Nexus

35 ROOTS

"I wasn't born Samantha Cataranes. I was born Sarita Catalan. I grew up in southern California, in a little town near San Diego. My parents were Roberto and Anita. They both worked in bioinformatics, had met on the job. I had a sister, Ana." Sorrow welled up from her. Tears began to flow again, silently running down the side of her face. Kade felt troubled, concerned, empathic. He stroked her hair, sent kindness.

"My parents were hippies. The kind of hippies who worked in tech but went camping with the family, had singalongs with friends. There were always a lot of friends around the first few years. I think my parents smoked pot." It made her laugh, even through the tears. Kade kept stroking her hair.

"When I was eight, and my sister was four, the company where they worked was acquired by a bigger company. They had the option of relocating to Boston, or cashing out with a big severance payment. They took the latter." Her voice took on a faraway quality. She began to show Kade with her mind as she told him.

"Some friends of theirs had moved to a place in New Mexico. They'd joined a kind of white collar commune. Everyone did some sort of work they could do remotely. Computer people, consultants, analysts, visual design people, some radiologists and lawyers. They all lived on this ranch. The idea was to raise kids together, to live in a place where they could share parenting duties, where they could be a little shielded from the law, maybe do some hippie things together."

The images came across as bright and colorful. Kids running around in the New Mexico sunshine, smiling grownups picking them up and swooping them through the air, pushing them on the swings.

"They had some shared rules and rituals. There was a Sunday night thing all the families had to go to. Somewhere between a church service and a town hall. It was a hippie thing." Her tears had stopped. She was trembling, though, anticipating something to come.

Annoyance flashed across Sam's face. They were hailing her. Her superiors. Her eyes flicked to one side, silenced a notification.

She looked back at Kade, became present with him again.

"The place was called Yucca Grove." She swallowed.

She saw Kade frown, the name familiar, reaching for the memory… "Yucca Grove? Isn't that where…?" His eyes went wide. Something chilled him. He pulled her closer. "Oh no, oh, Sam, I'm so sorry."

"Shhhh. It's OK. I have to finish this."

He held her as she spoke, as she showed him with her mind.

"The first couple years were good. Really fun." Laughter. Carefully contained bonfires in the back. Two dozen "cousins" and playmates. Hiking in the green Sangre de Cristo mountains. And love, love, love. Her mother's kind face and melodic voice. Her father's mischievous sense of humor. Her sister's squeals of delight at each new prank and trick they played together.

"Then it started to change." A listlessness in her parents. Laughter draining out. Smiles only during the rapture of Sunday nights. A rapture she didn't share. A rapture Ana didn't share. Then the bad men.

"It was called the Communion virus. It tweaked the brain. It was supposed to bring people closer together, make them less selfish, more empathic. It did something to the temporal lobe, one of the circuits involved in religious experience. It was supposed to put people closer to God. It did that. It also made them slaves." Anger rose up in her. The bad men. The ones who were immune. The way they took over the enclave. The way they made everyone else serve them. Stole their money. Crushed their spirits. The control. The abuses.

"Some of the survivors claimed that the whole commune had chosen to take it together. Some say they never took it, that someone used it against them as a weapon. I can imagine my parents trying it voluntarily. They weren't scared. They loved the idea of group living, of altruism, of harmony." It came out bitter. She was still angry with her parents. Angry that they'd failed to protect her. No… not her. That they'd failed to protect Ana.

"I don't know. I can't ask them. They died." Kade was numb, horrified, concerned, just watching, listening, empathizing, trying to comfort her with his mind, with his arm around her and his hand stroking her face.

"There were thirteen of them that ran the place after that." Their faces filled her mind. The memory of their cruelties, their abuses. The cigarette burn on her thigh. The blow that had knocked a tooth out of her mouth. Worse. Much, much worse…

"The prophet and his twelve disciples. All men."

She flicked her eyes to one corner to dismiss another message from her superiors, brought her eyes back to his.

Kade swallowed. He wanted to look away, wanted to not hear this, not know this. He endured. He held her and listened, sent her what comfort he could.

"The prophet. He was a bastard. He was naturally immune. It didn't drag him down. He figured out that he could make all the rest do what he wanted. He found the others, the ones with the most resistance, all men. Made them his disciples. Let them have anything they wanted, as long as they reinforced his control."

