by Ramez Naam
“You see these people hurt by Nexus. Human bombs. People stealing. Women hurt. But for me… For me, Nexus means I touch my brothers for the first time. I understand that I’m not alone. Until then… ‘brother’ just mean someone I have to fight, have to compete with. One of us won’t get to eat. One of us gets more pain. No love. No loyalty. After Nexus, I can touch their minds… Then I feel them. Then I love them. Then I know loyalty. Then I really have brothers.
“And you know, I still hate instructors. Still today, and especially then. But Su-Yong, she say, we don’t have to be loyal to instructors, don’t have to be loyal to commanders. Have to be loyal to China. To the people. They’re our brothers and sisters.
“What you did, Kade. You give Nexus 5 to everyone. I know it makes Su-Yong mad. She wants more control than that. But you did the right thing.” Feng turned to look at Kade, poured every ounce of emotion into this. “All those people out there. They can start to understand. They each other’s brothers, each other’s sisters. Like you and me. Brothers. You did the right thing.”
Darkness finally fell. Insects came out. The jungle came alive with sounds. The air cooled to a more bearable level of heat.
“So what now?” Feng asked.
Kade turned and looked at his friend. “The monasteries aren’t going to work anymore. The bounty hunters have figured out our pattern. We’re just going to get monks killed. It’s time to try a new strategy, Feng. Let’s head to the coast. Let’s go see the big city.”
17
SURPRISE ENCOUNTER
Friday October 19th
“I’m not here to kill you, Martin.”
What? Holtzmann thought. The distortion was gone. This was a different voice. A voice he knew.
“I was hoping you could answer some questions for me,” his not-assassin continued.
Holtzmann opened his eyes. In the mirror he could see a face there, in the darkened back seat, where there hadn’t been one before. Headlights struck them from another car, illuminated the face for a moment. Dark hair, graying at the temples. Asian features. A face he hadn’t seen in months.
“Kevin.”
Nakamura nodded. “Who did you think I was?”
“I… I don’t know!” Holtzmann stammered.
Nakamura’s face was a mask in the darkened car, utterly still.
“I thought I was being mugged… carjacked…” Holtzmann went on.
“By someone who knew your name?” Nakamura asked. “Who snuck into your car while it was parked at DHS headquarters?”
Holtzmann’s heart hammered in his chest. He was that transparent. A professional could see through him in seconds…
Dear God, what am I doing? he thought. He said nothing.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Nakamura said gently. “We all know things we shouldn’t.”
Holtzmann swallowed, forced himself to breathe calmly. The car drove on down the dark highway, the lights of the DC suburbs sliding by on either side.
Nakamura filled the silence. “Six months ago, Samantha Cataranes was sent to Bangkok. You remember the mission?”
Cataranes? Holtzmann thought. This was about Cataranes?
“Yes. I remember.”
“You dosed her with Nexus 5 before she left. While there, during an op, she attacked ERD contractors during the attempted capture of Thanom Prat-Nung. Three days later, she attacked a team of SEALs, brought down a chopper, helped create an international incident. You remember all this?”
Holtzmann nodded. He remembered the chaos of that week. The botched mission in Bangkok. Dozens dead in the loft fire. The Nexus girl, Mai, among them. Ted Prat-Nung as well. Lane’s escape. Then the attack on the monastery. Su-Yong Shu’s death there. Nexus 5’s release. His own decision to try Nexus for himself… The discovery of Warren Becker dead of a heart attack, the next morning. He wouldn’t easily forget those few days.
“Why?” Nakamura asked.
Holtzmann blinked. “What?”
“Why’d she do it, Martin?”
“I…” Holtzmann fumbled over himself. “We think that Shu coerced her…”
“Could she do that? Coercion that complex?”
A memory flashed through Holtzman’s mind: Secret Service agent Steve Travers, in his suit and mirrored glasses, his hand coming out of his jacket in slow motion, the giant gun held there, the encrypted Nexus traffic between the shooter and whoever was controlling him echoing in Holtzmann’s mind. The world slowing even further as Holtzmann came to his feet and opened his mouth to scream that the man had a gun!
“Yes. Shu could do that.”
“Is there any evidence that she did?”
“There wasn’t any other explanation. We sent Cataranes out there with Nexus 5. It was a stupid move. Su-Yong Shu might have created Nexus. If she discovered who Sam was…”
“Is there any evidence?” Nakamura repeated.
“The evidence is how Sam acted. Kevin, you knew her. You mentored her. You practically raised her. She was loyal.”
More loyal than I am, Holtzmann thought.
Nakamura said nothing for a while. The car switched lanes of its own accord to fall in behind a long row of vehicles, then pulled up close to the one ahead, just inches from bumper to bumper, drafting, saving fuel.
“Shu’s dead now,” Nakamura said. “How would that affect Sam?”
Holtzmann brought his hands up to his face, closed his eyes for a moment, then pulled his hands away. “I don’t know, Kevin.”
“You don’t know?”
“It depends. How did Shu program her? Did she turn Cataranes into a puppet steered by remote control?”
In his mind the Secret Service man’s gun came out out out, and fired, and fired.
