Ramez Naam - Apex

But she wasn’t going to give up.

She was still going to stop this monster.

Somehow.

99

Scramble

Sunday 2041.01.20

Kade stumbled out of the building hours later, a medic’s hand guiding him. Intense morning sunshine and the tropical heat and humidity of Bangalore hit him. He blinked at the brightness.

Outside, when he could see again, he saw devastation. Fires still burned in a dozen places. Smoke rose into the sky. There were military vehicles and troops around, and ambulances.

And stretchers. So many stretchers.

So many body bags.

“We’re unable to make contact with the Chinese government,” General Singh told them, grim faced, minutes later. “Every formal line in Beijing is down. Their embassy in Delhi is in the dark.”

“The whole country’s offline?” Sam asked.

Singh looked at her, as if deciding whether he could speak in front of her. “No,” he said. “Phones and net traffic for civilian data are flowing in general. But governmental and military offices appear to have been taken offline, or are being aggressively jammed.”

Kade closed his eyes. There was a temporary access point here, set up in one of the emergency vehicles. He reached out to it through NexusOS, got on the net, routed himself up through Shiva’s constellation of LEO satellites, towards China’s net.

He tried Ling’s net address. Nothing. It was offline, completely gone.

He had other tools now. He had Su-Yong’s weapon that could destroy the code she’d created, wipe it out of Ling’s mind, end the threat. He had scanning code that could find the agent she’d created. He ran it, sent it out, sent it searching through Shanghai, through Su-Yong’s flat, through the Jiao Tong network blocks, through the Secure Computing Center’s access points.

Nothing.

If she was out there, she was hidden. She was firewalled. She had defenses up stopping him from getting to her.

Kade opened his eyes, looked at General Singh.

“You have to send me there,” he told Singh, locking eyes with the man. “Me and Feng. Now.”

Singh stared back. “That’s impossible. What you’re talking about would be an act of war. War between two of the greatest superpowers in the world.”

Kade held Singh’s gaze. “General,” he said. “Within forty-eight hours, there may not be a world left to war over.” He paused. “You need to send me there. Or we’re all going to pay for what was done to this woman. Everyone on Earth is.”

Kade met Ayesha Dani’s eyes across the screen. He knew he was bedraggled, wet, still dehydrated and hungry from the hours in the elevator.

The Prime Minister of India didn’t seem to care.

Around her he could see other ministers and serious-looking men and women in uniform. India’s National Security Council, in emergency meeting.

“You said you could help our children learn faster,” Ayesha Dani said. “You said nothing about starting a war.”

Kade’s fists clenched, outside the field of view of the camera, he hoped.

Breathe. Observe. Release your attachment. Release your aversion.

He lifted his chin. “I’ve held up my part of the promise,” he said. “Now I’m asking you to let me stop a war before it starts.”

Ayesha Dani raised an eyebrow.

How much of this was theater? he wondered. How much was for the benefit of her cabinet members?

“General Singh?” the Prime Minister asked.

Singh spoke. “If the Shu entity is to be reinstantiated in the state that we found her, with open access to the net, that poses a grave threat. I believe so, and so do our top Indian experts. The attack on the Bangalore facility, combined with the loss of contact with Chinese authorities, gives me reason to believe that Dr Lane’s story is accurate.”

“How would we do it?” the Prime Minister asked.

“A commando team from Division Six,” Singh said. “Stealth insertion, airborne, directly into Shanghai, nighttime, roughly fifteen hours from now.”

“Any questions?” Ayesha Dani looked around the room in Delhi, at her advisors.

The questions came thick and fast.

Kade did his best to keep his cool.

Twenty minutes later, the Prime Minister ended the call. “I’ll discuss this privately with the Defense Minister and the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff,” she said. “You’ll have your answer within the hour.”

Half an hour later, they called back.

“Do it,” Ayesha Dani said. “And the gods help us all.”

“Feng,” Sam said. “The kids here need me.”

Feng looked down at his feet, looked back up at Sam, looked at her eyes.

“Sam, the whole world depends on this,” he said. “This is the woman who saved my life, you understand? This is hard. And I’m going. Can’t let her come back crazy. I know her. And if she’s as crazy as she showed me…” his finger went to his head, tapped at a memory only he could see. “Terrible, terrible things.”

Sam shook her head. “I’m sorry, Feng. I really am. I’m sorry for your loss. But you have the help you need.”

“No,” Feng said, shaking his head. “Got Indian commandos. Don’t know them. I trust them as far as Kade can throw them.”

Sam chuckled at that, despite herself.

“And there’s Ling ,” Feng went on. “She’s a little sister to me. If I can save her… I have to. Like these kids here are to you, she is to me, you understand?”

Sam looked away, then nodded and looked back.

Feng reached out, put a hand on Sam’s shoulder.

“I need you , Sam,” he said. “Suit up for me? Last time?”

Kade enmeshed with Ananda, with Sarai, with a whole circle of the children.

This might just be the last time, he thought.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Open the mind.

Let the breath become a focus.

Let it draw the attention.

Let it synchronize.

Let the common breath become a sync between minds.

Let it connect them all.

Let it deepen.

Minds touched minds.

Thoughts linked to thoughts.

Working memories opened, interlocked.

Attentions expanded, enfolded, became a continuum, stretching from mind to mind.

Something larger came into being. A mind greater than the sum of its parts.

The component that was Kade opened itself wide. It showed them everything Su-Yong Shu had passed down.

This time, for the first time since he’d been frightened weeks ago, Kade didn’t hold back.

The memories and thoughts and knowledge and tools and weapons and plans from Su-Yong rose through them.

All her hopes. All her dreams. All the incredible insights she’d passed on in that short time.

And all the horror.

To see a woman, a being, who’d expanded the definition of humanity, who’d explored new realms of the possible, who’d experienced the sublime.

Tortured. Degraded. Made a prisoner and a slave.

To live through that with her.

To feel her madness.

He needed the children to feel it with him. He needed Ananda to feel it with him.

It was cruel, it was horrible, it was terrible to share this pain.

But they had to know. They had to understand if there was any hope.

And as he’d known, as they came together, as their breath synched, as their minds linked, as their perceptions expanded, as their working memory grew by leaps and bounds, as the size and intricacy of the patterns they perceived grew – the horror gained context, became more bearable, became…

Became a pattern. Became a disease. A disease of the humans. A disease of society. A disease inflicted on Su-Yong Shu, infecting her mind.

He showed them what he had planned. The bare bones of a plan. A hopeless plan. A plan with no chance. A plan so thin, so miniscule, so fragile to hang the hopes of the future on. A plan no fighter would ever make.