Nexus

5 LEVERAGE

Rangan woke slowly. His head ached. His muscles were cramped, his stomach restless. God, what a hangover. What had he been doing last night? What time was it? He cracked one eye to take a peek.

This was not his bedroom.

Memory rushed back. Oh, fuck…

Rangan sat bolt upright. He was on a thin mattress atop a rigid metal bench along the wall of a starkly white cell. Fuck fuck fuck. He looked down at himself. His clothes were gone, his watch, his shoes. He was in shapeless grey cotton slacks, like hospital pants, and a baggy grey shirt. Prison garb. They'd taken his phone, his wallet, everything.

Think, Rangan, think.

If there was an unguarded net connection here, he could get online, maybe figure out where he was. Maybe get a message out as insurance…

Nexus OS would have the tools to locate an open net connection. It wasn't running. It must have crashed last night when they'd tranqed him.

[nexus_restart] he mentally commanded. The boot sequence scrolled across his vision.

[Nexus OS 0.7 by Axon and Synapse]

[Built on ModOS 8.2 by Free Software Collective]

[8,947,692,017 nodes detected]

[9,161,412,625,408 bits available]

[visual cortex interface 0.64 ... active]

[auditory cortex interface 0.59 ... active]

[...]

More scrolled across his vision as the operating system they'd ported to the Nexus platform came to life. He paced as it booted.

In a top secret facility outside Washington, DC, two men stared at a wall screen. One man was tall, fit, square-jawed, in a dark suit, hands clasped behind his back – Enforcement Division Deputy Director Warren Becker. The other was a scientist, wearing rumpled clothes, in old-fashioned spectacles, with a shock of unruly white hair – Neuroscience Director Martin Holtzmann.

On the screen, a dark-skinned, bleached blonde man in prison fatigues was pacing a small, starkly white cell. Rangan Shankari.

"I still don't think this is necessary," Holtzmann said.

"We have to know if your weapon works," Becker replied.

Holtzmann shook his head. "It works. We've seen it work. Many times."

Becker turned to look at him, then looked back at the wall showing Rangan Shankari. "Martin, we need to know if it works against Nexus 5. We don't know what changes they've made since Nexus 3."

"We can find that out in animals," Holtzmann replied.

Becker raised an eyebrow. "And if it doesn't work the same in mice and in men?"

Holtzmann was silent for a moment. "There are dangers. We should do the animal studies first, assess the safety, then try humans."

Becker considered this for a moment. "We don't know when we'll have this opportunity again. If this doesn't work, we'll need to spend more time refining your weapon. If it does work against Nexus 5, we have that much more confidence that it will work against our eventual target."

Holtzmann grunted. "Warren, I can't ethically…"

Becker held up his hand to interrupt. Holtzmann paused.

"Thank you, Martin. Given our mission priorities, I'm going to proceed. I'll take note of your reluctance. We'll keep this as brief as possible."

Holtzmann bowed his head.

Becker pitched his voice to address the wall. "Activate Nexus disruptor."

Rangan could find no signal, on any frequency. The room seemed to be entirely EM shielded. Damn. What now?

Searing pain burst across Rangan's mind. His head was on fire, alive with thousand-decibel static, threatening to burst. A scream drove its way out of his lips. Every muscle in his body convulsed. He toppled forward to the floor. Errors and warnings streamed at high speed across his consciousness.

[interface ERROR – memory out of bounds]

[interface ERROR – memory out of bounds]

[interface ERROR – socket not found OXA49328A]

[interface ERROR – socket not found OXA49328B]

[interface ERROR – socket not found OXA49328C]

[interface ERROR – socket not found OXA49328D]

…and on and on and on… thousands of lines of hard errors scrolling across his vision, a massive fault like nothing he nor Kade had ever seen.

