SOLDOTNA STATION – ALASKA – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

As Stacks predicted, the auto-station was utterly devoid of human life, and likely had been for a long time. A few faceless tanker trucks emblazoned with corporate logos, their prows bristling with antennae and sensor palps, filled machine-controlled refueling bays where spidery crane arms fed power umbilicals into waiting slots on their flanks. Jensen watched one of them finish topping up the charge in its massive batteries, and detach itself with a surge of movement. The robotic vehicle cruised past him toward the freeway on-ramp, infrared running lights flicking on. A shocker turret mounted on the side of the tanker turned to track him as he stood there, a mute warning to stay away. The simple artificial intelligences that drove these trucks had only a cursory interest in humans, as either obstacles to be avoided or potential hijackers to be terminated. The price of real fossil fuel made the theft of such transporters from the vast Alaskan fracking fields an ongoing problem, so the machines were programmed to automatically distrust anything organic that approached them.

Jensen watched it go, accelerating to over a hundred miles per hour in a skirl of tire noise. He frowned and looked away, considering his next move. They didn’t have a lot of time, maybe a twenty-minute lead on their pursuers at best. He would need to work quickly.

The auto-station had some cursory shelter, an afterthought built into the place on the off-chance that someone flesh-and-blood might be unfortunate enough to find themselves stranded out here. Behind a thick, windproof door with failing seals, chairs and tables made out of a kind of extruded polymer were lined up across from a fetid chemical toilet, an emergency phone, a broken wall-screen and a pair of vending machines that were out of order. The latter hadn’t stopped Stacks from using his augmented strength to peel open their shells and help himself to what was still inside. Jensen eyed the bloated cans of expired Nuke Cola, the crumbling packs of Soy, and grimaced.

“That junk’ll poison you,” he told the other man. “It’s gotta be old enough to have kids.”

Stacks offered him a stale Proenergy bar. “Don’t get to be picky. So. What about your guy?”

Jensen reluctantly took the packet. “Any second now…”

“Let me know how it goes.” Opening a salvaged pack of caffeine sticks, Stacks lit one with a shaky hand and wandered outside.

Within a day of being there, Jensen had realized that Facility 451 was surrounded by a masking field that smothered any kind of long-range cellular signals. While he was inside, his implanted infolink was dead metal, unable to transmit or receive, blocked from even the most basic tracking signal. But now he was a few miles clear of 451, and with nothing to interrupt the feed, the infolink was rebooting itself. The start sequence concluded, and for anyone who knew the implant’s covert contact protocols, Adam Jensen was effectively back on the grid.

Two minutes later, a familiar voice echoed through the transceiver implant in Jensen’s mastoid bone. “Who is this?” The demand was brusque and distrustful.

“Hello, Francis.”

On the other end of the line, Jensen heard a sharp intake of breath. “Identify yourself. Or I cut this transmission right now and scrub the contact.”

“I don’t have time for games, Pritchard. It’s me. I figured you’d still be monitoring this comm-code.”

“After a year of silence?” Frank Pritchard’s tone rose, becoming terse and sneering. “Maybe I should—” He stopped, catching himself, and his manner changed. “Adam Jensen was listed as missing presumed dead after the destruction of the Panchaea complex. I have no reason to believe that fact isn’t true. If you’re Jensen, prove it.”

“Your middle name is Wendell. Your hacker handle is Nuclearsnake. With a number 3. Good enough?”

“Any competent investigator could dig up that data.”

“You’re also a prick.”

There was a long pause. “Well,” said Pritchard at length. “If you’re not Jensen, you’re a very convincing emulation of him.” He paused again. “Locator ping is showing you in… Alaska? Perhaps you could provide some kind of explanation as to why—”

“No time,” Jensen cut him off. “If you got the location, you know exactly where I am. I need a ride, Pritchard, and I need it now.”

“Is that all? You contact me out of the blue because you need a favor?”

“Pretty much, yeah. Can you do it?”

“Of course I can do it,” the hacker snorted. “Where do you need to go?”

The door banged open and Stacks rushed in. “Jensen! I seen a chopper, off out to the west, lights scanning the road. Coming this way.” He shook his head. “We got about five minutes before they’re here, no more.”

He nodded to the other man and looked away. “Detroit,” he told Pritchard. “It’s time I came home.”

THREE

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