"Your sister?" Kade asked.
Sam shook her head. There had been one hundred and nineteen people in total at the Yucca Grove ranch. Twenty-eight had survived, including Sam. Most of the disciples had been killed by gunfire or the explosives. The others had taken their guns to their own heads. Neither Sam's parents nor her sister Ana were among the survivors.
"Oh, Sam. I am so so so sorry." He put all the compassion he had into it, all the support and care and understanding he was capable of.
Sam locked her eyes with his. "Kade, I wish my sister were still alive. But I would rather have her dead than living through what was coming for her." She meant it, he saw. Meant it fiercely.
"I'm so sorry for everything you went through, Sam. I can't imagine… No one should go through that. No kid. I can see why you joined the ERD." She'd wanted to hurt them, the bad men. Find them and hurt them or catch them or kill them. Make it so they couldn't hurt anyone ever again. She'd wanted to be strong. Strong enough that no one could ever hurt her or those she cared about again.
He tried to comfort her. Tried to give her support.
"Kade, Kade, you don't understand," Sam said.
"What?"
"That's the past, Kade. I can't go back. I've let it control me for way too long. I can let go now."
He was confused.
"I met the most amazing little girl tonight, Kade. She showed me. She helped me face it. I've just been nibbling off bits of it at a time. I can face it now. It's over. I'm not that little girl anymore. I did the best I could. I forgive myself."
He could feel it in her. The sorrow was still there, but it didn't weigh her down. She felt light as a feather. She felt free.
"That girl, Kade, oh my god. She's like you are. Like we are." Sam said it wondrously, as if she was realizing it for the first time. "The Nexus is in her always. She was born that way. It's amazing. I have a sister again."
She collapsed against his chest, laughing as she cried, her breath coming fast. Eventually the laughter faded, and she lay against him, breathing in and out, weeping silent tears, tears of release, tears of closure, tears of transition, tears of gratitude. She walked through her life again, marveled at it, thanked her young self for her courage and her steadfastness, forgave that young Sam for all the things she'd once held against her, said goodbye to her parents and her first sister and all the things she'd known so long ago. She lay with her head against his chest and he stroked her hair, sent her compassion, sent her warmth and comfort. She fell asleep against him and still he lay there. He could feel the party slowly dwindling out in the living room. It felt so good here. It felt so right. Kade stroked Sam's hair, felt the bittersweet goodbyes of her dreams, felt her chest fall and rise in time with his, and eventually sleep took him as well.
There was silence in the C&C aboard the Boca Raton. She'd dismissed every message instructing her to desist, to restore her cover. They'd stopped trying eventually. They'd just listened.
The three of them had each known tiny bits of Sam's background. None of them had heard all of it before. It was a relief when she stopped talking. It was a relief when sleep took her. No one spoke for long minutes.
"Make sure the fireteams are on alert," Nichols finally said. "Let's let Blackbird get a little shut-eye."
Wats sat cross-legged one floor above Kade and Cataranes. His weapons were at his sides. Chameleonware made his still form difficult to pick out from his surroundings. A heat capacitor attached to his combat suit slowly siphoned off the excess warmth his body produced, keeping him from boiling in the infrared blocking garment. The data fob felt hard and cool against his chest.
His radio had picked up bursts of encrypted chatter twice tonight. The commandos were near. He wasn't sure where, but they were near.
It was a relief to feel the party below drift towards sleep. His Nexus nodes were in strictly receive-only mode. It was hard to get a good Nexus connection that way. Two-way feedback was necessary to synchronize minds, to get a clear transfer of concepts.
But he'd caught enough. The night had affected him powerfully. He was a part of the Buddha too. He was the dark mirror of a bodhisattva in his own way. He was the opposite of the enlightened teacher. He was one who would risk rebirth in darkness and ignorance, ever further from nirvana, so that others might have their chance at peace and enlightenment.
He wondered if, in a past life, Cataranes had been one of those as well.
36
COMPANY
Kade dreamed Sam's memories. He was fourteen, wrapped in a blanket by the man who'd jumped with him from a thirdfloor window, watching the hell he'd lived in for the last six years burn to the ground. He was a young teen, growing up in a strange new world. He'd known exactly what he wanted to be, from the moment his old life had ended. He wanted to be one of the ones to fight the bad guys, to save the little girls from the fires.
He was eighteen, at the academy for the newly created ERD, his mentor a man named Nakamura, the very same agent who'd carried him out of the burning wreck of the ranch; his instructors teaching him to fight, to think, to survive. He was twenty-one, the year he'd spent in a seemingly endless round of surgeries and gene therapies, turning him into a weapon against evil. He was twenty-three, alone on the shores of the Caspian, the lone survivor of a mission that had destroyed a bioterror lab, but at huge cost to his team… He was twenty-seven, assigned suddenly to infiltrate a Nexus ring in San Francisco… He was in Bangkok. He'd met a girl. An amazing, magical little girl…
Someone was shaking him. He brought his arm around to trap the hand, didn't actually know how, flailed ineffectually instead.
"Kade!" It was a whisper, a man's voice. He was Kade. That's right. Kade. Not Sam.
"Kade, wake up!" Loesan. That's who it was. "There's someone here to see you!"
Kade struggled to open his eyes. It was so early… They'd barely slept for an hour. Loesan's mind vibrated with excitement. Something big was happening. Someone important was here.
"Wha'?" Kade managed to mumble.
"Come on, get up," Loesan whispered. "You're going to like this!"
Kade blinked again, tried to wake himself up. Sam mumbled something against his arm. He looked over at her, her hair tousled, her face vulnerable and younger than he'd ever seen it before. He felt a wave of tenderness. It confused him. Time for that later.
He slowly extricated himself from her sleepy embrace, sat up, blinked some more. "OK, OK. I'm up."
Kade followed Loesan out of the tiny guest room, down the hall, into the living room. The very faintest hint of pre-dawn light showed through the windows. Two dim lamps were on inside. Most of the people from last night were sprawled out on couches or on the floor under blankets, asleep.
Shit, we snagged the best room, he thought. That was rude.
Old Niran sat cross-legged in front of the altar, meditating, feeling content and serene. Narong and Suk were awake. Suk radiated alarm and surprise. Narong was staring at someone, getting up on his feet, walking towards the person just out of Kade's sight.