by Ramez Naam
And to fire half a meter to the left of his target.
They’d used it to shoot at the President, but not to hit him. To miss.
“They could have at least been better shots!” Anne said in his memories.
Oh no. They hit exactly what they meant to.
Who had the most to gain? Nakamura’s voice asked him.
Stockton was losing until the PLF tried to kill him, Anne answered. He’s going to win because of the assassination attempt.
The answer was clear.
The President had the most to gain.
35
LAST WORDS
Saturday October 27th
Sam crossed the courtyard to Jake, fell to her knees at his side. He was face down in the gravel. His mind was still there, but in pain, and fading. A red stain was spreading across his back. A puddle was forming under him. There was a hole in his shirt, in the flesh below, where the bullet had punched all the way through him.
“Jake, Jake,” she said. “Oh my God, Jake.”
He groaned in pain. “Sunee…” he said weakly. His mind was faltering, confused, weak from blood loss.
Sam put her hands on his shirt, ripped it open as gently as she could, tried to see the wound better.
It was bad. The bullet had punched through his lung, had sent an expanding cone of carnage through his chest cavity. There was blood everywhere. Something had nicked a major blood vessel.
“Sunee…” he groaned. He was reaching out for her with his mind, trying to feel her more. She could feel him fading, fading further.
She balled up the shirt, pressed it into the wound as best she could. The blood kept coming.
No doctor, she thought. No vehicle.
“Let me touch you…” he moaned. “Please.”
“You’re not going to die,” she told him.
His eyes were open. He was staring at her. He knew what was coming.
“Please…” he begged her.
Tears rolled down Sam’s face. A sob ripped its way out of her. She nodded. “Yes.”
Then she opened herself to him, opened herself as wide as she could, let him see who she was.
His eyes went wide as he drank her in, a confusion of images and memories and sensations. Above it all she sent her feelings for him, her admiration, her trust, her tenderness, the thing that might have been love.
He closed his eyes and when he opened them there were tears there too. A drop of blood from her cuts dripped from her face onto his. He looked at her, with those wide, amazed eyes, so surprised now to find out how right he’d been about her.
“Sam… Sam… Get them back. Get them back.”
She nodded, weeping. She would. She’d get them back.
He coughed, and blood came up, and she could feel his regret, his regret at not seeing the future, his regret that she’d never opened herself to him before.
“I wish I’d known you,” he whispered. And his mind was fluttering, faltering, on the edge of that sudden decoherence into darkness that she’d felt before.
“You did,” she pleaded with him. “You did know me. You did.”
But he was gone before the words left her lips.
She knelt there, next to Jake, weeping. She closed his still-staring eyes. Her blood and tears fell on his face to mix with his.
I wish I’d shown you, she told herself. I wish I’d trusted you. I wish I’d opened up to you.
I’m sorry, she sent him. I’m so so sorry.
But there was no one there to hear her.
A sound snapped her back to reality. She turned, and the soldier she’d disabled inside the house was there, yards away, a long length of metal pipe in his hand, running at her, swinging it like a baseball bat with lethal, superhuman force.
She was on her feet in an instant. Her left forearm shot up at blurring speed to block the swinging pipe. Pain ripped through her as her bullet-wounded muscles strained to heave her arm up. Then the whole arm went numb as it collided with the deadly pipe. But by then she was forward, inside his guard, and her right fist snapped out in a lightning-fast punch that crushed the man’s nose and snapped his head back in a violent whiplash motion.
The pipe dropped from the man’s hand, clattered on the gravel. It was bent thirty degrees where it had collided with her arm. The man tottered, took one step back, and then collapsed, semiconscious.
Sam stepped over him, patted him down. A search of his pockets brought up a phone, a wallet with cash, credit and ID, and a spare clip of ammo.
She reloaded the pistol, dismissed the ID as a fake, and shoved the rest in her own pockets.
He came to as she pocketed his things.
