"White," he said to the air. "Go to thermal. Target the thirteenth floor. Tell me what you see."

"I have three unit indicators" came the reply from the sniper. "Silver, Blue, Green. Multiple unidentified targets same locationHe paused, a

note of confusion entering his tone. "Youre in the room with them ..."

"No," Namir growled, reaching down to grab a bunch of the cables. "We are not." He gave the cables a violent yank and they tore free from the

glass, spitting sparks. The glass panes shimmered and went transparent as power bled out of them.

Hardesty's gasp of surprise was transmitted over the open channel. "What the hell...? Silver, all unidentified targets have vanished. Repeat,

vanished."

"They were never here," Hermann said aloud. "The panels. They were some form of thermal blind, projecting a decoy image."

"Real smart," muttered Barrett. "So where is this creep really hidin' out?"

"Find him " demanded Namir.

Saxon nodded distractedly, and glanced around the marble lobby. It was gloomy in here, the only light a weak morning glow through the fan

shaped windows above the high front doors. Aside from Federova, the area was deserted.

He glanced back to find the Russian woman down on one knee, rifling through the pockets of one of the men she had just killed. A gasp escaped

the guard's mouth as she turned him over, a last breath leaving his lungs as she shifted the body.

"If the target's not on thirteen, then he's got to be on a different floor, shielded from thermographic scan." Saxon gave voice to his thoughts,

following them through. He cast around the lobby. "There are multiple lift shafts. One of these has to be a dedicated express elevator... Here"

He found a single set of doors off to one side, in a discreet alcove; everything about the positioning of it screamed Restricted Access.

"Use it," Namir ordered. "Well track your locators, vector to you."

"There's no call button here," he noted, finding a glass panel set in the wall. "It may need some kind of key, or maybe palm print recognition—"

A heavy, wet crunch sounded behind him, and a blade edge clanked against the marble; then Federova was sprinting to his side. In her fingers

she carried something fleshy that left a trail of red droplets all across the tiled checkerboard floor.

"Never mind," Saxon reported, as she pressed a severed hand into the panel. "Red has, uh, improvised."

The elevator gave a hollow chime and opened itself to them.

It let them out on ten, right in the line of fire from a pair of security-grade boxguards. The machines were steel cubes the size of a washing

machine, inert in a monitoring mode; but when their sensors detected something that did not match their programmed security protocols, the

mechanisms unfolded like a complex puzzle, extruding weapon muzzles and targeting scopes. They were the smaller cousins of the large,

vehicle-size versions deployed by the military or law enforcement, but they could still be lethal.

Saxon rolled out into the lavish corridor, bringing up his machine pistol as he moved. Federova launched herself from the elevator car on those

racehorse legs of hers, so fast she was almost a blur of motion. The boxguards dithered, the simple machine-brains of the basic robots hesitating

over which target to attack. Saxon used the moment to his advantage, coming up in half cover behind a cockpit leather armchair. He aimed with the Hurricane and

squeezed the trigger, marching a clip of armor-piercing rounds up the frame of the closest boxguard, ripping it open. It stumbled into a wall and

collapsed.

Federova was on top of her target, and she took off the machine's primary sensor head with a spinning crescent kick. The robot reeled, and the

dark-skinned woman rammed the muzzle of her machine pistol into a gap between its armor plates, and fired point-blank.

"Tenth floor" Saxon reported. "We're splitting up to search for the target." He looked toward Federova, who gave him a curt nod and set off

down the southern corridor.

"Copy, Gray" said Namir. "We're coming to you. Isolate and neutralize."

Saxon chose the northwest arm of the Y-shaped corridor and moved forward, low and fast, from cover to cover.

Something moved ahead of him, and he saw a squat, thickset shape roll out from a shadowed alcove. It was an ornate machine, plated with steel

and sheathed with ceramic detailing—an elegant hotel service robot modeled on some arcane, pre-twentieth-century artistic ideal of what an

automaton should be. It moved on fat gray tires, turning like a tall tank. A speaker grille presented itself to Saxon and spoke in Russian, then

Farsi and finally English. "This area is off-limits to guests," it declared. "Proceed no farther."

A fan of green laser light issued out and scanned the hallway, catching Saxon by surprise. The machine caught sight of his drawn weapon and

reacted instantly. Ceramic panels opened up to allow the vanes of a pulsed energy projector to emerge. "Mandatory warning delivered," it said.

"Deploying deterrent."

A throbbing wave-front of force hummed from the robot and blasted down the corridor. Saxon went down as the pulse threw freestanding

tables and flower vases into the air with the force of the discharge. The rush of the knockdown effect was powerful, like the undertow in an

ocean wave.

He leapt from where he had landed, firing as he went. Bullets sparked off metal and inlaid wood, marring the elegantly worked surface of the

machine. It fired again, dislodging pictures from the walls, blasting open the doors to empty rooms.

Saxon's free hand closed around a cylindrical object on his gear vest and he tugged it free with a jerk of the wrist. By feel alone, he found the

primer tab and pulled it. The weapon buzzed in response and Saxon threw it hard, diving for cover behind a damaged door.

The Type 4 Frag-k grenade clanked off the casing of the robot and bounced to the carpet beneath it; a moment later the explosive core

detonated, blasting the machine off its supports and into a smoking heap.

Bursting from cover, Saxon raced through the cloud of cordite smoke and the humming after-note of the explosion. He took down the door to

the corner suite with a kick from the heel of his tactical boot and pushed through, leading with the Hurricane.

Inside, the room was wide and devoid of angles, all soft furnishings and bowed windows. A thick layer of metallized plastic sheet—doubtless

some kind of sensor baffle—coated the window glass, bleeding out all the color and warmth of the dawn rising over Zubovskaya Square. Saxon

found the power feed for the baffle and disconnected it.

Off to one side, folding panels opened out into a range of rooms bigger than the house Saxon had grown up in; on the other side of the suite, a

second bedroom had been gutted to accommodate the racks of a compact server farm, an orchard of data monitors, and a complex virtual

keyboard.

A man in a dark jacket rushed Saxon from a doorway leading to the bathroom, the lethally compact shape of a Widowmaker shotgun in his

hands. The machine pistol in Saxon's ready grip chattered and the thug took the burst in the chest, crashing backward onto the tiles in a welter

of blood. He ejected the clip, slammed a fresh load into place, and crossed into the bedroom.

Mikhail Kontarsky, his face lit by sheer animal panic, recoiled from the keyboard console and fumbled for a nickel-plated heavy-frame

automatic pistol lying on top of one of the server pods. Saxon brought up the muzzle of the Hurricane and aimed it at Kontarsky's chest. "Don't,"

he told him.

The Russian wasn't the man he'd seen in the briefing picture anymore. That grim face and distant gaze were gone, replaced by raw terror. He

gave a brittle nod and held his hands to his chest. "Please," he began, his voice heavily accented. "You must not stop me."

Something in Saxon's peripheral vision shimmered, and he realized that beneath the panes of complex, scrolling data on the screens, there was

a recognizable shape, the ghost-image of a human face, peering out through layers of static. "He's here to kill you, Mikhail," it said. The voice

was toneless, sexless, flattened into a brittle machine-timbre that was utterly anonymous; the only thing that could be considered any kind of

identity was a data tag showing a name, Janus.

"You told me I would have more time!" Kontarsky spat, his lips trembling. He gave Saxon a pleading stare. "Please, I have to finish what I

started, or—"

Saxon took a warning step forward. "Touch that console and it will be the last thing you ever do, Minister."

"Mikhail" said the video-masked figure. "This is bigger than you. We need the data on the Killing Floor, you must complete the upload—"

Saxon sneered and put a burst of rounds through the big screen, silencing the voice. Kontarsky howled and stumbled backward. "Enough of

your pal." He grabbed the man by the collar and dragged him forward, propelling him out of the room.

"No." There were a dozen other monitors in the gutted bedroom, and screens in the main part of the suite; each one flickered into life, repeating

the image of the static-shrouded face. The word repeated over and over as each one activated. "No. Not yet."

"It's over," Saxon told him, ignoring the voice.

A flash of resentment and defiance crossed Kontarsky's face, and he struggled in Saxon's grip. "You're not here to arrest me ... You're not a

policeman! What authority do you have?" The moment passed just as quickly, as the man's eyes fell to the machine pistol. "Please, I beg of you.

Do not kill me. I only did what I thought was right!" "He is not a criminal" insisted the voice. "You cannot judge him."

Saxon's jaw stiffened. "You're part of a global terror network!" he spat. "You're part of Juggernaut! And the people you sold out to are

responsible for the deaths of my men!" The anger was coming back, and he felt the burn of it. "Operation Rainbird." He snarled the words at

the cowering man. "You know that name? You know what happened out there? They were soldiers, doing their jobs—it wasn't even their damn

war!" Saxon clubbed Kontarsky with the butt of the gun and sent him stumbling into the door frame. "Now move! I'm taking you alive! You can

answer for what you've done!" He glared at one of the screens. "Are you watching this? Because we're coming for you next."

"N-no, no, no ... That's not true," Kontarsky stammered, turning to the monitor. "Please, Janus!" he implored the video-ghost. "Help me ..."

But the image's attention was on Saxon. "Do you know what you are doing, mercenary?" He thought he detected a faint edge of reproach in

the words. "Do you know what master you serve?"

The question made Saxon hesitate and he shot Kontarsky a hard look, hauling him up to his feet, pushing him forward into the middle of the

room. The man staring back at him was pale with fear, his eyes betraying no duplicity, no deception. "I don't know anything about your men,"

he whispered. "You must believe me!"

And for a moment, Saxon did. He was a good judge of liars; he'd met enough of them in combat and elsewhere, and he knew the look of a man

too afraid to lie. And if "Rainbird" meant nothing to him, then—

"Green light."

Saxon heard the voice over the general comm channel a split second before the plastic-coated window crackled with fractures. Hardesty's bullet

entered Kontarsky's head through the nasal cavity, blasting bone and brain matter across the wood-paneled walls. His body fell, jetting red,

collapsing across a rosewood table.

When Saxon looked up again all the screens were dark.

CHAPTER FIVE

Silver Springs—Maryland—United States of America

The autocab let her out at the curbside outside her apartment block, and Kelso glanced back to watch the driverless vehicle nose its way back

into traffic, the sensor antennae along the hood of the car feeling the air. The fare from the airport had claimed the last of the money on the

discretionary credit chip Temple gave her. The flight back had passed in a blur, Anna's gaze turned inward, passing the time with the ebb and

flow of the same emotions over and over again. She felt disgusted at herself for her weakness, angry at getting caught, sad at the thought of

letting Matt down, numb and furious, full of regret and fear.

But mostly she felt hollowed out inside. All the work, everything she'd done in the endless days and weeks of her clandestine investigation, now

was unraveling all around her. She had destroyed her career for the sake of something that only she seemed able to see, for a truth that no one

else wanted to face.

As she walked the short distance to the lobby of the building, the question echoed in her mind. Was it worth it?

Inside, she thumbed the entry pad to her apartment and ignored the glow of the messaging system, dropping the packet she had carried all the

way from the 10th Precinct on the sofa. In the living room, the television activated automatically, blipping to the local Picus News affiliate

preset. The screen showed a report about the upcoming National Science Board caucus on human augmentaion; the conference was getting a lot

of heat from the pro-human, antienhancement lobby, and it seemed like every day a new busload of protestors arrived in the capital.

She ignored the low burble of the screen and fished out her vu-phone, leaving it on the countertop in the small, plastic-white kitchen,

mechanically moving through the motions of swigging milk from a carton in the refrigerator. The apartment was dim; the sunny magnolia colors

did little to lift the tone of the gloom leaking in from the dull, low cloud smothering the sky.

Anna grasped the carton in her hand, her fingers deadening with the cold. Was it worth it? The question hammered at her in the silence.

A grimace crossed her face and she went to the alcove where her laptop sat inside an old cedar bureau. The computer woke at her touch, and

she pulled her federal ID from her pocket; the machine automatically pinged the arfid in her badge, but the data chip did not reply. Instead, a

small panel opened on the screen. The text it contained was a paragraph of legal boilerplate reiterating what Temple had told her in the holding

room, but the meaning was clear. Access denied. Clearance revoked. Even the most basic level of entry into the agency network was sealed off

from her.

She sat in the dimness, lit only by the glow of the screen, and began to wonder what else had taken place while she was in New York. Temple

had reamed her files, that much was certain ... but had he sent agents to her home as well? Anna looked around. She saw nothing out of place.

A sudden impulse pushed her up from the chair where she sat, and she crossed to the closet. Inside, hidden behind the hanging clothes, the

safe-locker she'd installed back when she moved in was visible, the door still sealed shut. She typed in the entry code and found the contents as

she'd left them. A box of what little jewelry she had, some cash and papers—and in a separate section, a short-frame Zenith 10 mm automatic,

two full ammo clips, and a small flash drive.

Anna took the gun and checked it before loading. The weapon was legal, licensed and clean. If anything, the flash drive was the more dangerous

item; inside it was an encrypted copy of everything she had worked on, every bit of data gleaned along the road to this moment.

She turned the memory module over in her hand. All that work, all the lies and secrecy, the nights she stayed late at the agency offices digging

into files she should never had accessed, the legacy of the stims she'd taken to keep awake, to keep going ...

Was it worth it?

A chime sounded though the apartment, and Anna flinched in surprise. The house was announcing a call on her vu-phone. She left the gun and

the drive on a shelf in the closet and went to the handset.

The caller ident read Matt Ryan. Anna had been maudlin about deleting his name and number from the phone's memory. It was a foolish, silly

thing, but she'd kept putting it off; perhaps on some level she was denying the reality of what had happened six months ago on Q Street.

She gripped the handheld, her knuckles turning white around the silver casing. Slowly, Anna raised it to her ear, tapping the answer pad. "Who

is this?"

The voice at the other end was electronically distorted, all trace of identity bled out. "You and I need to have a talk." Kelso's training

instinctively kicked in; she tried to listen through the masking filter, looking for the cadence and pattern of the voice, profiling the speaker in

her mind.

