Nexus (37 page)

  "A little while later there was shooting. A sheriff's deputy had rushed out to the site, and one of the disciples had shot him, killed him." My fault, she'd thought. I killed him.

  "No, Sam, no! That wasn't your fault!" Kade told her.

  She smiled sadly at him, put her finger to his lips. "I know, Kade. I know that now. I thought I knew that already. Now I do. Finally.

  "After that it was a siege. All the slaves… my parents, the other parents, even the kids. They all worshipped that man, the prophet. Every family had guns. He'd made sure of it. He told us all that Satan's forces were coming to take us to hell, and we had to protect ourselves. The feds arrived. The FBI's Bioterror Division. Someone had picked up on the word 'zombie'. It wasn't the first Communion virus outbreak. Just the worst.

  "The prophet told the feds that we'd rather die than go with them. That if they invaded we'd blow ourselves up, burn ourselves alive, all of us, including the kids.

  "The siege lasted three days. The FBI played loud music. They brought in preachers. They brought in shrinks. I'd never seen Ana so frightened.

  "On the fourth day I woke up in the middle of the night. It was 2.28am. I remember that on the clock. I'd slept maybe an hour with all the music and all the people running around. And I just knew what I had to do. My dad had a gun, like all the rest. I snuck into their bedroom. He was asleep. It wasn't his shift to be on guard. His pistol was on the nightstand. I took it, and I put on a pretty dress, the white one, the dress that the worst one, the prophet, liked to dress me up in when he fucked me. I hid the pistol under that dress, and I went to see him. People just chuckled when they saw me. They knew what that dress meant.

  "There was a guard at his door, one of the other parents, a fat one, not one of the disciples. The light was on underneath. I told the guard that he'd sent for me, that he wanted me to come to him in the middle of the night, that he had a 'blessing' for me." She spat the word out in disgust.

  "The guard understood. He didn't have any sympathy for me. He just saw me, and wanted me, and wanted to serve God and the prophet. He let me in.

  "The prophet was behind his desk, looking at his terminal. He looked up, saw me in that dress, looked me up and down. 'Sarita,' he said. 'What do you want?'

  "And I pulled out the gun. It was huge. The guard was already turning away to go back into the hallway. The prophet saw the gun, and he yelled." The memory was so fresh in her mind. She remembered every instant of it, the position of every piece of furniture, every sound, every moment frozen forever as a still image. "He tried to come at me, but his desk was in the way. I pulled the trigger and my first shot missed completely. The gun jerked up towards the ceiling. The guard was turning around, coming at me. The prophet was most of the way around his desk, coming at me to slap the gun away. " Sam remembered the huge boom of the pistol, the smell of it, how the gun's kick had shaken her whole body. She remembered the fear, the way he was growing larger in her sight, the knowledge that she was about to die and fail – and be beaten and be killed – and have her sister raped in front of her.

  "I panicked. I tried to jerk the gun down to level it and pulled the trigger again. I fired wild. The guard hit me at the same time.

  "He knocked me to the ground. He tried to kick me. Somehow I still had the gun. I pulled the trigger again and the guard fell on top of me. He was fat and huge. There was blood everywhere, all over my dress. I tried to pull myself out from under him. I got part of the way but my legs were still stuck. I looked up and I saw the prophet. He was getting up on his feet. I'd shot him. There was blood on his shirt, his left arm. I'd shot him and knocked him down and now he was getting up. He had a knife in his right hand. He started coming for me and I pulled the trigger again, took him in the stomach, and he fell down to his knees."

  Sam stopped speaking. The scene played out for Kade in his mind.
I hate you
, she'd whispered to the prophet. He'd coughed up blood and she'd shot him again, in the chest, and he'd flopped backwards. And then there had been more gunfire, from everywhere. The FBI had heard the shots, taken it as their cue to enter. The defenders at the gate were firing back with shotguns, rifles, pistols. People were screaming. More gunshots, coming closer. More screams.

  And then, the first explosion. It took the south wing of the ranch down completely, sent a fireball up into the night sky. The rest of the building was on fire. Smoke was everywhere. Sam struggled free of the fat guard on top of her. The prophet was moaning, still barely moving. She stood above him, took careful aim, fired into his head again and again.

