Ramez Naam - Apex

Rangan nodded.

There was silence.

“I’m sorry,” he said, finally, “if I’ve put you at more risk… by being here… by coming out.”

She shook her head, still smiling. “I came for…” she paused, reaching for a name, “…for Angel. For Cheyenne. They’re friends of mine. But I’m glad to see you. I’m glad I could give you that.” Her eyes pointed at the slip of paper in his other hand. “I patched you up. I’m invested.”

He let his hand rise, then, from her arm, up to her neck, up to the side of her face, touching her softly.

She sighed, and placed her hand on his.

“Oh, Rangan.”

He leaned towards her, his lips parting.

And she pulled his hand away from her face.

“No,” she said, gently, clearly, her eyes searching his.

“I…” he said.

She smiled sadly at him.

“You’re hurting. You’re in shock and loss. You’re looking for something. You think I’m it, but you don’t know me.” She searched his eyes. “And to me… you’re just passing through. And I’m still going to be here.”

She squeezed his hand, held onto it for a moment, then took a half step back, and let both their hands fall before releasing his.

Rangan took a breath, his chest aching.

“I hope you get away,” Melanie said. “Be careful out there. It’s getting worse, not better.”

She moved forward then, put her arms around him in a hug, and Rangan hugged back, sinking his face into her hair, inhaling her scent.

“Thank you,” he said, “for everything.”

“Don’t make a habit of it,” she whispered.

Then she let go, looked one more time into his eyes, and turned and walked away.

Rangan waited, alone in his tiny room. He heard the heavy outer door open and close. Finally, he ventured out into the common room.

Melanie was gone. Angel was gone. Cheyenne’s eyes were closed. She was breathing deeply.

Tempest sat alone on a couch, a flask in her hand. She looked up as Rangan entered.

He gave her a tiny, nervous nod, and turned to leave.

“Axon,” she said. He felt something from her mind. An invitation.

Rangan turned. She had the flask extended to him, her head cocked towards the open space next to her on the couch.

That looked like such a bad idea.

“Truce?” she said.

Well, shit, he thought.

Rangan walked over slowly, took the offered flask, still standing, tipped it back.

Whatever it was burned as it hit his throat, brought tears to his eyes.

Jesus. She liked that stuff?

She plucked the flask from his fingers, took another swallow.

“My mom’s in prison,” Tempest said.

Rangan blinked. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t want to ask. Speculation still ran through his thoughts, ideas, possibilities.

Tempest picked up on them.

“Release of classified information,” she said. “She’s a crypto researcher. Was a crypto researcher, I should say. She’ll never touch it again, even after she gets out.”

“What…” Rangan started. “What did she do?”

“She found a security hole in a public protocol. She was about to publish it. NSA hit her with a gag order, so they could keep the hole, use it for themselves. She published anyway.”

“They sent her to jail for that?” Rangan was surprised, despite himself, despite everything he’d been through.

Tempest took another swallow from the flask, then another. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then handed the flask to Rangan.

“No. They nailed her on something else. Audited all her net activity. Said she’d been hacking. Said one of her scans of public routers for vulnerabilities broke the law.” She shook her head. “Charged her with one count for every router she scanned.”

“How many routers?” Rangan asked.

“Eighty-seven thousand,” Tempest said. “Give or take.”

Oh god. Rangan raised the flask to his lips, and downed another swallow. It burned just as much as the first.

“She bargained down to fifteen years. Twelve left. Parole in five, maybe. Not so bad.”

Rangan coughed a little. His eyes watered.

“So I hate the fuckers,” Tempest said. “But I also know just how much power they have. And just how easily they can nail you. It leaves me a little edgy sometimes.”

Rangan nodded uneasily, not sure what to say.

She looked over at him. “Finish that. I’ll get us some more.”

Rangan woke sometime later, his head pounding like someone had taken a jackhammer to it, his stomach doing flips. It was still dark outside, not yet morning. Oh god, why had he let Tempest feed him so much booze. All he could remember was more drinking, more talking, about software, politics, prison, revolution. And then more drinking on top of that. Until he couldn’t keep his eyes open.

She was shaking him awake, leaning over him. He was still on the couch where he’d collapsed, still in his jester clothes from the day before.

“It’s the phones,” Tempest was saying, her face looming over his.

“That’s how they had so many transmitters, without us finding any. They hacked an awful lot of phones.”

How was she awake? How could she think?

“There’s no way we can build enough transmitters to fight that,” she went on. “So we do it in software – inside NexusOS. We use brains as the active countermeasures. What we need is a way to coordinate those minds to identify the hostile signals. And you and Angel are already working on it.”

She stared at him, as if waiting for him to get it.

Rangan lay there. He brought his hand to his aching head, tried to will his stomach to stay down.

Tempest just shook her head at him and spelled it out. “The mesh.”

Kade stood at the small balcony outside his bedroom, looking out at the darkened research park. The breeze ruffled the palm trees, cooled him pleasantly.

Rangan was alive. They’d spoken again later, merged minds, shared memories, tried to catch up on six months in too little time.

His hands clenched around the wrought iron railing.

Rangan had been through too much.

Connecting with him had been painful. It brought back so much.

Wats was dead.

Ilya was dead.

And Breece. Breece had killed a lot of people. And he’d killed more today. Hundreds more.

By using Nexus. Using Nexus to cause chaos. To overpower people’s minds. To manipulate.

Getting India out of Copenhagen wasn’t enough. Breece had to be stopped.

How the hell was he going to do that from India?

Breece slumped in a chair in the darkened room of his new safe house, a tumbler of cheap whiskey and ice in one hand.

Across the room, the bottle of whiskey was half empty. It took a lot of booze to overcome his genetically-boosted alcohol dehydrogenase levels. Shit.

Kate. Fucking Kate. God that hurt. It hurt like shooting Hiroshi had hurt. Losing a friend. Losing a lover.

Breece took another swallow of the whiskey, felt it burn on the way down, and sat there, images of her floating through his mind. Kate, her long black hair undone, floating down in a cloud above him as they made love. Kate, jumping into his arms after they’d been apart. Kate, so easily charming Miranda Shepherd in Houston, giving them a way into the greatest operational success yet.

Breece brought a hand up to his face. How could she falter now? What was wrong with her?

He shook his head, brought the glass to his lips, downed the rest of the whiskey in one long swallow. It didn’t matter. He had work to do.

He’d managed to slip free of her in the chaos of the protest when a clash between police and rioters had surged in their direction, forcing her to lower the gun. He had no idea what she would have done otherwise.