"They set themselves up as gods. The Sunday night meeting… it became worship. The virus made everyone want to believe. They used every trick in the book to set themselves up as gods and everyone worshipped them."

"Almost everyone. It only barely worked on me. It didn't work at all on my sister. We couldn't understand what was happening to everyone else. It was crazy. I tried to run away when I was eleven. They caught me – beat me. My mom and dad just watched. I tried again, and the prophet and his disciples beat me within an inch of my life. I tried to stab one of them with a fork, once, and they whipped me half to death, left me tied to a fencepost all night, burnt me with cigarettes." The memories were brutal and painful. Kade lived them with her. Sam was numb to it. Tears streamed down his face.

"After that they kept a close eye on me. They didn't let me near any phones, any terminals, any knives. They used those people as cattle. Took their money. Took whatever women they wanted. Beat up the men for sport." She remembered it. Living in hell. In a prison camp. She knew it wasn't supposed to be this way.

"They started using me when I was twelve."

Kade moaned with the memory of it. Sam just stared off into space.

"I fought the first few times." She'd clawed them, bitten at them, lashed out like a wild animal. "But they always won. It hurt less if I just let them." The pain and humiliation of surrender – of submission. The disgust of it. The self-loathing.

"After that… I just gave in. I just started pretending that the virus worked on me. I told Ana to do the same." The act of dewy innocence. The complete submission to any request, any authority, the feigned enthusiasm at the Sunday night rallies. It killed Kade. The tears kept flowing. He was sending Sam love and compassion, not for the adult her, but for that twelve year-old child, helpless and alone and abused, utterly abandoned by the world.

"I went two years that way. I thought about killing myself every day. I thought about killing one of them every day. What kept me going was Ana." Her sweet sister, also unaffected by the virus, confused, hurt, scared. How Sam had tried to comfort her, hold her, raise her, shield her, protect her, show her some small bit of joy in this godforsaken place.

"It changed when I was fourteen. I'd gotten used to the abuse. I only got hurt when one of them was in a bad mood. Then one day, I was taking a walk with Ana, and one of them saw us, and he had this look, this leer on his face, and I was so used to that, and I didn't care anymore what they did to me. But then I realized he wasn't leering at me. He was leering at my little sister. And I thought, oh my god, if any of them touch you I'm going to kill them all, every one of them, with my own bare hands."

She was crying again. The numbness was gone. Old rage and fear and impotence replaced it. She could be numb about the pain she'd endured. Not about her fears for her sister, for the one innocent human being she'd tried to protect in those years.

"So I did what I should have done a long time earlier. One of them took me to his room. He used me hard. And after he'd spent himself, and he'd fallen asleep, I did the bravest thing I could imagine. I slid out from under him… I went out into the other room, where his phone was, and I picked it up. I hadn't touched a phone since I was nine. It beeped when I pressed the keys. I was so terrified he was going to hear me…"

Kade felt her memory, that childhood terror. They would kill her for this. They would beat her. They would rape her sister. She would never escape…

"…but I pushed 9-1-1 and it went through. And I told them where I was, and that the prophet and his disciples had made us slaves, and that they were about to hurt my sister, and that my parents had become zombies, and I didn't listen to any of their questions, and I hung up." Adrenaline was coursing through both their veins now, the memory of danger, of courage, of pushing her luck.

"And then I put the phone back and snuck back into his room. And when I crawled back into bed with him, he started to wake up. And so I fucked him, told him I wanted him so bad, did anything I could to distract him." Kade remembered it, remembered it through Sam. The fear. The shame. The way she'd hated him as she did it. The way she'd imagined him bleeding and broken and dying as he'd taken her, the way he'd mistaken her hatred for passion.

"A little while later there was shooting. A sheriff's deputy had rushed out to the site, and one of the disciples had shot him, killed him." My fault, she'd thought. I killed him.

"No, Sam, no! That wasn't your fault!" Kade told her.

She smiled sadly at him, put her finger to his lips. "I know, Kade. I know that now. I thought I knew that already. Now I do. Finally.

"After that it was a siege. All the slaves… my parents, the other parents, even the kids. They all worshipped that man, the prophet. Every family had guns. He'd made sure of it. He told us all that Satan's forces were coming to take us to hell, and we had to protect ourselves. The feds arrived. The FBI's Bioterror Division. Someone had picked up on the word 'zombie'. It wasn't the first Communion virus outbreak. Just the worst.

