Ramez Naam - Crux

SAM!

He felt her mind there but she didn’t respond, just kept on coming. His combat display showed him status updates from the drones. Red dots. Men headed this way. Shiva knew where they were now.

Fuck this.

He lashed back out at Sam, took advantage of her disregard for self-protection, slammed his foot into her midsection, let her slice him across the shoulder in exchange for a vicious slam of his rifle into her head. She stumbled back and Feng jumped up, got one foot on the top bar of the railing, and then kicked out against it, propelling himself up, towards the second-story window.

The sound of gunfire erupted just as Feng got his fingers onto the ledge. He hauled, flipped himself up and over, and into the hallway beyond in a shower of breaking glass.

Kade collapsed to his knees, his insides aching, his skin burning – his damaged hand in pain so bad he thought he would cry. All around him the security men were unconscious, knocked out by the back door command that the children had amplified for him. He reached out with his left hand, unclipped the unlocked Nexus jammer from the guard’s throat, tossed it to the side.

Then he opened the man’s mind, burrowed into it. He needed the passwords to the network.

There. He had them now. He could reach Houston, contact the police, the FBI, warn them about the bombing, evacuate the people.

Then someone was shaking him in the real world. He tried to break loose of them, to focus on the task at hand.

Kade!It was one of the children, the girl, Sarai.

Sam!she sent him. Shiva’s taken her! You have to help! Please!

He pulled himself back, his mind still reeling.

Sam? Here? And Shiva.

Gunfire burst out somewhere, barely audible over the ringing in his ears. Distantly he heard another explosion. Fighting was still going on. They were in danger here.

He tried to twist, to look around him, to see what was going on. Pain burst up from his midsection. He was so tired… And Houston…

Sam!the girl yelled into his mind. Help her!

Kade groaned. He had to help Sam, stop Shiva, stop the fighting, make them safe here on the island. Then he could tackle Houston.

Kade opened his senses wide. There, at the edge of his perception, he could feel that familiar mind. Fatigue and pain tried to pull him down. But she was here. She’d saved his life before. And now she’d come for him…

Kade forced himself to concentrate, pulled himself together. And then he reached out his mind to hers.

Sam’s world was horror. Pure horror. She wanted to go to that place she’d known so well on the ranch. The place she’d gone to when they’d hurt her, when she’d learned to stop fighting and just shut it out.

But Shiva wouldn’t let her.

Kill them.

She did her best to kill Feng. She wanted it. He had to die. She didn’t want to want it, but dear God she couldn’t help herself.

She tried to shoot Feng, to hit him, to cut him. Even as she did her mind replayed the horror she’d just been party to. The bullets striking Kevin. Her bullets striking Kevin. His body toppling backwards out into nothing…

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

She screamed inside as Shiva’s compulsion drove her. This was rape. Worse than rape. His mind was inside hers and she had no choice. She wanted Feng dead. She knew it wasn’t true, but she had no choice. Shiva had turned her into a zombie, like her parents had become, worse, far worse, a tool for killing the man who’d saved her life, who she’d loved as a mentor and friend!

Aaaaaaah!

She wanted to stop, to turn a knife against herself, to stab herself in the throat to end this pain.

But she wanted to kill Feng more. And so she fought.

And then his rifle collided with her head, and in a split second, he was gone.

Shiva’s men raced past her, ignored her, leapt up, scrambled for holds, and followed Feng into the building.

She moved to follow. Catch him, Shiva commanded her. And she would.

And then Kade was there, in her mind as well, his thoughts wrestling Shiva’s, tearing her in two, and Sam screamed inside.

85

SIGNAL STRENGTH

Saturday November 3rd

Feng took in his surroundings as he hurtled through the window. Glass shattered around him, fell in slow motion as he came down on the carpeted floor. A hallway. Doors.

He surged forward. One foot lashed out at a closed door. Wood splintered as the door buckled inward and crashed open. He moved forward to the next open doorway, rolled into it, rifle in his hands, eyes taking in the scene instantly. An office, empty.

He listened as Shiva’s men scramble up the wall and in through the window. Glass crunched under booted feet. Four men. They moved without speech but their footsteps, their breaths, even their pulse rates gave them away to him. They moved to the door he’d kicked open, paused.

Feng slipped back out into the hall, a ghost in his chameleonware, as silent as death. He leveled his assault rifle at the four men, and pulled the trigger.

The gun clicked.

SAFETY LOCKED – FIRE AUTHORIZATION DENIED flashed across his vision.

Fuck!

The security men heard the click, turned, guns rising. They moved in slow motion to Feng’s eyes, turning like molasses, their eyes widening in dawning awareness, fingers tightening over triggers.

Feng threw himself forward, into a roll that propelled him at their feet. Gunfire burst from muzzles as dozens of rounds filled the air. Feng’s accelerated senses brought him each boom and pop as a discrete event. His mind filled with pressure waves and firing solutions and the neon red paths of bullets zipping through the space he’d just occupied.

Then he was up, out of the roll, a man-shaped blur moving faster than they could imagine.

Kade found Sam’s mind hard and sealed off from him. So he did what he had to. Activate the back door. Send the passcode.

And then he was in. He could feel her mind, feel the homicidal thoughts Shiva was forcing on her, feel her horror at what was happening.

Then Kade threw his mind against Shiva’s, tried to force the other man’s mind out of Sam’s. Shiva counter-attacked, jammed his will hard against Kade’s. They wrestled over her, mind against mind.

Kade felt Sam scream as their struggles tore at her, as her brain was assaulted by conflicting signals from inside itself, from Shiva, from Kade. Distantly he felt her fall to her knees, her head throbbing, pain and confusion and despair like she’d never known tearing at her…

Brute force was futile. Kade dropped to a lower layer, fired random data at Nexus nodes in Sam’s brain that Shiva controlled, hoping to confuse them. He felt Shiva reinforce them, bolstering the signal from his own brain.

Kade switched strategies again, pulled up a network connection listing, fired a kill command at Shiva’s connection to Sam’s mind, felt Shiva clone the connection before the first one died. Then Shiva counter-attacked again, hopping from Sam’s mind to Kade’s, trying to open the back door, send the passcode to crack into Kade’s mind.

And then Kade had him. For there was no back door in his own mind.

He ignored Shiva’s attack, dropped the struggle for Sam’s body, felt her topple over in pain as he did, and grabbed control of Nexus nodes in her brain as a proxy instead, using them to hop from Sam’s mind to Shiva’s.

The second back door! There were three, and Shiva only knew of one!

He activated the second one now, entered the second passcode, to break into Shiva’s mind…

Then Shiva dropped the connection, severed it before Kade could get inside the man’s head. And he was alone with Sam in her mind.