He could do it. He could go into his lab, load up a syringe with a cocktail of tramadol and dapoxetine. That would do the trick. One injection, and a few minutes later, Rangan would be seizing hard, would need to be taken somewhere for treatment.

Yet Rangan was right. Those children… One by one, they’d be tortured. They’d become guinea pigs for new cures. Some would die in the process. Some would survive to be shipped off to concentration camps, or to be set free, scarred by the loss of Nexus.

Holtzmann clenched his fists, pressed them against his head. He wanted to scream with the force of the struggle inside him. Gaaaaah!

I’ve never been brave, he told himself. Always been a coward. Goddamn it! I want to do something right for once.

He had to try. Had to try to get Rangan and these children out at the same time.

And the other children? The children being studied in Virginia? In Texas? In California?

Dear God, he told himself, I can only do so much at once!

He would save these children here, the ones under his own direct care, if he could. The rest would have to wait.

Holtzmann took the car, left campus, went to a coffee shop in the DC slum that surrounded the sprawling Homeland Security complex in Anacostia. There he linked himself to the net, tunneled in through an anonymizer, connected to the Nexus board, and fired off a message.

[Change of plans. A dozen more friends to get out. Young ones. You get the rest of the files after.]

And then he went back to the office, and stumbled his way through another day of hypocrisy.

Rangan sat in his cell, shaking.

Did I just do that? he wondered. Did I just say no to getting out of here?

Yeah. I did.

He’d spent his whole life as a taker. He’d spent his whole life as a boy. But he didn’t have to end it that way.

Those kids… they needed out of here. They deserved their freedom more than he did.

It was time to do what was right. It was time to do something for someone else for a change. It was time to be a man.

Sweet fucking Jesus, Rangan thought. I hope it works.

Chapter 62: Up the Coast

62

UP THE COAST

Wednesday October 31st

Sam pushed through hard seas Wednesday night. Four days she’d been traveling now, moving the little stealthed boat at night, hiding during the brutally hot days. Her shoulder, tended with a continuous supply of fresh bandages, antibiotic cream, and abundant food, was healing.