It came out as a scream from her mind and throat, unforced, perfect for her needs. Sam wrenched her mind away from them, as brutally as she could, felt things tear inside her, saw and knew them stunned and disoriented.
She remembered her name. Samantha. Samantha Cataranes. She remembered who she was.
Tactical contacts came online, had always been online, dropped layers of threats and recommendations and escape vectors and supplemental information on her.
[EXTRACT EXTRACT EXTRACT], her display read.
Arrows pointed towards escape vectors. Alternate exits. Ceiling hatch seventy feet above her. Likely weak points in the wall. Back out the door she'd come in through. She chose the latter.
Samantha Cataranes stood up. Force of will pulled her out of the chaos of the drug high. Years of training took over. She swept her vision across the scene around her. A score of names lit up, faces recognized, bios scrolling. All green or yellow. No gross threats.
Her fingers found her slimline in her boot, tripped the emergency uplink sequence. Buffered data pulsed out instantly at emergency power. Everything she'd seen and heard going out to her watchers.
The phone pulsed once, twice, three times, violating FCC power regs by a cool order of magnitude, expending a quarter of its fuel cell to get the message out.
White noise shot through mind space, tearing up mental cohesion. Sam saw one or two go down with their hands to heads. Her own head ached. The music stopped.
She turned towards the door then. The voices and minds around her were starting to burble, coming out of their stunned and pained silence. Few of them had caught what had really happened, but they had caught on that something bad had occurred indeed.
That was sick. That was wrong. I can't believe I took part in that.
Images of the mind meld she'd just experienced bounced through her, nauseating her, reminding her too much of… of… of what she'd killed to escape.
Time for reminiscing later. She caught a glimpse of Kade on his knees, vomiting onto the floor. She felt a pang of pity, of regret. Time for that later, too.
She strode towards the entrance, locked her mind down. Crowds parted. Then she felt a mind against hers, saw him move to block her path. Watson Cole.
He felt hard, poised, resigned. Pacifist or no, he was not going to let her pass.
[Combat Threat. Extreme Caution.]
Alternate routes flashed on her display. Arrows towards other escape vectors. She could turn and run, beat him to an exit.
But Sam was not in the mood to let some burned-out jarhead stand in her way.
She blanked her mind, weaved towards him unsteadily on the floor, brought her left hand to her stomach, her right to her face, feigned a disoriented stumble to the left as she reached him, came out of it in a vicious right-hand backfist to his temple.
Wats was unfooled. The big black Marine had anticipated the move or something like it. He brought his hand up to block, fell back, barely twisted the blow aside as he gave ground.
Good. She was faster than he was. Her fourth-generation enhancements outclassed the Marine Corps' third-generation techniques. The ERD saved the best for its own.
Sam's next two blows were already in the air in the close space between them. Hard jab to his solar plexus, low kick to his knee. Wats parried the first, still falling back, lifted his leg and let his raised calf absorb the damage of her kick.
Cole was good. Experienced. Deadly. The Marine Corps' thirdgeneration viral upgrades had made him stronger, faster, less sensitive to pain than any normal man.
Sam was smaller, shorter of reach, lighter of muscle, but she'd been taught by the best, and she had the better technology. Fourth-generation posthuman genetics gave her nerves like quicksilver, muscles like corded titanium, and bones of organic carbon fiber.
She'd become something like the thing she hated. She'd stared into the abyss, and it had transformed her. To destroy evil, she'd become it.
Wats countered her superior speed by giving ground, step by step. Sam stayed in close as he did, neutralizing his advantage in reach. They moved in a blur of strikes, dodges, and blows, almost too fast for any onlooker to follow.
She could see him coming up now, see the adrenaline hitting him, making him a more dangerous foe. Behind her she felt flashes of courage and anger. Partygoers thinking of joining the fray. Before long, they would mob her.
End this now, then. A gambit. A sacrifice. She let him create a foot of space to get his comfort, parried three more blows, threw feints at groin and eyes and plexus, then came in wide and sloppy, hole in her guard at mid-section.
Wats saw the opening and threw a brutal fist at it, low and under her nearly unbreakable ribs. She accepted the fist, twisting to mute it, felt pain blossom inside her as he connected. As she twisted, she brought one hand down like a vice on his wrist, yanked him off balance as she planted a leg behind his knees and slammed her other hand into his shoulder to bring him down.
Wats saw it coming, but it was too late. The gambit had worked. He went down fast and hard.
Sam's booted foot flashed out, connected with his head, twice, three times.
She stopped herself. Don't kill. Incapacitate.
Her breath was fast, pulse elevated. She'd taken serious but not immediately life-threatening damage. Time to leave. She stepped over Wats' unmoving form towards the door.
And then she felt it. Felt him. Kade. He was behind her. He was inside her mind. She could feel his anger and hurt, his confusion, his sense of betrayal, his self-loathing at having been so easily fooled… having risked so much on behalf of so many people, and let them down. Despite herself, she felt a pang of guilt at how she'd deceived him, at the hell he was going to pay.
"No," he said.
He was about to do something to her mind, Sam knew. She saw it in his thoughts. He was a threat.
She turned. Crossed the space between them in three long steps. Don't kill. Incapacitate. She lunged forward, hard backfist snapping out at his temple.
No.
She heard him in her mind. Felt his will slam against something inside her.
Hard fist connected with civilian body. All went black.
4
THE NOOSE
Sam swam slowly back to consciousness. Darkness. Her eyes were closed, head slumped. She stayed that way. Better to feign unconsciousness as long as she could, and learn the situation. There were voices around her. People talking.
"So she's, what, a DEA agent?" That was Rangan Shankari, the DJ.
"Not DEA," a voice responded slowly. "Homeland Security. Emerging Risks Directorate." That deep bass. Watson Cole.
"ERD?" Ilya Alexander spat it out. "Fuck."
Rangan spoke again, "So, this Samara from the ERD, you think she's alone?"