Ramez Naam - Crux

Shankari looked up at him for a moment. His eyes showed nothing. Then he looked back down and touched the surface again to advance the images.

“This is why we want the Nexus back doors,” Holtzmann told him. “To stop these sorts of things.”

A lie, he told himself. We want them for control. Surveillance. Nothing more noble than that.

“I already gave them to you,” Rangan said. “Not my fault they don’t work anymore.”

“Keep looking at the pictures,” Holtzmann told him. “Go through the whole set. Maybe you’ll think of something once you see what we’re up against.”

Shankari grunted, touched the slate again.

Then Holtzmann reached out, carefully, cautiously, for the boy’s mind, sent a request for a chat connection.

Shankari looked up, his eyes wide in surprise. His mind gave off shock, disbelief. And then he accepted the chat request.

[holtzmann]Make no sign. Keep advancing images.

[rangan]What the fuck?

[holtzmann]I’m here to get you out.

Holtzmann opened himself partially to the boy, showed him his sincerity, his deep desire to see Rangan free.

Rangan tapped the surface of the slate again, then looked down.

[rangan]Why?

[holtzmann]It doesn’t matter. But we have an opening tonight. Can you fake a seizure at 11pm?

[rangan]Yes. What then?

[holtzmann]If it’s convincing enough, you’ll be taken to the nearest hospital. From there some friends will get you free.

[rangan]What about the kids?

[holtzmann]Just you.

Rangan blinked in surprise. Holtzmann felt the boy struggle inside, felt hope and guilt and fear and principle war with one another. Seconds passed. Then he felt Rangan come to a decision.

[rangan]No.

[holtzmann]We may not get another chance.

[rangan]Not without the kids. They come, or I don’t.

Holtzmann groaned inside. He wanted this so badly. He needed to get Rangan out. It was so close, so very close.

[rangan]They’re kids, man. You’re torturing them. It’s fucked up.

Holtzmann closed his eyes. He could fake a medical emergency. There were any number of things he could inject Shankari with that would force a trip to the ER.

[rangan]Goddammit, don’t you have any fucking conscience at all? They’re KIDS.

Holtzmann felt himself slipping further. Images of the children went through his head. Alfonso Gonzales, the one who’d been tortured until he gave up Nexus. Bobby Evans, the one they’d spent four hours torturing before finally giving up…

[rangan]Please. I don’t even have to go. Don’t worry about me. Get at least get one of the kids out instead.

Holtzmann grabbed his slate out of Rangan’s hands, stood up.

[holtzmann]I’ll think about it.

[rangan]Wait, wait. What about Ilya? Kade? Wats?

Holtzmann stared at Shankari. And suddenly he felt so tired, so very tired of all of this.

[holtzmann]Dead. Hunted. Dead.

Shankari dropped his head into his cuffed hands as Holtzmann turned and strode from the room.

Holtzmann sat in the bathroom stall, the lid down over the toilet, fully clothed, and wept. He wept in frustration. He needed to get Rangan out. He had to do it. His whole body was wracked with the need, his palms sweating, his breath coming fast, his skin tingling. Rangan had to be free!

He could do it. He could go into his lab, load up a syringe with a cocktail of tramadol and dapoxetine. That would do the trick. One injection, and a few minutes later, Rangan would be seizing hard, would need to be taken somewhere for treatment.

Yet Rangan was right. Those children… One by one, they’d be tortured. They’d become guinea pigs for new cures. Some would die in the process. Some would survive to be shipped off to concentration camps, or to be set free, scarred by the loss of Nexus.

Holtzmann clenched his fists, pressed them against his head. He wanted to scream with the force of the struggle inside him. Gaaaaah!

I’ve never been brave , he told himself. Always been a coward. Goddamn it! I want to do something right for once.

He had to try. Had to try to get Rangan and these children out at the same time.

And the other children? The children being studied in Virginia? In Texas? In California?

Dear God, he told himself, I can only do so much at once!

He would save these children here, the ones under his own direct care, if he could. The rest would have to wait.

Holtzmann took the car, left campus, went to a coffee shop in the DC slum that surrounded the sprawling Homeland Security complex in Anacostia. There he linked himself to the net, tunneled in through an anonymizer, connected to the Nexus board, and fired off a message.

[Change of plans. A dozen more friends to get out. Young ones. You get the rest of the files after.]

And then he went back to the office, and stumbled his way through another day of hypocrisy.

Rangan sat in his cell, shaking.

Did I just do that? he wondered. Did I just say no to getting out of here?

Yeah. I did.

He’d spent his whole life as a taker. He’d spent his whole life as a boy. But he didn’t have to end it that way.

Those kids… they needed out of here. They deserved their freedom more than he did.

It was time to do what was right. It was time to do something for someone else for a change. It was time to be a man.

Sweet fucking Jesus, Rangan thought. I hope it works.

62

UP THE COAST

Wednesday October 31st

Sam pushed through hard seas Wednesday night. Four days she’d been traveling now, moving the little stealthed boat at night, hiding during the brutally hot days. Her shoulder, tended with a continuous supply of fresh bandages, antibiotic cream, and abundant food, was healing.

The weather had started calm, but grown rougher each day as she moved further north. Tonight was the worst. The waves tossed her little boat around. She secured the weapons and extra fuel and food and water and surveillance gear as best she could, but inevitably they crashed from side to side as well. The wind died down around midnight, and she made great time after that.

She found a small, unlit island before dawn, settled into a narrow cove for the day. She’d made seventy miles that night. She was now just thirty miles from Apyar Kyun.

Sam ate all she could, cleaned her shoulder wound, then forced herself to sleep. Slumber came slowly, and when it came, she dreamt of Sarai, of Jake, of death.

Sam woke gasping, had to jam her own hand into her mouth to silence herself. It was only noon. There would be no more sleep.

She readied her gear instead, stripping it down, cleaning it, assembling it, testing it. Rinse. Repeat.

The sun dropped lower in the sky. It was Thursday afternoon now. She could reach Apyar Kyun before midnight, spend this night studying the island, scanning it with the high-powered scope and infrared imagers Lo Prang’s men had provided, find a way to get her kids back.

Sam steered her little smuggler’s boat out of the cove, out into the water. It was rougher away from the island she’d spent the day at, but the engines kept her moving forward. The waves buffeted her, rocked her, but she endured.

She fought the wind and waves for four hours, pushed within ten miles of Apyar Kyun. The winds died, and Sam quietly rejoiced, and progress got easier. She was just a mile from Apyar Kyun, a few hundred yards past a final tiny unnamed island, when the storm came back with a vengeance.

The big wave hit her from the port side, from out in the deeps, and battered the little boat to the side. The force of the blow snapped an anchor point, loosing a strap. Gear she’d secured came free. A pile of water jugs toppled to the bottom of the boat. More anchor points failed. A stack of food collapsed. A box of ammunition flew across the cabin and struck the far side.