Nexus 02 - Crux (35 page)

[Bruce_Lee: Attack Failed L]

Then the man had Kade by the arm, was dragging him towards the armored jeep, shoving him in the open door.

Then there was static, everywhere, spheres of static, Nexus static.

And the head of the bounty hunter who had him exploded.

Nakamura milled through the club called Mango, his backpacker costume in place, upgraded slightly for a Saturday night. Nexus was everywhere here. This was the kind of place Lane would feel at home in. If he’d let his guard down sufficiently…

[Shots fired, 819 Bùi Viện Street]

The alert was pulled from the Vietnamese People’s Police network. That address was at the other end of the Bến Thành district. Another club with a concentration of Nexus.

Nakamura turned and pushed his way against the crowd, swam like a fish against the current, until he was through the doors and out into the night. His jeep was back at his apartment, impractical in the maze of streets here. The club where the alert had come from was just over a mile away. Nakamura broke into a run. He’d be there in three minutes.

Shiva watched the feeds as his soldiers stormed the building, took down the two remaining bounty hunters. The club was a shambles. One wall had been destroyed, the windows blown out. Revelers were strewn about, many injured, some bleeding or broken or dead from the impact of the jeep or the crossfire of bullets. The rest were unconscious.

“There,” he said and tapped on the screen. “Lane.”

Hayes nodded, and the medic rushed forward.

Someone grabbed Kade, a new man, in a respirator but no armor.

The man was fitting a respirator over Kade’s head, then patting him down, yelling something through the mask and over the sound of the ringing alarm.

“What?”

What’s happening?

The sound of the alarm ended abruptly.

“Are you hurt?” the man yelled again.

“Feng,” Kade said, muffled through the mask over his head. Then Feng was up, a submachine gun in his hand. There was blood splattered on his face, blood on his shirt, blood on his pants.

“Get back,” Feng said.

Kade struggled to take in the situation. There were seven of the new force. Six with guns, plus the one leaning over him. They wore masks and sleek black fighting armor, less bulky than the bounty hunters, but even more deadly-looking. They had silenced automatic weapons in their hands, but none were pointed at him.

Every one of them had a sphere of static around him. Distortion on the Nexus frequencies. Jamming, but on a local scale.

Shielding, he realized. They’re running Nexus, but they’re shielding themselves.

“Get back,” Feng repeated, pointing his gun at the man over Kade.

“We’re here to help,” the medic said.

Kade?
Feng sent.

“Who are you?” Kade asked.

“Activate my avatar,” Shiva said. “I want to talk to him.”

The medic stepped back from him.

Then a hologram appeared in the middle of the room, projected by a fist-sized spider-like robot beneath it.

The figure was old, Indian, long white hair, dressed in a simple white garment.

“Kade,” said a projected voice. “We’re not your enemies. We’re friends.”

“What do you want?” Kade asked.

“I want you to come with me,” the hologram said.

“Who are you?” Kade asked.

“I’m someone who needs your help,” it replied.

“My help?”

“Yes,” the hologram said. “To save the world.”

“Not interested,” Feng spoke from the side of the room.

The hologram turned in his direction. “Are you sure?” The image of the man raised an eyebrow. Then he turned back to Kade. “It seems like you’ve been trying quite hard to do that already. I applaud what you’re doing. We can do it together.”

Kade felt his hackles rise. He knew why someone would want his help. There was only one reason he could think of.

“I’m not interested,” he said.

The holographic figure smiled. “But you don’t deny it, do you? You’ve been hacking into brains, haven’t you? Saving the world one criminal at a time? There are more than a million people running Nexus now, did you know? All because of you. There are thousands more each day. And you have a back door into each of those minds. That’s a great power for good, Kade. I can help you use that power.”

Ilya rumbled somewhere in the back of Kade’s mind.
Where does it end, Kade? No one should have that kind of power.

Not now, Ilya!
he yelled back at the voice inside him.

He swallowed, spoke calmly to the hologram, his mind spinning, searching for a way out of this. He probed the shielding around these soldiers. Too strong. He could tell. Too strong for even his mind to burrow through.

“I’m not interested in help,” he told the hologram. “I’ll let you know if that changes.”

