Was one of the other diners an FBI watcher? That electrician’s van – did it have a mobile listening post? That young couple walking down the street holding hands – were they enhanced ERD operatives waiting for someone to walk up to that door?
He stretched the lunch out, ordered a beer that his genetically upregulated alcohol dehydrogenase levels would chew up long before it could get him buzzed. The other diners paid and left. The electricians returned to their van and drove away. The young couple didn’t come back.
In the window of the flat, there was movement. A good sign. If there were an FBI or ERD ambush in there, they’d be utterly still, totally undetectable, waiting for their mark to make himself known.
He paid the bill and walked across the street to the flat.
No one fired on him as he approached. At the door he put his right hand around the pistol in his pocket and rapped out the knock with the knuckles of his left. Slow-fast-fast-fast-slow-slow.
The door swung open and his fingers tensed around the pistol and then there was Ava in front of him, as gorgeous and cool as ice as ever.
“Took you long enough,” she said, one eyebrow raised.
Breece grinned and swept her up in his embrace, twirled her around, sending her long dark hair flying. The ice melted and she laughed and kissed him.
They were all here. Hiroshi, the brilliant telecoms engineer turned hacker, his Japanese face careworn, his long black hair pulled back into a ponytail. The Japanese understood the future. They embraced it. This man more than most. Breece had no problem admitting that Hiroshi was his intellectual superior, might always be. He counted himself lucky for the man’s friendship over the years.
The Nigerian, tall, leanly muscular, quiet – but apt to sudden smiles and bursts of deep bellowing laughter. Their weapons specialist. A man of deep courage and conviction, who’d put his life on the line for the cause many a time.
And Ava. The chameleon. The woman who could blend in anywhere, persuade anyone of anything. Smart. Fearless. Gorgeous. Unflappable. The woman he loved.
They hugged and smiled, and slapped each other on the back, and then gathered in the kitchen. It was good to be back with his people again.
He opened his mind to theirs and they to his. Through the Nexus link he showed them the attack at the cemetery and they showed him their rushed trip to rescue him. They’d been on their way to risk their lives for him, heading to his location expecting to find a DHS team between them and him. He loved these three. He’d die for them if he had to.
“So Zara decided to off you,” Hiroshi said. “Why?”
Breece shrugged. “He’s always been a control freak. He’s always wanted to pick the missions, move cautiously. We’ve upset that. The truth is, we don’t need him, and that’s a threat to his power.”
“What does he know about this mission?” Ava asked.
Breece shook his head. “Nothing. Same as Chicago.”
“We need to deal with him,” Hiroshi said.
Breece nodded. “We will. After this.”
“So we’re still a go?” the Nigerian asked.
“We have one other problem,” Breece said. “Hiroshi?”
Hiroshi showed them the feed from the Chicago mission. Everything was normal until the last moments.
I think I have a bomb! the mule said in their minds. A bomb!
“The mission succeeded,” Breece told them, “but only barely.”
“We thought at first that the software had glitched,” Hiroshi said. “But the logs showed otherwise. Someone else hacked into that mind and overrode our commands. And whoever did this is very very good. It was less than a minute between the mule’s activation and this hack.”
Breece watched as his team absorbed that.
“Could this explain DC?” the Nigerian asked. “The mule there fired only twice instead of four times. And he missed.”
Breece looked at Hiroshi.
“Possibly,” Hiroshi said, nodding.
“So what do we do about this?” Ava asked.
“Two things,” Breece said. “First, we’re going to make a few changes to the mission profile. Second, we need to be more careful ourselves. As long as we’re running Nexus, we could be vulnerable to this hacker again. Hiroshi needs to run Nexus to prep the mule. None of the rest of us do. So until we’ve figured out what happened, the three of us are going to dump our Nexus, and after Hiroshi preps the mule, he will too.”
He felt their disappointment, Ava’s especially. He wanted to touch her in mind and body, feel her pleasure as he made love to her. But that would have to wait.
They all agreed with this decision. They’d all do what needed to be done. They were a team, and more. They were family. They were soldiers.
29
NEANDERTHALS
Friday October 26th
Holtzmann kept cool as he and Barnes cleared security prior to their meeting with the president. They cleared Nexus detectors and terahertz scanners and a physical pat-down. Then an aide showed them into the empty Oval Office and to their seats. A secretary brought them water and coffee.
Holtzmann felt the preternatural calm and confidence of the neurochemical cocktail he’d prescribed himself. The room was bright, every detail vivid. He felt completely sharp, not even the slightest bit nervous or cloudy. He was himself again, before the bombing. Better, even.
The President entered, and Holtzmann and Barnes came to their feet.
“Dr Holtzmann,” Stockton shook Holtzmann’s hand. His palm was warm and large, his shake firm and strong. All-star quarterback strong. The President took his seat behind the desk, waved them down into their chairs. “Director Barnes has sent me memos summarizing the status of the Nexus children. What I want is to make sure I understand the situation.”
“Of course, Mr President.”
“These children are smarter than human children?”
Holtzmann answered. “Not exactly, Mr President. Individually, they have a wide spectrum of intelligences. But when housed together and educated together, they can learn far faster than unaugmented humans, and they can solve problems together that are beyond normal human difficulties.”
President Stockton nodded. “Yes. So in groups they’re smarter. And it matters how early they were exposed to Nexus?”
Holtzmann nodded in return. “Yes, Mr President. Learning is definitely accelerated among groups of people using Nexus. The younger they’ve received it, the larger the effect. Adults receive a boost to group cognition. Children – mostly autistic children – who first received Nexus at younger ages get an even larger boost. And the effect is most dramatic in those few children we’ve found who were exposed to Nexus in the womb.”
“Do we know what the long-term effects are? Health concerns?”
Holtzmann spread his hands wide. “We don’t see any signs of specific health concerns from Nexus, but we could easily miss anything subtle, let alone anything that took many years to develop.”
“And the long-term limits?” the President asked. “How far can these children grow in intelligence, particularly the ones exposed to it in the womb?”
Holtzmann shook his head. “Mr President, I wish I could tell you. But at this point we have so little data. The oldest children exposed to Nexus in the womb are eight, and we’ve only seen a handful of those.”
“What’s your best guess, then?” Stockton said.
Holtzmann wanted to refuse. He glanced at Barnes, and the man raised an eyebrow and inclined his head slightly.
You don’t refuse the President, he thought to himself.
Holtzmann met Stockton’s eyes. “Mr President, if I had to guess, I would say that these children, if raised in groups or in constant contact with others of their kind, will grow up to be extraordinary, in both the amount they’re able to absorb over the course of their lives, and their ability to reason and problem solve as a group.”