Deus Ex: Black Light (19 page)

Chen slid other images across the panel so Jarreau and Vande could see them clearly. The first one that caught her eye was of a front page from
The Detroit Chronicle
bearing the lurid headline
MASSACRE IN MEXICANTOWN
; the others were what looked like transcript documentation from closed-session interviews. Jensen figured prominently in them, so it appeared.

“There was a shooting,” Vande read aloud. “It says here Jensen’s SWAT unit were called in to neutralize a dangerous augmented individual… and when the time came to commit, he refused to take the kill-shot.”

“Yeah,” said Chen. “They stood him down on the spot, but someone else
did
pull that trigger and the whole thing led to the Mex-Town locals kicking off in demonstrations, confrontations with the cops and finally full-on rioting.”

“The target was a fifteen-year-old boy,” Jarreau said grimly.

“Whatever the circumstances,” said the tech as he went on, “by the time it was all over, Jensen’s career was in the toilet. Reading between the lines, I reckon there’s more to it that didn’t go into the official report… But anyhow, they threw him under the bus after the unrest, so he quit. Six months later, he’s headhunted by the CEO of Sarif Industries for a new gig as their director of physical security.” Chen paused. “Then, the info we have gets hazier. There are reports that Sarif gets attacked soon after by what appears to be a mercenary hit squad intent on wiping out their top scientists…”

“Most likely a rival corporation attempting to sabotage Sarif’s research,” suggested Vande. “
Unscheduled external contract termination
, they call it.”

Chen nodded in agreement. “Jensen is almost killed in the process, but he clearly had a real good medical plan, ’cos a few months later he’s back at work sporting a whole bunch of shiny new augs, with Sarif footing the bill. Once again, he turns up on the DPD’s radar when the company forces the cops to stand down, so Jensen can deal with a gang of idiots from Purity First who took over a Sarif production facility. Wanna guess which one?”

Vande’s eyes narrowed. “The manufacturing plant that got torched?”

“
Exactly
. Give the lady a gold star.” The tech swiped through more of the virtual documents. “That building was familiar turf to him. In fact, this whole city is his home territory, so that’s gonna be a problem when catching him.”

“Not necessarily,” Vande insisted. “We can use that to our advantage. Being on home ground will make him complacent, and he may drop his guard…”

“What happened after that?” said Jarreau, pulling them back on to the narrative of events. “Chen, you said the records show him as deceased.”

“More accurately,
missing-presumed-dead
,” said the other man. “Jensen is mentioned again in a police report about him confronting one William Taggart at a Humanity Front rally at the convention center, and then he fades away.”

“Taggart…” Vande turned over the name. The man had been the public face of the world’s largest anti-augmentation group, touring the globe with lectures and book signings. But like many others, Taggart had gone missing in the madness of 2027, in an event that some believed he had a major hand in making happen. “We’ve all heard the stories about how his Humanity Front were connected to the incident,” she went on.

“None of that has been proven,” Jarreau said firmly.

“But the Front
were
connected to the violent anti-aug radicals in Purity First,” she insisted. “I doubt very much that Jensen was a fan of either.”

Chen took a long breath. “Whatever his intentions were, that’s the last piece of viable intel we have on the guy. Jensen goes off the grid, then the Aug Incident hits and suddenly everybody is dealing with that.” He indicated a post-recovery image of the man, his face marked by the black commas of implants around his eyes. “Jensen had forty to fifty percent of his body replaced with augmentations, so there’s no way he would have come through the incident without being affected, right? Anyhow, the next time his name rises to the top, it’s attached to a formal declaration of his may-be-a-corpse status.”

Vande nodded to herself. In the nightmare of the incident, a lot of augmented people had died of shock or been killed in the throes of it. Years later, there were still many families with unanswered questions and missing people who had never been found. But the tragedy had also given opportunities to the more calculating.

She voiced a thought. “Jensen wouldn’t be the first person to use a major disaster like the incident as a way to disappear. All he had to do was let the world go on thinking he was dead, and he’d have a free pass…”

“For what?” Jarreau shot her a look. “If he wanted to remain a ghost, why come back to the one city in the world where he’s the most known? It doesn’t track.”

