Готовый перевод Нова Проспект / Nova Prospect: Deus Ex Machinae (Адам)

Deus Ex Machinae (Adam)

* * *

Adam had no physical need for coffee. Sharif had made sure that his best man had been implanted with a cutting-edge implant that stimulated his nervous system by injecting adrenaline as soon as Adam wiped his eyes from sleep. The blissful sipping was a thing of the past, replaced by a rapid heartbeat and dilated pupils. In the chief's opinion, the head of security at Sharif Industries could not afford such a lowly biological luxury as sleepiness.

But that didn't stop Adam from sticking to his morning ritual: a mug of black coffee, strong enough to make even the dead rise from the grave, and a Royal Hellhounds cigarette (though as soon as Adam took his first puff, the filters in his lungs destroyed the tobacco, rightly recognizing it as an external threat). These actions helped him feel like a man of capricious flesh demanding its momentary pleasures again, not an all-metal shell.

The final part of the ritual was a lazy glance at the screaming headlines of The Midnight Sun. Adam leaned back in his leather chair, the cigarette smoke preventing him from seeing what was written on the screen. The vision module obeyed the command to filter out the interference without question. Despite the decades of technological progress that had made technology invisible and inaudible, the computer fan still hummed pleasantly.

++"Sharif Industries shares - unprecedented record first quarter results! Will the rally continue?"

Blah, blah, blah. Only Sharif and his cronies will make a real profit from any stock spike. Everyone else would have to make do with leftovers from the king's table. Adam blinked - switch. The next news item obediently appeared on the screen.

++"Senator Harry Jasers is concerned about black helicopters. What is the government really hiding?"

Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to. If black helicopters are all that bothers Senator Jasers, it's been a long time since the august man took to the streets of Detroit. The city has become a giant breeding ground for contagion, teeming with vermin, bacilli, and gossip.

++"Mysterious TV host Elise Kassan - everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask!"

Enough. Adam didn't know what revelation he was expecting from the yellowed Midnight Sun and took a large sip. The coffee didn't taste bitter enough, but Adam was wary of altering his taste buds to simulate what he wanted. He was unconsciously drawn to the real, unaltered tastes and smells.

They embodied something elusively human for Adam, something that Sharif had so unceremoniously taken from him under the guise of "his own good." One of those people who were happy to try on the guise of a savior without bothering to find out whether the rescued person wanted to be rescued. The anesthesia-blurred memories of mechanical needles made Adam shiver.

The number of activities that can be used to postpone the start of the working day without remorse is very limited. The cigarette was almost to the filter and had been scrapped. It would be recycled and returned to Adam just like it - perfectly waste-free.

The shiny black surface of the table was covered in a web of tiny scratches. Adam imagined the infinite number of random touches it had taken to create such a pattern of life.

The monitor screen went out abruptly. At the same second, the fan stopped whirring and the red icon on the coffee maker stopped blinking. Adam stared thoughtfully at the black square, assessing the new interpretation of modern art.

It was suspiciously quiet in the Sharif Industries headquarters, where a cacophony of electronic and human sounds reigned around the clock. Until the first annoyed exclamation in the Open Space, heard through the ajar office door: "What the hell? Is there a short circuit or something?!".

The assumption was logical but highly unlikely. The headquarters housed the company's holy of holies, the research center, and a laboratory. Sharif had invested a lot of money to keep the servers running as smoothly and accurately as a Swiss watch.

A system failure would cost the company much more if even a fraction of the information in the data sets were lost. Adam mentally wished Pritchard would take advantage of the confusion to flee toward Latin America and hide in the Amazon jungle.

If such a force majeure were to happen, it should never last more than five seconds. After that, the backup generators should have kicked in and everything would be back to normal.

Five, four, three, two, one. A piercing electric silence. Everything is unprecedented until it happens for the first time.

The handle of the Zenith itself eased into his mechanical hand. Adam tried to connect to the security department's corporate chat room, which was normally on mute so as not to annoy his ears with constant tasteless jokes. A critical communication error message popped up in front of his eyes. An attempt to contact Pritchard directly ended the same way.

Jensen scrapped the short-circuit theory - the corporate chat room had nothing to do with the main power supplies. If the attempt to contact Frank had failed, the mechanical override of possible scenarios left only one possibility: an electromagnetic bomb. An attempt at sabotage, corporate espionage - in other words, Adam Jensen's daily bread.

Ten rounds - the fully loaded Zenith was tight in his hand, perfectly synchronized with the guidance system. The cameras showed only white noise. It was a rare moment in the modern world to use brains rather than technology.

