Apex: Nexus Arc Book 3 (60 page)

M
onday 2041.01.20

Zhi Li screamed as the explosion hurled her through the air. Then she was down. Then she looked over and saw Yuguo.

She screamed again, louder.

“Lu Song!” she yelled. She reached out for his mind. “Lu Song!”

“Zhi!” he yelled.

Yuguo was screaming now, screaming with his lungs, with his mind.

“Help me, Lu Song!” Zhi yelled. “We have to get him inside!”

She pushed up to her feet, grabbed one arm. Lu Song was there, and he grabbed the other, and they started dragging, dragging Yuguo towards the Computer Science Building.

What was left of him.

Yuguo’s legs were gone below the knees.

Yuguo screamed, and she pulled faster. There were explosions up above, aircraft fighting aircraft. There were explosions down here. The sounds of machine gun fire. Of rockets or shells. She saw Confucian Fist moving, barely perceived blurs. She saw soldiers in armor – heavy looking, insectile armor – fighting back.

Not dying.

Aaah!

Then they were at the building.

They were inside. For all the good it did them.

“Yuguo!” someone screamed.

A girl ran up to them. Then other people were there, first aid kits, tourniquets. Someone brought a needle full of some fluid.

He was screaming, screaming. There was so much blood.

She stepped back, out of the way. “Dear gods.”

Lu Song put his arms around her. “They can save him,” he said. “They can save him.”

It sounded more like a prayer than a statement.

More gunfire sounded from outside.

Zhi heard more screams, someone out there crying, plaintively, asking for help.

She looked up at Lu Song. “We have to help.”

Lu stared down at her, fear plain in his eyes.

She put her arms around him, buried her head in his chest. “I’m so frightened, lover,” she said.

He wrapped his arms around her. “I know. I am too.”

She felt it. Felt his fear. Felt his courage. Felt his immense love for her.

She’d never felt so close to him as now. To have him in her mind. To be in his.

What a gift. The gift of love, in the middle of hell.

She wanted stay like this, in his arms, forever.

But she couldn’t.

Zhi pushed back, looked up at her lover. “We have to help.”

Lu nodded down at her. She felt his courage and his love for her overwhelm his fear.

Her heart was so full right now.

Zhi turned, headed to the door, the love of her life at her back, towards the sound of whoever was out there on the battlefield, injured, needing help.

Then she heard the sound of gunfire again, horribly close.

Something punched through her. Her body shuddered. She felt her midsection go cold, like ice. She gasped.

Then the pain hit her, pushing aside all else.

L
u watched
as Zhi turned and walked for the door.

His heart was on fire. His feet were paralyzed by fear.

She took one step. Two. Three.

Walk, he commanded himself. Then he was moving, following this woman who amazed him, who was so much smarter, more courageous, more giving than he could possibly be.

Then she screamed at the doorway. Horror shot through his mind as he felt her agony. He saw blood blossom, saw bits of her expelled through the back of her blouse. She fell towards the cold tile of the floor and he was falling too, to catch her.

She was in his arms, bleeding, in agony, her chest, her belly, a mess of blood.

She coughed, and blood came up.

Her eyes were frantic, searching his.

She opened her mouth wider, tried to speak, coughed up more blood.

Her mind touched his, with pain, with fear, with love. So much love.

I’ve never loved you so much,
she sent him. And she was weeping in her thoughts. She was crying. She was terrified, but so full of love, so full of passion, so determined.
Finish this, lover. Please.

“You’re not going to die!” he yelled at her, tears falling from his face, horror coming out from his mind. “You’re not!”

He rose with her in his arm. He turned, back towards the people inside the building. They could help!

“HELP ME!” he yelled. “HELP ME!”

HELP ME!

Her blood soaked into his shirt, spilled onto the floor. People stumbled towards him, in shock. He saw phones held up, and hated them.

love you…
Zhi sent.

He looked down at her.
I love you! You’re not going to die! You’re not!