“…Or did she put in something more complex? Something deeper?”
Human missiles leveled the shooter, and Holtzmann turned, looking for the President. Joe Duran screaming in his ear, “How did you know, Martin? How did you know?”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Nakamura said.
Then the world exploded in Holtzmann’s memories, hurling him through the air.
“What?” Holtzmann said.
“If Shu turned Sam, she could have sent her back to ERD as a mole. Or whisked her and Kade off to China. Shu had to know the loft was an ambush, that it was a mission to get close to Prat-Nung.”
“I don’t understand,” Holtzmann said.
“Why did Shu let Sam and Kade walk into that situation, Martin? If she’d already turned Sam, then she knew the loft was an ambush. Shu was recruiting Kade, but she nearly got him killed.”
“Shu was trying to protect Ted Prat-Nung,” Holtzmann replied.
Nakamura shook his head. “No. Shu and Prat-Nung knew each other. She could have just warned him away.”
Holtzmann dropped his face back into his hands. He was so tired. So very tired. He could feel the aches starting again, the clammy sweating, the chills deep inside.
“I don’t know, Kevin.”
“Who had the most to gain?” Nakamura asked, almost to himself. “The way to find the cause of an event is to understand who had the most to gain from it.”
The car activated its turn signal, then switched lanes on its own, into the exit lane that would take them to Holtzmann’s home.
“Lane,” Holtzmann said. “Kaden Lane had the most to gain. He escaped because of Sam.”
Nakamura nodded. “Yes. That was my conclusion as well.”
And the movie started again in Holtzmann’s mind. The hot July day. The white plastic chairs. The President blathering on. The encrypted Nexus traffic. The Secret Service agent in black suit and mirrored glasses, reaching into his jacket…
“Could he do it?” Nakamura asked.
…The gun coming out in slow motion...
“Yes,” Holtzmann replied, sick to his stomach. “I think he could.”
… Coming out, out, out…
“One last question, Martin.”
Firing, firing. Muzz
le flash and terrible boom. Human bulldozers striking Travers, the gun flying from his hand. Holtzmann ached so deep inside.
“Can you get it out of her?” Nakamura asked. “Out of Sam’s mind?”
Holtzmann thought of the cure experiments, the mice dead in their cages from every batch so far. Maybe the back door that Rangan Shankari had given them? That terrible, terrible tool. Could they at least use it to counteract whatever Shu had done to Cataranes? It was too soon to say.
“I don’t know, Kevin. I just don’t know.”
Nakamura nodded.
The car slowed as it reached the turn signal at the end of the exit. The doors made a thunk as they unlocked. In the rear-view mirror, Nakamura pulled the mask of his chameleonware suit over his face once more.
“Thank you, Martin,” he said with the deep distorted voice again. “I was never here.”
Nakamura opened the door just as the car came to a stop. He stepped out onto the curb, his silhouette fading to a moving pattern of shadow and distortion before Holtzmann’s eyes. Then the door closed, and the car made its turn, and Holtzmann was alone with his thoughts and his memories and his aching need.
18
FRIENDS
Friday October 19th
Rangan woke, curled up on the floor in a corner of his cell. He’d eaten the traitor’s meal they’d given him, but refused the new, restraint-free bed. It was better than he deserved.
He blinked to shake off sleep. His dreams had been strange. Ilya fighting faceless figures with push/pull. Ilya dying in the dark, crying, alone, her heart stopped, all of her fading to nothing. And children. Strange children. Confused children.
Rangan pulled himself up to sitting. He was stiff from sleeping on the hard surface. His hip hurt and his left leg was half asleep. He rubbed his calf absently as he struggled back to wakefulness.
Ilya. Ilya was probably still resisting. She’d never give in. She had the heart of a fighter. His dream was guilt. Guilt that he’d given up, that he’d turned informant, when his friend would never put her own life ahead of her convictions.
Had they told her that he’d broken? Would they go easier on her now? It was something to hope for. What would she think of him, once she found out? Would she despise him? Hate him?
And Kade? Wats? What would they think of him?
He’d always had the easy life. Rich parents. Good looks. Success came easy, in school, in music. The Indian golden boy. Boy wonder scientist by day, hot DJ by night.
And the women. God, how he loved women. And they’d loved him. Woman after woman after woman. He could leave a club most weekend nights with a party girl, sometimes two. He’d jerked himself off to sleep so often the first few weeks here, calling up memories of their faces, their bodies, the kinky things they’d done for him. Memories remembered naturally. Memories he’d recorded with Nexus, without ever asking their permissions.
Such an easy life. Rangan Shankari, international playboy.
Yeah, right.
He was pathetic, he saw now. What had he ever done for anyone else? He’d lived his whole life as a taker. Taking money from Mom and Dad. Taking sex from girls whose names he barely remembered, girls that he honestly didn’t give a fuck about, except that they were hot and fun in bed and good for his rep.
The only thing he’d ever done that was worth a damn was Nexus. His one impact on the world. And had he fought for that? When they’d busted the party in SF he tried to run. And now, in this stinking cell, they’d given him a second chance. He could show this time that he had the strength of his convictions. But no. They tightened the screws a bit and he folded, just like that.
