Her thoughts moved him, captivated him, pulled him out of his funk and into something else, something reverent, something full of awe, something he used to feel.

The smoke on stage cleared and he could see her again. Lotus she called herself. She was in red tonight, a long dress of red sequins, low in the back, tight through the waist and hips, then loose again from mid-thigh to her feet. She wore iridescent red gloves that went beyond her elbows. The hair that had been platinum the night before was the color of flame, now, with bright strands that pulsed to the music woven through it. She was a mermaid, made of fire.

She held her arms out above the crowd in benediction and parted her ruby lips to sing to them, mouth wide open, head canted back, a soaring aria that intertwined with the techno beats. Then she pumped out her mental song and it was so so good. Darker and hotter even, than the night before. It seemed a betrayal of everyone who’d died because of him to dance. But it also seemed a betrayal of Ilya and Rangan not to dance.

Feng felt his thoughts, patted him on the back, and pointed him at the dance floor. “Go,” his friend said. “You need it. I wait here.”

So Kade went. He went out onto the floor of a club that reminded him so very much of the parties that he and Rangan and Ilya used to throw. And he danced. He moved slowly, at first. He kept his eyes on the floor, or closed. He felt those around him, let them feel him, but made no motion to interact. He danced for Ilya. He danced for Rangan. He danced for himself, to clear his head, to fill his spirit back up, and to give him the strength to make it through all the perils that were sure to be ahead.

Shiva sat in the back of the armored command center as they rushed into Saigon. Hayes was next to him, studying an array of screens. A map of the area showed on one. Structural diagrams of the building that had been hastily downloaded on another. On a third, status of his team members, both human and drone. And on the fourth, running progress on the attempt by their hacker to penetrate the club’s systems.

They were tapped into this group of bounty hunters. That was the one useful thing they’d gotten from the man Shiva had interrogated – the frequencies and codes and identities of the others in his group. They were lucky that it had been that specific group that had found Kade. Had it been another, they wouldn’t have known of it.

Audio transmissions came across the channel they’d broken into.

“South-east corner, fifty cal and tranq, ready.”

“North-west corner, fifty cal and tranq, ETA three minutes.”

“Backup 1 ready.”

“Backup 2 ready.”

“Door 1 ready.”

“Door 2 ready.”

“Bait ready.”