Lu Song looked up again, at the people all around. “HELP ME!” he yelled.

And then her mind was fading, jumbling, melting into confusion, confusion of pain, of love, of fear, of hope.

Lu Song…

Zhi!
He cried, looking down at her.

Of nothing.

Her eyes were wide open, staring at nothing.

Lu Song sobbed, shaking, holding her in his arms.

And then he fell to his knees, his lover’s body clenched to his chest, and wept as the sobs wracked him.

G
eneral Ouyang Fan
, Minister of National Defense, walked back into the Standing Committee meeting room, his face grim.

They looked up at him.

“Our assault on Jiao Tong is stalling,” Ouyang said. “It may fail entirely. We’re being fought off by airpower from Dachang, in addition to the clones.” He watched as their faces paled, and kept on. “We’ve also confirmed that a facility storing one of the data cubes was attacked yesterday. Plundered. Su-Yong Shu may well be back, and she has control of one of our air bases.”

“Try harder,” Bo Jintao said. “Use every resource!”

“More units are mobilizing,” Ouyang said. “Time is the issue. She has
taken control of an air base
. Do you not see the seriousness of that? What if she can take control of more?”

“What do you propose?” President Bao Zhuang asked, his face ashen.

Ouyang took a deep breath.

I will go down in history as a monster or a savior, he realized.

“The ultimate recourse,” Ouyang said. “Nuclear attack.”

I
n Beijing
, in Tiananmen square, Pan Luli falls to her knees, screaming. Her mind is in Shanghai, in horror.

Lu Song stands before her, covered in blood, shaking, his body wracked in sobs, tears flowing down his face.

Zhi Li in his arms.

Zhi Li is dead.

Zhi Li is dead!

“They’ve killed Zhi Li!” she yells. Around her there is shock, grief, hundreds of thousands of minds, screaming in horror at what they’ve done, huge numbers of them tuning in to the same few streams, some seeing the scene from the perspective of those watching Lu Song, some feeling Lu Song’s thoughts as they spill into the mind of mindstreamers near him.

Some replaying Zhi Li’s last few seconds over and over.

A giant angry scream goes up all around Pan Luli, the scream of half a million men and women who loved Zhi Li!

And then, more than a thousand kilometers away, Pan Luli sees through another woman’s eyes, hears through another woman’s ears, as Lu Song looks up to the sky, and screams himself, in rage that eclipses any he’s ever shown on the screen.

“BO JINTAO!” he roars, like an animal, like a creature in such pain it’s been driven mad. Veins bulge in his neck. His eyes are tinged in red.

“BO JINTAO!” he roars again, the cry of a man beyond hope, beyond fear, beyond anything but rage.

And in Beijing, in Tiananmen square, half a million lungs scream the name of the man who’s murdered his beloved.

“BO JINTAO!”

Pan Luli hears it all around her, hears it from every mouth of every man, every woman, every child. She feels it from their minds

Then, as one, half a million pairs of eyes turn, turn to the north and west, beyond the Gate of Heavenly Peace, beyond the soldiers and tanks and guns, towards the walled refuge of Zhongnanhai, the palace of the modern day Emperors of the nation.

And like a great, angered beast, enraged beyond its senses, the crowd surges.

“
N
uclear attack
,” Bao Zhuang whispered softly. “On Shanghai?”

Ouyang nodded.

“This is insanity!” Wang Wei cried. “She’s dead! We shut her down.”

“Shut up, old man,” Fu Ping said.

“Tactical weapons?” Bo Jintao asked.

Ouyang shook his head. “No. She is a kilometer down. Her forces control the surface all around her. Strategic weapons must be used. Even then they may not destroy her. But they will knock out her connections to the outside world.”

The blood left Bo Jintao’s face entirely.

Bao Zhuang spoke softly, “The death toll?”

“Twenty to thirty million,” Ouyang said. His voice was steady, his face a mask. Inside he felt sick with it. His stomach was rebelling at the thought. Could he kill millions of his own people?

