Ramez Naam - Crux

He stared into her eyes, whispered intently. “I’ll give you whatever you want. Proof children are being held. But my price is Shankari. You have to get him out.”

Lisa was shaking her head. “Martin, if you think you’re going to… to entrap me into planning some sort of prison breakout…”

He reached out, took her by the shoulders. “Please, Lisa. You have to help me. Please!”

She stepped back, smacked his hands away. “Don’t touch me.” Her voice was hard, angry. Students looked their way as they passed.

Holtzmann closed his eyes, took another deep breath, opened them. “I’m sorry. It’s just that, if he stays in custody…” He felt it deep inside. The compulsion. Pressing on him, expanding, threatening to burst him open if he didn’t act on it. “Bad things will happen. Very bad.”

Lisa shook her head. “You’re just wasting my time.” She turned and walked away.

“Please, Lisa!” Holtzmann said to her back. “Please!” He walked after her, grabbed her arm.

She turned and slapped him, yanked her arm away. “Don’t touch me!” More students looked their way now. Lisa whirled, then strode away.

He did the last thing he could, then. He opened his mind to her, reached out to her, hoping against hope…

He felt nothing there. But she stumbled, surprised, maybe, and turned, and looked at him.

He beamed his sincerity to her, his sincerity in offering her the proof she wanted, his deep desire to see Rangan Shankari go free.

He couldn’t feel her. But she held his gaze, then stepped towards him.

“Give me an account,” she whispered. “Where you can be reached.”

He told her. Told her the name of an account he kept on a Nexus message board, an account whose existence was enough to hang him.

Then she stepped back, and spoke loudly, for any passerby to hear. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you. Good luck.”

Then Lisa Brandt turned and walked away.

Holtzmann was in a daze as he took the train back to DC. At home he logged into the Nexus board. There was a message there, from an account he’d never seen before.

[Send the evidence. Then we’ll talk.]

He sent his own note in reply.

[Will send half. The rest when my friend is out.]

The reply came back in less than a minute.

[Agreed.]

Holtzmann sat down at his secure terminal in his second-floor office, connected to work, and started collating the files. He heard Anne come home while he worked. He yelled out a hello, but she didn’t answer from downstairs.

He pulled the data together. Records of experiments on the children. Manifests of their ages and names. A recording of the torture used to force Nexus out of a nine year-old autistic boy. Blueprints for “long-term residence” facilities that were little more than concentration camps. Plans and imperatives for the Nexus “cure” and “vaccine”.

He made sure none could be tied specifically to him, then downloaded the files. He ran it all through a filter, cutting the documents and images and video into right and left halves. The right half he fired off in reply to the message. The left half he uploaded to his own account on the message board, but didn’t send. For that, they’d have to deliver.

Anne was in the kitchen when Holtzmann went downstairs.

“Hi,” he said.

She turned and stared at him. “Where were you today, Martin?” Her face was cold, hard.

Holtzmann blinked.

“At the office.”

“No, you weren’t. I checked. You’ve been sick since Friday. ”

Holtzmann reached for some explanation.

“And who’s Lisa Brandt, Martin? Wasn’t she a student of yours?”

Holtzmann’s chest caught in his throat.

“Is she who you went to visit in Boston today?”

“Anne…”

“I have access to the accounts and the phone records, Martin. I’m not stupid.”

“Anne, it’s not what you think…”

She stared at him. “What’s going on, Martin?”

Holtzmann’s head spun. What could he tell her? Jesus.

“Come with me,” Holtzmann told his wife.

He dragged her down to the basement, to the laundry room, past it, to the room with the old furnace, the room with no windows a laser could be bounced off of, the room least likely to be bugged. He closed the door behind them, and then leaned close to her, and whispered.

“Anne. Who had the most to gain from the assassination attempt? Who benefited?”

She frowned at him. “What the hell are you talking about?” Her voice was angry, impatient.

“The President, Anne.” He glared back at her. “You said it yourself! The PLF couldn’t shoot straight! And Stockton was losing !”

Anne scoffed. “You’re paranoid, Martin. You’re worse than Claire! Those were Stockton’s friends that died. Cabinet members.”

He took her by the shoulders. “Think, Anne! Think about it!” He needed to make her understand.

“ You think, Martin. Didn’t the President overrule Barnes on killing those kids? Would a man who’d kill his own friends do that?”

Holtzmann stared at her.

“And why the bomb in Chicago? He was already up in the polls. So that wasn’t him .”

Holtzmann kept staring at her, a terrible feeling of disorientation washing over him. He’d been so sure… It made so much sense.

“And you’re running around trying to dig into this conspiracy ? You need help , Martin. You need a psychiatrist. Get yourself together!”

Holtzmann sat in his office after Anne had gone to bed.

Something kept tickling at his head. Something she’d said. You’re worse than Claire!

Claire. Warren Becker’s wife. And what had Warren said? It had been the Spears kidnapping. The one the files blamed on the PLF.

Mexican cartels , Warren Becker had told him once over drinks.

Cartels. Not the PLF. Cartels.

So why did the official record read differently?

It was thin, very thin. But if the PLF wasn’t what everyone thought… Perhaps that one thread…

A notification chimed in his mind. From the Nexus board. A new message.

[Files look good. Get your friend to the ER at Vincent Gray tomorrow night, between 10pm and 4am. We’ll provide appropriate care.]

Holtzmann stared at the message, then deleted it.

Vincent Gray was the closest hospital to DHS Headquarters. Now all he needed was to get Rangan Shankari there.

58

ALONE TOGETHER

Tuesday October 30th

The bad men came for Bobby two days after Alfonso and he knew that if he let them take him away they’d take the Nexus from his head and he’d be no one he’d be dead he wouldn’t be a person anymore, so Bobby tried to KICK the bad men and BITE them and SCRATCH them, but they were too strong and one of the men slapped him in the head and it HURT and then they dragged him out, through two doors into the special testing room.

The door closed behind Bobby and then his friends were gone. They were gone from his head. He couldn’t feel them at all. The bad men put Bobby in a chair and they strapped his hands down to the arms of the chair which they’d never done before and which scared him and he knew this was it, they were going to push the Nexus out of his head like they had to Alfonso and things would be like they were before, before his daddy Derik had given Bobby Nexus and given himself Nexus and then Bobby could feel his daddy for the first time and know that he was a PERSON – a person like Bobby and not like all the other fake people who didn’t have anything in their heads at all. And since that day Bobby hadn’t been so alone. He could feel people now, his daddy and then the boys here Tim and Alfonso and Jason and Tyrone and the other boys, and for the first time he had real FRIENDS even if they were in a bad place; he had other boys he could feel and understand and who could feel him and understand him and now he was crying and crying – and he knew that only little boys cried only babies cried and he was twelve and he wasn’t supposed to cry – but he knew what was going to happen, they were going to make him like Alfonso and Alfonso was all alone now and Alfonso just cried, and Alfonso MIGHT AS WELL BE DEAD because he’d never feel anyone again and no one would ever feel him and he was just empty like all the other STUPID PEOPLE who didn’t have Nexus and weren’t really people at all.