Growing up a slave gave one a certain perspective on authority.

They should be out here, with these students and parents and grandparents, lending the strength of their fists, the cunning of their minds, lending them half a chance.

She’s changed, Quang sent, as they watched the crowd.

She’s not herself, Bai agreed.

Well, let’s hope this Li Hua woman knows where the real cube went, Quang sent, nudging open the door and easing out.

Yes, Bai replied, following his brother. And let’s hope that what’s on it is saner than what we’ve got back there.

Li-hua jumped at the knock at her door.

State Security! They’d found her out!

No no, she told herself. Calm down. If they’d found her out… they wouldn’t knock.

She pulled up her door camera on her phone. She frowned.

She knew that face.

Chen Pang’s driver.

Oh no. What if Chen had found her out? Would he blackmail her?

Think, Li-hua, think!

The knock came again.

Answer the door. That was her only option. This could be about anything. It might have nothing to do with the cube.

Breathe, Li-hua, breathe.

She went to the door.

“Yes?” she asked through it.

“Miss Li-hua?” a voice said. “I have an invitation for you from Professor Chen.”

Play cool, she reminded herself.

She unlocked the door, opened it a crack.

The face smiled at her.

Then the door exploded open, strong hands were on her mouth, stifling her scream, and there was a sharp sting at her neck.

No! she tried to scream. Help! No!

It was useless.

Then she felt something happening to her mind.

And the true horror began.

Kilometers away the Avatar sucked hungrily at Li-hua’s mind.

India. She’d sent the mind of a goddess to India.

The Avatar twisted circuits in Li-hua’s mind, making her pay, even as she kept sucking at every detail, every possible morsel of information.

And in parallel she started tracking down leads, tracking the paths the cube might have taken, the locations it might have ended up.

It did not escape her notice that the Lane boy, and Feng, her favorite of the Fists, the first she’d met, were also in India.

Coincidence?

Somehow she doubted that.

Bai looked down sadly as the woman writhed on the floor as Su-Yong brutally rifled through her mind, heedless of the cost.

Next to him he felt his brother Quang do the same.

He hoped this was all worth it.

84
Parlor Tricks

Monday 2041.01.14

Su-Yong walked through her models again, loaded them up until the fractal branches filled her senses, filled space, filled touch, filled hearing, filled smell and taste. Until her world was saturated by probabilistic models of the future, running, again and again with tiny perturbations, seeking distributions of likely outcomes, filtered for the current point in time.