Please… the dying Holtzmann pleaded. Rangan. Children. Still alive.

The name hit him like a bucket of cold water. Rangan. Rangan! Rangan was still alive. Holtzmann was the one lead he had to save him!

FUCK!

Kade loosed his mental grip, let the brainstem resume its normal activity, searched for a pulse.

Nothing. The brainstem’s behavior was erratic, confused, neural circuits temporarily disrupted by the surge of random pulses Kade had sent through it.

Holtzmann was passing out now. Consciousness fading as the flow of oxygen and nutrients to his brain ceased.

No. He needed this man alive.

Kade paired his own brainstem to Holtzmann’s, pumped signals from his neurons into the analogous ones in Holtzmann’s brain.

Chaos still ruled in Holtzmann’s brainstem. Aberrant signals from his own neurons swamped the input from Kade’s brain.

Kade amplified the input from his own brainstem to Holtzmann’s again, ramped it up to four times strength.

Neural circuits started to reform, but there was still so much chaos, so much random behavior left over from Kade’s attack. Holtzmann’s heart was still stopped.

Kade pushed again, stepped up the input levels by a factor of ten, overruled all neural inputs coming into the Nexus-linked neurons in Holtzmann’s brainstem with the signals from his own brain.

Order strengthened, but the heart still didn’t beat.

He pushed one last time, harder, overlaying his own brainstem’s neural activity onto Holtzmann’s, and held it that way, forcing Holtzmann’s brain to behave, to step back to regularity.

Lub-

Lub-

Holtzmann’s heart stuttered, tried to turn over. Kade held on, kept pushing, kept imposing his own neural activity on Holtzmann’s.

Lub-

Lub-

Lub dub. Lub dub.

And finally the man’s heart beat again.

Kade pulled himself back into his body, rose to sitting on the bed.

He was shaking. He needed to get himself together. Holtzmann was out cold for the moment. He reached into the man’s sleep centers, made sure Holtzmann would stay that way while he took a moment to think.

Oh, Kade, Ilya’s voice said in his mind. You almost killed him.

He’s still alive, Kade replied.

You got lucky, she said. He could have died.

He killed you! Kade shouted at the voice in his head.

He didn’t. He showed you. He didn’t want me to die.

He’s responsible, Kade shot back angrily. He’s one of them. Your blood’s on his hands. Wats’ blood. A lot more than that.

And you get to decide that? she asked him. You’re the judge now? Are you wiser than all humanity, Kade? Are you?

Yes. If I have to be.

Then Ananda was in his thoughts. A memory of the monk.

When you suffer, Ananda had told him, When you rage. When you weep. When you crave. That is when you must still your mind.