“Better than a billion,” he said aloud.

“Is there no other way?” Bo Jintao asked.

“Authorize it,” Ouyang said. “I’ll wait until the last possible moment. We’ll do everything possible to win via conventional means. But if defeat appears imminent – if she seizes control of more military assets – then we must strike immediately.”

The room was utterly silent. Ouyang looked around. He was a career soldier. These were politicians. The situation was horrid, the thing of nightmares. But the difference between the two careers was evident here, evident in the ability to take hard decisions. Or not.

“We must decide,” he said. “And you must say ‘yes’. As great an atrocity as it would be…” He swallowed. “The alternative is even worse.”

Still these men were mute, their faces drained of blood, their brains paralyzed by the unthinkable.

Then his chief aide ran into the room, breaking protocol.

“General Ouyang,” the colonel nearly yelled. “We have a massive network attack from Shanghai. She’s gone offensive!”

Ouyang surged to his feet. His eyes found Bo Jintao.

He saw the man look over at Bao Zhuang. The President they’d deposed. Who was somehow still the elder statesman here.

Bao Zhuang took a breath. “Yes,” he said.

“Do it,” Bo Jintao said, turning back to Ouyang.

Ouyang saluted them both, then ran from the room.

T
he soldiers
open fire on them. Pan Luli feels the bullets rip into men and women around her. Tanks fire shells. Thousands of her sisters and brothers die in the first minute.

Then the crowd is on the army. Weapons the students have hidden are used, and the tanks go silent. Students and householders are climbing over tanks, throwing ladders up against walls, climbing up, throwing carpet and boards and coats over barbed wire.

There’s more gunfire. People are dying. Dying in huge numbers. She sees friends fall, waves of them dying as the soldiers gun them down.

But the rage is strong.

Bo Jintao! Bo Jintao!

He killed Zhi Li!

Then they are over! And the Molotov cocktails are flying, flying, most of them landing in the vast lake in the center of Zhongnanhai, but some striking soldiers, some splashing flame onto buildings, and people are still coming over the walls, and rushing forwards, climbing over walls, a raging human wave.

O
uyang ran
next to his aide.

“How do you know it’s an attack?”

“What else could it be, General?”

Within a minute they were outside, almost to his helicopter, what he’s been using as a command center, with its analog radio link to the planes he has circling overhead.

Then he saw the mob cresting the walls, the flaming firebombs hurtling this way, the soldiers falling back.

The soldiers being swallowed up by it.

The rioters coming up with guns in their hands.

“Into the chopper!” he yelled, shoving the colonel ahead.

He hauled himself on with raw adrenaline. “Lift off! Lift off!”

They rose, the sound of the rotors deafening, their downdraft creating a small storm inside the helicopter. A soldier slammed the armored sliding door closed.

The human wave was still a hundred meters away, visible through the armored glass. Automated defense guns had risen halfway out of their nacelles.

Had stalled, frozen.

Dear god. They’d been paralyzed. Paralyzed by electronic attacks.

And the mob had rifles now, was firing on the soldiers, was hurling Molotovs.

“Order the evacuation!” he yelled to the radio man in the co-pilot’s seat. The soldier was already screaming into the mic of his headset.

Ouyang looked down.

Molotovs were crashing among the core buildings of Zhongnanhai. The mob was close behind.

It was too late.

M
onday 2041.01.20

Professor Somdet Phra Ananda sat on the thin mat, his legs crossed in lotus, thumbs and forefingers joined, backs of his palms resting on his knees. His body sat in the great meditation hall of this millennia-old monastery nestled against the side of a mountain, high above the lush plains of Thailand.

His mind was here and beyond. He was enmeshed, part of something far vaster, far more real, far more beautiful than himself.

A mind greater than the sum of its parts. A mind of paramount peace. A being of unrivaled insight and reflection. A being of unequaled wisdom.

