Net Force--Kill Chain by Jerome Preisler (e book reader txt) 📕

Braithwaite nodded. “Go on.”

“Her involvement with a sensitive government program restricted her from leaving my country. But her father is of some former stature, and his influence enabled her to do so under certain conditions.” Urban paused. “Those conditions were violated. Therefore the agreement has been cancelled in full.”

“So what’s Papa’s story? He taken up residence in Black Dolphin?”

Urban gave him a hard look. Black Dolphin, or Penal Colony 6, was out near the border with Kazakhstan, a hellhole where political prisoners went to rot with the cannibals, pedophiles, and terrorists. Its cramped solitary-confinement cells didn’t have enough headroom for a grown man to stand upright, and the inmates spent their lives bent over in misery.

Braithwaite ticked off a full thirty seconds, during which Urban did not blink once. Finally he shrugged his narrow shoulders. “All you need to know is we want the daughter harvested.”

Braithwaite looked at him. “And she has her own ideas?”

The Russian lifted his beer mug and drank. The lug next to him did the same. Braithwaite took a pull to make it unanimous.

“If we can’t have her back, she is to be eliminated,” Urban said.

Braithwaite considered that. He could see why the SVA man had insisted on meeting face-to-face. InfoSec was bullshit. Fiction. With computer hacks and cyberspying, no one trusted encryption anymore. These days, the most delicate communications were made in person and the most critical secrets exchanged as dead drops and physical handoffs. It was like the page had been flipped back to the golden age of Cold War espionage.

“Where is your precious girl now?” he asked.

“The United States,” Urban said. “New York City, in fact.”

“And you want Braithwaite Global handling things to give your government deniability. Should things get messy.”

“A logical assumption. But there is an added dimension.”

“Namely?”

“She has ties to one of their intelligence agencies. Close ties.”

Braithwaite took a deep breath. “The plot thickens,” he said. “Be forewarned, this contract will be bloody expensive.”

“Name your rate,” Urban said. “If you succeed, I can guarantee a generous bonus.”

Braithwaite nodded. “This American agency. The one she’s tight with. Which is it?”

Urban looked across the table at him.

“Net Force,” he said.

Chapter Three

New York City

April 13, 2024

At Club Fallout, Dev Zero was performing their second set of the night to a packed house, working the people on the dance floor up to a feverish pitch.

Natasha Mori was center stage behind her synthesizer, a massive quarter-century-old Korg Trinity she had bought in junk condition for chump change and restored to working order with spare parts. Her fingers glided down the keyboard, throwing off a digital wail, a fusion of the synth’s original instrument samples and recording-studio blunders she’d programmed into its sonic palette. Previously discarded shrieks of feedback, accidental speaker squawks, unwanted cable buzzes, scraping sounds, howls, whooshes, clicks, and clanks, all merging into surprisingly musical tones.

Natasha liked reclamation projects, being a major one herself.

She felt the bass in her diaphragm and rolled her hips and shoulders, her inhibitions dissolving with each fuzzy thump. Fluid and supple, she had on a short kimono blouse, tight black dance pants, and lace-up Timbs. Her silver-blond hair was short on the right side, and longer on the left, swept forward with its choppy, dark tips brushing her forehead. She wore lightly tinted blue sunglasses that matched the color of her eyes.

Moving, dancing, she raised her arms over the keys and struck a majestic two-handed chord. Behind her, Duncan Ulysses took his cue, using a visual sequencer atop his console to start a flow of lights and images. Thickset and muscular, he grinned joyfully, his bald black head bobbing up and down to the rhythmic beats.

Natasha called tonight’s piece “Bone Mother” after the Russian folktale in which the little girl, Vasilisa, sent out into the woods by her stepmother, sought a flame to light her home. A magical doll, blessed by her long-lost birth mother, was hidden in her pocket.

For a moment, the stage became a dense, shadowy forest of trees. The kimono flowing around her wispy frame, Natasha seemed an otherworldly creature flitting among the dark, naked trunks.

Then Duncan worked his wonders, and everything exploded into brilliant color—red, blue, gold, a thousand other shades with no names. They blended and separated and swirled and shifted around her.

Natasha no longer suffered dizzy spells from the colored lights. For bees, having four visual receptors in each eye had value—allowing them to distinguish the subtlest color variations in pollen-rich flowers. But nature had made most humans trichromatic.

She was a rare exception.

Though the blue lenses were dimmers, it was easier if she avoided looking directly at Duncan’s FX panels. Her attention on the floor, Natasha stoked the beat to a hot, thumping peak, then abruptly brought things down. Duncan played off the slower pace with some softer atmospherics, giving the dancers a minute to catch their collective breath. But she wasn’t letting go. As she pushed the tempo toward another buildup, they responded like a single organism.

Natasha looked out at the floor, the lights, the moving, sweaty bodies.

That was when she saw the guy with the tats. He was fairly close to the stage, not dancing and not really standing still. Just watching her and swaying to the music behind a cluster of other people. He was tall, strong-featured, with long black hair in a ponytail. Wearing a ribbed military-green tank top that displayed his lean, muscular physique and the full tribal tattoo sleeve on his right arm. It was standout ink.

He was definitely an interesting specimen. And he’d been looking at her intently. She was performing, so nothing unusual there. But now that she’d noticed him, he snapped his eyes away. Completely averted them. Like he didn’t want her to notice him.

Something about him triggered a powerful discomfort in her.

Mind the small things, katya. A predictor looks for details.

Anna’s voice. She could hear it clearly in her mind as she hadn’t in years.

The rest happened all at once. The visual and physical effects. Their onset shocked her.