Then she heard the crackle, saw her world turn red even through closed eyes, as the flash charges in her heels went off at maximum intensity, discharging all the energy of their fuel cells in an instant, burning out all their LEDs in the process. She heard a man yell as she came up and around the desk, opening her eyes to take in the scene. The guards had their hands to their faces, blinded for a few critical seconds, waving their guns around, but no longer daring to let loose without their sight. Lo Prang was in front of her, his pistol on her, she couldn’t tell if he was blinded or not.
Sam threw herself forward and to the side as he fired, felt the bullet graze her hip. And then she was inside his reach. He threw an elbow at her in the close quarters, raised a knee towards her gut. He was fast, and he was good, but he was old, and Sam was young and had the better tech in her body. She blocked his elbow with her right forearm, raised a leg and took his knee to her thigh, then spun, throwing him to the floor and pulling the gun from his hand in one brutal motion. Her shoulder ached but did as she told it.
Lo Prang rolled with the fall, came up on one knee, fast as a snake, with a knife in his hand. Sam moved faster, grabbed the knife hand, twisted it behind him, and brought his pistol to his head.
She looked up just in time to see the two girls get to their feet, trying to blink away the momentary blindness, and the two guards from outside the door push their way through the crowd, automatic weapons in hand.
They stopped when they saw her holding a stunned, blinking Lo Prang, a gun primed to blow his head off.
“Now,” she said to her prisoner. “I’m going to Burma. And you’re coming with me.”
47
NEW HORIZONS
Sunday October 28th
Kade woke slowly, head spinning, disoriented. There was static in his mind. His head ached. He cracked his eyes open ever so slightly. He was on his back, atop something soft. He saw sunlight, a ceiling with a lazily spinning fan and gold filigreed moldings. He was in a bed, giant and ornate, with elaborately carved wooden posts at the corners that towered above him.
He blinked, tried to adjust.
“Good morning,” the Indian man said. Kade looked over. The white-haired figure was dressed in white. He’d pulled back cloth-of-gold curtains from a wide picture window. Beyond it, there was blue sky and ocean. Between Kade and that ocean, there were bars on the windows, a fine mesh built into them.
Kade sat up in the bed. He found himself dressed in cotton trousers and a loose cotton shirt. They’d changed him while he’d slept. Feng. Where was Feng?
“Where am I?” he asked.
“You’re at my home,” the Indian man said. “In Burma.”
“Who are you?” Kade asked.
“My name is Shiva Prasad,” he answered. The name sounded familiar.
“…and I hope we’ll become good friends,” Shiva finished.
Kade felt his anger flare.
“Some way to start a friendship,” he spat out.
Shiva smiled. “Eat first,” he said. “Then we’ll talk.”
Then the Indian man strode out of the room.
Kade jumped to his feet, but before he could follow Shiva out through the door, a young Asian woman wheeled in a cart. A muscular, dusky-skinned man whose origin Kade couldn’t place followed her. The server and the guard. Kade stopped and stood where he was.
The girl wheeled the cart to the middle of the room and unveiled a platter of eggs, bacon, and potatoes; then another of pancakes; flagons of juice, water, and coffee.
“Breakfast,” she said in heavily accented English. Her eyes met his briefly. Then she looked away, and she and the guard left through the door, and he heard a lock click as they did.
Kade ate. If they wanted to drug him or poison him, they could just hold him down and administer what they wanted. Then he explored his prison.
The room was spacious. A king-sized four-poster bed. An antique writing desk and chair. Two oversized ornate antique chairs in a small sitting area. A private bathroom suite almost the size of his apartment in San Francisco. A walk-in closet. Clothes waited for him there. More pants and baggy shirts in soft cotton. Jeans, shorts, T-shirts, sandals, hiking boots, socks, underwear, two bathrobes, a pair of swimming shorts. All in his size.
A kitchenette held snacks, dishware, bottles of beer and sparkling water and expensive-looking wine, a coffeebot, a cookbot that probably cost more than most cars.
Every room had windows. He had incredible views in two directions of a green and blue sea, seen from atop a cliff. From the kitchenette another window afforded a view east into a courtyard dotted with date palms, orange trees, bright tropical flowers, and flowing water. He looked to be on the fifth and topmost floor of what could only be called a mansion.
The windows opened at the touch of a switch to allow the breeze and the scent of sea and citrus. But inset in the window sills were metal frames that covered the space with bars and a fine metallic mesh. Kade could see that these, too, were built to open. But they were all locked and bolted in place. The bars would keep his body here. The mesh was a Faraday cage, he imagined, to keep his mind and any electronics trapped just as surely.
This was an elaborate cell. However luxurious it may be, it remained a prison, and he, the prisoner.
Last, he came to the final piece of his bondage. Around his neck, a thin metal chain held in place a dull metal disk, perhaps two inches in diameter and half an inch thick. Try as he might, he couldn’t get it loose, couldn’t get it over his head. There was a slot where a key of some sort would slide into it. Other than that there was no way he could see to remove it.
A Nexus jammer. Another layer of his prison.
He knew more now than ever before. He’d learned things, from studying Feng’s mind, from his contact with Ling, from meditation with Ananda and the monks, from secrets and tools and pieces of code gained legitimately or stealthily from scientists around the world experimenting with Nexus. He could make his Nexus nodes stand up and do tricks now.
He tried the tools in his toolbox one by one. Frequency tuning code that searched for a band with weaker interference. Filtering packages to suppress the static. An active noise reduction app he wrote himself that played the static reversed, back at itself, to cancel the signal out. Directional tuning of his Nexus antennae, to bore through the jamming in one direction, or boost gain in that direction.
Nothing. Nexus worked fine inside his mind. His code all ran fine. But he could broadcast nothing through the interference, could pick up nothing from around him.
He tried to think like Ling, to remember the feel of her contact, to amp and broaden the sensitivity of the Nexus in his brain until he could pick up the feel of the circuits in the walls, the transmissions all around him, and in particular the inner logic of this jammer.
The static only grew louder in his mind, painfully louder until he broke off in frustration.
He sat down on the floor, crossed his legs, closed his eyes, and began the practice of vipassana. He would rein in his attention until he could shift it in such a way that the static wasn’t there, was completely removed from his awareness, and then perhaps he’d be able to pick up…
The door opened. Kade opened his eyes, and Shiva was there, a slate in his hand.
48
ACCESS DENIED
Saturday October 27th
Holtzmann closed his eyes again.
Alive. I’m still alive.
He had to get Rangan Shankari free. He felt it in his bones. The strong desire. The deep need to break Shankari loose from ERD custody.