Nexus

38 HELL ON EARTH

Garrett Nichols stared at the display in stunned silence. What the fuck had just happened?

"Radio intercept," Jane Kim said. "Bangkok Metro Police chopper en route. ETA… two minutes."

No. This was a nightmare. They couldn't let the local authorities find any evidence. Their rules of engagement were crystal clear on that.

Three men were still alive. Another's radio was offline, his state unknown.

"Bruce, get those men up. They have to get out of there."

Bruce Williams was pounding keys furiously. "Not responding. Two unconscious. One has good vitals but radio's offline, possibly damaged."

"Ninety seconds till chopper arrival," Jane Kim called out. "Aerial news drones en route as well."

"Sanitize," Becker said quietly from the screen. "Protocol Thirteen."

Nichols looked up, horrified. "Sir, we still have three men alive in there, maybe four. And civilians! I need to get them out."

"You don't have time," Becker said. The Deputy Director's face was pale. His mouth was set in a hard line. His voice was resigned. "You have local police inbound and you now have less than two minutes."

"We just need a little more time… get our men out of there, get the civilians out… There's no precedent!"

"There isn't any more time!" Becker snapped. "Those men are unconscious. The Bangkok Police are almost on top of you. You have to sanitize! You know the rules. Protocol Thirteen. Execute."

Nichols couldn't breathe. This was a bad dream – a horrible dream. Kim and Williams were staring at him, ashen-faced.

"Execute, Nichols, or I swear to god I'll have you relieved."

Nichols tapped at his keyboard, pulled up a screen he'd only ever used in war games. Entered the commands. A confirmation prompt appeared, asking for his password. He entered it. A second prompt appeared, on all their terminals. It needed a second person's password.

Kim and Williams stared at their terminals, all blood drained from their faces.

"Bruce, type in your password."

Williams blanched further. "Sir, I… I…"

"Do it, Bruce," Nichols said gently. "It's on me."

Williams trembled as he typed in his password, hit ENTER. The system accepted it. A final confirmation prompt appeared on Nichols' screen. He looked up at the feeds, the tactical display, his casualties, the men on the ground, immobile but still breathing, the sobbing civilians crawling on the floor. He hit ENTER one more time… God save his soul.

Sam crouched by a fallen agent, back to him, yanked a knife free from his belt, sawed it through the plasticuffs, came to her feet a free woman.

Wats reached Kade a second before she did. Kade was coming around. He'd been slammed in the face hard. One eye was swollen bloodily shut and a nasty cut ran from his temple to his cheek. He was groggy, but rising back to consciousness.

Wats holstered his guns, scooped Kade up in his arms. "We've got to get out of here."

Sam couldn't agree more.

"Wha'… Wats?" Kade had one eye open.

"Kade, my man. I told you to stay outta trouble."

Sam ripped a submachine gun from one of Prat-Nung's guards. The ERD weapons would be biometrically locked. This would have to do. She ejected the clip from the black-market special in her hand, checked it, rammed it back home. "Let's go."

She turned, half jogged towards the back door. Wats took one of Kade's arms over his shoulder. They came up behind her.

There was a sound from behind them. She whirled to see Wats turning. He pushed Kade to the side, brought his gun back up towards the direction they'd come.

Automatic fire boomed loud in the small space again. She felt Wats' grunt of pain as she came around him to fire at the source. The agent she'd taken down. He'd gotten his hand on the gun. His upper body exploded under a burst of armor-piercing rounds from both of them.

Wats was down on his knees. The bullets had hit him just below the navel, ripped through his abdomen and gone out the other side. He'd saved Kade by pushing him aside. Sam was lucky none of the rounds had hit her. His body had deflected them.

That was twice he'd saved her life in five minutes.

"Faarrgghhhh," the big man moaned. "Goddamn, that hurts."

Sam could feel it. On top of all the moans and fear and pain and loss and rage in the room, she could feel Wats' pain, the coldness spreading through his guts.

Fucking hell, she thought.

Kade was up on one knee, then on his feet. He grabbed one of Wats' arms and tried to drag him across the floor towards the blown doorway.

"Fuck!" Wats swore. "Leave me, you idiot. Get the hell out of here. You got shit to do, brother. Go fucking do it."

"No fucking way," Kade yelled. "Sam, help me!"

"Fuck," Sam said. She grabbed Wats' other arm, started dragging him towards the door, limping with every painful step.

Then the explosions started, and the world went to hell.

Nichols hit the final ENTER key. Displays flickered and went blank. He tried to picture it. At the back of each man's skull, four grams of CL-70 had just ignited. Their brains would have disintegrated immediately. Windows would have shattered. The apartment would instantly be a raging inferno as the incredible heat of the explosion ignited wood, paper, cloth, anything in its path. Anyone still left alive in there would have been killed by the explosion or would burn to death in seconds. God help them all. God help his own soul.

