Nexus

49 VERMIN

Kade came back to consciousness in the back of a pickup truck driving up a steep and winding road. He was wrapped in a blanket and soaking wet. Feng had an arm around him. The Chinese soldier had lost his suit jacket and gloves somewhere, was down to a sodden white dress shirt and slacks. Sam was on the other side, bald-headed in drenched nun's robes, with a gun trained on an unconscious Navy SEAL.

Kade coughed. It was a wet cough. Water this time, instead of fire. Maybe he'd be buried alive next time. Or vacuum. Yeah. Vacuum.

Sam caught the gist of his thoughts, chuckled at him. "You're alive, Kade. Be happy."

"I'm…" cough cough cough "totally…" cough cough "fucking…" cough cough "thrilled."

Sam and Feng both laughed.

"We get you in front of a fire, yeah?" Feng said.

Kade nodded. That sounded good. He was shivering, even in the warm Thai air.

Shu met them at the top. She was a sight for sore eyes. She hugged Feng, hugged Kade, even hugged Sam.

Feng carried Kade off towards the massive hearth in the kitchen. The whole monastery was in chaos. There were army trucks with mounted machine guns and micro-missile launchers. Ananda was talking to a military officer. Conscious monks were dragging unconscious monks to the meditation hall as a makeshift infirmary. Sam threw the big SEAL over her shoulder, looking comical carrying such a bigger man, and said she was going to get him tended to and handed over to the Thai military. Shu said she had to speak to Ananda.

The kitchen had half a dozen Thai cooks in it. They were making giant pots of tea, even bigger pots of soup. Feng found a chair for Kade, dragged it to the hearth, deposited Kade in it almost gently. Everything hurt inside again.

The Confucian Fist found the smallest of the pots, poured tea for both of them, brought a mug of it to Kade.

"Thank you, Feng. And thank you for saving us. I owe you."

Feng nodded, crouched down in front of the hearth near Kade. "You should thank Su-Yong," he said. "This will cost her."

Kade nodded. "I will. It'll cost her how?"

Feng looked at the fire. "Bosses in China, they won't like this. Very messy. Very public. She… how do you say it? She played a lot of cards."

Kade didn't know what to say. He stayed quiet.

Feng kept staring at the flames.

"You know, when we meet, you called me robot? Slave?"

Kade nodded. "Yeah."

Feng nodded back, still staring into the roaring fire. "I'm free. I'm free because of her."

He swallowed tea. "I choose to serve my country, now. But more than that. More than that I choose her."

Su-Yong Shu chose that moment to enter, a smile on her face. She radiated relief and resolve.

"Only one dead," she said. "One monk, anyway. Everyone else will be fine. And the Thai are beefing up defenses here. The Americans can't try that again without declaring war."

Kade felt a shortness in his chest. "Which one?"

Shu looked at him quizzically, without understanding.

"Which monk? The one that died? What was his name?"

"Ahhh," she said. "A novice. He was hit, and then broke his neck falling down a flight of stairs. Bahn."

Bahn… Kade stared down at his tea. Another one dead.

"You shouldn't look so glum," Shu began.

Then her eyes lost focus. She was far away. Kade and Feng both looked up at her in alarm.

Her eyes regained focus. She exuded shock. Anger. She stared at Kade.

"What have you done?"

Spider BR-6-7-21 lurked in the corner of the room. Combat status had been initiated thirty-seven minutes ago at 01.08 local time. The active Engagement Protocol, previously Observe, was now Terminate.

Weapons free.

Find and eliminate primary targets.

BR-6-7-21 slowly walked around the room, in the long corner where wall met ceiling, identifying targets. It was in this mode when possible matches Primary Target Gamma and Tertiary Target Sigma entered the room. BR-6-7-21 slowly crawled along the ceiling to get a better view. Yes, with high confidence, the two human-shaped objects were Primary Target Gamma and Tertiary Target Epsilon. Even as it confirmed this, Primary Target Alpha entered the area.

Human Control was currently offline. BR-6-7-21 reviewed its instructions and combat status again. The active Engagement Protocol was Terminate. These were valid targets. Weapons were free.

Not having access to Human Control, it conferred with its sisters, as it slowly and stealthily moved towards its targets. The responses came back even as it reached firing range. Greater than ninety-five percent of reachable sisters agreed with its conclusions.

Spider BR-6-7-21 steadied itself against wall and ceiling, extruded the tiny launcher for its neurotoxin microdarts, loaded up its clip, and fired a controlled burst.

