Nexus 02 - Crux (50 page)

Then they were out of the trees, climbing an embankment up to a road. And there was a beat-up old white van there, and a man was jumping out of it, reaching his hand down to Rangan, to help him up, to take him and the boys away to safety.

73

MOTHER, MOTHER

Friday November 2nd

Ling’s bruises healed. Her burns covered themselves in a thin white protective layer which then sloughed off, revealing fresh, healthy skin below. No scar remained. She was her mother’s child, and her mother had given her every genetic advantage possible at the time of her creation.

She lived like a wild thing that week, like an animal, hiding in her den, venturing out when it was safe to scavenge food. She placed orders for groceries, used her father’s credentials, had them delivered while he was out, stocked into the pantry and refrigerator by the kitchen bot. If her father noticed or cared it didn’t show.

She missed Feng. Feng who was brave and strong and had always bounced her on his shoulders when she was little. Feng who could crush her father and take her away from here.

She missed Kade. Kade who was clever and would help her find some way…

Feng!
she called out.
FENG!

Kade!
she tried.
KADE!

Nothing. Nothing for days now. They were dead, or gone, or off the net. She was alone.

How long can I live like this? Ling wondered.

As long as I have to, until I get to Mother.

Everything changed on Friday, on the fourteenth day since she’d tried to free Mother.

The call came in a few minutes before midnight. Chen jumped as he saw the name. Sun Liu! The Minister of Science and Technology was calling him here!

He rushed into his bedroom, tapped the panel beside the door to seal the room, flicked to a different screen on the room control, and activated the privacy filter.

Then he took a deep breath and accepted the call.

“Chen.” Sun Liu’s voice was strained.

“Minister,” Chen replied. “I’ve tried everything, I assure you. Manipulation of her volition centers. Direct pain stimulation. Pulsed pain and pleasure. I assure you, I’ve tortured her,
everything
possible has been tried.”

“Chen,” Sun Liu interrupted. “It’s over. We’ve lost.”

Chen caught his breath. The minister sounded tired. No. Not tired.

Frightened.

“How…” Chen started. “How bad?”

There was silence on the line. Then Sun Liu spoke again. “They won’t call it a coup,” the Minister said. “I will… probably… be allowed to retire, rather than face…”

Sun Liu’s voice broke and he went silent.

Chen held his breath, and the Minister finished.

“Rather than face prosecution.”

Chen let out an involuntary noise.

“Everything has changed, Chen,” Sun Liu said. “Shanghai… whatever happened there, it has frightened the people, frightened the Assembly. It’s put the hardliners in the ascendency.”

Chen’s heart was pounding. “What… What…”

“They’ll want people to remain calm,” Sun Liu said. “They’ll do their best to make it look seamless. A period of
ill health
for the Secretary General. An
early retirement
, with great honors. A change in membership of the Standing Committee. New laws, for public safety, public order. Steps to avoid another Shanghai. Restrictions on dangerous technology, dangerous research.”

Sun Liu’s voice wavered as he spoke. He sounded so old, Chen thought. So beaten. The fear came through beneath his voice. “They’ll avoid outright murder,” the Minister continued. “I believe they will. Yes.”

Chen was sweating.

“Your wife,” Sun Liu said. “You must shut her down. Tomorrow. You must give them no excuse.”

Chen heard nothing after that. He barely remembered placing the calls to his staff, his assistant Li-hua. Tomorrow morning. They’d meet. They’d initiate the final backup. Then they’d shut her down.

And hope the hardliners didn’t take their heads as well.

Ling followed her father with her mind, routed around the room’s pitiful privacy filters, listened in to the call with the apartment’s audio monitors.

Later, she could not recall all that was said. Only fragments stuck with her through the haze of anger and grief, the overwhelming loss that poured through her, forcing tears from her human eyes.

“…tried everything… pain stimulation… tortured her…”

“…useless to us now… backup and deactivate… tomorrow…”

Her world went white, then, white-hot with the rage and loss. They were going to kill her mother! She felt the anger building inside her, felt the urge to lash out, to destroy this city, to topple the buildings, light them on fire, to kill them all, every single one of these humans who wanted to kill her mommy!

