Feng sat with him, absorbed, listened as Kade spilled it out. And finally Feng spoke.

“I’m sorry, Kade,” he said. “Sorry your friend is dead. I’m glad you’re worried about what you did. But sometimes no good option.”

Kade shook his head. “I can’t let that happen again, Feng. A million people running Nexus. I have all this power. I can’t lose my head, can’t lose control.”

Feng spoke softly. “Maybe too much power. Too much control. Trust people, that’s what Ananda told you, yeah? Maybe you should let go, close the back door.”

Ananda. Kade remembered. Are you wiser than all humanity? Ananda had asked him.

No.

He closed his eyes, and in his mind’s eye the icon for the script was there, the bot that would close the back door. It hovered in the upper left of his virtual workspace. All he had to do was invoke it, and he’d close off that hole he’d left for himself, forever.

Then another memory flashed through his mind, a blinking light, wires, then chaos, and death.

War is coming, Shu had said.

Kade opened his eyes, looked into Feng’s. “But if I do that, Feng, who’s going to stop the PLF? Who’s going to stop them from starting a war?”

Feng broke the eye contact, looked down at his hands.

Kade spoke again. “Sometimes, there’s no good option.”

Kade wanted to stay in, lick his wounds, see if he could turn up any additional leads on the PLF. But Feng insisted that Kade get out, do something to reset his thoughts.

So they went down to club Heaven hours later. It was Hell Night when they arrived. The Saturday before Halloween. A night of demons.

The door girl looked them over skeptically in their lack of costumes, but she took their money, stamped their wrists, and let them in. The bouncer glowered like the night before.

It was early still, just barely evening, and the club was sparsely populated. The music was downtempo, quiet enough to talk over. The dance floor was empty, the stage where the DJ and NJ and go-go dancers would be later tonight held a few racks of equipment and nothing else.

They took a seat at the bar. Kade wasn’t hungry, wasn’t thirsty. Even after the meditation and the hours coding, the shock of the day still coursed through him. Feng ordered drinks for them both, made Kade down one as he watched, then ordered food as well.