She felt Sarai and the children recoil in horror, and she knew what mind this was. Shiva’s mind. Shiva who had these children here. Shiva who had her now.
He rifled through her thoughts with brutal efficiency and she was unable to resist. He summoned thoughts of the plan, the assault, and she gave him everything.
She felt his mind jolt in surprise. Only three of them? Here to take away the children, to take away Lane? The rest, a diversion?
She wanted to lie, wanted to misdirect, wanted to protect Kevin and Feng and Kade and the children, but it was impossible. Kade had built this back door too well. Shiva pressed on her mind and she gave him everything.
Then she felt him smile, smile in satisfaction.
Kill them, he sent her. And her will bent beneath his.
Sam turned, and there, first in her line of fire, was Kevin Nakamura.
Nakamura tensed as Feng raised the gun. His eyes flicked over the menus in his mind’s eye, found the remote disable for the weapon, clicked it.
“You,” Feng whispered over their laser link. “You killed him.”
Nakamura backed away, away from Feng, away from the wall of the house, towards the railing, moving slowly, placatingly. Feng couldn’t shoot him now. Nakamura could take the Confucian Fist, capture him, bring him back to Langley. But he had a charade to play. For Sam. For her sake.
He whispered back over their laser link. “The missiles went off course. Countermeasures. We have to get up there, find Kade!”
He turned towards Sam, wishing he could see her face, see how she was reacting.
He found her with her assault rifle raised to her shoulder, pointed squarely at his face.
“Sam!” he yelled.
His eyes flicked towards the menu that would disable her gun.
Sam fired before he got there.
Sam moaned in despair as she turned, found Kevin, raised the gun to her shoulder. He turned, spoke her name. Time froze in an endless moment of horror. She threw herself at the mental hold Shiva had over her, threw herself with all her might, wailed at it, ripped at it with thoughts like claws, with every ounce of her being, with every bit of fury she could summon. This couldn’t happen! This wasn’t happening!
Kill them, Shiva whispered to her.
And she obeyed.
Her first burst took Nakamura in the face. The graphene foam impregnating his skull held, stopping the bullets. The momentum of it snapped his head back, the acceleration punishing his brain. He staggered backwards against the railing. His upper half pivoted out past it and over empty space.
Sam tried to stop, tried to pull her finger from the trigger, tried to close her eyes and make it go away!
Kill them.
Her second burst struck his chest. The bullets punched into him, pushed his upper body back, flipped him head first over the railing. His head and chest flew out into space and then he was cartwheeling backwards, his legs rising as he spun end over end. Then he was gone, out into the night, plunging down the cliff face to the rocks below.
“Sam!” Feng yelled.
Sam wept inside as she turned and pulled the trigger once again.
83
DADDY DEAREST
Saturday November 3rd
Ling stepped silently into her father’s room. The house closed the door quietly behind her. The curtains were closed tight here. There was practically no illumination in the room, but her posthuman eyes needed next to none to make out his form. The bed was ahead of her and to the right. Her father was sprawled on it, face down, his limbs akimbo, his body on the side closest to her, his head turned towards the center of the bed.
Ling moved forward slowly, quietly. Her feet made no sound on the thickly padded carpet, but the urge to cry, to sob, was strong. This was so hard. So scary. Her father frightened her now. He was only a human, but he’d hit her, burned her.
Ling’s face scrunched up as she took another step, she felt tears falling from her eyes, felt a sniffle rising, felt cries rising up inside her, threatening to burst out.
She moved forward faster, her sight blurring from the tears. She was past the foot of the bed now. Her father’s hand lolled off the left side of the bed. She stepped around it, past it, until she was just before the night stand, her body against the bed, inside her father’s reach, his head just within reach in front of her.
Ling’s face was hot. Her heart pounded as the tears fell from her face. She could barely see, could barely think. This was her father! But if she didn’t do this her mother would die, die forever.
Ling raised the injector with two trembling hands, pushed it forward until the tip almost touched the back of her father’s neck.
He heard something then, or felt something. Her father stirred, made a noise, started to turn his head.
Ling jammed the injector forward, squeezed the trigger for all she was worth with both her index fingers.
Within the injector, a circuit closed, a battery delivered current to a superconducting coil, magnetizing it, activating a Lorenz-force motor that drove a piston forward. A fraction of a millisecond after Ling pulled the trigger, the injector shot a supersonic stream of nanodevice-laden fluid into the skin, muscle, and blood vessels of her father’s neck.
Chen yelled in pain, lashed out with one hand, knocking the injector away, out of Ling’s grasp, sending it flying through the air to land across the room. Then he was up on his feet, and his other hand came down, smacking Ling across the face, driving her backwards and off her feet, onto the carpet.
“Lights!” her father bellowed, and the house illuminated his bedroom. He had one hand on his neck, where the injector’s high-powered jet had penetrated his flesh. He looked at his daughter in horror, then pulled his hand away to look at it. It came away bloody.
“What have you done?” he yelled at her. “What have you done?”
Then his eyes scanned the room, and came to the injector. The ampule of silvery fluid, still half full, loaded into it.
Her father roared and came at Ling. She raised her hands to protect herself and he kicked her, hard.
Ling screamed in pain as his foot slammed into her midsection.
“You monster!” he said. Then he kicked her again.
Ling screamed louder. “No! No!”
Her father lifted his leg again, to kick her a third time, and now Ling could feel just a tiny bit of mind around him as the nanites bound to his neurons, exposed the innards of his brain to her.
Her father’s foot came at her and she reached out and twisted what she could feel in his mind. His foot slammed into her again but this time he stumbled, wobbled after he kicked her, as her thoughts pushed against the neurons of his motor cortex.
Ling screamed in pain. Tears were falling down her face freely. She had never hurt so bad before in her life. But she reached out and pushed on her father’s mind and now she could feel even more and he staggered backwards.
“No,” he said, trying to get his balance. “No.”
He tried to kick her a fourth time but this time she shoved with her mind against his, against the nanites latching onto the neurons of his motor control centers, and her father fell backwards instead, fell against the bed, his head cracking into one of the upright posts. Ling breathed hard, but her father stayed there, stunned by the blow to his skull and by the events in his brain. Already his eyes were going glassy, his mind going wild as more and more of the nanites latched onto his neurons and launched into the calibration phase.
Ling reached out, and clenched around the parts of his mind she could sense. She could feel his disorientation, his confusion at what the nanites were doing to him, his terror of her.