Chapter 1
Tokyo, Japan
The Tendaiko building was a needle of silver and glass that sliced seventy stories into the sky. Moonlight beaded like water against its jeweled surface. Antennae and satellite dishes crowned its top. Red lights blinked rhythmically, tapping out the pulse of information that flowed in and out. Snow swirled into eddies on the November wind, painting the world crisp and white.
At street level the moonlight was drowned out by fluorescents and the clashing colors of nightlife. Crowds swirled into human froth within Tokyo's Roppongi entertainment district. The Roppongi had everything from twenty-story nightclubs to prostitution, drugs and criminal activities that thrived on businessmen with money and a need to waste it.
Neon signs and colored lights decorated every level of the densely packed buildings. Glittering Pachinko parlors and video game malls warbled and rumbled. Drunken suits accompanied women in sleek dresses and heels. Hawkers stood outside clubs and seduced pedestrians with the promises of drink, sex and other delights. Cars beeped and zipped agilely around each other like steel acrobats.
A man crouched on the roof of an empty parking structure across the street. Moonlight wrapped him like a fiery shroud, glinting off weapons and black armor plate. Angry blue eyes shone out of a face camouflaged with greasepaint.
He pulled a portable computer and a tiny satellite dish from his backpack and set them in front of him. A red light flashed while the dish rotated slowly, coming to rest thirty degrees above the horizon. The light blinked green. His helmet microphone crackled to life.
"Valerie, do you copy?" Michael whispered.
>>Copy, fax, print...<< Valerie replied. Her voice was smooth, dark and dry. A smoker's voice. >>I'm versatile that way.<<
"Cute," he growled. "Stick to the intel."
>>Working on it.<<
His computer screen sprang to life. Text scrolled down the screen at light speed; data stolen directly from the Tendaiko database. Michael skimmed through the files Valerie had highlighted.
The Tendaiko building was the headquarters of the Wa no Tayo, the Brotherhood of the Sun. They were a group of scientists and politicians, all at the highest levels of corporate leadership, all linked by a single goal - to control the secrets of evolution. The secrets of Exotics.
The twentieth century had been one of technological growth and integration. The Internet enmeshed the world in a living web of computer-transmitted information. The earth was decorated like a Christmas tree with communications satellites and orbital stations. Mankind had walked on the moon and the bottom of the ocean, broken the speed of sound, sundered atoms and discovered the basic blueprints of life.
Or so they had believed.
Some called it the Gray man, the Loup Garou, or La Mujer Fiebre. If you just happened to be unlucky and born at the wrong time on the wrong day, the Gray Man would visit you and you would be one of them. Your body would be wracked with fevers, sweats, and cramps. Hallucinations, revelations. When the fevers resolved, you'd be one of them. Hyper-intelligent or telepathic. Piano genius, math prodigy, arrested development or cognitive damage. Einstein, Amadeus or Genghis Khan. Precognitive, telekinetic, teleport, or just twisted. Unnecessary limbs, inhuman strength and speed, patchwork skin structures, weakness and palsies. Too far mutated, too much damaged to even be called human. Exotic.
Most Exotics died in childbirth or soon after. The ones that lived were not so lucky. In the past they had lived as gods or monsters. Now they were part of daily life. Exotics tended to live out of the spotlight. Those with visible mutations often strayed to the fringes of society. Those who looked like normal humans could hide their Exotic status. As medical technology improved, more and more Exotics go on to lead normal or supra-normal lives. Exotics were becoming a force to be reckoned with.
The supernatural had become science. Genetics and immunology had evolved to the point where many believed they were on the cusp of finding the holy grail. The Proteus Vector. Some thought it was a recessive gene complex handed down for generations until activated somehows. Others postulated spontaneous mutation. Some thought it was a virus. It was the next great leap for science.
The Brotherhood had found it first.
The Brotherhood had fifty-three Exotics currently under investigation, in research facilities all over Japan. The reports on their capture were short and concise, the methods used violent but efficient. The subjects had been run through battery after battery of tests. The files listed numbers for the subject's physical characteristics, previous history, and Exotic abilities.
The testing was brutal. A child with photosynthetic skin was put under sun lamps until he went into hyperglycemic shock. A telekinetic was made to rearrange puzzles without sleep. He was locked up under sedation, gibbering from the mental strain. Unnecessary surgeries were performed. Unnatural diets were given. When the subjects died they were autopsied, dissected, then fed into grinders to purify as much genetic material as possible.
"It's like a goddamn Nazi prison camp for Fevers," Michael said, shaking his head in disbelief.
