Nexus 02 - Crux (47 page)

“Storm did this,” Feng said. “No sign Shiva’s looking for it.”

And then he looked up at Nakamura and smiled. “Could be people,” Feng said. “Shiva’s people. Human intel.”

There was only one way to find out.

Nakamura brought the sub in close to the beach, under the waves, then waited for nightfall.

“Let me come with you,” Feng pleaded. “I can help. We’re friends now!”

Nakamura chuckled. “You’re my prisoner, Feng. Not my partner.”

“You leave me on the boat?” Feng sounded outraged. “What happens if you get killed, huh? I go down to the bottom!”

“I’m not planning on getting killed, Feng.”

“Look, our goals the same!” Feng replied. “We both want Kade free! I’ll help you. I’ll be useful!”

“No,” Nakamura said. “Now clip your cuffs to the hardpoint.”

Feng hesitated for a moment, then did what he was told, locking his ankles and wrists to floor and ceiling of the sub’s fuselage.

Feng glowered at Nakamura. “You a real bastard, you know?”

Nakamura smiled. “I know, Feng,” he said.

Then he brought the sub up, pushed himself and the inflatable boat out the hatch.

“Grandpa!” Feng yelled as Nakamura pushed himself and the inflatable away.

Nakamura smiled and sent the sub the signal to seal itself up and submerge again.

Nakamura paddled the small boat in, not daring to risk the noise or IR emissions of engines. The boat’s skin shifted color to blend in with the waves. His own chameleonware suit rendered him nearly invisible. Its goggles extended his vision into the IR, into radio frequencies.

The blood was rising in him. He was out here, alone now, his life on the line, nothing but his wits and his skills and his tools between him and death. He felt free. He felt alive. Everything around him felt sharp and vivid. A feral grin split his face of its own accord.

He scanned the beach, eagerly, thoroughly, looking for anything, a sign of human life, the radio emissions of a rescue beacon, anything.

Nothing. The surf crashed on a lonely stretch of sand, palm trees swaying behind it.

Nakamura aimed for the eastern end of the beach, as far from the wrecked boat as he could manage. He landed softly, slipped off the inflatable quietly, then dragged it up onto the sand. His assault rifle was in his hands. Dual load clip switched to tranq. He wanted whoever was here alive.

Nakamura was halfway down the beach, moving silently towards the boat, watching it for movement, when he heard a sound behind him. He turned and rolled as a voice yelled “Freeze!” He came up firing, tranquilizer rounds whishing out of his gun, moving in an inhuman blur even as he depressed the trigger. Silenced rounds struck the ground where he’d just been. His assailant was a barely seen blur, a distortion of muzzle fire and impressions in the sand. He dove low and diagonally to close the distance, came up to strike with the rifle as a weapon. Blur met blur at close range. His opponent blocked his rifle strike with a rifle block, kicked at his knee. He twisted away from the kick, came again with the rifle butt in a feint, lashed his own foot forward… And had it blocked as he would block, a counterstrike launched that he would launch.

They struck and parried, dodged and twisted. His enemy’s moves were his own! He was fighting his own ghost, here. And then the voice caught up with him, stunned him.

“Sam?” he said aloud.

He dropped his guard for an instant and the butt of her rifle struck him in the side of his head. He let it propel him into a shoulder roll, came up with his gun pointed into the sand, his off hand yanking off the mask of his chameleonware suit.

“Sam!”

The space ahead of him was just a distortion. Still now. A ghost with a gun pointed at his face, wet scuffs imprinted in the sand where their feet had moved in their fight.

“Kevin?” her voice spoke from the distortion.

“Sam,” he said. “It’s me.”

He held his breath. The surf crashed onto the beach, loud in his ears. The breeze rippled the palm fronds above. A bird called somewhere, far away. His heart pounded in his chest.

If he was wrong, he was dead… If she was Shu’s, he was dead… If she was Lane’s…

Then the gun was falling to the ground, and a ghost was wrapping her arms around him.

Sam held on tight to the ghost in her arms. Nakamura. She couldn’t believe it.

She let go, pulled off her own chameleonware hood, and looked into his eyes again. He was real. Her old mentor, the man who’d rescued her, who’d thrown himself out of a burning three-story window to save her life…

They disentangled, moved under the cover of the trees to talk.

