Apex: Nexus Arc Book 3 (7 page)

S
aturday 2040.11.03

Kade verified his last upload, then streamed the last of the files down from Shiva’s satellite constellation, through the plane’s directional link, and into the NexusOS in his mind. That was it. There was no more time. Either this was going to work or it wasn’t.

It has to work, he told himself. It
will
work.

Sam’s voice came through the plane’s cabin, amplified over the plane’s speakers, in Thai, for the kids. He could only parse some of what she said, but he understood enough. They were landing.

The plan they’d agreed on was going to be put to the test.

He felt the children react, twenty-five of them crammed into this private jet meant to transport a dozen adults in luxury. They tightened seat belts and huddled together and curled up in the crash position taken from Feng’s mind. The nerves were back. Fear. Uncertainty. They were amazing beyond anything Kade had ever known, but they were still children.

Kade reached out with his thoughts and open arms and the one called Kit – seven years old? – came to him. He wrapped his arms around the boy, braced them both as well as he could on the floor of the plane, and then, with little more than a bump, Sam brought them down.

S
am shut
down the engines again, killed the fuel pumps, and then unclipped from her harness. Her chest was pounding. Her face was hot. She turned and Sarai was there, standing in the cockpit doorway.

Sam held her arms open and the girl ran into them, into the hug.

“I knew you’d come for us,” Sarai told her in Thai.

Sam kissed the girl’s brow, mussed her hair. She could hear Feng behind her, tapping on controls, going through the rest of the post-flight shutdown.

“Aroon misses you,” Sarai said. “He can’t feel you.
I
miss you, Sam. When you have Nexus again…”

Sam’s chest pounded louder. Kevin Nakamura’s face swam in her mind. Her finger pulling the trigger. Kevin’s form, just a green outline in her goggles, toppling back into empty space as her bullets punched into his face, his chest… Kade and Shiva tearing at each other in her mind, wrestling for control as she dropped to her knees in agony…

“Sarai, I–”

“Sam.” It was Kade, standing behind Sarai, by the door of the plane. A door that was opening. “Time to go.”

Kade in her mind, clawing at Shiva, the two of them ripping her to pieces as they fought one another, Kevin already dead at her hands.

Sam’s stomach churned. Something like rage was threatening to rip itself loose from within.

She pushed it down. She needed Kade. Needed him to do his part. Needed him to play a role she couldn’t.

She took a deep breath, swallowed hard, squeezed Sarai with all the love she had in her, and then went out to meet their Indian hosts.

An officer in uniform met them on the tarmac, a Colonel Sanghita Atwal: tall, muscular, short haired, dark eyed, utterly professional and rather deadly looking. With her were uniformed medics. Beyond them Sam could see soldiers, armed, their rifles at the ready but not
quite
pointed at the plane. With them were emergency vehicles, the sort that responded to aircraft crashes, their amber lights slowly flashing in the pre-dawn gloom, ready, but this time unneeded.

Medics saw to their wounds with cold professionalism. Soldiers watched carefully. Any time Sam looked around, there were at least a dozen ringing her, another dozen around Feng, far enough back to take several strides to reach, their rifles in both hands, safeties off.

Further out, she saw sets of powered combat armor, occupied or being piloted remotely, in a loose perimeter around them.

The Indians were certainly taking this seriously.

She tried to ignore it, to focus on the kids.

She watched as they splinted the ankle of a girl named Arinya who’d twisted it in the chaos, as they dealt with minor cuts and abrasions and burns. Off to the side she saw a medic rig a proper sling for Feng’s arm, saw another dealing with Kade.

Kevin’s face swam in her mind again. Her bullets slammed into him. Shiva’s will controlled her. Controlled her through Kade’s back doors.

Goddammit! she told herself. Shiva did that. Not Kade.

She felt her fists clench. Sweat was beading on her forehead. Fight-or-flight. Adrenal response.

This wasn’t rational. It was physiological. Kade was just a proximate trigger.

She knew what it meant, knew all about this.

She had to nip it in the bud now.

“I need something,” she told a medic. “A beta-adrenaline blocker, a strong one. Or a serotonergic.”