Rangan was dimly aware of hitting the hard concrete floor. Everything was a blur of pain and white noise. His mind was in complete overload. He swam through oceans of static. Through the confusion he could just barely grasp that something was wrong with the Nexus in his brain. He needed to stop it. There was something he could do… something… something… What was it? Fuck that hurt. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Another scream ripped through him, tore open his mouth against his will, roared its way into the echoing chamber of the cell. Thought vanished in a haze of pain and chaos. It was too much. There was no hope of coherence. There was nothing but noise, noise, nothing but noise in his mind.

And then it was over. The pain ended as abruptly as it had begun. The onslaught of static across all his senses was gone. The spear driven into his brain had evaporated. His head hurt where it had hit the floor. It was nothing compared to what he'd just endured.

Rangan drew breath, then shuddered. He was covered in sweat. His body was trembling. His breath came raggedly. He lay curled on the floor, shaking.

On the wall screen Shankari collapsed. His scream echoed out of the speakers. He curled on the floor, body spasming. Becker let it go on for a second, two, three, four…

"That's enough," Holtzmann said bitterly.

Becker nodded. "Halt disruptor," he spoke aloud.

Shankari's screams ended. The boy lay on the ground, curled in a fetal position.

"Are you satisfied now?" Holtzmann asked. His voice was acidic.

Becker nodded slowly, calmly. "Yes."

Kade woke to bright light and a voice informing him that he had five minutes until his interview. His mouth tasted like dirt, his stomach was in rebellion, and his head felt like it had been worked over by a sledgehammer. He relieved himself, splashed water on his face, and then it was time to go. Two guards took him from his stark white cell to a conference room at the end of the hall. The room was furnished with a large fake wood table, chairs, and a wall screen. Kade took a seat as directed, and waited.

Less than a minute later, a door at the far side of the room opened and an official-looking man in a suit and tie entered, holding a leather-bound slate. He was followed by a shorter, older man in a rumpled white shirt and glasses, his head topped by disorderly white hair. There was something familiar about the second man.

"Mr Lane," said the first man, as he made his way to the head of the table and sat. "I'm Enforcement Division Deputy Director Warren Becker. This is Professor Martin Holtzmann, whom you may know."

Holtzmann! thought Kade. He'd been Chair of the MIT Neuroengineering Department once. His lab had done good work in the neuroscience of volition. How was he involved with the ERD?

Holtzmann nodded in greeting. "Mr Lane," he said. He had a German accent.

Becker spoke. "Mr Lane, you're in some pretty serious trouble. You've been engaging in research in direct contravention of the Chandler Act. You've far exceeded the bounds of your ERD license. You've been caught engaging in the distribution and possibly the manufacture of a Schedule 0 narcotic. Do you understand the seriousness of your position?"

Kade's head had slumped as Becker talked. His eyes were on the fake wood grain of the table he was seated at. He didn't trust himself to speak.

After a minute, Becker spoke again. "You're in a deep pile of shit, Kade. The DEA wants to press full charges. My bosses want to classify you as a threat to humanity. The prosecutor assigned to this case has you down for–" Becker paused and looked down at his slate, "violating your ERD research limits, violating the Chandler Act in multiple cases, development of a coercion technology, employment of a coercion technology in the first degree, kidnapping an agent of the law, assaulting an agent of the law, and more. All of this together adds up to… a long, long time in a National Security Internment Center. Possibly life. Without parole. Those aren't pleasant places. You understand?"

Kade nodded mutely.

"Good. Now listen, this is an airtight case. The evidence is clear. If we press, you'll get all the penalties there are. But I don't think you're a terrorist. I think you've been stupid here, that's all. I'm on your side."

Like hell you are, Kade thought.

Becker was still talking. "There's a way that you can help your country and help humanity. And if you do, then we can waive most of the punitive action against you."

Kade set his mouth in a grim line. Blackmail, he thought to himself. Just fucking blackmail.

"What about my friends?" he asked. "The people who were at the party?"

Becker nodded. "You care about your friends. That's good. They're in pretty deep piles of shit themselves. The DEA wants to press possession charges against everyone who was there last night, and distribution charges against everyone who helped throw the event. Our own prosecutor wants to level Chandler Act violations at you, Rangan Shankari, Watson Cole, and Ilyana Alexander."

