Ramez Naam - Crux

She explained her rules to him. Sex would happen when she initiated. She would always be on top. And it would be just sex, nothing more.

He complied, mostly. And it was sweet and hot and uncomplicated. She loved the touch of his hands on her skin, the feel of his body beneath her, the passion and pleasure that rose from his mind, the satiated feeling they shared after. She started to look forward to her nights, almost as much as she looked forward to the daytimes playing with and tutoring the children.

4

TRANSITIONS

Wednesday October 17th

Bobby lay curled up on the floor of the cell, his brow to the cold concrete floor. He was hot everywhere. The cool felt good on his head.

It all kept replaying like a movie.

They were going to take a train trip! Then everything had gone crazy and his daddy had picked him up and then he’d been hurt and there were bad men and it was scary and his daddy fallen down with Bobby over his shoulder and it had HURT when Bobby had hit the ground but not as bad as it hurt inside his daddy when those… when those… when those BULLETS had hit him and his daddy had fallen down and been so cold inside and there’d been a puddle all around him…

And now there was nothing at all, nothing at all, nothing at all where his daddy had been in his head he was just so very very sad too. He was twelve and he didn’t have a daddy anymore.

They put him in a little room and left him there and then came to move him and he’d tried to BITE them and tried to HIT them but they’d been too strong and put him in a bad car and moved him to a bad place where a lady had tried to talk to him and make him think she was good but he wanted his daddy and he knew she was with the bad men so SHE WAS BAD TOO.

And after he’d bitten her on the FACE they’d grabbed him and brought him to another bad place where doctors asked him questions and poked him with needles which HURT and he didn’t like so they’d held him down while they stuck needles in him which made him ANGRY and then he’d slept and it felt like he’d slept a long long time and he’d woken up in another BAD CAR like a cage with his hands tied together like he’d seen on TV when he sneaked a look at the shows he shouldn’t see and he wanted to KICK them because his hands were tied but he couldn’t because he was in a cage.

Then they’d taken him out and taken him to a big building and he’d fought but they were too strong and they HIT him and they took him in an elevator and down a hall and another and another and then they opened the door…

…and then he felt someone else’s head. And someone else. And someone else. And someone else besides that.

And everything changed.

Ilyana Alexander lay strapped to the gurney, alone in the sterile white room. The sedative dripped into her veins. She was so tired. So very tired. How much more of this could she take? What would they try today? Waterboarding again? Truth drugs? fMRI lie detection?

Ilya lay there thinking, remembering her father’s stories of Pudovkin’s secret police, the torture chambers, the political disappearances, the creative ways they pulled confessions out of dissidents these days in Russia. All the reasons they’d fled when she was thirteen.

Most of all, she remembered what her dissident father, who’d been taken by the police more than once, had told her about torture. Everyone breaks eventually, he’d said. Everyone.

Sharp pain lanced across her skull. Thousand-decibel static overwhelmed her. A roaring crackling filled her hearing. An overwhelming smell of fire was in her nose. Pain sizzled through every nerve cell in her body. Every muscle tensed and she screamed, arching away from the gurney that confined her.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

[aegis activated]

The defenses Rangan had built slid into place. The static receded to a dull roar. Her head ached like she’d been smashed by a twenty-pound sledge. Her heart was pounding in her chest. Her breath came fast.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Rangan.

Tears ran down her face.

Then the minds appeared.

Three of them. She looked up from the gurney, and there they were. Two women and a man in business attire, government IDs hanging around their necks.

They’d never tried this before.

She felt the agents’ minds, flush with Nexus, looked into their hard eyes, and then they were on her.

They pushed on her mind in unison. The back doors! The codes! Give them to us!Three strong healthy minds pushed against her tortured, abused, sedated one. Her will buckled under the first onslaught.

She felt her mouth open. Felt memories of those frantic hours on the plane start to rise.

Nyet!

Code structures started to flood into her memory. Her jaw moved. Three of them. Together, they were stronger than she was.

The back door! She could hack them, shut them down!

No. A trick. They want you to!

She used the other half of Rangan’s battle package instead.

[activate: nd*]

She sprayed all three of them with the Nexus disruptor they’d used on her, saw and felt them stagger.

She picked the weakest of them, the woman on the left, still dazed from the disruptor, and followed up with a push to her mind, grabbing for control of her hand with all she had, and punched the woman in the nose with her own fist.

The woman staggered back, a look of surprise on her face, blood beginning to flow. Ilya’s mouth began to open again as the other two pressed once more.

Nyet!

She grabbed control of the stunned woman’s leg and spine and kicked up and jerked back hard. The woman’s body threw her to the ground, backwards, and her head made a satisfying crack against the cold tile floor.

The other two jerked away, but held on to their wits. Shields had descended over their minds, blocking out the disruptor. Ilya grabbed for the man’s fist, and tried to hit him with it. He fought back, and the other woman helped him. His clenched fist came up slowly, slowly, until it paused in front of his face, vibrating, trembling in the air, muscles straining as Ilya pushed the man’s fist towards his face and he and the woman pushed back. They were two against her one, and they were fresh.

Ilya dropped her mental grip on the man’s arm and the combined force of the agents’ wills sent it swinging wide and out, away from his face and body, pulling him off balance. In their surprise they stopped pushing, and in that moment Ilya grabbed the man’s fist again and slammed it full force into the woman’s face.

She staggered back, her hand rising to her nose, and Ilya toppled her as she had the first one, yanking the bitch’s neck muscles back hard to make sure it was her pretty little head that hit the floor first.

The last one standing turned and looked at her in horror. Ilya pushed against his mind. No fancy tricks this time, just will on will.

Show me everything.

And she saw. More like these three. Many, many more, being trained and armed with tools to pry open her mind and extract what she knew.

Ilya had time to gasp. Then the doors opened, and the techs in white lab coats rushed in, and a single jab into her arm sent her into a deep, dark sleep.

How much longer can I hold out?

Ilya lay in the dark cell, listening to her heart beat.

Lub dub. Lub dub.

The codes. The passwords. The back doors to Nexus 5. That’s what they wanted. And if they wanted them so badly, then Ilya could only draw one conclusion: Nexus 5 had gotten out. Somehow, against all odds, Rangan or Kade or Wats had gotten it out into the world. And she’d be damned if she gave them a back door into that.