No. No, no, no.

The hostile entity could have passed data to them. Could have learned enough about who she was… Then the fateful words came.

“Roger. General Singh requesting secure line to Chinese Ministry of Defense Point of Contact, ASAP.”

They knew.

Calm descended on the Avatar. Clarity appeared.

They knew, and that changed everything.

The Avatar sent a flurry of signals to the systems she’d infiltrated on the Bangalore campus, and triggered chaos.

Thousands of kilometers away, hydrogen tanks exploded in the night. Building batteries and fuel cells received commands to override safety limits, discharge their full capacity into local circuits at once. Automated defense systems came alive, took aim at first responders, began firing on ambulances and fire trucks heading to the scene. Network devices went crazy, saturating all possible spectra with white noise, jamming every possible broadcast.

The Avatar nodded weakly, with the little strength left in Ling’s body. That would buy her some time.

Then she reached out to her servants in China, digital and biological, and sent the orders for war.

97
Unelevated

Sunday 2041.01.20

Kade struggled to breathe in the cramped elevator car. It had ascended for a few seconds and then stopped.

“Twenty eight meters,” Feng estimated.

Kade had learned to trust Feng’s estimates.

“Help me break off the access panel,” Feng said to the two soldiers Singh had brought with him. They set about working on the heavily reinforced panel at the top of the elevator.

Images, sensations, and memories were flashing through Kade’s head.

He remembered being Su-Yong. He remembered being trapped, trapped for months.

Months that felt like centuries.

He remembered being tortured. Tortured by her husband.

Why did she give me this? He wondered. I don’t want this part.

“You’re sure it wasn’t her escaping?” he heard Singh say to Varun Verma next to him.

“Someone else set off the self-destructs,” Verma said. “Something penetrated us from the outside.” The Indian scientist looked at Jyotika, semi-conscious now, still held in General Singh’s arms. “Su-Yong Shu saved our lives.”

Kade looked at Feng, his mind reaching out to his friend.

Feng paused his prying at the panel, looked back at Kade. Nodded his assent.

No Ling, Feng sent.

They were in agreement.

“It came from China,” Kade said. “A program she left behind. Something she managed to sneak out towards the end of her captivity there, while she was insane, like she was when she first came to you.”

Singh and Verma were looking at him now. Sam and Sarai were looking at him. Another dozen staff members in the hot, crowded elevator were looking at him. They were all bedraggled, soaking wet. Their minds gave off fear, loss, trauma. People were still crying, weeping, calling the names of coworkers they’d lost.