Crux

by Ramez Naam

  How long had it been? How long since his last opiate dose? Twelve hours? Something like that?

  He was due. He was due to take more. He felt the need for it. Even if this added stress wasn’t here, he’d need another dose soon. And without another dose…

  Martin Holtzmann was going to go into withdrawal.

  49

  CAGED

  Sunday October 28th

  “I hope the room is to your liking,” Shiva said.

  Kade pushed himself to his feet.

  “Where’s Feng?” he asked.

  “We have feelers out,” Shiva replied. “Informants. We hope to know soon.”

  “Let me go,” Kade said.

  Shiva smiled slightly. “I want us to be friends, Kade. To work together.”

  “You try to kill me,” Kade shouted, “get my friend killed or captured, and you want me to work with you?” Spittle flew from his lips.

  Shiva’s face became stern. “I’ve never tried to kill you. I saved your life, and your friend’s.”

  “Oh please.” Kade waved away Shiva’s claims.

  “What did you think awaited you outside that club?” Shiva asked.

  “We knew,” Kade went on. “We would have made it.”

  “Oh?” Shiva asked. “Past the snipers on the rooftops?”

  Kade’s confidence wavered.

  “And if you had, what then? Run again? Where to?”

  Kade stared at him, mute.

  “And when you were caught, eventually, what then?” Shiva asked. “Do you want your back door in the hands of the Americans? The Chinese? How do you think those governments would use it?”

  Kade’s face was hot. He said nothing.

  “Can you blame me for what I did?” Shiva asked. “You were out there, irresponsibly, putting yourself at risk, putting more than a million other people at risk. Can you blame me for wanting you off the streets?”

  “No one gets the back door,” Kade said. “No one.”

  “No one but you,” Shiva replied. “Isn’t that what you mean?”

  Are you wiser than humanity? Ilya’s whispered in his mind, echoing Ananda. Not even you should have that power.

  “Here.” Shiva stepped closer, held out the slate to him. “I won’t let you touch my mind. But I’ve done the next best thing. I’ve recorded my thoughts, my plans, direct from my mind. They’re here for you to peruse. To see how much we could do together.”

  Shiva stood before Kade, just feet from him, the slate in his outstretched hand. Kade knew what he needed to do. He closed his eyes, took a steadying breath, and went Inside.

  [activate: bruce_lee mode: attack_and_capture]

  Targeting circles appeared on the inside of his eyelids. Kade opened his eyes, clicked on Shiva, and Bruce Lee launched him at the man.

  His body surged forward. His left fist snapped out, connected with Shiva’s jaw, rocked the man’s head to the side.

  [Bruce_Lee: Attack Succeeded!]

  His body moved in for a lock, to capture the older man.

  Then Shiva’s left hand shot out, grabbed Kade by the neck, lifted him off his feet, and hurled him across the room.

  Kade hit the far wall with a thud, the wind knocked out of him. A framed picture jumped off its hook, crashed to the floor a foot away, glass shattering all around it.

  [Bruce_Lee: Block Failed L]

  Shiva set the slate down on the writing desk, then turned and walked to the door. “I look forward to your thoughts,” he said. Then he was gone, the door closed behind him.

  Kade sat there, reeling from the blow.

  When, he wondered, has that app ever fucking worked?

  He pulled himself slowly to his feet, one hand on the wall for balance.

  The door opened, and one of Shiva’s men came in, something in his hand. He brought it up to Kade’s throat and Kade backed away haltingly, until he realized what it was. A key.

  The man inserted it into the slot in the medallion around Kade’s neck, and it came loose, falling into the man’s hand.

  Kade reached out, immediately, with Nexus, to feel whatever he could. But this man wore a static-producing jammer as well, and the slate was the only other thing in the room transmitting, advertising a set of files for Kade to consume.

  The man nodded to Kade. “I’ll be outside if you need anything, sir.”

  Then the guard turned and left, locking the door behind him, leaving Kade with the slate, with Shiva’s promised thoughts and plans.

