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  —Fuck you, he thought into the void.

  DUBAI CITY, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

  Taylor watched Sarah's flight from a distance. He saw her plummet into the pool, struggle with the trooper and break free. Determined woman. His analysis of her held true.

  The voice on his link cut into the scene. “She attempted to link with our target. The jamming bug held.”

  Taylor smiled. “She's on her own.”

  The voice went rich with pleasure, then slid back to monotone. “As is Laing, wherever he is. Don't let Peters drown. She's only good to us on the run.”

  “I have the situation in hand,” he whispered back.

  Taylor felt tension flooding the link. His own life rested in the balance. If Sarah died here, his life was that much ash in the wind. Taylor savored the sensation—life or death on a roll of the dice.

  He gazed down into the pool and waited.

  Sarah blazed white hot in the flow-link, craving the connection. And she had felt it, felt him. A far-off comfort. Then nothing. Had Ryan cut the link somehow? Had the augment bugged it? She pushed hard and regained the signal for an instant. She caught a single transmission,

  —Fuck you, Sarah.

  The link faded, then died. She wanted to scream, to cry. Why had she thought Ryan would help her? Or even care? She didn't live in that kind of world. Not anymore.

  She sank to the pool's bottom, its smooth contour cupping her body. She wanted only to inhale. Then something flicked across her face, tingling soft. Her perception spiraled down and yet the sensation remained. Far off, the sensation clicked. It was a stream of bubbles. Air bubbles!

  Energy surged within her. Groping, vision dwindling, she found one of the small holes from which the bubbles escaped. She exhaled dead air and lip-locked a hole. Air—oxygen! Her lungs burned with it. She exhaled before the added buoyancy could pull her away and took another drag.

  Focus ratcheting back, she saw that she lay on a blanket of air holes. The bubbles rising around her broke the water's surface tension, easing the waterslide's landing.

  She relished the moment, living breath to breath, knowing her reprieve would be short-lived.

  Above her, Sarah caught the blurred thrash of feet and arms—swimmers being ushered out. She had one shot. She grabbed another gulp of air and took it.

  In a flurry she pulled free of her clothes and swam with everything in her. From the slice in her side, she unholstered the hawkeye. It came free with a fleshy release. She prayed it would work. Sure enough, it unfolded and pushed through the water at her side.

  She needed to blend—to meld with the mob leaving the pool. Her underwear would pass for a bathing suit, but she needed more. The implant throbbed, her mind already pushed to fracture by the hawkeye's extra stim. No choice. She hoped Judson had installed the full package.

  Sarah surfaced among the throng. She swam with them. As she did, she initiated the body mesh. The neural implant opened pathways in her mind, linking her to the tat. Sarah stared at the slick flesh of the man next to her. She wrapped her mind around the color, letting it flush through her. She could only hope it worked. Judging from the man's reaction, it did. His eyes flashed wide. Then they reached the pool's edge and were separated.

  Sarah pulled herself out, struggling. The enhanced arm of a trooper grabbed her. Sarah knew it was over. But the trooper looked her right in the eye and pushed her away, retuning his attention to the pool. Her transformation had worked, the shift in skin pigmentation enough to confuse her pursuers—for now. Sarah stumbled back, meshing into the jumble of terrified bathers.

  She moved with the confusion. For the first time, she took in her surroundings. Above her loomed the slide in which she had descended. The pool area was shielded from the Arabian heat by a thin transparent film, pressurized to puff into the open space. Lounges were sprinkled around the meandering pool. Cabanas ringed the structure.

  Sarah slipped into a yellow tented cabana. The maxed crush outside gave way to the interior's sumptuous luxury. A thick, white sheeted bed pocked with pillows nearly filled the space. The imprint of bodies still held on the bed's temperfoam. The occupants had been pulled from their tryst by the action outside.

  Clothes lay splashed across the room, ripped off in the heat of passion. Sarah found a stretch form corset, soft silk underwear, long leather boots. She grabbed the boots and stuffed her feet into them, lacing them up to her thighs. Then she found it—the conservative dress that had cloaked the woman. She grabbed it and jumped to the mirror. Only then did she get a real look at the person she had become.

