They only had one question these last couple days. The back door. The code that activated it. That’s all they wanted.
The serenity package had kept them at bay so far, had buffered him from some fraction of the horror. Some.
Where was Ilya now? Where was Kade? Where was Wats? Were they dead or alive? Free or imprisoned? Were they being tortured too?
Something had changed. Something bad. Now they knew about the back doors. Now they wanted them. And Rangan didn’t know how long he could hold out.
OCTOBER 2040
THREE MONTHS AFTER THE ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN STOCKTON
1
TAKEN
Monday October 15th
Sergeant Derik Evans, US Marine Corps Special Forces, retired, kept a calm smile on his face as he and his twelve year-old son made their way through the train station. Nothing to worry about. Just make it onto this train, and they’d be on their way south to Baja. No more questions from social workers on Bobby’s remarkable improvements. No more worries about being snitched out.
No more worries about having his boy taken away from him, having his boy locked up like some kind of animal, some kind of test subject, some kind of subhuman. It wasn’t going to happen to them. Not if Derik had a damn thing to say about it.
The train was the only way now. The airports had their Nexus detectors installed already. And he’d seen on the news last week a story about a Nexus bust at the car crossing. And Bobby just threw a screaming fit every time Derik tried to show him how to purge the Nexus from his brain. Nexus had changed the boy’s life. It was the thing he loved most. Nothing would convince him to let go of it, even for a little while.
So they couldn’t make it through a Nexus scanner. This was the only way.
Derik steered them into the security line before the main train terminal. He looked over the gear ahead as the line inched forward. Metal detectors, terahertz scanners, TSA agents. All standard stuff. Nothing that looked like a Nexus scanner.
He looked at his son, smiled, sent happy calm thoughts. Bobby laughed his awkward laugh and smiled back, his mind sending off waves of excitement at the new adventure. Jesus, what a change.
Derik hadn’t ever planned to try Nexus therapy. The only time he’d seen Nexus before was when they’d rescued that poor bastard Watson Cole in the KZ, the big sarge brainwashed by the drug, confused who his friends were, who his enemies were, like that poor SOB that’d blown himself up trying to kill the President.
But then he’d heard whispers in the autism dads’ support group. That guy Schneider, he’d taken Derik aside and told him about it. Schneider’s boy had severe autism, way out on the spectrum, like Bobby. Not one of those easy borderline cases. But his boy was getting better. It was the Nexus, Schneider said. Vitamin N. Not a cure, but a big big step. But they both had to take it. Bobby and Derik. It wasn’t the drug. It was the connection.
Derik felt his son’s hand in his own, his son’s happiness in his own mind. Bobby was learning to see a different perspective through Derik’s thoughts, to understand other people and the world a bit better, to be less threatened by the loud stimulus of places like this.
Bit by bit, Bobby was changing. The teachers and social workers said so. Then they asked their questions…
On the news screen in the terminal, an old brown-skinned man was talking, a brown woman and an old white couple behind him. A subtitle went by. “PARENTS OF NEXUS DEVELOPERS APPEAL FOR DAY IN COURT. ‘We don’t know where Rangan or Ilya are. No one has seen them. They’ve been held for six months without trials, without access to attorneys. This isn’t American.’”
Every parent’s nightmare. They weren’t going to do it to him. They weren’t going to take Bobby away.
Derik stepped forward, hoisted his duffel onto the baggage scanner’s moving belt. Almost there.
Baja, here we come.
He reached into his pocket to pull out his Aug Card, declare himself to TSA as lethally enhanced, like the law and the Corps said he had to.
Then he saw the TSA agent walking down the line of people, an electronic wand in his hand. Derik froze. The man behind him in line said something. The TSA agent with the wand lifted his eyes from the wand’s readout, a frown on his face. And his eyes met Derik’s.
Shit.
Derik hoisted the duffel off the belt with an apologetic laugh to the man behind him. “Forgot somethin’.”
His hand tightened on Bobby’s, and he turned, dragging the boy away from the line, back towards the exit to the train station. Bobby’s mind radiated confusion, agitation. He wanted to go on a train trip.
Another TSA agent stepped into his path. “Everything alright, sir?”
“Yeah,” Derik improvised. “Just forgot my wallet at the coffee shop.”
The TSA man raised a finger to the radio in his ear, nodded at something.
“I’m going to need you to come with me, sir.”
Derik heard a footfall behind and to the right of him. Another agent moving in for backup.
Shit.
Bobby felt his agitation. Derik could feel it rebounding, magnifying, the boy vibrating on edge now.
“Uh, I should really go get my wallet.”
“Sir.” The TSA man’s hand dropped to the taser at his hip. “You need to come with me.”
My boy, Derik thought. They’re gonna take Bobby away from me. They’re gonna lock him up.
Derik sighed, then nodded in resignation.
“Sure,” he said. “Whatever you say, man.”
The TSA agent relaxed fractionally. Then Derik’s booted foot lashed out, taking the man in the ribs and sending him flying through the air. Derik swung hard with the duffel even before the first man hit the ground, slamming the fifty-pound weight of it into the agent behind him, sending the man staggering back.
No one was going to take his boy.
Then Derik had a screaming Bobby over his shoulder and he was running, hyper-muscled legs propelling him at a frightening sprint, enlarged heart sending a flood of superoxygenated blood to power his mad dash.
Shouts rang out. People jumped out of his way. Bobby was screaming like a banshee, “AAAAGH! ARRRRR! AAIIEEEE!” and scratching and clawing at him. The main doors were two hundred yards away. One fifty. Just a hundred yards away!
The taser barbs took him in the lower back mid-stride. The muscles of his back and legs seized up, and he and Bobby crashed to the ground, sliding across the tile floor in a heap.
Derik forced his arm to move, reached back and yanked the barbs out of his flesh. He got them out as the TSA men closed on him. He was on his feet in a heartbeat. His right fist cratered a man’s face, took the man off his feet.
Bobby screamed again, “AAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!”
The terror and rage and chaos of it filled his mind.
Another one came at him with a baton and Derik broke the man’s arm. Two men tried to wrestle him to the ground and Derik snapped one’s knee like dry kindling and sent the other flying with a concussive smash to the side of his head.
They weren’t going to take his boy!
Bobby was on the ground, dazed. Derik hoisted the boy over his shoulder and ran like hell.
Eighty yards.
Fifty yards.
Thirty yards.
We’re gonna make it!
Then the shots rang out, and Derik felt the bullets punch through his chest, again and again and again, and he fell, and fell, and fell until the floor met his face.