Ramez Naam - Nexus

Jane rewound, played the last few seconds. Two assailants. Three. Four. Combat. Fuck.

"Get the fireteam there, stat!" he ordered.

• • • •

Sam ran down the alley, Kade across one shoulder, her phone in the other hand. The blasted thing claimed to be transmitting, but there was no sound from the speakers. She had no idea if her support team were hearing what she was saying, no idea if they had any data from her at all.

The alley mouth was just two blocks away. Wait. Figures there. Three, four of them, backlit by light from the street. Were those rifles? She ducked into a side alley. Were they her backup? Or more assassins?

She still had the knife she'd taken from the thug. She looked around for a place to hide Kade. There, a dumpster.

"Blackbird! Blackbird! We're from the nest! Here to get you home."

Voices speaking good English. The right code name.

"Today's word is golden calf. I repeat, golden calf!"

The right daily password. She relaxed fractionally.

"Coming out!" Sam yelled.

There were four of them, all local contractors vetted by the CIA, dressed as businessmen, dark pants and dark shirts, with conservative dark blazers over them. The automatic rifles and bandoliers of ammo gave them away. She knew that underneath the blazers they wore armor, packed more ammo and more weapons. They were mercenaries, not regular forces, but at this point she just didn't care. Thank god for well-armed support teams.

"I've got a man down," she said.

Two of them came forward, took Kade's unconscious form from her, ran back towards the main street.

"I'm Lee," the point man said. "Our car's at the alley mouth. We can take him. What's the sitrep?"

"Ambush five blocks back," Sam reported. "Three Thai muscle, taser rifles, trying to take us alive. I think he was the target, I was a surprise. There was a fourth guy, not muscle, headed off…" She paused to get her bearings. "…east. In a hood. The muscle had implanted explosives, detonated after I disabled them. All KIA."

"You get samples?"

Sam looked down at the splatter of blood on her hands and clothes. More blood was dripping into her eyes. "Not intentionally."

"You hit?"

"Minor," she said. "But I'm going with him."

Lee nodded. "Roger that. We'll get samples and sanitize the site."

"Fuck the sanitize," Sam replied. "That was a fucking explosion. Bangkok Metro cops will be here soon. Get in, get out, don't get caught." There could be no contact with the local authorities.

Lee nodded. "I'll confirm with command." He jerked his head towards Soi Samahan. "Car's back that way, sooner you're in it, sooner they can roll." He gave Sam a smart salute.

Sam returned the salute, ran for the alley mouth. There was a four-seater Toyota there. The two on her team were standing by the front, their guns gone from sight, eyes scanning the perimeter, hands inside jackets. The back door was open, Kade slumped inside. Sam dove in the back, slapped the interior roof of the car.

"Let's go!"

Wats froze, flattening himself against the wall of the alley, deep in the gloom. He held still, let the chameleonware blend him into the wall, shield his IR emissions as it dumped his body heat into its onboard heat store. They were shouting in English, good accents, passwords of some sort. Four newcomers and Cataranes. The newcomers wore business garb and automatic rifles. He recognized them, American made, all ceramic and composites, x-ray invisible and non-magnetic, perfect for sneaking across a border. At a guess they were loaded with graphene-tipped rounds, harder than diamond, able to punch through any conventional body armor.

Two of them carried Kade away, carefully, like a patient rather than a sack. That was a good sign.

The other two new arrivals jogged his way as Cataranes headed out of the alley. Wats froze, held his breath. They passed right by him without noticing. Short hair. Bulky builds. Military bearing. These were CIA or Special Forces. Maybe local mercenaries. Something along those lines. They matched the description of the men who'd lounged most of last night in the lobby of the Prince Market Hotel.

Wats waited for the two military types to recede into the distance. He counted to sixty, then crept silently forward to the mouth of the alley. Gone. Kade, Cataranes, the other two – they were gone. This whole night had gone belly up. What the fuck had happened here? Who was trying to kidnap Kade?

One thing was certain. Getting the kid out was going to be a royal bitch now.

25

THE PAWN SELDOM KNOWS

Kade swam in and out of consciousness. He was in a car. Sam was with him. His head was in her lap, her hand on his brow. Lights raced by. There had been a fight… Explosions. He caught flashes of conversation. Tasers. Kidnapping. Abduction.

He could just barely feel Sam's mind through a haze of static. She was concerned. For him. And she was angry. Someone was going to pay.

Then he was being moved, carried out into the night, through a doorway. There was a woman's face. Thai. A stranger. And then a coffin lid closed down around him.

He tried to fight, found he had no strength. They'd buried him alive. He blinked hard and the world swam back into focus. Strange noises all around him. Then the lid came away and bright light filled his eyes.

He was in a compact surgery. An operating table with lights and two insectoid robotic surgeons occupied one wall. An emergency metabolic suspension tank was against a second wall. The coffin he was in was an imaging bed. They'd been scanning him.

The Thai woman was at a console, looking at diagnostic results. Kade tried to sit up, failed. Sam gave him an arm and he managed it on the second try.

The Thai woman looked over at him. "You have a concussion. Not very serious. No significant brain bleeding. You do have a linear fracture of the skull on your right side, but it's faint, and not impinging on the brain. You're going to have major bruising of the side of your face."

Kade grunted.

She loaded up a syringe and approached him.

"What now?" Kade asked.

"I'm going to inject you with growth factors. Trust me, you want this."

Kade followed her instructions without further demur, letting her treat his wounds. He was lucky to be alive. If Sam hadn't been with him, or if she'd been a little bit slower, or if that guy had smacked him just a little bit harder…

Then again, if it weren't for her, I wouldn't be in this mess at all.

The last step was a lumbar puncture. The Thai woman slid a needle into his back, between his vertebrae, sucked out a tiny sample.

Cerebrospinal fluid. They're looking for signs that Shu inserted something else into me. They won't find any.

After the Thai woman was done with him, Sam led Kade to a room where he could lie down, then disappeared.

Kade dozed. He woke at some sound, disoriented.

Where am I?

The party, the fight, Thailand, Su-Yong Shu, it all came flooding back into him. A chill went up his spine. His stomach knotted up. He reached for the Nexus OS. No good. He couldn't get the OS to launch, couldn't invoke the serenity package. The nodes in his brain were scrambled. What was he doing here? Why were people trying to kill him, trying to capture him? He was going to die in this place. They were going to catch him, torture him, and then, even though he'd tell them everything, they'd kill him.

He felt faint. His heart was pounding in his chest. His breath was short. He was trembling. He felt cold all over. His body was covered in sweat. He needed to get out of here.

The door to the room opened. Light flooded in. Kade flinched, threw up an arm to ward away whatever was coming.

"Kade!"

It was Sam. Samantha. She had something in her hand. She moved towards him, closing the door behind her. He flinched back farther, put both hands up to keep her away.