“Its mission is to bring back another copy of Shu,” Kade went on. “In a much, much more powerful quantum cluster.” He shook his head. “The cluster at Jiao Tong… It makes what you have here look like a toy.”

Diagrams flipped through his mind. Algorithms. Stats. Updated capabilities. Newer ion traps. Wider qubit registers. Dramatically longer entanglement times. And new algorithms within the full Su-Yong herself. Algorithms he couldn’t get his head around. Algorithms only a quantum mind could invent, that only a quantum mind could fully understand. Algorithms that effectively doubled or tripled the number of qubits at her disposal, that made Su-Yong on that hardware exponentially more dangerous than anyone had realized.

Kade swallowed. They were all staring at him. Frightened. Waiting for him to continue.

“We need to contact the Chinese.” I won’t mention Ling, he told himself. Not if I can help it. “They need to secure all the copies made of Su-Yong Shu. They need to secure the quantum cluster under Jiao Tong.”

He felt Feng’s heart breaking. Felt pain going through his friend, at the thought of doing this to the woman who’d saved him, who’d brought him freedom.

Feng slammed something hard into the metal panel above them. The sound echoed painfully through the elevator.

She doesn’t deserve this! he sent to Kade alone.

I know, Feng. Kade sent back.

It has to be done, Feng sent again, with grim determination.

That determination broke Kade’s heart. It made him angry, angry with the Chinese who’d done this, who’d brought them to this, angry with the Indians whose plans weren’t so far off.

“You understand why this is happening?” His voice was louder than he expected. He was nearly yelling into Verma and Singh’s faces. He felt the soldiers holding Feng up turn to look at him again.

Breathe, Kade told himself. He closed his eyes.

Breathe.

Observe.

Let go.

“Understand,” he said softly, opening his eyes. “If you treat them this way, if you treat posthumans as slaves, if you torture them, if you make them prisoners… You’ll drive them to want revenge. You’ll make them paranoid and angry. You may drive them insane. You’ll create the war that none of us can win.”

He felt Varun get it. He felt Varun’s shame. The man nodded.

“What I understand is that this creature is dangerous,” Singh said, his face set.

Kade stared at the man.

There was a banging sound, and suddenly a breath of cooler air. Kade looked over, and Feng, his feet in the hands of Singh’s soldiers, had the hatch free.

And he had a communications handset, on a wire, held to his face.

Feng pulled the handset away, frowning.

“It’s for you,” he said, and tossed it at General Singh.

Kade listened as Singh talked to the people topside, through the hard-lined handset they’d lowered.