Good.
She stuck the barrel of the gun in his face, inches from his eyes.
“Who are you? Where did they take those kids?”
He clenched his jaw, shook his head from side to side. He’d die before he told her.
She couldn’t feel his mind at all, but she knew it was there, knew he was running Nexus. She pushed against him the way Kade had taught her – the way Shu had done it to Kade – forced his Nexus nodes to respond. His eyes went wild but she could feel him now. She threw her mind against his, tried to force him to open to her, to tell her where those children had gone.
He resisted, fought back with pure willpower and terror. He could see the gun in her hand but it wasn’t enough.
She wished she had Kade’s back door, so she could force this man’s mind open, take what she needed to know. Some part of her was sick at that thought, but the rest of her didn’t care. Her anger, her loss, her fear for the children overruled all else.
She had to break this man’s will so she could take what she needed to know. Fear wasn’t enough. Pain would have to do.
She rose to her feet, gun still trained on the man’s head, and kicked him in the side. Pain burst from his mind, a groan escaped from between his clenched teeth, and she pressed against him, pressed her thoughts against his and willed him to open up.
He resisted.
She kicked him again and again, pushing at his mind with hers as she did. He feebly tried to block and she broke his wrist for his trouble, pressed again with her thoughts.
Still he fought.
She spread his legs with her foot, and his eyes went wide and he tried weakly to turn away, to stop her, and then she rammed her foot home into his testicles and a scream burst out of his mouth as he curled up around himself into a fetal ball. The backwash of his pain struck her, muted by his stubborn clenching of his thoughts, but bad enough. She held her ground. His mind was teetering on the edge, his defenses letting go.
Sam dropped to her knees, grabbed the man’s head by his short hair, yanked it back, then drove the barrel of the gun into his mouth. She heard teeth break as she jammed it into his throat. She pushed against him with all her mental strength, and finally he cracked.
Then what he knew streamed into her. And she saw. An island. A research base. These children, molded into something else, into something monstrous, something posthuman. A new species that would rule them all. And behind them, one man, using them as his tools…
The knowledge flowed into her, horrifying her, transfixing her. She searched for every detail, every bit she’d need to know to get them back…
The gun went off in her hand. She felt it, heard it, and only then saw the soldier’s fingers around her own. He’d pulled the trigger.
He was still alive, but dying. The bullet had blown out the back of his throat, shattered his spine, sent bone shards through his brainstem. He was dying, all but decapitated by the blast. There was horror in his eyes, in his thoughts. He hadn’t planned to…
But something had. Something planted in his mind. Planted by his master. By the man who would soon have Sarai and Kit and Mali and Aroon and the other children she loved. The man who’d killed Jake.
Shiva Prasad.
She felt the soldier die below her. But she’d seen enough. She knew where to go.
And
no one was going to stop her.
36
GODS AND MONSTERS
Saturday October 27th
Kade fell fast asleep after they returned from the club. It felt so good to be doing something, to be making some progress. He’d find those bastards. He’d stop them.
He came fully awake in the early hours, as Feng rose to do his daily exercise.
Kade set himself to reviewing data, looking through the pings his new agent had sent back from around the world as it searched for the monsters behind Code Sample Alpha.
At midday Feng went off to retrieve the jeep and move it to a parking garage they’d found at the end of the block in case they needed to make a quick exit.
The data lulled Kade back to sleep. He dreamt of the NJ, of the conjoined minds of the dancers, of a million minds dancing together, a shared rhythm rising from their thoughts…
He woke abruptly, something flashing in his mind.
[Match: Rangan Shankari - confidence 96%]
[Match: Ilya Alexander - confidence 98%]
What? Was he dreaming?
[Match: Rangan Shankari - confidence 96%]
[Match: Ilya Alexander - confidence 98%]
One mind. Those alerts were from one mind.
Kade blinked, forced himself fully awake. Rangan. Ilya. Jesus.