>>You seem surprised. I thought this kind of thing wouldn't shock you anymore.<<
"Spent an awful half-hour in a research lab once. Saw a white rat. Part of his skull had been removed and replaced with gleaming electrodes. Blood clotted on his head. The rat had tried to kill himself by ramming its head into the bars that imprisoned him. 'Give me liberty or give me death', he tried to tell them. They doped him up with chemicals so that they could finish their experiements."
The man within the black armor imagined a frightened little girl with part of her skull missing, replaced with electrodes.
"Bastards. All this, for what?"
>>They found the Proteus Vector, Michael. The logs seem to indicate that. However, the actual research notes are kept offline. Annoying.<<
"Have you found Samantha yet?"
>>I'm surprised they haven't started a media blitz. Megalomaniacs seem to enjoy that sort of thing. I hope this isn't another myth like cold fusion or human cloning.<<
"Forget about the Proteus Vector. We're here for Samantha."
>>Of course.<<
He rubbed the bridge of his nose and refocused his tired eyes. He scanned over the blueprints of the building. Valerie created bright crisscrossing lines on the map. Guard schedules were outlined in blue, guards with dogs in gold, watchtower arcs in crimson. Samantha's location was a white X. X marks the spot.
Intrusion strategies flashed through his mind. They had been ingrained by years of training and experience so they were almost subconscious. He indexed entry points, obstacles and difficulties. The crisscrossing lines left no gaps, no vulnerabilities. He couldn't go through the sewers or the air ducts. He couldn't land on the roof.
This was a five-man mission. Three in the primary intrusion team, one to secure the exit, one to work security. Michael didn't have five men. He had himself and Valerie. He was going to have to go in the front door and rely on Valerie's witchcraft to blind their electronic eyes.
As he stretched his muscles he felt the knotted scars of the AK-47 round he had taken in his thigh in Chicago; the knife tip that had snapped off between his left ribs, only centimeters from his heart, during an ambush in Paris; the torn ligaments of his shoulder that was dislocated by a Xenomorph in Tripoli. The twisted cross scar on his temple, the sign of his rebirth, moved like a bird in flight as he worked his jaw.
"Valerie?" he said.
>>Eternally patient, eternally helpful.<< her synthetic voice replied.
"Don't give me any of that martyr crap. You've got security under control?"
>>Be serious.<< she answered dryly.
"Good. I'm going in," he said.
>>Michael, I am just returning from the apogee of my orbit. I need at least twenty minutes to redirect myself in order to be on the horizon.<<
"Going in now," he said. "Before I talk myself out of it."
Anger mixed with the fear knotted in his gut. It was Russian roulette time again. Skill and gear only counted for so much in a combat op. Might as well be nothing at all. Might as well just put the barrel to your forehead and squeeze. He was tired and jetlagged. And old. Like an old wolf, he would soon be culled from the herd.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why the hell does my gut feel so funny about this one?"
>>You're asking me, Michael? I can predict solar events and weather with only a few teraflops, but predicting your behavior is technically unfeasible.<<
"Impossible," he corrected.
>>Nothing is impossible, Michael.<<
"Nothing is impossible, yeah."
>>I tried it once, you know.<<
"Tried what?"
>>Predicting your behavior. I laid out codestream of randomizing agents, each destabilized by quantum phenomena, each representing a variable in your life, each designed to be self-replicating in order to account for the changes in each code-object. I ran through several thousand permutations and tried to come up with a composite to predict your next action.<<
"I didn't understand a single word of what you just said."
>>It was a lovely mess, but had zero predicitive power. The Oracle at Delphi must have had several orders of processing higher than mine.<<
"Is that all I am to you? A hobby?"
>>Michael. I'm hurt. All I'm saying is that you're going to have to figure out your behavior on your own. I don't have any more secrets for you.<<
"Great, thanks," Michael said. He slipped the computer shut and rechecked his equipment one last time. If he was actually going to survive tonight he would need every resource at his disposal. They had a fortress and an army of trained soldiers and Fevers to defend it. All he had was his determination, the Pied Piper watching overhead, and his gear.
H&K PP7 machine pistol: laser sight active, round in the chamber, locked and loaded. Shock rod: igniter primed, fluid cartridge full. Fragmentation and smoke grenades: pins in place, clips loose. K-bar knife: sheath unbuckled. Night vision googles: lenses clean, levels calibrated. CDX explosive and detonators: secured. And other goodies, well, he hoped they wouldn't be necessary.
Go time.
"Stay frosty, Sam," he whispered. "Here comes the cavalry."
