Deus Ex: Black Light (11 page)

When the robot stumbled into a pillar, Jensen realized that the EMP rounds had made some difference, just not enough to deal with the machine outright. Its motions were becoming sluggish and drunken.

He took a breath of dusty air and circled back around a sedan, before launching himself right at the Box-Guard. If he could just place his shots in the right spot…

The robot slammed a leg into the concrete floor with enough force to knock him off-balance and his first round went wide. He fired another, clipping the side of the Box-Guard’s menacing head, and that seemed to agitate the machine. If it was having difficulty targeting him with its guns, then the robot’s programming told it to use a more direct,
more kinetic
approach instead.

Rearing up, the Box-Guard raised one leg and calculated the exact amount of hydraulic pressure to crush a human body. It loomed over Jensen, clipping its frame on a dangling light strip.

He fired, unloading every bullet remaining in the CA-4’s magazine, marching each flashing hit toward a gap in the plating beneath the Box-Guard’s head, where its flexible neck connected. Jolts of sparks vomited out from behind its single eye-lens, and the leg descended with a juddering clank, stopping just short of grinding Jensen into the dust. He rolled away as the machine repeated the action over and over, never quite completing it, stuck in some kind of loop.

“Jensen!” Pritchard’s nasal shout echoed across the garage. “Quick, get over here before it resets! The door’s clear!”

He sprinted over, mantling the hoods of parked cars. Pritchard held on to an inert mine template draped with dozens of connector wires, while Stacks shouldered open the door, revealing the stairwell beyond. “Gotta go, gotta go!”

“Don’t wait for me.” An idea flashed through Jensen’s mind and he snatched the explosive device out of Pritchard’s hands, reactivating it as he raced back the way he had come. He ignored their calls to follow, pausing long enough to toss the frag mine under the shuddering Box-Guard before doubling back once again.

Jensen was at the door, wrenching it closed behind him when the robot finally snapped itself out of its temporary malaise – and stamped down, right on top of the mine template. The explosive detonated with a flat, loud crack and the Box-Guard toppled.

“So much for the quiet approach,” snapped Pritchard.

Jensen shot him a cold look, and started up the stairs toward the upper level. “Next time, have a better plan.”

* * *

They emerged through a service door and into the main atrium of the SI building. What hit Jensen first was the smell of stale smoke, an acrid stink that lay heavy in the air all around them. Across the reception area, where once there had been illuminated video-pillars showcasing the achievements of Sarif Industries, there was only a mess of half-dismantled machinery and piles of broken office furniture. Along the walls near the sealed main door there was a wide black stain that reached up to the second level of the atrium. The slick of old soot and melted plastic was like a great burn wound.

“Firebombs,” Pritchard said quietly, by way of explanation. “Courtesy of the good people of Detroit. Never mind that the company had nothing to do with the incident.” He shook his head. “Idiots. Like trying to burn down a hospital just because someone gets sick.”

“P-people get afraid, they need someone to blame…” muttered Stacks. “Ain’t no-one’s fuh-fault.”

Jensen saw splashes of paint over the doors and angry scrawls over the glass – slogans like
AUGS OUT
and
DIE HANZERS
! left behind in the aftermath.

He looked away as movement caught his eye. Set out across the atrium, there were stubby, drum-shaped sensor pods endlessly scanning the area with laser rangers. Each had a multi-barreled gun atop them, and they were actively tracking back and forth. The Box-Guard in the parking garage would have sent a warning to all the units on the security network, upping their alert status to full. Above, on the second and third levels, Jensen saw small, wheeled robots wandering in pre-programmed patrol loops, the same kind of armed sentry that had threatened him outside the Chiron Building apartments.

“Typical Tai Yong…” Pritchard crouched in the lee of what used to be the reception desk. “Too cheap to bring in any real security.”

“You forgetting that mech downstairs?” said Jensen.

Pritchard ignored him. “They’re using SI’s own robots, they just reprogrammed them for deterrent duty.” He tugged on a zip at his cuff that opened the sleeve of his coat along the length of his forearm, revealing a flexible keyboard and monitor screen clipped to the inside of his wrist. The hacker went to work, his other hand dancing across the panel. “Their protocols are always sloppy. Hengsha’s never produced a single decent black hat…”

“What are you doing?” Jensen demanded.

