Ramez Naam - Nexus
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- Название:Nexus
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- Издательство:Angry Robot
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- Год:0101
- ISBN:нет данных
- Рейтинг книги:3 / 5. Голосов: 1
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Nexus: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация
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Sam didn't know what to do. There were tears streaming down her face. Everything hurt. She didn't even know this man. They'd been on opposite sides the last time she'd seen him. The Nexus and the Empathek were still coursing through her brain, opening her to him. She could feel him dying, feel his singleminded focus on ensuring that his mission succeeded despite him. She could feel Kade observing them in horror. She nodded to Wats. Yes. Yes, she would carry it on.
Wats' eyes burrowed into her. He kept pushing with his mind. She must do this. She must. Sam nodded again through tears. Yes, she would see Kade to safety. Yes.
She could feel his life drifting out. Feel his will touching Kade. There was something he had to take. Something around Wats' neck. A data fob… He would understand. It would set his gift free. It would help him make the world a better place.
Wats' eyes lost focus. His mind began to fray. She shifted her fingers, tried to find a way to stop the bleeding. It was no good. More blood spurted into her face. His mind was slipping… slipping…
"Karma…" he croaked.
The coherence of his thoughts collapsed into noise, into chaos. The chaos fell to pieces. The pieces disappeared. He was gone.
There were more screams coming from the living room. Narong was still alive. He was on fire, burning to death. It was horrible, horrible. She felt every moment of it in her mind, felt Areva collapse to her knees from smoke inhalation, her lungs burning. This was how her parents had died. How her sister had died. This is how she'd killed everyone Sarita Catalan had ever known. The smoke was thick.
Kade was pulling a bloody chain up and over Wats' neck. He was crying, placing it over his own neck, tucking it under his shirt. The boy was in pain. She could feel it. His leg was pinned under something. She crawled on hands and knees around his upper body.
Stay low, she thought, under the smoke.
Her hand felt something. His leg, his shin. It was broken. There was a fallen beam across his calf, burning hot. She heaved up, threw it off of him, felt him cough painfully. Smoke was getting in his lungs. He struggled to get to his feet and collapsed. Sam felt pain lance through the broken shin. He wouldn't be getting out of here under his own power.
She felt and heard the hallway ahead of them collapse into a pile of burning rubble. There would be no getting out that way. She came to her knees, picked him up. She tried to picture the apartment. The front door would lead out to a building already on fire, a long hall, a locked door at the end. Not that way. The altar… it was under a window that looked out on the alley. She tried to picture it. Areva was burning, now, her skin crisping and blackening, the pain filling Sam's mind. Sam coughed, once, twice, three times, from other people's pain or from her own smoke inhalation, she didn't know. She was getting lightheaded. She had to concentrate. The altar, the window. She wouldn't be able to see. She'd have to find it by dead reckoning.
Sam put her head to the floor, hyperventilated air that was super heated, but cooler than any other she'd find. This was as good as she was going to get. She sucked a final breath into her lungs. She came up onto her feet, Kade in her arms, stayed as low as she could, held her breath. She staggered down the hall, limping, her left leg aching from some blow.
The living room was ablaze, the open space raging far hotter than the hallway. The heat of it made her wince and draw back. A fire vortex was forming in the middle of the room, the superheated air swirling ever faster.
She half ran, half limped forward. Her foot came down on something still alive. Someone screamed louder. She ignored it, lurched forward, blind. The window must be directly ahead of her. God help her if it wasn't.
"CLOSE YOUR EYES!" she yelled with all her saved-up breath.
Sam surged forward with what she had left, twisted her body at the last second to shield Kade, crashed through what little glass remained in the window after the explosion, hurtled into the pre-dawn air.
39
FRYING PAN TO FIRE
Feng shook her awake with mind and body. Even after all these years, this body still needed sleep.
Shu opened her eyes. "What is it?" she asked in Mandarin.
"Explosion. Nana District. Near where he was attacked on Monday."
She was awake instantly. Feng opened his mind to her, and she absorbed it all. She became one with her higher self, breathed deep in the glory of it, scanned the net for all public knowledge of this, saw how paltry it was. Thai Royal Police databases opened for her, told her fractionally more, not what she was looking for. Where was Kade now? Thai Telecom opened to her mental touch. There. His phone was at the site of the blast.
"Get the car," she commanded.
"This may be dangerous," Feng replied.
"Get the car," she repeated. Feng bowed and turned, sprinting for the other room in their suite.
"And your guns, Feng. Get your guns."
Sam landed hard in the alley. Pain shot up the damaged leg and it gave out. She couldn't roll with Kade in her arms, staggered instead, caught herself on one knee. Fuck. Jumping one story shouldn't hurt like that.
Coughing racked her body violently. Bloody mucus landed on Kade's scorched shirt. Kade had burns all over him. He'd passed out from pain or smoke or something else. She could hear the last fading mental screams of the dying in the apartment above, as the smoke and flames brought their lives to an end.
This is how my family died, she thought to herself.
More coughing racked her body. She'd inhaled too much smoke. Fuck. She didn't have time for this. She had to get them out of here. That way, the main street. Find a cab. Go to ground, somewhere, anywhere.
What had she done?
Time to think of that later.
Sam came up to her feet, lurched painfully down the alley towards the main street. She made it a handful of steps when she heard running feet behind her, a yell, in Thai. "There!"
She tried to turn, was too tired, too slow with Kade. Something jabbed her fast and hard in the back. Electricity coursed through her, convulsing her muscles. She screamed. A taser round. Oh, god, no. Not this again. Not now, when she was so tired…
A second round hit her. Her legs gave out. She stumbled, fell to her knees. Kade rolled out of her grip. Running feet approached. Her vision was fading. Someone kicked her in the face and she toppled backwards, into a pool of broken glass blasted out by the explosions above. She was vaguely aware of someone picking Kade up, hauling him off. She could feel someone's mind… A mind she'd felt…
Suk. Suk Prat-Nung. He was still alive.
An electrified shock baton came down on her. Her body spasmed. Kicks rained down, more shock batons. Three of them above her. Four. Maybe five. She pushed it all away from her self, like she'd pushed the beatings, the rapes, the humiliations and abuses.
She'd been so stupid.
"The Friday night event is a trap," the note had said.
Wats. It must have been Wats. That's why he'd been here. He'd known it was a trap. He came into it anyway, died trying to save Kade.
Thank you for saving my life, she whispered to him.
She felt a last feeble mental scream from someone upstairs, felt his skin turn to ash and his mind wink out. Loesan. That had been Loesan. Dead, all dead.
Her eyes opened. Wats had made her promise something. Promise that she'd keep Kade alive, keep him alive so he could make an impact.
They'd rolled her onto her stomach, she realized, brought her up on her knees, face down in the alley, on the cobblestones and the broken glass. There was a forest of legs around her, just visible in the pre-dawn gloom. One was yelling in Thai that she'd killed his brother. The blows had stopped coming down.
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