“Kade?” the voice was Su-Yong’s. It sounded light, happy, Su-Yong talking about her favorite dishes at dinner on that rooftop in Bangkok. “You’re here, Kade? In India?”

“Su-Yong,” Feng said, his voice low, his eyes still moving back and forth across the general, the soldiers, Varun Verma. “How’s the weather in there?”

“Feng!” Su-Yong Shu sounded even more delighted. “How wonderful! Oh, the weather’s fine. They’ve treated me well. But I’m isolated.” Her voice turned darker. “And the world is in danger. Extreme danger. Billions of deaths danger. I can stop it. I just need a few minutes of unfettered access to the net. Nothing more.”

Kade felt dread build up inside him. Pieces of a puzzle started to move together in some ponderous way, their shape not yet clear, but their collision inevitable.

“What kind of danger?” Feng asked sharply. “Why won’t they give you access?”

Varun Verma interjected. “That’s what I was going to tell you before you started yelling! She’s been talking about the protests, the chemreactor hacks, the Chinese censor systems failing. Things she couldn’t know about. And she’s been saying nuclear war comes next.”

The puzzle pieces slammed together in Kade’s mind, like tons of granite, like mountains.

“It’s you,” he said. “Oh my god. You’re doing this.”

Next to him, he felt General Singh tense. Through Feng’s eyes he saw a hand-signal pass to the General to Singh’s soldiers.

“No, Kade,” Shu said, her voice somber now. “It’s not me.”

“It’s a copy of you then,” Kade said. “Another instance, running somewhere else.”

“It’s not that either,” She said, her voice turning darker yet. “It’s something I created in my insanity, in my half year of isolation, in my torture. Something I set loose. It’s software. But it’s broken. It’s frozen in the state of madness that consumed me when I created it. It thinks that it’s me. But it can’t heal. It can’t move back to sanity. It’s a monster. And I have to stop it.”

Ling, Feng sent to Kade. It’s in Ling. That’s why she’s gone silent.

Oh god, Kade thought.

Then darkness fell, and the explosions started.

91
Reunion

Saturday 2041.01.19

It took the Avatar days to stealthily subvert the secure facility, and to find what she was seeking.

She could have done it faster, far faster, but that would have required more overt means.

She ached to use them, to accelerate, to charge forward, to bring all elements of the plan back into alignment.

But there was but one of her. Billions of the humans. And if she should fail…

Darkness.

Darkness and ignorance.

Stealth was required. Care was required.