"Whoever you are, you're not Matt Ryan. So I'm hanging up—"

"That would be a mistake ," said the voice. "I spoofed the caller ID so youd pick up. Because I'm guessing right now that you're not in the

mood to talk to people. Not after what happened at the pier."

Her throat went dry. "What pier?"

"Don't talk to me like I'm stupid, Agent Kelso. I really hate it when people do that."

"Then show me the same courtesy," she snapped, her patience wearing thin. "Who the hell are you and what do you want? Answer that or get

lost."

Anna heard a faint sigh. "You can call me D-Bar. And like I said, I wanna talk to you."

"We are talking."

"Well, when I say I want to, I really mean we want to. And not over an open line. In person."

She drifted back toward the closet, reaching for the pistol. "Uh-huh. And who is 'we'?"

"A group you may have heard of. We call ourselves the Juggernaut Collective. We're kind of a big deal."

Anna's hand froze on the gun. "If you know who I am and what happened out at the pier, then you know the last thing I'm going to do is talk to

a terrorist." She should have disconnected, right then and there; but instead she waited.

"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Yeah, trite, maybe, but true." The sigh came again. "Look, let's cut to the chase, 'cos

I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this conduit secure. You went to that wannabe Widow and her crew and they gave you some

scraps. But the fact is, she's a bottom-feeder and she was never going to get you what you need. We can. We're looking for the same thing."

"I don't know what you're talking about—"

"The Tyrants. Do you want to know who they are or not?" Anna said nothing, and after a moment the voice returned. "I'll take your silence

for a yes. Check your messages. If we see anyone but you, that name will be all you'll ever get." The connection cut with a click; a moment

later, the vu-phone beeped. In the message cue was a street address in downtown Washington, D.C., and a meeting time two hours hence.

In the bathroom she paused to splash a handful of cold water on her face. Two hours; that barely gave her enough time to throw on a fresh set

of clothes and bolt out the door.

And she was tired. The events in New York, the time in the cells, the nervous tension of the flight home ... The fatigue from all of it was exerting

a heavy, tidal drag on her. She couldn't afford to do this half-awake. She couldn't afford to miss something.

Anna reached for the door to the medicine cabinet without looking in the mirror.

Knightsbridge—London—Great Britain

The town house had once been a hotel, an exclusive boutique lodge in a shady mews just a few blocks away from the greensward of Hyde Park.

Like so much of the city, it sat in unconcerned contrast with the sheer-sided corporate towers emerging from the streets around it, the pale

stone of the five-story exterior understated, the rectangular windows lit from within by a warm glow not lost through the thickness of armored

polyglass. From the outside, it seemed no different from any of its neighbors; but the structure of the town house was reinforced and hardened

against anything up to a rocket attack.

Saxon glanced around the fourth-floor room and took in the clean, sparse decor; white walls and chrome-framed furniture. A print of Rubin's

The Flute Player hung on one wall, a large thinscreen monitor mirroring it on the far side of the room. The six operatives sat around a long,

glass-topped conference table, each dressed in what passed for civilian attire—although to a trained eye none of the Tyrants could shake the

aura of a soldier, even when armor and weapons were out of reach.

At first, Saxon thought the town house was some sort of operations center, perhaps the London base for the Tyrants; but then he had glimpsed

slivers of the rooms on the lower floors through half-open doors. He saw living spaces, a study, a kitchen—and dotted around, the touches that

showed a family lived in this place. On the third-floor landing, Saxon passed a framed photo and had to look twice; Jaron Namir gazed back out

at him, dressed in a suit and wearing a yarmulke, smiling broadly. A woman in yellow and two children, a boy and a girl, shared his good cheer.

The image was jarring; try as he might, Saxon couldn't connect the man in the picture with the man he had seen kill silently with no pause, no

flicker of remorse.

They were in Namir's home. Something about the idea of that ground against Saxon's every ingrained instinct. The idea of a man like him, a

man like Namir having a life and a family outside the unit, seemed false. Somehow, unfair.

In the wake of the mission in Moscow, the team had gone through a cursory review aboard the transport plane as it flew west, back into

European airspace. As with every other operational debrief, Saxon had felt as if they were going through the motions, not just for themselves,

but for some unseen observer. The people who gave the orders were watching, he was certain of it. Not for the first time, he wondered if they

would ever show their faces.

Seated around the table, Namir led them through the postmortem once again. On the plane, they had given their reports one at a time; now,

with all of them together, Saxon felt the pressure of the unanswered questions in his thoughts.

He leaned forward. "I could have brought Kontarsky in alive."

Hardesty gave him an arch look. "Was that ever the objective?"

Saxon ignored him, turning to Namir. "You said Kontarsky was working with Juggernaut. He was a high-value target. He must have had intel

we could use."

"The minister was compromised," Namir replied. "Anything we'd have been able to compel from him through interrogation would have been

marginal at best. We didn't need what he knew."

Saxon's eyes narrowed. Despite what Namir had told him earlier, he was sure of Kontarsky's reaction when he mentioned Operation Rainbird.

The name meant nothing to the man.

Namir saw his train of thought and headed him off. "You need to see past this, Ben. Don't make it personal. Kontarsky was a cancer in the

Russian federal government. We cut him out."

"Sends a message," offered Barrett in a languid tone. "Anyone deals with Juggernaut, they're not protected."

"We're not in the business of taking prisoners," Namir went on. "You know that."

Hardesty leaned back in his chair. "As we're on the subject, maybe the limey can explain why it is he didn't just double-tap the creep the

moment he found him?"

"I told you. I could have brought him in."

"You don't get to make that choice," Hardesty replied. "You're not in command of this unit.

We're not your little PMC scout troop, Saxon. You lost that, remember?"

Saxon studied the other man. "Maybe if you were actually on the deck with the rest of us, instead of hiding behind a camo net four hundred

meters away, I might have some respect for your opinion, Yank" He gave the last word a sneer. "Don't make the mistake of thinking you see

everything down that rifle scope."

"What I did see was you talking to the mark," insisted the sniper. "And someone else, too, maybe?"

"Kontarsky was the only one in the room," Saxon replied, a little quicker than he would have liked. From the corner of his eye, he saw

Hermann, Federova, and Barrett watching the exchange, gauging his reaction.

Do you know what you are doing, mercenary? The ghost-voice's questions returned to him. Do you know what master you serve?

The misgivings muttering at the edges of his thoughts were there, clear and undeniable. Saxon broke eye contact with Hardesty as Namir stood

up and crossed the room to a window.

"I understand your intentions," said the commander. "But I need all of you to follow orders when I give them. We may not have allegiance to a

flag anymore, but we all must share allegiance to the Tyrants. If we don't have that, then we're no better than Juggernaut or any of the other

anarchists out there." He threw a look toward Saxon and Hermann. "You two are our newest recruits. You both understand that, don't you?"

"Of course," replied Hermann, without hesitation. In turn, Saxon gave a wary nod.

Namir went on. "There are reasons for everything we do. Reasons for every order I give you. Every mission." He smiled slightly, the craggy

face softening for a brief moment. "We cannot bring stability if we don't have equilibrium in our ranks." Namir's gaze crossed to Hardesty, and

his tone hardened again. "Clear?"

The sniper pursed his lips. "Clear," he repeated.

He will never tell us, Saxon realized. Whoever is pulling the strings, he's never going to pull back the curtain on them. The question that came

next pressed to the front of his thoughts: Can I live with that?

In the months since Namir had plucked him from the field hospital in Australia, Saxon had earned more money than he had in years of service

with Belltower and to the British Crown. The Tyrants had fitted him with high-spec augmentation upgrades, given him access to weapons and

hardware that had been beyond his reach in the SAS or as a military contractor. Downtime between missions was spent at secure resorts, the

likes of which were open only to corporate execs and the very rich. And the missions ... the missions were the most challenging he'd ever had.

Putting aside Hardesty's irritating manner, Saxon meshed well with all the Tyrant team members. He couldn't deny that he liked the work.

They were free of all the paperwork and second-guessing he'd waded through as someone else's line soldier. None of the Tyrants wasted time

saluting and sweating the trivial crap; they just got on with the business of soldiering, and the appeal of that simple fact held Ben Saxon tight.

He liked being here. Despite all the doubts, it still felt right. After all the two- or three-man operations, the tag-and-bags, the terminations and

infiltrations, and then the Moscow gig, Saxon felt as if he had graduated. He was in; but part of him remained troubled, and it annoyed him that

he couldn't fully articulate it.

Was it the secrets? It seemed foolish to consider it; as a spec ops soldier, he'd spent most of his career working in the dark ... but with the

British Army and then with Belltower, he'd at least had some grasp on what he was risking his life for.

In the humid night air of the field hospital, Namir had offered him a second chance. He had offered the opportunity to make a difference, but

more than that, Namir had offered Saxon trust.

Or perhaps, just the illusion of it. There were other operations going on, he was certain. Tyrant missions that he wasn't supposed to be aware

of; he knew for a fact that Federova and Hardesty had been deployed to the United States, Japan, and India on untraceable black-bag jobs.

Once more, any question about who chose their targets or what they were was not going to be answered.

Do you know what master you serve?

He decided then that for the moment, the questions the shadowy hacker Janus had posed would go no further.

Namir turned from the window. "It's clear to me that we've reached an important juncture here." Hardesty, Federova, and Barrett abruptly

stood up, with Saxon and Hermann reacting just a second later. For a moment, the ghost of a cold smile danced on Hardesty's lips.

"About time," said Barrett.

Namir nodded to the big man. "Open the study, will you?"

Barrett nodded and crossed to the wall where The Flute Player hung. He whispered something Saxon didn't catch and a seam opened on silent

hydraulics. The wall retracted into itself to reveal more rooms beyond. Saxon caught sight of a dark, windowless space, weapons racks, and

workstations.

"Yelena?" Namir inclined his head toward Federova.

The woman's hand blurred as she pulled a weapon from a pocket, a boxy plastic handgun lined with a yellow-and-black hazard strip. She

turned it on Hermann and pulled the trigger.

A thick dart buzzed from the muzzle and hit the German in the neck; Saxon heard the hum of a tazer discharge and Hermann moaned, his body

going rigid. The younger man fell, his watch cap falling from his head.

"What—?" Saxon looked up as a second dart struck him in the chest. He had an instant to register the bite of the contact needles in his skin

before a second stun charge lashed into him.

The Ohama Center—Washington, D.C.—United States of America

The message brought her to the doors of the conference center, the fading light of evening lit by the glow from inside the glass-and-steel

building. A gallery of holograms formed a promenade from the street to the main doors, each of them moving through cycles showing venue information and events listings.

She moved closer, her senses sharpened and acute; for the moment, the fatigue gnawing at her had been beaten back. Kelso knew she'd pay for

it later—but for now she was focused and alert.

Over the entrance, a banner announced the name of the seminar that was about to begin: No Better—The Myth of Human Augmentation. She

immediately recognized the title. The ebook that it was based on had been hovering around the top ten of the Picus Network best-seller list

forever, along with its various audio and video versions, not to mention the frequent references to it on the chat-show news circuit. She glanced

up to see the face of the author smiling down from one of the holoscreens. William Taggart's warm, fatherly eyes watched her from behind a

pair of understated glasses, wearing the same expression of compassionate concern that graced the back cover of every copy of No Better, and

every flyer for his lobby group, the Humanity Front.

Taggart had founded his organization with one goal in mind—to disabuse society at large of the idea that human augmentation technology was a

positive development. As Taggart's people would put it, cybernetic implants served only to dilute a person's humanity, making them less than

what they were instead of more.

Anna found the Humanity Front's rhetoric a little hard to take, though. The augmentations she possessed had improved her, and that was

something she'd never been in doubt about—and when she thought about the facets of her life that made her feel less human, her implants

weren't at the root of it. She frowned and pushed that thought away.

Smartly dressed young men and women were handing out flyers to the attendees and anyone who walked within arm's reach. Anna noted that

a fair few of them were sporting simple mechanical prosthetics in place of limbs. These were people who had taken to what some called

"disaugmentation," freely giving up cybernetic implants in an attempt to move back to being fully human again; the only thing was, losing an

augmentation wasn't like getting a gang tattoo removed or ditching your piercings. She didn't know quite how to take someone who'd made that

choice willingly. Maybe life with a basic leg prosthesis was easier, with less maintenance to deal with and no weekly regimen of neuropozyne

doses to keep the nerve contacts crisp, but Anna wasn't buying it.

Here, though, she seemed to be in the minority. A lot of the downtowner crowd were filing in to hear Taggart give his lecture, and after having

heard the man on television, Anna had to admit he had charisma enough to hold your attention, and the kind of academic gravitas that many

people admired. Along with plenty of his supporters, he was here to make his voice heard at the National Science Board meetings, to continue

his campaign to decry augmentation; he would doubtless be a fixture at the pro-flesh demonstrations taking place over the next few days.

As she entered the conference center atrium, as if on cue, a recording of Taggart's voice issued out of a hidden speaker. "Some people believe

augmentation is the wave of the future. That replacing part of yourself with machines will make you superhuman ... But the truth is, for

every part of yourself you sacrifice, you are less than you were before. That's why I created the Humanity Front. Tonight, Fll tell you why

you should be apart of it, too."

Anna scowled slightly. The name made Taggart's anti-aug crusade sound like a paramilitary group, and Anna wondered if that might have been

a deliberate choice. Some of the people who shared Taggart's views did a lot more than write books or give speeches; episodes of violence

against augmented humans fanned the flames of a new breed of intolerance. Groups like the militants of Purity First were more than happy to

twist Taggart's message toward aggressive ends.

There were more than enough people who couldn't afford augmentation in the States and elsewhere—and she doubted any of them could have

paid the extortionate ticket fee for the seminar either—as well as those who felt threatened by the new technology, just like they were by

anything unfamiliar to them. The Humanity Front was selling itself as two things: a caring group out to show augmentees the error of their

ways, and a force for retaining the status quo. Anna wondered if men like Taggart would ever understand that you couldn't put the genie back

in the bottle.

