Griffon One had put them down at Dachang. It would have been so much faster to bring it straight to Jiao Tong, but there was no way to escape detection, no way to land that sort of craft in an urban environment while hiding its downthrust, masking its heat output, muting the sound of its engines.

Not from hostile troops just a few hundred meters away.

And the last thing they wanted to do prematurely was alert the military that there was anything special about Jiao Tong, that it was anything more than another university with another protest. Let them focus their efforts on the much larger protest in People’s Square in Shanghai; on the politically explosive protest in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, nestled just south of the ancient capital of the Forbidden City and not much more than a stone’s throw from the modern halls of power in Zhongnanhai.

Look there, old men. Look at the truly massive protests, and especially the one on your very doorstep. This little commotion is nothing special. Nothing special at all.

Until it is your doom.

Ground vehicles had brought them most of the way. The roads were full of military vehicles, as troops mobilized to control the sudden explosion of protests, from hundreds of thousands of citizens to millions. Most of the troops were from Army posts, of course. Dachang was primarily an air base, not a provider of infantry. But they were not challenged on the road.

They ditched their vehicles four kilometers back, stripped off uniforms, activated chameleonware, and slowly eased their way through the shadows and to Jiao Tong.

“Tao!” Tao heard his name as he exited the first elevator, into the Secure Computing Center, three stories below the campus.

It was a grinning Bai, a brother he was happy to see.

Tao grinned back, and they embraced

“We have the package,” Tao said.

Bai took a breath, the grin leaving his face, and nodded somberly.

“Good,” he said. “You’ll need to head all the way down. Let’s hope it works.”

Tao frowned. “Is everything alright, brother?”

Bai looked at him, then looked past him, at the other brothers behind, at the politician with them.

“You’ll have to see for yourself,” Bai said.

Excellent, the Su-Yong in Ling’s body sent. You’ve done well, all of you.

Tao kept his face completely neutral, kept his mind calm.

This was not what he’d expected.

“I’ll take that,” Chen Pang said. The man reached forward to take the data cube from Tao’s outstretched hand. His hair was disheveled. His clothes were rumpled. Up close, to Tao’s heightened senses, the man smelled. He smelled of old fear, of sweat that had cooled on his body. His mind gave off little waves of horror, not unlike Sun Liu behind Tao…

And his daughter… Ling…