Thorne?”
“That’s part of the job.” She glanced up at the monitor cluster, and Jensen saw it rotate to present a different camera head to peer down at him.
He made himself very still. If this woman wanted to play head games, that was fine. She had information that he wanted to know as much as the reverse was true.
“You know why you’re here?”
“People tell me it’s because I’m lucky.”
Thorne went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Facility four-five-one is part of a network of medical clinics set up to help the victims of the Aug Incident reintegrate into society.”
Despite himself, Jensen’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what they’re calling it? An ‘
incident’
?”
“You name a thing and you rob it of its power, Mr. Jensen,” offered Thorne. “Nine-Eleven. The Vilama Superquake. The Cat Fives. The Incident. Give it a name and you can put it in a box, contain it. It’s an important coping mechanism. It helps people to rebuild.”
“In my experience, it takes a lot more than that.”
She nodded. “And you
do
have experience, don’t you? More than enough human disasters in your personal narrative. The situation in Mexicantown when you were with Detroit SWAT, the terrorist attack on Sarif Industries—”
“They weren’t terrorists,” he corrected, then halted. He’d given her an opening, and he retreated from it, trying another approach. “You act like you know a lot about me. Maybe you could help me with something.” He tapped a finger on his brow. “Like where I’ve been for the last year.”
Thorne spread her hands. “Here, Mr. Jensen. You’ve been here, as I understand it, slowly climbing your way back out of the coma you were in when they found you in the Arctic Ocean.” She leaned in. “What I’m interested in is where you were
before
you took a swim. What you were doing at the Panchaea facility and what part you played in its collapse.”
“I don’t recall.” But that wasn’t true, and they both knew it.
Built as part of an experimental weather modification program, the keystone in a process that would attempt to reverse the creeping trends of global warming, Panchaea was a vast complex rising up from the sea bed, layers of complex systems using current control, iron seeding and dozens of other methods to turn back the clock on the thawing of the polar icepack.
All of it a false front, of course. Jensen didn’t doubt that the reasons for building Panchaea, and the people who had the vision to make it happen, were genuine. But others had taken that ideal and used it as a cover for something sinister.
His personal crusade to learn the truth about the attack on Sarif – the attack that had almost killed him – came full circle in the closing months of 2027, as Jensen had journeyed to that hole in the ocean and learned what
really
lurked down there. Thinking machines that used kidnapped human beings as component parts, devices turned to the work of a callous, secretive power group that had been lurking in the shadows of human civilization for centuries.
And with all of that, the fruits of a plan originated by one bitter genius who had been rejected by his greatest discovery. A Frankenstein out to kill his monster. A Daedalus intent on tearing away his wings.
“Were you present when Hugh Darrow died?” Thorne’s question was a scalpel, bright and cutting.
“I don’t recall,” he repeated. But he did. Because he had been there, and he had seen what Darrow had wrought, firsthand.
The man the world had once called the father of human augmentation technology, forever prevented from experiencing his creation himself thanks to a rare genetic disorder, Darrow had devised a scheme that was breathtaking in its scope and its sheer horror. The scientist had engineered a way to reach almost every augmented person on the planet at once, via secretly implanted biochips that triggered a catastrophic neurochemical imbalance – an artificially induced psychotic break.
“That’s part of the job.” She glanced up at the monitor cluster, and Jensen saw it rotate to present a different camera head to peer down at him.
He made himself very still. If this woman wanted to play head games, that was fine. She had information that he wanted to know as much as the reverse was true.
“You know why you’re here?”
“People tell me it’s because I’m lucky.”
Thorne went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Facility four-five-one is part of a network of medical clinics set up to help the victims of the Aug Incident reintegrate into society.”
Despite himself, Jensen’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what they’re calling it? An ‘
incident’
?”
“You name a thing and you rob it of its power, Mr. Jensen,” offered Thorne. “Nine-Eleven. The Vilama Superquake. The Cat Fives. The Incident. Give it a name and you can put it in a box, contain it. It’s an important coping mechanism. It helps people to rebuild.”
“In my experience, it takes a lot more than that.”
She nodded. “And you
do
have experience, don’t you? More than enough human disasters in your personal narrative. The situation in Mexicantown when you were with Detroit SWAT, the terrorist attack on Sarif Industries—”
“They weren’t terrorists,” he corrected, then halted. He’d given her an opening, and he retreated from it, trying another approach. “You act like you know a lot about me. Maybe you could help me with something.” He tapped a finger on his brow. “Like where I’ve been for the last year.”
Thorne spread her hands. “Here, Mr. Jensen. You’ve been here, as I understand it, slowly climbing your way back out of the coma you were in when they found you in the Arctic Ocean.” She leaned in. “What I’m interested in is where you were
before
you took a swim. What you were doing at the Panchaea facility and what part you played in its collapse.”
“I don’t recall.” But that wasn’t true, and they both knew it.
Built as part of an experimental weather modification program, the keystone in a process that would attempt to reverse the creeping trends of global warming, Panchaea was a vast complex rising up from the sea bed, layers of complex systems using current control, iron seeding and dozens of other methods to turn back the clock on the thawing of the polar icepack.
All of it a false front, of course. Jensen didn’t doubt that the reasons for building Panchaea, and the people who had the vision to make it happen, were genuine. But others had taken that ideal and used it as a cover for something sinister.
His personal crusade to learn the truth about the attack on Sarif – the attack that had almost killed him – came full circle in the closing months of 2027, as Jensen had journeyed to that hole in the ocean and learned what
really
lurked down there. Thinking machines that used kidnapped human beings as component parts, devices turned to the work of a callous, secretive power group that had been lurking in the shadows of human civilization for centuries.
And with all of that, the fruits of a plan originated by one bitter genius who had been rejected by his greatest discovery. A Frankenstein out to kill his monster. A Daedalus intent on tearing away his wings.
“Were you present when Hugh Darrow died?” Thorne’s question was a scalpel, bright and cutting.
“I don’t recall,” he repeated. But he did. Because he had been there, and he had seen what Darrow had wrought, firsthand.
The man the world had once called the father of human augmentation technology, forever prevented from experiencing his creation himself thanks to a rare genetic disorder, Darrow had devised a scheme that was breathtaking in its scope and its sheer horror. The scientist had engineered a way to reach almost every augmented person on the planet at once, via secretly implanted biochips that triggered a catastrophic neurochemical imbalance – an artificially induced psychotic break.
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