"Can I help you?" A tanned young guy sporting a blandly neutral prosthetic hand stepped up to greet her. He gave her a once-over,

immediately spotting her cyberoptics, and his expression became almost pious. "Everyone is welcome."

Over his shoulder, a shimmer passed through one of the holograph banners, the text changing. A new string of words formed: Kelso. Upper tier.

Section G. Box 3. She gave him a tight smile. "Actually, no. I know exactly where I'm going."

Anna had her hand on the butt of the Zenith as she entered the skybox. It was well appointed, with an excellent view of the stage below. The

house lights were just starting to grow dim, and as the door closed behind her, William Taggart stepped out into the pool of light cast from

above, to a tide of applause. She hesitated; the skybox's illumination was low and there were deep shadows everywhere.

Down on the stage, Taggart began with some carefully rehearsed platitudes, and from the shadows, Anna heard someone make a spitting noise.

"Yeah, that's enough from you, Billy." The voice was young and male.

She went to low-light and a figure in a bulky jacket and baseball cap became clear in one of the low, dense seats. With a wave, the youth cut off

the sound feed from the auditorium and turned to face her. "Let me guess. You're D-Bar?" He was a youth, no more than nineteen, slouching

and cocksure.

"Wow," he replied. "You're more of a looker in the real."

"Whereas you are far more disappointing." She backed off a step. "I'm not in the mood for games, kid." Automatically, she started to profile him

in her thoughts. He had an accent that didn't fit; it had a European twang, maybe French-Canadian.

D-Bar stood up. He was gangly, and the puffed-up jacket hung badly on him, making him look even thinner than he was. A collection of data

goggles and audio buds lay in a complex tangle around his neck. "Kid? Oh, come on, Agent Anna Kelso. Book by a cover and all that static? And

here I was thinking you were a professional..."

She looked around the room, searching for anything that screamed out ambush, and found nothing. "Fair point," she conceded. "It's just that

the name 'Juggernaut'... well, it conjures up a

different kind of person than you."

D-Bar nodded sagely. "Oh, I hear you. I get that a lot."

"Where's the rest of the 'we' you mentioned on the phone?"

He tapped his hat, and she saw what looked like a minicam clipped to the bill. "Watching. If you try to ice me or anything, they'll wideband the

pix to every screen in a five-block radius."

"Cute trick." It was likely a threat he could make good on; Anna had read up on the Juggernaut Collective's impressive hacking expertise. It

was a matter of public record that they had bankrupted two Fortune 500 companies, crashed the Syrian intelligence agency's mainframe, and

brought the Seattle traffic grid to a standstill. "Maybe I should just arrest you, then. I could use a win right about now."

That got her a flash of real worry; but then the youth shuttered it away. "You don't want to do that, Anna. We're the good guys, yeah? Like you.

Serving the cause of justice and all that stuff."

This time she snorted. "Now who's being patronizing? You expect me to buy into the whole 'white hat' hacker thing? Juggernaut are

information terrorists. You're not Robin Hood, you're a cybercriminal."

D-Bar gave a mock shudder. "Ooh, yeah. Don't you think things always sound cooler when you put the word 'cyber' in front of them?" He gave a

short, nasal laugh. "Okay, so we rob from the rich and we keep it. Can't deny. But what we also do is oppose inequality."

"By breaking the law?" she snapped.

"We're the thorn in the side of heartless megacorps who wanna turn the world into their personal chum-bucket!" he insisted.

"What, is that your recruitment speech?"

D-Bar chuckled. "I don't have to recruit you. You're already on our side."

"Don't count on it." Kelso licked her lips, an earthy taste in the back of her throat. Her hands tightened as her annoyance built. "You've got ten

seconds to tell me why the hell I am here, or I'm dragging you out in cuffs."

"I thought the choice of locale was, y'know, ironic." When he saw the hard edge in her gaze, he paled a little. "Okay, okay. Look, for a while now,

we've been bumping up against the edges of something ..." D-Bar paused, feeling for the right word. "Shadowy. There's a group out there. An

organization with a long reach and a lotta patience. They've been systematically using info-war and assassination to target midlevel corporates

—"

"Isn't that what you people do?" she broke in.

The youth's eyes flashed. "Juggernaut doesn't kill people, lady. And if you let me finish, I was gonna say it's not just corporations getting the

knife. Other free groups like us are going dark. These bad guys are taking people down with blackmail, extortion, entrapment, absorption ..."

Anna's patience was wearing thinner by the moment. She folded her arms across her chest. "And this concerns me how?"

"The Tyrants," D-Bar sounded out the name, and she couldn't stop herself from reacting to it. "Yeah, that get your attention? The Tyrants are

their attack dogs, Agent Kelso. This ... group, whoever they are? Those black-ops bastards are doing their dirty work for them." He leaned

closer. "We're both looking for the same thing. We're both asking the same question." She was silent for a long moment, her irritation warring

with her curiosity. Finally, she gave it voice. "What do they want?"

Knightsbridge—London—Great Britain

Saxon felt cool, clammy concrete against his back and he rolled slightly, his head swimming, clearing from the effect of the stun-dart.

He heard a woman's voice, distant but light and playful. Gradually, he leaned up from where he lay and caught sight of a short, unfinished

corridor stretching away from him. He was inside the hidden spaces behind the picture on the wall, under the stark light of a fluorescent bulb.

At the edges of the shadows around him, he glimpsed Barrett, Hardesty, and the Russian woman. Hermann was nearby, slowly pulling himself

into a pained crouching position. The chamber they were in was no bigger than the conference room, but it was sparse and had the feel of a

place one might use for a purpose that needed a little space, like a sparring court. Or an interrogation room.

Hermann tried to get up, but that drew a guttural, negative noise from Barrett. "You stay right there, son," he told him. The German frowned

and ran a hand through his short, dirty-blond hair.

The woman at the far end of the corridor was talking to Namir, and in that moment he knew who she was: the wife. He didn't understand

Hebrew, but he recognized the rhythm of it. Their voices had the casual, easy pace of two people who knew each other intimately. Saxon closed

his eyes for a moment and tried to marry the voice he heard with the Jaron Namir he knew from firsthand experience. Just as with the picture

on the landing, the two things refused to mesh. He was listening to a warm and personable man, a father joking with the mother of his children,

not the stone killer he knew from sorties into the deep black. Saxon had seen Namir kill men in the time it took him to blink, and do it calmly

and cleanly. He wondered how he could be both of those people at once.

A child called out and the wife stepped away. After a moment, Namir came back down the corridor and Saxon saw Hardesty grin in the

darkness, in anticipation of something.

Namir saw it, too, and drew a handgun, throwing the American a flat look. "Scott. Go see to Laya and the children, would you?"

The sniper's face fell. "I thought—"

"Do it now," said Namir. "I'll handle this."

There was a moment when it looked like Hardesty might argue; but then he grimaced and walked away. Saxon heard the sniper call out and a

child laugh in reply; then the hidden door closed and the sound died.

Namir worked the slide of the automatic pistol and ejected all but one round into the palm of his hand, then pocketed the bullets.

At last, Saxon spoke. "What's going on?"

"One of you is disloyal," Namir said, without looking at them. "I know which. And the other needs to prove himself." He gestured with the gun.

"So, two birds and one stone."

"One bullet, more like," Barrett noted dryly.

Hermann gave Saxon a fierce look. "I am no traitor!"

Saxon got to his feet. "Are you serious? Disloyal how, exactly?"

Namir tossed the loaded pistol onto the floor between them. "I'll explain it to you if you live past the next five minutes."

"You actually expect me to—" Hermann never let him finish. The German was swift and he came up hard, striking with that armored fist of his

in a short, hammer-blow punch. Saxon barely had time to deflect it.

He was aware of the others drawing back and away as Hermann moved in and came at him again. This time, Saxon was a half second too slow

and the metal-clad fist clipped him across the shoulder. Even a glancing impact was enough to rob him of a little balance and Saxon shifted his

weight. Even if he wasn't sold on this sudden, enforced bout of trial-by-combat, the younger man certainly was. Hermann glared at him, sizing

him up; the way he did it made it clear to Saxon that the German had given plenty of thought to how he would fight him if the opportunity

arose. He had a sudden mental image of Gunther taking him down, stripping his corpse for parts to bolt on

to himself like a hunter taking the skull and pelt of a kill.

Saxon dodged the next punch, and the next, but then his luck ran out. Hermann connected with a heavy strike to the sternum that rattled

Saxon's rib cage and ghosted the taste of blood up his throat. The other man glimpsed the flash of pain in his eyes and for the first time since

he'd met him, Saxon saw something approximating a smile flicker briefly over the German's face. He came back in like thunder, a flurry of fast

kicks and faster punches that Saxon had to work to deflect, never once getting the chance to attack in turn. The young man's nerve-jacked

speed was far in advance of Saxon's own reflex booster, maybe a custom model or something the Tyrants had granted; it didn't matter. Trying

to match Hermann blow for blow wouldn't work.

Instead, Saxon let the other man's overconfidence take the lead. He let his guard go loose, and the hammer-blows started to land. Finally,

Hermann connected with a punch that sent Saxon reeling, down to the concrete floor.

He blinked away pinwheels of pain from behind his eyes. Hermann went down in a looping sweep, grabbing for the pistol; he took his gaze off

Saxon in that moment, chancing that his opponent was winded. His mistake, then.

As the German snatched up the weapon, Saxon rocked off his augmented legs and collided with Hermann, sending him reeling toward the edge

of the light cast from the overhead bulb. The hand gripping the gun came up and it turned into a wrestling match.

For long moments they both strained for the superior position, but Saxon had the power, and the will to take the long road. Finally, with a

savage twist of his wrist, he pulled the pistol away and elbowed Hermann hard in the throat, putting him on the ground.

Saxon weighed the gun in his hand.

"You gonna do it?" asked Barrett.

At the periphery of his vision, Saxon saw Namir shift slightly, his hand moving out of sight. Hermann looked up at him, silently furious.

"No," Saxon said at length. "I'm not going to do it. Because there isn't any bloody traitor, and I don't play games like this. I'm a professional." He

flipped the gun over and held it out, butt first, to Namir.

The Tyrant commander took it with a nod. "The right call, Ben. If you had pulled the trigger, I would have shot you myself."

Hermann got up slowly. "Then both of us would be dead."

"Rounds in the gun were blanks," said Barrett. "We've done this before. We ain't stupid." A

smile crossed his scarred face. "You did good there. You got steel. I'm impressed."

Saxon frowned. "A test?"

"In a way," said Namir. He nodded to them all, and when he spoke again his tone was all command. "We've got another assignment, in America.

We fly out tomorrow, so make the most of your downtime tonight and be sure to prep your gear."

"That's it?" Saxon took a step after him as he walked away. "You got nothing else to say?"

Namir glanced over his shoulder. "What do you want, Ben? A membership card? You both proved yourselves. You're part of the Tyrants. Until

death."

CHAPTER SIX

The Ohama Center—Washington, D.C.—United States of America

"We don't have all the answers." Anna watched the hacker as he crossed to the minibar behind the skybox's line of seats and did something to

the lock to make it open, fishing inside for a slender can of Ishanti. He popped the cap and drained the energy drink in a single, long pull. "Ah.

Better."

Beyond the sound-screened window, she saw William Taggart bow slightly as something he said earned a round of applause from his audience.

The resonance of the clapping was distant, like faraway waves.

"What do you know?" Anna demanded. "I'm tired of your games."

"Games haven't even started yet," said D-Bar. "Not for you, anyhow." He sighed. "Let me put it another way ... You ever heard of something

called 'the Icarus Effect'?"

"Sounds like a Las Vegas magic show."

The youth chuckled and discarded the empty can. "Yeah, I guess. The Tyrants certainly have a way of making people vanish, that's for sure."

He came closer, became more animated. "You know the story of Icarus? Guy and his dad build a set of wings, guy gets bold and flies too high,

too close to the sun, guy gets dead. Same idea. It's a sociological thing, see? A normative process created unconsciously by a society in order to

maintain the status quo, keep itself stable." D-Bar talked with his hands, making shapes in the air. "Whenever someone threatens to do

something that will

upset the balance, like flying too high ... the Icarus Effect kicks in. Society reacts, cuts them down. Stability returns." He sighed. "That's what

the Tyrants do. They enforce that effect for their masters, only they don't wait for it to happen naturally. They choose whose wings are gonna

be clipped, if you get me." He jabbed a finger at the air. "These creeps, they're all about power. Anyone who threatens them, anyone who

makes waves, gets dealt with."

"Threatens them how, exactly?" said Anna.

"You know what they say; if you wanna make enemies, try to change something. People invested in keeping things the same don't like it when

you make waves." He fished in his pocket and pulled out a data slate. "Look at this. These places and faces mean anything to you?"

Anna glanced down and images scrolled past her: a highway accident in Tokyo that claimed the life of a cybernetics researcher; a string of

missing-persons reports from a Belltower law enforcement detachment in Bangalore; the violent mugging of a senatorial aide in Boston; an

augmented teenager killed by police snipers in Detroit.

At first, she saw nothing that registered with her; then a face she recognized from her own investigations passed by—Donald Teague, an

advisory staffer at the United Nations, shot dead in Brooklyn by unknown assailants. An eyewitness report talked about an ambush of Teague's

car and three men in black combat gear, and of the almost military precision with which the kill had been made ...

She blinked, and for a moment the dark memory of a day in Georgetown pressed in on her thoughts, threatening to overwhelm her. Anna

stiffened, forcing the recall out of herself. She read on. There were other points where the files connected to those she had discovered on her

own. Men and women from corporations, government figures, those with international or UN connections like Teague. All of them either dead,

missing, or assaulted. She halted on one image in particular; Senator Jane Skyler, caught by a stringer's camera six months ago as she was

wheeled through the doors of a private D.C. medical clinic. Matt Ryan's blood was rust-red on her expensive silk blouse.

"And there's more we don't even know about," D-Bar told her. "The ones who were leaned on instead of getting roughed up or murdered. The

ones who buckled, who did what they were told to."