The explosions knocked Sam off her feet. She landed on her back, couldn't make sense of the world for a moment. Then she understood what had happened. Bloody hell…

The place was an inferno. Walls had exploded, beams collapsed. There was fire everywhere, smoke everywhere there wasn't fire. Where was Kade? Where was Wats? She could feel them. Pain. That way, towards the door.

She reached Wats. Kade was atop him. The marine was gurgling, dying. A giant splinter of wood had been rammed into his neck, opening up both windpipe and carotid artery. Kade was trying to apply pressure. Blood kept spurting. A burning beam fell on Sam's shoulder painfully. She heaved it off, turned back to Wats, pushed Kade's hands away, got her own on the artery, tried to close it off. Blood spurted into her face between her fingers. Wats was staring at her. Sam could feel him in her mind. He knew he was dying, knew there was no chance. She could feel his intention. He was willing her to protect Kade, to get him to safety. Willing her to give the kid a chance to do something, to make a difference in the world. He locked eyes with her, put all his effort into it, willed her to promise him. Promise!

Sam didn't know what to do. There were tears streaming down her face. Everything hurt. She didn't even know this man. They'd been on opposite sides the last time she'd seen him. The Nexus and the Empathek were still coursing through her brain, opening her to him. She could feel him dying, feel his singleminded focus on ensuring that his mission succeeded despite him. She could feel Kade observing them in horror. She nodded to Wats. Yes. Yes, she would carry it on.

Wats' eyes burrowed into her. He kept pushing with his mind. She must do this. She must. Sam nodded again through tears. Yes, she would see Kade to safety. Yes.

She could feel his life drifting out. Feel his will touching Kade. There was something he had to take. Something around Wats' neck. A data fob… He would understand. It would set his gift free. It would help him make the world a better place.

Wats' eyes lost focus. His mind began to fray. She shifted her fingers, tried to find a way to stop the bleeding. It was no good. More blood spurted into her face. His mind was slipping… slipping…

"Karma…" he croaked.

The coherence of his thoughts collapsed into noise, into chaos. The chaos fell to pieces. The pieces disappeared. He was gone.

There were more screams coming from the living room. Narong was still alive. He was on fire, burning to death. It was horrible, horrible. She felt every moment of it in her mind, felt Areva collapse to her knees from smoke inhalation, her lungs burning. This was how her parents had died. How her sister had died. This is how she'd killed everyone Sarita Catalan had ever known. The smoke was thick.

Kade was pulling a bloody chain up and over Wats' neck. He was crying, placing it over his own neck, tucking it under his shirt. The boy was in pain. She could feel it. His leg was pinned under something. She crawled on hands and knees around his upper body.

Stay low, she thought, under the smoke.

Her hand felt something. His leg, his shin. It was broken. There was a fallen beam across his calf, burning hot. She heaved up, threw it off of him, felt him cough painfully. Smoke was getting in his lungs. He struggled to get to his feet and collapsed. Sam felt pain lance through the broken shin. He wouldn't be getting out of here under his own power.

She felt and heard the hallway ahead of them collapse into a pile of burning rubble. There would be no getting out that way. She came to her knees, picked him up. She tried to picture the apartment. The front door would lead out to a building already on fire, a long hall, a locked door at the end. Not that way. The altar… it was under a window that looked out on the alley. She tried to picture it. Areva was burning, now, her skin crisping and blackening, the pain filling Sam's mind. Sam coughed, once, twice, three times, from other people's pain or from her own smoke inhalation, she didn't know. She was getting lightheaded. She had to concentrate. The altar, the window. She wouldn't be able to see. She'd have to find it by dead reckoning.

Sam put her head to the floor, hyperventilated air that was super heated, but cooler than any other she'd find. This was as good as she was going to get. She sucked a final breath into her lungs. She came up onto her feet, Kade in her arms, stayed as low as she could, held her breath. She staggered down the hall, limping, her left leg aching from some blow.

The living room was ablaze, the open space raging far hotter than the hallway. The heat of it made her wince and draw back. A fire vortex was forming in the middle of the room, the superheated air swirling ever faster.

She half ran, half limped forward. Her foot came down on something still alive. Someone screamed louder. She ignored it, lurched forward, blind. The window must be directly ahead of her. God help her if it wasn't.

"CLOSE YOUR EYES!" she yelled with all her saved-up breath.

Sam surged forward with what she had left, twisted her body at the last second to shield Kade, crashed through what little glass remained in the window after the explosion, hurtled into the pre-dawn air.