“Because the reward must be worth it,” she retorted. “We can assume Jensen is pro-aug, enough that he picked a fight with the most well-known anti-aug spokesman on the planet… It’s not much of leap to suggest he could have been radicalized.”

“You think our boy is involved with those ARC activists over in Europe?” Chen considered the possibility. “Yeah… I could see it.”

“You’ve got nothing to prove that, just circumstantial evidence,” said Jarreau.

Vande held his gaze. “The point is moot, sir. It doesn’t matter how Jensen connects to ARC or Sheppard and his mercs. He’s clearly armed, dangerous and capable.” She ticked off each word on a finger.

Jarreau was silent for a long time, before he turned to Chen. “Seth. Dig deeper. If Jensen went dark, we should find out why. Where was he? Who was he with? He worked with a lot of people at Sarif and in the Detroit police force. Look for someone that he might reach out to.” He dismissed the tech with a nod. “Get on it.”

“Copy that,” said Chen, as he walked away.

Then the team leader’s hard gaze was on Vande again. “Raye, listen to me. I know it’s tempting to put all your energy on this one guy because of that screw-up at the plant,” he told her. “But just make sure you’re not reaching too far. We don’t know why Jensen was there. Until we do, I’m not going to hang him
in absentia
. Clear?”

“Clear,” Vande replied, tensing as she spoke. “So let’s put him in a cage, give it a shake and find out what’s really going on.”

“I admit, there were a lot of things I kept from you at Rifleman Bank,” said Quinn. He dropped into the depths of the worn-out leather sofa across from Pritchard’s makeshift living area.

Jensen leaned against a support pillar, cleaning off the accumulated film of dirt, cordite and dried blood that still coated his combat gear. He made sure he kept Quinn and Vega where he could see them both at the same time. “I’m shocked,” Jensen said, deadpan. “What are you lying about this time?”

Quinn smiled thinly. “I deserve that. But I’m on the level now.”

“That right?” Jensen eyed him. “Then tell me your real name.”

That got him a shake of the head. “I said
on the level
, not
stupid
.” Quinn leaned forward. “Your man Frank, he’s right. The Juggernaut Collective wants you on side. You were already known to Janus before your unscheduled stop at Rifleman Bank, and what you did there… Well, consider it a successful audition.”

“That’s how he works,” offered Vega. “Janus looks for like-minded people, people whose lives have been screwed by the Illuminati. He brings us together, gives us common cause.”

“That what happened to you?”

The woman grimaced. “Let’s just say that without Janus and a mutual friend, I would have wound up floating face-down in Panama Bay with my throat slit.”

“So Janus is a man, then?” said Pritchard, catching Vega’s use of the pronoun.

She shrugged. “Maybe. That’s how he presents. But it doesn’t matter to me what Janus is. He gets results, that’s what is important.”

“You did a lot of damage on your own, Jensen,” said Quinn, picking up the conversation again. “Think of what you could accomplish with some real resources behind you. Janus is connected, worldwide, and that means the Juggernaut Collective has eyes and ears everywhere.”

“
Almost
everywhere,” corrected Vega, glancing back at Jensen. “We tried to secure evidence from the Panchaea site but that was a bust. You’re probably the only one who really knows what was going on down there. I’ve seen the data on you, man. You got skills. We need someone like you to get into the Illuminati’s power structure.”

“They know his face,” said Pritchard, folding his arms over his chest. “Well, some of them might…”

“They think he’s dead,” Quinn countered. “Look, it’s a simple enough equation. You work with Juggernaut and do what I reckon you’re planning on doing anyway – fuck up the enemy wherever you find them, eh? But the difference is, Janus can get you access to the intelligence you need to make that happen.” He made a show of looking around. “With all due respect to Frank here, I don’t think he’s going to be able to give you the same depth of help as we can.”

Pritchard made a low, growling noise in his throat. “That’s the deal? Jensen, are you really going to pledge allegiance to a faceless ghost who may not even be an actual human being? Are you going to put your confidence in
this
man?” He stabbed a finger at Quinn.

