Feng stopped mid-word. In his thoughts Kade saw a whirlwind of death in the midst of red firing lines and blurred phantom limbs, a wish for more of these men to break with his fists and feet.

Kade took another deep breath.

“No one’s leaving,” he said. “Feng knows Su-Yong Shu a lot better than I do. Better than anyone does.”

Anyone except Ling, Kade thought.

Ling. Something tugged at his mind about Ling.

He pushed it aside.

“Put Su-Yong on audio,” he said. “You have speech synth for her, right? And audio pickups?”

Varun Verma nodded, silently and looked at Singh.

“You wanted my help,” Kade said. “Well there it is. Do it!”

Sam looked up from the assessment she was reading in bed: Pro and Anti-Technology Sentiment in Rural Villages: Strategies for Successful Mediation. It was something people’s lives depended on, and that the authors seemed to do their damndest to make absolutely mind-numbingly unreadable.

Something was beeping at her.

The phone. The new phone.

She reached over, fished it out of her bag.

Then frowned at what it was telling her.

Kade? Feng?

She scrolled back farther, at the log, at what it displayed.

Singh? Verma?

She checked the time. It was past 11pm. General Singh and Varun Verma had been inside the building, on a Saturday night, for hours.

And the way Kade and Feng had arrived. She pulled up video, played it back.

They’d sent someone looking for them. One of Verma’s postdocs. They’d summoned Kade and Feng.

This didn’t look planned. Something was going on there. Right now.

What the hell?

What went on in that building that they needed so much power? That they’d needed deep bore diggers? That they’d erased all the real records of it?

That they needed to summon Kade and Feng there in the middle of the night?

Was that an emergency?

Was it a threat to the children in her care?

Sam got up, pulled on trousers and a shirt, shoved her feet into boots, and went to the window. From here, in front of the old Victorian manor house they were lodged in, with the children three and four to a bedroom, she could see the small guard house, see the guards in there, armed, vigilant. She could see their armored four wheel drive vehicle beside it.

“Camera,” she said into the phone. “Alert me to any changes on the Advanced Computational Sciences Building. Any at all.”

Then she turned, looked at the desk in her small bedroom. She walked over to it, pressed her thumb to the lock on the bottom drawer until it released, and pulled out the side-arm Division Six had issued her.

“You wanted my help,” Kade said. “Well there it is. Do it!”

Singh nodded.

Varun Verma struck keys, then nodded at Kade. A red indicator light came on.

“Su-Yong?” Kade said aloud.