If Adam decided to sabotage a competitor and detonate an electromagnetic bomb as efficiently as possible, he would enter the building through the ventilation system, planting the bomb in the server room. The electrical pulse would burn the servers' data to the ground, causing the entire tech department to once again believe in any of the forgotten gods and pray that the backups were done in full.

The building came alive again with flashing lights and vibrating noise. The air seemed stale and overheated, like yesterday's soup. A mechanical voice hit Adam's eardrums, confirming his guess about the bomber:

++" Attempted unauthorized entry into the building has been detected. Repeat: an attempt to..."

The sentence was interrupted by a nasty, worse than the sound of a fingernail on glass, scraping. The systems were damaged - the company would need time and money to repair the damage. The uninvited guest acted alone. A scan of the premises found only one person without an ID card.

++"The connection to corporate chat has been established. We apologize for any inconvenience".

Voices distorted by heavy interference rang out in Adam's head:

"Boss, up here on the roof ...

... hostage on the roof!"

The terrorist must have tried to hijack the helicopter from the roof deck, taking the hostage with him. Adam quickly sent a message to Farida - by his calculations, she should have been just about to fly up to the headquarters. She would provide air support if Adam didn't get there in time to treat him with iron first.

First flight of stairs. The chat was bursting with simultaneous messages.

"...the instruments went to hell. Looks like an electromagnetic bomb, but..."

Second stairwell.

"...interference on the cameras - I see the girl, I don't see the girl.....

...must be holding her at gunpoint..."

The roof. A sharp kick. The guidance system searched for a moving target - but found only one. A gale-force wind slammed into his face. This morning, Elise Kassan had reported a seven on the Beaufort scale with an unchanging plastic smile.

On the roof stood a frail girl in unthinkable clothing. Adam's infrared vision detected no other intruders. A terrorist had taken a hostage, but abandoned her halfway up without even using her as a payoff for his pursuit? It's too illogical behavior. Adam signaled the Detroit Police Department's assault team to intercept the aircraft.

"...The flash is not electromagnetic....

. some kind of paradox..."

Adam really disliked paradoxes.

The girl was in a state of shock, staring at Adam with a glazed look in her wide-open, almond-shaped eyes. The terrorist had kidnapped his victim, either from a drama club or from a movie set, and the girl was dressed in medieval style. Women in those times did not wear shirts with a bodice visible in the neckline - but the movie makers would put a miniskirt on Mother Teresa for the sake of a sexy show and make her send an air kiss to the audience.

The swordswoman with the cutout on her shirt and the ornate medallion in the shape of a cat's head looked like she'd stepped off the cover of a fantasy game. Adam wasn't a fan of such entertainment, but he'd turned a blind eye (in vain, as it turned out) to the console in the guard room.

The first rule for helping civilians in the middle of a firestorm is to activate the communication module and assess the degree of mental damage. General facial expression analysis in progress... Personality type: alpha. What a generous compliment to the trembling creature, he should have ignored the notification of the last update. Emotions: fear, shock, excitement. Analysis complete.

The motto of the new world, Descartes' nightmare: "I analyze, therefore I exist."

"Miss, calm down, I'm not going to hurt you," Adam stepped toward her with his hand out in warning. "Adam Jensen, head of security for Sharif Industries. You're safe."

The girl had hair dyed a fashionable ash color, like the members of the newfangled Atomic Kittens that the receptionist listened to on repeat. The scar on her cheek looked like makeup to him at first, but upon closer inspection, Adam didn't see any makeup particles. Just once metal-torn flesh. She must have come from a poor family if she hadn't had the cosmetic blemish removed - cosmetic surgery prices were dumping.

However, when beauty is available to everyone at an affordable price, its absence is perceived as a kind of valor. A new way to express your individuality.

"Nie podchodź," the girl drew her sword with a deft movement and pointed it at Adam. "Nie podchodź, mówię! *"

The speech was more like a hiss, but Adam recognized it as a language from the Slavic group. A Russian tourist whose language module had malfunctioned after the EM flash. The poor woman had lost her mind from the experience and had decided to defend herself against the cyborg with... a sword?

The sword was real, of pure metal, not a theatrical prop. Unlike the movie people, Adam listened attentively to lectures on the history of weapons - swordsmen never carried their weapons in scabbards on a belt behind their backs - too dangerous and too long to draw, but no one in our times still cares about historical accuracy.

The radio in his ear buzzed, and a cheerful voice called out:

"Malik is on the line, repeat: Malik is on the line. I'm two kilometers away, I've got a visual. I see the girl, I don't see the terrorist."

Adam glanced up at the sky: Farida's plane was already visible on the horizon and was rapidly gaining speed. The sky above headquarters was the color of a television screen tuned to an empty channel How many times had he told Farida that her daring would not end well?

