And the right signal could open this door. Chen Pang had known that signal. He’d touched his wife’s mind. And she’d been backed up, before being restored in India, and had passed that signal on to Kade and Feng.

So they said.

Sam shook her head.

Shitty rules of engagement. Terrible plan. Probable death.

Why the hell did I agree to this? she wondered.

Because a little girl’s life is at stake, she answered herself. Because a stranger risked his life to save me when I was a little girl.

She took a slow breath.

Because the woman held down here for half a year was a prisoner, a prisoner they tortured and abused, Sam thought. Because that woman saved my life once too.

Because to have the right future, we need to lay down the right past, for that future to build on.

Tit for tat.

Tit for tat.

Sam saw Feng give the signal, and she reached up with her eyes, pulled down a menu, and disabled her chameleonware, as did he.

She and Feng were the bait.

She saw Feng pull off his hood, stand perfectly still for a moment. Then he reached back and pulled his hood back on, chameleonware still disabled, his form still barely visible.

Then with a deep bass grind of stone against stone, the massive, meters-thick door started opening, light spilling into darkness.

And she was diving forward into that light, and into the sound of gunfire.

Kade readied himself at the bottom. It all came down to this.

He left his chameleonware active, but peeled back his hood to free himself from the Faraday lining of the thing. Then he closed his eyes, and he and Feng were linking up, conjoining, their minds forming two poles of a compound antenna, manipulating a wave on a long, long wavelength, as long as the distance between them, sending a slow, deep signal, searching through the cold rock for the receiver on the other side.

And then a key fit a lock.

Kade felt it. He reached back, pulled the chameleonware hood back over his face, settled it in place. A vertical crack of light, twenty feet tall at least, split the wall of the elevator shaft. It widened, widened.

Then he saw Feng and Sam roll through it, moving in opposite directions, and gunfire burst out, someone inside, firing out, full auto, shooting at them.

He moved forward, slowly, careful on the rocks, limping on his damaged knee.

Gunfire kept emerging in staccato bursts. He heard thuds, grunts. He couldn’t see inside.

He made it down the rubble, his knee aching. He moved quietly, slowly, was just crossing through the tunnel created by the meters thick door when he caught a glimpse of the battle, bodies moving, muzzle fire.

Something rocked his head, slammed it hard into the stone door like a blow from a hammer.

It set his world to spinning.