Ecko Rising Read Online Free Page B

came over their personal link. Do you trust this, Luge? She could as easily set him up...
    Lugan didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure he could.

2: RECONNAISSANCE
                         PILGRIM PHARMACEUTICALS RESEARCH FACILITY, LONDON
    Ecko crouched against the back wall of the roof garden.
    The cold March wind shrieked the length of the Thames, driving the grey water to white froth. The weather had grounded drones and aircars; on Blackfriars Bridge rain slashed viciously sideways into bright glass. Up here, acrylic greenery was driven to madness by the howling weather, it thrashed round where he hid as if it were trying to give him away.
    He’d been cornered like a fucking rat – stuck here, with no way out of the shit Lugan’d landed him in.
    He’d like to see Collator’s percentage on this .
    Ecko’s recon was fucked and now he was trapped, eight storeys above the sidewalk, with no firearm, no aural link and no radio. The wall of the building below him was sheer glass, running with rain – too tough to break and too smooth for his vacuum suckers to hold. His usual Spidey tactics useless, the only way out was past the guard-’bot that blocked the stairwell door.
    Yeah, like that’s gonna happen any time soon...
    Through the rain, he could barely see it. Like his suckers, his oculars were trashed by the weather – the ’bot was a dark-grey blur against a bright-grey background. It’d set up camp like it was waiting for the opening of a BiFrost gig. Watching, Ecko hunched against the wall and wondered if Lugan would send the cavalry in time.
    Salva, goon commander, knew he was up here. She was coming.
    And once she found him, he was fucking toast.
    “I know you can do this,” Lugan’d told him quietly after the initial briefing. “But listen up. This run is just recon – you get in, you get out. No mess. Fuller uploads the report at 06:48. Don’t fuck this up.”
    Ecko’d barely listened; he’d been so fucking cocky. He’d been given a chance to show what he could really do – and he’d grabbed at it like a dangled carrot.
    “Like I’m as dumb as you look.”
    “I mean it.” One of Lugan’s hands had clamped hard on his shoulder, holding him back. “You don’t understand ’ow important this is – an’ I ain’t explainin’ it, not now. Behave yourself.”
    Yeah right , Ecko told the memory. That’s why you didn’t gimme a radio you –
    One of the potted trees went over with crash, ceramic shattering. A blood-red sheet of target-scan seared through the rain.
    Ecko dropped flat in the lee of the wall and belly-crawled backwards, the puddles soaking his skin. The scan passed over him.
    Jeez , he thought at the ’bot, Get it through your metallic brain willya, there’s no one fucking up here...
    It was his only plan: if the ’bot scanned one hundred per cent of the potential hiding places and found nothing, it might just go for a cappuccino.
    All right, already, so it was a long shot.
    He’d thought this job was going to be so fucking simple!
    Collator had pulled everything it could on Doctor Slater Grey; it had plotted Ecko’s approach carefully. They’d seen sat-cover of the South Bank – cafés, bars, galleries, theatres. Tourists and yuppies, he’d thought, a piece of piss, placid after dark. Grey’s pad was a zigzag of blue glass rising above its surroundings.
    Getting in had just been too fucking easy.
    He’d been a flicker of obscurity; they’d never seen him coming. His chameleon skin tone concealed him from visual security, his small physique radiated no heat, his stealth-cloak blurred his outline. His black-on-black eyes and black grin reflected no light. Mobile or stationary, he made no noise unless he chose to, he left no scent –
    That fucking ’bot was moving.
    Flicking his vision over to starlites, Ecko struggled to make it out. It showed up like a blotch of grey-green, one arm rising to point across the landing pad. Through the screaming weather, he