Her rage pulsated within her, straining to get out.

No, no
, a voice whispered inside her.
Not that way!

Aaaaaah! she screamed inside her mind, blind with the anger, with the urge to rip and rend at the electronic fabric of the city.

They’ll catch you!
the voice whispered.

She pounded her tiny hands against the wall instead, channeled the rage towards something that would not lead them to her. Her fists pounded the wall.

And one of the panels slid away. There behind it was the freezer. The freezer she’d known was here. The freezer that held no food. The freezer that held something else entirely.

74

A LAST DEBATE

Saturday November 3rd

Kade came to slowly. There was an aching pain in his head, in his right hand. Light was shining in behind his closed eyelids.

He opened his eyes to find himself back in the room he’d occupied for the last week. A splint and bandages covered his right hand and most of his forearm. He didn’t even want to think about the damage he’d done to that.

Breakfast was laid out for him already. His body was hungry, but he couldn’t bring himself to eat.

So stupid, he thought. He played me so easily
.

Now Shiva had one of the back doors. And with that… he’d become a tyrant. Kade had seen it. A well-intentioned tyrant, at first. But that sort of power. It would corrupt anyone.

Like you?
Ilya asked in his mind.

Yes
, he told Ilya.
Like me
.

Shiva came to see him an hour later, a Nexus jammer around his neck. Smart man. Even now, he didn’t think he’d plumbed Kade’s depths. And he was right.

“My hand is still extended to you, Kade,” Shiva said. “Join me. We can save the world together.”

“Don’t do it,” Kade pleaded with him. “This can’t work. People have to find solutions on their own. It has to be from the bottom up.”

Shiva shook his head. “You’re naïve, my young friend. The world has no time left. Your way is a luxury we can’t afford. My way is the only option left to us.”

Kade shook his head. “You can’t keep it a secret,” he told Shiva. “They’ll find out what you’re doing. They’ll catch you. They’ll hate you for it. You’ll go down in history as a monster.”

Shiva held Kade’s eyes. “Let them call me a monster. At least they’ll have a future to do it in.”

Shiva stood atop the roof of his home. His eyes drank in the magnificent sea and sky. He spread his arms wide and the cool breeze blew his white cotton robe behind him like a cloak, like the wings of some supernatural being.

The code he’d captured from Kade had passed every test. Now vast machinery, long prepared in anticipation of this moment, leapt into action. Data centers around the world began humming. Microsatellites in low earth orbit began transmitting. Software tools flipped into an active mode.

Shiva closed his eyes, his arms still spread, his robe billowing behind him, and savored the feel of the sun on his skin and the wind in his hair. His thoughts spread across the island, up through uplinks to the constellation of satellites above, and out into the minds of thousands, tens of thousands, more every moment as the software agents his team had built spread out, replicated, infected every Nexus mind they found.

He could feel them. He could feel their intellect, their need. His vast computing machinery processed their inputs, collated it for him, coalesced it into a gestalt that he could wrap his own mind around. They were him. He was them.

He was a god, entwined with a spreading congregation of humanity. He was the burning spearpoint of a new planetary intelligence, a new superorganism.

And together, bit by bit, they would save this world.

75

SANCTUARY

Friday November 2nd

Rangan accepted the outstretched hand, pulled himself up with it to the road. He put Jose down, then he and this other man hauled the rest of the boys onto the muddy embankment, then into the ancient-looking white van.

“Get in front,” the man yelled to Rangan over the wind. Rangan nodded, opened the passenger side door and hauled himself in. Free!

He slammed the door as this man did the same on the driver’s side. The boys were in a stunned state of excitement in the back, babbling at each other, their minds giving off chaos and disbelief. Rangan studied the man who’d rescued them. Early thirties. Dark hair. Average build. Clean shaven. In a raincoat, with jeans and hiking boots showing beneath it.

“I’m Levi.” The man turned to Rangan, offering his hand.

“I’m Rangan,” Rangan said, taking the hand, shaking it.

“I know.” Levi smiled. He turned an old-fashioned key and a startlingly loud engine rumbled to life.

