Holy fuck! Arkady thought.
He reached out with his thoughts to the controls across the side of his vision, flipped off the layer that was on, and looked up. The dragon was gone, nowhere to be seen, the stars were masked by the smoke and lasers. He scanned around him. The auras were gone. The sea was water, crashing onto ordinary sand. The go-go dancers no longer threw electricity.
He flicked the layer back on, and lightning sparkled around the girls on stage again, auras shimmered into appearance around the other dancers, silver waves crashed onto the beach. And up there, he could see the dragon against the unreal galactic backdrop, flapping its wings, turning, coming around for another pass.
Fucking amazing! Arkady thought.
He rose up, lifted his hands into the air, waited for the virtual dragon to rain fire on them all.
Bogdan Radic took another drag on his cigarette, his eyes closed. His thoughts scanned from mind to mind, looking for just the perfect mark. The French girl with the designer shoes? The Italian couple with the flashy jewelry? They’d taken his drugs, his special version of Nexus, and now their minds were open to his.
It wasn’t that hard, really. Nexus 5 was open source now. All he’d had to do was download the code, modify it for his own purposes, to give him a back door into the minds of anyone who took it, then load his modifications up into vials of the drug. If you could code, you could change Nexus in all sorts of ways. And Bogdan could sure as hell code.
He dismissed the French girl. From a rich family, but he couldn’t find any way to access that wealth in her pretty little head. And kidnapping wasn’t for him. Too high a risk. Too much chance of physical violence.
The Italian couple… His mind roamed through theirs during their calibration phase, when the disorientation would hide most of what he did. No. They played rich, but they were overleveraged. Their assets were too illiquid for Bogdan’s needs. And two deaths would be so much harder to get away with than one.
The Russian was coming up now. Bogdan sifted through Arkady’s chaotic thoughts as the calibration phase opened up his mind. Well, well, well. Paydirt.
Bogdan slipped back into the club proper, down into the storage room, and set up his gear. Then he reached out with his thoughts, and pulled Arkady to him.
Arkady held his arms up and out, defiantly, as the giant dragon bore down on them. The beast opened its mouth, and a gout of flame burst from it. The heat struck him full force, bathing his face, his arms, his chest. The force of the beast’s wing flaps pushed at him. He wanted to flinch, but he yelled instead, like a man plunging down a roller coaster.
Then it was gone, and the dragon was past them.
Arkady jumped up and down, hooting in triumph. Beside him, a Croatian girl in little more than a bikini yelled as well, jumping up and down, gravity making her breasts do incredible things. Their eyes met.
Then something took hold of Arkady. His world dimmed. His sight narrowed. And he began to walk.
Arkady tried to resist, but his limbs moved without him. He flicked off the virtual reality layer. The auras disappeared, but his body kept moving. He tried to scream, but nothing came out.
Oh no. Oh, fucking no.
Whatever force controlled him led Arkady away from the water, over sand that gradually turned to rock and then concrete, away from the outdoor party, into the sprawling club, down a side hallway, down a set of stairs, and in through a closed door.
Inside he found the man who’d sold him this Nexus. Bogdan. A lit cigarette was in his hand. On the table next to Bogdan was a slate. On its screen was Gazprom’s remote access site. Next to it were a retinal scanner and a thumb print pad.
No.
“Mr Volodin,” Bogdan said. “How very nice to meet you.”
Abruptly Arkady found he could speak again.
“Please,” he said. “I’ll give you anything. I have money. Lots of money.”
Bogdan grinned.
“Oh, I know you do, Arkady. But your employer has so much more.”
“No,” Arkady said. “You don’t understand. You don’t know how they operate. They’ll kill me.”
Bogdan took a drag on his cigarette, then exhaled, flicking ash to the floor. He grinned at the Russian he held captive. “No, Arkady. You’ll already be dead.”
Arkady screamed then, only to find it abruptly cut off as someone else’s will constricted his throat.
“Now,” Bogdan said. “Kindly swipe your thumb, place your eye to the scanner, and enter your access codes.”
Arkady moved forward to comply.
Kade tunneled into fear. This mind was gripped in terror. He struggled to take in the situation. A dark room. Pounding music came in from beyond the walls. The sense of a vast crowd nearby, thousands of minds. And here, in the room with him.
He flicked this body’s eyes over, took in the slate, the retinal scanner, the man with the cigarette.
Theft. Theft and likely murder.
Kade reached out with his thoughts, opened the mind of the man before him, sent the passcode, and then he was in.
Bogdan smiled as Arkady moved forward. The money would be dumped into offshore accounts which would be cashed out minutes later. Arkady here would have a nasty accident. And by the time the authorities realized that it hadn’t been an accident, Bogdan would be long gone, and much, much richer.
Then Arkady stopped, suddenly. Bogdan felt something change about the man’s mind. Then he felt something press against his own mind, something vast.
Oh fuck, Bogdan thought. He turned and ran for the door.
Kade saw the man turn and run, just as the passcode opened his mind. He reached out and yanked on the man’s motor cortex.
The man stumbled and fell to the floor of the store room, cursing.
Bogdan. That was his name. Kade could feel it now.
Kade gripped the man’s mind tighter, then took stock of the rest of the situation.
Bogdan couldn’t breathe. His heart was pounding. There was something in his mind. Something in his mind!
He tried to get up but the stranger had control of his limbs. He tried to break the connection but he was locked out.
Oh God, he thought. Someone else has a back door. A back door into me!
Kade let himself breathe deeper. The man named Arkady was physically unharmed. He’d gotten here in time. He broke the bonds on Arkady’s mind, and the Russian rose to his feet, and ran, screaming.
Kade rifled through Bogdan’s mind. Where was the coercion code? Ahhh, there. Files opened for him. He skimmed through them. More patterns to block in the next version of Nexus. More abuse paths that he could cut off from everyone.
Bogdan had given out hundreds of doses of Nexus loaded with this code. Thousands. Kade would need to send out a virus, hunting for them, rewriting code to fix these exploits when it found them.
Who are you? Bogdan asked.
Kade shook his head mentally. I’m the last mind you’ll ever touch.
Please, Bogdan thought at him. I have money. I have friends.
Kade ignored him. He downloaded the code to add to his libraries, then went to work.
He removed Bogdan’s administrator privileges to the Nexus OS in his own mind, locked him out of any control over the nanobots that infested him, took away Bogdan’s ability to modify, upgrade, or even remove Nexus in the process.
No! Bogdan screamed.
Kade locked Bogdan out of Nexus communication, then. His brain would be hermetically sealed, never to touch another’s. Only Kade would be able to access it, via his own back doors.
Fuck you! Bogdan raged. You can’t do that.