The hand came back, slapped him again. He'd been screaming. He whimpered softly, sobbed. The pain of his flesh was nothing. He inhaled, let the serenity package take over and calm him.
Someone spoke in English. "Who are you?"
There was a mind there. Suk. Suk Prat-Nung.
A hand struck his face again. It burned like hell.
"Who are you? Who do you work for? They're dead, all dead because of you."
The hand hit him again, hard. Kade could feel the rage and fear and hatred of the mind behind it.
All because of you, Kade thought. All true. All true.
The serenity package had kicked in. He was empty, now. He was cold. He was nothingness.
Another man came forward. Thai. Angular. A large hooked nose.
"How do you do this?" he asked in accented English. "How do you have so much Nexus in you, for so long?"
The Nexus. That's what it had always been about. He wasn't going to tell them. He shook his head.
The new man's hand clenched around Kade's testicles, squeezed hard.
"You're going to tell us," he said. "Or we're going to kill you." He squeezed even harder. "Slowly." Again. "Painfully." And again.
Kade shook his head, screamed his anger at them, screamed it from throat and mind. "NO!"
He saw the man in front of him recoil from it, felt Suk wince in pain. They had Nexus in their minds. He could hurt them.
The thug stepped forward, rammed his fist into Kade's face again, into the burnt and bruised and swollen side. The pain made the world go hazy for a moment.
Suk stepped closer again. "Tell me."
The thug grabbed Kade's left hand, took his pinky finger, wrenched it backwards until it broke.
FUCK!
Kade knew what he had to do then. Emptiness consumed him. Hatred. "I'll tell you. I'll tell you! Stop! Please!"
The thug grabbed his next finger, bent it halfway back, enough to hurt. Coldness descended over him. The pain was nothing.
"Please! Stop! I have to show you. Please."
He opened his mind for them to suck them in. They came closer. Kade showed them the first discoveries, he and Rangan's first experiments. Suk and the other one lapped at it eagerly. He showed them more. Whizzed them through memories – fast fast faster. They came closer, hungrily, sucked up as much as they could from him. He was giving them more than they could possibly keep up with. He wanted them as close and as open to him as possible.
"Wait, wait, slow down!" the angular one said.
Kade could feel him now. His mind was faint. His name was Tuksin. He was a monk. He was here to steal these secrets, free himself of Ananda, become the lord of Nexus. His mind was twisted and foul to the touch.
Kade sucked them in deeper, showed them the synthesis for Nexus 5, the molecular structure of the individual components, how they fit together. It was still too much for them, too complex all at once. They needed more bandwidth. They came even closer, almost touching him, opening their minds as fully as they could to absorb what he was giving them.
And then he showed them hell.
[activate nd* pri: max]
He blasted them with the Nexus disruptor, the signal the ERD had bombarded Rangan's brain with, the way they'd disrupted all thought in that cell. It was pain more intense than anything they could ever have imagined. They screamed with it, both of them, screamed and fell to their knees. Even through the filters in his mind the barest fraction of it took Kade's breath away.
The thug turned, saw them writhing in pain, hesitated for a moment. Kade kept pounding the signal into their brains. The big man wheeled on him, smacked Kade hard enough that it knocked him out of the chair, onto the floor. The pain stunned him.
He held on, kept jamming the signal into their brains. The thug kicked him. Pain exploded in Kade's abdomen. Still he held on. There. Yes. There. Suk and Tuksin were writhing in agony, all thought gone from their minds.
Kade stopped the Nexus disrupter. He needed to focus entirely on something else. There was a gun on the thug's hip. Kade was in Suk's mind now. Push/pull. He was the master of it. He always won.
The gun. The gun. The gun.
The thug kicked him again. Something cracked inside him.
Shoot him. Shoot him. Shoot him.
The gun was in Suk's hand. The thug turned, his eyes going wide. Suk fired, enormously loud in this space. The thug's kneecap exploded. He roared. His leg gave out. He collapsed, hauled himself half up, reached for Suk to slap the gun out of his hand.
Suk fired again. The bullet took the bigger man in the belly. He grunted, still trying to move forward, almost prone now.
Suk fired a third time. The bullet entered the top of the thug's head, split it open like a melon.
Suk blinked in surprise. Tuksin tackled him. The gun went off again, without Kade's willing it this time. Tuksin coughed, and blood came up out of his mouth.
Suk scrabbled backwards, away from Kade, pulled himself up on his feet, pistol still in hand, backing away rapidly. Kade could feel his hold slipping as Suk put distance between them. Kade tried to stand; pain lanced up his left leg and it buckled under him. He crashed to the floor. Fuck.
Suk was at the other end of the room now, maybe forty feet away. He was pointing the gun at Kade. His hands were shaking.
"What are you?"
Kade tried pushing at his thoughts, got nowhere. He was too far, too far.
"You're a devil! A devil!"
Suk fired, missed at that range. Kade felt a bullet embed itself in the floor near him. He scrambled back with one leg and both hands. Suk fired again, missed again.
Kade looked around for anything to hide behind, anything to use as a weapon. The thug's submachine gun was against the wall. He crawled for it as fast as he could, rough pain shooting up from his insides with every motion. It was so far away. Everything hurt so goddamn much. Suk's hands were steady now.
"You go to hell!" the Thai man yelled at him, taking careful aim.
The outside door burst in. Sam stood in the doorway. Suk saw her, dragged his gun around, fired on her. Sam rolled, flinging something at him as she did. Something sharp cut Suk across the left arm. He moved forward, gun trained on Sam. Fired, missed.
Kade got his fingers around the submachine gun. Suk was at thirty feet. The Thai man fired again, but missed Sam.
Kade brought the gun around, pulled the trigger. The recoil knocked him back, pinned him into the wall, brought agony to his broken rib. The shots went wild, too far to the left. Suk turned back towards him, fired. Kade felt a searing pain in his left arm, kept the trigger down, tried to bring the muzzle around to bear on Suk. Suk fired again, missed. Kade's bullets tracked from Kade's left to right, took Suk across his gun arm and then into his chest, knocked him off his feet. The gun clicked. Empty. Silence ruled again. Then sirens, sirens from outside.