As he spoke he reached out, searching for a mind. A mind that would have what he needed. Lotus. Where
was
she?

The Indian figure shook its head. “Young man, you have the key to more than a million minds. Everyone is looking for you. What if the Americans get you? What if the Chinese get you? You’re dangerous. Let me help you. Let me keep you safe.”

There. He found the NJ, the woman who called herself Lotus. She was semiconscious. He opened her to his touch, pulsed adrenaline through her, bringing her mind back from the brink of unconsciousness, searching for the knowledge he needed. He felt her wonder at his contact, and shouted his need at her even as he searched. Where? How? Show me!

Out loud he spoke. “No. Thank you. Really. But I’m not interested.”

There. She didn’t understand, but she trusted him. She helped him. Showed him.

Kade understood. He saw the link. He burrowed through her mind to it, felt her awe as he did. He opened a pipe to the hardware via Nexus OS, proxied it through Lotus’s Nexus OS to his own, executed the command she showed him. The hardware’s user interface controls appeared in his mind’s eye – virtual knobs and sliders and equalizer graphs.

The Indian man’s holographic figure sighed. “I’m afraid it’s not your choice, Kade. That key is a threat to the entire planet. I can’t let you and it fall into untrustworthy hands. You’re going to have to come with me.”

The soldiers in sleek black combat armor raised their weapons.

Feng tensed, his finger on the trigger of his gun.

Kade mentally slid the gain controls on the system he’d tapped into all the way up to maximum. He felt adrenaline pump through him, anticipation, that sense of power, that sense of
satisfaction
.

“No,” Kade told the hologram. “I’m not.”

Then he multiplexed his signal out through the club’s Nexus amplifiers at maximum power. His transmission burned through the jamming, opened the backdoors in the soldier’s minds over encrypted connections, and instructed the Nexus nodes in a specific region of each brain to fire at maximum strength.

All seven men spasmed, went rigid, and then fell to the floor, unconscious.

The Indian figure inclined his head. “Impressive.”

Kade smiled coldly.

Then Feng slammed his booted foot down on the avatar bot with an audible crunch. The hologram crackled into nothingness.

Who are you?
Kade felt Lotus’s question in his mind. But he only shook his head. He turned, took in the wreckage all around him, revelers fallen to the ground – some unconscious, some wounded, some dead. The brunette Kade had seen so often was crumpled on the floor, her chest softly rising and falling. The Vietnamese boy who’d been ridden from London was next to her, his neck bent at an unnatural angle, motionless. Kade shook his head. He was so very very tired of this.

“Jeep,” Feng said as he ripped weapons off the fallen men. Pain ground through him from a bullet in his arm, from the massive impact of the vehicle when it had burst through the wall and struck him head on. “I drive.”

The woman named Lotus lay prone on the stage, her mind reaching out to Kade’s, and watched with open eyes as they fled.

42

CONVERGENCE

Saturday October 27th

Breece and the Nigerian followed Ava back to the garage. They left the cars outside. Ava led Miranda Shepherd in through the door, and Breece and the Nigerian followed.

Hiroshi closed the door behind them, began to reconnect the mesh panels, resealing the Faraday cage.

“Status?” Breece asked, as Ava led Miranda Shepherd to the chair in the middle of the room.

“Nominal,” Ava answered. “I administered the scopolamine in the car. Memory formation’s blocked. She’s been cooperative.”

Miranda Shepherd sat down in the chair, docilely.

“Hiroshi,” Breece said. “It’s your show.”

They had an hour to turn Miranda Shepherd into their mule. They’d practiced the process, stripped it down to its bare essentials.

Hiroshi slid the syringe into a vein between her toes, then slowly depressed the plunger. The silvery fluid pumped, bit by bit, into the woman’s bloodstream. They left her sitting there while the modified Nexus 5 took hold.

“The phone?” Hiroshi asked.

Breece handed it over in its Faraday cage bag. Hiroshi took it out with gloved hands, plugged it into the slate that would load it with new software.

By then Miranda Shepherd was coming up. Hiroshi left the phone, pulled up a seat next to Miranda’s, closed his eyes, and went Inside. Ava pulled the styling hood down over Miranda’s hair, and let it do its work.