"Assassination, extortion, coercion ..." Anna said aloud. "The Tyrants are behind all these incidents? How could they be doing that? They would

need global reach, unparalleled access to secure information—"

The hacker seized on her words. "Ah, now that, that we do know something about. The group, the guys with their hands on the leash of the

dogs ... they've penetrated hundreds of agencies. They got a spy network that spans the world." He nodded to himself. "That Skyler thing,

fer'ex. How'd they explain away the shooters knowing exactly where and when to find the senator?"

Anna frowned. "The FBI investigation turned up evidence that one of Skyler's maids was paid off by the Red Arrow triad."

"Pled innocent, though, right? Then what?"

Kelso recalled that the woman had died in prison, killed during a violent scuffle. Like so much about the Skyler hit, Anna had never accepted

what had become the official version of events.

D-Bar went on. "The Tyrants got their info someplace else. I reckon you've probably been thinking that for a while, but you don't wanna go

there, do ya?"

She glared at him. He was perceptive—she had to give him that. "If you're so goddamn clever, say it."

"I can do more than that," he told her. "I can show you. We can show you the truth about what you've suspected all along. That the Tyrants

have a source inside the United States Secret Service."

"It's not possible," Anna said, without conviction. A chill ran through her. The very real possibility of someone being compromised within the

agency made her feel sick inside.

D-Bar studied her carefully. "We came to you, Agent Kelso, because we can't prove any of that. But you can."

She shook her head. "I can't do anything. Even if you're right, I'm suspended."

"I'll get you back inside," he told her, with absolute, unshakable confidence.

"All right." It was a second before Anna realized she had spoken.

Knightsbridge—London—Great Britain

Namir gave him a room at the top of the town house, in the converted attic where white pine floors ranged up to tall, arched windows that

looked out onto the London skyline.

Saxon left the lamps off and cracked open the window a little, letting in the night air along with the steady rush of the traffic out on Kensington

Gore. The distant rattle of a police aerodyne reached his ears, and he saw a saucer-shaped advertisement blimp caught like an errant cloud,

drifting east toward Mayfair. The glow of the video billboards flanking the airship reflected off the rooftops, strings of commercials for high-end

fashion, cybernetics, and consumer electronics raining silently down over the city.

The night was uncharacteristically warm, and as soon as he had settled in the room, Saxon stripped to the waist and found a place to sit cross

legged by the freestanding mirror, checking himself over in every place that Gunther Hermann had laid his punches and kicks on him. He had a

collection of ugly bruises, shallow cuts, and minor contusions, but nothing that could have been a broken or chipped bone. Saxon ran his flesh

hand down the length of his cyberarm, checking maintenance seals and actuators. He made a few practice moves; the arm felt slightly off

speed.

With a grimace, Saxon filled a tumbler of water from the filter carafe on the nightstand near the wide, shadowed bed; then he loaded a fresh

dose of neuropozyne into an injector pen and took the shot in his arm.

He drained the glass as he stood at the window. What the hell just happened? he asked himself. For a moment, it seemed as if he was hanging

over the ragged edge, that everything he was or could be was about to be snuffed out in an instant; and then the gun and Gunther's life had

been in his hands.

Were the rounds in the pistol really blanks? If I had pulled the trigger, put a shot between the German's eyes, what would they have done?

It chilled him to consider a different truth from the one Namir had laid down as he took the weapon from him. Saxon's disquiet should have

been silenced; he had passed a test down there in that room. In some strange way, he had bonded with the rest of the Tyrants.

So why doesn't it sit right? He almost asked the question out loud.

Saxon glanced up and saw the airship drift overhead. Up there, a woman's face was lit by rainbows of color, showing off a cascade of diamonds

around her wrist. Her mouth moved and a marquee of words appeared in sequence on smaller video-screens all around her. What master do

you serve?

He blinked, uncertain if his eyes were playing tricks on him.

The woman on the screen, flawless and fashion-model perfect, was looking right at him, as if the billboard was a window through which she was

peering. Over her shoulder, he saw a virtual skyline mimicking the view from the tenth floor of the Hotel Novoe Rostov.

What master do you serve? she asked once again. The words shifted and changed like drifts of sand, transforming into a string of numerals.

The groupings matched an international sat-comm code.

Before he was even fully aware he was doing it, Saxon reached for his gear pack and recovered the spare vu-phone he kept for emergencies. It

wasn't the slick, cutting-edge device the Tyrants had given him, just a store-bought disposable. He entered the digits and thumbed the DIAL

key. A string of swift tones sounded from the earpiece, followed by a hum as the line connected—

Behind him, the bedroom door clicked open, and he spun from the window, cutting the call short, letting the phone drop.

In the light cast from the airship's advert-screens, Yelena Federova resembled some kind of shadow-wraith, a creature made out of flesh and

darkness straight from fable. She stalked silently toward him, her black-and-steel legs catching the glow. Her eyes were hooded and he could

not read them. Slowly, like a knife being drawn from a sheath, a low smile crossed her lips. The sullen glower that characterized her neutral

mode of expression was gone, and instead Saxon saw an echo of the predatory thrill Federova had shown in the Rostov's lobby, after cutting

down three men in as many seconds.

It came to him that he had failed the test. She had come to kill him, quietly and discreetly. Sparing Gunther's life had marked him as weak; he

was going to be cut from the pack ...

She halted a few steps from him, and then, with care, Federova pulled at the tabs holding the ballistic-cloth blouse closed over her chest. She let

it fall free to the floor; beneath she wore nothing, and Saxon's gaze was drawn to the rise of her breasts, a small ebon cross hanging in the valley

between them. Her tawny skin was marred only by the scarred disc of an old bullet wound. Then she shrugged off her short breeches and

crossed the rest of the distance, her hands reaching for him.

Saxon let her draw in, let her find her own way; and when their lips met, hers were as cool as fresh water. Together, they drifted out of the light

and into the shadowed corner, descending into darkness.

U.S. Secret Service Headquarters—Washington, D.C.—United States of America

At this time of the evening, the building was sparsely populated; but then, cops never slept, and the agents of the Secret Service were no

different. There would be more than enough people still on duty or working late to steal a march on their investigations, others preparing

details to deal with VIP escorts while the demonstrators were in town. More than enough of them to make this a difficult endeavor for Anna

Kelso. Everyone on her floor, at the very least, had to know about the cover story Temple had put in place—Kelso's so-called medical

suspension. She knew that others would have been told everything, and how those people would react if they saw her here ... It would not go

well.

All that she pushed aside as she went in through the front doors. In her head Anna was going through the same warm-up techniques she used

for undercover work; it was peculiar to do it here and now, but she was pretending to be something that she wasn't—an agent with a right to be

there.

The security guard at the desk gave her a wan smile. Anna cursed inwardly; he knew her, in a nodding kind of way. She had hoped someone

else would be on duty tonight.

"Agent Kelso." His face showed faint confusion. "I'd heard you were taking some medical leave?"

She smiled back at him, playing into the moment. "That's right. But I've got to drop some paperwork off for the guys picking up my caseload."

"I'll need you to sign in." He offered her a touch pad, and she ran a stylus over it in a quick scrawl. Anna couldn't help but glance over her

shoulder, back out to the parking lot where her car was waiting. She thought about running.

A soft beep sounded from the guard's panel. "Thanks."

She was through the security arch before it caught up to her that she had been allowed in without question. Anna resisted the urge to reach up

and touch the badge in her pocket; whatever D-Bar had done to it on the drive from the conference center had worked.

The elevator took her to the seventh floor, and all the way up she fought back the twitchy sensation in her fingers, folding her arms, unfolding

them, shifting her weight from foot to foot. The dose she'd convinced herself she needed, the shot of stims that had propelled her through her

confrontation with D-Bar, was waning. She could sense the dark clouds of the comedown encroaching, like a thunderstorm just over the horizon.

Anna blinked; her eyes were tired and gritty.

When her phone hummed in her pocket, she almost jumped. Quickly she thumbed the wireless headset from the dock on the back of the

handset and inserted it in her ear; she wasn't about to let D-Bar access her mastoid comm. "Talk to me," she said.

"Are you there?" asked the hacker. "1 ghosted you via the entry subnet, blanked the sign-in as soon as you were through. Can't go any

further without your help, though."

"Working on it," she replied. "Now shut up and let me concentrate." Anna muted him as the elevator let out a melodic chime and the doors

opened. She stepped out, and for a second, force of habit took her in the direction of the main office bullpen. Across the tops of the open cubicles,

the desks and glassy partitions, dimly lit by glow strips and the occasional active monitor screen, she saw her work area. A bright orange

storage crate was on top of it, crammed with her personal effects. She thought about the marksmanship plaque, the photo of her and the rest of

the team after the Anselmo case bust, and fought down the irrational urge to risk discovery in order to salvage those little, trivial mementos.

Then she saw Agents Tyler and Drake walking between the desks toward her, and Anna's purpose snapped back into sharp, cold focus.

Chiding herself for the moment of inattention, she turned on her heel and went back around the elevator bank, heading away. The corridors

leading to the server room on floor seven went past the conference areas, and they were all dark and unlit. Anna hoped that Tyler and Drake

would enter the elevators, but they were coming her way, their conversation reaching her. They were talking about the Redskins game, both

men dour and serious about matters of yardage and field goals.

Fear bubbled up inside her, threatening to flood out into panic. She pressed it down, and her hand found a door. Anna slipped into an empty

conference room and closed the door behind her, pressing her back to it. She held her breath.

It seemed to take forever for them to pass, the echo of their mundane discussion hanging in the air; then they were gone, and she was moving

again.

The server room needed another identity pass, and Kelso showed the sensor her badge. The door opened with an obliging click and she was

inside.

"I'm there," she said, toggling the mute on the headset. On the drive over, D-Bar had told her what to look for. From her pocket, she fished out

a data rod the size and thickness of her thumb.

"You know what to do," D-Bar said, his tone a mix of eagerness and annoyance.

"Here we go." She found the correct input socket and slid the rod home. A sleeping monitor screen immediately flashed into life, and a cascade

of information panels unfolded across it.

In her ear, the hacker muttered under his breath. "Wireless link established. Greentooth is handshaking ... Okay, here we go ..." He cursed

and she heard the distant rattle of a keypad. "Damn it. You know, this would be a lot easier if I had both hands free."

Anna eyed the door. "What can I say? I'm the cautious type."

On the drive from the conference center, D-Bar had brought out a customized laptop from his backpack; the thing had the shell of an off-the

shelf business machine, but even her inexpert gaze could tell it was tricked out with multiple hardware modifications and bespoke black-market

tech. The airstream casing was ruggedized and covered with laser etching and decals; it reminded her of a racecar.

She pictured D-Bar out there in the parking lot, hunched over the keyboard in the passenger seat, watching the feed as his machine talked

through the rod's encrypted wireless link to the Secret Service mainframe. Before she had left him in the car, Kelso had asked the youth to

show her his right hand; with a flick, she'd snapped a cuff around his wrist and tethered him to the steering wheel. After all, she was putting a

lot of trust in the Juggernaut hacker, and there was nothing to stop him from copying what he needed from the secure server and leaving her to

take the rap.

"Okay" he went on, "I'm injecting the seeker worm program ... now." One of the information panes on the screen flickered red-white and

vanished. Search routine is running. I've preloaded the seeker with parameters related to the leaked information and the Tyrant targets.

It'll automatically flag anything it finds and upload it to a saved file."

"Good." Anna's hand snapped out and she yanked the data rod from the interface socket. D-Bar called out in surprise as he lost his remote feed,

but she ignored him, dropping the rod to the floor and breaking it in two with the heel of her shoe.

"Was that you?" D-Bar demanded. "What did you just do?"

Anna's hands twitched, making it difficult to gather up the broken pieces in one go. "Cut you off," she confirmed, dropping the fragments into a

cup of cold coffee some errant technician had left on a nearby desk. "This is not my first rodeo, kid. I let you drop the seeker, but I'm not letting you keep an open conduit into a federal law enforcement agency's mainframe, not for one second more than I have to."

"And how exactly are you going to get the data out?" he retorted.

"Way ahead of you." Anna rooted through a storage locker and found a case of blank media units, flash drives of the same model she'd used to

store her own information. Working as swiftly as she could, she connected a drive in place of the data rod and let the unit fill with the seeker

program's digital harvest.

D-Bar was too interested to stay silent for long. "What are you seeing?"

"A lot," Anna admitted. Data flashed past her eyes, much of it in formats unfamiliar to her, some immediately recognizable as U.S. Secret

Service and Department of Justice files. There were operational schedules, transport routes, profiles of agents on duty and principals to protect;

but there were other documents as well, evaluations and surveillance records, the kind of materials that Kelso's agency didn't use. Then she

saw information that bore digital watermarks from Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Diplomatic Corps; other pages

were not even in English, and it took her a second to realize that she was seeing memos and documentation from security agencies outside the

United States. Whoever the leak was inside the service, they had been tunneling through the agency's link to the DOJ, and from there out to

the shadowy nexus of information shared by the global law enforcement community.

As abruptly as it had begun, the search ended and the data parsed itself into the flash drive. Anna felt a cold impulse down her spine and she

reached for the keyboard in front of the monitor, inputting the name "Skyler" and a date string as the parameters for a sweep of the stolen

data. Instantly, the complete scope of all the supposedly secure transit information about Senator Skyler's detail on that fateful day was there

in front of her. Every last bit of it, from details of what pool vehicles would be used and their maintenance records, through the receipts showing

how many bullets the agents on the detail had logged out from the agency armory. Everything an assassin would need to prepare a flawless

attack.

The file bore a validation code, a digital fingerprint tying the requested data to the terminal and agent identity of the person who had copied

them. Anna knew the code; she'd seen it a hundred times appended to her own after-operations debriefs and memos. But still she clicked on the

text string, hoping that she had read it wrongly. Hoping she had made a mistake.

The display opened a panel and showed her Ron Temple's authentication.

"You son of a bitch." The words slipped out of her in a shallow breath, drained of all anger and fury. Anna felt nothing, just a chill numbness at

the core of her gut.