Becker paused and shook his head. "But if we have your full and complete cooperation, we can waive most of those charges."

Kade winced. Nexus possession had mandatory minimums of two years, not to mention likely expulsion from any decent school and never getting a job in science or research in the future. Distribution had a minimum of seven years. Names and faces swam through his head. Antonio. Rita. Sven. All the people that had helped with the party, that had been responsible for giving out doses to other attendees. A lot of people could go to jail for a long time.

And as for Rangan, Ilya, and Wats… They'd face the same penalties he would. Decades in a National Security Internment Center. Life maybe. His face was hot. He wanted to throw up at the thought of it.

Poker face, Kade. Poker face.

He straightened up a bit. He'd be damned if he'd break down here.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked.

"We want you to get close to someone," Becker replied. "A fellow scientist, in another country. We want you to apply for a position in their lab after your PhD. We want you to keep us informed regarding their work."

"You want me to spy for you," Kade said.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because the scientist we want you to spy on may be doing some very bad things," Becker answered. "Murder. Political assassination. Mind control. That sort of thing."

"And why me?" Kade asked.

"Because this scientist appears to have taken an interest in your work," Becker told him. "And, now that we know what you've really been doing, we can see why."

"Who are we talking about here?" Kade asked.

"You find that out if you agree. If not, you go to jail just wondering."

Kade drummed his fingers on the table. Spying on a fellow scientist. He felt dirty.

"You said most of the charges?" he asked. "What are you offering?"

Becker nodded. "Everyone there gets probation and mandatory drug testing for three years. They pass, it's gone from their record. You, Shankari, Cole, and Alexander are on a lifelong watch list. Mandatory testing. No use of advanced computing, bio, neuro, or nano tools, including Nexus. You're blacklisted for all federal science funding. No jail time."

Kade's vision dimmed. No funding. No computing or bio. No Nexus. They're taking everything I care about away, he thought. He couldn't breathe for a moment.

"There is one way you can stay in science," Holtzmann commented.

Kade looked up at him. "How?"

"You could come work for me," Holtzmann said. "Here at the ERD, you'd be doing work to serve your country. Under strict supervision, of course."

I'd rather lobotomize myself with a spoon, Kade thought.

"I understand this is a hard pill to swallow," Becker said. "But it's a lot better than life in prison."

Is it?

The world was spinning around him. He couldn't see straight. This was a nightmare.

"There's one more condition," Becker was saying. "You hand over all the work you've done on Nexus to us, and you walk our research team through what you've built and how."

"I…" Kade started. "I just need some time to think about this…"

Becker nodded again. "Fine. Think about it. But don't think too long. We can hide that you're in our custody for a few more hours. After that it'll be difficult. And if it's known that we had you, you'll be of no use to us. You'll get the book thrown at you."

The guards took him back to his cell. Kade lay on the cot and closed his eyes. Faces swam through his vision again. All the people who would be fucked if he didn't agree to this.

And if he did agree to spy for them? If he did, then he might be helping the ERD screw over some scientist who was guilty of nothing. He'd be signing on to an organization that was almost his complete opposite in ideology.

But I'd have options, he thought to himself. I wouldn't be in jail. I'd be working for them overseas. I could find a way out…

I'd be part of a system I hate.

He wished his parents were alive. Dennis and Cheryl Lane had been scientists, a high energy physicist and a research biologist, until a highway crash had taken both their lives late last year. He could use their counsel now. What would they say if they were here?

A scientist is responsible for the consequences of his or her work. His dad had drilled that into his head again and again.

The consequences of my work are jail for dozens of my friends. Unless I do what the ERD wants.

His thoughts chased their own tails for an hour. No matter how he looked at it, staying out of jail, keeping his friends out of jail, was better than having them all locked away. He couldn't have that many destroyed lives on his conscience. He had to make amends for leading so many people into trouble. His decision was clear. It left a vile taste in his mouth. So be it.