“What are you doing here?” Sam whispered to him.

“I’m here for Lane,” he told her. “Same as you.”

Kade? Had she heard right?

“What?” she asked.

“Kade,” Nakamura repeated. “He alerted you somehow? Or Feng did?”

Sam shook her head. “Kade’s not here, Kevin. He’s…”
in Cambodia
, she almost said. But no. She’d sworn to protect his secrets, and he hers. “He went a different way. I’m here for the kids.”

“Kids?” Nakamura asked.

She told him. Told him the whole story. She wished she could show him instead, touch his mind and let him feel what she’d felt. But there was no Nexus in his brain, and so she settled for words. Mai. Phuket. Mae Dong. Sarai and the children. Jake. The men from the Mira Foundation. What she’d seen in that soldier’s mind.

“Shiva… He’s trying to create a posthuman intelligence. Succeeding. He has dozens of children there. Kids born with Nexus in their brains. And he’s subverting them. Bit by bit.”

Nakamura listened as Sam told him everything. His mind whirled. Her story dovetailed with Feng’s. She hadn’t been coerced. She’d flipped in that raid.

Which meant that he was a danger to her. A conduit through which the CIA could find her. And what would they do when they learned she hadn’t been coerced? Nothing pleasant, he was sure.

“Your turn, Kevin,” she told him. “Why are you here?” She tensed as she asked. She tried to hide it from him but he saw it in her.

“Lane,” he said. “Shiva has him. I’m here to get him out.”

“And then what?” Sam asked.

He looked into her eyes and thought of lying to her. But he couldn’t. And even if he did, he doubted he’d fool her.

“CIA wants him. Wants his help. To counter the Nexus assassination attempts.”

“You can’t,” she said softly.

“I know you got close with him, Sam…” he started.

She shook her head. “No. It’s what’s in his head. The back door. You can’t give that to CIA.”

“This isn’t ERD,” he told her. “I’m here to get him before they do…”

The wheels were turning in his head as he spoke. The cloak-and-dagger briefing with McFadden. The stealthed sub. The absolute secrecy. The separation from all other agencies. The black-on-black mission that only a handful of people knew about.

Sam was talking. “…can’t trust anyone with that power. Millions of people. Whoever has the back door could have absolute control over them. They could do anything – read minds, change votes, create informants or sleeper agents. Anything.”

He looked at her. It was so obvious. He’d been so completely stupid. Counterterrorism? No. If that was all, they could have left it to ERD, left it to the wider Homeland Security apparatus that ERD was part of. Why was CIA involved? It had to be something higher stakes.

Something like Sam was describing.

Nakamura stared into Sam’s eyes. An image of his grandfather flashed before his eyes, the boy in his mother’s arms, in black and white, behind that barbed with fence, while his father went out and fought for the country that imprisoned him.

Loyalty.

Where did his loyalties lie? Where?

68

ESCAPE

Friday November 2nd

Kade woke before dawn. Friday. He felt rested and at peace with his decision. But other subjects loomed in his mind. Where was Rangan? Was Feng still alive? Was there any way to stop the bombing just forty hours in the future?

Shiva summoned him for breakfast on the roof.

“Have you reconsidered?” Shiva asked.

Kade looked at Shiva. He understood this man now. He could have become this man.

“I can’t give you the back door.”

Shiva grunted in reply.

“There’s something I need to ask you,” Kade said. He described the assassination plans. “You can stop it. Send an anonymous warning.”

Shiva frowned, shook his head.

“These men are monsters, Kade. They’re enemies of the future.”

Kade nodded. “I agree. They should be brought to justice. But not like this.”

“There’s blood on their hands,” Shiva said. “They deserve to die.”

“Not like this,” Kade repeated.

Shiva waved that away. “They’re the
enemy
, Kade. They’ve tried to kill you. They’ve imprisoned your friends. They’ve persecuted scientists doing valuable research. They hunt down children who have Nexus in their brains. They have plans for genocide.”

“There’ll be hundreds of other deaths,” Kade said. “Innocents.”

Shiva scoffed. “Innocents? No one who gives money to these monsters is innocent. No one who helps get them elected is innocent.”