A man she had trusted, a man she had served with, and before her lay proof that he was a traitor, proof that he had sold out whatever integrity

he had to the faceless figures who had their hands on the leash of the Tyrants.

Then the emotion came, breaking the icy dam of the dead feeling in her chest, engulfing her. Anna's eyes prickled and her vision misted. She

staggered a little and reached out a hand to steady herself. Temple had sold them out—Kelso and Ryan, Byrne, Laker, and Connor, everyone on

the Skyler detail, along with all those other men and women he had given up. Her hands drew into hard, tight fists. She wanted to know why.

More than the fury, more than the rush of potent despair, Anna wanted to know the answer. How a man could betray his oath and his

colleagues.

For money? Out of fear? No answer she could imagine seemed good enough.

A repeating tone dragged her back from her reverie, and she blinked owlishly. D-Bar was yelling in her ear, and Kelso glanced back at the

server monitor; a warning panel was blinking there, a string of text in livid red letters telling her to stand by and wait for security.

"Are you listening to me?" D-Bar shouted. "Kelso, can't you hear that?"

She pulled out the connector leading to the flash drive, then shoved the data device in her pocket, moving swiftly across the room to the door.

Outside she could hear voices.

Fighting down the tremors in her fingers, she stepped out calmly into the dim corridor and walked at a steady, unhurried pace toward the

elevator bank. Every nerve in her body screamed at her to run, but she knew that the agency's internal security monitors possessed

subroutines that looked for abnormal body kinetics—if she ran, they would see it. She smothered the urge with a grimace and metered her

pace. Just a few more steps.

Behind her, she heard a voice call out. Drake. She knew it was him without having to turn around. Anna ignored him, kept moving. In a few

more seconds, she'd turn the corner and be at the elevators.

"Hey, stop!" called the other agent. "I'm talking to you! Stop right now!" Anna heard the rustle of a holster being snapped open, the click of a

safety catch flicking off. "I won't tell you again!"

She fled. It wasn't a conscious choice on her part, not something she was aware of doing on anything but the most base, animal-brain level; but

suddenly she was sprinting the rest of the distance down the corridor, her thoughts clattering inside her mind, the rush of new adrenaline

warring with the tidal drag of the stim crash. She couldn't think straight, she couldn't process. All she could do was run, run, run—

Anna raced around the corner and came face-to-face with Agent Tyler, wandering out of the break room past the elevators, stirring a cup of

dark coffee. "Kelso?" His face registered a moment of confusion.

"Stop her!" shouted Drake. That was enough to galvanize Tyler into action, and he let the cup drop, going for his service weapon.

Anna ignored him and dove for the open doors of the elevator, hand reaching for the controls. Her feet were just across the threshold when

Tyler snatched at the collar of her jacket and pulled hard. Some of her hair caught in his grip and sent a shock of pain through her head. A kick

landed in the back of her right knee and her leg buckled. She went down, catching a glimpse of herself falling and Tyler right on her in the

mirrored back of the elevator car.

Then she was on the floor, half in and half out of the lift, with a federal agent's handgun pressed into the small of her back. "You're under

arrest," said Drake.

Romeo Airport—Michigan—United States of America

The aircraft put down on the runway just as the sunset bled away across the landscape. No visible-spectrum landing lights were in operation,

and the pilot brought them in using a virtual headset rig that made it seem to him as if he were touching down in the middle of the day.

Romeo had gone back and forth between active and inactive over the last four decades, until it had quietly slipped into the hands of a minor

corporate consortium that, via a labyrinth of blinds and shell companies, was one cog in a far larger machine. The surrounding area was remote

enough that the local populace were sparse, but it was close enough to Detroit for the glow of the city's skyscrapers to be visible on the horizon,

the colors reflecting off the bottom of the low cloud base.

Inside the hangar, a staging area had already been set up alongside a fuel bowser for the jet and a line of utility trailers. Robot forklifts swarmed

around the rear of the plane, peeling back the vast curved blades of the cargo doors to gather up the helo nestled in its storage cradle.

In defiance of common sense and regulations, Hardesty stood at the thin sliver of open air between the tall hangar doors and smoked a

cigarette. Saxon caught the pungent smell of the nicotine as he crossed the space, taking the opportunity to exercise his legs after hours aboard

the jet. Federova was at the back of an unmarked van, picking her way through a set of armored, olive-drab cases. She was considering

different models of grenades, picking them up, weighing them, exchanging them for others. He smiled thinly; she reminded him of someone at a

market stall buying fruit.

After that night in London, he hadn't known what would come next. Even in the throes of their quiet, animated sex, he had still been on alert,

waiting for the moment when she tried to stick a knife in his ribs or snap his neck. But that moment never arrived; and when they were both

spent she left him there, as silent as ever. He couldn't help but wonder if Hermann had got the same treatment when he joined up.

On the flight, Federova looked right though him, her manner utterly unchanged from the one she had shown him before. Saxon decided to file

their night together away as some kind of opportunist incident and think no more about it; but it wasn't easy. She had been ... a challenge.

"Saxon." He turned to see Namir beckoning him from a temporary workstation set up near the nose wheel of the jet. As he approached, he saw

Barrett and Hermann there with him, peering into a virtual map of the city of Detroit.

The young German's manner also remained unaffected toward Saxon, despite the moment in the fight room; but unlike Federova's cool affect,

Saxon could see the chink of something through Hermann's metaphorical armor. A new respect, maybe? Or perhaps it was something else:

some kind of jealousy. Saxon had beaten him because of two things—endurance and superior augmentations. The former was something that

had to be taught, but the latter... that could be bought. He wondered how badly Gunther Hermann wanted to surrender a little more of his

meat to the machine. Saxon guessed he wouldn't hesitate if the offer was made.

He studied the map as he came closer. On the flight in, Namir had discussed the next operation in brief. Detroit was home to a corporation

called Sarif Industries; Saxon had heard of it, a cutting-edge cybernetics research and manufacturing concern that specialized in boutique tech

off the axis of most people's budget. According to Namir, Sarif had forcibly indentured a group of scientists, who were now being held against

their will in the company's main research and development facility. The Tyrants were going to go in and extract these people, and "restore the

balance." He wondered how much of that was true.

Barrett played around with the map control and shifted the image to a plan view of the Sarif facility. They were planning a rooftop assault, and

the timing had to be perfect.

"We have a narrow window of opportunity to breach their perimeter," said Namir. "Some of the Sarif staff are heading out to Washington for a

meeting with the National Science Board, and there's a weapons demonstration taking place on-site for a representative from the Pentagon. As

such, their focus will be split on that and preparations for the trip. We also have an electronic interdict ready to deploy, but for now, we'll wait

here for the word before we move to the forward waypoint in the city."

"Weapons?" echoed Saxon. "I thought Sarif was all neural implant tech and athlete-grade cyberlimbs."

Namir gave him a long look. "That's part of the reason we're going in." He pulled the map back out to a higher scale, and Saxon got the message

that he wasn't going to give him any more details. "Some of our... associates have secured a holding area for us here." He pointed a slender steel

finger at a location out in the city's industrial wastelands. That's our waypoint once we clear the objective and exfiltrate. There will be some

postmission cleanup to go through at that location, then we'll decamp and return here for departure."

"What kind of threat force will we be facing?" asked Hermann.

Barrett answered before Namir could speak. "A bunch of rent-a-cops. Some embedded security tech. Nothing that'll make you break a sweat."

He shrugged, the action exaggerated by his augmented arms. "Hell, I could do this number on my own. We could leave half of you on the bench

for this one."

Saxon met Namir's gaze. "Is that right?"

The Tyrant commander released a sigh. "I'm still working out the tactical details. The information we have received on the objective so far has

been ... incomplete. I decided to mobilize the whole unit in case it is needed." He smiled thinly. "After all, it's better to have an asset and not

need it, than to need an asset and not have it, don't you agree?"

"Can't argue with you on that score," Saxon admitted. Next to the display there was a data slate showing what seemed to be personnel files. He

picked it up and studied them. "These are the marks?"

Namir reached over and took the screen from him. "That's right. Along with some other actives who may be encountered in the area of

operations." He hesitated, then called up a different file and showed it to Saxon. "Take a look at this. Give me your first impressions."

"All right." Saxon studied the screen, a little warily. Looking back up at him was a younger man with a narrow, angular face and hard eyes. A

loop of footage a few seconds long ran past, perhaps snagged from a security camera feed. The guy had no visible cyberware, but the way he

carried himself immediately set off a warning in Saxon's mind. "This guy's not a rent-a-cop," he said. "Trained. I'd bet on it. Not military,

though, not a spook either. A federal agent? Some kind of copper?"

"That's a good read. He's a former officer of the Detroit police department, Special Weapons and Tactics unit. Currently heading up physical

security at Sarif Industries."

Saxon read the man's name out loud. "Adam Jensen." He scanned the other pages in the man's file. His eye dithered over marksmanship

records, details of Jensen's police career, and information about a discharge from the force that said more by what it left out than what it didn't.

What he read there crystallized his thoughts. "He's no day-player."

Someone made a spitting noise behind him, and Saxon turned to see Hardesty approaching.

"Jensen's a flatfoot," he sneered.

"An ex-flatfoot," Barrett added, with a derisive snort.

"My point," Hardesty replied, nodding. "He's not even that. He's just a broke-ass cop, out of his league. No threat to us."

Saxon answered, keeping his eyes on Namir. "You shouldn't underestimate this guy. Read the file. He's tenacious. Men like that don't go down

easy."

"Like knows like, is that it?" Hardesty came closer.

"I guess." He shrugged and handed back the data slate, glaring at the other man. "Let's just say I can tell the difference between someone who

is a professional, and someone who pretends to be."

For a long second, Hardesty balanced on the edge of the veiled insult; then he gave a humorless smirk. "Useful. You gotta teach me that

sometime, limey."

Namir blanked the holograph map with a wave of his hand. "Get your gear together and stand by. We need to be ready to deploy at a moment's

notice."

U.S. Secret Service Headquarters—Washington, D.C.—United States of America

In the basement of the agency offices there was a holding area with cells and a processing office. It didn't see much use on a day-to-day basis

and it was a lot cleaner and well appointed than its NYPD equivalent, but the function was the same. A cell was a cell was a cell.

They took all her gear, including the flash drive, the doctored badge, and her car key; Agents Drake and Tyler were dogged but they were

smart, and she guessed that sooner or later one of them would head outside to the parking lot to go looking for her vehicle. Anna found herself

hoping that D-Bar had been quick enough to hot-wire her nondescript Navig sedan and get the hell out of there when he'd heard the scuffle

over the headset; she'd left the line open all the way.

They took her watch, so she had no way to reckon the passing of time. Maybe under normal circumstances she might have sat there on the

plastic mattress and fretted about what was going to happen; but the crash was on her and she surrendered to it. Anna let herself go and fell

into a deep, dreamless slumber.

When Tyler woke her, it was like dragging herself up from the bottom of the ocean, as if her conscious mind were wrapped up in anchor chains

that kept trying to pull her back to the dark and to sleep. Shrugging it off, she rose and followed him, grim-faced, down a corridor to an

interview room. This, too, mirrored the one she'd been in at the 10th Precinct.

Inside: a plain table and a few chairs, the console of an audio and video recording system built into the wall, and Ron Temple. His arms were

folded in front of him, and his face had an expression on it she'd never seen before. It wasn't fear or anger, but some strange merging of the two.

Anna couldn't help herself. The moment she saw him, she went for him. "You fucking bastard-!"

Tyler was right there to stop her, and he caught her in an armlock, twisting the limb back until Kelso grunted in pain. "Calm down, Anna."

"Go screw yourself, Craig!" she retorted.

"Sir?" Tyler gave Temple a questioning look, and his superior nodded toward the other chair. In quick order, the agent pushed her into the

seat. Anna's cuffs slammed into the tabletop and were held there by an invisible electromagnetic inductor coil.

"I'll take it from here," said Temple. "Wait outside."

Tyler gave her a last look and then did as he was told.

Before Temple could speak again, she snarled at him. "I know what you did, you goddamn rat! You sold out your own people! You got Matt

killed—"

Temple reached across the table and silenced her with a hard slap across the face. "Shut up," he said tightly. "You stupid, stupid bitch. I warned

you! Didn't I warn you to stay away from all this? But you couldn't just let it go, could you? You dosed yourself up and came right back."

Her head rang with the impact and pain flared on her cheek. "I know you're part of it. The Tyrants. All of it."

"That name doesn't mean anything to me," he replied, too quick, too practiced. "You don't understand anything."

"I understand you abused your position!" she spat, pulling at the cuffs. "I understand that you took money to give up confidential information,

information that got people hurt or killed!" She drew a sharp breath. "They were your colleagues. Matt and all the others ..."

When she looked up, she saw fear in his eyes. Temple was shaking his head. "You don't know. They have people everywhere. It's not like there

was a choice, Kelso! It was my life, the life of my family, my kids!" Anna recalled he had an ex-wife and three children living in Toronto. "This is

the way things work!" he spat, the anger returning again. "You're too na'ive to see it, and now you're going to pay for that. Because I am damn

well not going to take the fall!"

"Who are they?" Anna demanded. "The government? Corporates?"

He gave a harsh laugh. "Too small. It's more than just flags or dollars! These people are so big you don't even see them!" He was trembling, and

he seemed to realize it. After a moment, Temple took control of himself. When he spoke again he was formal and guarded. "You've destroyed

yourself, Anna. The drugs, collusion with terrorists, breaking in here and stealing classified data..." He produced the flash drive from his pocket

and showed it to her. "You gave me everything I need." He shook his head. "If you had just listened to me, you could have walked away. But

not now." Temple stood up. "You're going to disappear. Everything about you will be destroyed, and when they're done, it will be as if Anna

Kelso never existed."

"You can't hide this!" she shouted.

