Nexus

11 SERENITY

April came. It had been five weeks since the bust. Three weeks until Kade left for Bangkok. The serenity package was ready. He'd tested it at low levels on his own. It could keep his pulse steady on a heart rate monitor, keep his breathing and pulse steady at whatever rate he told it, keep his skin resistance steady on the psych lab's biofeedback rig.

Time to give it a harder test. He turned the system up to a level of three out of ten, and went to meet Nakamura.

"Have you spent any time thinking about what you'll do after your doctorate?" the simulated Shu asked inside the VR rig.

"I'm going to apply for postdoc positions," Kade replied. "I'm really interested in higher function decoding and mapping."

There was no buzz from the lie detector.

"That's great to hear," Su-Yong Shu replied. "We may have funding for a postdoc in that area in my lab next year. I'd encourage you to apply."

"That'd be fantastic," Kade said. "It'd be such an honor to work with you."

Still no buzz.

"It's such a shame how tightly the authorities regulate neuroscience in your country," she said. "Don't you think?"

"Umm, well, you know, it's for safety reasons."

No buzz.

"Why, I'd love a postdoc position in your lab. You're one of my scientific heroes."

Nothing.

"I think the ERD serves a useful purpose in the US, even if they do go a bit too far."

Nada.

"Why, yes, I'd love to talk in more depth about how you came across your amazing insights and learn more about the mind behind those incredible papers."

Zip.

"No, I don't worry about my friends back home. What could possibly happen to them?"

Nothing.

Nakamura reached over and plucked the goggles and headphones from Kade's head. "You've done something."

Kade grinned.

"Mmm. You've done something inside your own skull, haven't you?"

Kade remained mute.

"You should have told me," the CIA man said.

"It was on a need-to-know basis," Kade replied.

Nakamura chuckled. "Well, let's see how it does under greater stress. Please understand that this is in no way personal."

Kade had a moment to be puzzled by the comment, then the CIA man was on him.

Nakamura was up, out of his chair, and halfway around the table, coming around to Kade's left, before Kade even had a hope of reacting. The CIA man took Kade's left arm, twisted it behind his back, used it to lift him painfully out of his seat.

BZZZZZZT! The stress detector went off. BZZZZZZT! BZZZZZZT!

In annoyance, Kade cranked the serenity package to ten out of ten. The buzzer abruptly stopped.

Nakamura chuckled. "Very good. Now, tell me, Kade," he crooned into Kade's ear in an imitation of Shu's voice, "does the idea of working with me in China excite you?"

"Oh, Dr Shu, I'd like nothing better." Kade ground the words out around the pain in his shoulder and elbow.

The sensor made no sound.

"In fact, Dr Shu, I have a little present for you."

Kade activated Bruce Lee. He flicked the switch to full auto, hit START.

Kade's body twisted to the right to elbow Nakamura in the head, then spun back to the left to kick the CIA man in the knee. Nakamura parried the elbow, fell back and bent his leg to take Kade's kick on his thigh instead of knee. Kade's body came all the way around, free hand lashing out in a palm heel strike to break Nakamura's nose and drive the shattered fragments into his brain.

The CIA agent dodged the strike with a preterhuman twitch of his neck, let go of Kade's pinned arm and took another step backwards into the apartment. There was a feral grin on his face.

Uh-oh, Kade thought.

Kade's body sprang forward with a lunging kick to Nakamura's groin and a spear finger strike at his eyes. Nakamura stepped forward, knocked the kick away with his forearm and dodged the finger strike entirely. Nakamura spun, and then somehow he was behind Kade.

Bruce Lee lashed back with an elbow and a low kick. Neither connected. Kade's body twisted to the right. Nakamura put a hand on Kade's shoulder and came around behind him again. An open palm slapped Kade almost gently on the side of his face. Bruce Lee sent a straight kick backwards towards Nakamura's groin and connected with a chair instead. The agent was beside him now, still grinning.

Bruce Lee lashed out with Kade's right hand in a knife strike at Nakamura's throat. The agent dropped into a crouch, almost casually, as Kade's hand flew through empty space above his head.

Still smiling.

Kade knew he should end this now. He was horribly outmatched. This could only end in pain. But something in him wanted to land just one blow on the smug older man. Kade cranked up a setting in the VR martial arts app: full offense, zero defense. His body threw a flurry of kicks, punches, knees, elbows, open palm strikes, knife hands, and gouging fingers.

None of them connected. The CIA agent kept smiling, kept moving out of the way.

A sensor was flashing red inside Kade's mind. His blood oxygen was dipping to dangerously low levels. Kade's eyesight was dimming, his vision narrowing. His body threw kicks and punches, while the serenity package kept his pulse at sixty-five bpm and his respiration at fifteen breaths a minute. Kade's body needed more oxygen and his software wasn't letting him have it.

Kade flipped off the serenity package, let his body's responses normalize. Sweat sprang up on his brow, his breath came in a ragged gasp, his heart pounded in his throat. He threw another kick at Nakamura, connecting only with empty air…

BZZZZZZT!

Kade flipped off Bruce Lee in disgust, and collapsed in an exhausted heap on the floor, panting. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. His chest ached. He didn't even care that Nakamura was about to kick his ass into the next century.

Kade heard the sound of clapping.

Nakamura was standing above him, smiling and slowly applauding.

"You're just full of surprises, Mr Lane. That was very impressive."

"Fuck. Off," Kade managed between gasps.

Nakamura laughed.

The older man crouched down next to him, still smiling. "You had your body locked down that entire time, didn't you? You weren't breathing hard the entire time we were fighting. Your pulse was steady. Impressive."

Kade nodded feebly.

"But, mmm, Mr Lane, you should leave the combat to combatants."

Nakamura's fist lashed out, stopped an inch from Kade's face, and hovered there. The CIA agent laughed again, laughed and laughed and laughed.

Kade let his head fall to the floor in defeat.

The final weeks flew by. Rangan finished his work on recreating the ERD's Nexus disruptor and a partial defense against it. The defense system could filter out signals of all sorts that Kade didn't want the Nexus nodes in his brain receiving. It had layers of failsafes, watchdogs, and tripwires to stop rogue signals and rogue processes. It seemed like a fine set of capabilities to Kade. Antivirus for their minds.

The Nexus disruptor was different. It was a weapon. Did he really need this? Rangan insisted that Kade install the disruptor itself, and not just the defense system. "You never know when you might need it," Rangan said.

In the final week, Nakamura replaced Kade's phone with another of the same model. All his data was there. This phone, Nakamura said, had one very special feature. It would transmit Nexus 5 signals over the net. Samantha Cataranes, under her alias of Robyn Rodriguez, would have a phone with the same capability. She would be running Nexus 5, and their minds would be linked.

Oh, joy.

• • • •

The approval to visit Chris Evans came two days before she shipped out. Sam made her way past three armed checkpoints to reach the secure regeneration suite Evans was housed in, deep in the secret levels below Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Chris – what was left of him – was submerged in the regen coffin. His body was opened to the nutrient-rich growth medium. New tissue seeded with his own cells was slowly growing to replace that which bullets, sepsis, blood loss, and necrosis had destroyed.

The doctors said Evans was aware, but there was nothing to indicate that. She sat beside the tank, put her hand on the glass, felt the gentle hum from within.

"You did good, Chris," she told him. "You saved a lot of people from a lot of hell." She stayed and talked to him for an hour, told him how much he'd done, told him what a hero he was, told him he'd be back together in no time.

She wished she could reach out and touch him. She wished he wasn't so isolated in there. She wished she could show him she cared. Wished she could know what he was thinking. She wished he were running Nexus.