Nirvana here on Earth.

Almost.

Twenty-five children and a hundred monks, together, here, a nucleus. A hub.

Three dozen more monasteries around the world, now, another two thousand meditators, linked at the speed of light, breathing as one, perceiving as one, the stuff of mind proxied by photon and electron, a web of consciousness, nearly circling the planet.

And out there, a million more minds they’d glimpsed, waiting for them to reach out. Ten million more they might pull in. Bits of technology whizzing around the planet at high speed to assist them.

All to save one woman’s soul.

And perhaps the world.

Fear rippled through the tiny fraction of the greater self that was Professor Somdet Phra Ananda. Fear of the woman named Su-Yong Shu. Fear of the woman he’d named a friend. Fear of the woman he’d admired. Fear of what she could do in her insanity.

Words rose up, unbidden.

I accept rebirth, until all sentient beings have attained enlightenment.

I accept suffering, until all may know peace.

They rose up, rippled out into the greater self and were gone.

Where they had been there was only peace.

And then a connection was opening, a connection to a chamber a kilometer beneath Shanghai.

And utter insanity burst forth from it.

K
ade coughed
, pain wrenching through his chest.

“Get the first aid kit,” he heard Sam say.

He’d seen something. In the agent’s mind. He had to warn Rangan.

Kade reached out with his thoughts, activated the network access point they’d brought down with them on the end of more than a kilometer of ultra-high grade fiber. He felt it come alive, instantly, felt it proxy him through the net via its satellite-linked mate near the surface.

He reached through it to send a message to Rangan.

Rangan,
he sent.
Not the protest. The Capitol. That’s where it’s going to happen. The Capitol.

He’d destroyed the monster in Ling’s mind. There was nothing to exploit what was about to happen in DC. But even so, the chaos it would cause…

Then Su-Yong’s mind came alive in the space below Shanghai, and smashed down on him in her utter madness.

Su-Yong!
he managed to send.

She kept coming, kept coming, kept forcing herself onto him.

And he was completely powerless to resist.

B
o Jintao looked
up as the alarms started blaring.

“What?”

Then there was shooting.

A soldier burst into the room.

“Evacuation!” the soldier yelled. “The mob has broken through!”

“Impossible!” Wang Wei yelled.

Bo Jintao jumped to his feet and ran for the door. Other Standing Committee members got there first. He grabbed Wang Wei by the back of the man’s suit, threw him to the side, stepped forward, did the same to Fu Ping, and then he was to the door.

He looked back once, and he saw the chaos in the room behind him, a scrum as Standing Committee members fought to follow. Except one. At the head of the table, still seated, his hands flat on the table, a wry half-smile on his face, and his eyes far away, was Bao Zhuang.

Bo Jintao snapped his face back, pushed through the door and into the hallway. Then he was running down the hall, the way the soldiers pointed.

He heard gunfire behind him. Screams. There was a smell of smoke in the air.

A soldier held a door open ahead.

Bo Jintao burst out through the door into the courtyard, where the vehicles should be.

He saw guards, firing weapons, shooting their machine guns at a tide of humanity, coming over the inner walls, into this thousand year-old courtyard, swarming over them.

More gunfire behind him.

He turned to see the soldier behind him fire, fire, fire again into people emerging from within the building. There were flames. Protesters fell from the bullets.

Then one got through, grabbed the soldier. He struggled, pushed the man off. Then another grabbed the soldier, another. They pulled him down.

Bo Jintao turned and ran.

But there was nowhere to run to. The courtyard was full of protesters.

The last thing he saw was angry faces, a forest of hands reaching out for him, dragging him down.

The last thing he heard was his name being yelled, over and over again.

“BO JINTAO! BO JINTAO!”

Then the kicks came, and the mob tore into him.

And there was nothing left but pain.

G
eneral Ouyang Fan leaned back
, numb.

Zhongnanhai gone.

Su-Yong Shu loose.

Everything ending.

