Ramez Naam - Apex

Silence for a moment.

Then a slightly annoyed, “Roger, 148.”

Her thumb found the safety, and somehow it was on. The barrel of the pistol dropped of its own accord, away from Abigail’s chest.

Then her left hand came up, found her tactical glasses. And somehow they were off her face, the earpiece was out of her ears.

It was all someone else doing this. Not her.

Barb stared at Abigail. “The videos?”

Abigail looked her in the eyes. Levi came up, put his arms around his wife.

“I only know about the kids. And him.” She gestured at Shankari. The terrorist. And then she nodded. “Those parts are true.”

Barb swallowed hard. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh, Barb,” Abigail said, reaching out to put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry. We did our best to tell the whole world.”

Later, in a daze, Barb walked out of the church, her gun in its holster, her patrol glasses dangling from one hand.

She walked around the truck and to her waiting squad car. There, at the rear of the car, she crouched, as if in a dream, and carefully placed her patrol glasses behind the driver’s side tire of the cruiser.

Then she let herself into the driver’s seat, rolled down the window, and backed over the glasses, then forward, then back, until she was sure they were destroyed. Then she got out, and scooped up the pieces, to drop them in a storm drain somewhere with fast running water, to render the data on them, the video and audio that hadn’t been transmitted, beyond retrieval.

Then Barb called back in to dispatch.

“Command, car 148. Resuming patrol sweep for Shankari.”

19

Rude Awakening

Monday 2040.11.05

They came for Kade half a day later. He’d been allowed to eat, to relieve himself, then had fallen asleep in the chair from sheer exhaustion, his head cradled on his one undamaged hand atop the table.

He woke to the sound of the door slamming open. He looked up, saw armed soldiers moving towards him, more of them coming in, filling the room.

A sound escaped his throat. He pushed back from the desk in alarm, tried to stand at the same time. A back leg of the chair caught on something as he did, and suddenly the chair was toppling backwards, and he was toppling with it.

He reached out to break his fall, and his bad hand slammed into the floor.

Horrid pain flared up it.

Then Kade’s head slammed into the floor. More pain blossomed in his battered ribs. The world spun.

“Get him up,” he heard someone say.

Two soldiers loomed above him. Their hands closed like vices on his biceps. They heaved and he came to standing, a groan escaping him as more pain shot through his abdomen. He started to double over, and then a hood came down over his head, cutting off his vision of the world.

“Hands,” the same voice said.

He had a vision of invoking Bruce Lee, but he knew how futile that would be.

His wrists were yanked together behind his back. The damaged one ached so hard tears came to his eyes. Cold metal closed around them. He heard the snick of something locking.

Kade brought the icon for the suicide script he’d written front and center.

Whatever this was about, they weren’t going to get anything useful out of him.

“Walk,” the voice commanded.

Walking hurt. He heard muffled sounds. Doors opening and closing. Footsteps. Echoes on tile and then bare concrete.

They went down, into tunnels.

Into a garage.

He was shoved into a vehicle.

Then movement, acceleration, banking, turning, driving. The sounds of hustle and bustle. The city outside. New Delhi.

There were men with him. Soldiers. Many of them.

They were outside now, he was certain of it.

He reached out with his thoughts, searching for any transmitter, but there was nothing.

He retuned his mind like Ling had shown him, opening himself to all sorts of electromagnetic activity, but he was blocked. Shielded. The hood or something else was cutting him off.

The city sounds disappeared first. The hustle and bustle, the sounds of traffic and street vendors and everything else, went away, bit by bit, then the last of them, all at once.

Were they taking him out to the country? A secret location to interrogate him? A spot to put a bullet in his head?

Then something else changed. They went down a ramp and something about the sounds told him they weren’t outside at all. Then more turns, and a stop, and the soldiers were moving, and he was being shoved out, and led down a hallway of concrete, and through doors, and more doors, and into an elevator, and then out.

And into somewhere quieter, more hushed. It felt different under his feet.

Hands guided him, turned him, propelled him, stopped him, propelled him again.

Then suddenly his wrists were being tugged at. There was a clicking, a second click, and the restraints were off. Someone pushed him, almost gently, and he fell into a chair. Someone else tugged at the hood and it came away.

He was in an ornately decorated room, sitting, facing a carved wooden door in a gold-gilt frame.

I’m not dead, he realized.

Then the door opened. A massive man in a grey suit entered, then a second. They moved into the room, their faces masks, their eyes scanning.

Behind them came a small, grey haired woman in an elaborate green silk sari.

Kade’s face recognition app flashed text next to her. He ignored it.

He didn’t need its help to recognize Ayesha Dani, Prime Minister of India.

Kade pushed himself to his feet, nearly groaning as pain hit him again.

The PM stepped forward until she was just feet away from him. The top of her head came to his chin. There was a piece of paper in her right hand.

“You told one of my most trusted advisors to ‘fuck off’,” she said. Her voice was the voice of authority. A voice you listened to. Her pronunciation was precise, accented, but somehow more perfect in her use of English than most Americans ever managed. “Why?”

Because he’s an asshole, Kade thought to himself.

He blinked, fought to adjust to this very different situation. “I needed to…” He wracked his exhausted brain for the right words. “… convey to Secretary Aggarwal the… depth of my convictions on this issue,” he said. “I didn’t feel I’d… gotten through to him.” He paused. “Before that… point of emphasis.”

She studied him. He could see her eyes taking him in, taking his measure in some fundamental way he didn’t understand. “You can help our children learn faster.” It was a statement, not a question.

Kade took a slow breath in through his nose. They had to start this the right way.

“Honestly,” he told her. “You can do that yourselves, with Nexus, without me.”

The Prime Minister held up the paper, flapped it in Kade’s face. At this distance he could see roman letters on it. English words.

“Then these conditions of yours,” she said. “Why should I agree to any of them?”

Kade’s eyes moved from the paper back to Ayesha Dani’s eyes.

He spoke with all the conviction he had. “Because every one of those is the right thing to do – the right thing for those children you’re going to give Nexus to, the right thing for India, and the right thing for the world. Because in time, if you’re the person I think you are, you would have done them all anyway.”

She looked at him for a moment, her face unchanged, her eyes still studying him.

“And,” Kade said, a smile slowly spreading across his face, “because with my help, your children will do even better.”

20

Election Day

OUTCOME SUDDENLY UNCERTAIN AS ELECTION DAY ARRIVES