Apex: Nexus Arc Book 3 (13 page)

ARMED EXTREMELY DANGEROUS continued to blink over Shankari.

It was surreal.

DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED just above the head of the boy who had his arms wrapped around Shankari.

She was here and somewhere else. This was all so far away.

“No. Oh no.”

“Unit 148, please repeat.”

Barb’s mouth hung open. No no no.

“148,” Dispatch’s voice was sharper this time. “What’s your status?”

Barb looked into Abigail’s eyes. The woman pulled her finger away from her lips, and mouthed a single word at her. “Please.”

Barb took a deep breath.

“Status nominal, command. False alarm. Please disregard. 148 out.”

Silence for a moment.

Then a slightly annoyed, “Roger, 148.”

Her thumb found the safety, and somehow it was on. The barrel of the pistol dropped of its own accord, away from Abigail’s chest.

Then her left hand came up, found her tactical glasses. And somehow they were off her face, the earpiece was out of her ears.

It was all someone else doing this. Not her.

Barb stared at Abigail. “The videos?”

Abigail looked her in the eyes. Levi came up, put his arms around his wife.

“I only know about the kids. And him.” She gestured at Shankari. The terrorist. And then she nodded. “Those parts are true.”

Barb swallowed hard. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh, Barb,” Abigail said, reaching out to put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry. We did our best to tell the whole world.”

Later, in a daze, Barb walked out of the church, her gun in its holster, her patrol glasses dangling from one hand.

She walked around the truck and to her waiting squad car. There, at the rear of the car, she crouched, as if in a dream, and carefully placed her patrol glasses behind the driver’s side tire of the cruiser.

Then she let herself into the driver’s seat, rolled down the window, and backed over the glasses, then forward, then back, until she was sure they were destroyed. Then she got out, and scooped up the pieces, to drop them in a storm drain somewhere with fast running water, to render the data on them, the video and audio that hadn’t been transmitted, beyond retrieval.

Then Barb called back in to dispatch.

“Command, car 148. Resuming patrol sweep for Shankari.”

M
onday 2040.11.05

They came for Kade half a day later. He’d been allowed to eat, to relieve himself, then had fallen asleep in the chair from sheer exhaustion, his head cradled on his one undamaged hand atop the table.

He woke to the sound of the door slamming open. He looked up, saw armed soldiers moving towards him, more of them coming in, filling the room.

A sound escaped his throat. He pushed back from the desk in alarm, tried to stand at the same time. A back leg of the chair caught on something as he did, and suddenly the chair was toppling backwards, and he was toppling with it.

He reached out to break his fall, and his bad hand slammed into the floor.

Horrid pain flared up it.

Then Kade’s head slammed into the floor. More pain blossomed in his battered ribs. The world spun.

“Get him up,” he heard someone say.

Two soldiers loomed above him. Their hands closed like vices on his biceps. They heaved and he came to standing, a groan escaping him as more pain shot through his abdomen. He started to double over, and then a hood came down over his head, cutting off his vision of the world.

“Hands,” the same voice said.

He had a vision of invoking Bruce Lee, but he knew how futile that would be.

His wrists were yanked together behind his back. The damaged one ached so hard tears came to his eyes. Cold metal closed around them. He heard the snick of something locking.

Kade brought the icon for the suicide script he’d written front and center.

Whatever this was about, they weren’t going to get anything useful out of him.

“Walk,” the voice commanded.

W
alking hurt
. He heard muffled sounds. Doors opening and closing. Footsteps. Echoes on tile and then bare concrete.

They went down, into tunnels.

Into a garage.

He was shoved into a vehicle.

Then movement, acceleration, banking, turning, driving. The sounds of hustle and bustle. The city outside. New Delhi.

There were men with him. Soldiers. Many of them.

They were outside now, he was certain of it.

He reached out with his thoughts, searching for any transmitter, but there was nothing.

He retuned his mind like Ling had shown him, opening himself to all sorts of electromagnetic activity, but he was blocked. Shielded. The hood or something else was cutting him off.

The city sounds disappeared first. The hustle and bustle, the sounds of traffic and street vendors and everything else, went away, bit by bit, then the last of them, all at once.

Were they taking him out to the country? A secret location to interrogate him? A spot to put a bullet in his head?

Then something else changed. They went down a ramp and something about the sounds told him they weren’t outside at all. Then more turns, and a stop, and the soldiers were moving, and he was being shoved out, and led down a hallway of concrete, and through doors, and more doors, and into an elevator, and then out.

And into somewhere quieter, more hushed. It felt different under his feet.

