“In fact, I know a great deal that I’m sure the government would hate to see revealed. Most of which happens to be in violation of Copenhagen anyway.”

He let it hang there, the implicit threat. Aggarwal just stared at him.

“Mr Aggarwal,” Kade went on. “The last thing I want is to harm India. I believe it’s in your nation’s strategic interest to move forward with Nexus deployment and to leave Copenhagen. I believe your government has already come to that conclusion. So if this is really just a timing issue, perhaps we could speed things up a bit.”

Kade sat alone after that, after Aggarwal had gone to confer with his superiors, barely masking his contempt. Hours passed.

The plan was Sam’s in origin. They had to go somewhere. They had to assume that wherever they went, the CIA would know. Nakamura had tracked Kade to Shiva’s home on Apyar Kyun, which meant that the CIA had as well. The firefight and Nakamura’s death would sound alarms. The liftoff of Shiva’s plane and its eventual landing point would hardly go unnoticed.

Thailand was an option. The Thai had already left Copenhagen, much to the US’s displeasure. The authorities had turned a blind eye to Kade and Feng and Sam after the assault on Ananda’s monastery 6 months ago, for a few days. Long enough for them to slip away. But now? With a senior CIA operative dead? With the US publicly blaming Kade for the PLF’s terrorist attacks, and privately hunting for his back doors? What kind of pressure would the US bring on the Thai to arrest Kade and Sam? Economic sanctions? Seizure of US-held assets?

And how much harder would it be to slip away with twenty-five children in tow?

India was different. India was a rising superpower: The third largest economy on the planet. The most populous country in the world. Not a country the US could just push around anymore. And India, according to media reports, had already been caught experimenting with Nexus and other proscribed enhancement technologies. If any nation had both the clout and the inclination to shield them, India was it.

Sam had originated the plan. Kade had embellished it.

The war was coming. The war between human and post-human. The US government had invented the Post-human Liberation Front, and then the PLF had slipped its leash and bitten its creators’ hands. They’d turned a bit of staged assassination theater against Stockton into something very close to the real thing, had killed cabinet members, had set off bombs in ERD offices, had assassinated a wildly popular televangelist and a US Senator who also happened to be the frontrunner for Governor of Texas. They’d killed hundreds of innocents in that church in Houston just hours ago, with the cameras rolling.