Nexus

9 TRAINING DAYS

Training for Kade's ERD mission began immediately. Monday night he was instructed to report to room 3004 in the Health Sciences Building. There he met his trainer, Kevin Nakamura. Nakamura was fortyish, graying at the temples, fit, and serious.

The older man was CIA, he told Kade, but doing a favor for his old agency the ERD. He and Kade would meet nightly for the eight weeks leading up to the International Society for Neuroscience meeting in Bangkok. Nakamura would teach Kade to keep his cool – to lie without being detected. He'd drill Kade on potential scenarios of interacting with Shu and the strategies for each. And together they would implant a false persona in Kade's memories that he could invoke if needed.

Much of the training happened inside a pair of VR goggles and headphones, with a portable stress meter observing him. There, a simulated Shu had simulated conversations with Kade, conversations that called on him to lie, to hide his assignment from the ERD, to hide the contact he'd had with them.

Every time he lied, the stress meter caught it.

"You'll improve," Nakamura told him.

The later part of the first session was the implantation of the cover story memories. It was hazy – hard to remember clearly. Nakamura injected him with something. A non-sedative hypnotic. The world became dreamlike. What the goggles showed him, what the headphones told him, Kade could only recall in fragments.

At the end of the session, he felt strung out, mentally exhausted. He returned to his apartment, collapsed onto his bed and slept for ten hours.

Every night, they did the same.

While Kade trained, Rangan brooded.

They skipped lab one day, went out to Golden Gate Park, and took Ilya with them. Kade opened his mind to theirs, showed them everything the ERD had briefed him on, showed them what he knew of his mission. Then Rangan opened his mind to Kade and Ilya, showed them what had happened in that ERD cell. They'd hit him with a pain beyond anything he could imagine.

Rangan was angry. He wanted to hit them back. He wanted to arm himself and Kade and Ilya with defenses against that ERD attack. He wanted to arm them with their own weapons. It would be important, Rangan said. If Kade were going on this mission, he shouldn't go unarmed.

The invitation to the ISFN meeting and the private workshop to follow arrived in the second week. Kade's advisor was delighted. Important people were taking note of his work, she told him. Kade pretended surprise, pretended joy, found only dread and loathing inside.

The training continued. He learned to use a mantra to activate the false memories and anti-memories. The party had been ended by a noise complaint. What encounter with the ERD? It was bewildering, snapping in and out of different states of mind. It left Kade paranoid and edgy. If memories could be changed like this, how did he know what he remembered was true? Had more happened in ERD custody? Had they erased it from his mind? Was there a mantra that would unlock that? Was there a mantra that would turn him into someone else entirely?

"That's normal," Nakamura told him. "Everyone questions their own memories as they go through this."

That didn't reassure Kade.

Saturday, after his training, he went to the Mephistopheles Club where Rangan had a gig. Kade had a fine view of the DJ booth. Rangan seemed subdued. The music was more ponderous than Kade was used to. Rangan usually played flashcore or elemental on a Saturday night, something high-energy, driving, fun to move to. Tonight his set bordered on blackbeat – heavier, harder, darker. Fewer people danced than usual.

On Sunday night, Nakamura told him that while the memory implantation was going well, the other parts of the training were going poorly. Kade was a rotten liar, it seemed. He got nervous. And when he got nervous, the sensor knew.

"Is this really necessary?" he asked Nakamura.

"Shu may have off-the-charts intelligence. She has an elite special forces bodyguard. She has access to top-of-the-line technology. If you aren't absolutely perfect at dissembling, she will pick it up."

They kept trying for another week. It was no use.

"Your pulse just shot up again," Nakamura told him the next Thursday. "Your pupils dilated. If we don't make progress soon, we'll turn to drugs. We have to hide your anxiety."

Drugs, eh? Alternatively…

That night, Kade didn't collapse into deep sleep. Instead he sketched out a possible new Nexus OS app. A tool to manage his mental state around Shu. If he could suppress the anxiety signals passing through his amygdala, boost serotonin, suppress noradrenaline… If he directly modulated his breathing rate and his pulse… Then he could keep himself serene. It was conceptually simple, but they'd always resisted playing this deeply with their emotions. He would have to be extremely careful…

Kade closed his eyes, went Inside, and invoked his development environment. Windows blossomed in his inner sight. New project. Serenity package. He had a lot of work to do.

Weeks passed. The sessions with Nakamura improved slightly, but not enough. Kade worked away on his serenity package. He was almost there.

At the end of the fourth week, Rangan came to him with something. He exuded good cheer. Kade hadn't seen Rangan thi happy since before the bust.

[rangan]Ready for a surprise?

[kade]Sure. Bring it on.

A file transfer request blinked in Kade's mind. He accepted it. A pair of files came across. One was source code. The other was an application. He had no idea what it did. Then he saw the name. Bruce Lee. Oh no…

[rangan]OK, so launch that app. But don't hit any buttons yet, OK?

Kade groaned inwardly. Rangan had always dreamed of this app. It was ridiculous.

[kade]I don't really think hand-to-hand combat is what this is about…

[rangan]Come on. You're a spy now. You need to be able to fight.

[kade]But I won't have the muscle, or the endurance, or...

[rangan]Dude, just launch the app.

Kade sighed and fired it up. His vision came alive with targeting circles, buttons for attacks and defenses, a toggle for automatic versus manual mode, sliders to change the auto-mode AI's emphasis on attack versus defense.

[rangan]The game engine's from the crack of Fist of the Ninja that went online last month. It takes standard VR body shapes and vectors. I just hooked it up to our Nexus body interfaces.

[kade]Uhh... Rangan, thank you, really, but…

[rangan]Oh, don't thank me yet! You probably don't want to be mashing buttons, so you just click on the target. It uses our object list to track people and so on... And then you tell it to attack. You can slide this here for how much focus to put on attacking versus defending. And over here if you want to pause. Pretty great, eh?

Kade couldn't believe they were having this conversation.

[kade]Yeah. It's great. Really. I mean, thank y–

[rangan]OK. I can see you're not convinced. No worries. You can thank me after you're forced to kick someone's ass with it.

[kade]I'm not really sure...

[rangan]Come on, let's take it to the gym.

An hour later, they limped out of the gym. Kade ached everywhere. His body had thrown a bewildering array of kicks and strikes at the punching bag, most of which he was sure had hurt him more than they would have damaged any real-world assailant. His knuckles were bloody. His right wrist and left ankle both ached from times when Bruce Lee had driven him to hit the punching bag far harder than he really should have. And then there was the moment at which the targeting system had decided his target was the wall instead of the punching bag…

Rangan thought it was hilarious and promised to fix the bugs. Kade just hurt.