The Deep Link (The Ascendancy Trilogy Book 1) by Sicoe Veronica

Author:Sicoe, Veronica [Sicoe, Veronica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Veronica Sicoe
Published: 2015-06-14T22:00:00+00:00

23

On his fifth run, Bray no longer scorns the tediousness of his task. They've all got to do their part, after all.

He navigates the streets carefully, making sure there are no danger zones or surveillance spots he can't trick. His synet overlays traffic signs, street names and house numbers over the visual input from his eyes, and even gives him the images from various traffic cameras in small patches that dance along the top of his vision. He walks with his hands tucked deep in the pockets of his overall, a cap shading his eyes.

It's late afternoon in Erano's thirty-one hour day, and the second work shift has already retreated into their homes and weekday housings. The crowd is getting thinner on the streets, so he doesn't have much time left to reach his target unobserved.

The four Syndicate sleepers he's contacted so far proved to be a disappointment. One was eight years short of retiring—an engineer who didn't want to risk his pension. The next was a mother of five, pregnant with twins. Bray almost laughed in her face as she opened the door, but the dark rings under her eyes held him back. She said she would do her best to provide them with information, but that's all. The other two guys were fairly eager to be part of any radical activity that promised to score off the TMC. James Ratrand and Helmut Krupke. Bray doesn't like them, especially not Helmut. The guy's got a funny glint in his eyes that screams trigger happy. But Bray hasn't come out here to judge them. All he has to do is bring them in.

The dome's halo makes all the colors look off. The concrete on the streets and sidewalks is washed in an oily-yellow hue, the lamps hovering above the street glinting like disco balls, and all the building fronts are a tad too violet.

Bray turns a corner and crosses a river over a fortified bridge. The permafrost-covered acidic river, the Fiume Giallo, flows into the Mare Ocra, the Yellow Sea, further south in D5. It forms a small delta there, enriching the rigid soil with various valuable minerals. The poisonous river cools the air down to negative degrees Celsius along its shores. Bray shivers and hugs his arms to his chest as he crosses the bridge.

The buildings along this street are mostly info-tech development facilities and data analysis centers, completely covered in opaque panels and riddled with surveillance cameras. Bray even sees a couple of observation bots fly overhead like fist-sized bumblebees. He pulls his cap lower and hunches his shoulders, kicking imaginary pebbles as he approaches his target.

A cargo transport rolls soundlessly over the concrete on twenty large, foam-filled tires. It stops further up the street and begins a laborious parking maneuver up the ramp of a storage building. Bray squints up at a nearby surveillance tower with its round observation deck, its own antennae array and a good dozen slots for the observation bots to come back to and recharge.

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