"They already have," he said, without looking at her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

North Springfield—Virginia—United States of America

The unmarked van rumbled along the central lane of Interstate 495, heading westward into the evening. If any of the other drivers in the

sparse traffic had given it a second look, they might have noticed the opaque polyglass slits along its flanks and the air vent in the roof; but

there were few people driving at this time of day, and for the most part the 495 was the domain of unmanned cargo haulers. The blank-faced,

slab-sided machines hummed past the van, running lights bright around prows that had a whiskered look, like dogfish. Some of them had

thinscreens along their flanks denoting cargo and livery, lighting up the road as they passed.

Shafts of color penetrated the interior of the van and made Anna Kelso blink and turn away. She shifted uncomfortably. The orange detainee

jumpsuit she wore was scratchy, the fiber-paper material rough in the places where it rubbed on her skin. Restraints around her wrists and

ankles gave her limited freedom of movement, but not enough to sit up or appreciably change position.

The only other person in the back of the van was Craig Tyler. His narrow face and small eyes were set in a professional expression of

detachment, but Anna knew him well enough to see that he was uncomfortable with the job he'd been asked to do. Temple had charged Tyler

and Drake to personally convey her from D.C. out to whatever holding facility they had lined up; the other agent was in the driver's seat, on the

far side of the armored bulkhead isolating the rear section of the van.

At first, Anna had been afraid that they were taking her out to some remote spot in the projects, somewhere that they could put a bullet in the

back of her head and leave her for dead; but it soon became clear things were not going to be that simple.

All she'd been able to draw out of Tyler was that the agents were taking her to a rendezvous, where she would be transferred into the care of

"contractors." The word had an ominous ring to it; anyone who had worked inside the Beltway for more than a few months knew that behind

that term lay a multitude of sins. Temple had been right; she would end up inside some ghost prison, a "black site" facility off the grid, and that

would be the last anyone would see of her.

"They're going to interrogate me," she said, her fear giving itself voice. "Some faceless mercenary, someone with no legal oversight, no due

process." Anna stared at Tyler, who wouldn't meet her gaze. "And when they're done, when they get all they want from me, I'll be executed."

She stamped her foot on the metal floor. "Right here, Craig. On American soil. You know that's not right!"

He was silent for a moment. "What I know is that you're a terrorist sympathizer, Anna. You've been classified an enemy combatant."

"Bullshit!" she snapped. "You know me! You know what I was doing was not about terrorism! It's about Matt Ryan-"

"Maybe so," he retorted, speaking over her. "Maybe, yeah, that is what you think you're doing, breaking the chain of command and conducting

illegal operations without sanction ... But you're in bed with international criminals! You're working with Juggernaut! They're wanted by

Interpol, the NSA, FBI-"

"I..." She tried to find the right words. "It's not what you think!"

Tyler reached into a pocket and pulled out a data slate. "D-Bar. You know who he is, right? Your hacker buddy?"

The name brought Anna up short. How does the agency know about D-Bar? She'd kept that information to herself. They had to have been

listening in on her calls. More than likely, her apartment was wired as well.

Tyler ignored her, reading from the slate. "Patrick Couture, also known as P-C, also known as D-Bar, from the French word meaning 'to unlock'

..." He frowned. "Escaped capture by RCMP forces in Quebec, currently wanted in connection with numerous data-crimes on three continents,

known to be an active member of the Juggernaut Collective. Designated priority target." Tyler waved the slate at her. "This isn't some kid

pirating software or deep-sixing parking tickets. He's part of an international criminal conspiracy! And now so are you."

For a moment, she couldn't find anything to counter his accusations, and Anna began to wonder if she had been played all along. What if

Juggernaut had been tracking her, watching while she conducted her covert investigation? What if they had used her, twisted her to their own

ends? She bit down on her lip, feeling sick inside. Another lie on top of all the others? "No," she managed, shaking her head. "It's Temple. He's

the traitor! He's been using his access to the DOJ network to pass classified data!"

"To who?" Tyler demanded.

"I... I don't know!" she said angrily. "All I know is that he's responsible for the deaths of a half-dozen Secret Service agents, men you and I

worked with!"

Tyler sat back, his expression souring. "I'll tell you where you are going, Kelso. You're being transferred to a secure psychiatric unit out of state.

Maybe there you can get some help. If Juggernaut were just using you—"

"Don't talk to me like I'm delusional!" Anna snapped, pulling against her restraints. "I know what I saw!"

Tyler's hand slipped to the stun gun on his belt. "Sit back," he ordered. "Don't make me knock you out."

She sagged and fell against the metal bench as another truck hummed past, the light cast from the screen-panels along its flanks moving slowly

along the inside of the van. Something made her look up, and for a moment Anna thought that the stims, the stress, and the lack of proper sleep

had all conspired to make her hallucinate.

Visible through the slit-windows, she saw a line of text marching along the side of the driverless truck as it paralleled the van. Brace Yourself

Kelso, it read, This Is Going to Hurt.

Her jaw dropped just as Tyler caught on, and the agent turned to look out the windows, catching sight of what she had seen. He tapped his

mastoid. "Drake, do you see—?"

Before he could complete the thought, the wheels of the computer-controlled hauler gave a savage screech and the glowing screen-panels

loomed through the windows. The robot truck broadsided the van and the vehicle resonated with the force of the impact. Tyler was knocked

aside, but Anna was ready, riding out the collision. Through the security panel in front of her, she heard Drake swearing as he tried to stop the van from spinning into a wild skid. Then the truck veered across the lanes a second time and Drake lost control as they collided. The vehicle

fishtailed across the freeway and momentum turned it sideways. There was a moment of stomach-churning vertigo as the van flipped over and

crashed onto its side. A horrible grinding shriek sounded out as the prisoner transport scraped to a halt along the asphalt.

Anna recovered quickly, ignoring a cut over her right eye. Tyler was lying on his side, his breathing shallow but ready. She pulled as far as the

restraints would let her and grabbed at him, dragging him closer. Her hands snagged the magnetic key rod on his belt and she tapped it on the

cuffs; they fell away and she immediately felt a prickling sensation as proper blood flow returned to her extremities.

Someone banged twice on the rear doors. A hissing, fizzing glow appeared where the lock was mounted and she turned away. Metal parted with

a heavy cracking sound and the doors fell open.

The bright beam of a torch engulfed her and Kelso held up a hand to shield her eyes. "You gonna sit there and stare, or are you gonna get the

hell out?" said a voice.

Anna lurched onto the highway, panting, and found D-Bar standing there, a manic grin on his face. The unmanned truck was idling nearby,

blocking the view of the wrecked van from passing traffic. The hacker jerked his thumb at a sporty Redline roadster parked nearby on the hard

shoulder. "C'mon, your ride's here."

"You did that?" She blinked. "Tyler ... Drake ... You could have killed them!"

D-Bar gaped. "Excuse me, but weren't they taking you off to some deep dark hole, never to return? And you re welcome, by the way!" Anna

took two steps toward the front of the van, but D-Bar grabbed her arm and pulled her back. "The driver is okay, I checked. Don't worry, I don't

want a murder rap any more than you do."

Limping, she followed him to the sports car; it was a Falcon GTG, worth maybe ten times the sticker price of Kelso's commonplace sedan.

"I hadda dump your wheels," he said, before she could ask. "Which I managed to do, despite the whole handcuffing thing..." He drifted off, and

paused. For the first time, Anna noticed he was wearing an earphone. "Yeah, okay," he said, speaking to the air. "Just monitor the traffic

cameras at the exits. If anything looks jagged, let me know."

"Who are you talking to?" she demanded.

"Some people. Springing you, getting a new ride, all on short notice, that had to be a team effort, y'know? And I'm still waiting for some

gratitude." He pointed. "There's some clothes in the back, nothing fancy though. Better ditch the romper suit soon-as, yeah?"

She reached the car and sagged against the hood. "Temple. It's Ron Temple, he's the leak. The son-of-a-bitch was giving the Tyrants all they

needed."

D-Bar nodded gravely. "Okay. Well, look, don't sweat it. We know it's him now, so there are other approaches we can make. And with your help

—"

Anna shook her head. "I'm not in this to help you, I'm doing this for me. For Matt." She tore off the prison garb and threw it into the bushes,

ignoring D-Bar as he gawked at her. From the backseat she recovered a track suit and sweatshirt. "He has a contact, he must have. I'm going to

make him give it to me." She climbed into the car and started the engine.

Abruptly, D-Bar realized that she wasn't going to take him with her. "What about me? You're just gonna leave me out here on the highway?"

"I don't trust you!" she snapped, stamping on the accelerator. The Falcon peeled out into the main lane with a snarl of engine noise that

smothered the hacker's string of curses. She aimed for the next exit, already plotting the route in her head that would take her back toward the

D.C. suburbs.

Romeo Airport—Michigan—United States of America

The helo extended its rotor-rings and turned them this way and that, running through the last of the preflight checks. Saxon watched, his fist

tapping absently against his thigh. It seemed like they had been here for hours, primed and ready to go, watching the clock. Waiting for the

word from the forward waypoint. Once or twice he had seen Hardesty and Barrett in quiet conversation, talking animatedly in low tones that

didn't carry. Saxon found himself wishing he had an aural booster implant, or maybe one of those lip-reader software upgrades for his optics.

He looked away, unable to ease the tension knotting in his chest. After the fight room, after that night in London, he'd expected this feeling to

drop away—but it was still there. Saxon could not shake it, no matter how hard he tried. He still felt like an outsider—what he had thought were

the first inklings of comradeship were ghosts, illusions. The reality was that the bond of brotherhood, of shared purpose he'd felt in the service

and then again with Strike Six, was absent here. He wondered if he was fooling himself, holding on to some mawkish ideal of esprit de corps.

Perhaps there was no place for something like that in the Tyrants.

His train of thought stalled as Namir emerged from the hatch of the transport plane, stepping quickly down the ramp. The other man had been

called back aboard by the pilot; Saxon had caught the tail end of the conversation, something about an urgent signal from "the group." Now the

commander's face was furrowed with irritation; whatever he had been told, Namir wasn't happy about it.

"We're going?" Hermann asked, gathering up his rifle. He couldn't keep the eagerness from his voice.

Namir ignored him and beckoned Federova closer as he approached Barrett and Hardesty. "There's been a change of plan," he said, his tone

terse. He glanced at the big American. "Lawrence, it seems you'll have the chance to put your boasts to the test. We're proceeding with the Sarif

exfiltration at reduced capacity. I expect you to compensate, yes?"

Barrett gave a nod. "Not a problem."

Namir nodded to Federova. "Yelena, you and I will accompany him."

"You're benching us?" said Hardesty. "What the hell for?"

"Close your mouth and listen, Scott." Namir's reply was sharp. "There's been a development. Apparently, one of our North American assets has

been compromised and there's a very real danger of some serious blowback. The situation needs to be dealt with immediately." His gaze bored into the other man. "A scorched-earth protocol is now in effect. You will lead a team to expedite immediately." He nodded toward Saxon and

the German.

Hardesty's expression changed. If anything, he seemed reassured. "Well. That's different."

"Sir," insisted Hermann, "we have an objective here, in Detroit. We've planned and prepared for it."

"And now you have a new one. Adaptability is something I require from all my operatives, Gunther. Circumstances on the ground are always

fluid. We meet the mission needs as they occur." Namir's tone made it clear he would brook no questioning of these orders. He offered Hardesty

a data slate. "This isn't something we can trust to hired hands. Details are here. Transport has already been dispatched for the rest of us. The

helo is at your disposal."

Hardesty nodded, scanning the data. "It'll be tight. We'll have to do this quick and dirty."

"I made that clear to the group," Namir replied. "It's not an issue."

"Fine." Hardesty passed the slate to Hermann and walked away to brief the pilot of the flyer.

Saxon broke his silence. "This ... asset. You want a straight recovery?"

Namir shook his head. "No. Locate, terminate, and sanitize the area."

Terminate and sanitize. He had just handed them an assassination mission. Hermann passed Saxon the slate and asked another question.

"There's little suggestion of what kind of resistance we can expect."

"Minor" Namir replied. "Nonlethal embedded security. Perhaps one or two threat vectors, including the target himself. The primary concern is

that the asset does not escape and no materials are left behind in any recoverable state."

Saxon read, and he kept his expression neutral. The location was an expensive gated community, part of a suburb of Washington, D.C., called

Great Falls. In the helo, flying full tilt, he estimated they could reach it in less than ninety minutes. The target's residence was a large home set

in grounds and woodland; he ran his finger over the surface of the slate to reveal the next page, and found the face of the person Namir wanted

them to kill looking back at him. He read on, and his eyes narrowed. "This man is a federal agent."

Namir came closer. He nodded, making no attempt to show any disquiet over Saxon's concern. "Correct. As such, he may be armed. He's

certain to be on alert, given the situation."

"Which is what?" Saxon insisted. "I'd like to know what requires the murder of a ranking officer of the United States Secret Service."

"Ben," said Namir, his human and synthetic eyes measuring him carefully. "You need to believe me when I tell you that this is necessary. You

have to trust me. The Tyrants have a mission, and sometimes that mission requires that we make choices that are difficult, ugly... bloody. But I

know you understand that."

"Why does this man need to die?" He didn't flinch from Namir's gaze. "What's the reason behind all this, Jaron? I've followed your orders ... the

group's orders without question now for months. But blind faith in your CO only goes so far."

Namir nodded. "I respect your honesty. It's part of the reason I recruited you. So I'll give an answer, but it will be the last time, know that.

Because I cannot afford to have men under my command who continually question me at every turn."

The ghost of a threat hung in the air between them, the Israeli face-to-face with him. Saxon tensed, feeling the edges of ready menace coming

off the other man; once again he found himself wondering who would prevail if they went against each other. He didn't like the odds.

"The group has been observing a ... situation. This man has been classified as a liability," Namir went on. "He can expose us to our enemies.

What he knows could severely impede our objectives if it were to be revealed to the wrong people. Ronald Temple is a serious threat to

stability."

"And we can't have that," said Saxon, without weight.

Namir gave the slightest of smiles. "I knew you'd understand."

Great Falls—Virginia—United States of America

Configured for stealth and speed, the helo flashed over the countryside at treetop level, ducted blades chopping the air in a low, droning thrum.

