She rushed to try to understand it, understand what had happened. She devoured documents in the local data space just outside the quantum cluster itself, used systems running on backup power. There she found contingency plans, found self-destruct plans, found isolation plans. She compared them to the triggers she’d been able to seize control of.

The answer wasn’t good.

I’m dead, Su-Yong Shu realized.

Again.

Kade flinched as the room went black and explosions sounded.

Feng thought a warning at him, and Kade ducked, his mind suddenly moving at Feng speed, in the trance of combat, where the room was bright, so bright.

Weapons discharged, the soldiers firing on Feng and Kade, thinking they were behind this. The small space was alive with the red lines of their targeting solutions, the rippling shockwave of bullets as they moved in slow motion through the air.

Feng was on top of him, in mid-flip through the air, one hand pushing Kade down further, bullets and their ripples thrashing the space where Kade had been.

Then Feng was landing, one foot down, spinning, the soldiers around him turning, bringing the red lines his mind painted onto reality around, towards an intersection with his body.

And in a blur, they were both down on the ground, their guns in Feng’s hands.

Red emergency lights came on, illuminating the space. Alarms began to blare.

Varun Verma hunched in front of a terminal, his body as low as he could make it, seemingly trying to hide, even as he tapped keys and read the screen.

General Singh stood tall, exactly where he’d been.

“You won’t get away with this,” he said calmly.

“Away with what?” Kade yelled. “Your men just fired on us!”

“You can’t expect to escape,” Singh said. “Surrender now!”

“It wasn’t them,” Varun said. “Something… oh god… Oh dear Krishna and Brahma and all the other stupid gods. Oh bloody hell.”

“What are you babbling about, man?” Singh demanded.

“Someone triggered the self-destructs,” Varun said. He shook his head. “Most of them didn’t blow, but… Lake Bellandur is about to drain into here.”

He looked up at the General, at Kade. “We’re all about to drown.”

Kade heard a rumbling sound, then, somewhere above them, as if to emphasize Varun’s point.

Then the door to the control room opened, and a forty-something Indian woman in a hospital gown stumbled halfway into the room, barefoot, her hair disheveled, barely holding herself up by the doorframe.

Hello Feng. Hello Kade. She sent. Nice to see you.

And hello to you as well, Dr Verma. She smiled.

Kade stared at the woman in shock, then stepped towards her to support her.

“Is this…” General Singh started.

Verma, she sent, activate the Nexus-band transmitters for the QC. All of them.

“I’d do what she says, Varun,” Kade said. “And yes, General Singh. Meet Su-Yong Shu.”

The woman didn’t spare a glance for Singh.