Hands guided him, turned him, propelled him, stopped him, propelled him again.

Then suddenly his wrists were being tugged at. There was a clicking, a second click, and the restraints were off. Someone pushed him, almost gently, and he fell into a chair. Someone else tugged at the hood and it came away.

He was in an ornately decorated room, sitting, facing a carved wooden door in a gold-gilt frame.

I’m not dead, he realized.

Then the door opened. A massive man in a grey suit entered, then a second. They moved into the room, their faces masks, their eyes scanning.

Behind them came a small, grey haired woman in an elaborate green silk sari.

Kade’s face recognition app flashed text next to her. He ignored it.

He didn’t need its help to recognize Ayesha Dani, Prime Minister of India.

Kade pushed himself to his feet, nearly groaning as pain hit him again.

The PM stepped forward until she was just feet away from him. The top of her head came to his chin. There was a piece of paper in her right hand.

“You told one of my most trusted advisors to ‘fuck off’,” she said. Her voice was the voice of authority. A voice you listened to. Her pronunciation was precise, accented, but somehow more perfect in her use of English than most Americans ever managed. “Why?”

Because he’s an asshole, Kade thought to himself.

He blinked, fought to adjust to this very different situation. “I needed to…” He wracked his exhausted brain for the right words. “… convey to Secretary Aggarwal the…
depth of my convictions
on this issue,” he said. “I didn’t feel I’d… gotten through to him.” He paused. “Before that… point of emphasis.”

She studied him. He could see her eyes taking him in, taking his measure in some fundamental way he didn’t understand. “You can help our children learn faster.” It was a statement, not a question.

Kade took a slow breath in through his nose. They had to start this the right way.

“Honestly,” he told her. “You can do that yourselves, with Nexus, without me.”

The Prime Minister held up the paper, flapped it in Kade’s face. At this distance he could see roman letters on it. English words.

“Then these conditions of yours,” she said. “Why should I agree to any of them?”

Kade’s eyes moved from the paper back to Ayesha Dani’s eyes.

He spoke with all the conviction he had. “Because every one of those is the right thing to do – the right thing for those children you’re going to give Nexus to, the right thing for India, and the right thing for the world. Because in time, if you’re the person I think you are, you would have done them all anyway.”

She looked at him for a moment, her face unchanged, her eyes still studying him.

“And,” Kade said, a smile slowly spreading across his face, “because
with
my help, your children will do even better.”

OUTCOME SUDDENLY UNCERTAIN
 AS ELECTION DAY ARRIVES

Tuesday, 5.31am, Washington DC

American News Network

P
olls and analysts
gave wildly differing assessments of the likely outcome in the race for the Presidency late Monday night. A barrage of scandals battered the campaign of President John Stockton and bolstered challenger Stanley Kim, but may see their impact muted by the record setting number of early votes cast in this election.

Senator Kim made a videocast appeal to voters on Monday.

“My fellow Americans, this is a democracy! In a democracy, the candidate chosen by the majority is the one elected to office. It’s clear that today, knowing what we now know, a majority of you would cast your votes for me. If you
did
vote early, know that the constitution and the laws of the land are clear: your vote is not actually
cast
until election day, even if you’ve sent it in before then. There is still time to change your vote. And if you decide to do so, and you’re denied that right for any reason, we ask only that you register that fact at the net site that follows…”

The Stockton campaign in turn, has denied the allegations, saying that…

B
arb tapped
the slate to turn it off, then stepped out of the car – her
personal
car this time, and walked down the sidewalk towards Town Hall. She took a turn inside the door towards the West Room. She stopped outside to start her phone recording and stuffed it into her shirt pocket. Then she stepped inside, into her designated polling place.

The time was 6.01am.

Jenny Collins was working the table. Bill Banks was in uniform, providing security. No one else was there.

Barb walked up to Jenny.

“My name is Barbara Ann Richmond, and I want to change my vote.”

T
uesday 2040.11.06

Rangan said goodbye to the boys in the hidden basement of a farm supply store on the outskirts of Palmyra. There were tears. He almost couldn’t bear it.

He hugged them all tight, said as much as he could.

I’ll see you in a few days,
he sent.

But he didn’t sound convincing even to himself.

Then he left them in the care of Laura and Janet, and started the slow, painful ascent of the narrow stairs.

At 7.42pm, sweating bullets, gasping in pain, he was there in the darkened alley, and the nondescript car pulled into the other end, as he’d been told it would.