  Kade blinked and stood there a moment to regain his balance. Then he went Inside and turned off the Nexus OS file sharing in his own mind, blocking the tempting files out of his senses.

  They brought him lunch later. Kade ate, meditated, took stock of the situation.

  Rangan was still locked up. He’d set Holtzmann in motion, but the task was complicated. He needed to be out there to guide and assist.

  And the PLF. He knew their next targets. Chandler and Shepherd, at a Houston prayer breakfast with thousands of supporters. He knew about Miranda Shepherd. He could find her, if only he was out of this cage.

  He tried to imagine the consequences of the Houston bombing. Hundreds dead, maybe thousands. And the impact on US politics, on opinions of Nexus, on treatment of Nexus children… It would be the final blow. Nexus scanners would go up in schools, at bus stops, in the workplace. Security checkpoints everywhere. Maybe worse – roundups of activists, of anyone who’d protested against the Chandler Act or made pro-transhumanist statements in the past. The bomb would frighten people into accepting a security state more constrictive than ever. The PLF was playing right into the hands of the conservatives, just like terrorists always did.

  Kade could stop it, if he were out there. But he wasn’t. He was a prisoner, because he’d been stupid.

  He surveyed the windows again. The bars and mesh swung on their own frames. Those frames were bolted into the windowsills, locked with old-fashioned mechanical padlocks.

  He heaved, but it was no use. He found a fork in the kitchen, tried using one of its tines to pick a lock, but he hadn’t the faintest idea how to actually pick a lock, and after half an hour he gave up.

  From the kitchen, he could see into the courtyard below. There were people out there. Shiva’s staff. And none of them wore Nexus jammers.

  If he could somehow get through the Faraday cage…

  The kitchen had no knives in it, but plenty of forks. He crouched below window level so he wouldn’t be seen, used the fork to stab over his head at the line where the mesh met the metal frame, over and over again, as hard as he could. He stood to inspect his work. Nothing. The mesh wasn’t scratched, wasn’t torn.

  Damn.

  Something attracted his attention out there, in the courtyard. A group of children, sullen, despondent. Some adults moved among them. What were they doing here?

  Then one of the children, the oldest, a girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen, looked up at his window, and waved. Waved as if she knew him. He waved back, and a moment later, half a dozen children were looking at him, waving excitedly, where just a moment ago they’d been subdued.

  The adult with them, a Caucasian woman, looked up at him, frowned, and then herded the kids away. They went unhappily, stealing glances at him.

  Kade sat down heavily on the floor. Those children knew him. He’d never seen them before, he couldn’t see their minds and they couldn’t see his. But somehow they knew who he was.

  He had one guess why that was.

  Sam.

  50

  DETOX

  Saturday October 27th

  Holtzmann crawled into bed, terrified of what was to come.

  He woke hours later to Anne shaking him. “I’m heading out, Martin. I’m going to see Claire. God help me, you’re both going crazy.”

  Holtzmann just stared at her. He lay there in bed, miserable, nauseated, waiting for the full force of the withdrawal to strike, his mind spinning on how to free Shankari.

  Anne came home wi
th takeout. He tried to talk, but she turned on the news, responded in monosyllables. She went to bed after dinner. Martin went to his office, feeling ill, but not as terribly as he’d expected…

  He was there, sitting in his office chair, thinking of how to free Shankari, when the aches came.

  They started in the leg, intensifying, bit by bit, minute by minute, until they were pounding out from his femur where the compound fracture was still healing. They spread out from there, into the hip that had shattered, into his other leg, his ribs, his back, his neck, his arms, his head.

  He arched his back and moaned. He writhed around in the chair searching for some relief. His skin was damp with sweat now. He was burning up. Snot was dripping from his nose.

  Then the nausea was coursing through him. He dragged himself out of the office, stumbling around without his cane, his body contorted by the pain, made it into the hall bathroom just in time, and heaved up bile into the toilet.

  Then his guts cramped. He made it onto the toilet before his bowels exploded filth into it.

