Ramez Naam - Apex

She watched as they splinted the ankle of a girl named Arinya who’d twisted it in the chaos, as they dealt with minor cuts and abrasions and burns. Off to the side she saw a medic rig a proper sling for Feng’s arm, saw another dealing with Kade.

Kevin’s face swam in her mind again. Her bullets slammed into him. Shiva’s will controlled her. Controlled her through Kade’s back doors.

Goddammit! she told herself. Shiva did that. Not Kade.

She felt her fists clench. Sweat was beading on her forehead. Fight-or-flight. Adrenal response.

This wasn’t rational. It was physiological. Kade was just a proximate trigger.

She knew what it meant, knew all about this.

She had to nip it in the bud now.

“I need something,” she told a medic. “A beta-adrenaline blocker, a strong one. Or a serotonergic.”

Stop the near-permanent imprinting. Stop physiological response from amplifying the emotions, from heightening the stress response, from turning these last few hours into a trauma that would last for years.

The Buddhists and the shrinks agreed. The body was the seat of emotions. Quell the physiological response and you could dampen the psychic pain as well.

“Are you having a heart attack?” the woman medic said to her, an eyebrow raised.

“I’m post-traumatic,” Sam said, keeping her voice as level as she could. “It’s setting in. Standard protocol is to stop it now, before…”

The medic stared at her.

“Please,” Sam said.

“Physical trauma only,” the medic said, and closed up her kit.

Sam’s fists clenched tighter.

They sealed them up in a large-ish briefing room, with soldiers positioned outside, while Colonel Atwal awaited her orders on what to do with them. Only when Sam complained loudly did the soldiers bring any food and water, or allow bathroom trips, always under the guard of multiple armed soldiers.

Her heart kept pounding. They weren’t being treated as guests. They weren’t being embraced. They were prisoners here.

Kevin died again and again at her hands.

She pushed it away, focused again on the children, held Sarai, held Aroon, held Kit, held all the children to her, wishing she could touch their minds. And shuddering with the horrible memory of killing the man who’d raised her every time she even thought of taking Nexus again.

We’ve got a plan, she told herself. They want something. They want Kade .

Stay cool. Stick to the plan. Make the kids safe. I come later.

After a few hours Colonel Atwal came to them again.

“My orders have come through,” she told them. “We’re sending you on to Delhi.”

Kade collapsed into a window seat in exhaustion, pain flaring up from his midsection as he did.

The aircraft to Delhi was larger, a military passenger jet. With all of them on board, more than half the seats were still empty. It was also Faraday caged, effectively shielding Kade and everyone else in the passenger compartment off from the electromagnetic world outside.

They were prisoners once again.

Kade could see Shiva’s private jet sitting on the tarmac as they taxied past it. He had the access codes to that plane, as he did to almost everything of Shiva’s now. He wouldn’t change those access codes. He wouldn’t steal, wouldn’t divert resources from wherever Shiva’s estate or the courts eventually sent them. But, for the time being, he could reach out to that aircraft, or innumerable other assets of Shiva’s, and they’d respond. If he wasn’t inside this Faraday cage, that was. If the Indians ever allowed him to touch the net again.

They lifted off into early morning sky. Behind him, in plentiful seats, Kade could feel the children nodding off to sleep after their long ordeal, hear low voices talking, Sam’s voice, speaking in Thai. He could feel Sarai’s mind back there, befuddled, confused, longing. Longing for Sam, for the touch of a mind that was no longer there, no longer linked by Nexus.

The exhaustion pulled at Kade harder. The grief, the sorrow at all the death. The physical pain of everything he’d been through. He needed to rest, to regroup, to be ready and focused. He closed his eyes.

Then Feng lowered himself into the seat next to him, his left arm bound up in a proper sling now.

You think this is going to work?Feng sent. The transmission was tuned for Kade’s brain alone, a tight beam, at minimal power. Even via this method, Feng was taking no chances.

Kade shook his head mentally. I don’t know, Feng.He sent it back just as carefully. Then he thought better, thought that was too bleak, and tried to be more cheerful. What’s the worst that could happen?

Feng was silent for a moment. Then: Well… they throw the kids into an orphanage. Torture you, me, and Sam until we tell them everything. Mostly you.Feng paused. Then… they sell us to your American friends?

Kade turned, surprised, and found Feng grinning at him.

Then Feng laughed, and laughed, and laughed, a bellowing raucous sound, filling up the plane.

Kade shook his head, a chuckle coming out of him unbidden, and turned back to the window, to the ever receding blue of the Indian Ocean below, the vast stretch of water they still had to cross to reach the Indian mainland.

It’ll work, he sent to Feng. Probably.

Feng shrugged, good humor radiating from his mind.

“Hey, why no in-flight entertainment system?” the Chinese soldier asked loudly, kicking the seat in front of him. “What kind of lousy plane is this?”

Kade shook his head, cheered despite himself, and closed his eyes to sleep.

“Mr Lane,” the man said, smiling coldly, his hand extended to shake Kade’s. “My name is Rakesh Aggarwal. I’m with the Ministry of External Affairs.”

Kade rose slowly from behind the table as Aggarwal entered the room, his ribs aching in pain as he did. He gestured with his bandaged right hand apologetically, then extended his left hand to meet Aggarwal’s. The man took Kade’s one good hand smoothly in his right. Aggarwal’s hair was grey, close cropped. He wore an American-style business suit over a trim frame.

Nexus nodes recorded everything for posterity. A memory-augmenting app Kade had loaded with the files he’d downloaded from the net on Shiva’s jet tagged the man before him.

[Rakesh Aggarwal]

[Special Secretary, Ministry for External Affairs]

Special Secretary, Kade thought. A fix-it guy. A cleaner. That could be good. Or very bad.

The door closed behind Aggarwal, leaving Kade alone with him here, armed guards on the other side, another series of Faraday cages cutting him off from the outside world, Feng and Sam off in their own interview rooms, the children under the temporary care of Thai-speaking social workers.

Kade cut to the chase. “Mr Aggarwal, I’d like to formally request asylum here in India, for myself, my companions, and the children we brought with us.”

Aggarwal froze for a moment, then lowered himself into the chair across the table, motioning Kade to do the same.

Kade lowered himself back into his own chair, even more slowly than he’d risen, wincing as his ribs flared in pain again.

“Mr Lane,” Aggarwal started. “You should be aware that India has a mutual extradition agreement with the United States, where, we understand, you are wanted by your government for acts of terrorism.”

Kade nodded, smiling to hide his fatigue. “Yes. That’s why I’m formally requesting asylum.”

Aggarwal pursed his lips. “Mr Lane, it is certainly theoretically possible for India to grant political, religious, or humanitarian asylum which may pre-empt extradition or other agreements. However, to do so, you’d need to make a case that your home government was… persecuting you on grounds which we in India find invalid. What case would you make to us?”