He looked for the others, the ones who’d dropped ahead of him. Looked for Feng, looked for Sam, looked even for that liar, Aarthi.

But they weren’t there. They were stealthed, chameleonware active, radio silent, Faraday-caged inside their chameleonware suits, even laser links between commandos too much a risk of detection during the insertion phase.

He was alone. Alone ten miles above the ocean, and doing something completely insane.

His heart was pounding. His breath was coming fast. He could hear the oxygen bottle hissing, hissing as he sucked at it.

Kade closed his eyes, hit the button on his mental interface to silence the external input.

Breathe.

Slow.

Observe.

Break the link between sensation and reaction.

Breathe into the gap between them.

Blind reaction is attachment.

Blind reaction is slavery.

Freedom exists in the gap.

Choice exists in the gap.

I exist in the gap.

Let go of attachment to my fear, he told himself. Let go of attachment to myself.

Let go of attachment to my life.

That’s the secret to living.

He opened his eyes, reactivated the feed of data from the visor and the wing directly into his mind.

The world came alive around him.

He breathed into it, took it in, observed it without fear.

Down below, the dark sea, the flecks of white clouds above. He was five or ten times higher than those clouds, carried not by jet engines but by carbon fiber wings. His heart ached with it this time, not in fear, but in beauty.

Ahead, to the southwest, the darkness gave way to lights.

The outlying islands beyond Shanghai.

Huanghai, his visor labeled one. Chongming Dao. Heng Sha. Changzing Dao.

Their lights, like toys, a faint glow so many miles below and miles ahead, rising up through the sky, through layers of clouds.

Beyond them, Shanghai itself, a vast sprawl of light, a city of forty million people, the “Capital of Asia”, the City of Lights. It glowed brighter than anything else on the horizon, glowed in white and blue and red and green, skyscrapers in all their décor sending up multicolored lights to blare against the sky or the passing clouds. It was a festival seen in the distance. It was a luminescent circus on the horizon.

Kade breathed it in, breathed it all in.

More to remember. More to pass on. More to play forward.

He turned his head to the left, to the south-east and the light entering the sky, out over the open water. Dawn was still more than an hour away, but up here, miles up, the light was coming. And it was gorgeous, so gorgeous, bringing the first hints of pink and red to clouds far out on the horizon, turning the sky from black to deep blue.

This was amazing. So amazing.

He wished Rangan was here to experience this. Or Ilya. Ilya would love this. He wished he could talk to Feng, Feng who must be somewhere nearby.