All it would require was the key. The key that would open a million minds today, that would open tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of minds, at some point in the future. That was all.
60
WAR STORIES
Wednesday October 31st
In a cramped submarine beneath the waters of the Andaman Sea, Kevin Nakamura laughed as Feng gesticulated with his cuffed hands.
“So I throw the butter knife, yeah?” the Chinese soldier was saying. “Boom! Right through the eye.” Feng shook his head. “But he gets me with cleaver first. That’s how I get this one.” Feng gestured at the scar across one forearm.
“So that was Almaty?” Nakamura asked.
“Yeah,” Feng replied. “In ’37. You there?”
Nakamura nodded, rolled up one pant leg, showed the scar below his knee.
Feng peered at it and frowned. “Sniper?” he asked.
Nakamura laughed. “Farmer. With a pitchfork.”
“Pitchfork!” Feng laughed in return. “You see action at Astana too?”
Nakamura shook his head. “Not me. But I had friends who were there.” He cocked his head. “Were you at Mashadd, in ’35? Or what about Maymana, back in ’26?”
Feng’s expression turned puzzled. “In ’26… I was eight.”
Nakamura frowned.
“You old, man,” Feng said.
Nakamura glared at the pup, then snorted and turned back to the sub’s controls. Two more days to Apyar Kyun.
Two hundred miles off the coast of the southeastern United States, Zoe raged. Beneath her, the October seas were hot, hotter than they’d been this late in the year in millennia. The currents of the Gulf Stream dragged warm water north from the equator and into the mid-Atlantic, adding energy to seas already heated from a record summer.
The Atlantic gave off that excess heat now, evaporating it as water vapor into the air above.
Zoe gorged on that warm vapor-filled air, absorbing its energy and its moisture. They added to her, strengthened her, fueling her winds, driving them ever faster and more furiously about her calm center until she whirled about at a fifth the speed of sound.
North Zoe went. And chaos went with her.
61
THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
Wednesday October 31st
Holtzmann slipped out of bed at 6am, while Anne still slept. His head pounded and his mouth was dry. His body felt stiff. His stomach was unsteady. He craved more opiates. But that wasn’t going to happen today.
He showered and dressed quickly. Anne rolled over in bed, murmured something, then nothing more. Then he was in the car and on his way to the office.
The news had more on Stockton’s impending victory. The rest was Zoe. The hurricane had sped north and east into the warm, wide open Atlantic, sucking energy from the unprecedentedly hot surface waters as it went, intensifying from the Category 4 storm that had wrecked Havana into a Category 5 monster, with hundred-and-sixty mile per hour winds and ten-foot sea swells. And now Zoe’s track was bending again, turning it towards north by northwest, putting it on a course towards central New Jersey, with possible landfall Friday night. God, what a disaster that would be.
He arrived at the office a little after 7 o’clock, collected his slate and the images he needed, then headed to the Human Subjects wing. ERD Headquarters was no prison. It wasn’t equipped for long-term interment. But the Human Subjects wing could house up to fifty subjects, for research purposes, for months at a time.
Holtzmann swiped his ID to enter the wing, then walked up to the security desk.
He recognized the guard. “I’m here to see Rangan Shankari,” he told the man, holding up his ID.
The guard nodded, then looked over at his maze of monitors.
“Room 31,” he replied. “He’s still asleep.”
“Wake him up,” Holtzmann said. “I’ll be in the interview room.”
Two guards brought Shankari to him ten minutes later, his wrists cuffed to one another. They clipped his cuffs to the hardpoint on the table, which was itself bolted to the floor. Holtzmann waited across that table for the guards to leave. Just seeing Shankari sent a powerful buzz through him. He was so close… So close to getting Rangan out of here…
Wait for it, he told himself. Tonight.
The guards left.
“Rangan,” Holtzmann said. “It’s been some time.”
“Not long enough,” Shankari muttered darkly.
Holtzmann slid his slate across the table to Shankari.
“Open it. See what Nexus has done to the world.”
With his hands restrained, Shankari could just barely touch the surface of the slate. The first image was an aerial view of the assassination site, just a quarter-mile from here. Bodies were scattered across the ground, the geometry of the white seats shattered in a zone around the blast.
Shankari looked at the image. “What’s this?”
Holtzmann answered him. “Three months ago the Posthuman Liberation Front used Nexus 5 to reprogram a Secret Service agent. They tried to assassinate the President. The President lived, but dozens of others died.”
Shankari looked up at him for a moment. His eyes showed nothing. Then he looked back down and touched the surface again to advance the images.
“This is why we want the Nexus back doors,” Holtzmann told him. “To stop these sorts of things.”
A lie, he told himself. We want them for control. Surveillance. Nothing more noble than that.
“I already gave them to you,” Rangan said. “Not my fault they don’t work anymore.”
“Keep looking at the pictures,” Holtzmann told him. “Go through the whole set. Maybe you’ll think of something once you see what we’re up against.”
Shankari grunted, touched the slate again.
Then Holtzmann reached out, carefully, cautiously, for the boy’s mind, sent a request for a chat connection.
Shankari looked up, his eyes wide in surprise. His mind gave off shock, disbelief. And then he accepted the chat request.
[holtzmann]Make no sign. Keep advancing images.
[rangan]What the fuck?
[holtzmann]I’m here to get you out.
Holtzmann opened himself partially to the boy, showed him his sincerity, his deep desire to see Rangan free.
Rangan tapped the surface of the slate again, then looked down.
[rangan]Why?
[holtzmann]It doesn’t matter. But we have an opening tonight. Can you fake a seizure at 11pm?
[rangan]Yes. What then?
[holtzmann]If it’s convincing enough, you’ll be taken to the nearest hospital. From there some friends will get you free.
[rangan]What about the kids?
[holtzmann]Just you.
Rangan blinked in surprise. Holtzmann felt the boy struggle inside, felt hope and guilt and fear and principle war with one another. Seconds passed. Then he felt Rangan come to a decision.
[rangan]No.
[holtzmann]We may not get another chance.
[rangan]Not without the kids. They come, or I don’t.
Holtzmann groaned inside. He wanted this so badly. He needed to get Rangan out. It was so close, so very close.
[rangan]They’re kids, man. You’re torturing them. It’s fucked up.
Holtzmann closed his eyes. He could fake a medical emergency. There were any number of things he could inject Shankari with that would force a trip to the ER.
[rangan]Goddammit, don’t you have any fucking conscience at all? They’re KIDS.
Holtzmann felt himself slipping further. Images of the children went through his head. Alfonso Gonzales, the one who’d been tortured until he gave up Nexus. Bobby Evans, the one they’d spent four hours torturing before finally giving up…