  Standing before her was a woman in thigh-high boots and white underwear. But instead of the pallor that contrasted with her emerald green eyes, her flesh was deep black. The tat was working! Sarah stepped closer, examining her face. She augmented the pigment around her eyes and pulled some from her cheeks. While her underlying bone structure stayed constant, the alteration to her coloring shifted her appearance substantially. She gazed at a stranger's reflection.

  Slipping into the long dress, she cinched it high on her neck, making sure it covered the gash. Blood still seeped from the wound. With a head scarf thrown over her hair, her own parents wouldn't recognize her.

  Sarah stepped from the cabana and was immediately caught up in the mayhem. Hopefully, the disguise would hold. It had to.

  Taylor tracked her departure. He exited before Sarah—only then realizing that her disguise would not get her through the cordon of troopers. Sarah's pursuers had pulled her bioprint from the hotel's records. They quietly scanned each person on exiting.

  Sarah passed the trooper with quick assured steps—a rich woman who wouldn't be put out for anything. The trooper gazed transfixed at her stunning physique, just hinted at under the flow of her dress. Only after she passed did his eyes drop to the readout. He had a second to register. Then, the micron-thin shaft of Taylor's blade pierced the man's neck between the second and third vertebrae. The strike was an assassin's favorite. Instant death with almost no blood.

  The trooper fell into Taylor's arms, eyes staring at him in wide shock, then fear, then nothing. Taylor calmly set the man down and walked away. In the confusion, the trooper wouldn't be noticed. At least not immediately. Taylor let a smile play across his lips. His work was done. His lifeline would continue to spool out for another day, another week.

  I am Zachary Taylor, he thought, the mantra chilling his satisfaction. Any emotion pulled focus, and that he couldn't allow.

  He faded into the city and tracked Sarah's flight.

  7

  DUBAI CITY, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

  Sarah stared into the froth churned up by the boat's prop, her emotions equally chaotic. Even as she skimmed across the Gulf, she knew her freedom neared an end. She settled back on the thick cushions and tried to chill. This wasn't happening. Couldn't be happening. The barge sliced through the water in a clean streak, its propulsion system releasing only a soft hum.

  She let the movement settle her, trying to neutralize the terror of the past hours. Her flight from the mall had taken Sarah into the searing heat that crisped Dubai. Stepping onto the wide street, she had slowed her pace, trying not to mark herself.

  She had walked, lost in fear and revolving plans of action. Hours slipped away. Finally, the resonating call to prayer wrested her from her inner turmoil. The call rose up in a lyric chant that grounded the city in its past.

  Acting on impulse, Sarah followed her fellow pedestrians to the spindling minarets of the Jumeirah Mosque. What better place to find refuge? The mosque retained the dignified cadence of age—a reminder of another time.

  A woman flanked Sarah. Dressed conservatively, she rushed for the mosque—one more commitment in her busy day.

  As she walked, she spoke into a com-link with a crisp English accent. “Yes, yes, buy at twelve thousand euros. Buy and hold. I'll be back in a few minutes.” She listened to the reply and broke into a smile. “Yes, Steve, Allah calls. I'm holding on to my immortal sou
l, and if that means losing a point or two to the market, it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.” The caller responded again, but the woman cut off the conversation. “Bye, Steve...”

  She flipped the link, setting it to vibrate and clipping it to the outside of her purse. Sarah decided this was her chance. She let the streaming crowd push her into the woman, bumping her softly.

  “Please forgive me,” Sarah said in Urdu, and stumbled away before the woman could get a real look at her. The com-link now in Sarah's hand, she pulled out of the crowd and melted into the winding garden behind the mosque. There, she removed her veil and sidled up to a tour group of Westerners who were admiring the architecture.

  She pulled the link and locked the site she never thought she'd need.

  “Code,” the voice said.

  Sarah drew the link close and whispered a progression of prime numbers. Silence on the other end, then a series of clicks and scrambles as the encryption package came online.

  “Sarah? Thank God! We've got you popping all over our stat reports here.” Andrew Dillon's voice crackled.