  When the episode was over, he collapsed onto the floor of the bathroom, wrapped himself in a towel, and waited to die.

  Anne found him in the morning, still curled up on the floor, aching and feverish and a mess.

  She took one look at him.

  “My God, you really are sick.”

  Holtzmann nodded weakly, then leaned over the toilet and vomited again.

  Anne helped him into the shower, brought him a warm robe to wrap himself in, took him back to bed, put a trash can next to him, brought him soup and painkillers and anti-diarrheal meds.

  “I’m going to call a doctor,” she said.

  Holtzmann shook his head. “Just the flu,” he said weakly. “I’ll be fine.”

  Then he leaned over and heaved into the trash can.

  The agony lasted through Sunday, into Sunday night. Anne talked to him, tried to distract him from the horror that was coursing through his body. He found himself babbling to her, about the meeting with Barnes and the President, about the Nexus children, about everything but the Nexus in his own brain.

  By Sunday night the sheets were twisted and damp with his sweat, his writhing. Anne insisted on getting him out of bed so she could change them.

  She fell asleep beside him, while the fever and pain and explosive evacuation of his body kept him awake through most of the night. His world was a feverish, twisted nightmare, horrifying images of the President, of Barnes, of Lane. They were all one, a three-faced demon torturing him.

  Monday morning. Anne offered to stay home with him, to nurse him to health.

  Holtzmann insisted she go to work.

  He fired up his slate long enough to send a message in to the office, to say he was still sick. Subject lines loomed at him, lurid sentence fragments that made no sense. He ignored them, sent his own message, and disconnected.

  The withdrawal peaked around noon. He knelt before the toilet, his face over it, red and straining, his whole body convulsing as it tried to push some imaginary toxin out of him. He puked up water, puked up bile, puked up nothing at all, but his body wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop convulsing, wouldn’t stop trying to turn his guts inside out, trying to shove his stomach up through his throat and into this bowl.

  Then the episode was past. He cleaned himself as best he could, collapsed back into the sweat-stained bed, and slept.

  Holtzmann woke at 5pm. He felt awful, but fractionally better.

  His phone buzzed at him. A moment later his slate did as well. More calls from the office.

  He forced himself into the shower, forced himself to clean up, to dress himself, to make himself look halfway presentable. Anne had left him soup in the kitchen. He reheated it, drank a bowl, slurped down noodles. His body trembled, but he felt stronger. The food stayed down.

  Then he checked his messages, and found chaos.

  Half a dozen of his underlings had been trying to reach him urgently, their messages overlapping with one another, conflicting with one another. Barnes had been calling, asking where he was, ordering him to reply.

  The codes. The passcodes. The ones Rangan Shankari had given them didn’t work.

  Holtzmann nearly laughed in relief. Dear God. They didn’t work! Lane must have changed them before releasing Nexus 5! Shankari’s passcodes were obsolete!

  Then he saw the other messages. They’d been torturing children. Barnes had overruled him. And they’d forced Nexus out of the brain of one child. Dear God.

  Holtzmann felt the rage pump through him. He called Barnes.

  The Acting ERD director picked up immediately, his boyish face with those dark, dark eyes filling up the screen of Holtzmann’s slate.

  “Martin,” Barnes said. “How good of you to get back to me.” Acid dripped from his voice.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Holtzmann yelled. “Torturing kids? Going around me and ordering my team around?”

  Barnes scowled on the screen. “I’m doing your job, Martin. What the President ordered you to do.”

  “They’re kids!” Holtzmann yelled.

  Barnes stared at him coldly. “Not according to the law. Now do your fucking job.”

  Holtzmann sputtered. I quit. The words were on the tip of his tongue. But then the audit would kick in, the missing Nexus would be found...

  His mouth opened but no words came out.

  Barnes solved it for him.

  “Get your ass in here, Martin. Shankari gave us bogus codes for the Nexus back doors. Go figure that out. Now!”

  Then Barnes ended the call.