Kade exhaled, tried to keep his cool. He had to reach Shiva. “This isn’t going to benefit you,” Kade said. He put his hands together, his palms meeting as if in prayer, leaned towards Shiva, his voice straining. “Shiva, this is going to turn Chandler and Shepherd into
martyrs
. Events like this are the
reason
the ERD exists, the reason that Copenhagen exists. If you let this happen, we’ll end up with a hundred more politicians like Chandler, with a new Chandler Act that’s ten times
worse
than the current one, with more crackdowns on Nexus and
every
transhuman technology.” He stared into Shiva’s eyes. “This isn’t going to advance your goals.”

Shiva stared back at him.

“Fine,” the older man said. “You want mercy? You want me to spare the lives of these murderers? These enemies of the future? I’ll do it. For you, Kade. Just give me the back door, and I’ll save these lives for you.”

Kade looked down at his hands. “You know I won’t do that.”

Shiva shook his head, his lips pursed. “Pathetic.”

Kade paced, searching for a way out of here. Day turned to afternoon, afternoon to evening. The serving girl brought dinner to his room. Vegetarian this time. They’d learned his new preferences. He forced himself to eat, to keep up his strength, to be ready for any opportunity.

She came back an hour later, cleaned away the food, tidied up the room as she did daily. The guard waited by the door. When she came back from inside the kitchen, her eyes bored into his. She silently mouthed something at him, something he didn’t catch, then gestured with one hand, out of view of the guard. Gestured back at the kitchen.

What?

Then she left. “Goodnight!” she called out in her heavily accented English.

“Good night, sir,” the guard echoed her.

Kade sat at the writing desk. What had that been about?

He went Inside, accessed his recent memory buffer, replayed that scene, then again, and again, and one more time at lower speed.

“Tonight.” He wasn’t sure, but he thought that’s what she’d been mouthing at him. Then she’d gestured into the kitchen.

Kade rose. He stepped into the kitchen, fetched himself a glass of water, took a long look around, stepped to the window looking down into the courtyard.

It was twilight out there, but still light enough that he could see. The children were gone by now, bundled off to bed. He’d learned their patterns. A pair of the research staff were seated on a bench, talking. A security man was walking a circuit.

And beneath his hands, on the window sill, where the metal frame was bolted in… The lock was there, still holding the bolt in place. It rested on the frame. But when he surreptitiously put his hand on it, and tugged ever so slightly, his gaze still fixed on the courtyard, he met no resistance.

Kade forced himself to wait, to think. The lock was open. He could open the window, break the Faraday mesh. He could reach his mind out of this cage, find a network hub. Or better. Find a mind running Nexus. The guards didn’t wear jammers when they walked the grounds. He could take one, coerce him, coerce
all
of them, even Shiva, then get the hell out of here.

But why? Why had that girl unlocked the window? Who had sent her? Sam? Ananda? Shu? Feng?

Or was this a trick? A trap of some sort?

But why? They had him already.

Kade forced himself to wait two hours, until the sky was as dark as it would be. He still had more questions than answers. But he couldn’t pass up an opportunity like this.

He rose, slipped on the sandals they’d given him, padded to the kitchen, looked out into the courtyard. It was dark out there. Only a few dim lights illuminated the space.

His eyes slowly adjusted. All was quiet. He could see no sign of movement.

He waited ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour. No one moved.

There might be someone in his range that he couldn’t see. Shiva might still be on the roof, soaking up the night view. He’d only know if he opened the metal frame, pushed the mesh shielding aside.

He had to do it, then. He damped his Nexus transmission, went into a listen-only mode. And then, slowly, he pulled the padlock open, slid it out of the lock, as subtly as he could.

Then he took one more deep breath, and pulled on the frame, tugging it in towards him on its hinges. It was jammed from disuse. He tugged slowly and consistently, until it came loose with a scrape, swinging open just a crack.

His breath caught in his throat. The Faraday cage was broken.

He positioned himself by the crack he’d opened, felt out with his mind for anything out there.

Nothing. No one in range.

He opened the frame wider, gave himself a wider transmission angle to work with, reached out again.

Nothing.

Kade looked for network connections. He found several, but all locked, encrypted.

He visualized the mansion’s layout. At one end of the courtyard was a gate and a gatehouse, where he’d always seen a guard. He couldn’t see the gate from here. But if he could get close enough, and the guard was still there… Then Kade could take him. Could have the man open the gate, lead him to a car and then a boat, show him how to get off the island.