Ramez Naam - Nexus

Chuan smiled, nodded. "So you've never tried Synchro then?" he asked.

Sam shook her head. "Nope. Sounds awesome, though."

Offer me some, she willed him. See what happens.

"Ever tried Nexus?" he asked.

"Just once. A couple months ago, at a big party that Kade and Rangan threw."

"You did Nexus with Axon?" Chuan sounded incredulous.

"Yeah. And like a hundred of him and Kade's friends."

"All on Nexus?" Chuan's incredulity was rising.

Sam nodded. "Yeah. Everyone was linked to everyone. It was amazing."

And wouldn't you like to know more about how they did that?

Sam closed her eyes, tilted her head back, pulled out her best awestruck hippie tone of voice. "It was like we were all one being, all of us in the party, all one giant consciousness… Total ego dissolution." Now… how would they react? Had she laid it on too thick? She opened her eyes.

Chuan was staring at her. Then he started to laugh. "You're alright, girl." He turned to Narong. "This chick's alright, Narong. Nice job finding her."

She pressed a bit more against Narong, grinned at Chuan. "That's how we play in California."

Chuan laughed again. "Well, we should show you how we play in Bangkok! In fact…"

"Chuan!" It was Baroma, the careful one. "Be careful what you say in public!"

Chuan shrugged, splashing his drink a bit, narrowly missing the girl on his arm. Annoyance flashed across his face. "Public? We're in our own club, man. This isn't public."

Baroma replied in Thai. " Kao pen kon a-may-ri-gun !" She's an American.

Chuan appeared dumbfounded. "So?" he replied in English.

Sam kept her mouth shut.

" Rao jam pen thong kui!" Baroma said sharply, gesturing at Chuan and Narong. We need to talk! He stepped away.

Narong turned to Sam, shrugging apologetically. "Sorry, our friend's a little paranoid sometimes." With that he followed Baroma towards an empty corner of the club. Chuan frowned, shrugged, and followed.

There was a brief silence, and then someone made a joke about Baroma not feeling very playful. People laughed, and the moment passed.

Sam watched the three of them out of the corner of her eye. Baroma and Chuan were moving their arms animatedly, apparently arguing. Narong was making conciliatory gestures, playing peacekeeper. Interesting.

Sam wandered over and joined the conversation with Kade, listened in on a discussion of neural input output architectures. The Thai students were hanging on Kade's every word. He'd clearly impressed them.

There was a tap on her shoulder. Narong. He gestured her away from the group.

"Everything OK?" Sam asked.

Narong grimaced. "He's kind of a paranoid. Look, I was wondering, we're doing this thing on Friday. It's going to be small, really chill, a family kind of thing." He paused. "It's a Synchronicity circle. There'll be about a dozen of us. Really mellow. Would you and Kade like to join us?"

"That sounds amazing," Sam replied. "Yeah, I'd love to come."

"Great," Narong said. "It's in an apartment above us in this building. Meet here at 10pm on Friday."

"Fantastic."

Sam checked her watch. It was almost 1am. Time to get going, she told Narong. Together they extricated Kade from his conversation. Narong repeated the invitation to the Synchronicity circle on Friday.

[sam] Say yes.

Kade felt reluctant in her mind, but he answered in the affirmative.

Narong gave them directions to reach Soi Sama Han and flag down a tuk-tuk or a cab. Eventually the goodbyes were said, and they headed out into the cool Bangkok night.

Wats crouched on the rooftop. An old wound throbbed softly. Kade and Cataranes and their new friend – one he'd identified as Narong Shinawatra – would presumably be in the club for some time. Time to do a little research on that driver.

He pulled some of his clearest full frontal shots of the man off his rifle scope, used his phone to search for similar pictures on the net. Possible matches scrolled across his vision. Nope. Not that one. Not the next either. Similar, but not the same face. Not the one after that or the next dozen or the next hundred to follow. Nothing promising in the first few hundred matches at all.

He went back, selected a three-quarters profile shot from the scope, reran the search. Garbage. More garbage. More garbage after that.

But wait. What the heck? Image 438. Chinese Premier Bao Zhuang. They looked nothing alike. How had that matched?

Wats zoomed in. What he saw knotted his stomach. The match wasn't on Bao Zhuang's face. It was on the face of the man behind him, in the shadows. His bodyguard. Chinese Central Security Bureau. The Chinese equivalent of the Secret Service.

The date stamp said October 2039. Six months ago. What were the odds that a member of the premier of China's security detail was now, six months later, assigned to drive Su-Yong Shu around?

What were the odds that a Chinese "military advisor" who he'd seen die in Kazakhstan would come back to life two years later in either of those roles?

No. He knew what he was looking at. These were three different men. All creations of the Chinese supersoldier program. All clones.

What did it mean that Shu rated one as her driver? It meant that she was very important indeed.

This was getting heavy. The more he learned the less he liked.

Just then, the door to the club opened, spilling light and sound out into the alley. Wats dismissed the images on his goggle display. It was Kade and Cataranes.

They would pass right below him.

It was time to try contacting Kade another way. He was atop a roof at least thirty feet from the ground. Even with Nexus 5, this was at the outside edge of his range, but he had to try.

He let the filters on his Nexus drop, reached out to feel Kade's mind as they walked below him. There… Kade…

Fuck.

Wats recoiled, reeled his thoughts in as quickly as he could. There were two minds running Nexus down there. One was Kade. The other was Samantha Cataranes.

He caught his breath. Did he have enough control to reach Kade without Cataranes feeling him? He couldn't be sure.

This was going from bad to worse. It was time to get Kade out of this. He wished it could be his friend's choice, but this was getting way too deep. Kade couldn't know how heavy the players were, couldn't know that he'd been followed last night, couldn't know how much danger he was in. Without that information, he couldn't make an informed choice. Wats was going to have to make it for him.

The rifle was in his hands. He'd pulled it out without thought. His fingers moved with a mind of their own, screwed the silenced barrel onto the stock. He could get Kade out now. His hands slid the scope onto the assembled weapon. A shot to the head. His arms lifted the rifle up, brought the scope to his eye. The back of Cataranes' skull filled his vision. The crosshairs lined up perfectly. Her skull would be hardened, reinforced with a graphene mesh or a composite foam. The bullet might not penetrate, but it would bear her to the ground, give her a massive concussion, at the least. His thumb flipped the safety off of its own accord. She'd have pain filters. He'd need to fire more than once to be sure she was incapacitated. His index finger found the trigger. Could he take her down and not kill her? The force of the impact might just pulp her brain. Wats pulled in a long slow breath. He couldn't be sure.

To be sure of getting Kade out, he'd have to risk killing Cataranes.

Fuck.

He lowered his aim. The leg. He could put her down that way.

And if she had a weapon? If she turned and fired?

He let the breath out of his lungs, re-engaged the safety, pulled his face away from the scope. The data fob was a weight against his chest.

So close…