"The prophet told the feds that we'd rather die than go with them. That if they invaded we'd blow ourselves up, burn ourselves alive, all of us, including the kids.

"The siege lasted three days. The FBI played loud music. They brought in preachers. They brought in shrinks. I'd never seen Ana so frightened.

"On the fourth day I woke up in the middle of the night. It was 2.28am. I remember that on the clock. I'd slept maybe an hour with all the music and all the people running around. And I just knew what I had to do. My dad had a gun, like all the rest. I snuck into their bedroom. He was asleep. It wasn't his shift to be on guard. His pistol was on the nightstand. I took it, and I put on a pretty dress, the white one, the dress that the worst one, the prophet, liked to dress me up in when he fucked me. I hid the pistol under that dress, and I went to see him. People just chuckled when they saw me. They knew what that dress meant.

"There was a guard at his door, one of the other parents, a fat one, not one of the disciples. The light was on underneath. I told the guard that he'd sent for me, that he wanted me to come to him in the middle of the night, that he had a 'blessing' for me." She spat the word out in disgust.

"The guard understood. He didn't have any sympathy for me. He just saw me, and wanted me, and wanted to serve God and the prophet. He let me in.

"The prophet was behind his desk, looking at his terminal. He looked up, saw me in that dress, looked me up and down. 'Sarita,' he said. 'What do you want?'

"And I pulled out the gun. It was huge. The guard was already turning away to go back into the hallway. The prophet saw the gun, and he yelled." The memory was so fresh in her mind. She remembered every instant of it, the position of every piece of furniture, every sound, every moment frozen forever as a still image. "He tried to come at me, but his desk was in the way. I pulled the trigger and my first shot missed completely. The gun jerked up towards the ceiling. The guard was turning around, coming at me. The prophet was most of the way around his desk, coming at me to slap the gun away. " Sam remembered the huge boom of the pistol, the smell of it, how the gun's kick had shaken her whole body. She remembered the fear, the way he was growing larger in her sight, the knowledge that she was about to die and fail – and be beaten and be killed – and have her sister raped in front of her.

"I panicked. I tried to jerk the gun down to level it and pulled the trigger again. I fired wild. The guard hit me at the same time.

"He knocked me to the ground. He tried to kick me. Somehow I still had the gun. I pulled the trigger again and the guard fell on top of me. He was fat and huge. There was blood everywhere, all over my dress. I tried to pull myself out from under him. I got part of the way but my legs were still stuck. I looked up and I saw the prophet. He was getting up on his feet. I'd shot him. There was blood on his shirt, his left arm. I'd shot him and knocked him down and now he was getting up. He had a knife in his right hand. He started coming for me and I pulled the trigger again, took him in the stomach, and he fell down to his knees."

Sam stopped speaking. The scene played out for Kade in his mind. I hate you, she'd whispered to the prophet. He'd coughed up blood and she'd shot him again, in the chest, and he'd flopped backwards. And then there had been more gunfire, from everywhere. The FBI had heard the shots, taken it as their cue to enter. The defenders at the gate were firing back with shotguns, rifles, pistols. People were screaming. More gunshots, coming closer. More screams.

And then, the first explosion. It took the south wing of the ranch down completely, sent a fireball up into the night sky. The rest of the building was on fire. Smoke was everywhere. Sam struggled free of the fat guard on top of her. The prophet was moaning, still barely moving. She stood above him, took careful aim, fired into his head again and again.

The smoke was too thick. She was coughing. She couldn't breathe. She put part of her dress over her mouth. It didn't help. She started to get dizzy, confused. She fell down to her knees. She didn't mind dying. It was better than staying alive through this. She only hoped Ana was OK.

She was welcoming death when she heard the voice. Loud. Male. Still full of life, but not one of the disciples. A voice she didn't know.

"IS THERE ANYBODY IN HERE?"

She tried to stand. Fell. Coughed. Waved her hand. And then she was in someone's arms. A man. He was wearing a vest. It said FBI – BIOTERROR. He had Asian features.

"It's going to be OK!" he yelled over the din of fire and explosions and gunshots.

He carried her into the hallway. Fire was spreading. A timber fell from the ceiling to their right. He ran the other way. There was a picture window there. They were on the third floor.

