DOWNTOWN – DETROIT – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. As he emerged from the alleyway and on to the street, Jensen saw a fast, bat-winged shape moving at rooftop level

As he emerged from the alleyway and on to the street, Jensen saw a fast, bat-winged shape moving at rooftop level. The police drone had its strobes flashing red and blue, and the complex scanner head slung under its narrow fuselage was turning this way and that, gathering up sensor data on the area.

It was coming his way, following the digital scent of the ambulance’s lo-jack transponder, and he couldn’t afford to be seen by it. The Detroit police force knew too much about him for Jensen just to slip past the drone unnoticed. If it captured his face, it would draw heat from real human cops in short order.

He turned sharply into the first lit doorway that he came to – a 24-hour branch of Lucky Dot, the Chinese-owned convenience store chain that had popped up on every city street corner like a plastic and neon fungus.

The door clacked shut behind him just as the drone thrummed past. From the corner of his eye, Jensen saw the machine pivot on its ducted rotors and rise up to take an eagle-eye view of the area. He’d have to kill time until it moved on.

“Hi there, welcome to Lucky Dot!” The canned, pre-programmed greeting spun out of a cartoonish robot cat mounted behind the cluttered counter of the long, narrow store. Set on a rail that let it move back and forth, it had a fat torso, two chubby telescopic arms and a video screen for a head. Modeled on the company’s mascot, it resembled a giant child’s toy – but like most of the chain’s robot shopkeepers, it was grimy, cracked and covered with graffiti. “How can I help?” Its chirpy voice was generated by a limited artificial intelligence subroutine, but Jensen knew that there would be an actual human operator watching through its eyes – and those of a dozen others in a dozen other stores – from some office cubicle half a world away in Guangzhou.

He waved the machine away and made a beeline for an automated coffee vendor on the far wall, punching in a request for a beverage. The only thing that was not out of order was Lan Ri RealTaste Synthetic CoffeEsque, and he grimly ordered a cup, deliberately keeping his back to the store’s surveillance cameras.

Jensen rubbed his face as he waited. The skin around his right eye was tender and bruised from being twisted and pulled, and although he had replaced his own cyberoptic once again, it felt gritty and uncomfortable. The aug eye he’d stolen from Wilder’s corpse was rolling loose in his pocket.

He listened to the fake coffee brewing, blotting out the constant background twitter of the Lucky Dot jingle music playing from hidden speakers. His mind was going around and around on what he had seen through Wilder’s eyes.

“Jensen…” Pritchard’s voice buzzed through his infolink. “I suppose it would be a waste of time for me to tell you to do what I told you to do at the start.”

“Drop off the grid and go dark…” He subvocalized the words so the server robot wouldn’t pick them up. “Way too late for that now.”

Maybe Thorne was with Homeland Security, just like she’d said. But Jensen’s instincts to be wary of her had been right, and now he knew for certain that she had other, more sinister masters. The same people who had engineered the events that nearly killed him, that took his life and turned it inside out.

“The ramifications of this reach a long way,” said Pritchard. “You see that, right?”

“Yeah.” He couldn’t help but wonder, how much did the shadowy cabal of the Illuminati know about his missing time between the destruction of Panchaea and his awakening at Facility 451? Was he like Thorne in all this, some sort of piece in their endless games? Was he being guided and never knowing it? Each question begat more of the same, branching off into threads of unknowns that would strangle him if he tried to grasp them all at once.

Instead, he took a breath and silenced the chaos in his thoughts. “I need to focus on what is in front of me,” Jensen said, half to himself. “Deal with what I can deal with… and handle the rest as I go.” The coffee machine ejected a cup of something mud-colored and tasteless. He took it and walked slowly back toward the front of the store, looking for any sign of the police drone.

“That’s not the smartest approach,” Pritchard replied. “But when did that ever stop you?”

The hacker laid out the facts: it was very possible that the people running Thorne and the smuggling network the TF29 team was trying to dismantle had planned for this series of events from the beginning. And more so, Thorne’s specific mention of a train – which had to be the military transport Jarreau had mentioned – meant that they had inside knowledge of Interpol’s plans. Did Jarreau and Vande have any idea that they had a mole in their organization? There was no way to contact the Task Force unit to warn them.

“I’m searching all rail routes and databases in the area, but nothing is coming up,” he concluded. “If this is being done, Interpol have concealed it very well.”

“We can’t just stand by and let Jarreau’s people ride into an ambush!” Jensen’s temper flared, and he said the words aloud without thinking about it.

The robot behind the counter seemed to react to his outburst and it juddered on its hydraulic mount. “How can I how can I how can I?” The synthetic voice became distorted and growly, and the machine’s arms jerked into peculiar positions.

Suddenly the video screen blanked out and rebooted itself. When the picture resolved, it was a grainy and poorly lit image from a small handheld camera. Jensen picked out what looked like the interior of a van, and resting up against a metal panel with a smirk playing on his lips was Garvin Quinn.

“Hello, lads,” he began, speaking through the robot’s vocoder. “Nice night for a stroll, eh?”

Jensen froze. “How’d you know where to find me?”

“Francis is going to get upset when I answer that.”

Pritchard made a snarling noise that made Jensen’s infolink implant twitch, but he went on before the hacker could reply. “Cut the bullshit, Quinn. Now is not the time.”

Quinn’s tone shifted. “Aye, you’re right at that.” He gave an apologetic nod. “Long story short, Vega and I planted surveillance devices in your man’s hideout back there.”

“I know,” Pritchard shot back. “I found them and destroyed them!”

“Well, you missed one. Because we wanted you to,” Quinn went on. “Okay, so the Juggernaut Collective have been listening in on most all of your chats over the last day or so. Don’t take it the wrong way, we were looking out for you.”

“Didn’t seem like that to me,” Jensen said coldly. “Did your pal Janus enjoy the show?”

“You continue to impress, Adam,” Quinn said, his cocky grin returning for a moment. “Look, you can stand there all night sipping shitty coffee or we can cut to the chase. Bruised egos aside, you’re at a dead end, so I’m breaking protocol because Juggernaut can help you.”

“How are you going to do that?” demanded Pritchard.

“We know where the military train is and what route it’s taking across the state. And of course, I’ve got the lovely Alex here and her jump jet at my disposal. Do I have to draw you a picture?”

Jensen frowned. “How does Janus know about the train?”

“How does Janus know about anything?” Quinn shot back. “I told you before, he’s connected everywhere.” He paused, moderating his tone. “Consider this a demonstration of intent. Establishing Juggernaut’s bona fides, as it were. I know you don’t trust us, and you’ve got no reason to. So let us do this for you. Let us show you we’re on the same side by getting you where you need to go, eh? We’re already in the air. Closer than you think.”

“This is a bad idea,” said Pritchard. “This could be a setup!”

“Time to find out,” Quinn replied. “What’s it going to be?”

Jensen tossed the cup in the trash and glared at the screen. “How fast can you get me the VTOL?”

Quinn grinned again. “How fast can you get to the roof?”

⇐ Предыдущая24252627282930313233Следующая ⇒

Поделиться: