She recognized some of these people now as she walked past. A reformed felon. A Pashtun translator from Balochistan who was now on his way to becoming an American citizen. Merritt’s captain from his state police days. A Mexico City banker whose daughter Roy had rescued from kidnappers in a daring raid—and on and on.
As an agent in the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, Merritt had traveled the world and always into danger. But he brought the values he’d gained in this small town with him wherever he went. It had taken his death to finally bring him home.
Philips kept moving through the mourners. A young priest. City officials. A well-dressed woman in sports glasses.
Philips halted. Sports glasses. Her mind never missed details. She recalled the moments just before the attack. Merritt had come to her lab to bring captured Daemon equipment from Sao Paulo, Brazil. He’d brought her sports glasses—glasses that were actually a sophisticated heads-up display (or HUD) able to see into a virtual dimension. An augmented reality the Daemon had overlaid on the GPS grid. Sports glasses were the user interface to the Daemon.
She turned to look back at the woman, who was moving slowly but deliberately through the crowd as though searching for something. Philips turned to follow her but passed another mourner, a middle-aged man in a black suit, wearing similar glasses. The thick posts and unusual design of these glasses could easily be ignored as an annoying new fashion, but they could not be a coincidence. The man glanced at her and kept walking, also seemingly searching for something. Hot fear surged through her.
Daemon operatives are here.
Could they really be brazen enough to attend Merritt’s funeral? Her tears stopped. She palmed her L3 SME secure cell phone and marched purposefully through the crowd, putting distance between herself and the operatives. Before she walked ten feet she saw another man wearing HUD glasses. Philips stepped behind a tall headstone and looked for a sheltered place to phone for help. At the edge of the crowd she saw a weatherworn burial vault and headed toward it.
As she walked, she kept spotting Daemon operatives, moving through the mourners in a skirmish line, still scanning for something. There seemed to be no standard profile. They were equally male or female, young to middle-aged. There were dozens of them.
As Philips stepped behind the granite burial vault, she flipped open her phone—but then realized that she didn’t know who to call. Roy Merritt would have been her first choice. In fact, just about everyone she could think of calling was now dead or missing. There were hundreds of police officers and FBI agents all around her attending the funeral, but they wouldn’t have any idea how dangerous these people were. And what about the innocent people in the crowd? Did she really want to provoke a confrontation? But the operatives were here for a purpose. She had to do something.
It was then that Philips noticed she had no cell signal. There was no service at all.
“It’s rude to make phone calls at a funeral.”
Philips looked up to see a twentysomething man dressed in a dark suit, overcoat, and black gloves. An FBI badge hung from his breast pocket, giving him the appearance of an overeager rookie. She recognized him instantly. He was a Daemon operative. With short-cropped hair he was indistinguishable from a dozen other young FBI agents in the crowd, but unlike the other Daemon operatives he wore no glasses. Instead his pupils shone with the iridescence of mother-of-pearl—apparently contact lenses.
He was the one who had destroyed Daemon Task Force headquarters and slain all her people. This was Roy Merritt’s killer. The highest-level Daemon operative known.
“Loki.”
He approached her calmly, surveying the crowd. “I hear Roy didn’t have much in the way of family. Who the hell are all these people?”
“You made a mistake coming here.”
“Look. Actual tears on people’s faces. I don’t think you or I will draw a crowd like this, Doctor. What is it about Roy Merritt that inspires everyone so much?”
Philips glared. “It has to do with serving others—something you’d know nothing about.”
He stood silently for a beat. “I serve a greater good.”
“You’re a mass murderer who worships at the feet of a dead lunatic.”
“Is that right?” He noticed her still punching keys on her phone. “Don’t bother. It’s being jammed.”
Philips lowered it. “Why would you bring your people here?” “They’re not my people. They came on their own. There’s a video simulcast of the funeral beaming out to the darknet. Hundreds of thousands are watching this event worldwide.”
“Why, so they can gloat over their victory?”
He gave her a sideways glance. “Don’t be a bitch, Doctor. This was no victory. Roy Merritt is the famous Burning Man to them. A worthy adversary who’s gone viral. There’s no predicting these things in a network. The factions came to pay their last respects—and to find his killer.”
She thought he was being glib, but he looked serious. “If that’s true, how do you think they’ll react when they find out you killed Roy?”
He smiled grimly. “They all know what happened. You’re the only one without a clue.” He stared at her intently.
Loki pointed to Philips’s tinted glasses. “How are your eyes, Doctor? Corneal damage? You must have been close.”
Anger rose within her at his mention of the attack at Building Twenty-Nine. “There are hundreds of police officers around us. You won’t escape this time.”
“Did you expect me to go into hiding? Is that it? Well, I’ve grown beyond hiding, Doctor. Besides, it would be a shame to sully the memory of Roy Merritt by turning his funeral into a massacre.”
She studied his face and decided he wasn’t bluffing. “We will stop you.”
“You can’t even stop tweens from stealing music. How are you going to stop me? Feds: always overreaching. And what if you could stop me?” He gestured to the Daemon operatives still moving through the crowd. “It wouldn’t stop them.”
“We’ll find the Daemon’s weak spot sooner or later, and we’ll destroy it. If you help me, I’ll see that you’re treated with leniency.”
“You really have no idea what’s going on, do you? You’re like Merritt was. A true believer. You should have listened to Jon Ross: never trust a government.”
He noticed the momentary look of shock on her face. “You did know The Major was spying on you, right? Tapping into his surveillance system was what gave me access to everything on your task force. Including your private conversations with the illustrious Mr. Ross.”
Philips felt doubly defeated and stood grasping for something to say.
“I have video from every camera at Building Twenty-Nine before it was destroyed.” He paused. “By the way, you and Jon Ross should just have fucked and gotten it over with.”
Philips couldn’t help a pang of loss at the mention of Ross’s name. Not an hour passed when she didn’t think about him—and how he’d saved her life. She recalled their last moment together. Then she purposely met Loki’s gaze. “Get to the point.”
“Have I upset you? I didn’t think you’d go for the criminal type, Doctor.”
“Jon Ross is dead.”
“So I hear.” Loki slipped a hand into his jacket. “You might find some of my surveillance video interesting.” He withdrew a metallic scroll and offered it to Philips.
She hesitated.
“If I came here to kill you, Doctor, I wouldn’t waste time talking first. Just open it.”
She took the metallic scroll and pulled the twin tubes apart to reveal a glossy, flexible video screen already glowing with electrical energy.
“You don’t understand the Daemon. You keep thinking it’s something we obey like automatons. But that’s not it at all. The Daemon’s darknet is just a reflection of the people in it. It’s a new social order. One that’s immune to bullshit.”