Crux

61 THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

Wednesday October 31st

Holtzmann slipped out of bed at 6am, while Anne still slept. His head pounded and his mouth was dry. His body felt stiff. His stomach was unsteady. He craved more opiates. But that wasn’t going to happen today.

He showered and dressed quickly. Anne rolled over in bed, murmured something, then nothing more. Then he was in the car and on his way to the office.

The news had more on Stockton’s impending victory. The rest was Zoe. The hurricane had sped north and east into the warm, wide open Atlantic, sucking energy from the unprecedentedly hot surface waters as it went, intensifying from the Category 4 storm that had wrecked Havana into a Category 5 monster, with hundred-and-sixty mile per hour winds and ten-foot sea swells. And now Zoe’s track was bending again, turning it towards north by northwest, putting it on a course towards central New Jersey, with possible landfall Friday night. God, what a disaster that would be.

He arrived at the office a little after 7 o’clock, collected his slate and the images he needed, then headed to the Human Subjects wing. ERD Headquarters was no prison. It wasn’t equipped for long-term interment. But the Human Subjects wing could house up to fifty subjects, for research purposes, for months at a time.

Holtzmann swiped his ID to enter the wing, then walked up to the security desk.

He recognized the guard. “I’m here to see Rangan Shankari,” he told the man, holding up his ID.

The guard nodded, then looked over at his maze of monitors.

“Room 31,” he replied. “He’s still asleep.”

“Wake him up,” Holtzmann said. “I’ll be in the interview room.”

Two guards brought Shankari to him ten minutes later, his wrists cuffed to one another. They clipped his cuffs to the hardpoint on the table, which was itself bolted to the floor. Holtzmann waited across that table for the guards to leave. Just seeing Shankari sent a powerful buzz through him. He was so close… So close to getting Rangan out of here…

Wait for it, he told himself. Tonight.

The guards left.

“Rangan,” Holtzmann said. “It’s been some time.”

“Not long enough,” Shankari muttered darkly.

Holtzmann slid his slate across the table to Shankari.

“Open it. See what Nexus has done to the world.”

With his hands restrained, Shankari could just barely touch the surface of the slate. The first image was an aerial view of the assassination site, just a quarter-mile from here. Bodies were scattered across the ground, the geometry of the white seats shattered in a zone around the blast.

Shankari looked at the image. “What’s this?”

Holtzmann answered him. “Three months ago the Posthuman Liberation Front used Nexus 5 to reprogram a Secret Service agent. They tried to assassinate the President. The President lived, but dozens of others died.”

Shankari looked up at him for a moment. His eyes showed nothing. Then he looked back down and touched the surface again to advance the images.

“This is why we want the Nexus back doors,” Holtzmann told him. “To stop these sorts of things.”

A lie, he told himself. We want them for control. Surveillance. Nothing more noble than that.

“I already gave them to you,” Rangan said. “Not my fault they don’t work anymore.”

“Keep looking at the pictures,” Holtzmann told him. “Go through the whole set. Maybe you’ll think of something once you see what we’re up against.”

Shankari grunted, touched the slate again.

Then Holtzmann reached out, carefully, cautiously, for the boy’s mind, sent a request for a chat connection.

Shankari looked up, his eyes wide in surprise. His mind gave off shock, disbelief. And then he accepted the chat request.

[holtzmann]Make no sign. Keep advancing images.

[rangan]What the fuck?

[holtzmann]I’m here to get you out.

Holtzmann opened himself partially to the boy, showed him his sincerity, his deep desire to see Rangan free.

Rangan tapped the surface of the slate again, then looked down.

[rangan]Why?

[holtzmann]It doesn’t matter. But we have an opening tonight. Can you fake a seizure at 11pm?

[rangan]Yes. What then?

[holtzmann]If it’s convincing enough, you’ll be taken to the nearest hospital. From there some friends will get you free.

[rangan]What about the kids?

[holtzmann]Just you.

Rangan blinked in surprise. Holtzmann felt the boy struggle inside, felt hope and guilt and fear and principle war with one another. Seconds passed. Then he felt Rangan come to a decision.

[rangan]No.

[holtzmann]We may not get another chance.

[rangan]Not without the kids. They come, or I don’t.

Holtzmann groaned inside. He wanted this so badly. He needed to get Rangan out. It was so close, so very close.

[rangan]They’re kids, man. You’re torturing them. It’s fucked up.

Holtzmann closed his eyes. He could fake a medical emergency. There were any number of things he could inject Shankari with that would force a trip to the ER.

[rangan]Goddammit, don’t you have any fucking conscience at all? They’re KIDS.

Holtzmann felt himself slipping further. Images of the children went through his head. Alfonso Gonzales, the one who’d been tortured until he gave up Nexus. Bobby Evans, the one they’d spent four hours torturing before finally giving up…

[rangan]Please. I don’t even have to go. Don’t worry about me. Get at least get one of the kids out instead.

Holtzmann grabbed his slate out of Rangan’s hands, stood up.

[holtzmann]I’ll think about it.

[rangan]Wait, wait. What about Ilya? Kade? Wats?

Holtzmann stared at Shankari. And suddenly he felt so tired, so very tired of all of this.

[holtzmann]Dead. Hunted. Dead.

Shankari dropped his head into his cuffed hands as Holtzmann turned and strode from the room.

Holtzmann sat in the bathroom stall, the lid down over the toilet, fully clothed, and wept. He wept in frustration. He needed to get Rangan out. He had to do it. His whole body was wracked with the need, his palms sweating, his breath coming fast, his skin tingling. Rangan had to be free!

He could do it. He could go into his lab, load up a syringe with a cocktail of tramadol and dapoxetine. That would do the trick. One injection, and a few minutes later, Rangan would be seizing hard, would need to be taken somewhere for treatment.

Yet Rangan was right. Those children… One by one, they’d be tortured. They’d become guinea pigs for new cures. Some would die in the process. Some would survive to be shipped off to concentration camps, or to be set free, scarred by the loss of Nexus.

Holtzmann clenched his fists, pressed them against his head. He wanted to scream with the force of the struggle inside him. Gaaaaah!

I’ve never been brave, he told himself. Always been a coward. Goddamn it! I want to do something right for once.

He had to try. Had to try to get Rangan and these children out at the same time.

And the other children? The children being studied in Virginia? In Texas? In California?

Dear God, he told himself, I can only do so much at once!

He would save these children here, the ones under his own direct care, if he could. The rest would have to wait.

Holtzmann took the car, left campus, went to a coffee shop in the DC slum that surrounded the sprawling Homeland Security complex in Anacostia. There he linked himself to the net, tunneled in through an anonymizer, connected to the Nexus board, and fired off a message.

[Change of plans. A dozen more friends to get out. Young ones. You get the rest of the files after.]

And then he went back to the office, and stumbled his way through another day of hypocrisy.

Rangan sat in his cell, shaking.

Did I just do that? he wondered. Did I just say no to getting out of here?

Yeah. I did.

He’d spent his whole life as a taker. He’d spent his whole life as a boy. But he didn’t have to end it that way.

Those kids… they needed out of here. They deserved their freedom more than he did.

It was time to do what was right. It was time to do something for someone else for a change. It was time to be a man.

Sweet fucking Jesus, Rangan thought. I hope it works.