Nexus (16 page)

  Bruce Lee lashed back with an elbow and a low kick. Neither connected. Kade's body twisted to the right. Nakamura put a hand on Kade's shoulder and came around behind him again. An open palm slapped Kade almost gently on the side of his face. Bruce Lee sent a straight kick backwards towards Nakamura's groin and connected with a chair instead. The agent was beside him now, still grinning.

  Bruce Lee lashed out with Kade's right hand in a knife strike at Nakamura's throat. The agent dropped into a crouch, almost casually, as Kade's hand flew through empty space above his head.

  Still smiling.

  Kade knew he should end this now. He was horribly outmatched. This could only end in pain. But something in him wanted to land just one blow on the smug older man. Kade cranked up a setting in the VR martial arts app:
full offense, zero defense
. His body threw a flurry of kicks, punches, knees, elbows, open palm strikes, knife hands, and gouging fingers.

  None of them connected. The CIA agent kept smiling, kept moving out of the way.

  A sensor was flashing red inside Kade's mind. His blood oxygen was dipping to dangerously low levels. Kade's eyesight was dimming, his vision narrowing. His body threw kicks and punches, while the serenity package kept his pulse at sixty-five bpm and his respiration at fifteen breaths a minute. Kade's body needed more oxygen and his software wasn't letting him have it.

  Kade flipped off the serenity package, let his body's responses normalize. Sweat sprang up on his brow, his breath came in a ragged gasp, his heart pounded in his throat. He threw another kick at Nakamura, connecting only with empty air…

  BZZZZZZT!

  Kade flipped off Bruce Lee in disgust, and collapsed in an exhausted heap on the floor, panting. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. His chest ached. He didn't even care that Nakamura was about to kick his ass into the next century.

  Kade heard the sound of clapping.

  Nakamura was standing above him, smiling and slowly applauding.

  "You're just full of surprises, Mr Lane. That was very impressive."

  "Fuck. Off," Kade managed between gasps.

  Nakamura laughed.

  The older man crouched down next to him, still smiling. "You had your body locked down that entire time, didn't you? You weren't breathing hard the entire time we were fighting. Your pulse was steady. Impressive."

  Kade nodded feebly.

  "But, mmm, Mr Lane, you should leave the combat to combatants."

  Nakamura's fist lashed out, stopped an inch from Kade's face, and hovered there. The CIA agent laughed again, laughed and laughed and laughed.

  Kade let his head fall to the floor in defeat.

 

The final weeks flew by. Rangan finished his work on recreating the ERD's Nexus disruptor and a partial defense against it. The defense system could filter out signals of all sorts that Kade didn't want the Nexus nodes in his brain receiving. It had layers of failsafes, watchdogs, and tripwires to stop rogue signals and rogue processes. It seemed like a fine set of capabilities to Kade. Antivirus for their minds.

  The Nexus disruptor was different. It was a weapon. Did he really need this? Rangan insisted that Kade install the disruptor itself, and not just the defense system. "You never know when you might need it," Rangan said.

  In the final week, Nakamura replaced Kade's phone with another of the same model. All his data was there. This phone, Nakamura said, had one very special feature. It would transmit Nexus 5 signals over the net. Samantha Cataranes, under her alias of Robyn Rodriguez, would have a phone with the same capability. She would be running Nexus 5, and their minds would be linked.

  Oh, joy.

• • • •

The approval to visit Chris Evans came two days before she shipped out. Sam made her way past three armed checkpoints to reach the secure regeneration suite Evans was housed in, deep in the secret levels below Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

  Chris – what was left of him – was submerged in the regen coffin. His body was opened to the nutrient-rich growth medium. New tissue seeded with his own cells was slowly growing to replace that which bullets, sepsis, blood loss, and necrosis had destroyed.

  The doctors said Evans was aware, but there was nothing to indicate that. She sat beside the tank, put her hand on the glass, felt the gentle hum from within.