Stop the near-permanent imprinting. Stop physiological response from amplifying the emotions, from heightening the stress response, from turning these last few hours into a trauma that would last for years.

The Buddhists and the shrinks agreed. The body was the seat of emotions. Quell the physiological response and you could dampen the psychic pain as well.

“Are you having a heart attack?” the woman medic said to her, an eyebrow raised.

“I’m post-traumatic,” Sam said, keeping her voice as level as she could. “It’s setting in. Standard protocol is to stop it now, before…”

The medic stared at her.

“Please,” Sam said.

“Physical trauma only,” the medic said, and closed up her kit.

Sam’s fists clenched tighter.

T
hey sealed
them up in a large-ish briefing room, with soldiers positioned outside, while Colonel Atwal awaited her orders on what to do with them. Only when Sam complained loudly did the soldiers bring any food and water, or allow bathroom trips, always under the guard of multiple armed soldiers.

Her heart kept pounding. They weren’t being treated as guests. They weren’t being embraced. They were prisoners here.

Kevin died again and again at her hands.

She pushed it away, focused again on the children, held Sarai, held Aroon, held Kit, held all the children to her, wishing she could touch their minds. And shuddering with the horrible memory of killing the man who’d raised her every time she even thought of taking Nexus again.

We’ve got a plan, she told herself. They want something. They want
Kade
.

Stay cool. Stick to the plan. Make the kids safe. I come later.

After a few hours Colonel Atwal came to them again.

“My orders have come through,” she told them. “We’re sending you on to Delhi.”

K
ade collapsed
into a window seat in exhaustion, pain flaring up from his midsection as he did.

The aircraft to Delhi was larger, a military passenger jet. With all of them on board, more than half the seats were still empty. It was also Faraday caged, effectively shielding Kade and everyone else in the passenger compartment off from the electromagnetic world outside.

They were prisoners once again.

Kade could see Shiva’s private jet sitting on the tarmac as they taxied past it. He had the access codes to that plane, as he did to almost everything of Shiva’s now. He wouldn’t change those access codes. He wouldn’t steal, wouldn’t divert resources from wherever Shiva’s estate or the courts eventually sent them. But, for the time being, he could reach out to that aircraft, or innumerable other assets of Shiva’s, and they’d respond. If he wasn’t inside this Faraday cage, that was. If the Indians ever allowed him to touch the net again.

They lifted off into early morning sky. Behind him, in plentiful seats, Kade could feel the children nodding off to sleep after their long ordeal, hear low voices talking, Sam’s voice, speaking in Thai. He could feel Sarai’s mind back there, befuddled, confused, longing. Longing for Sam, for the touch of a mind that was no longer there, no longer linked by Nexus.

The exhaustion pulled at Kade harder. The grief, the sorrow at all the death. The physical pain of everything he’d been through. He needed to rest, to regroup, to be ready and focused. He closed his eyes.

Then Feng lowered himself into the seat next to him, his left arm bound up in a proper sling now.

You think this is going to work?
Feng sent. The transmission was tuned for Kade’s brain alone, a tight beam, at minimal power. Even via this method, Feng was taking no chances.

Kade shook his head mentally.
I don’t know, Feng.
He sent it back just as carefully. Then he thought better, thought that was too bleak, and tried to be more cheerful.
What’s the worst that could happen?

Feng was silent for a moment. Then:
Well… they throw the kids into an orphanage. Torture you, me, and Sam until we tell them everything. Mostly you.
Feng paused.
Then… they sell us to your American friends?

Kade turned, surprised, and found Feng grinning at him.

Then Feng laughed, and laughed, and laughed, a bellowing raucous sound, filling up the plane.

Kade shook his head, a chuckle coming out of him unbidden, and turned back to the window, to the ever receding blue of the Indian Ocean below, the vast stretch of water they still had to cross to reach the Indian mainland.

It’ll work
, he sent to Feng.
Probably.

Feng shrugged, good humor radiating from his mind.

“Hey, why no in-flight entertainment system?” the Chinese soldier asked loudly, kicking the seat in front of him. “What kind of lousy plane is this?”

