Kade felt her touch the flow of data around her, like Ling did, but more so. He felt her reach out, in wavelengths short enough to pass between the gaps of the Faraday cage.

Holy fuck, he thought. That’s high frequency. High energy. The toll on her brain has to be enormous.

Jyotika’s head came back out the gap. He and Varun pulled her upright.

Two separate systems… Su-Yong sent. I’ve beaten the system down here. But there’s another, physically disconnected, up top, that must also be defeated… Couldn’t find a way…

He felt something else then. He felt water pressure finally overwhelm the maintenance doors of the quantum cluster, felt it rush in, shorting out electronics, knocking over vessels with quantum cores, disrupting coherence.

Su-Yong! He sent.

He felt Feng turn towards them in alarm. Mother!

Save… Ling…

Her mind collapsed in a wave of decoherence.

Jyotika slumped in Kade and Varun’s arms, unconscious.

Kade stared at the still-sealed elevator doors.

95
Nothing Subtle

Saturday 2041.01.19

“Sarai,” Sam said. “No, head to the bunker. Now!”

Sarai’s expression hardened. “They’re my friends too.”

“Sarai, this isn’t a game!” Sam said. “You’re twelve!”

“I’m thirteen next month,” Sarai said. “Just a year younger than you were when you fought. And I can do things you can’t. Not every problem can be solved with bullets!”

Sam bit her lip.

She nodded.

“Stay behind me,” she told the girl. “Do everything exactly as I say.”

She turned to one of the guards. “Your keys. For the vehicle outside. Now!”

She waved her key at the armored vehicle, threw open the passenger door when it responded, belted Sarai in securely, then climbed into the driver’s side.

“Manual control,” she told it.

Controls thrummed forward from the dashboard towards her, more like the two handed yoke of a jet plane than the wheel of a civilian ground vehicle.

“Advanced Computational Sciences Building. Plot a course. Fastest time. Road or off-road.”

The windshield lit up with a path in false blue light, a course that would cut through the wide green spaces of the research campus.

“Hold on,” Sam said to Sarai.

“Off-road travel inadvisable,” the vehicle began in Indian-accented English.

Sam pushed the throttle forward. Acceleration shoved her back into her seat. She heard Sarai gasp. And they were on their way towards the darkened building across the sprawling campus.

That building. Trapping people in that building. No. Sarai had said underneath that building.

That building with its massive power cables. Its excavation. Its deep bore diggers.

It’s ten centimeter thick armored glass. Too thick to shoot through.

All hidden, redacted from the records.

“Vehicle,” Sam said. “Interface with my phone. Pull up file ACSB Floorplan. Orient as a map, north-south. Scale and match outline to position of Advance Computational Sciences Building. Identify feature Service Elevator. Plot a course for Service Elevator.”