But he had nowhere to go. He didn’t know where in Baltimore Oscar was taking him. He didn’t dare contact Levi and Abigail, for fear of bringing the hammer down on them. Kade was alive, and safe, in India. Maybe India would take him. His grandparents had been born there…

He’d tunneled through an anonymous cloud, under Tempest’s grudging supervision, then through a second anonymous cloud to further throw off the trail, connected to a Nexus board hosted in Thailand, created a brand new account, left a carefully worded message for Kade there, not using his own name, but dropping certain phrases, hoping to get his attention…

But Kade hadn’t replied.

Maybe, Rangan thought, I should just walk up to an Indian consulate, ask for asylum…

“Axon,” Cheyenne said. “I think you need to see this.”

Rangan turned. She was sitting at a console, her broad shoulders filling the chair, her head turned, facing him, black eyes in that dark face boring into his.

He pushed his chair back and looked over at her. “What’s that?”

“Just…” she started. She shook her head. “You need to see.”

He went, and as he approached, she stood, almost apologetically, rising to stand a good two inches taller than he was, and handed him a pair of ear buds.

He sat. On screen was a picture of his mother. His mother and his father, behind her.

His heart started pounding. He hadn’t contacted them. He’d wanted to, but Oscar’s words had rung through his head, his warning about not reaching out to anyone who he cared about.

Oh god. What happened?

He put the ear buds in his ears, and touched his finger to the screen. It was a video. It had reached the end.

He replayed it.

It started with his father and mother side by side, his father talking.

“My son,” Rohit Shankari said. “Your mother and I have been informed by the authorities, by the Department of Homeland Security, that you’ve somehow escaped from their custody. They told us that you killed a man, and nearly killed another.”

Rangan shook his head. “No,” he said aloud. “I didn’t kill anybody.”

“They told us that it’s only a matter of time until they catch you, and that they will be more…” his father, a professor of chemistry, seldom at a loss for words, hesitated. “That they will be more lenient with you…” He saw the emotion pass over his father’s face. Saw his mother close her eyes briefly. “…If you turn yourself in.”

His father swallowed on screen. “My son, here is what I think of these authorities, and what they say about you.”

And then his father leaned forward, worked his mouth, and spat upon the floor.

Rangan laughed, tears in his eyes.