Kade shook his head, cheered despite himself, and closed his eyes to sleep.

“
M
r Lane
,” the man said, smiling coldly, his hand extended to shake Kade’s. “My name is Rakesh Aggarwal. I’m with the Ministry of External Affairs.”

Kade rose slowly from behind the table as Aggarwal entered the room, his ribs aching in pain as he did. He gestured with his bandaged right hand apologetically, then extended his left hand to meet Aggarwal’s. The man took Kade’s one good hand smoothly in his right. Aggarwal’s hair was grey, close cropped. He wore an American-style business suit over a trim frame.

Nexus nodes recorded everything for posterity. A memory-augmenting app Kade had loaded with the files he’d downloaded from the net on Shiva’s jet tagged the man before him.

[Rakesh Aggarwal]

[Special Secretary, Ministry for External Affairs]

Special Secretary, Kade thought. A fix-it guy. A cleaner. That could be good. Or very bad.

The door closed behind Aggarwal, leaving Kade alone with him here, armed guards on the other side, another series of Faraday cages cutting him off from the outside world, Feng and Sam off in their own interview rooms, the children under the temporary care of Thai-speaking social workers.

Kade cut to the chase. “Mr Aggarwal, I’d like to formally request asylum here in India, for myself, my companions, and the children we brought with us.”

Aggarwal froze for a moment, then lowered himself into the chair across the table, motioning Kade to do the same.

Kade lowered himself back into his own chair, even more slowly than he’d risen, wincing as his ribs flared in pain again.

“Mr Lane,” Aggarwal started. “You should be aware that India has a mutual extradition agreement with the United States, where, we understand, you are wanted by your government for acts of terrorism.”

Kade nodded, smiling to hide his fatigue. “Yes. That’s why I’m formally requesting asylum.”

Aggarwal pursed his lips. “Mr Lane, it is certainly theoretically possible for India to grant political, religious, or humanitarian asylum which may pre-empt extradition or other agreements. However, to do so, you’d need to make a case that your home government was… persecuting you on grounds which we in India find invalid. What case would you make to us?”

Kade locked eyes with the Special Secretary. “Mr Aggarwal, my government, the government of the United States, is persecuting me for providing men and women the tools to enhance their own minds and enrich their connections with one another.”

Aggarwal shook his head slightly, his eyes never leaving Kade’s. “Mr Lane, as you must know, India is a signatory to the Copenhagen Accords, which expressly ban certain forms of human enhancement. What you’re talking about is, by treaty, a crime here in India as well. We can’t grant you asylum on that basis.”

Kade leaned forward, still staring into the man’s eyes, and put his hands together atop the table, good left atop bandaged right. “But if India pulled
out
of Copenhagen,” he told the Special Secretary, “then you
could
grant us asylum.”

A
ggarwal stared at him
. The man’s lips parted. His brow furrowed. His eyes narrowed. His look was of such disgust that Kade wondered if he’d miscalculated, if he’d been so wrong.

“Why would India possibly pull out of the Copenhagen Accords?” Aggarwal asked. “Simply for
your
convenience, Mr Lane?”

Kade kept his eyes on the man, pulled himself upright, kept his hands the way they were.

“In September, news outlets reported that India had a secret program experimenting with Nexus as a tool to accelerate learning in children,” Kade told Aggarwal. He waited a beat. “Mr Aggarwal, I know this to be true. I’ve touched the minds of the students in that program, and of the government-trained, government-
employed
teachers.”

The Special Secretary frowned.

“You’re already on your way out of Copenhagen,” Kade said. “Nexus finally gives you an enhancement tech that’s worth breaking the treaty for, one that’s easy enough to deploy, and brings you large enough economic gains, that the benefits to India outweigh the costs of pissing off the US and Europe and China. You’ve done the math. And now it’s just a matter of time.”

Guesses, just guesses. They had to be right. Everything depended on them.

Aggarwal shook his head. “Mr Lane, even if these…
baseless
allegations of yours were true… what matters is not whether we leave the Copenhagen Accords at some unspecified point in the future. What matters is right now.”

Kade kept his gaze level. This is what it comes down to, he told himself. Here we go.