Ramez Naam - Apex

Let the thoughts rise and pass away.

Shit shit shit.

Let the breath become all.

OK.

Let it slow.

Whew.

Let it deepen.

Let it absorb the attention.

Soldiers crossed his vision, running down the alley, shouting.

Breathe. Breathe.

The sounds of their shouts receded slowly into the distance.

Feng strained to make out the words on the radio. “w… reserve… land… stealth… now!”

Sam’s voice. And Kade’s. Not good.

“Override,” he told the wing. “Manual control.”

Warnings filled his vision as the wing protested.

“Override,” Feng said again. Then he seized the physical controls at his sides and pushed into a hard bank.

Alarms went off in his ears. More red warnings flared.

FLIGHT SPEED DROPPING.

ALTITUDE TOO LOW.

TRAJECTORY OFF COURSE.

DANGER: URBAN OBSTACLES.

Feng ignored them, banked hard, scanning.

“Radio,” he ordered. “Override,” he said, not even waiting for the Indian gear to complain.

“Kade!” he broadcast. “Sam!”

No response.

Skyscrapers swam back into view. He was dropping fast, his forward momentum bled off by his too-sharp turn. He scanned his eyes over the scene, quartering it.

Movement! Black canopy, dropping from the sky.

It disappeared between buildings, falling out of his view almost half a klick to the north.

Ay! Feng thought.

He banked again, starting another hundred and eighty degree turn, aiming to line up on the street where the canopy had gone down.

“Kade!” he broadcast again. “Sam!”

The skyscraper tops were just a hundred meters down now, lurid like Chinese New Year decorations, bright and colorful in the pale light before the sun.

Wind out of the north hit as he came around on his turn. He was coming in too slow, dropping too fast.

No way to make the next street.

Feng came in one street short of his goal. Or was it two?

He was even with the tops of the buildings now, bombarded on all sides by the neon colors and the moving adverts. Lu Song! That was Lu Song on that building hefting his spear!

“Rise, China!” the building yelled at him.

What the hell?

No time for that. He was at five hundred meters. Parachute height. Still dropping.

Feng put his hand around the cord, ripped it away, blew his chute open. He felt the drogue pop out, felt it catch air, felt it pull the rest of the folded chute out of his pack and into the sky behind him, and suddenly straps were grabbing him, holding him up more aggressively.

He looked up and back and there were thin black lines, almost imperceptible, leading up to a nebulous distortion in the sky above.

Clean open.

Feng released the bottom attachment points of the wing, let it pivot from his shoulders, sweeping out behind him, parallel to his plane of motion.

Then he reached up, grabbed the handles of the chute.

The streets were filled with people.

What he needed was a rooftop. A low roof, close to street level, large enough to land on.

There.

“Kade, Sam.”

Kade blinked in surprise.

“Feng?” he transmitted.

“No,” Kade heard back in Feng’s voice. “I’m the boogey man. Yes, Feng! Over.”

Kade chuckled.

Sam looked up from where she was splinting his knee, her face a mix of amusement and horror, her visor and helmet next to her, on the floor of this store they’d broken into from the alley.

She picked up her helmet, held it to her face. “What’s your status, Feng?” she said quietly. “Over.”

There was a pause. Then Feng’s voice again.

“Status not where we want to be,” he said. “Looking down on a black reserve chute, lotta angry soldiers.” He paused. “Couple bodies. Over.”

Sam frowned, shook her head. “Roger. Did what I had to.” Her voice sounded strained to Kade’s ears. “Over.”

Kade clenched his jaw. She’d killed those men to save him.

“Yeah,” Feng said over the radio. He paused. “Send your twenty. Over.”

“Alley south from there,” Sam said. “Fourth door on the right. Lock’s broken off. Knock. Over.”

“Roger,” Feng said. “Out.”

“Sam…” Kade said. “Those soldiers you shot…”

“It was them or you, Kade,” Sam said, tightening the splint around his swollen knee. “You die…” She paused, then went on. “You die now, a whole lot more people die.”

Her voice was cold. Her fingers kept working at the high tech splint molding itself to Kade’s joint.

Then she shook her head. “Like I told you, some people deserve to die. Those guys? Wrong time, wrong place. But it needed doing. I’d do it again.”

She pulled hard on an adjustment strap, tightening the splint further.

“I’m sorry you had to,” Kade said quietly. “I know it sucks.”

“Yeah,” she looked up at him. “Sucks to be them. Sucks to be their wives. Sucks to be their kids.”

Then she stood up and looked down at him. “Just make it worth it, Kade.” She sounded tired. “For everybody.”

“Twelve kilometers,” Feng said. “That’s how far it is to target.”

Kade closed his eyes. Seven and a half miles. With the streets flooded with people, soldiers, tanks. And his knee banged up.

It would take hours.

Hours they didn’t have.

Feng projected a map onto their visors.

“Here,” he said. A red arrow appeared, two kilometers from the flag icon of Jiao Tong. “Rendezvous point. It’s a risk, but we can send a message via satellite to the rest of the team. Meet up when we get there. Enter Jiao Tong together. In case we need them.”

Kade could feel the tension in Feng’s mind. The uncertainty. He was headed to confront a program left behind by the woman who’d been his hero, his savior. To stop her from coming back into the world insane. He didn’t know what they’d be up against. But he feared the worst.

He feared his brothers.

Sam nodded. “OK.”

Kade put a hand on Feng’s shoulder. “Sounds good,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

113

Contact Established

Monday 2041

Prime Minister Ayesha Dani waited for the arrival of Wu Qiang, Chinese Ambassador to India.

The demand for an urgent meeting, “vital to future friendship between the two great nations” had come in the late afternoon, just an hour ago.

She suspected her office had surprised the Chinese Ambassador by their near immediate acceptance.

The door opened. One of her bodyguards entered. Behind him came the dark suited, slender, formal Wu Qiang, a briefcase in his hand, his customary affectation of spectacles on his face.

Ayesha Dani rose slowly from her comfortable chair.

At her age, after three assassination attempts, with all that remained of her left hip, she considered standing for someone a great show of respect.

“Ambassador Wu,” she said. She waved at her bodyguards, and they stepped out. This man wasn’t an idiot.

“Prime Minister Dani,” Wu began.

The Prime Minister sat back down. Wu remained standing.

“I’m here to lodge my nation’s strongest possible protest at India’s electronic attack on our domestic communications systems, and to inform you that–”

“It wasn’t us,” the PM interrupted quietly.

Wu took a deep breath and pushed on. “President Bao Zhuang has expressly instructed me to convey to you his–”

“So you’re back in touch with Beijing?” she interrupted again, one brow raised.

Wu faltered, nodded. “Obviously.”

“Good,” Ayesha Dani said. “Because your President needs to know who, or rather what , is actually behind these attacks. And what you have to do to stop it.”