To kill them, Kade thought. To hurt them. To break the ERD.
He stared at Ananda blankly for a moment, struggled to control himself. "I don't know."
Ananda studied him. "Your thoughts are cold, child. They're rigid. You shield yourself from what's within you, even as you shield yourself during meditation."
Kade looked down. "I don't feel anything. Nothing feels real."
"You've shackled your own mind. Release it."
The serenity package.
Kade nodded. "Yes. It calms me."
"It numbs you," Ananda replied. "It freezes you. That is not the same thing."
Kade kept his eyes on the floor.
"Release the shackles on your mind, child. Then you'll experience what's going on around you."
"I think it's all that's holding me together," Kade said.
"Then perhaps you should fall apart," Ananda replied.
Kade felt the monk's mind touch his own. Could he do it? Could he turn off the serenity package? Horrible things lurked beneath the surface of his thoughts. He might burst from them. He feared his own emotions.
"There's no way forward for you without letting yourself melt," Ananda said.
"Or burn," Kade said softly.
"Yes. Or burn."
"People died because of me," he said.
They'd existed. They'd had thoughts, emotions, plans. Gone, all gone.
"Yes. That is your karma," Ananda replied.
"I want to hurt the ERD. I want it so bad."
He could feel the bloodlust, feel the anger, feel the rage, the only thing that got through the serenity package any more.
"But it was also my fault," he said. "If I'd made different choices, those people would still be alive."
Ananda nodded. "Perhaps it was your fault."
Kade trembled.
My fault.
"Those shackles… They're there because I don't know if I can face it. If I can face really feeling what happened."
"The past is gone, child. Those men and women are gone, dead or imprisoned. You cannot change what has already happened."
Kade nodded.
Ananda continued. "But you can choose what you make of it. You have a choice to make. Will you make their deaths mean something? And if so, what?"
Kade nodded again. His fists were clenched.
"That's what I've been thinking about."
Rage or emptiness. Nothing else.
"But you will make no headway until you allow yourself to feel. Until you can face your pain, you will not go past it. I will be here with you. We will face it together."
Kade took a deep breath, shook his head. "I can't."
"You can," Ananda replied.
"It's too much. I can't."
"If not now, when?" The old monk gestured around himself. "If not here, then where?"
Kade pulled up the control panel for the serenity package in his mind. It would be so easy. Just a flick of a switch.
He shook his head. "I can't."
"Then your friend died for absolutely nothing."
The words were like a slap to the face. Kade went red. His fists clenched.
He flicked off the serenity package with a thought. The grief surged up around him, came over him like a wave. It bowled him over. It found the cracks in him and suffused every corner of his mind. It filled him up until there was room for nothing else, until he would burst with it, with the pain, with the sorrow, with the heartache, with the despair of all that he'd lost, all the death that he'd brought about.
Wats… Wats…
The faces of the dead and lost to him rose up in his mind.
Ilya. I'll never see you again, Ilya.
The loss of all that had been good in his life threatened to destroy him. It threatened to wash him away in a flood and leave just a husk where he had once been.
Rangan. I'm so sorry, man. I miss you.
The pain of knowing that he had doomed innocents permeated him.
Narong. Lalana. Chariya. Niran. Mai!
He felt Watson Cole die again. Felt the man's mind burrow into Sam's.
Protect him.
He felt Wats' last urging to him.
Set it free. Give it to the rest of the world. Give them what it gave me.
He heard Wats' last words before the explosion.
"You got shit to do, brother. Go do it."
He saw Narong go down with a burst of bullets in his belly, felt the boy's fear and confusion, the way he'd died because of Kade, because Kade had given those bastards a tool to coerce him with.
He felt Lalana wink out of existence in a hail of bullets. He felt Areva burn to death, felt Loesan die in pain, felt old Niran cut down as he'd tried to save Lalana, felt Chariya mourn her dead family. He felt magical little Mai fade away with Sam crouched above her.
Will you make their deaths mean something? Ananda had asked him.
Yes, Kade answered. Yes.
He felt the gentlest of mental touches from Ananda, a feather brush of mind against mind. Ananda was breath. He was awareness. He was untroubled, undiluted awareness.
Breathe. Breathe. Watch the breath go out. Watch the breath come in.
It was sweet. It was solace. It was emptiness and silence. Wats faded slowly from his mind. Breath expanded in his ears, his sight, his sense of his body, grew and grew to fill his mind.
Breathe. Breathe. Let go.
Breathe. Watch the breath go out. Watch the breath come in.
In. Out. Breathe. Observe.
Ananda was tranquility. Ananda was peace. Ananda was awareness. His mind was Kade's lamppost when the darkness and confusion of guilt and remorse and despair came over him.
Observe the thoughts. Let them pass. Bring your attention back to the breath.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Spider BR-6-7-4 crawled silently along the roof of the hall, its skin the same color as the ceiling it clung to. It had been exploring for almost twelve hours now. It had identified 43 unique individuals. Its sisters had identified another 227 in total, seventy-eight percent male, twenty-two percent female. So far there had been no sign of any of its primary or secondary targets.
Spider BR-6-7-4 had observed a large number of individuals emerging from a doorway in this building, all together, earlier in the day. It had accordingly increased the priority of a search of this building and broadcasted that fact to its sisters. Three of them now crawled through it. There was another door ahead of BR-6-7-4. IR showed two human forms within, seated. BR-6-74 considered the door for a moment, telescoped a foreleg to explore the gap between door and doorway. It would do.