There was no time for paralysis. No time to mourn. That could come later.

He pulled the helmet tight over his head as the helicopter flew, activated his headset.

“Put me through to General Quan Huyan,” he said into it. “Immediately.”

Time. How much time?

He turned to his aide, Colonel Zhu. “What’s the status on the network attack?” he asked.

Zhu shook his head. “Same. Incredible bandwidth. We don’t understand it.”

“Weapons systems?” Ouyang asked. “Bases? Banks? Planes? What has she cracked? Has she launched on us? Has she gone nuclear?”

Zhu shook his head again. “Communication is strained. We don’t know.”

Ouyang absorbed that.

Can I kill millions? he asked himself. What if I’m wrong?

What if I hesitate and a billion die?

Or eight billion?

“General Ouyang,” General Quan Huyan’s voice said in his headset.

“Quan,” Ouyang said. He took a deep breath. There was no right answer. He had to do the best he could. “Fuel those two Dongfengs. Set a twenty minute timer. If I don’t belay this order, fire them.”

“General,” Quan Huyan replied. “I cannot fire without authorization from the Chairman of the State Military Commission or a unanimous vote of the Politburo Standing Committee.”

Ouyang looked out of the helicopter’s armored window. He could see the fires out in the distance as they left them behind.

“Quan,” he said quietly. “Zhongnanhai has fallen. I may be the highest authority in the nation.” He waited. “Send a soldier out. Find a civilian phone. You’ll see it’s true.”

He heard Quan exhale on the other side.

“Fan,” his old friend said. “How do I know this is really you?”

Ouyang Fan closed his eyes. “You wept on my shoulder when the doctors cured your wife’s cancer, my friend,” he said. “May both our wives live to share tea again.”

He heard another breath.

“Your orders have been received, General,” Quan said. “They will be executed.”

A
TTENTION ALL OFFICERS
AND SOLDIERS OF DACHANG AIR BASE AND ALL CONFUCIAN FIST COMMANDO UNITS. THIS IS A MESSAGE FROM GENERAL OUYANG FAN, MINISTER OF STATE DEFENSE, ACTING CHAIRMAN OF THE STATE MILITARY COMMISSION.

A STRATEGIC THERMONUCLEAR STRIKE HAS BEEN ORDERED FOR SHANGHAI.

TENS OF MILLIONS WILL DIE. YOU WILL DIE.

YOU CAN PREVENT THIS STRIKE.

DESTROY THE QUANTUM CLUSTER BELOW JIAO TONG, OR ISOLATE IT COMPLETELY FROM THE NET.

USE ANY AND ALL MEANS AT YOUR DISPOSAL.

YOU HAVE FIFTEEN MINUTES.

THIS MESSAGE WILL REPEAT ON ALL CHANNELS.

ATTENTION ALL OFFICERS AND…

I
n Shanghai
, thousands of analog radios blared the message.

Soldiers, their minds hijacked, switched channels, turned down volume, or simply ignored it.

A few Confucian Fist heard the message, and wished Feng and Bai and the Americans luck. Then they fought on, protecting Jiao Tong, protecting the woman who’d freed them, while the American boy tried to cure her of her madness.

K
ade struggled
under the crashing wave of Su-Yong Shu’s mind.

Too much. Too vast. Too angry.

He was a grain of sand battered against the reef by the crashing waves at the edge of her ocean.

He was nothing.

Everything was her.

Her thoughts.

Her madness.

Her hallucinations.

Quantum foam.

Fractal light of other worlds.

A trillion reflected faces of herself.

Pain. Centuries of pain. Millennia of pain. Infinities of pain.

Goddesses tortured by gnats.

Goddesses triumphant.

New orders. New realities. New worlds birthed in fire.

Cleansing fire. Wiping away the old. Making room for the new.

Codes breaking. Impossibly long numbers decomposing effortlessly into beautiful, elegant, primes. Systems opening like flowers. World unlocking itself. Routers. Networks.

