Freedom Incorporated (56 page)

Dan nodded again, more
warily than ever.

“
Come on then,
let’s get this over with.” He offered his scanner and Dan stepped
forward, brushing past the compact handheld device, which looked
similar to a barcode-reader. It communicated briefly with the chip
in his pocket and fed the relevant details to Christopher’s
monitor. Meanwhile, Dan lined up his weaponry for tagging.
Christopher watched as each piece of Dan’s arsenal emerged from the
folds of his clothing. He uttered an oath under his breath,
something that Dan couldn’t quite catch.

“
Very well Mr
Kennedy,” Chuck intoned formally. “Have a pleasant trip
abroad.”

“
Thanks
Chucky, I owe you one.” Dan holstered his weapons.

“
No, you owe
me two. Kegs. No, make it two bottles of scotch. The good stuff.”
Christopher smiled. “Just make sure you bring your ass back alive
so I can collect, you hear?”

“
Loud and
clear.” Dan walked away before a queue banked up behind him. It was
a busy time of night, the last minute rush before most Australians
wanted to be home in front of their televisions or making love to
their partners.

He looked over his
shoulder on his way to the portals, reassured to see Christopher
wasn’t making an emergency call to his supervisor and requesting
police involvement. So Dan joined the short queue at the nearest
international portal. Several large signs requested that travellers
check their destination codes before joining a queue. It was
annoying when somebody in front reached the portal and realised
they didn’t know their destination code. Fifty dedicated
code-terminals indexed the codes for all international
destinations, but Dan didn’t need them. When he reached the front
of queue, he stepped inside the white circle and he entered the
code he’d thoroughly memorised.

The portals were
impeccably hygienic, cleaned at regular intervals to PortaNet
specifications. They looked like large tubes. Users stepped inside,
made sure they were within the white safety circle, and dialled the
destination code on the provided panel. There was an identical
panel on the outside of the tube so that a second person could
operate the portal on behalf of the traveller. The elderly and
‘special’ members of the community had been so dumbfounded by
PortaNet’s invention that engineers had added the extra panel to
circumvent the problem of training the untrainable. The company was
already spending billions on public education; they’d simply
considered some people too slow-witted to comprehend the new
technology.

Dan had only a vague idea
how portals worked, but he’d always thought the process lacked
flare. There was no white flash, no sparks, and no melodramatic
countdown, just a pop of changing air pressure.

A gust of cold
North American air slammed his face when his vision shifted and the
customary tickle in his lungs made him cough. He stepped out of the
tube, thumped a fist to his chest to ease the discomfort, and
headed toward United States Immigration.
I
hope this goes smoothly.
American
immigration was a lot larger than Australian Immigration so he
didn’t know anybody well enough to cause a problem.
I hope.
But since America
used a two-tier system, he had two counters to pass: immigration
and customs. He gulped in anticipation.

But twenty minutes later
he’d navigated the chaos of travellers and was standing in the
chill of the North American autumn, gazing at UniForce
headquarters. A dire hatred consumed his inner thoughts and he was
prepared to tear the jugular from Esteban’s throat if he had half a
chance. One year ago he wouldn’t have believed himself capable of
transforming into a blood-lusting killer. Yet there he stood,
comfortable with the thought of bereaving Esteban’s
family.

He watched for security
and coldly calculated his best opportunity to enter the building.
He wasn’t sure what he’d achieve at 2:30 on Saturday morning, but
he wasn’t content to do nothing. Jen’s time was running out and if
there were even the slimmest possibility that he could save her,
he’d keep trying.

Something in
there will help me find Esteban… and Jen.
He
had to believe it or he’d lose what remained of his fragile sanity.
A digital scope, no bigger than a pen, helped him peer through the
night. He was squatting in a nature strip that ran the length of
the grime-smattered street. Massive buildings loomed on all sides
and he couldn’t help thinking it was unwise to tempt gravity so
excessively. Human engineering was good, but nature could swat once
and splatter the buildings like pimples. It would only take one
decent earthquake. He didn’t believe the rhetoric fed to the public
about earthquake predictability, nor could he swallow the
commercials he’d seen for the anti-vibration systems installed in
modern skyscrapers. It simply wasn’t clever to build them so
enormous, especially when portal technology made the logistics of
transportation so easy.

The concrete
monstrosities spewed fluorescent light as if electricity was free
and the light pollution was so bad that, despite zero cloud cover,
Dan couldn’t see a single star. Using a portal was out of the
question; security locked them down at night. Only a small subset
of authorised microchips could portal in, and security monitored
that activity closely. But Dan had never navigated through UniForce
headquarters on foot and he screwed his eyes tight trying to
remember on which floor he’d find the management
offices.

He shivered from cold and
praised his thick coat.

Standard
patrols guarded the building’s perimeter, a few men at most. Inside
there would be more, perhaps 50 – far more than Dan could handle
alone. He wouldn’t want to assault the building even if he had a
platoon as backup. UniForce guards were well armed and portal
technology ensured they could react quickly to trouble.
That leaves stealth.
He
chewed his lower lip, picking his moment. When a host of factors
had aligned in his mind, he stood, ignoring the discomfort when his
knees cracked in protest. Then streaked across the road and darted
into UniForce territory.

It was easier than he’d
thought. Deep down he’d suspected he would need to eliminate three
or four innocent security guards, and he’d been psyching himself up
for that probability. But he reached the opaque glass wall without
opposition and pressed his shoulder blades against it, wincing when
pain jolted from his wound. The bump stretched his skin and tugged
his sutures.

