Dammit! Kade raged. He slammed his good fist against the floor.

But Ananda was right. He had to be cool now. He had to think. Had to use this chance to get Rangan free.

Kade closed his eyes, folded his hands into his lap, took a few steadying breaths of anapana, then a few more, then a few more after that.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Layers of rage and grief peeled off him like an onion. Tears rolled down his face.

Breathe.

Breathe.

He opened his eyes again minutes later. The anger was still there. The loss was still there. But he was calmer now, he could think.

Breathe.

Holtzmann was Kade’s best chance to get Rangan free. He couldn’t squander that.

Kade checked the time. It was not quite 2am on the East Coast. He had some time before Holtzmann would be missed.

He had time, time to use the tools he’d taken from all those monsters he’d stopped, and employ them for his purposes – to free Rangan.

Kade tunneled back into Holtzmann’s mind. With a handful of commands he pulled up the coercion tools he’d done his best to exterminate, set them to hovering in his mental space, overlaid atop representations of Holtzman’s mind and brain. Then he grabbed one, and set to work sculpting the man into a slave, a slave who would do Kade’s bidding.

Holtzmann woke slowly. He was back in his office chair. Everything seemed orderly.

I’m alive, he realized.

4.19am, the clock told him. Hours had passed.

Then he felt it. The knot in his stomach. The ache in his chest. The overwhelming compulsion. He would free Rangan Shankari.

Chapter 37: Preparations

37

PREPARATIONS

Saturday October 27th

Breece woke before dawn, Ava wrapped in his arms. They’d made love with a quiet urgency the night before, their eyes burrowing into one another’s. Intensely bonded even despite the lack of Nexus.

He held her for a while, listening to her breathing. Then it was time.

They gathered in the kitchen. Ava briefed them on the mule, on the planned pickup today. Hiroshi reviewed the changes to the Nexus code they’d be using. The Nigerian prepped them on the weapon.

And Breece went over the targets with them one more time.

Daniel Chandler, former Democratic senator from South Carolina, architect of the bill that had created the ERD and banned whole swaths of scientific inquiry and human enhancement, had returned to his childhood home of Houston. After re-establishing residence, he’d launched his campaign to become the first Democratic Governor of Texas in a generation. And he was winning. Chandler could point at the events of the last few months, then point back at the law that bore his name – the Chandler Act – and show that he’d always been a leader in fighting transhuman technologies and those who would use them.