Ramez Naam - Crux

A shirtless Vietnamese boy, not more than twenty, danced by them, his face exulting, his hairless chest covered in sweat. His mind touched Kade’s, and Kade was suddenly elsewhere – a flat in London. This boy was being ridden, Kade realized, leasing himself out to a banker a continent away, letting someone pay him to take a short vacation in his body.

Two nearly identical Vietnamese go-go dancers in silver hot pants, silver knee-high boots, silver angel wings, and tiny silver pasties covering their nipples moved in perfect sync on the stage, silver-streaked hair flinging around their heads in unison, sweat glistening on their taut stomachs and lean thighs as they pranced and spun and fanned their Nexus-controlled wings and set the crowd on fire. Between them a muscular Vietnamese DJ in mirrored shades and a tight black T-shirt held one hand above his head, then dropped it down in time to a massive boom in the music.

Flashbulbs burst from every angle, blinding Kade, inundating the club in white, and then there was a new mind pushing through the Nexus chaos of the club, amplified by the Nexus repeaters in the walls and ceilings. The NJ. The Nexus jockey. She projected her mind onto theirs like a song, projected it like a dance, in time to the music, and the crowd roared its approval.

Kade blinked the flash blindness away and then he could see her on the stage, next to the DJ. Her dress was a mirror ball molded to her body. Her smiling lips glittered a metallic ruby red. Her lashes were silver and iridescent. Her hair was long and platinum blond, woven through with brilliant glowing strands of blue and green and red that pulsed to the music. She opened her mouth and sang, a pure wordless note of glory, and raised her silver gloved hands up and out and over the crowd.

And her mind… Her mind was dance. It was pure joy in motion. It was ecstasy. He felt the urge to move to her rhythm, to feel her emotions. He looked around himself and the crowd wasn’t chaos anymore, wasn’t a mob. It was a single living thing moving in time, exulting in the music and the lights and the pure ecstatic glory the Nexus jockey was pumping out of herself. From her perspective he saw the club, and it was heaven in her eyes, angelic beings dancing atop the clouds, exulting in the glory of some futuristic paradise. The amplifiers boosted her signal, let her project her song and sights and ecstasy to the entire club, and the crowd loved her for it, roared their approval in mind and voice.

Kade turned to find Feng, and his friend was there, grinning. And Kade was grinning, and then he was dancing, as he hadn’t danced since this whole nightmare began. And even Feng was swaying side to side, smiling, enjoying himself, eyes still flashing over breasts and hips and then searching, searching for any threat.

Kade danced, and as he danced, he let his virus do its work. Minds brushed against his, dancers, waitresses, go-go dancers, the DJ, the NJ… He felt them dancing, felt them boosting and twisting their own neurochemicals, drugging themselves into bliss or psychedelia, absorbing the NJ’s thoughts as they did, retransmitting their own, adding to the collective vibe. The whole crowd was beaming, grinning, smiles showing on faces all around. Friendly minds offered Kade Nexus apps to get himself higher – neurotransmitter modulators with names like DigitalEcstasy, SimTHC, and CyberAcid – but he passed with a smile each time. He was working, and he was high enough from the NJ and the crowd around him.

His agent infiltrated every mind that touched his. One of them would upload a memory of this night, or connect over the net to touch the mind of a friend back home, or go online to download a new software patch or a new app. And then his agent would spread.

Six degrees of separation, Kade thought. In days his new agent would reach every corner of the Nexus world.

The brunette was there, from the restaurant, dancing with her friends, a drink in her hand. She met his eye and smiled and he felt her mind brush against his. And oh, how nice it would be… But he couldn’t. And so he smiled and then turned away, pulled his eyes and his mind away from her, put all of himself into the music and the rhythm and movement of the crowd and his body and the song and dance and hallucinatory vision of the NJ.

Kade danced and danced and danced, until he was exhausted and covered in sweat and the agent he’d unleashed was already on its way to other continents. Then he stumbled out of the club, Feng at his side.

“Being your friend, fun sometimes!” Feng laughed as he pulled Kade along behind him.

And Kade laughed too, happy, satisfied with a strong night’s work.

28

THE FAMILY

Wednesday October 24th

Breece jogged down the hill to the Lexus, slowing as he approached the car. He checked for any movement from beyond it, where he’d crushed the third man up against the SUV. Nothing. He peered under the car cautiously, until he could make out what was left of the man. It was a gruesome sight. The assassin’s head and upper body weren’t visible, crushed between the Lexus and the SUV. One arm dangled limply down to meet a lower body splattered with blood, legs bent at impossible angles. He was definitely dead.

Breece rose and opened the driver-side door of the car. The vehicle was marked now, just like his phones, just like the identities all three objects were registered to. He had to stop the damage there, stop them from retrieving DNA samples, stop any chance of the authorities finding out Breece’s real identity, cut off any path that might unmask Hiroshi and Ava and the Nigerian.

He tapped on the car’s center console, navigated the menus, touched a corner that was blank, and let it scan his retina. A new menu appeared, with hidden options.

Self-destruct. He set it for a ten minute countdown, or when triggered from his phone.

From the trunk he pulled out his go bag with gear, phones, gun, and fresh false identities. Then he grabbed an enzyme bomb as well.

He took off up the hill again, the enzyme bomb in his still-gloved hand. The landscape was quickly growing darker in the post-sunset twilight. He gained the top of the hill, found the two assailants he’d killed. He pulled the ceramic knife out of one man’s throat, cleaned it on the man’s jacket, and slid it back into his ankle sheath.

Then he stood back from the area, brought the cylindrical enzyme bomb up, pulled the pin on it, and tossed it at the spot where he’d been hit. It rolled to a stop against one of the bodies. A half second later a dozen tiny ports opened on the soda-can-sized cylinder, hissing out a dense white fog of DNA- and protein-degrading enzymes. With any luck they’d erase any biological traces he’d left.

Breece pulled out his phone again, sent an encrypted message to Hiroshi.

[Am safe. Stay clear of area. Your phone now burned as well. Meet at rendezvous.]

Then he dropped down behind a headstone, looked around it at the Lexus, pulled up the menu, and moved the self-destruct time up to now .

Three hundred yards away, a solenoid opened a canister of compressed oxygen, venting it into the gas tank of the car, hyperpressuring it. Seconds later, a score of tiny penetrators poked holes in the fuel tank, sending aerosolized gasoline into the car’s interior and into the air around it, turning the vehicle into an unexploded fuel-air bomb. Breece counted down: 3… 2… 1…

The car erupted in a fireball that lit up the twilight sky. The heat of it warmed his face. Any evidence left in that car was now vaporized.

Breece pulled the batteries from his phone, turned, and slowly crept down the back side of the hill. It was a long way to the rendezvous.

He made it to Houston eighteen hours later, wearing his spare clothes, his hair freshly dyed black, a car rented under a fresh identity.