was closer to the intruder, and he tried to put shots into the hulking cyborg’s head, but the rounds went wide. Then their attacker was on the agent, ripping the rifle out of his grip and smashing it to pieces against the wall. With his other hammer-sized fist, he slammed Kastillo back against a window, the toughened glass breaking with the force of the impact. Blood streaming from his nostrils, the agent reeled, dazed and disoriented by the powerful blow.

  Chen couldn’t see Vande; was she still in the carriage with them? He had no time to look around for her, as the cyborg turned his attention in the tech’s direction, flexing his thick fingers as he stormed toward him.

  The revolver bucked in Chen’s grip as he loosed off more shots that did as little to halt the intruder’s advance as the first one had. Whatever dermal armor the attacker had implanted in him was as tough as tank plate.

  “Trottel,” snarled the cyborg from the side of his mouth. The word was foreign to Chen, but he could tell by the almost-sneer on that dead-eyed face that it was one of contempt. There was a black-and-steel blur as a fist came out of nowhere and the cyborg punched Chen so hard he left the deck and flew back with the force of impact.

  The tech felt his ribs shatter, and the searing pain as jagged spars of broken bone pierced his lung. Tumbling to the floor, agony washed over Chen as he tried to drag himself away, back toward the next car. “Vande!” he cried. “I need some help here!”

  The mech glowered at him, then turned away, stalking back to where Kastillo was slumped semiconscious against the wall. Other intruders in black anti-scan oversuits were filing in through the entrance.

  The cyborg’s hand opened wider than it should have, fingers extending to envelope Kastillo’s face. Then it tightened, crushing the bones in his skull with deliberate, exacting slowness.

  How did they make it on board without any of us knowing? Chen forced himself not to surrender to fear, trying desperately to grasp the sudden shift in events. How did they find us? The tech tasted blood in his mouth as a cold wash of dread reached deep into him. This is a setup! We were sold out…

  Then Chen felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up to see Vande standing over him with a silver pistol in her hand. “This isn’t going to end well,” she said.

  * * *

  The third car down from the locomotive was dead center of the train, and by Jensen’s reckoning, the most secure place to load the cargo of proscribed augmentations. He shouldered open the door at the forward end of the carriage and saw the stacks of familiar black hard case containers, the same ones he’d seen at the manufacturing plant in Milwaukee Junction. Each was held in place by magnetic locking clamps that would keep the cargo secure until it reached its destination.

  The Sarif Industries logo was on every one of them, a mute testament to David Sarif’s endless desire to tinker with human enhancement technology. Jensen wondered about what had motivated the man. Sarif had always been an enigma, determined to chart his own course, outwardly a man with ethics, a genius with principles… Or had that all been for show? Jensen never once doubted that his former employer believed that he was doing what was right – but it seemed less important to Sarif what others thought of his intentions. His vision of an improved humanity, of a world where people could determine their own evolution, had been seductive in its own way… until you looked down into the gritty details and started asking the hard questions. If you could make a person run faster, think quicker, live longer, it wasn’t difficult to make them more dangerous as well.

  And David Sarif was not the kind of man who would put aside a compelling technological idea just because it could have applications for war as well as peace. Jensen hesitated, looking down at the mechanical hands that had taken the place of the flesh-and-blood ones shattered two years earlier. He had never been given the choice, the chance to decide if he wanted to remain a flawed and broken human or become augmented with systems that had not only remade him, but forged him into a walking weapon. Not for the first time, a bitter kernel of resentment toward his ex-boss burned in his chest.

  Jensen moved on; it would never be the time or the place to dwell on that. The moment of clarity he so badly wanted was still beyond him, still out of reach.

  The hatch at the far end of the cargo wagon hissed open on its hydraulics and he snapped back to the moment, bringing the Hurricane TMP-18 to his shoulder in a firing stance. Jensen heard the low-pitched thud of a Shok-Tac stun grenade detonating, then the wild clatter of bullets bouncing off metal. Before the door was fully open, he saw two people come rushing through the gap, wreaths of cordite smoke gathering in with them.

  In front was one of the operatives he’d seen before at the TF29 staging post on the barge, the field technician with the cocky smirk. The man wasn’t smirking now. Pale and bleeding, he was moving in great pain. Shoving him through the gap in the door was Jarreau’s cold-eyed second-in-command, the blonde woman he called Vande. She had a gun in her hand and a clinical, determined look on her face.

  Vande hit the control to close the door again before Jensen could make out who was coming after them, and then she barked a command at the tech. “Get it done!”

  “I…” The tech – Chen, that was his name – coughed wetly and spat blood. “Ah shit, I don’t think I can—”

  Vande came to him and poked him in the face with her silver-plated semi-automatic, cutting him off in mid-speech. “I gave you an order! Do it now or I will put you down before they get the chance!”

  Chen nodded weakly, staggering away to a control panel on the wall, dragging an override module from a pouch on his bloodstained gear vest.

  Jensen took a breath. What the hell is happening here? Every other Task Force agent he had seen on the train up until this moment was dead, and his fear that he had arrived too late to warn Jarreau’s people seemed to have been borne out – but now here was the team leader’s second, threatening one of her own men at gunpoint.

  His thoughts raced. From the moment Vande had entered the cell on the barge, Jensen had been wary of the Interpol agent. At first he thought it was natural animosity spinning out of their first encounter on the roof of the Sarif manufacturing plant, but now he was wondering if there was more to it. Whereas Jarreau had been willing to give Jensen the benefit of the doubt, Vande had made no secret of the fact she disliked him on sight, and pressed for his arrest. He never got the sense it was a good cop, bad cop thing. Vande’s contempt was the real deal.

  But was it something other than a gut feeling on her part? Did she really know what he represented, what he’d done?

  The replay Jensen had seen in Wilder’s memory buffer confirmed without question that TF29 had been penetrated by the Illuminati, and he knew how they worked. The shadowy cabal wouldn’t just have people at the highest levels, they would place their agents on t
he ground as well. They’ll have a traitor in the room.

  He stepped out from behind the racks of black crates, holding the machine pistol on Vande. “Nobody move.”

  The woman saw him and spun around, drawing a second pistol by reflex. Vande’s eyes widened as she recognized Jensen’s face. “Verdomme…” The momentary surprise switched to annoyance and she pivoted, one gun aiming toward Jensen, the other in the direction of Chen and the door. “How are you here?” Vande demanded. “You’re a part of this? I should have known!”

  “Guns down!” he snapped.

  Vande swore at him and shook her head, the air of wintry calm she had shown back in Detroit evaporating into real anger. Her gaze flicked to the technician. “Chen! Do it! Access the lockdown, now!”

  “No!” Jensen took a step toward Chen, but Vande blocked his way.

  Still holding one of the guns on him, she fixed Jensen with a hard glare. “Don’t test me. Come any closer and I will ruin that pretty head of yours.”

  Chen coughed again and then the device in his hand let out a loud chime. “Got… it…” He wheezed and spat. “Activating…”

  Jensen expected to see the mag-locks holding the SI crates release, but instead Chen’s actions activated a different system. Armored metal slats dropped down over the windows and restraint clamps clunked into place around the access hatches at either end of the cargo wagon. Vande hadn’t ordered the tech to open the containers; she’d ordered him to seal them inside the train car.

  Chen’s labored breathing was coming in ragged, panting heaves and he dragged himself across to the far side of the compartment. He almost collapsed atop a low crate beneath one of the shuttered windows, giving Jensen a bleary-eyed look. “This guy?” he gasped. “You don’t have… a ticket for this trip.”