PROLOGUE: JULY 2040

PROLOGUE: JULY 2040

THREE MONTHS AFTER THE RELEASE OF NEXUS 5

Symphonic

SYMPHONIC

The pianist’s hands glided across the keys, spreading out to left and right, fingers striking keys in unison. The piano responded, music soaring from it. The violinists joined her, sweeping in perfectly. In her mind she could feel them behind her, feel the vibration as the bows moved over strings, feel the pressure of fingertips holding notes, the instruments tucked under chins, the music leaping out. Then she felt the drummers enter, even as she heard them, sounds and minds in counterpoint to her melody.

Kade sucked it in, completely entranced. His body lay on the other side of the planet, but his mind was in the pianist’s, watching, absorbing, using one of the back doors he and Rangan had hidden in Nexus 5 to observe how their technology was being used.

The pianist’s mind in turn was linked to the other musicians’. Seven of them, playing in this empty concert hall, their minds entwined like the music, feeling each other’s actions, unconsciously communing. There was no conductor here, none but the emergent sum of their minds. No audience, but someday, someday they would play with a full orchestra, for a full house, would let the audience feel what it was like to make such music.

The pianist threw herself at the piano now, leaning into it with her body, her hands flying, gliding, then pouncing, fingers moving in a blur, shoulders hunched as she brought her weight down onto the keys with every note. Kade could feel the sweat on her brow, her breath coming fast, the feel of the keys as she made them hers, the impossible intricacy of the piece she flew through. He could hear the music in her mind, feel the music, the towering crescendo of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, the anticipation of the epic climax she was building to. The drums answered her. The French horn sang. The strings joined them in harmony. He could feel the players, feel their minds, feel the exhilaration in them all as the piece built and built and built.

Yes. This. This is what Nexus could do. He could feel the walls between the musicians’ minds dropping; the veil of maya, the illusion of separation, being lifted. He could feel them conjoining, merging, becoming something more, a single mind greater than its individual components. Kade lost himself in the experience, in the music, in the symphonic structure of this higher mind gelling before him.

Then a high priority message flashed across Kade’s mental vision.

[Alert]

What? Kade’s breath caught in his chest. Rangan? Ilya? Had his bots found his friends?

[Alert: Coercion Code Detected. Status: Active]

No. Not Rangan. Not Ilya. Something else. Something monstrous. Something he had to stop.