He opened his mind to his brothers. The battle came alive from two hundred points of view. The battlefield became a living map in his mind, a gestalt of the perceptions of all the Fists: sights and sounds and insights, troop positions and firing angles, weak points and cover zones, potential crossfires and enfilades, tactics and stratagems.

The Confucian Fist moved together, two hundred bodies fanning out, one collective consciousness steering them.

Bai raised his rifle, fired on a group of incoming soldiers, forced them to dive for cover, sending them straight into the crosshairs of his brother Peng, sniping from a roof. Across the square, Tao rolled for cover himself, pinned down by fire from three angles, and Bai and Peng reflexively took out the soldiers gunning for him.

The battlefield was an extension of their minds. Its map was their personal space. Their brothers were their phantom limbs, striking in concert, conjoined in ways more intimate and immediate than any enemy could achieve.

The humans had engineered them to be the ultimate soldiers. Stronger, faster, more hardy.

But this was what truly made them deadly. This was what truly made them posthuman. The ultimate soldier wasn’t the strongest. It was he or she who was most connected.

Bai picked off a group of soldiers pressing Quang, then swapped in a fresh clip in the space while Liwei fired, perfectly in synch.

There. A breakaway group of soldiers, rushing for the center of the square, seen from Lao’s perspective, on the other rooftop.

Rushing for the leaders.

Bai moved towards them, throwing himself into the press of protesters, putting himself on an intercept course. Humans were panicking everywhere, running to and fro, colliding into each other.

No, not everywhere.

A few were fighting with cunning and courage, taking shelter, loading bottles with fuel, popping up to hurl them. Others were holding aloft phones, recording what was happening, to let the rest of China and the world know.

Bai saw the braves ones pay with their lives.

We’re here, he thought at them. We’re with you.

Then he was through the press, Liwei just behind him, in time to see the actress’s bodyguards die, as the soldiers moved in to execute the leaders.

And then he was the maelstrom.

“Qi!” Zhi Li screamed as her bodyguard, her loyal friend, was cut down by machine gun fire. She stumbled, suddenly realizing Lu Song’s hand wasn’t in her own. Then she was down on the ground, pain in her palms. She looked up and a soldier was bringing his rifle around to murder her.

“China!” she screamed, screamed with all her rage, the word she wanted to be the last to leave her lips.