The hacker sighed. “TYM’s acquisition team take what they want and abandon-in-place everything else. And they typically don’t bother to deep-sweep the main grid for backdoor passwords embedded by,
oh
, let’s say, the company’s former head of digital security.” Pritchard’s wrist-keyboard gave an answering beep and he showed a sly grin. “Done. Now those bots will register us as friendlies.” He got up and walked out of cover. “You were actually right for once, Jensen. This was easier than I thought it would be.”

“Easy for
you
,” Jensen muttered.

Pritchard ignored him and approached one of the pods. It momentarily tracked him with a red thread of laser light; then the beam snapped to green and moved on as if he wasn’t there.

“Whoa,” said Stacks. “Your… buddy, uh, he’s real impressed with himself, yeah?”

Jensen nodded. “And then some.” He paused, eyeing the other man as he walked awkwardly after the hacker, clearly in pain. “Can you handle this?”

“I… got it.” Irritably, Stacks waved him away. He was sweating and his breathing was shallow. “This place, brother, it gives me the damned creeps.”

“I hear you,” Jensen told him, the honesty of his own response giving him a moment’s pause. He offered his hand to Stacks, but the other man refused with a scowl and moved off without him, trying not to draw attention to the tremors going through the fingers at the end of his hulking arms.

Jensen followed, but his own thoughts kept straying as a steady stream of old memories washed over him. He’d come here partly hoping to reconnect with his past, but it wasn’t working the way he wanted it to.

Being inside the Sarif building seemed somehow
unreal
to him, the knowledge of the place where he had worked filtered through a lens of uncertainty. He knew the layout of the office complex intimately, but part of him felt as if he had never set foot in there before, as if it were all some kind of abstract illusion.

Jamais vu
, he remembered. That was the term for it, the polar opposite of
déjà vu
, the eerie sense of when something intimately familiar felt totally new. His eyes narrowed and he shook off the feeling with a physical shrug. As he did so, he caught sight of a dim corner of the atrium where the remembrance monument had been situated.

Back in 2027, a group of mercenaries known as the Tyrants had struck the company and many lives had been lost. Jensen’s was almost counted among them. What at first had seemed like a covert attack by one of Sarif Industries’ corporate rivals was revealed as the cover for the multiple kidnappings of several of SI’s top scientists. It was only Jensen’s dogged investigation of the assault that allowed him to track down the missing in the custody of Hugh Darrow, who had secretly abducted the group to work on his biochip control scheme at the Illuminati’s behest. Everyone else had thought they were dead, many laying the blame for that at Jensen’s feet – he had been in charge of security that day – and for a long time, a monument had stood to honor their loss… and his failure. But he had always known they were alive.

I always knew
she
was still alive
, thought Jensen.

“Why don’t you just get it over with and ask the question?” He turned to find Pritchard close by, watching him intently. The other man nodded toward the smoke-blackened monument.

“What happened to… the others?” He frowned, angry at himself for being unable to draw up the words he really wanted to utter. “You said David Sarif went off the grid, but what about the rest?”

“For the most part, the people who worked here were either caught up in the incident or else they scattered to the four winds soon after.” Pritchard folded his arms. “I know that Sarif’s assistant, Athene… she quit after what happened. Couldn’t live with herself being part of the company after all the chaos. She was the first to go. Your security teams were kicked out when Tai Yong bought up the company assets.” He paused, thinking. “Malik, the pilot… Last time I saw her she was with you, heading off to Hengsha, so you would know better than me.” Pritchard shook his head. “But we both know who you’re
really
interested in.”

Jensen bit out the name. “Megan Reed.”

The hacker gave a nod. “I’ll never understand that woman’s attachment to you, Jensen. You were never good for her.”

There were a hundred different retorts that pushed at Jensen for release, and for a brief moment he hated Pritchard for making him face that cold truth head-on. He must have seen that flash of pure fury in Jensen’s eyes, because Pritchard’s superior expression slipped for a moment.

“I went halfway around the world for her,” Jensen said, at length. “I found out the truth.”