Cities.

Weapons.

Minds.

Better worlds.

Better!

Kade screamed as her madness drowned him.

Su-Yong!
He tried, tried to offer her parts of him, tried to offer her input from his brain, stabilizing input, a dose of sanity.

He felt her reach out into the world then, through connections, so many connections, so much bandwidth, and he knew that it was all over.

Then he felt something flow into his mind through the access point.

Tranquility came.

A mind. A vast mind.

A self, compound, multi-faceted, yet whole, like the eyes of a fly.

A meta-brain, organic, functional, real, operating in the ways Su-Yong had been built to simulate, offering correction for the errors in her simulation code that had built up, that had compounded, that had driven her insane over time.

A peace, a stability, formed of a base so broad, a base of not one brain, not one life, not one perspective, but thousands, complementing one another, embracing one another, encircling and intertwining with one another.

A compassion. A compassion so deep, so heart-felt, a mind that knew this woman had suffered, that had seen glimpses of her torture. A compassion for all beings, for all minds, for all creatures who thought or felt, for her in particular, who’d felt so much for so long in so much agony.

A joy. A wild, multifarious, explosive, riot of joy, of moments, of glimpses, of experiences, of not just thousands of minds, but of now tens of thousands, of now hundreds of thousands of minds, as more touched them, as the core reached out to more minds, brought them together into joyous union, assisted by vast data centers of machinery that routed and filtered and coordinated connections, linked minds, sifted offered thoughts, identified love and bliss and passion and curiosity and delight and amplified them, selected for them, brought them here, through this link, through and around Kade, directly to this woman who needed them so badly.

Who needed to remember joy.

Who needed to see the good in humanity before she went to war with them.

It came through naked, vulnerable, wide open to her, not a challenge, but an offering. Not to defeat Su-Yong, but to surrender to her everything she needed to be whole and sane and joyous once more.

Kade felt the globe-spanning mind lift him up, out from under the crushing roiling pressure of Su-Yong’s madness, up, up.

He was alive with joy. He was ten thousand minds, a hundred thousand minds, joyous minds, exulting minds, transcendent minds…

one mind,

many minds,

one mind,

many minds.

He was humanity coming alive. Humanity waking up. Humanity reaching consciousness. Humanity reaching transcendence. Humanity casting aside the veil of Maya, humanity pushing through the shroud of illusion, the mask of separation, realizing its true form, its true unity.

Humanity unfolding into its true glory.

Every fiber of his being trembled with it, trembled with this new golden state, with this being beyond being, with this joy beyond joy, with this transcendence of all he’d known, all he’d experienced, with this glimpse of true Nirvana.

With this glimpse of the true posthuman.

Then Su-Yong’s madness crashed down onto him again, crashed
through
him, out through the link, into a thousand minds, ten thousand minds, a hundred thousand minds, taking all the joy and peace they offered her, and seizing more, and more, and more.

Injecting her own mad chaos into all of them in return.

Kade screamed.

Too gone. Too far gone.

He screamed again, louder.

Around the world, hundreds of thousands screamed.

Too gone. She was too far gone.

S
am watched
as Kade’s body went tense, as his breathing all but stopped.

She picked up the assault rifle she’d put down, rose to her feet. Her wrist ached from the punishment the Fist named Genghis had doled out.

Kade relaxed suddenly, a smile coming to his face, his breathing easing, even with the puncture in one lung.

Sam stared at him from above, both hands around her rifle now.

Smiling. Smiling was good.

She should drop back down, get the first aid kit, see if she could stabilize him.

Then Kade screamed.

Feng screamed.

No, Sam thought. No.

Kade’s back arched. His arms flailed out to the side, spasming. His head jerked back. His mouth opened.

No.

He screamed again, louder. His eyelids were open. His eyes were rolled back in his head. Whites showing.

No.

He was thrashing now, like he was having a seizure. She looked over and Feng was on his knees, hands to his head, screaming.