Saxon met his gaze, looking through the dark lenses to the dead eyes beneath. He saw nothing there, nothing but a cold machine soul driven by anger. "You're right," he admitted. "Because if being strong means turning into a heartless fucker like you, I'll stick to being human."
Hardesty laughed. "Good luck with that," he retorted as the SUV surged away in a growl of acceleration.
Location Unknown
Anna clawed her way back to a waking state as if she were buried in wet sand, digging herself out inch by inch. She felt the chemical drag of sedatives in her bloodstream; her last conscious memory was of Federova bundling her into the back of the black helo before something sharp and metallic nipped at the flesh of her neck. After that had come a turbulent dream filled with scattershot images of burning cities, crazed cyborgs, chaos, and conspiracy, rising up from the recall of the vision Janus had put in her head.
She was in a small room with metal walls, the only decoration a perfunctory cot bolted to the floor, a lamp set in the ceiling, and a steel toilet in the far corner. Anna rolled to a seated position and the room swayed around her. The floor seemed unsteady, and her stomach turned over.
The fog of drug haze made it difficult to move; her legs were like lead.
She wasn't secured by handcuffs or any kind of tether; clearly the Tyrants didn't consider her enough of a threat, which was insulting in its own way.
Beyond the door to the cell she heard movement, and held her breath, straining to listen.
"… with Hardesty," said Namir's voice, as he came closer. "Once it is done, we'll need to recover and proceed to the extraction point."
"Got it," said another man, this one gruff and hard-edged. "What about the li'l punk?"
"We've got what we need from him."
"This one, too?" Anna knew they had to be talking about her.
"We will see," said Namir. "If not, the Hyron Project can always use new materials." She heard him come closer. "Open it."
Anna scrambled back into the far corner of the cell as the door opened to admit the mercenary. She caught a glimpse of a thickset bull of a man hovering behind him, his face scarred by old burns down one side. He gave her a callous wink and walked away.
Namir stepped in and closed the door. "Anna Kelso."
"Jaron Namir," she replied. "Yeah, I know who you are."
That got her a moment of irritation, but it vanished just as quickly. "Ben should learn when to keep his mouth shut. It gets him into trouble."
"Are you here to kill me?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Not yet. For the moment, you're required intact. For purposes of leverage."
She snorted. "Against Saxon? I hardly know him. You think he's going to risk his life for a complete stranger?"
Namir nodded. "Of course he will. If you did know him, you'd know he will risk his life for you." He folded his arms over his chest. "It's a character flaw. Despite everything that has happened to him, every loss and disappointment, under it all Ben Saxon wants to be the good man.
The hero." Namir smiled coldly. "Others would have had that beaten out of them by now. But not him."
"Lucky for me," she offered, with more defiance in her tone than she felt.
"Not really." Namir stood opposite her. "I'm intrigued by you, Anna. Your tenacity. It's quite impressive for someone with such personal failings to overcome." He cocked his head. "When was the last time you had a dose? It must be difficult going cold all over again."
"Bite me," she snarled.
He smiled thinly. "I know this is difficult for you to understand, but you have to realize that you are fulfilling a purpose here. We all are. For a greater good."
"A greater good?" She spat the words back at him. "Your Illuminati are a cancer! You kill and threaten and ruin lives all because some faceless cabal of old men want to play God with the world? What gives you the right?"
"There is no God," Namir told her. "That's why these things need to be done. That's why the group exists." He sighed. "The Illuminati were created for that very reason. The future of humanity is too delicate to be left to the whims of passing kings and despots. It's too complex to be decided by the greater mass of mankind. It is the burden of the elite to be fit to rule, to take the reins of the world, and to guide it toward a stable unity."
"They teach you that little speech?" she replied. "The cowards who ordered the deaths of my friend and countless others?" She shook her head.
"I've heard the conspiracy theories, but until now I never thought they could be true. But that's how they want it, right? They stay in the dark, pull the strings, and no one knows it. They decide what wars are going to happen, who gets elected… And now they want to control the right to evolve!"
Namir studied his cybernetic hand. "Is that so wrong? Think about it, Anna. Think of how the free spread of augmentations has changed the face of our species, the divide it has created between 'cog' and 'natch,' the metal and the meat. Think of how it has changed you. Anyone can make themselves into a killing machine with the right hardware and enough money. Wouldn't things be better if there were controls, boundaries, regulations?" He leaned closer. "You know that rules exist for the good of society." Namir opened his hands. "All we're doing is putting them into place."
For a moment, his words cut deeply; but then she pushed them away. "And it doesn't matter how many freedoms you have to kill to get there, does it? Because you believe you're right."
He frowned at her tone. "Your young friend Patrick came around, once he had an understanding. I hoped you might, too, I really did. Saxon… he won't change… I thought you were smarter than him."
"I'm glad to disappoint you," she spat.
Namir watched her for a moment, before he spoke again.
"You wonder why you're still alive. It's more than just Saxon. There's something I want to know." When she didn't answer he took her chin in his hand. "Who is Janus? What did he show you?"
The limousine swung around Building C, where the council chambers were located, and pulled to a halt on the gravel drive in front of the United
Nations Assembly Hall, the white pillars rising up across the entranceway behind it. A handful of Swiss security staff stood on the upper steps, while Belltower guards waited at the drive. Standing in a line before the nearby library, a group of reporters trained their camera drones on the vehicle as one of the guards opened the rear door, allowing Elaine Peller to exit; the Humanity Front's media relations staffer and personal assistant to the founder stepped clear and addressed the hovering cameras.
"Mr. Taggart will make a short statement. He will take no questions."
As she finished speaking, Isaias Sandoval was the next to step out; his thin Hispanic features were perpetually set in a nervous frown, and today was no exception. Despite what they had been told by the authorities, Isaias had been awakened in the predawn light by what could only have been an explosion out on the bridge near their hotel. He was still smarting that his employer had outright refused to take his advice about postponing the meeting with the UN science board.
William Taggart followed him out into the bright light of the day, smiling warmly and sparing the cameras a fatherly nod and a wave. The face of the largest pro-humanist movement on earth appeared, as ever, impeccably groomed and perfectly at ease; and yet he never seemed to lose the cool sense of intent, the quiet, scholarly charisma that made so many people listen to him.
Taggart stepped around to the front of the limo and nodded again. "My friends," he began, "it fills me with hope to be here today, to talk to these good people and present our point of view to them. At no other time in human history have we found ourselves at so delicate a juncture, when the very nature of what we are is under threat by scientific avarice ungoverned by any moral code or-"