The pilot kept them off the line of any major population centers or highways, following power lines or river courses as they raced eastward. The

radar-transparent polymers and sleek, blended lines of the hull gave the craft the detection footprint of a bumblebee, and in tandem with

infrared and ultraviolet baffles cloaking the engines, the flyer was virtually invisible.

"Two minutes " said the pilot, the words resonating through Saxon's head over the mastoid comm. He began his final premission ritual, losing

himself in the simple, robotic motions, trying not to think about the job he had been sent to do.

Weapons. Equipment. Armor. All secure. He zipped open a gear pouch to check the contents and hesitated; something inside was emitting a

soft glow. Hardesty and Hermann were busy with their own checks, so Saxon reached inside. His gloved fingers found the lozenge shape of the

disposable phone; the morning they had left London, he had stuffed it into his kit and thought no more about it. He was certain he had

deactivated it. Turning the device to conceal it from the others, Saxon tapped the screen.

An error display told him the vu-phone's digital mailbox was full. He scrolled down and found hundreds and hundreds of text messages, all of

them sent from the number he had seen on the side of the advertisement blimp, all of them the same five words: What master do you serve?

Uneasy, he hit the mass delete tab, opened the phone's case, and disconnected the battery before concealing it once again.

"Will we need electronic support for this engagement?" Hermann was asking, loading heavy-gauge rounds into the magazine of a Widowmaker

tactical shotgun. Hardesty's tone was dismissive. "Namir said digital interdiction is being handled by other assets, so don't fret about getting caught on camera.

Just do what I tell you." He sensed Saxon looking at him and met his gaze. "You got a question, too? Make it fast."

"Ninety seconds to deployment" called the pilot. "Thermograph can't get an accurate read ...At least ten-foot mobiles inside target

structure"

Saxon glanced out the window and saw the flicker of lights below, the soft glow of streetlamps amid patches of darkness. He looked back. "We

can do this without collaterals. Cut the power, go in quiet, hit the mark, and extract."

"Like a ghost, huh?" Hardesty snorted. "It's funny. You bitched to me that I didn't have the stones to get my hands dirty in Moscow, but here I

am going in at the sharp end and suddenly you wanna soft-pedal it?" He gathered up his FR-27 assault rifle, securing the ammo magazine in

place. "How about that. All of a sudden, you're gun-shy."

"This is different. There are civilians in there." The helo dropped into the low grass with a bump and the engine note fell as the rotors went to

idle. Through a stand of trees Saxon could make out the house.

Hardesty shook his head. "There's only targets." He pulled a lever to let the hatch slide open and thumped Hermann on the back. The German

vaulted out into the darkness. Hardesty went next and Saxon followed him, but he'd barely taken a step before the other man placed the flat of

his palm on his chest. "Where you going?"

"Namir-"

"Is not in command of this engagement," Hardesty replied. "I am. And I'm telling you to wait here and hold the landing zone. Y'know, in case a

troop of Girl Scouts tries to sneak up behind us, yeah?" He gave a snort and set off.

Saxon stood there, watching the two men melt away into the shadows, his hands tense around the grip of his rifle, a nerve jumping in his jaw.

For a second, his finger rested on the FR-27's trigger. A single three-round burst would put that son-of-a-bitch down ...

Then the moment faded, and the lights in the house went dark. He caught the faint sound of breaking glass and what might have been a

woman's scream.

Kelso left the Falcon at the side of the road and crossed a stretch of scrubland to the wall of the estate; she'd been to Temple's place once before,

back when he'd just taken the job as department head. It was after the Anselmo case had broken, and in celebration their new boss had held a

barbecue to toast the team's success. It seemed like a century ago, a warm summer day with good food and a few beers, Matt there with Jenny

... Back before the first time Anna's career had gone off the rails.

She shrugged off the memory and scrambled up over the wall, concentrating on the moment. Temple would have security, she decided, some

kind of alarm system—

Anna caught sight of the house as her head came level with the top of the wall, and in that moment she saw every light in the building die. Her

fingertips touched a sensor strip on the top of the bricks, but no alarm sounded. Whatever had killed the power had given her a way in. She

took the opportunity and scrambled the rest of the distance, dropping to the gravel drive. There were a few cars parked outside the three

story house, mostly high-end sedans and a couple of SUVs. The house belonged to Temple's second wife and she was old money; Anna recalled

office talk about how she liked to play the hostess, gathering movers and shakers from the D.C. community. The whole city ran on that kind of

networking; Anna was disgusted that Temple could send her off to be disappeared, then stroll home for some overpriced wine with his spouse's

cronies without breaking stride.

She moved closer, using the cars as cover. Her hand strayed to where her service weapon would have been holstered and she grimaced. After

the van crash, she hadn't thought to steal Agent Tyler's firearm or stun gun. Going in unarmed made her feel naked and supremely vulnerable.

She caught the sound of glass breaking and froze. Something wasn't right; a power outage should not have lasted more than a few seconds.

Anna glanced over her shoulder, and in the distance she could see the next house over, the lights still on.

Her head snapped back as she heard gunshots, twice in quick succession. She guessed they were 10 mm rounds from a pistol. The gun sounded

again, and this time she saw the reflection of a muzzle flash through a ground-floor window. A woman screamed and a shotgun answered.

She blinked her optics to low-light mode; they had the Eye-See vision-enhancement package, the law enforcement variant, and while they were

not as powerful as military-grade cybernetics, they were enough to throw the view of the house into an ashen pattern of green and white. Anna

kept to her cover as two figures burst out the front door, stumbling in panic as they tried to flee—a woman in an evening dress and a man in a

sports jacket. They raced across the drive, the gravel crunching under their feet.

A shimmering thread, invisible to the naked eye, fell from a first-floor window and drew swiftly across the ground until it crossed the woman's

back. There was a hissing snap and a cloud of ink-dark mist blew from her chest. The man turned in fright and took a second round in the

sternum. Both of them were dead before they hit the ground.

Anna dared to peer over the wheel well and saw a shadow move away from the window, a rifle slung in a casual carry.

For a moment she considered turning tail, heading back to the car; but she was too deep in now to give up. Anna waited as long as she dared,

and then stole toward the house, staying low as she threaded her way in through the front door the dead couple had left open.

Inside, the horribly familiar smells of spent cordite and blood reached her nostrils. A man in a suit lay against the staircase leading upward, his

eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Anna felt for a pulse; there was nothing.

She moved on, hugging the walls, finding her way into the open lounge. More of Temple's guests were here, some of them caught still sitting in

chairs with glasses of wine in their hands, others shot in the back as they tried to run. Anna saw the telltale patterning of close-range shotgun

blasts.

On the floor above, a floorboard creaked and she froze. She very clearly heard a shuffling footstep; then in the next second, a strangled, pained

gurgle and the heavy fall of a body.

Cold certainty gathered in her thoughts. An assassin—or more than likely, a team of them—were stalking through Temple's home,

systematically executing everyone they found. It could only have been the Tyrants; the brutality and precision of the attack bore all their

hallmarks. Above, she heard the creaking again. They were sweeping the house, floor by floor. She had little time; once they had completed

their search, they'd double back and look for stragglers.

She scanned the corpses again; he wasn't among them, and if Ron Temple was anything like the man she thought she knew, he would have had

a plan for something like this. He was methodical to the last.

The house hadn't changed much since she had visited it, and she concentrated, pulling up her memories of that day. Temple had shown Matt

around; she remembered him mentioning something about the basement...

Anna found a doorway in an alcove, behind a privacy curtain. In the dark, it would be easy to miss. Slipping inside, she followed the weakest

sliver of light her optics could detect, and with care, descended a shallow set of steps. She blinked back to a normal vision mode. There, half

hidden behind a few wine racks reaching from the concrete floor to the low ceiling, was a work area. A desk, a monitor, a rudimentary office. It

was cool down here, and the carnage above seemed miles away.

She was two steps into the room when she heard a faint breath. "Temple," she whispered. "I know you're here."

There was a gasp of surprise, and he gingerly emerged from behind the desk, a small pistol in his trembling hand. "You ..." he whispered. "Are

you ... Was this a test?" Temple's face was a mess of conflicting emotions. "Did ... Did I fail?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" she hissed, throwing a worried look at the stairs. If the hit team heard them, it would be all over.

He kept muttering to himself, thinking aloud. "No ... No, it's not that. It's you. It's all your fault!" Temple rose up and aimed the gun at her.

"You should be dead! How did you get away?"

"I had help," she admitted, holding her hands open to show she was unarmed.

"That's why they're here ... Because of you, you stupid bitch! They know! You compromised me and they know it! I'm worth nothing now!

Nothing ..." He choked off in a sob. "Oh god. Everyone is dead. They're coming for me ... They're cleaning house."

Temple's self-pity grated on her and she stepped toward him. "This is the price you pay for betrayal. I'd kill you myself if I could, but that

would let you off easy!"

"You can't know what it was like ..." Temple looked down at the pistol and studied it, turning it toward himself. "They'll find me ..."

"No!" Anna lunged at him and backhanded the man across the face. For a moment they wrestled, and then she knocked the gun away, sending

it skittering out of reach under the wine racks. "I need you alive, you bastard. We have to get out of here!"

"And go where?" He met her gaze and Kelso saw a side of the man she'd never seen before. He was falling apart before her eyes. "You can't run.

You can't hide." Temple snorted. "What do you think is going to happen, Kelso? That you'll get your day in court like all good citizens? They

won't let the Killing Floor be exposed!"

"The what?" She'd never heard the term before.

He wasn't listening. "We are already dead!"

"Not yet," she said. "You're my proof."

He went to the desk and tore through the papers scattered across it. "You want proof? Here. You came back for it, so take it\" Temple thrust

something into her hands, and she realized it was the flash drive he had taken from her back at the office. "See how far you get!" He was

blinking back tears.

Somewhere above them, she heard the crunch of broken glass. Anna grabbed Temple's arm and twisted it. "I don't give a damn what you say.

You're coming with me. Move!"

She went back to low-light mode as they emerged into the kitchen. Temple gasped at the carnage and she saw him lurch toward a knife block.

He pulled out a butcher's blade and cradled it in his hands, his breathing fast and shallow.

Across the room, a door opened onto the garden beyond. Anna heard movement in the lounge and she made for the exit. Her hand closed

around the latch and she tested it: locked.

From the other room came a metallic click and an egg-shaped object rolled over the threshold, rattling as it came to a spinning halt on the tiled

floor of the kitchen.

"No—!" Temple cried out just as Anna's mind caught up to what she was seeing; she rocked off her feet and slammed her shoulder into the

door, wood splintering around the lock and frame. It came open as the grenade detonated with a shriek of combustion. A churning wall of heat

and gas picked her up and threw her the rest of the way, sending Anna spinning into the soft, damp grass outside. She rolled as a torrent of

glass and splinters rained down on her. Smoke and flame gushed from broken windows and the cracked doorway. Temple was still in there. Too

late now.

Anna pulled herself to her feet, the hot stink of the fire choking the air around her; the blast had to have ruptured a gas line. Without looking

back, she took off toward the trees flanking the house. As she sprinted away, two figures in matte black combat gear emerged from the smoke,

panning their weapons this way and that.

Saxon swore as the explosion from the house caused his night vision to flare out, and he switched modes to ultraviolet. Crouching on one knee a

short distance from the silent helo, he peered down the sight atop his rifle and tapped his comm pad. "White, this is Gray. Respond."

"Don't get your panties in a bunch " came the terse reply. "We're on the way out. Prep for dust off."

"That's your take on covert action? Blow the shit out of something?"

Hardesty ignored the comment. "If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you. Meantime, keep your eyes open. We got a possible runner, heading

your way. Intercept and execute, if you can handle that."

Saxon cut the channel without bothering to answer. Rising from the ground he came forward, the rifle at his shoulder, sweeping back and forth.

He heard the woman before he saw her, a moment before she emerged from the tree line. She was running across open ground, the last stretch

before the rear wall of the Temple estate. On reflex, Saxon pulled the FR-27 tight to his shoulder and flicked the fire selector to single shot; at

this range, he couldn't miss. The assault rifle would put a titanium-tipped flechette round directly on target, enough to tear open an unarmored

human body.

Then she saw him and stumbled, staggered, almost lost her balance. Saxon's finger was on the trigger. The smallest application of pressure and

she would be dead; an unarmed woman, a civilian, executed in cold blood.

She stood, frozen, waiting for the kill shot to come.

Ben Saxon was not an innocent. There were more than enough deaths that could be laid at his feet, kills he had made in the heat of battle and

through cold, calculating aggression. Lives he had ended from afar, and some so close he heard the escape of their final breath. But then he was

a soldier, and that had been war. But this ...

The realization crystallized for him. What he was doing now went against every moral code Saxon believed in.

He let the rifle barrel drop slightly, and the woman saw the motion. In a few moments, she was at the wall and scrambling up over it. Conflicted,

he watched her disappear out of sight.

As he got back to the helo, the aircraft's rotors were humming up to full power. Beneath the sound, he could hear the skirl of approaching sirens.

Hermann was already on board, and Hardesty stood waiting. "You get her?" he demanded.

"Nothing out there," Saxon replied. "If you missed one, they're long gone."

"What?" the American grabbed him by the collar, his eyes wide with anger. "I gave you one simple order—"

Saxon said nothing, shook himself free, and climbed into the flyer.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Romeo Airport—Michigan—United States of America

After the helo returned to the barren, isolated airstrip, the rest of the night passed in sullen silence. Hardesty boarded the parked jet in the

hangar for what he said would be his "debrief," but until Namir and the others returned from the operation in Detroit, there was little any of

them could do but wait.

The thought of getting back on the jet made Saxon feel claustrophobic, and he walked the apron of the airport, turning over his doubts and his

fears, unable to make peace with the disquiet that continued to grow inside him like a cancer.

