The Persona Protocol - By Andy McDermott Page 0,72

their driver pick up the pace.

Fa’s taxi approached an intersection. On the right, a half-built casino rose skeletally into the night sky, tall barriers cutting the construction site off from the sidewalk. There were very few people about; the area was still under development. ‘Go right here,’ Adam ordered, sliding over to that side. ‘Keep going once you’re round the corner – don’t slow down. Get them to follow you for as long as you can.’

The driver made the turn. Adam half pulled the door handle until he felt the latch release, then held it in place. As the other cab slowed to follow, it was briefly blocked from sight by the barriers on the corner—

He pulled the lever and dived out of the car.

Even with his arms crossed tightly across his chest and his head bowed to shield it as much as possible, Adam still hit the pavement hard. Pain flared in his left shoulder. He rolled, tumbling diagonally across the sidewalk and hitting the wooden barrier with a bang.

He flattened himself along the foot of the fence, burying his face in his arms. Fa’s cab pulled away, and he heard the second taxi take the corner. He had to hope that the bodyguards’ attention was on the vehicle ahead and not the shadows at the roadside . . .

It drove past. Adam lifted his head. His pursuers’ cab was following the first. No brake lights, no sudden turns. They hadn’t seen him.

Wincing at the ache in his shoulder, he stood. ‘Holly Jo, I’m out. Where’s the van?’

‘Almost there,’ she replied. ‘We’ll pick you up at the corner.’

Checking again that the second cab was still heading away from him, he trotted back down the street to the intersection, seeing an anonymous white van approach. It pulled over, and he hurried to the back. The rear door opened. ‘You okay?’ Tony asked as he helped Adam inside.

‘Yeah.’ The back of the van had been turned into a mobile operations centre, albeit a very cramped one. Kyle and Holly Jo sat in staggered positions, the various components of their portable workstations secured to racks on the cabin walls. Tony had a similar arrangement for his own system. ‘What about Bianca?’

‘She’s fine, so far,’ Holly Jo reported.

‘Good. Kyle, where’s the drone?’

Kyle indicated one of his monitors. It showed an aerial view of the intersection, the van stationary at the roadside. ‘Right overhead.’

‘Get it back to the casino. We need eyes on Zykov’s penthouse.’

‘On it.’ The intersection swept off the screen as the UAV turned and ascended.

The van set off. ‘How are you going to get in there?’ Holly Jo asked.

Adam gave her one of Vanwall’s sardonic smiles. ‘That’s a good question.’

Tony spoke into his headset. ‘Levon, we need those hotel floor plans. The routes we considered to reach the penthouse – bring them back up.’

Levon’s voice came through the comm system. ‘You do remember that all those routes looked incredibly dangerous, right?’

‘It’d crossed my mind,’ said Adam.

‘Juuuust checking.’

Adam regarded the cases containing the PERSONA equipment. ‘There’s no way I’ll be able to get across the roof carrying those. I need a backpack – something that leaves my hands free.’

Holly Jo peered under her console. ‘There’s a laptop bag here that should be big enough. It’s only got a shoulder strap, though.’

‘Nothing better?’ Tony asked, getting head shakes in response. ‘Okay, it’ll have to do. Pass it down.’

Adam opened the cases. It was not so much the dimensions of the PERSONA device and its recorder unit that would be a problem as their weight – and fragility. The large, solid cases had plenty of high-impact foam padding inside them. A laptop bag, however big, would have almost nothing. ‘It’d make things easier if I didn’t take the recorder.’

‘Martin’s orders,’ said Tony. ‘We need a backup of Zykov’s persona in case anything goes wrong.’

‘That would mean imprinting it into Adam twice,’ Holly Jo objected.

Adam chuckled sarcastically. ‘If anything goes wrong fifty floors up, the only thing I’ll be imprinting will be the sidewalk.’ He took the bag from Tony and opened it. It was big enough to hold both parts of the PERSONA system . . . just. The smaller medical case was another matter. ‘Kyle, that strap holding your laptop in place. Toss it over.’

Kyle unhooked the black nylon band and threw it down the cabin. ‘Hope we don’t hit any bumps, brah,’ he said, awkwardly wedging the laptop in position with his knees.

Adam looped the strap through the medical case’s handle and