Feng threw the jeep into reverse as Kade buckled in. He sent them careening back over rubble and through the hole in the wall it had left on the way in. Then they were out into the night. The crowds had gone, dispersed by explosions and gunfire and wild vehicles. Another jeep was embedded in the building across the street, flames licking up from it.

Feng spun the jeep around, then threw it in forward and accelerated.

“You’re hurt,” Kade said. There was blood everywhere.

“I’ll live,” Feng said.

Kade looked around him, searched for anything that might be a first aid kit. The dash of the jeep was a riot of displays. The interior of the doors and ceiling were covered with weapons: rifles, pistols, knives, grenades.

“Map,” Feng said. “How do we get out of town? Back streets.”

Kade looked at his friend – bleeding and in pain – and nodded.

Kade found the map control, zoomed it up onto his side of the windshield, and began to shout directions. “Left. Straight. Next right. Here, here!”

The alert came moments later.

[Alert: Coercion Code Alpha AUTHOR Detected. Confidence: 93%]

Details scrolled after.

[Match: Nexus 0.72 binary]

[Match: Nexus 0.72 source]

[Match: Coercion Source Code. ]

[Match: PLF Self-identification.]

[…]

It struck him dumb. He stopped talking, stopped navigating.

“Kade?” Feng asked. “Kade!”

“Feng. It’s them. I’ve found them.”

He clicked on the link to the mind in the alert.

“Kade!” Feng said. “This not a good time!”

“I might not get another chance, Feng! I have to.”

Kade entered the passcode.

The jeep turned hard, pushing him against the door. Dimly he was aware of the sound of bangs, of something clanging against the armor, of adrenaline coursing through Feng.

“Really not good time!” Feng said.

And then Kade was in.

It took forty-five minutes to turn Miranda Shepherd. At the end of that time, the woman was theirs.

The modified version of Nexus lodged in her brain, waiting to come online at the right signal from the phone, to turn her into a living weapon against her husband and Daniel Chandler. The memory script was deeply embedded, ready for Miranda’s own imagination to embellish it, to create a false recollection of a hair appointment as real as any other.

When they were done, Ava left with Miranda Shepherd to return the woman to her car. The Nigerian went with her, in the backup vehicle. Breece and Hiroshi started the process of tearing down their gear and sanitizing the garage, leaving absolutely no trace of what had happened here.

Kade took stock of the mind he’d infiltrated. He’d give away nothing this time until he knew what was going on.

He was in a building of some sort. A warehouse or a garage. There were rolls of a fine metallic mesh, like a window screen, lying at his feet. He had tools in his gloved hands.

Kade turned, scanned his surroundings. Across the room there was another man, using similar tools to take down another panel. He was whistling as he worked.

Kade reached out for that other man’s mind, to take him as well, hold them both, until he could find out where they were and call the authorities.

But there was no mind there, no Nexus for him to hack into.

Kade could feel his pulse picking up, his breathing coming heavy.

Act normal, Kade told himself. Find out what’s going on.

He clamped down on this mind, told it to pull down another panel, started to sift through its recent memories.

Images, thoughts, words. They came thick and fast. He absorbed them at faster than real-time, straining the link between their minds, the Nexus in each of them.

PLF. Assassination attempt. Team of four. Miranda Shepherd. Daniel Chandler. Explosives. Thousands at risk.

Jesus
.

This wasn’t the boss. The code had come from the other man,
Breece
, who had passed it on from the PLF’s leaders. This one, Hiroshi, had taken that code, fixed bugs, added features, improved on it.

I have to go deeper, Kade realized. I have to get to the bottom
.

There was Nexus here. In Hiroshi’s kit. Syringes of Nexus. Yes.

Kade steered Hiroshi’s body to the kit still out by his terminal. He placed the body between Breece and the gear. Then he reached into the bag, opened the insulated case inside, and pulled out a syringe already loaded with silvery Nexus.

He turned. Breece was still happily taking down mesh panels.
Faraday cage panels
. He understood now.

It didn’t matter. They’d opened their cage and let him in. And now they were his.