Ramez Naam - Nexus

"Kade!" She was on the bed with him now, her hands on him. "It's OK. It's OK. Husshhh. It's OK. I'm here. You're safe. We're in a safe place. It's OK. Shhhhhh."

Her words didn't reach him. Her thoughts did. She was calm. She was comfort. She was strength and safety and resolve. He was someplace safe. They'd gotten away. No one would hurt him here. It was OK.

Bit by bit he relaxed. His heart slowed. It no longer threatened to burst from his chest. His breath steadied. The trembling subsided. Sam held him, and he clung to her. It was OK. It was going to be OK. They were safe now. It was OK.

He lay that way for a while, feeling the comfort of her mind, listening to the strong beat of her heart, the rhythm of her breathing, feeling her stroke his hair as she whispered again and again that it was OK. Her thoughts grew stronger in his mind. He lay that way, and sleep took him.

Sam stroked his head and whispered kind things and exuded support and peace and safety until Kade fell asleep again. This poor kid, scared and out of his depth. They were the same age, but Kade seemed so young in comparison. How was it that Kade, who'd grown up in a happy middle class family, in a happy suburban town, shielded from all threats until recently, was the anxious one, while she, Sam, with all the damage and torments of her childhood, was the strong one?

Maybe he was still recovering from the death of his parents six months ago.

Or maybe he was the normal one. Maybe she'd just had all the weakness beaten out of her.

She had work to do. She'd borrowed a slate from the safe house. She picked it up from the floor where she'd dropped it, shifted back into physical contact with Kade to reassure him, tapped and typed out her report. It took time. Three men, presumably Thai nationals, were dead. Bangkok Metropolitan Police would have found them by now. Her DNA could be at the scene. Oversight would have a field day with this. She finished up the report, shook her head, submitted it. Then she lay there, drifted into a half sleep with Kade beside her.

She woke – an indeterminate amount of time later – to a tap on the door. Someone turned the handle, stuck a head in. It was Lee, the squad leader. He spoke softly.

"You've got a call. ERD Deputy Director Becker. Want it on your slate or out here?"

Sam blinked the sleep out of her eyes. Her contacts said 3.05am. Kade was asleep, an arm around her.

"Out there," she said. "Be there in a sec."

Lee's head disappeared. Sam slowly extricated herself from Kade's embrace, slipped out and to the comms room.

It was a three-way call. Becker on one screen, Garrett Nichols on another.

"Sam," Becker said. "You OK?"

Sam nodded. "Yes, sir. Couple bruises, nothing major."

"I read your report. Good work out there. That was a hard fight."

"Just doing my job, sir."

"Any personal suspicions as to who the assailants were or what they were after?"

Sam nodded again. "They were after Lane, sir. I'm sure of it. They hit him first with non-lethal weapons, but didn't hesitate to use lethal force with me. As to who they were, hired muscle or organized crime, I'd guess. The self-destruct suggests the latter."

Becker nodded. "Nichols?"

"I agree with Agent Cataranes. This was an abduction attempt aimed at Lane."

Becker spoke again. "The major value that Lane has is the Nexus 5 design. That has to be what they wanted. As to who they are, let's enumerate the possibilities."

"OK," Nichols said. "First guess, Su-Yong Shu. She may want what Lane has. She's already shown interest in him. Inviting him to this conference may have been a ruse so she could nab him."

Sam mulled that over. "Why go to the trouble of having dinner with him?"

"Maybe she needed confirmation that he was what she thought," Nichols mused.

Becker nodded. "We know that Shu has connection to Thai organized crime through Ted Prat-Nung. And at their dinner there was heavy Nexus traffic between Shu and Lane. That might have been the confirmation she was looking for."

Sam frowned. "Sir, how do we know that?"

"Lane's phone was recording all Nexus traffic near it for later analysis," Becker replied.

"Sir, I turned off the Nexus functions on the phone before their dinner, per plan, to minimize the odds of it giving Lane away."

"The record function remained on, Sam. We needed to determine whether or not Shu has Nexus capabilities."

Sam frowned again. "Why didn't I know that?"

"It was on a need-to-know basis."

"And I didn't need to know?"

"No, Agent Cataranes," Becker's voice was firm. "You didn't need to know."

"Sir, with all due respect, I think that data would have been operationally relevant."

"Agent Cataranes," Becker said sharply, "that information was not operationally relevant to you. The phone was in passive record mode. There was no way for Shu to detect it."

"Sir–" Sam started.

"This topic is closed, Agent."

Sam took a breath, held her temper.

The pawn seldom knows what the King has planned , Nakamura had said once.

She didn't like feeling like a pawn.

"Next possibility," Becker said.

Nichols cleared his throat, looked at the camera again. "Ananda," he said. "He had Lane followed, demonstrating interest. It's possible they had a Nexus interaction as well. If so, Lane's technology could be valuable to him."

"Any luck identifying the man who followed Lane and Cataranes?" Becker asked.

"Not yet, sir," Nichols replied.

Sam held her tongue. Ananda seemed an unlikely suspect, but he had sent a monk to follow them. And stranger things had been true.

"Next possibility," Becker said.

"There are two possibilities left," Nichols said. "First, it's possible that someone else who knows Lane's work sold him out to some organization here, maybe Thai mafia, or Ted Prat-Nung's distribution cartel."

Sam was frowning.

"Yes, Agent Cataranes?" Becker asked.

"Something just occurred to me, sir. Narong Shinawatra, the student who invited us to that afterparty. He introduced himself to Kade, apparently bumped into him randomly. He rapidly befriended us, invited us to this relatively small event. He knew the route we were taking. He had the opportunity to notify the ambushers when we were leaving the club."

"…and we know that he's had contact with Suk Prat-Nung." Nichols was nodding.

Becker nodded as well, thoughtfully. "Good observation. Any suspects on the US side who might have sold Lane out?"

Nichols shook his head. "We'll get on it, sir. We can mine phone and email for any contacts with people in Thailand or obvious short hops away. We'll look for sudden bank deposits as well."

"Nichols, you mentioned one more possibility?" Becker prompted.

"Yes, sir. The last possibility is a leak within our organization. Someone inside the ERD could have sold this information, to the same sorts of sources as discussed in the last possibility."

Becker nodded. He looked troubled.

Sam spoke up. "My instincts say no."

"Why is that, Agent Cataranes?" Becker asked.

"They would have come at us harder."

Kade came slowly back to consciousness. The panic attack had passed. Sam was gone from the bed. He could feel her across the link. She was nearby, still in the safe house. It comforted him. She was talking to her superiors. Becker. The thought of the man was like a bitter taste in his mouth.

Nexus felt much stronger now, much more stable. Whatever effect the taser had on it, it seemed that sleep and time were undoing it.

Tasers. They'd wanted to take him prisoner. He was lucky they hadn't gotten him. He owed Sam. She'd risked her life to keep him from them.

There was only one reason for them to try to take him prisoner. They wanted what he knew about Nexus. They'd wanted to take it and make it their own, use it however they chose. And him? Perhaps they'd planned to kill him after they had what they wanted. Perhaps they'd planned to make him a slave, improving the technology for them.