They came for Kade half a day later. He’d been allowed to eat, to relieve himself, then had fallen asleep in the chair from sheer exhaustion, his head cradled on his one undamaged hand atop the table.

He woke to the sound of the door slamming open. He looked up, saw armed soldiers moving towards him, more of them coming in, filling the room.

A sound escaped his throat. He pushed back from the desk in alarm, tried to stand at the same time. A back leg of the chair caught on something as he did, and suddenly the chair was toppling backwards, and he was toppling with it.

He reached out to break his fall, and his bad hand slammed into the floor.

Horrid pain flared up it.

Then Kade’s head slammed into the floor. More pain blossomed in his battered ribs. The world spun.

“Get him up,” he heard someone say.

Two soldiers loomed above him. Their hands closed like vices on his biceps. They heaved and he came to standing, a groan escaping him as more pain shot through his abdomen. He started to double over, and then a hood came down over his head, cutting off his vision of the world.

“Hands,” the same voice said.

He had a vision of invoking Bruce Lee, but he knew how futile that would be.

His wrists were yanked together behind his back. The damaged one ached so hard tears came to his eyes. Cold metal closed around them. He heard the snick of something locking.

Kade brought the icon for the suicide script he’d written front and center.

Whatever this was about, they weren’t going to get anything useful out of him.

“Walk,” the voice commanded.

Walking hurt. He heard muffled sounds. Doors opening and closing. Footsteps. Echoes on tile and then bare concrete.

They went down, into tunnels.

Into a garage.

He was shoved into a vehicle.

Then movement, acceleration, banking, turning, driving. The sounds of hustle and bustle. The city outside. New Delhi.

There were men with him. Soldiers. Many of them.

They were outside now, he was certain of it.

He reached out with his thoughts, searching for any transmitter, but there was nothing.

He retuned his mind like Ling had shown him, opening himself to all sorts of electromagnetic activity, but he was blocked. Shielded. The hood or something else was cutting him off.

The city sounds disappeared first. The hustle and bustle, the sounds of traffic and street vendors and everything else, went away, bit by bit, then the last of them, all at once.

Were they taking him out to the country? A secret location to interrogate him? A spot to put a bullet in his head?