Ramez Naam - Nexus

The state trooper placed Rangan in the back of his squad car. Bruce Williams patched Nichols into the CHP comms system.

Nichols put on his headset. "Rangan Shankari?" he asked.

Silence. On the screen, Rangan looked towards the floor of the vehicle, making no sign he'd heard.

"Mr Shankari, you are now in the custody of the Emerging Risks Directorate. My name is Special Agent Nichols."

More silence.

"Mr Shankari, is Samara Chavez still inside Hangar 3? What's her status?"

"I want to see my lawyer." Rangan uttered the words without looking up.

"Mr Shankari, you're under suspicion of very serious crimes in breach of the Emerging Technological Threats Act. Under these conditions you don't have the right to a lawyer."

Silence.

Nichols continued. "What I care about is the safety of Samara Chavez. Is she still in that building? What's her situation?"

Rangan said nothing.

"Mr Shankari, I have a team of men ready to knock down the door of that building and do whatever it takes to get my agent out. There are also at least a hundred civilians in the building, many of whom are your friends. If we go in with force, some of your friends could be hurt. Do you understand me?"

"Suck my dick."

Nichols was irritated now. "Rangan, you may think you're accomplishing something with this, but you're not. If you're covering for your friends, we already have Watson Cole," Nichols lied. "What we want is to know if Samara Chavez is still alive, and a way to communicate with the people inside that building to get her out."

Rangan said nothing, but shifted slightly in his seat.

"If you don't help me, we're going in, and people are likely to get hurt. People might get killed. You understand that?"

Rangan shifted again. "I want my lawyer."

"You're not going to get one. Are you going to help us, or do we kick in the door and start shooting?"

Rangan visibly hesitated, then spoke. "They're going to let her go in a couple hours."

Nichols leaned back in his seat. So, she was alive. And being held.

"Let's end this now," he said. "Not a couple hours from now. You're going back in there, and here's what you're going to tell your friends inside…"

Fifteen minutes later, a black SUV deposited him outside the hangar's back entrance.

"…if there's any monster here, it's you!"

The handle of the door to the storage room turned. Both Kade and Sam turned, startled, to see Ilya enter, a glum look on her face, trailed by Rangan, dressed in a grey hoodie and jeans. Rangan looked pale and unhappy. His eyes were fixed on the ground in front of him. Party sounds followed them in.

"They caught me," Rangan announced. His voice shook.

Kade could feel the bitterness of it. The words tasted like ashes in his mouth.

"They sent me back in to deliver a message," Rangan said. "They have this place surrounded. They have Wats too."

"Ugh." Kade felt it like a blow.

"They want the three of us to come out, with her." Rangan nodded towards Sam, still bound to the chair. "They want us to shut down the party, send everyone home with some excuse, and surrender ourselves. Just us. We're not to mention the ERD at all. If we don't come out in thirty minutes, they say they'll come in here with guns out."

"What about everyone else here?" Kade asked.

"As long as we surrender, everyone else can go home."

"I'd rather make a scene," said Ilya. "Force them to arrest a hundred of us. Take it public. Show people what they're doing. That's how we fight."

"Everyone knows what they're doing," Rangan said. "No one cares. We're just druggies to them."

Kade spoke up. "I don't want other people going to jail because of us. That was the whole point of not running."

"That was part of the point," Ilya said. "The other part is standing up for what's right. We've done nothing wrong. The ERD are the bad guys here. We can show the world that."

Kade shook his head. "No. This is our fall to take."

"I'm with Kade," Rangan said softly.

Ilya bowed her head. She didn't look convinced. Her mind felt angry to Kade, defiant.

"Fine," she said. "I'll go start shutting things down." She left through the open door.

Rangan looked at Kade. "You OK?"

Kade nodded but said nothing.

Minutes passed. They waited in silence.

What's taking so long? Kade wondered.

Just then, through the door, they heard the current track fade, Ilya's amplified voice, something about a noise complaint, the party over, time to go, drive safe.

Ilya returned shortly after that. Her eyes were wet. Had she been crying? He wanted to comfort her, but she felt hard and angry.

"I left Antonio in charge of clearing people out," she said. "That'll take a while. We might as well go now."

"They said to head out the side entrance and walk towards the golf course parking lot," Rangan said.

Ilya untied the rope around Sam's feet, helped her up with a hand on her bicep.

Sharp pains lanced up Sam's left side as she rose. She ignored them. The four of them walked out of the storage room, turned and took a hallway away from the main hangar area. A minute later Rangan opened the side door of the hangar and they emerged into the cool night air.

Sam's contacts immediately lit up with the positions of the DEA SWAT team that was providing her support on this mission. The two vehicles were a hundred yards ahead. Two agents were with the vehicles. Four more in a loose perimeter blocking possible escape. All showed ready to fire, half with lethal loads, half with tranq. A green handshake glyph showed that their tactical systems had registered hers as well.

She looked to her right at Rangan, squinted to illuminate him as a target, then Kade on her left, squinted, and hit the fire icon with her eyes. Rangan started to turn, the start of a frown on his face. Sam felt him tense in her mind. Then tranquilizer rounds shot out from two agents and hit each men in the neck. They went down like comic actors, hands rising to the sudden wasp stings at their necks, gurgling cries of surprise, then eyes going glassy, balance lost, toppling into loose-limbed heaps.

"Bitch!"

Sam felt Ilya grab her physically from behind, her arm around Sam's throat. Sam spun to present a clear shot on the woman to the shooters, heard the thwap of a silenced tranq dart, and a moment later felt the grasp around her neck loosen and Ilya's limp body crumple to the ground.

Watson Cole came up for air under the Dumbarton Bridge. He slid his body slowly into the shallows where it came to ground in Menlo Park, gradually letting just his face rise above the level of the water. With luck, the bridge would shield him from any cameras, IR or visual, searching for him from above. He'd swum more than six miles underwater, an exhausting feat in the best of times. He needed time to let his blood hyperoxygenate again. He rested a moment, then started the pressure breathing that would accelerate his uptake of precious oxygen. He had miles to go before he slept.

5

LEVERAGE

Rangan woke slowly. His head ached. His muscles were cramped, his stomach restless. God, what a hangover. What had he been doing last night? What time was it? He cracked one eye to take a peek.

This was not his bedroom.

Memory rushed back. Oh, fuck…

Rangan sat bolt upright. He was on a thin mattress atop a rigid metal bench along the wall of a starkly white cell. Fuck fuck fuck. He looked down at himself. His clothes were gone, his watch, his shoes. He was in shapeless grey cotton slacks, like hospital pants, and a baggy grey shirt. Prison garb. They'd taken his phone, his wallet, everything.

Think, Rangan, think.

If there was an unguarded net connection here, he could get online, maybe figure out where he was. Maybe get a message out as insurance…