"What have you done?" Shu demanded of him.

Ow! Something stung Kade on his right hand. He looked down in annoyance and surprise, saw a prick of blood there.

Feng was moving, intense alarm emanating from him. The Confucian Fist was already at the stovetop, a giant pot of boiling water in his hands. He flung the water at something high up on the wall, jumped forward, brought the pot itself down on something that fell to the ground, again and again and again.

Su-Yong Shu had fallen to her knees, between Kade and the fire. There was a spot of blood on the side of her neck. Feng turned to her. There was a spot of blood on his chest.

Kade's hand was numb. He couldn't feel it any more.

"Neurotoxin," Shu said softly. "Save the boy."

Feng whirled. There was a chopping knife in his hand. A giant cleaver. Kade's eyes went wide.

"Feng, no!"

Feng's free hand came down on Kade's wrist. He raised the cleaver high.

Kade tried to pull his arm away. It was like trying to pull it out of a steel manacle.

"Feng, no!!" he screamed. "No!!"

Firelight turned the cleaver's blade red. The world slowed to a crawl. Kade had time to see a tiny twitch of a muscle on Feng's face, a tightening of tendons in his wrist, and then the man's expression hardened and the cleaver came down, down, down, whistling in a long arc through the air, glinting in the firelight as it fell, until it came clean through Kade's forearm and embedded itself deep into the wood of the chair with a meaty thunk. Kade jerked back. His upper arm came away.

His right hand was gone, his whole right arm from an inch below the elbow.

There was no pain at first, just shock.

What? What? What?

Kade screamed in horror and shock, screamed as the pain hit him. Feng was wrapping something just below Kade's bicep now. His belt. He squeezed it tight, tourniquetting him. Kade saw again that there was a pinprick of blood on the right side of Feng's shirt.

Kade stopped screaming, just stared. On the arm of the chair where he'd been sitting, his hand, the hand that had been his, was turning gray. The fingers were twitching.

He turned, saw Shu. Her face was going gray. She touched his mind. The pain ceased. The shock didn't. Feng was at her side now, sucking at the wound at the side of her neck, spitting out the toxin as fast as he could pull it out of her. It was no use. Kade could see that in her mind. He just stared.

Kade… Shu sent. They've tried to kill me again.

Her thoughts were weak. Her mind was fraying.

Again.

He could see it now. He understood. The fire that had killed her mentor, Yang Wei. The limo wreck. Yang Wei trapped in the seat next to her, where her husband was supposed to be. He was screaming – burning to death.

She was burning to death as well. Her hair was on fire. Her legs were crushed, pinned in the wreck beside Yang Wei. Her skin was blackening. Something had embedded itself in her abdomen. Blood was gushing out. Her lungs were filling up with smoke.

The unborn baby in her womb. Not Ling. An earlier child. An unborn son.

The surgical bed. The shaved head. She hadn't been sick. She'd been mortally wounded. She was dying of the burns. Her lungs filling up with fluid. Her immune system failing. Infections blooming inside her.

A desperate measure. The work she and her husband and Ted Prat-Nung had been doing. The nanites that burrowed through the blood-brain barrier, burrowed through neuronal tissue, recording everything, heedless of the damage they did to cells in their haste to preserve data.

The process that digitized the structure of her brain. The process that had failed every time before her.

No hope for her body. Only one chance for her mind.

Too late for her unborn son.

Pain. Fear. Confusion.

Transcendence.

Hatred.

They'd tried to kill her. They'd tried to kill her husband.

They'd killed her mentor instead. They'd killed her unborn son instead.

They'd made her into something else. Something that despised them. Something that would destroy them.

The tapestry of her thoughts was degenerating into mere threads.

Feng… she sent him. Trust… Feng.

No! he sent her. You don't have to hate! No!

It was too late. She was gone. This clone body had died.

Feng was on his feet, yelling in Thai. His mouth was red with Shu's blood. More blood had splattered his white shirt. There was a tiny hole in the shirt where a neurotoxin dart had struck him, but still he lived.

Kade couldn't understand the words the man yelled, but he got their drift: Spiders! Spiders! Assassins! Find them! Destroy them!

Kade was still in the chair, in front of the fire, Su-Yong Shu's gray, lifeless body slumped on his lap, his stump of an arm tourniquetted in Feng's belt, when Sam and Ananda found him.