Kade spasmed this body’s hand to drop the gun. And two human missiles collided with him head on.

The assassin’s gun barked twice, muzzle flashes brighter than the morning sunlight, as his peers rammed into him with locomotive force and a vicious thud. The gun was flung from the assassin’s hand as he was knocked off his feet. The three Secret Service agents flew through the air as a single mass for a dozen yards, then touched ground again in a crunching heap, the assassin on bottom.

Holtzmann whirled towards the podium, looking for the President. Was he safe? Had he been hit? But Stockton was out of sight, only a mob of Secret Service agents in view. Duran was yelling something into Holtzmann’s ear. “You! How did you know, Martin? How did you know?”

The human tanks knocked him back, crushed him to the ground, and Kade felt his own body gasp as the pain of it came down the link. He was down! The assassin was down!

Had he shot the man? Had he stopped it in time? Where was he? Who was he?

Then he felt something wrong in the assassin’s body. A pain deep inside. There was something hard and heavy inside his torso, where there shouldn’t be.

Oh no.

Not just a gun. The assassin didn’t have just a gun…

He opened the man’s mouth to speak, to warn them.

White noise bloomed across his senses.

[CONNECTION LOST]

And the link went dead.

“How did you know, Martin?” Joe Duran was yelling at him, spittle flying from his mouth. “How did you know?”

Holtzmann stared aghast, his mind blank. Some excuse. He must have some excuse. It wasn’t Nexus. I don’t have Nexus!

Then the world exploded. The expanding pressure wave of the blast struck Martin Holtzmann. The force of it lifted him off his feet, hurled his body through the air. He flew in shock, limbs akimbo, disconnected from the ground. An instant later he felt the searing heat of it. Then Holtzmann struck something hard and unyielding, and darkness took him.

“NO!”

Kade opened his one good eye, a yell ripping out of him. The door burst open and Feng was there, guns in his hands, scanning for the threat. Two monks rushed in after him, their minds full of grim devotion, and threw their bodies over Kade to shield him from whatever danger had invaded the clinic.

“No, no, no…” Kade repeated.

“What? What?” Feng yelled back, spinning, looking for a target.

Kade flipped his mind to the news feeds, searching, trying to understand what he’d just seen, hoping that it wasn’t what he feared…

Then the first reports hit the net.

“Oh, fuck.”

Breece swore softly. Two shots. Two misses. He’d dialed up four shots. And every one of them should have been a kill. Something had interfered. Someone had gotten in the way…