“He makes a good point,” said Jensen. “I never heard of this Juggernaut Collective before now. For all I know you could be another front for the Illuminati…”

Vega turned her head and spat. “Juggernaut didn’t end up on the National Security Agency watch list for nothing. We brought down Belltower, smashed a viral weapons plant in Syria, did for Zapphire Biotech and that whole thing with the contaminated riezene…” She paused, thinking through her next words. “You wanna know why
I
signed on, Jensen? Because it gets me some payback.”

“There’s a real opportunity here to expose and destroy our mutual enemy,” insisted Quinn. “But to do that, we need to work together. Every dictator in history knows that the best way to keep the little people down and suppress revolution is by making sure that the disaffected can’t
connect
.” He meshed his fingers together in a lattice. “Alone, individuals can only make a small dent. But a collective…” Quinn let the sentence hang – then abruptly he stood, brushing imaginary dust from his fingertips. “Listen,
bratán
, you don’t have to give me an answer right now. Take some time.” He walked away, patting Jensen on the shoulder. “Just consider what we’ve discussed.”

Jensen watched him go, his gaze meeting Vega’s on the way. She gave him a wry smile.

“I’ll think about it,” he heard himself say.

The strong and sweet black tea began to tilt toward the shallow cup’s gold-rimmed edge, and Elizabeth DuClare’s eyes flicked up from the encrypted data tablet holding her attention. Weak light through the oval windows of her private jet shifted across the interior wall of the opulent cabin as the aircraft started its final inbound leg, on course to descend into Geneva International.

The trip had been swift, not following the more circuitous route that a common civil flight might have made, but cutting directly over zones of disputed airspace that other aircraft would have been prohibited to transit. That made no difference to her. Those in positions of power knew whom the jet belonged to, and they knew what kind of retribution would befall them if there was so much as a momentary delay to the flight passing through their area. She rode inside a shell of power that was soft and ever-present on the surface, but steely and inviolate beneath. And this was as it should be.

DuClare frowned, taking a purse-lipped sip of the tea before straightening the elegant scarf around her neck. An expensive brand from London, the garment also served a dual purpose of masking her identity – woven into the threads of the innocuous-looking cloth was a frequency-flattening material that made it nigh-impossible for digital cameras to get a coherent image of her face.

Her eyes dropped to the tablet again, as she tapped the screen to lock away the reports she had been reviewing on her flight back from Naples. There were so many issues that required her attention.

In her leading position at the World Health Organization, the everyday and the mundane tasks of programs for the sick and needy were dealt with by lackeys. Her work was far more important, concentrating on the clandestine, the places where the WHO’s operations dovetailed with the Council of Five’s plans. She considered the reports of work in progress from the retroviral vector team in Kiev and the various Helix-designation genetics labs and their many initiatives. DuClare made a mental note to check in on the status of the D-Project, as once more her bio-programmers were tardy with their latest summary.

She was reaching for her seatbelt when the jet’s engine note suddenly changed, shifting to a keening whine as the aircraft lifted its nose above the horizon and angled into a sharp turn. The landing had been aborted, and they were climbing again.

DuClare stabbed an intercom button on the arm of her chair with one perfectly manicured fingernail. “Pilot. What’s going on?”

“
Orders, ma’am.
” The reply came immediately from a speaker on the desk before her chair. “
We’ve been told to divert into a waiting pattern
.”

“Orders from whom?” she demanded. The jet’s identity transponder carried permissions equivalent to that of any head of state, effectively giving it carte blanche to land whenever and however it wanted. DuClare shot a look out of the window but saw nothing amiss. The very idea that someone could divert her flight, even for a moment, was ridiculous.

“
Stand by for incoming communication
,” said the pilot, and from above, a holographic projector hidden in one of the crystal light fittings came alive, sketching a human figure in glowing laser lines.

As a virtual representation of a face took shape, she knew immediately whose orders had superseded hers. In the end, it could have been no-one else.