"CLOSE YOUR EYES!" he yelled.

And then he'd run at the window, twisted at the last moment, broken through it with his shoulder, shielding her from the glass with his body, and propelled them out into the night.

"Nakamura," Kade said.

Sam nodded, tears streaming down her face. She felt… lighter. Like she'd released something, heavy and pressing.

"Your sister?" Kade asked.

Sam shook her head. There had been one hundred and nineteen people in total at the Yucca Grove ranch. Twenty-eight had survived, including Sam. Most of the disciples had been killed by gunfire or the explosives. The others had taken their guns to their own heads. Neither Sam's parents nor her sister Ana were among the survivors.

"Oh, Sam. I am so so so sorry." He put all the compassion he had into it, all the support and care and understanding he was capable of.

Sam locked her eyes with his. "Kade, I wish my sister were still alive. But I would rather have her dead than living through what was coming for her." She meant it, he saw. Meant it fiercely.

"I'm so sorry for everything you went through, Sam. I can't imagine… No one should go through that. No kid. I can see why you joined the ERD." She'd wanted to hurt them, the bad men. Find them and hurt them or catch them or kill them. Make it so they couldn't hurt anyone ever again. She'd wanted to be strong. Strong enough that no one could ever hurt her or those she cared about again.

He tried to comfort her. Tried to give her support.

"Kade, Kade, you don't understand," Sam said.

"What?"

"That's the past, Kade. I can't go back. I've let it control me for way too long. I can let go now."

He was confused.

"I met the most amazing little girl tonight, Kade. She showed me. She helped me face it. I've just been nibbling off bits of it at a time. I can face it now. It's over. I'm not that little girl anymore. I did the best I could. I forgive myself."

He could feel it in her. The sorrow was still there, but it didn't weigh her down. She felt light as a feather. She felt free.

"That girl, Kade, oh my god. She's like you are. Like we are." Sam said it wondrously, as if she was realizing it for the first time. "The Nexus is in her always. She was born that way. It's amazing. I have a sister again."

She collapsed against his chest, laughing as she cried, her breath coming fast. Eventually the laughter faded, and she lay against him, breathing in and out, weeping silent tears, tears of release, tears of closure, tears of transition, tears of gratitude. She walked through her life again, marveled at it, thanked her young self for her courage and her steadfastness, forgave that young Sam for all the things she'd once held against her, said goodbye to her parents and her first sister and all the things she'd known so long ago. She lay with her head against his chest and he stroked her hair, sent her compassion, sent her warmth and comfort. She fell asleep against him and still he lay there. He could feel the party slowly dwindling out in the living room. It felt so good here. It felt so right. Kade stroked Sam's hair, felt the bittersweet goodbyes of her dreams, felt her chest fall and rise in time with his, and eventually sleep took him as well.

There was silence in the C&C aboard the Boca Raton. She'd dismissed every message instructing her to desist, to restore her cover. They'd stopped trying eventually. They'd just listened.

The three of them had each known tiny bits of Sam's background. None of them had heard all of it before. It was a relief when she stopped talking. It was a relief when sleep took her. No one spoke for long minutes.

"Make sure the fireteams are on alert," Nichols finally said. "Let's let Blackbird get a little shut-eye."

Wats sat cross-legged one floor above Kade and Cataranes. His weapons were at his sides. Chameleonware made his still form difficult to pick out from his surroundings. A heat capacitor attached to his combat suit slowly siphoned off the excess warmth his body produced, keeping him from boiling in the infrared blocking garment. The data fob felt hard and cool against his chest.

His radio had picked up bursts of encrypted chatter twice tonight. The commandos were near. He wasn't sure where, but they were near.

It was a relief to feel the party below drift towards sleep. His Nexus nodes were in strictly receive-only mode. It was hard to get a good Nexus connection that way. Two-way feedback was necessary to synchronize minds, to get a clear transfer of concepts.

But he'd caught enough. The night had affected him powerfully. He was a part of the Buddha too. He was the dark mirror of a bodhisattva in his own way. He was the opposite of the enlightened teacher. He was one who would risk rebirth in darkness and ignorance, ever further from nirvana, so that others might have their chance at peace and enlightenment.

He wondered if, in a past life, Cataranes had been one of those as well.