  51

  UNKNOWNS

  Saturday October 27th

  Breece packed up hurriedly. He rolled Hiroshi’s body in a piece of carpet, hauled him out to the trunk of his car, then came back for the electronics, the Nexus vials, and the guns. He had no idea how much the hacker had gotten from Hiroshi’s mind before he’d pulled the trigger…

  Hiroshi’s head, blood and brains blasted from it, sliding down the wall of the garage as his body crumpled into a heap.

  …but he had to assume that the intruder had gotten enough.

  He saturated the garage with enzyme bombs, then made his exit, locking the door behind him.

  Then he put in the calls to Ava and the Nigerian.

  They met four hours later, in a dive bar in Moscow, Texas, two hours from Houston.

  They took a booth, crammed in close, talked softly under the cover of the raucous trash-rock. They were all raw, grieving, shocked by Hiroshi’s death.

  The questions cycled endlessly. Who was the hacker? How much did he learn? What did it mean for them? For their mission?

  Very little made sense. If the hacker had been law enforcement, why not lead DHS or FBI to the site?

  Could it have been Zara? But Zara had been surprised by the bombings in DC and Chicago, and the hacker had interceded in both of those events.

  And so far, there was no movement at the safe house or the garage, no sign that either location had been found.

  They tossed it back and forth for a while, and finally, it was Breece’s decision.

  “We’ll wait and see,” he said. “Stay ready to evac if we’ve been made.”

  “And if they don’t come?” Ava asked. “If there’s never a sign that we’ve been made?”

  Breece nodded. “Then the mission’s a go.”

  52

  SAIL AWAY

  Sunday October 28th

  “No tracers,” Sam repeated, her gun to Lo Prang’s head. “Your boss is coming with me. I find a tracer, he dies. Badly.”

  “No tracers,” Lo Prang echoed, calmly, agreeably.

  His men nodded, kept on loading the last of the food and fuel and gear onto the stealth boat in this hidden cove. It was a smuggling craft, a low, skinny, quiet affair, with a sonar absorbent hull and a chameleonware upper shroud. If anything could get her up the coast and to the island she’d seen in that soldier’s mind – Apyar Kyun, the Blue Island – this
was it.

  Lo Prang’s two razor-nailed slave bitches watched her, still in their party dresses from the night before, their blades extended. Murder was in their eyes. The claw marks one of them had cut down her back ached. This was personal for them. If she crossed their paths again, they’d do their worst.

  “Time to go,” Sam said. She stood, dragged Lo Prang up with her, propelled him forward towards the low cigar of a vessel, her free hand on the cuffs that bound his wrists behind his back. Now was the time of maximum danger. Transitions are points of vulnerability, Nakamura had taught her. If they were going to try to take her, it was now or never…

  But she and Lo Prang made it onto the boat unharmed.

  Sam pushed Lo Prang forward, away from her, towards the driver’s seat. “Drive,” she said.

  An hour later they were past the island of Koh Phayam, a few hundred yards off shore, and on their way towards the Burmese border.

  “You could have done this the easy way, Jade,” Lo Prang told her. “I meant what I told you. If you joined my household, you’d be happy.” He gestured with his cuffed hands towards his head. “A little tweak here and there. All this stress? All this hardship? I could have taken care of whatever problem you have. And you’d have contentment, the satisfaction of having a purpose in life, of knowing what it was, of having a master who loved you.”

  Sam stared at Lo Prang and shook her head.

  Lo Prang smiled. “Trust me, Jade. I’ve never had happier staff than I do now. They come to me willingly, for what I can give them, for the satisfaction, the peace and contentment. Even the whores are happy.”

  Sam shuddered. “There are more important things than happiness,” she told the man. “Doing the right thing. Doing what matters.”

  Lo Prang smiled at her. “The right thing? What matters? Those are just patterns in your brain, Jade. A few tweaks, and your right thing would be mine.”

  “Not in this lifetime,” Sam told him.

  Lo Prang shrugged. “You’ll change your mind one day. I’ll be waiting.”

  They were leaving Koh Phayam behind now. It was time to make a choice.