Ramez Naam - Nexus

They were going to take her with them, he was saying. Then they were going to rape her. They were going to make her scream for hours. They were going to flay the flesh from her stupid body. They were going to make her beg for death.

Fools. They should have killed her here and now. Her hand closed on a long, jagged piece of glass, inches wide, a foot long. The sharp edges bit into her palm, her fingers. Blood welled up.

"Chaonai Rayum Khongkhun pen Kon Kaa!" she yelled. Your fucking boss killed him!

Sam lashed out behind her with a kick, felt it connect with one of them. She slashed to the right with the broken glass at the nearest leg, took him on the back of the calf, hamstrung him. Blood fountained out of the leg. The thug dropped to one knee, mouth open, screaming in pain.

She reached up with her left hand, grabbed the man above her by the hair, used it to pull him down and herself up, jammed the foot-long glass shard into the underside of his jaw – all the way up into his head – as she came up to her feet. Red arterial blood spurted out. The man gurgled and gasped for breath, dead on his feet.

There were rotor sounds above her. A helicopter. Someone kicked at her chest. She cut a furrow in his leg for his trouble. A spotlight illuminated them. An amplified voice boomed out in Thai, instructing them to halt by order of the police. Gunshots ricocheted off the brick walls. The thugs turned and bolted, scattering in all directions. Fuck.

An explosion ripped out of the apartment upstairs, some munition on one of the bodies finally going up. The chopper pilot jerked up and away, and the light came off her for just an instant. Sam rolled, painfully, came up with a limp, threw herself into a shaded doorway.

She had to find Kade. Where had they taken Kade?

Kade came to abruptly. Someone had smacked him across the face. He was slumped in a chair. One of his eyes wouldn't open. Everything hurt. His hands and the left side of his face burned. It hurt to breathe.

Someone smacked him again. He screamed in pain. Oh my god, that hurt. The skin of his face was on fire. His eye, he couldn't fucking see through one eye. It hurt like hell!

A fist landed in his gut. He doubled over, gasping for breath, retching. He couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe.

A voice spoke in Thai. The next blow didn't land. A tiny bit of air leaked back into his lungs. He gasped. He was in a large room of some sort. A warehouse. Where was Sam? Where was Wats? Oh my god, that was Wats. He'd felt his friend die. Felt them all die.

Oh no. Oh no. Dead, dead, dead, all dead. My fault. My fault. All my fault.

The hand came back, slapped him again. He'd been screaming. He whimpered softly, sobbed. The pain of his flesh was nothing. He inhaled, let the serenity package take over and calm him.

Someone spoke in English. "Who are you?"

There was a mind there. Suk. Suk Prat-Nung.

A hand struck his face again. It burned like hell.

"Who are you? Who do you work for? They're dead, all dead because of you."

The hand hit him again, hard. Kade could feel the rage and fear and hatred of the mind behind it.

All because of you, Kade thought. All true. All true.

The serenity package had kicked in. He was empty, now. He was cold. He was nothingness.

Another man came forward. Thai. Angular. A large hooked nose.

"How do you do this?" he asked in accented English. "How do you have so much Nexus in you, for so long?"

The Nexus. That's what it had always been about. He wasn't going to tell them. He shook his head.

The new man's hand clenched around Kade's testicles, squeezed hard.

"You're going to tell us," he said. "Or we're going to kill you." He squeezed even harder. "Slowly." Again. "Painfully." And again.

Kade shook his head, screamed his anger at them, screamed it from throat and mind. "NO!"

He saw the man in front of him recoil from it, felt Suk wince in pain. They had Nexus in their minds. He could hurt them.

The thug stepped forward, rammed his fist into Kade's face again, into the burnt and bruised and swollen side. The pain made the world go hazy for a moment.

Suk stepped closer again. "Tell me."

The thug grabbed Kade's left hand, took his pinky finger, wrenched it backwards until it broke.

FUCK!

Kade knew what he had to do then. Emptiness consumed him. Hatred. "I'll tell you. I'll tell you! Stop! Please!"

The thug grabbed his next finger, bent it halfway back, enough to hurt. Coldness descended over him. The pain was nothing.

"Please! Stop! I have to show you. Please."

He opened his mind for them to suck them in. They came closer. Kade showed them the first discoveries, he and Rangan's first experiments. Suk and the other one lapped at it eagerly. He showed them more. Whizzed them through memories – fast fast faster. They came closer, hungrily, sucked up as much as they could from him. He was giving them more than they could possibly keep up with. He wanted them as close and as open to him as possible.

"Wait, wait, slow down!" the angular one said.

Kade could feel him now. His mind was faint. His name was Tuksin. He was a monk. He was here to steal these secrets, free himself of Ananda, become the lord of Nexus. His mind was twisted and foul to the touch.

Kade sucked them in deeper, showed them the synthesis for Nexus 5, the molecular structure of the individual components, how they fit together. It was still too much for them, too complex all at once. They needed more bandwidth. They came even closer, almost touching him, opening their minds as fully as they could to absorb what he was giving them.

And then he showed them hell.

[activate nd* pri: max]

He blasted them with the Nexus disruptor, the signal the ERD had bombarded Rangan's brain with, the way they'd disrupted all thought in that cell. It was pain more intense than anything they could ever have imagined. They screamed with it, both of them, screamed and fell to their knees. Even through the filters in his mind the barest fraction of it took Kade's breath away.

The thug turned, saw them writhing in pain, hesitated for a moment. Kade kept pounding the signal into their brains. The big man wheeled on him, smacked Kade hard enough that it knocked him out of the chair, onto the floor. The pain stunned him.

He held on, kept jamming the signal into their brains. The thug kicked him. Pain exploded in Kade's abdomen. Still he held on. There . Yes. There. Suk and Tuksin were writhing in agony, all thought gone from their minds.

Kade stopped the Nexus disrupter. He needed to focus entirely on something else. There was a gun on the thug's hip. Kade was in Suk's mind now. Push/pull. He was the master of it. He always won.

The gun. The gun. The gun.

The thug kicked him again. Something cracked inside him.

Shoot him. Shoot him. Shoot him.

The gun was in Suk's hand. The thug turned, his eyes going wide. Suk fired, enormously loud in this space. The thug's kneecap exploded. He roared. His leg gave out. He collapsed, hauled himself half up, reached for Suk to slap the gun out of his hand.

Suk fired again. The bullet took the bigger man in the belly. He grunted, still trying to move forward, almost prone now.

Suk fired a third time. The bullet entered the top of the thug's head, split it open like a melon.

Suk blinked in surprise. Tuksin tackled him. The gun went off again, without Kade's willing it this time. Tuksin coughed, and blood came up out of his mouth.

Suk scrabbled backwards, away from Kade, pulled himself up on his feet, pistol still in hand, backing away rapidly. Kade could feel his hold slipping as Suk put distance between them. Kade tried to stand; pain lanced up his left leg and it buckled under him. He crashed to the floor. Fuck.