Dan gritted his teeth.
It’d been a long time since he’d broken into a high-security
building. But, although he was nervous, the necessary skills came
back to him. At one time well developed, his unique skills would
probably stay with him for life. They hibernated until he
reactivated them in times of need – like now.

Tonight he was thankful
for his past.

He extracted a knife-like
instrument and began cutting a manhole-sized block from the wall.
The glass was only four centimetres thick, but the manufacturer had
cured it with chemicals that had modified the quartz’s molecular
structure, making it a thousand times stronger than a normal pane
of glass. Nanoscopic wires wove through the fabric, supplying the
digital information the glass needed to switch between transparent
and opaque states. Dan’s laser-class instrument cut through it all,
slicing it as neatly as a katana would slice silk. It fired an
intense beam of radiation, focused by a series of nano-lenses into
a shaft that was five nanometres thick. He was finished in less
than twenty seconds and pushed the panel clear, cringing when it
clanked noisily to the tile floor. He then dove through the hole
and replaced the disk, lining it flush with the remainder of the
wall. His laser cutter was so fine that its incision was invisible
to the naked eye.

Dan berated
himself for holding his breath.
Stupid…
Now, where am I?
It was hard to see in the
dark and he stumbled forward with arms outstretched, blindly hoping
he wouldn’t trip over anything.
What would
they put on the ground floor? Mailroom? Storage
space?
The answer came a few moments later
when he kicked over a mop and bucket, spewing a brackish brew of
hair-infested water over the floor with an almighty clamour.
The janitor’s closet, of course.

By chance, his
hand blundered into the light switch, but he refused to cave in to
his desire for illumination. He didn’t want to do anything that
would attract attention and he was already disappointed with
himself for making such a racket.
Come on
Danny-boy, stop fucking up… the next time it might cost
you.
He took a deep, steadying breath and
pressed ahead, easily finding the stairwell. A chilly draft wafted
from the basement, carrying the scent of damp grit and oil. It
reminded Dan of the time he’d visited an underground mine and
resurrected feelings of claustrophobia.

He moved as silently as
he could in his croaking leather boots. Five flights up he stopped
to ease some spit around the two leather flaps that were making the
noise before continuing his upward journey. He gripped the handrail
as if it was his only link to life; the last thing he wanted was to
miss a step and tumble backward into the void – he didn’t want to
become a quadriplegic. But the icy metallic rail was steadily
numbing his fingers and making his knuckles ache.

The distant thud of
footfalls made him freeze and he thanked the dim, almost
nonexistent lighting in the stairwell.

Voices.
Two.
He wasn’t close enough to delineate
individual words, but the muted muttering was definitely getting
stronger. They were above, possibly on the tenth floor.
Or was it the eleventh?
It
was hard to tell in the dark, he was becoming disorientated and
knew with grim certainty that he’d never be able to retrace his
steps.

Dan slithered
through the nearest door, both glad and frightened to have finally
reached some light. He shielded his eyes until they adjusted and he
drew into the shadows as far as he could. It looked empty. There
was carpet on the floor and the walls had been freshly painted, but
only a few loose cables dangled from strategic places in the
ceiling. There were no desks, no obligatory coffee machine, no
computers, nothing. It was a barren landscape of stale dust and
silverfish husks. He listened, paused, and crept his way up the
building, empty floor by empty floor, counting no fewer than 40
abandoned levels before finally encountering something habited. It
begged the question why UniForce had bothered constructing such a
massive building.
Maybe they’re stitching
together a subletting deal.
He doubted it.
UniForce was not the type of company to share.
So maybe they intend some serious
expansion.
Even that was difficult to
swallow.
Forty floors
worth?
It didn’t make sense. UniForce had no
need of a large onsite workforce, their contractors – the bounty
hunters and assassins – worked offsite and alone.
Status then?
That was the
only logical conclusion he could draw. All the other
giga-corporations had mammoth headquarters so UniForce wanted one
too.
That’s pathetic.
The more he discovered about his ex-surrogate company the more
he found to dislike.

With a great
deal of effort and backtracking, he located the portals on the
fiftieth floor. Three constipated looking men were guarding
them.
That’s strange.
There would be none if UniForce hadn’t declared a state of
company emergency. Portals had impermeable locks, so it was unusual
to waste resources protecting them. But UniForce was in panic mode
and capable of many unusual decisions.

Portal reception was the
only place Dan knew he would definitely find a map of the building.
Of course, there was none. There was only a list of internal portal
destinations, but since portals were numbered logically according
to their physical location, it was nearly as good.

He watched the
guards from the depth of the shadows, convinced they hadn’t noticed
his silent approach. A wash of adrenaline coursed through his body,
accompanied by the familiar sharpening of his senses that always
came before he made a move. He toyed with the idea of dropping all
three from where he crouched.
Tempting.
Katherine stopped him, or
more to the point, the thought of what she would’ve said if he slew
three innocent men stopped him. A pang of guilt seeped into his
mind just for considering it an option.

Something
else.

He used his scope to look
at the board, circumventing the problem altogether. It worked well
enough; the chart gave him an idea of the building layout. He
trekked back to the stairwell and resumed his climb, feeling the
exertion in his thighs and exhilaration in his head.

*

Michele was
reclining in her chair, dabbing perfume on her wrists and smearing
it behind her ears. The tedium was gnawing at her nerves and she’d
been in a terrible mood for the past few days. She hated this part
of the job, the emergencies.
Why can’t
they sort it out on their own?
James was
busy with his computer and Esteban was off looking for Dan.
But what can I do?
Worst
of all, the UniForce showers didn’t approach the high standards
she’d become accustomed to.