What did it even matter that he was going to die here? His whole life was a self-obsessed joke. He’d been so goddamn self-centered that he might as well not have existed at all.
Fucking pathetic.
Fuck!
Rangan slammed his hand against the concrete wall of his cell and then swore as he felt the pain.
Then he felt something else.
Another mind.
Faintly. A young mind, weird and warped, and reaching out for him…
Bobby closed his eyes and he could feel his new friends in his head – Tim and Tyrone and Alfonso and Pedro and Jason and Jose and Parker and all the rest. They were like him, autistic. But more than that. He could feel them in his head. They were real.
There were grownups here who came in and gave them tests, but he couldn’t feel the grownups in his head at all and he knew why it was because they didn’t have NEXUS and so they were stupid and they weren’t real people at all.
Sometimes the grownups took one of his friends away to give them a test, but Bobby and the others could still feel whoever they’d taken, like when they took Nick and gave him tests on Math and English and Bobby could feel him taking the test and even though Nick didn’t know some of the answers, Nick got them right because he had his friends there in his head.
But then later they took Nick further away and he was GONE from Bobby’s head and Bobby was scared that they had HURT him or KILLED him but they brought Nick back and Nick said they’d only given him special tests and so Bobby felt better.
The next day they took Bobby away and gave him tests on Math and English and Science, and made him play games and solve puzzles and he could still feel all his friends, but then after that they took him to a special room and they closed the door and he COULDN’T FEEL HIS FRIENDS and he started to get scared, but he remembered that Nick had come back and Tim said that all the other boys came back, and so he’d probably come back too.
Then they put a cap over his head and gave him a test of Spanish, at least he thought it was Spanish, because he didn’t know Spanish and he just guessed and did really badly at the test, but that wasn’t his fault if they were testing him on something he hadn’t studied.
And then they took him back to the room with all the others and he was glad when he could feel them all in his head again and they asked him to tell them all about it and he SHOWED them the
And that night he dreamed in Spanish and dreamed he was Pedro or Alfonso or Jose and the next day they took him away to the special room again where he couldn’t feel his friends and tested him in Spanish only this time he KNEW THE ANSWERS and even when they asked him questions they hadn’t asked yesterday he KNEW THE ANSWERS TOO.
And he knew it was because of Pedro and Alfonso and Jose and the Nexus in all their heads.
And that night, when they made him go to bed and he lay down and closed his eyes he felt something, another person, far far away, a sad person, alone, a person who felt less like his friends and more like his daddy. And Bobby reached out to that person so sad and so far away and tried to say hello.
19
THE LONG GOODBYE
Mid October
Sam and Jake argued for half the limping journey home.
“But I can be useful,” she said. “I know these kids. I love them. They love me!”
“I know, Sunee,” Jake replied. “I told them. I want you there. But the Mira Foundation is really careful. They’ve had… incidents.”
“There has to be another way.”
“Look, I think I can talk them into it, but it’s gonna take a while.”
“And what, I just wait for you to call? Not knowing when? Or if?”
“You know I want you there.”
“No,” Sam said. “I don’t!”
“Well maybe if you’d fucking let me in, you would,” Jake snapped.
Sam almost dropped him. “Fuck you. There has to be another way!”
Jake took a deep breath. “Sunee, we just have to do what’s best for the kids.”
“What, and that’s ripping away someone who wants to be there for them?”
“Jesus, Sunee, it isn’t just about yo
u!”
“What about Khun Mae? She’s the one in charge, really.”
Jake sighed. “Khun Mae said yes.”
“You asked her before me?” Sam’s voice rose.
“Yeah,” Jake replied. “Because you’re taking it exactly how I expected.”
It was after dawn when they reached the home atop the hill. Silence filled the hours. They spoke just enough to agree on a story for the children. They put on their game faces at the end, smiled and projected happy thoughts.
And the children saw right through them.
Sam begged Jake and Khun Mae for a few days to come up with alternate ideas, then forced herself to think them through.
She could appeal to Ananda for money to keep the orphanage going.
She could go back to Phuket, take Lo Prang up on his offer, start a career as a prize fighter to raise funds.
She could start a charity, ask for donations.
She could sell samples of her own cells and their fourth-generation enhancements on the black market.
She considered each idea, and others, and discarded them all.
Ananda would be watched by the ERD.
She knew nothing about running a charity.
Winning fights for Lo Prang would raise her profile and increase the risk of the ERD finding her. And how long before the mobster asked her to hurt men outside the ring?
And her genetic tweaks… Selling them would mean deaths, somewhere, far away. Deaths of men and women like her, doing their jobs, trying to protect their country or save the innocent. She wouldn’t have that on her conscience, not even to save the orphanage.
In the end she had nothing.
The second night she woke to terror, to thoughts of faceless men bursting in, ripping her away, ripping Jake away, taking the children.
Nightmare!
It pressed down on her even after she woke. She looked at the doorway to her room and masked men appeared – bad men.
No, not real.
Not her nightmare, the children’s. It crested over her, paralyzing her, freezing her to this bed, trembling.
Get up! Sam yelled at herself, and the dream’s hold on her broke.