He clicked on the alert, opened the encrypted connection, invoked the back door, sent the passcode.
And then he was in.
Martin Holtzmann felt the panic rising up around him, constricting around his throat, cutting off his air. The President had the most to gain. The words kept running through his head, driving all other thought out. Of course the President had the most to gain. And he who had the most to gain did it. The President had staged that assassination attempt. The President had killed dozens of Americans to ensure his own re-election.
Dear God.
Dear God.
The ground below Holtzmann’s feet was cracking open. There was nothing there, no solidity, nothing to hold onto. He was going to fall into that abyss and keep falling, keep falling. This nightmare was going to swallow him up, swallow Anne with it, swallow up his boys, swallow everyone and everything he loved.
Because he knew something he shouldn’t. Because if John Stockton would stage his own attempted assassination, would kill dozens of his supporters, dozens of federal employees, three of his own Secret Service agents…
…then he wouldn’t hesitate to kill Martin Holtzmann, and anyone else who might know.
Holtzmann needed this out of his head. He needed to forget. He needed his suspicions gone. He needed his qualms about purging Nexus from the children erased. Then he needed the Nexus out of his mind, forever. He needed to forget he’d ever tried it, forget all of this.
Holtzmann reached out with his mind to his home’s network for the first time in weeks, sent his thoughts out towards the Nexus boards, and started searching. There must be something out there. Something that would make him forget. Something that would erase his conscience. Something that would turn back the clock, to where it was before he’d ever downed that first vial, before he’d ever supped of this forbidden fruit.
He searched and searched and searched, finding dead end after dead end. There must be something that would do what he wanted. There must.
He was still searching, frantically, desperately, when a mind like a god’s descended thunderously down onto his own. A monstrous mind, an epic mind, full of rage and murder. It crushed his will beneath its staggering force. Its mental fist closed painfully around his heart, and began to squeeze.
Kade sucked at the memories of Rangan and Ilya his agent had found in this mind. A montage of them spilled across his mind.
Rangan, tortured. Hooded and cuffed. Being electrocuted. Being smothered with a towel and suffocated while his body jerked and spasmed against its restraints.
And Ilya.
Ilya with her eyes closed, pale and still.
Cold. Lifeless.
Ilya dead.
It hit him like a blow. He opened his eyes and he was on his side, on the floor of the room in Saigon, a glass of water he’d had by the bedside on the floor, rolling on its side, water spilling out. He couldn’t breathe. Dead! Dead!
And that face. The face seen in the mirror. He knew that face. He knew whose mind this was.
He felt the anger rising behind the shock. Anger like he’d felt in Thailand, like he’d felt after the inferno in Bangkok, anger like he’d felt every time he’d found someone using Nexus to kill or rape or steal, anger that threatened to erupt from within him.
Kade pushed his will down Martin Holtzmann’s pathetic mind. This man was completely his. And by God he deserved to die.
Holtzmann tried to scream as the alien mind invaded his. No sound left his lips. Something grabbed control of his limbs, lifted him up, and threw him to the ground. A will unthinkably, inhumanly strong was plowing through him, racking him with pain.
YOU KILLED HER!
An image of Ilya Alexander filled his mind. Her autopsy photo. Her in life, the last time he’d seen her, weeks earlier.
No! he tried to say. No! It wasn’t me!
Nothing came out of his mouth. He felt the mental fist close tighter around his heart. He couldn’t breathe. He struggled against it, tried to push it out of his mind, but it was stronger than he could imagine, locked around him, impervious to his efforts.
DON’T LIE TO ME!
I’m not lying, he tried to say. Please, I didn’t kill her. I didn’t want her to die!
He pulled up the memory, him standing at the one-way mirror, looking down on the Nexus children, the news of her death coming through on his phone, his anger and frustration at the waste of it all!
His heart pounded in his chest with fear.