  The smoke was too thick. She was coughing. She couldn't breathe. She put part of her dress over her mouth. It didn't help. She started to get dizzy, confused. She fell down to her knees. She didn't mind dying. It was better than staying alive through this. She only hoped Ana was OK.

  She was welcoming death when she heard the voice. Loud. Male. Still full of life, but not one of the disciples. A voice she didn't know.

  "IS THERE ANYBODY IN HERE?"

  She tried to stand. Fell. Coughed. Waved her hand. And then she was in someone's arms. A man. He was wearing a vest. It said FBI – BIOTERROR. He had Asian features.

  "It's going to be OK!" he yelled over the din of fire and explosions and gunshots.

  He carried her into the hallway. Fire was spreading. A timber fell from the ceiling to their right. He ran the other way. There was a picture window there. They were on the third floor.

  "CLOSE YOUR EYES!" he yelled.

  And then he'd run at the window, twisted at the last moment, broken through it with his shoulder, shielding her from the glass with his body, and propelled them out into the night.

  "Nakamura," Kade said.

  Sam nodded, tears streaming down her face. She felt… lighter. Like she'd released something, heavy and pressing.

  "Your sister?" Kade asked.

  Sam shook her head. There had been one hundred and nineteen people in total at the Yucca Grove ranch. Twenty-eight had survived, including Sam. Most of the disciples had been killed by gunfire or the explosives. The others had taken their guns to their own heads. Neither Sam's parents nor her sister Ana were among the survivors.

  "Oh, Sam. I am so so so sorry." He put all the compassion he had into it, all the support and care and understanding he was capable of.

  Sam locked her eyes with his. "Kade, I wish my sister were still alive. But I would rather have her dead than living through what was coming for her." She meant it, he saw. Meant it fiercely.

  "I'm so sorry for everything you went through, Sam. I can't imagine… No one should go through that. No kid. I can see why you joined the ERD." She'd wanted to hurt them, the bad men. Find them and hurt them or catch them or kill them. Make it so they couldn't hurt anyone ever again. She'd wanted to be strong. Strong enough that no one could ever hurt her or those she cared about again.

  He tried to comfort her. Tried to give her support.

  "Kade, Kade, you don't understand," Sam said.

  "What?"

  "That's the past, Kade. I can't go back. I've let it control me for way too long. I can let go now."

  He was confused.

  "I met the most amazing little girl tonight, Kade. She showed me. She helped me face it. I've just been nibbling off bits of it at a time. I can face it now. It's over. I'm not that little girl anymore. I did the best I could. I forgive myself."

  He could feel it in her. The sorrow was still there, but it didn't weigh her down. She felt light as a feather. She felt free.

  "That girl, Kade, oh my god. She's like you are. Like we are." Sam said it wondrously, as if she was realizing it for the first time. "The Nexus is in her always. She was born that way. It's amazing. I have a sister again."

  She collapsed against his chest, laughing as she cried, her breath coming fast. Eventually the laughter faded, and she lay against him, breathing in and out, weeping silent tears, tears of release, tears of closure, tears of transition, tears of gratitude. She walked through her life again, marveled at it, thanked her young self for her courage and her steadfastness, forgave that young Sam for all the things she'd once held against her, said goodbye to her parents and her first sister and all the things she'd known so long ago. She lay with her head against his chest and he stroked her hair, sent her compassion, sent her warmth and comfort. She fell asleep against him and still he lay there. He could feel the party slowly dwindling out in the living room. It felt so good here. It felt so right. Kade stroked Sam's hair, felt the bittersweet goodbyes of her dreams, felt her chest fall and rise in time with his, and eventually sleep took him as well.

 

There was silence in the C&C aboard the
Boca Raton
. She'd dismissed every message instructing her to desist, to restore her cover. They'd stopped trying eventually. They'd just listened.

  The three of them had each known tiny bits of Sam's background. None of them had heard all of it before. It was a relief when she stopped talking. It was a relief when sleep took her. No one spoke for long minutes.