"Escaped. I've already notified the assault team. Land, but be careful. Do you have a language module on board? We got a Russian tourist with PTSD threatening me with a sword."

"What is she threatening you with?" Farida laughed. The radio turned her laughter into a joyous chirp.

Although wireless technology had been in use for half a century, the girl clearly thought Adam was talking to her and listened warily to the foreign speech without lowering her sword.

Adam tried in vain to remember the language of the old geopolitical adversaries, which he had once memorized in his lectures on military translation at the University of Phoenix. The only words that came to mind were "da," "net," and a couple of other profanities. Ah, yes, holodnaya vojna. It was time for the improvisation that only the human mind can do.

"Ne vojna," he pointed a finger at himself, vaguely realizing he was talking nonsense, but nonsense was better than awkward silence. "Dobro."

Apparently, such a performance made an indelible impression on the girl: her light green eyes rounded, and her face flashed almost a pity for the madman. Emotions detected: doubt, incomprehension. Useless stuff. Adam switched off the communication module and repeated, "Dobro," just to be sure. The girl waggled an eyebrow in response to this statement, but still lowered her sword arm slightly and said incredulously:

"Nie wyglądasz na dobrego człowieka."*

Adam only caught the word " good" in that incoherent set of hissing sounds, and that was good enough for him. He took another step toward the hostage. There was something unusual about the stranger, and not just her clothes and behavior: some strange alienness, an innocence unusual for the modern world.

The blades of Farida's hovercraft rumbled in the air. Farida tried to land two meters away from them, on Sharif's helipad, but the gale wind was pulling her away. The girl stared up at the sky and backed away:

"Ślepy jesteś? To żelazny gryf. Kryj się! "*

This was the first time Adam had ever had to witness the kind of animal panic a simple airplane could cause. The girl pointed her sword at the sky, striking a protective pose. A real actor never gets out of character. Post-traumatic stress syndrome had scarred her psyche far more than Adam had realized. As the hovercraft flew closer, the girl clenched her eyes tightly, a look Adam had seen on the faces of children who, in critical situations, try to escape into their secret imaginary world.

The world around him was covered with red spots. Adam blinked, trying to reset the vision module. Still, it continued to produce phantasmagorical images before his eyes - the girl was glowing green and her eyes were emitting a blinding white light. After his vision, his hearing began to fail - the system gave out a message in front of his eyes:

++"Fatal error. Please restart the system. Gravity drop."

"Jensen, my electronics are malfunctioning!" an agitated Farida shouted into the radio. "It's going to be a hard landing!"

The girl continued to glow with green light like a neon angel. The air vibrated with a deep infrasound shudder. The corporate chat room turned on again:

"...electromagnetic pulse ...

...second strike..."

The message in front of his eyes flashed a menacing red color:

++"You are in a critically unstable area. Please return to the gravitationally stable..."

Adam hadn't realized such a mistake existed. If his skin had allowed him to sweat, he would have been covered head to toe in sweat. For the first time since the bullet had struck him in the forehead, he felt fear -not the cold, mechanical warning signal of the nervous system, but simple animal fear.

"Jensen, I'm fucking falling! Mayday, mayday, mayday, mayday!"

He always knew that sooner or later the flights of the Night Valkyrie would end with this.

The plane tilted, diving at breakneck speed straight for the roof of Sharif Industries' headquarters, and Adam didn't need any built-in math module to calculate the trajectory of the falling pile of metal. The girl would be killed either by the impact of the Hovercraft's cockpit or the heat of its glowing engine.

"Stay where you are!" Adam shouted, but the girl didn't react, throwing her head back and staring at the sky with unseeing white eyes. He wouldn't have time to push her away before the blow would kill them both.

The rushing car ripped through the air with the scraping of metal against the concrete of the roof. It was overlaid with a shrill, piercing scream - the girl's or Farida's? - It was impossible to make out. Sounds and visions swirled like a kaleidoscope. Adam clenched his teeth, barely resisting the urge to close his eyes to avoid imprinting another death on his memory.

The world around him was falling apart, but that didn't stop him from seeing the girl dissolve into a green haze a second before her slender body was nearly crushed by tons of metal.

++"Critical System Error."

* * *

Nie podchodź. Nie podchodź, mówię! (Pol) - Stay back. Stay back, I said!

Nie wyglądasz na dobrego człowieka. (Pol.)* - You don't seem like a good man.

Ślepy jesteś? To żelazny gryf. Kryj się! (Pol.)* - Are you blind? It's an iron griffin. Hide!

Внимание! Этот перевод, возможно, ещё не готов.
Его статус: идёт перевод

Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/86809/568880

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP