Crux

36 GODS AND MONSTERS

Saturday October 27th

Kade fell fast asleep after they returned from the club. It felt so good to be doing something, to be making some progress. He’d find those bastards. He’d stop them.

He came fully awake in the early hours, as Feng rose to do his daily exercise.

Kade set himself to reviewing data, looking through the pings his new agent had sent back from around the world as it searched for the monsters behind Code Sample Alpha.

At midday Feng went off to retrieve the jeep and move it to a parking garage they’d found at the end of the block in case they needed to make a quick exit.

The data lulled Kade back to sleep. He dreamt of the NJ, of the conjoined minds of the dancers, of a million minds dancing together, a shared rhythm rising from their thoughts…

He woke abruptly, something flashing in his mind.

[Match: Rangan Shankari - confidence 96%]

[Match: Ilya Alexander - confidence 98%]

What? Was he dreaming?

[Match: Rangan Shankari - confidence 96%]

[Match: Ilya Alexander - confidence 98%]

One mind. Those alerts were from one mind.

Kade blinked, forced himself fully awake. Rangan. Ilya. Jesus.

He clicked on the alert, opened the encrypted connection, invoked the back door, sent the passcode.

And then he was in.

Martin Holtzmann felt the panic rising up around him, constricting around his throat, cutting off his air. The President had the most to gain. The words kept running through his head, driving all other thought out. Of course the President had the most to gain. And he who had the most to gain did it. The President had staged that assassination attempt. The President had killed dozens of Americans to ensure his own re-election.

Dear God.

Dear God.

The ground below Holtzmann’s feet was cracking open. There was nothing there, no solidity, nothing to hold onto. He was going to fall into that abyss and keep falling, keep falling. This nightmare was going to swallow him up, swallow Anne with it, swallow up his boys, swallow everyone and everything he loved.

Because he knew something he shouldn’t. Because if John Stockton would stage his own attempted assassination, would kill dozens of his supporters, dozens of federal employees, three of his own Secret Service agents…

…then he wouldn’t hesitate to kill Martin Holtzmann, and anyone else who might know.

Holtzmann needed this out of his head. He needed to forget. He needed his suspicions gone. He needed his qualms about purging Nexus from the children erased. Then he needed the Nexus out of his mind, forever. He needed to forget he’d ever tried it, forget all of this.

Holtzmann reached out with his mind to his home’s network for the first time in weeks, sent his thoughts out towards the Nexus boards, and started searching. There must be something out there. Something that would make him forget. Something that would erase his conscience. Something that would turn back the clock, to where it was before he’d ever downed that first vial, before he’d ever supped of this forbidden fruit.

He searched and searched and searched, finding dead end after dead end. There must be something that would do what he wanted. There must.

He was still searching, frantically, desperately, when a mind like a god’s descended thunderously down onto his own. A monstrous mind, an epic mind, full of rage and murder. It crushed his will beneath its staggering force. Its mental fist closed painfully around his heart, and began to squeeze.

Kade sucked at the memories of Rangan and Ilya his agent had found in this mind. A montage of them spilled across his mind.

Rangan, tortured. Hooded and cuffed. Being electrocuted. Being smothered with a towel and suffocated while his body jerked and spasmed against its restraints.

And Ilya.

Ilya with her eyes closed, pale and still.

Cold. Lifeless.

Ilya dead.

It hit him like a blow. He opened his eyes and he was on his side, on the floor of the room in Saigon, a glass of water he’d had by the bedside on the floor, rolling on its side, water spilling out. He couldn’t breathe. Dead! Dead!

And that face. The face seen in the mirror. He knew that face. He knew whose mind this was.

He felt the anger rising behind the shock. Anger like he’d felt in Thailand, like he’d felt after the inferno in Bangkok, anger like he’d felt every time he’d found someone using Nexus to kill or rape or steal, anger that threatened to erupt from within him.

Kade pushed his will down Martin Holtzmann’s pathetic mind. This man was completely his. And by God he deserved to die.

Holtzmann tried to scream as the alien mind invaded his. No sound left his lips. Something grabbed control of his limbs, lifted him up, and threw him to the ground. A will unthinkably, inhumanly strong was plowing through him, racking him with pain.

YOU KILLED HER!

An image of Ilya Alexander filled his mind. Her autopsy photo. Her in life, the last time he’d seen her, weeks earlier.

No! he tried to say. No! It wasn’t me!

Nothing came out of his mouth. He felt the mental fist close tighter around his heart. He couldn’t breathe. He struggled against it, tried to push it out of his mind, but it was stronger than he could imagine, locked around him, impervious to his efforts.

DON’T LIE TO ME!

I’m not lying, he tried to say. Please, I didn’t kill her. I didn’t want her to die!

He pulled up the memory, him standing at the one-way mirror, looking down on the Nexus children, the news of her death coming through on his phone, his anger and frustration at the waste of it all!

His heart pounded in his chest with fear.

The mental hand closed into a fist inside him. A sharp pain stabbed through his chest, and then his heart’s pounding was gone. Where it had been there was nothing. Dear God.

It had stopped his heart!

No. Please. Not this way!

Rangan, he pleaded with the mind holding him. Children. Still alive.