The mental hand closed into a fist inside him. A sharp pain stabbed through his chest, and then his heart’s pounding was gone. Where it had been there was nothing. Dear God.
It had stopped his heart!
No. Please. Not this way!
Rangan, he pleaded with the mind holding him. Children. Still alive.
The world was dimming, growing darker, fading out, as oxygen stopped reaching his brain.
No. Please.
Please…
And then there was nothing.
Kade ripped into Holtzmann’s mind in a blind rage. He seized control of the man’s body, threw him from his chair and to the ground, crushed Holtzmann’s will with the tools the back door afforded him.
This man was ERD. He was a leader of the organization that fought Nexus. The people who’d blackmailed him, who’d turned Narong Shinawatra into a robot assassin and led to his death, to Mai’s death, to Lalana’s death, a dozen deaths in that Bangkok inferno! The people who’d sent Rangan and Ilya and scores of his friends to jail. That had killed Wats and killed Ilya!
Kade wrapped his mental fist around the man’s brainstem. He felt the power he held over Holtzmann’s life, the supremacy, the absolute control, the complete domination of this pathetic creature. It was a drug, pulsing through him, hot with pleasure.
This man deserved to die.
Holtzmann struggled, pleaded, made excuses.
Kade ignored them all. With a clench of his mental fist he spasmed the man’s brainstem, stopping his heart. The sweet bliss of power coursed through him.
Judge, jury, executioner, Ilya whispered in his head.
Please… the dying Holtzmann pleaded. Rangan. Children. Still alive.
The name hit him like a bucket of cold water. Rangan. Rangan! Rangan was still alive. Holtzmann was the one lead he had to save him!
FUCK!
Kade loosed his mental grip, let the brainstem resume its normal activity, searched for a pulse.
Nothing. The brainstem’s behavior was erratic, confused, neural circuits temporarily disrupted by the surge of random pulses Kade had sent through it.
Holtzmann was passing out now. Consciousness fading as the flow of oxygen and
nutrients to his brain ceased.
No. He needed this man alive.
Kade paired his own brainstem to Holtzmann’s, pumped signals from his neurons into the analogous ones in Holtzmann’s brain.
Chaos still ruled in Holtzmann’s brainstem. Aberrant signals from his own neurons swamped the input from Kade’s brain.
Kade amplified the input from his own brainstem to Holtzmann’s again, ramped it up to four times strength.
Neural circuits started to reform, but there was still so much chaos, so much random behavior left over from Kade’s attack. Holtzmann’s heart was still stopped.
Kade pushed again, stepped up the input levels by a factor of ten, overruled all neural inputs coming into the Nexus-linked neurons in Holtzmann’s brainstem with the signals from his own brain.
Order strengthened, but the heart still didn’t beat.
He pushed one last time, harder, overlaying his own brainstem’s neural activity onto Holtzmann’s, and held it that way, forcing Holtzmann’s brain to behave, to step back to regularity.
Lub-
Lub-
Holtzmann’s heart stuttered, tried to turn over. Kade held on, kept pushing, kept imposing his own neural activity on Holtzmann’s.
Lub-
Lub-
Lub dub. Lub dub.
And finally the man’s heart beat again.
Kade pulled himself back into his body, rose to sitting on the bed.
He was shaking. He needed to get himself together. Holtzmann was out cold for the moment. He reached into the man’s sleep centers, made sure Holtzmann would stay that way while he took a moment to think.
Oh, Kade, Ilya’s voice said in his mind. You almost killed him.
He’s still alive, Kade replied.
You got lucky, she said. He could have died.
He killed you! Kade shouted at the voice in his head.
He didn’t. He showed you. He didn’t want me to die.
He’s responsible, Kade shot back angrily. He’s one of them. Your blood’s on his hands. Wats’ blood. A lot more than that.
And you get to decide that? she asked him. You’re the judge now? Are you wiser than all humanity, Kade? Are you?