And that truth was complex and troubling. Before coming to work at Sarif, they had been lovers, even spoke of settling down together, and although it hadn’t worked out, Jensen could not deny that he had still carried some affection for her. Maybe that had been what fueled his search after the Tyrants attacked, at least at first. But in the end, he had discovered that Megan Reed’s priorities were very different from his own.

She’d kept secrets from him, sampling his DNA in hopes of isolating his unique super-compatibility, even ensuring he would be offered a job at Sarif Industries to keep him close. And when at last he had confronted her with that, her reaction wasn’t what he’d expected. Megan believed she was working in the name of a greater good, and Jensen still wasn’t sure if she was right or wrong.

Pritchard’s tone shifted. “All I know is that Megan came back to Detroit after Panchaea, and then she vanished. But there have been rumors that she’s working for Versalife, maybe in their Hong Kong or San Francisco labs.”

“And Versalife is an Illuminati front.” Jensen let that sink in. “I don’t know what to make of that.”

“For what it’s worth… I’m sorry,” said the hacker.

Jensen took whatever emotional reaction was forming and crushed it before it could coalesce. “It’s over and done,” he said firmly. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

* * *

Stacks was waiting for them by the elevator bank, and Pritchard ran another bypass subroutine to call a lift car down from the upper floors. Jensen drew his gun and reloaded it as they began their ascent to the laboratory levels, while Stacks kept to the corner of the elevator, panting hard.

Pritchard eyed the other man and shot Jensen a questioning look, but he said nothing.

“What are the odds this place will have what we need?” Jensen watched the floor number display count up and up. “Didn’t you say Tai Yong stripped most of it?”

“Only what was portable, and what their goons could actually get into.” Pritchard gave a brief, smug smile. “Someone might have tampered with the key codes on his way out the door…”

“Can… we get out soon?” Stacks breathed. “Too close in here.”

There was a hollow
ping
and the elevator halted, the doors parting to reveal darkness beyond them. “We’re here,” said Jensen.

“Testing and quality control,” Pritchard told them. “Main power is off on this floor, but I should be able to get the emergency batteries up and running.” He reached into the daypack on his back, retrieving a spherical drone. The hacker gave it a twist and tossed it into the air, where it floated away on micro-rotors. The unit immediately cast out a weak orange glow that spilled over desks, chairs and other equipment, casting strange, jumping shadows.

Jensen stepped out, his pistol raised, with Pritchard right behind him.

Stacks came last, but he made it only a few steps before his trembling iron hands came up to his face and he started screaming.

The sound that came out of the other man’s mouth was something tortured and animalistic, a raw cry of pain that cut right through Jensen’s skull. Stacks staggered out across the corridor, shaking his head violently and clawing at the air. His heavy cybernetic arms crashed through racks of discarded equipment, smashing them to the ground. The man cast around, swinging back and forth, as if he had been thrown into a pit of horrors that only he could see.

“No, no, no,” he cried, tears running down his cheeks. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t do it, oh no, no, please, no…” For a brief moment his wild gaze crossed Jensen’s and he saw the panic in Stacks’s eyes, the blank lack of recognition, the all-consuming shock and horror. “The blood, all the blood, make it stop, please!”

At Jensen’s side, Pritchard was fumbling for a weapon, a Buzzkill stun gun unfolding as he dragged it from a pocket in his hoodie. “Wait!” Jensen pushed him away before the hacker could draw a bead. “Don’t shoot!”

“He’s lost his mind!” Pritchard shouted back.

“Just back off, damn it!” Jensen gave him another hard shove and deliberately put himself in the line of fire. He advanced on Stacks, hands raised and his eye shields retracted.

“All this blood, the blood,” Stacks repeated, muttering the words over and over. “
How
? How did it happen…?”

For a moment, Jensen wasn’t sure what he meant, but then he looked down at the floor and the implication of the other man’s words clicked. The muddy orange light from Pritchard’s little light-drone spilled over the floor of the corridor, where the contents of storage boxes had been upended and scattered. All around there were piles of augmentation components, bits of circuitry and mechanical limbs in a chaotic mess. The light from the drone gave everything a blood-red cast and Jensen felt sickened as his mind suddenly reframed what he was seeing as a vision from some hellish abattoir.