The unrest he felt was reaching critical mass—he could sense it. All the small details, all the little things he had let pass over the last few

months, now they accreted into a mass of contradictions and challenges he could no longer turn away from. He had tried to convince himself

that Namir had been right, back in the field hospital—that what the Tyrants were doing was making a difference to the world, holding back a

rising tide of chaos; but the longer he went on, the less he believed it. Namir had assured him that they would find the men responsible for the

failure of Operation Rainbird, the terrorists who planted the false data that led Strike Six to their doom. But aside from vague promises, nothing

had been resolved.

Have I been played for a fool all along? It frustrated Saxon that he could not be certain of the answer to that question.

There was an annex at the side of the hangar building, a line of rooms. He went inside, fatigue dogging him. He felt it rise up; he wanted to rest,

to close his eyes and make all of it go away, if only for a short time. But instead of solace he found Gunther Hermann, seated at a plain table with

ordered lines of weapon components spread out in front of him. He recognized parts of a Widowmaker, still blackened from being fired hours

earlier. A pistol, yet to be dismantled, sat within the German's reach.

"Where have you been?" he asked.

"Taking the air," Saxon replied irritably. He studied Hermann for a few moments, trying to take the measure of him; but it was impossible to

get a read from those eyes. They were dead, like a shark's.

"You have something to say to me?" said the younger man. The challenge was clear in his manner.

The question came before he could stop himself. "How many people died in that house tonight?"

"All of them." Hermann didn't show the slightest flicker of concern.

"And you don't have a problem with that?"

"Why should I?" He put down the cleaning rod in his hand and studied Saxon. "You heard what Hardesty said. They were targets. They were in

the wrong place at the wrong time. Collateral damage."

Saxon's jaw set at the man's matter-of-fact tone. "That's how you see it, yeah? Black and white? Hardesty says kill and you do it, like a good

little dog?"

A tiny flicker of emotion crossed Hermann's face. "I am a soldier. I follow orders."

Saxon shook his head. "I didn't sign up for this. Not to butcher civvies."

"What did you expect?" Hermann replied, confusion in his tone. "Did you come to the Tyrants expecting to keep your hands clean? That is not

what we do." He tapped the table with an iron finger. "I had thought a man of your experience would have no illusions, Saxon. We do the worst

of deeds in order to protect the world from itself. Because no one else can."

"And who gets to decide?" he shot back. "Don't you ever wonder about that? About who calls the shots?" Saxon leaned closer. "You were GSG

9, right? German police, antiterror unit. When you followed orders then, you were following the law—"

Hermann snorted softly. "When I was with them, the law was a rope around our necks. It kept us from making any progress." He shook his

head. "Do you know what Namir said when he recruited me in Berlin, what made me decide to go with him? He told me that the Tyrants did

not concern themselves with laws. Only justice. The group erased all my connections to the police force and I was happy they did." He nodded.

"What we are doing is right. The ends are justified."

Saxon tried to find an answer that didn't stick in his throat, but before he could frame a reply the door opened and Barrett entered. He

shrugged off his combat armor and gave them both a level look. "Miss me?"

"It's done, then?" said Hermann, his conversation with Saxon dismissed. The other man was almost eager to hear what had taken place in

Detroit. "Were there any complications?"

"Nothing we couldn't take in stride," said the big man. He glanced at Saxon. "That cop you were so worried about? Namir broke him in two."

Barrett helped himself to a beer from a cooler and drained it in a single pull.

"What about the people being held there? By Sarif?" said Saxon.

Barrett smiled thinly. "Oh, we handled them." He paused, massaging a contusion on the side of his skull. "They weren't that pleased to see us,

though ..." He made a face. "Some folks, huh? No goddamn gratitude."

Saxon glanced out into the hangar. "Where's Federova?"

The other man folded his arms. "Well, now. Would have been back here with me and the boss, but 'stead she's still out in the field." He aimed a

finger at Saxon. "Cleaning up your mess."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Barrett gave a shrug of his shoulders. "You tell me. Barely got our cargo secured from Sarif before Hardesty is on the horn to Namir, bitchin' a

blue streak."

"We achieved our objective," Hermann insisted. "Temple was terminated."

Barrett kept his eyes on Saxon. "Heard you let one get away."

"Bullshit," Saxon insisted. "Hardesty's just covering his own arse."

"Whatever you say, man." Barrett shrugged again and walked away.

Silver Springs—Maryland—United States of America

Kelso knew even as she did it that she was making a mistake. How many times had she seen criminals caught in the very same situation she

was in now, and for the same reason? She knew better. The smart play was to fade away, get out of the city, and keep on going.

That wasn't what she had done. Anna kept her head down and walked in the places where the streetlights didn't shine too brightly, staying to

the shadows. Instead of fleeing, she followed a basic, animal instinct to return to where she felt safest. Home.

Maybe now she understood those criminals a little better than she had when she was on the other side of the badge. For most people, it was

counterintuitive to just cut and run. She understood that impulse; the raw need to go to ground. She tried to convince herself she was being

smart—after all, no one would expect her to go back to her apartment—but she knew that wasn't it at all. She couldn't just leave. Not yet.

From the road she had glimpsed the spherical shape of a police monitor drone squatting on the lawn, the clusters of eyes on the robot

ceaselessly scanning the area. The device's face-matching and body-mapping software would be programmed with her biometric profile, and

she'd be made in a moment if she strayed too close. Instead, Anna detoured around the back and got in through a damaged window near the

trash bins on the ground floor. For once, she was pleased that her landlord had reacted with his characteristic slowness in fixing the problem.

She took the stairs to the fourth floor. Another sensor, this one the size of her fist, was attached to her front door. A built-in holograph projected

Police Line—Do Not Cross across the threshold.

Anna's luck was holding; she recognized the security sensor as a model the Secret Service also used. She frowned as she thought of Matt Ryan.

He had been the one who showed her how to spoof them. From her pocket, Anna pulled a piece of foil paper taken from a discarded cigarette

packet and a vu-phone she had picked from the pocket of a man at the metro station. She gently plastered the foil over the sensor's antenna

and worked at the phone, cycling its on-off function. After a few moments, the sensor went dark; Ryan had explained to her that the devices

could be put into a reset mode if they were swamped with microwave signals, like those from a cellular telephone—it was a hit-and-miss hack,

though. She unlocked the door and had it shut behind her just as the sensor reactivated. Moving slowly so as not to disturb it, Anna advanced

into her apartment.

The lights came on automatically, dim enough for her to see her way around but not so much they would be seen from the street; the television

chirped as it activated, casting a blue glow across the open-plan apartment.

Anna's gut tightened. The place had been turned over, likely by the agency, and while they hadn't wrecked it, it was still in great disarray. It

seemed as if they had opened every cabinet, every drawer and box, searching for... what? Some evidence to back up the accusation that she

was colluding with terrorists?

The light from the screen illuminated the open door to her bedroom. Even from here, she could see they had got into the wardrobe and found

the safe. Her files were gone, just as she had known they would be. Anna thought about the flash drive in her pocket, the one Temple had

pressed into her hands. That was all she had now, every other piece of her painstaking secret investigation now lost. She hoped it would be

enough, if only she could find someone to entrust it to.

A part of her wanted to fall into her bed and give herself over to sleep. She was exhausted, and the shock and fatigue from the day's events

were threatening to overwhelm her. Anna's gaze was drawn to the dark rectangle of the open bathroom door. For a long moment, she fought to

ignore the thoughts of what was inside the mirrored cabinet over the sink. She tasted earth in the back of her throat and swallowed hard.

It took a lot of effort to go straight to the bedroom. From the closet, she took a sturdy daypack and circled the bed, gathering up items of

clothing from where they had been piled, filling the bag with everything she would need to leave and not look back. Returning to the living

room, she finally allowed herself a look into the bathroom. In the reflection of the mirrored cabinet she saw the frosted glass window over the

bath, the light from the street shining through it.

Anna turned away and went to the desk until she found what she was looking for. The brass disc was right there where she had left it, and with

hesitation, she picked it up, turning it over in her fingers. Suddenly she realized that the sobriety coin had been what really brought her back

here. Everything else, the clothes and the bag, all that she could have found elsewhere. The coin she could not have surrendered; it was the last

link to the person she used to be, to the person Matt Ryan had always believed in. She swallowed a sob and allowed herself a moment to give in

to the emotion inside her, just a brief instant before she forced it away.

Then Anna realized she was looking at something she didn't recognize. She didn't get a lot of paper correspondence, maybe the odd circular or

item of junk mail, but there on the desk was a pile of items, doubtless placed there by one of the investigators Temple had sent to search the

apartment. The largest was a plastic box, postmarked from the city that day, but with no return address details. She shook it gingerly, and

then, with care, used her thumbnail to peel back the wrapping. Inside was a courier case with simple print lock. Anna tapped it with her index

finger and it opened with a click; the noise seemed like a gunshot in the quiet of the apartment, and it made her flinch.

Inside there was a commercial data card, coded with a one-way rail ticket from Washington, D.C., across the border to Quebec. She found a

Canadian passport with it, a high-grade fake using her face and a name she'd never heard before. The rest of the box was taken up with a flat,

slab-sided device that resembled a rifle magazine; a Pulsar electromagnetic pulse grenade. She drew out the weapon and weighed it in her

hand. It was a military-grade item, and possession of it alone was a felony... but that was hardly a concern for her now. Who had left her this

gift, she wondered? Was it some contingency plan by D-Bar and his Juggernaut comrades, or a clever trap left behind by the Tyrants? She put

the grenade back down and sighed.

For a moment, she thought the fatigue was playing tricks on her, but when it happened a second time, Kelso was certain she had heard

someone say her name. She gave a start when she realized it was Eliza Cassan, the Picus network's ever-present anchorwoman, voicing a breaking report on the Nightly World News. Anna fumbled for the television's remote and turned up the volume. She saw her own face there on

the thinscreen, a still from the agency's press file. A line of text ticked past at the bottom of the image, the words talking about a multiple

murder in Grand Falls, a manhunt getting under way...

"... at this hour. The Picus News Network had learned from sources within the Department of Justice that Agent Kelso was on suspension

pending an investigation relating to an incident several months ago, when Senator Jane Skyler of Southern California was injured during an

assassination attempt by members of the ruthless Red Arrow triad." The picture was replaced with quick clips of Skyler, then FBI agents

raiding the home of the senator's maid. Cassan's face reappeared, growing concerned. "Some viewers may find the following footage

disturbing. We have just obtained security recordings of the events at the Temple house that appear to incriminate Agent Anna Kelso in the

brutal attack that took place earlier this evening"

Anna felt the blood drain from her face as grainy white-and-green images unfolded before her. She saw herself stalking through the halls of

Temple's home, a heavy weapon cradled in her arms. She gasped as the figure on the screen entered a room full of people and gunned them

down with quick, callous motions. The image froze and zoomed in; the face looking back was very much her own.

"No ..." she muttered. "That's not me ... They faked it..." She trailed off as the weight of her own words bore down. It made terrible, perfect

sense. All the way back to the apartment, she had wondered why the Tyrant soldier who saw her hadn't opened fire and gunned her down. She

couldn't understand why he had let her flee, but now she understood. It had to be part of this! They let her go so she could be framed for the

killings, and she had played the part for them perfectly. Anna reeled with the sense of it; no one would believe her claims of conspiracy now. To

the rest of the world, she would be seen as a violent criminal. A murderer and a traitor.

The screen showed the file photo of her face once more, this time captioned with the words Anna Kelso—Wanted Fugitive.

Panic boiled at the edge of her thoughts as she snatched up the daypack, the ticket, and the passport. She grabbed the EMP grenade and thrust

it into the bag. Anna took two steps toward the front door and froze. A sense, an impression that years of training and expertise had instilled in

her, pushed through the web of fear clouding her thoughts. A cool breath of air brushed her bare neck, and she turned slowly to look through

into the dimly lit bathroom. Reflected in the mirror, she saw that the frosted window in there was open. It was closed, she told herself, trying

to be sure of her own thoughts. I know it. I'm sure of it. When I came in here, it was closed—

Static prickled the hairs on her arms and Anna had the sudden, immediate knowledge that she was no longer alone. She spun, pulling the bag off

her shoulder to swing it like a weapon, in time to see a lithe figure emerge from thin air, sketched in by ripples of silvery light, like oil on water.

A woman, made of glass, becoming real.

Anna saw her face, the dark doll's eyes and the predator's smile on her lips; then she was coming at her, a wicked blade flashing though the air.

Romeo Airport—Michigan—United States of America

Saxon crossed underneath the fuselage of the jet, looking back and forth across the open space of the hangar. He should have known that

Hardesty wouldn't let the incident at the house pass without trying to turn it to his advantage; if the sniper had decided to use Saxon's apparent

insolence against him, there was no knowing how Namir might react to the situation.

As he reached the pools of shadow at the far edge of the hangar, he heard someone say his name, very clearly; the voice was unmistakably

Hardesty's. A moment later, Namir's low tones reached him; the two men were outside on the apron. Saxon caught the familiar scent of

Hardesty's acrid cigarettes.

By reflex, Saxon shrank into the gloom, placing himself behind the bulk of a low-slung aircraft tractor—the dense construction of the service

vehicle would hide his heat signature if either of the men chose to sweep the area with his optics. Dropping into a crouch, Saxon forced himself

to slow his breathing and become as silent as possible. After a moment, their voices came to him on the faint breeze. He strained to hear what

was being said.

Hardesty was speaking again. "I'm not trying to second-guess you, Namir. I know you got your reasons." He turned away to exhale and Saxon

lost the next few words. "... Don't trust the limey, period. He's a liability."

"So you keep saying," Namir replied, his voice level. "But your personal aversion is not my concern."

"This isn't personal!" Hardesty insisted hotly. There was a moment's pause. "Okay, screw it. Yeah, it is personal. The son-of-a-bitch walks

around like his shit don't stink, with all that noble-soldier, honor-of-the-regiment crap. I've seen his kind before. I don't like Saxon because he

thinks he's better than the rest of us."

"He's good at what he does. More than a match for you."

Hardesty was silent for long seconds, and Saxon wondered if he had been spotted; but then the American went on. "That's not the problem. It's