H
is driver went by “Oscar
”. That wasn’t his name, he was quick to tell Rangan. That was just what Rangan should call him. Oscar was tall, lean, freckled and red-haired, younger than Rangan, and twitchy. He was wearing a black hoodie, not unlike the one Rangan had been loaned. He spoke with a Jersey accent.

“Lie down in the back. Pull the blanket over you, the greyish one. Don’t lift your head up, ever. If you can see out the windshield,
the cameras can see you.
Got it?”

“Got it.”

Oscar drove, or the car did. Rangan wasn’t sure. Miles passed. The motion went from start and stop to the fast, steady flow of a freeway.

“Shouldn’t I be in the trunk or something?” Rangan asked.

“T-rays,” Oscar replied. “Terahertz scanners. See right through the trunk. Nothin’ more suspicious than a man in the trunk.”

Rangan noodled on that.

“So how do you know–” he started.

“I don’t know anybody!” Oscar snapped. “And neither do you! Knowing people gets ’em killed, OK? You wanna do those people that helped you a favor? You forget about ’em. You ever get in touch with them again? You ever mention their names? You’re killin’ ’em. Literally. So I don’t know ’em. You don’t know ’em. And you sure as hell don’t know me.”

Rangan shut up for kilometers after that, just staring at the ceiling of the car, trying to be grateful for the help Oscar was giving him, trying to take the things he was saying to heart.

“So where are we going?” he finally asked.

Oscar said nothing.

“It’s not like I’m gonna tell anybody,” he went on. “Hell, I don’t know anybody, right?” He forced a chuckle.

“Baltimore,” came the eventual reply.

“Baltimore?” Rangan was surprised. That was north of here. Cuba was the other way. “Shouldn’t we be headed south?”

Oscar took his time in replying. “We go where there’s a boat we trust, that’ll take you. You’re a hot commodity. The Cubans want you. But it’s a hell of a risk for anyone transporting you.”

“So why Cuba?” Rangan spoke up to the ceiling of the car.

“Cuba’s still shit poor,” Oscar said. “They’re way behind the US in industry. They’re not big enough to be another China or even another Mexico. But if they can say ‘yes’ to tech the US and all the other rich countries say no to… maybe that gives them an edge. Lets them move ahead in ways we won’t. There’s a lot of funky biotech down there. Now maybe neurotech too.”

Rangan pondered that.

“Plus maybe they like the idea of refugees from America heading down to Havana. Good propaganda.” Oscar laughed.

Then the man’s tone changed. “Shit.”

“What?” Rangan asked, his body suddenly tensing.

“Fucking Stockton,” Oscar said. “He’s going to fucking win.”

Rangan exhaled, feeling himself relax. Not the cops then.

A woman’s voice filled the car. A news broadcast.

“…ANN is confirming that President John Stockton has carried the key battleground states of Ohio and Illinois. That adds to New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida.”

“That’s right, Jane,” said a different woman’s voice. “In fact, as we can see on this map, the only states that Stanley Kim has carried thus far are Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, and Vermont. Despite Senator Kim’s commanding lead in today’s polls, President Stockton has captured twenty-two of the twenty-six states where voting has closed, and amassed almost one hundred and ninety of the two hundred and seventy electoral votes he needs to retain the White House…”

“Fucking piece of shit,” Oscar exclaimed, silencing the broadcast.

Rangan said nothing. Not my country any more, he thought to himself.

They drove in silence. Then Rangan felt the car slow abruptly, heard Oscar swear again under his breath.

“What?” he asked, his body tensing once more. Bad election results didn’t apply the brakes.

“Traffic jam,” Oscar said. “Accident up ahead.”

“Accident?” Rangan asked, incredulously.

“Fucking hell,” Oscar said. “I’m getting us off the friggin’ freeway. Someone blew up a goddamn car.”

“What?” Rangan wanted to sit up, wanted to see what the hell was going on, but Oscar’s admonition rang in his mind.
If you can see the windshield, the cameras can see you.

But… someone blew up a car?

He felt the car swerve hard to the right, brake, then accelerate briskly as it or Oscar moved them across lanes and towards an exit. Then they were moving smoothly again, banking on what he was sure was an exit ramp, banking, banking.

“We’re on the outskirts of DC, now,” Oscar said. “We’ll take surface streets past the accident, then back onto the freeway.”

Rangan grunted. He felt the city streets from the car’s pattern of motion. Driving. Stopping at lights. Turning. Driving. Stopping. Turning.

And then he heard Oscar exclaim again. “What the hell?”

The car came to an abrupt stop.

“Oh, Jesus,” Oscar said. “It’s a fucking riot.”