  "You did good, Chris," she told him. "You saved a lot of people from a lot of hell." She stayed and talked to him for an hour, told him how much he'd done, told him what a hero he was, told him he'd be back together in no time.

  She wished she could reach out and touch him. She wished he wasn't so isolated in there. She wished she could show him she cared. Wished she could know what he was thinking. She wished he were running Nexus.

 
 

…thus, given (1) the large number of advanced technological threats to the security of the United States, which have already taken the lives and dignities of tens of thousands of American citizens and which threaten millions more; (2) the rapid advancement of the science and technology at the root of such threats and the resultant risk of even more dangerous threats to come; and (3) the insufficiency of traditional courts and law enforcement agencies in the face of such threats, we recommend:

  The creation of a new office within the Department of Homeland Security – the Emerging Risks Directorate – empowered to act in any and all ways necessary to counter such threats.

  The empowerment of the President and the Secretary of Homeland Security to designate certain persons, organizations, and technologies as Emerging Technological Threats.

  The suspension of normal judiciary procedures and rights for such designated persons, organizations, and developers and traffickers in such technologies, including the protections of speech, trial by jury, and against unreasonable search and seizure.

  The creation of National Emerging Threat Tribunals as the exclusive forums for adjudicating cases involving such persons, organizations, and technologies, assuming all responsibilities and powers of the courts, and reporting solely to the Secretary of Homeland Security and the President.

  
Committee Report
: Protecting America From Future Threats, Senate Select Committee on Homeland Security,
Chairman Daniel Chandler (D – SC) November 2031

 
 

Kade shoved his carryon bag into the overhead compartment of flight 819 to Bangkok.

  "Kade," Samantha Cataranes said from the seat next to his. "Heading to ISFN?"

  He could feel her mind. Nakamura had told him to expect this. This was unmistakably Samantha Cataranes. If he'd had any doubts that it was the same woman given the new face, the touch of her mind erased them. He remembered that mind too well from the night at Simonyi Field.

  The signal from her mind was strong and clear. Not as strong as that from Rangan or Ilya or Wats, but stronger than that of any casual user. She'd been running Nexus 5 for weeks, then. She'd been practicing.

  "Hi,
Robyn
." He stressed her alias just a tiny bit. "You're headed there too?"

  "Yep."
  
  Full cooperation, they'd said. Sigh.
  
  [robyn] Hello there.

  [kade] Fancy meeting you here.

  He tried to keep the bitterness and anger from roiling off his mind.
  [robyn] How's your head?
  Kade reflexively brought his hand up to his temple, where she'd hit him. The bruise had lasted for a week.
  [kade] Better. How's your side?
  [robyn] Better.
  He didn't like that her chat ID came across as "robyn". He needed to remember who he was really interacting with. He navigated a menu, aliased it to "sam".
  [kade] Why you? No offense.
  [sam] I was the only suitable agent available. And none taken.
  [kade] Too bad.
  [sam] Think what you want, Kade. My job is to keep you safe on this mission.
  [kade] I'm overjoyed.

  They sat in silence for a while, but despite himself, Kade didn't have the energy to stay angry for the entire flight. He wanted to just get this over with, please his ERD masters, and get safely home.

  Sam, for her part, spent the time with her nose in her slate, first flipping through guide books of Bangkok and Thailand, pointing out interesting things to Kade, then doing the same with the program of the International Society for Neuroscience meeting.

  Kade idly flipped through a guide book himself. Thailand did look amazingly beautiful, with jungles and waterfalls and beaches, and temple after temple after temple. If only I was coming here for a vacation, he thought.

  The conference guide yielded up a plethora of fascinating talks: Neural Substrates of Symbolic Reasoning, Intelligence and Prospects for Increasing It, Emotive-Loop Programming: A New Path to Artificial General Intelligence. How could they even hold these talks? In the US the topics of half of them would be classified as Emerging Technological Threats.

  No wonder the international meeting trumps the US neuroscience meetings these days, Kade thought. The cutting edge stuff isn't legal at home any more.