“Thank you,” Rangan said.

Levi nodded his head and the van lurched forward, driving them into the night.

“Where are we going?” Rangan asked.

“West,” Levi said. “St Mark’s Episcopal Church.”

Rangan frowned. “I thought the churches all hated Nexus?”

“Not this one,” Levi said. Then he turned and smiled at Rangan. “I should know. I’m the minister.”

It took almost three hours to make it out to the Virginia countryside and to St Mark’s, a little church on the outskirts of a farming town called Madison. Levi took back roads, avoiding the highways where cameras would be. Zoe battered them every moment of it, pushing herself onto land, chasing them as they drove. The radio brought news of downed trees, roofs torn off, power outages, cars overturned, injuries, and deaths.

“We got lucky,” Levi told him as he drove through the gale. “We couldn’t have gotten you out without this storm. It left them short-staffed. Satellites can’t see us with the clouds. Drones can’t fly in this wind. Zoe’s a gift from the Lord, Rangan. He sent her. So we could get you and these boys out.”

Rangan just grunted in reply.

Holtzmann lay on the floor, face down, eyes closed, pretending to be unconscious. His head ached where Rangan had punched him, shoved him against the wall. His right arm had long ago fallen asleep, pinned beneath his weight. His still healing hip ached at him. His Nexus OS was on the fritz, disrupted by the electrical shock through his system, not responding to his commands.

Stay still, he told himself. Just a little longer. Just a little longer.

In the end it was thirty-five minutes before Holtzmann heard running feet and a raised voice, before someone shook him and rolled him over.

He did his best to look and seem dazed, confused. The guard was asking him again and again, “What happened?”

Holtzmann groaned, put his hand to his head. “I was interrogating Shankari. The alarm went off. And then…”

Then the guard cursed, got up, ran off. A moment later a new alarm sounded, one Holtzmann had never heard before. A voice came on over it.

“Lockdown alert. Lockdown alert. This facility is now locked down. No one may leave or enter the facility until the lockdown is completed. Lockdown alert. Lockdown alert…” and on and on.

Now he just hoped that Shankari and the children were already off the campus.

They held him for two hours, not as a prisoner, but as a witness. More guards arrived, some sopping wet, others dry. A medic pointed a light in Holtzmann’s eyes, scanned him for any sign of concussion, pronounced him likely healthy.

Bit by bit, over the course of those hours, Holtzmann’s Nexus nodes came back to functionality, until the Nexus OS booted itself again. Idly, he wondered if his root access to his own brain had been restored? No, he told himself. Best not to check that. Best not to go down that road again. Never again.

While he waited, Holtzmann overheard bits of chatter across the radios. All-points bulletin. Local police. FBI. Hurricane problems.

They were doing everything they could to recapture Shankari and the children. And Zoe was fighting them.

The lockdown ended just before 10pm, but Zoe raged on, intensifying, as more of her pushed aground.

Shortly after, Holtzmann persuaded them that he’d answered all the questions he could. One of the guards escorted him to his office, opening the doors that Holtzmann couldn’t without his badge.

He thanked the man, sat down at his desk, waited for the guard to leave.

Then he got to work.

As they drove, Levi updated Rangan on world events. It was November already. When had he thought it was? Fuck, he didn’t even know. A lot had happened. Kade’s release of Nexus 5. The embrace of it by scientists, mental health workers, and the autism community. The PLF bombings. The Nexus crackdowns. The birth of the underground railroad.

Rangan’s head spun with it. The world was a different place. Nexus 5 had changed things in ways he’d never expected. Maybe Wats had expected this conflict. Maybe Ilya had. They’d been political. Not him or Kade. The political ones had died. He and Kade were just hunted.

He needed to get in touch with his parents, let them know that he was alive.

“Later,” Levi said. “DHS will have your parents under surveillance. We’ll find a stealthy way to let them know.”

Rangan nodded his head mutely. He had no choice but to trust this man.

Levi pulled the van up to a covered garage attached to the small church. The door opened and they drove in. The boys were holding their breaths in Rangan’s mind. This all seemed so unreal.