  "Make sure the fireteams are on alert," Nichols finally said. "Let's let Blackbird get a little shut-eye."

 

Wats sat cross-legged one floor above Kade and Cataranes. His weapons were at his sides. Chameleonware made his still form difficult to pick out from his surroundings. A heat capacitor attached to his combat suit slowly siphoned off the excess warmth his body produced, keeping him from boiling in the infrared blocking garment. The data fob felt hard and cool against his chest.

  His radio had picked up bursts of encrypted chatter twice tonight. The commandos were near. He wasn't sure where, but they were near.

  It was a relief to feel the party below drift towards sleep. His Nexus nodes were in strictly receive-only mode. It was hard to get a good Nexus connection that way. Two-way feedback was necessary to synchronize minds, to get a clear transfer of concepts.

  But he'd caught enough. The night had affected him powerfully. He was a part of the Buddha too. He was the dark mirror of a bodhisattva in his own way. He was the opposite of the enlightened teacher. He was one who would risk rebirth in darkness and ignorance, ever further from nirvana, so that others might have their chance at peace and enlightenment.

  He wondered if, in a past life, Cataranes had been one of those as well.

 
 

Kade dreamed Sam's memories. He was fourteen, wrapped in a blanket by the man who'd jumped with him from a thirdfloor window, watching the hell he'd lived in for the last six years burn to the ground. He was a young teen, growing up in a strange new world. He'd known exactly what he wanted to be, from the moment his old life had ended. He wanted to be one of the ones to fight the bad guys, to save the little girls from the fires.

  He was eighteen, at the academy for the newly created ERD, his mentor a man named Nakamura, the very same agent who'd carried him out of the burning wreck of the ranch; his instructors teaching him to fight, to think, to survive. He was twenty-one, the year he'd spent in a seemingly endless round of surgeries and gene therapies, turning him into a weapon against evil. He was twenty-three, alone on the shores of the Caspian, the lone survivor of a mission that had destroyed a bioterror lab, but at huge cost to his team… He was twenty-seven, assigned suddenly to infiltrate a Nexus ring in San Francisco… He was in Bangkok. He'd met a girl. An amazing, magical little girl…

  Someone was shaking him. He brought his arm around to trap the hand, didn't actually know how, flailed ineffectually instead.

  "Kade!" It was a whisper, a man's voice. He was Kade. That's right. Kade. Not Sam.

  "Kade, wake up!" Loesan. That's who it was. "There's someone here to see you!"

  Kade struggled to open his eyes. It was so early… They'd barely slept for an hour. Loesan's mind vibrated with excitement. Something big was happening. Someone important was here.

  "Wha'?" Kade managed to mumble.

  "Come on, get up," Loesan whispered. "You're going to like this!"

  Kade blinked again, tried to wake himself up. Sam mumbled something against his arm. He looked over at her, her hair tousled, her face vulnerable and younger than he'd ever seen it before. He felt a wave of tenderness. It confused him. Time for that later.

  He slowly extricated himself from her sleepy embrace, sat up, blinked some more. "OK, OK. I'm up."

  Kade followed Loesan out of the tiny guest room, down the hall, into the living room. The very faintest hint of pre-dawn light showed through the windows. Two dim lamps were on inside. Most of the people from last night were sprawled out on couches or on the floor under blankets, asleep.

  Shit, we snagged the best room, he thought. That was rude.

  Old Niran sat cross-legged in front of the altar, meditating, feeling content and serene. Narong and Suk were awake. Suk radiated alarm and surprise. Narong was staring at someone, getting up on his feet, walking towards the person just out of Kade's sight.

  Kade stepped further into the living room, turned his head to see what Narong was looking at. There were three huge Thai men in overcoats in the room. They screamed
bodyguard
. Between them was another Thai man, tall, ramrod straight in his posture, grey hair at his temples, a fancy ring on one hand, a confident smile on his lips. He stepped forward towards Kade, extended his hand in greeting.

  "Hello. My name is Ted Prat-Nung. I hear I have a lot to learn from you."

  Oh no. Oh god no.