The world was dimming, growing darker, fading out, as oxygen stopped reaching his brain.

No. Please.

Please…

And then there was nothing.

Kade ripped into Holtzmann’s mind in a blind rage. He seized control of the man’s body, threw him from his chair and to the ground, crushed Holtzmann’s will with the tools the back door afforded him.

This man was ERD. He was a leader of the organization that fought Nexus. The people who’d blackmailed him, who’d turned Narong Shinawatra into a robot assassin and led to his death, to Mai’s death, to Lalana’s death, a dozen deaths in that Bangkok inferno! The people who’d sent Rangan and Ilya and scores of his friends to jail. That had killed Wats and killed Ilya!

Kade wrapped his mental fist around the man’s brainstem. He felt the power he held over Holtzmann’s life, the supremacy, the absolute control, the complete domination of this pathetic creature. It was a drug, pulsing through him, hot with pleasure.

This man deserved to die.

Holtzmann struggled, pleaded, made excuses.

Kade ignored them all. With a clench of his mental fist he spasmed the man’s brainstem, stopping his heart. The sweet bliss of power coursed through him.

Judge, jury, executioner, Ilya whispered in his head.

Please… the dying Holtzmann pleaded. Rangan. Children. Still alive.

The name hit him like a bucket of cold water. Rangan. Rangan! Rangan was still alive. Holtzmann was the one lead he had to save him!

FUCK!

Kade loosed his mental grip, let the brainstem resume its normal activity, searched for a pulse.

Nothing. The brainstem’s behavior was erratic, confused, neural circuits temporarily disrupted by the surge of random pulses Kade had sent through it.

Holtzmann was passing out now. Consciousness fading as the flow of oxygen and nutrients to his brain ceased.

No. He needed this man alive.

Kade paired his own brainstem to Holtzmann’s, pumped signals from his neurons into the analogous ones in Holtzmann’s brain.

Chaos still ruled in Holtzmann’s brainstem. Aberrant signals from his own neurons swamped the input from Kade’s brain.

Kade amplified the input from his own brainstem to Holtzmann’s again, ramped it up to four times strength.

Neural circuits started to reform, but there was still so much chaos, so much random behavior left over from Kade’s attack. Holtzmann’s heart was still stopped.

Kade pushed again, stepped up the input levels by a factor of ten, overruled all neural inputs coming into the Nexus-linked neurons in Holtzmann’s brainstem with the signals from his own brain.

Order strengthened, but the heart still didn’t beat.

He pushed one last time, harder, overlaying his own brainstem’s neural activity onto Holtzmann’s, and held it that way, forcing Holtzmann’s brain to behave, to step back to regularity.

Lub-

Lub-

Holtzmann’s heart stuttered, tried to turn over. Kade held on, kept pushing, kept imposing his own neural activity on Holtzmann’s.

Lub-

Lub-

Lub dub. Lub dub.

And finally the man’s heart beat again.

Kade pulled himself back into his body, rose to sitting on the bed.

He was shaking. He needed to get himself together. Holtzmann was out cold for the moment. He reached into the man’s sleep centers, made sure Holtzmann would stay that way while he took a moment to think.

Oh, Kade, Ilya’s voice said in his mind. You almost killed him.

He’s still alive, Kade replied.

You got lucky, she said. He could have died.

He killed you! Kade shouted at the voice in his head.

He didn’t. He showed you. He didn’t want me to die.

He’s responsible, Kade shot back angrily. He’s one of them. Your blood’s on his hands. Wats’ blood. A lot more than that.

And you get to decide that? she asked him. You’re the judge now? Are you wiser than all humanity, Kade? Are you?

Yes. If I have to be.

Then Ananda was in his thoughts. A memory of the monk.

When you suffer, Ananda had told him, When you rage. When you weep. When you crave. That is when you must still your mind.

Dammit! Kade raged. He slammed his good fist against the floor.

But Ananda was right. He had to be cool now. He had to think. Had to use this chance to get Rangan free.

Kade closed his eyes, folded his hands into his lap, took a few steadying breaths of anapana, then a few more, then a few more after that.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Layers of rage and grief peeled off him like an onion. Tears rolled down his face.

Breathe.

Breathe.

He opened his eyes again minutes later. The anger was still there. The loss was still there. But he was calmer now, he could think.

Breathe.

Holtzmann was Kade’s best chance to get Rangan free. He couldn’t squander that.

Kade checked the time. It was not quite 2am on the East Coast. He had some time before Holtzmann would be missed.

He had time, time to use the tools he’d taken from all those monsters he’d stopped, and employ them for his purposes – to free Rangan.

Kade tunneled back into Holtzmann’s mind. With a handful of commands he pulled up the coercion tools he’d done his best to exterminate, set them to hovering in his mental space, overlaid atop representations of Holtzman’s mind and brain. Then he grabbed one, and set to work sculpting the man into a slave, a slave who would do Kade’s bidding.

Holtzmann woke slowly. He was back in his office chair. Everything seemed orderly.

I’m alive, he realized.

4.19am, the clock told him. Hours had passed.

Then he felt it. The knot in his stomach. The ache in his chest. The overwhelming compulsion. He would free Rangan Shankari.