  “I'm in it here. Someone's after me—people died.”

  “We know.”

  “I'll bet you do. No one could have found me without your data. There's a leak on your end—and it's going to get me dead!”

  A long silence over the link. “You may be right, Sarah. You're too careful to be tracked. With that in mind, I have to ask—”

  “What?”

  “Why are you calling?”

  “Because I don't know what the hell I'm doing! And I don't have anyone else.”

  “Okay, Sarah. I'm bringing you in. EMPYRE has you covered. But it's going to cost.”

  Sarah's head slumped. She remembered to move her feet and stay with the tour group. “I know that. There's no alternative.”

  “Now, get to Tierra del Fuego and I'll bring you in.”

  “Tierra del . . . what the hell are you talking about? That's a world away.”

  “In Dubai, the world's smaller than you'd think.”

  With that, the link went dead, leaving Sarah to the tour guide's dull drone.

  It hadn't taken her long to realize the meaning. High among Dubai's list of outrageous developments was a series of man-made islands built into the Gulf, each shaped like a country or continent. The rich and famous could buy up slices of the globe and barricade themselves in opulence.

  Sarah had managed to get to The World's harbor without being spotted. She hopped the barge and now skimmed through canals between the islands, watching mega mansions slip by.

  The freshly activated implant sent an itching nag through her mind. She tried to shut out the augmented stim stream, but found it difficult to hold focus. Now fully operational, Sarah was linked both to the flow and to her internal neural and cognitive enhancements.

  Sarah itched to flow-jump, to run the data streams where she was most comfortable. There, she could manipulate reality to suit her whim. She could lift up reality's face and gaze at the logical, if tangled, web of coding underneath. But that was an itch she couldn't scratch; her pursuers might have piggybacked a flow-tracker onto her system upgrade.

  Questions ripped through her, ones to which she wasn't sure she wanted answers. How much tinkering have they done to me? How deep did they go? The raw horror of violation threatened to overwhelm her.

  To distract herself, she gazed down at her hand. Initializing the tat, she flexed that new muscle, shifting the color of her fingers to suit her mood.

  Sarah looked away, stuffing her hand under her armpit. It was all too much. The barge wound down the coast of South America, finally rounding Cape Horn and pulling into Tierra del Fuego—and refuge.

  CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Andrew Dillon burst into EMPYRE's situation room, heady with expectation. Meeting Sarah Peters, talking with her face to face, maybe he could unlock the mystery that was Echelon. But even if that was not to be, holding a person of such capabilities was a huge boon. Despite her psychological instability, the woman's knack for sniffing out patterns of cause and effect was extraordinary. In fact, now that she was here and under his thumb, her vulnerability would itself become an asset. Dillon would use it to draw her into EMPYRE's fold. And once Savakis took Laing out of the picture, Sarah would be truly alone and even more easily manipulated.

  He entered the conference room to see the rest of EMPYRE already seated. He preferred to arrive last. Sarah sat by herself at one end of the table, hunched and small. The fiery will that had kept her from them in the past was gone. She looked hollowed, the fight in her slumbering under a heavy blanket of fear and isolation.

  She gazed up at him and he was immediately struck by her eyes. A mesmerizing blue-green. They set off a flow of line and form that made it hard not to stare. Her beauty was striking.

  “Sarah, we're so glad you're safe.”

  Sara glared back at him. “Not sure if I should thank you or blame you for all this.”

  “Let me assure you, everyone in this room has your best interests at heart.”

  Sarah nodded and gazed at her fellow occupants. “I assumed EMPYRE was U.S.-based. Just didn't think it would be this prestigious.”

  Sam Hansen chuckled at that. “We all appreciate your amazing contributions.”

  “And now that you have me in the flesh, I'm sure you'll be thrilled to let me go.”

  Silence in the room.

  Sarah nodded, turning back to Andrew. “So, the attack, everything, was a mechanism for getting me under your thumb?”

  Dillon held her gaze. There was still fight left in her. He pushed back in his chair and shook his head. “Sarah, I won't lie to you. We considered it. While we didn't know your exact whereabouts, we could have hacked it out.”

