Kade nodded. "Yeah."
Feng nodded back, still staring into the roaring fire. "I'm free. I'm free because of her."
He swallowed tea. "I choose to serve my country, now. But more than that. More than that I choose her."
Su-Yong Shu chose that moment to enter, a smile on her face. She radiated relief and resolve.
"Only one dead," she said. "One monk, anyway. Everyone else will be fine. And the Thai are beefing up defenses here. The Americans can't try that again without declaring war."
Kade felt a shortness in his chest. "Which one?"
Shu looked at him quizzically, without understanding.
"Which monk? The one that died? What was his name?"
"Ahhh," she said. "A novice. He was hit, and then broke his neck falling down a flight of stairs. Bahn."
Bahn… Kade stared down at his tea. Another one dead.
"You shouldn't look so glum," Shu began.
Then her eyes lost focus. She was far away. Kade and Feng both looked up at her in alarm.
Her eyes regained focus. She exuded shock. Anger. She stared at Kade.
"What have you done?"
Spider BR-6-7-21 lurked in the corner of the room. Combat status had been initiated thirty-seven minutes ago at 01.08 local time. The active Engagement Protocol, previously Observe, was now Terminate.
Weapons free.
Find and eliminate primary targets.
BR-6-7-21 slowly walked around the room, in the long corner where wall met ceiling, identifying targets. It was in this mode when possible matches Primary Target Gamma and Tertiary Target Sigma entered the room. BR-6-7-21 slowly crawled along the ceiling to get a better view. Yes, with high confidence, the two human-shaped objects were Primary Target Gamma and Tertiary Target Epsilon. Even as it confirmed this, Primary Target Alpha entered the area.
Human Control was currently offline. BR-6-7-21 reviewed its instructions and combat status again. The active Engagement Protocol was Terminate. These were valid targets. Weapons were free.
Not having access to Human Control, it conferred with its sisters, as it slowly and stealthily moved towards its targets. The responses came back even as it reached firing range. Greater than ninety-five percent of reachable sisters agreed with its conclusions.
Spider BR-6-7-21 steadied itself against wall and ceiling, extruded the tiny launcher for its neurotoxin microdarts, loaded up its clip, and fired a controlled burst.
"What have you done?" Shu demanded of him.
Ow! Something stung Kade on his right hand. He looked down in annoyance and surprise, saw a prick of blood there.
Feng was moving, intense alarm emanating from him. The Confucian Fist was already at the stovetop, a giant pot of boiling water in his hands. He flung the water at something high up on the wall, jumped forward, brought the pot itself down on something that fell to the ground, again and again and again.
Su-Yong Shu had fallen to her knees, between Kade and the fire. There was a spot of blood on the side of her neck. Feng turned to her. There was a spot of blood on his chest.
Kade's hand was numb. He couldn't feel it any more.
"Neurotoxin," Shu said softly. "Save the boy."
Feng whirled. There was a chopping knife in his hand. A giant cleaver. Kade's eyes went wide.
"Feng, no!"
Feng's free hand came down on Kade's wrist. He raised the cleaver high.
Kade tried to pull his arm away. It was like trying to pull it out of a steel manacle.
"Feng, no!!" he screamed. "No!!"
Firelight turned the cleaver's blade red. The world slowed to a crawl. Kade had time to see a tiny twitch of a muscle on Feng's face, a tightening of tendons in his wrist, and then the man's expression hardened and the cleaver came down, down, down, whistling in a long arc through the air, glinting in the firelight as it fell, until it came clean through Kade's forearm and embedded itself deep into the wood of the chair with a meaty thunk. Kade jerked back. His upper arm came away.
His right hand was gone, his whole right arm from an inch below the elbow.
There was no pain at first, just shock.
What? What? What?
Kade screamed in horror and shock, screamed as the pain hit him. Feng was wrapping something just below Kade's bicep now. His belt. He squeezed it tight, tourniquetting him. Kade saw again that there was a pinprick of blood on the right side of Feng's shirt.
Kade stopped screaming, just stared. On the arm of the chair where he'd been sitting, his hand, the hand that had been his, was turning gray. The fingers were twitching.
He turned, saw Shu. Her face was going gray. She touched his mind. The pain ceased. The shock didn't. Feng was at her side now, sucking at the wound at the side of her neck, spitting out the toxin as fast as he could pull it out of her. It was no use. Kade could see that in her mind. He just stared.
Kade… Shu sent. They've tried to kill me again.
Her thoughts were weak. Her mind was fraying.
Again.
He could see it now. He understood. The fire that had killed her mentor, Yang Wei. The limo wreck. Yang Wei trapped in the seat next to her, where her husband was supposed to be. He was screaming – burning to death.
She was burning to death as well. Her hair was on fire. Her legs were crushed, pinned in the wreck beside Yang Wei. Her skin was blackening. Something had embedded itself in her abdomen. Blood was gushing out. Her lungs were filling up with smoke.
The unborn baby in her womb. Not Ling. An earlier child. An unborn son.
The surgical bed. The shaved head. She hadn't been sick. She'd been mortally wounded. She was dying of the burns. Her lungs filling up with fluid. Her immune system failing. Infections blooming inside her.
A desperate measure. The work she and her husband and Ted Prat-Nung had been doing. The nanites that burrowed through the blood-brain barrier, burrowed through neuronal tissue, recording everything, heedless of the damage they did to cells in their haste to preserve data.
The process that digitized the structure of her brain. The process that had failed every time before her.
No hope for her body. Only one chance for her mind.
Too late for her unborn son.
Pain. Fear. Confusion.
Transcendence.
Hatred.
They'd tried to kill her. They'd tried to kill her husband.
They'd killed her mentor instead. They'd killed her unborn son instead.
They'd made her into something else. Something that despised them. Something that would destroy them.
The tapestry of her thoughts was degenerating into mere threads.
Feng… she sent him. Trust… Feng.