  He looked over at Sam. She was part of the reason he was here. She was part of the organization blackmailing him. She was an enforcer of laws he despised, an agent of ignorance and repression, with violence as her primary tool. It wouldn't do to forget that.

  Two movies, three meals, and fourteen hours later, they were finally approaching Bangkok. Cloud enveloped them for a seemingly endless time, and then they were out, below the clouds, and the lights of South East Asia's second largest metropolis were everywhere. Minutes later, they were on the ground.

  Kade watched Sam as they collected their bags, passed through Customs and immigration. She smiled at the immigration officer, flipped her hair casually. He waved her through. How many identities did she have? How often did she do this? Kade could feel her, cool and collected through the Nexus link.

  When it was his turn, immigration waived him through just as quickly. So this is what it's like to be a spy.

  Outside the air-conditioned terminal, Bangkok's heat hit Kade like a wall. It was 11pm, local time, and yet hotter than noon on a summer day at home. And louder. They were enveloped in a din of small car engines, whooshing buses, shouting touts and trinket vendors, the zipping Skytrain above them, shouts in English and Thai of all sorts, smells of biodiesel, dust, sweat, and grilling meats, the feel of the damp hot air on his skin, the bright lights, police spinners, flashing ultrabright LED signs advertising places to sleep, places to eat, places to fuck, where to see naked girls, naked boys, and more.

  As tired as he was, Kade was enraptured. This wasn't even Bangkok proper – just the exit from the airport. He could drink this all in. He could experience all of this at once.

  Sam whistled and waved, and then a cabbie in an officiallooking uniform was tugging at the bags in Kade's hands and jerking his head towards a waiting car. Kade let himself be led, and then they were in the cab, and onto Bangkok-Chonburi Expressway, heading into the city.

  The cabbie spoke decent English and rambled on as they headed into the city. Were they here for the conference? Yes, it was filling up all the hotels in the city. If they wanted a break from the temples and markets and conference, they should see the Samutprakarn Crocodile Farm. He could take them, and here was his card. That intersection off in the distance was Phra Ram 9, where they could find the Fortune Town IT Mall and buy software and electronics of all sorts very, very, very cheap, if they knew what he meant.

  "Not just Indian!" he said. "Good Chinese stuff! Korean stuff! Even some American software!" In another direction was the road to the ancient Thai capital of Ayutthaya. His cousin ran a tour company with good guides and excellent prices and he could even get them a discount. This way to Damnoen Saduak floating market – get there right at dawn if they could.

  If they wanted seedier delights, here were some ideas of places to go to see the best sex shows where the women could do the most amazing things with certain parts of their anatomy, and no offense to the lady. There were boy shows too, but, ummm, the fine miss in the back might be the only woman in the audience. They should see the night bazaar – just west of the Queen Sirikit Convention Center where the conference was being held. And of course anyone who visited Bangkok, the city of angels, should pay respects at the temple of Wat Phra Kaew and see the Grand Palace. If they had time for another temple go see the Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho in the old city. And look, here they were at the Victory Monument, almost the center of the city, and here they were at the Prince Market Hotel where they were staying, and that would be one thousand baht please, plus whatever tip they felt so kind as to offer.

  Sam peeled eleven hundred-baht notes off a roll and handed them to the cabbie as a hotel employee opened the cab door for her. The heat was a gauntlet to be run from air-conditioned cab to air-conditioned hotel lobby. They survived.

  Inside, they checked in and found that their rooms were on the same floor, just a few doors down from each other, just as he'd been told to expect.

  Sam's room was across the hall and four doors short of Kade's. She was close enough to keep tabs on him, positioned between his room and the elevator, but not conspicuously and improbably in the room next door. She carded the door, propped it open with her bags, and turned back to him with a faint smile.

  "See you in the morning. 8am downstairs for breakfast, right?"

  Kade grunted affirmatively in reply. Sam closed the door and disappeared into her room.