Freedom TM

dropped from her hand with a clang. The glowing message changed to read:
Open the service door and do not speak.
    She turned around.
    There at the rear service door stood a man dressed in a blackNomex flight suit, body armor, and utility vest. A balaclava covered his head and advanced-looking night vision goggles covered his eyes. In his gloved hands he held a laser pointing device aimed at Philips’s dining room wall.
    She recovered from the shock and walked to the service door. After a moment’s hesitation she opened it.
    The intruder ducked past her and closed the door, holding a gloved finger to his lips.
    He pulled a wandlike device from his utility harness and started scanning the walls, light fixtures, and furniture with it.
    As she watched, Philips listened to the news playing in the background, continuing its litany of financial and social woes. Philips turned up the volume.
    Anji Anderson was on screen as part of a panel with other pundits. She spoke authoritatively for someone who had a few short years ago been a lifestyles reporter.
“People can’t simply blame others for their plight. They need to lift themselves up by their bootstraps, but it appears that some people don’t want to do that. They want to take from others in pursuit of what they call”
—air quotes—“‘
fairness.’”
    The stranger meanwhile was teasing a small bugging device out of her dining room lamp with tweezers. He held it up for Philips to see, then placed it in one of several chambers in a small metal box.
    He continued scanning for bugs as Philips followed him
    It took nearly twenty minutes, but by the time he was done, he had located eight bugs in all—from the bar to the bathroom to the bedroom. The stranger then sat down on a changing bench at the foot of the bed and removed his hood and goggles. Jon Ross sighed in relief and smiled at her. “There we go.”
    “Jon! My god …” She rushed to hold his face in her hands. There was that slight crinkle at the corner of his eyes when he smiled that she missed so much. Before she had time to think about it, she was kissing him passionately. After a moment she pulled back to look at him.
    He gazed back, and then pulled her close, kissing her harder, longer, and with a strength that almost squeezed the breath from her.
    He eventually relaxed his hold. “I thought I’d lost you.”
    “How on earth did you find me?”
    He tugged on the silver chain around her neck, coming up with the amulet he’d created for her.
    She scowled. “You gave me a tracking device? How romantic …”
    “It’s more an amulet of protection.”
    “Protection from what?”
    “From Loki—and people like him. I didn’t want his machines harming you.”
    She studied the amulet and then turned back to him. Philips pointed to the metal box on the nearby table. “You’re sure they can’t hear us?”
    Ross nodded. “Bug Vault. It produces generic sounds of human habitation—footsteps, television, stuff like that. It’ll make them think their bugs are still in place.”
    “How the hell did you get past ranch security? This place is surrounded by the best surveillance system money can buy.”
    “Yeah, they’re using the latest technology—a Beholder Unified Surveillance System designed by Haverford Systems. State of the art.”
    She looked puzzled.
    “Let’s just say it has some flaws built in, compliments of the Chinese people.”
    She sat down next to him. “I was worried I’d never see you again.” Philips looked at him gravely. “But why would you take such a stupid risk to come here?”
    “I came to get you, Nat.”
    “What made you think I needed rescuing? This is where I need to be. They’re about to launch Operation Exorcist, and unless I can stop them, they’ll take control of the Daemon.”
    He contemplated her words. “The Weyburn Labs people haveexpanded on the work you and I did at Building Twenty-Nine. They’re starting to crack their way into the Daemon’s darknet. I don’t know how they did it, but they’ve started spoofing people and creating darknet objects. They used it to capture Pete Sebeck, and he’s here on the ranch now.”
    “Where did you hear that?”
    “From Pete Sebeck.”
    “Peter Sebeck is
alive
?”
    “Yeah, look, it’s a long story, but Sobol rescued Sebeck from his execution and sent him on a quest to justify humanity’s freedom. The Major just kidnapped Sebeck and brought him here. There’s about to be a serious showdown, Nat,