Holtzmann almost sighed with relief. They could delay the briefing.

Barnes continued. “So we’re moving it up to tomorrow. 11am.”

Holtzmann blinked. His heart was pounding again. “But… I haven’t prepared anything. There’s no way I can be ready…”

Barnes held up a mollifying hand. “This is just a casual chat, Martin. Just come ready to answer his questions. That’s it. And besides, the President likes you.”

Then Barnes was gone, and moments later Holtzmann was in the men’s room, on his knees, his head over a toilet, retching up the day’s lunch.

He wiped his mouth with a piece of toilet paper, flushed the vomit away. He knew what he needed.

Martin Holtzmann pulled up the interface in his mind, dialed up another opiate surge, and let it take him away.

He cleaned up, later, and let the car drive him home as he thought about the next day.

He knew the content. He knew the facts backwards and forwards. But the President terrified him. The risk of being caught…

What he needed was confidence.

That night, as Anne lay asleep next to him, he wrote a simple script to elevate his serotonin and dopamine levels during the meeting. No sudden surge. Just a long, steady flow that would keep him calm, alert, and confident.

When he was satisfied he gave himself a large luxurious opiate surge as a reward. His cares went away. All was peace and bliss.

Chapter 22: Memories

22

MEMORIES

Saturday October 20th

Shiva’s security team brought him the bounty hunter, prepared as ordered. The man’s larynx had been crushed by Lane’s traveling companion, but not so far as to cut off all air instantly. The Vietnamese police had managed to stabilize and intubate him before swelling finished the job the Chinese soldier had started. It had taken a non-trivial bribe to get him here, now.

His soldiers had the man on his knees, between them, his hands and feet bound in high-test carbon restraints behind his back. He was a macho sort, his muscles bulging from black market enhancements, his head mostly shaven and covered in jagged, angry-looking tattoos. Shiva imagined his dark eyes had once been fierce; now they looked up at him wide with fear. His team had injected the man an hour ago with the modified Nexus version Shiva used for interrogation. The version that responded to his commands alone. The man would just be coming out of the calibration phase hallucinations now. He must have some idea of what was to come.

Shiva reached out and wrapped his will around the bounty hunter’s mind. “Tell me what you know of Kaden Lane,” he commanded the man. “And how you found him.”

He extracted what knowledge the bounty hunter had, of the bounty hunter networks and their strategies and communication protocols, and how they’d tracked Lane down.