“That’s how they had so many transmitters, without us finding any. They hacked an awful lot of phones.”

How was she awake? How could she think?

“There’s no way we can build enough transmitters to fight that,” she went on, “So we do it in software – inside NexusOS. We use brains as the active countermeasures. What we need is a way to coordinate those minds to identify the hostile signals. And you and Angel are already working on it.”

She stared at him, as if waiting for him to get it.

Rangan lay there. He brought his hand to his aching head, tried to will his stomach to stay down.

Tempest just shook her head at him and spelled it out. “The Mesh.”

Kade stood at the small balcony outside his bedroom, looking out at the darkened research park. The breeze ruffled the palm trees, cooled him pleasantly.

Rangan was alive. They’d spoken again later, merged minds, shared memories, tried to catch up on six months in too little time.

His hands clenched around the wrought iron railing.

Rangan had been through too much.

Connecting with him had been painful. It brought back so much.

Wats was dead.

Ilya was dead.

And Breece. Breece had killed a lot of people. And he’d killed more today. Hundreds more.

By using Nexus. Using Nexus to cause chaos. To overpower people’s minds. To manipulate.

Getting India out of Copenhagen wasn’t enough. Breece had to be stopped.

How the hell was he going to do that from India?

Breece slumped in a chair in the darkened room of his new safe house, a tumbler of cheap whiskey and ice in one hand.

Across the room, the bottle of whiskey was half empty. It took a lot of booze to overcome his genetically-boosted alcohol dehydrogenase levels. Shit.

Kate. Fucking Kate. God that hurt. It hurt like shooting Hiroshi had hurt. Losing a friend. Losing a lover.

Breece took another swallow of the whiskey, felt it burn on the way down, and sat there, images of her floating through his mind. Kate, her long black hair undone, floating down in a cloud above him as they made love. Kate, jumping into his arms after they’d been apart. Kate, so easily charming Miranda Shepherd in Houston, giving them a way into the greatest operational success yet.

Breece brought a hand up to his face. How could she falter now? What was wrong with her?

He shook his head, brought the glass to his lips, downed the rest of the whiskey in one long swallow. It didn’t matter. He had work to do.

He’d managed to slip free of her in the chaos of the protest when a clash between police and rioters had surged in their direction, forcing her to lower the gun. He had no idea what she would have done otherwise.