  “But,” Barbara Cox cut in, “there was a good chance you would have caught the trace and disappeared.”

  Sarah stayed on Dillon. He felt her boring into him.

  “The truth, Sarah, is that we couldn't risk losing you—even to ensure your—” Andrew hunted for the right word, “—cooperation.”

  Sarah continued to hold his gaze. Finally, she nodded and looked away. Andrew let himself exhale. Now she was his—theirs. He foresaw hours of conversation, the trickle of information flowing between them slowly building to a torrent that would change everything.

  “So, I'm free to go—once you sort out this mess?” Sarah asked.

  “No. We'd like you to be our guest. We've used your information, Sarah. I think we've used it well. But we were never able to give you the full parameters of our strategy.”

  “Nor our capabilities to so implement,” General Stanton interjected.

  “But now, thanks to the vicissitudes of fate, you have me here and can do with me what you will.”

  “Consider yourself an honored guest, Sarah. While your physical freedom may be restricted, the thing you love most—your true world—will be yours to roam,” Hansen said.

  “You see, we want you to stay of your own volition,” Dillon said. “We want you to help us. We'll give you the big picture and make you a true member of EMPYRE.”

  Dillon watched Sarah's expression shift. He saw struggle in those perfect green eyes. He saw the fire. Then they went cold blank.

  Confusion filled Andrew. He had seen that look before—on the man upon whose shoulders EMPYRE was built. A man he had manipulated for years. They were the fish-dull eyes of a psychopath. Dillon had played such men throughout his career. All it took was finding that fulcrum and shoving. But that wasn't Sarah. She didn't fit the profile.

  Andrew watched Sarah's green eyes dull out. He sensed danger, adrenaline flooding him. But by then it was too late.

  Sarah Peters exhaled and life as Andrew Dillon knew it was over. Alarms pierced the silence.

  Inside Sarah, something kinked. Her thoughts, her perception—all snapped shut, screen dark. Reality melted into a pool of impressions. The internal processes of her body slushed around her, foreign an
d out of control. Horror filled what scraps of consciousness she retained.

  “What the hell is that?!” Barbara shrieked over the needle-sharp alarm.

  Andrew flipped his handheld and read the alarm. “Bioagent,” he said in dull confusion. Then, looking up at Sarah, comprehension hardened his gaze. “Oh my God. No, no, no! ” The first was confusion, the second horror, the third pure rage.

  As Sarah watched, the skin on Dillon's forearms went papery, then bubbled red. He coughed blue-black blood.

  Through wheezing hacks, Stanton forced out a single word: “How?”

  Dillon held on Sarah, his skin pocking into a ghoulish mask. “You? Why . . .”

  Shock and horror warred within Sarah. She watched the people around her fall to wracking pain. Words slipped from her mouth, her voice a desiccated husk. “It's not me.”

  But what else could it be? She waited for the coughing to reach her, almost longed for the sickness to set in. But she felt fine.

  Dillon's eyes bulged, then bled, spasmodic hemorrhaging throwing him back in his chair. The others shared Sarah's horror—until they too succumbed. Gurgling, wrenched cries gave their transformation a sound track. Sarah stood stock-still, unable to grasp the death show playing out before her.

  She locked on Sam Hansen. He alone didn't scream. Instead fury flooded him, his suffering masked by rage. He held position, muscles locked tight. In a spasmodic jab, Hansen freed a needle gun from his jacket. The mere touch of the fabric shredded his hand, flesh peeled from muscle in black sheets. Sarah could not move—could only watch in horrified fascination. Even as his flesh liquefied, Hansen gripped the gun. He sighted, eyes filled with blood—a cataract of red. He fired.

  Sarah couldn't pull herself from the red eyes. Needles whizzed past. She heard them bore into the wall behind her. With a final flicker of perception, Hansen saw he had failed. Then, his head and neck went into convulsive spasms. The convulsions shot through the rest of his body, torquing him into a rigid arch. The pain arcing through him burst out in a primal scream. But on expelling the air, he sputtered, unable to draw breath. Asphyxiation set in.