She heard Feng rushing up the vertical line behind her. She turned, helped him make the transfer and dismount with Ling. No time to mourn. Only time to act.

Then they were running, running for the next elevator, willing it to move faster, running out of it, and Feng was yelling for everyone to clear the building, clear the building!

And they were running out into the central square of Jiao Tong

The fighting was over, all over.

A crowd was gathered, all around one tank.

And atop that tank, with lights pointed at him, with thousands of phones pointed at him, a man was speaking, giving a speech, impassioned, while signs behind him waved, with characters so simple and iconic that Sam knew them

Let a Billion Flowers Bloom!

Sam watched as Sun Liu stood atop the paralyzed tank, his hands pumping the air, his mouth moving, his face screwed up with passion, as the phones and the lights pointed up at him.

A kilometer below Shanghai, Kade swam in light, his eyes closed, his mind drifting, drifting through waves of beauty, through something so like Nirvana, so like the end of Maya…

So many minds, so many men and women and children. So much beauty. So much potential.

Such a glorious start.

Kade, Su-Yong sent. There isn’t much time left. I can make your last few moments blissful, if you’d like. Or ecstatic.

Kade smiled. This was already so amazing. He’d lived to see this.

I want… to understand, he sent back. I want… to know… everything… Everything.

He felt a ripple of amusement from Su-Yong at that.

Want to know… he sent. How proteins fold… memories form… life started… universe created. All of it.

He felt Su-Yong grow serious. Felt something from her.

Recognition.

A recognition of the core trait they shared.

That hunger to learn. To discover. To understand.

That incessant curiosity.

There’s so much I don’t know myself, Su-Yong sent him, bemused. But I’ll show you what I can.

Then her mind suffused his, and his hers. His thoughts expanded.

Knowledge flooded in.

So much, so much.

One more thing, Su-Yong sent, even as she flooded him with so much. Let me show you what it was like to die, and be reborn.

And she did.

Kade gasped. Gasped at it. Gasped at what she’d seen. Gasped at the possibilities.

And in the instant before the nuclear battery blew,

in the instant before his body was vaporized,

the last things he felt,

were hope,

and awe.

“Radiation detected, sir. The signature matches.”

“Stand down,” Minister of Defense and Acting Chairman of the State Military Commission Ouyang Fan ordered.

For the love of all, stand down.

“Chinese silos are closing, sirs.”

“Stand down,” US Secretary of Defense Bernard Stevens breathed. “DEFCON Two.”

Applause greeted him.

Carolyn Pryce lowered herself into a chair in relief.

EPILOGUE

Surfacing

January 2041