Then the gun was falling to the ground, and a ghost was wrapping her arms around him.

Sam held on tight to the ghost in her arms. Nakamura. She couldn’t believe it.

She let go, pulled off her own chameleonware hood, and looked into his eyes again. He was real. Her old mentor, the man who’d rescued her, who’d thrown himself out of a burning three-story window to save her life…

They disentangled, moved under the cover of the trees to talk.

“What are you doing here?” Sam whispered to him.

“I’m here for Lane,” he told her. “Same as you.”

Kade? Had she heard right?

“What?” she asked.

“Kade,” Nakamura repeated. “He alerted you somehow? Or Feng did?”

Sam shook her head. “Kade’s not here, Kevin. He’s…” in Cambodia, she almost said. But no. She’d sworn to protect his secrets, and he hers. “He went a different way. I’m here for the kids.”

“Kids?” Nakamura asked.

She told him. Told him the whole story. She wished she could show him instead, touch his mind and let him feel what she’d felt. But there was no Nexus in his brain, and so she settled for words. Mai. Phuket. Mae Dong. Sarai and the children. Jake. The men from the Mira Foundation. What she’d seen in that soldier’s mind.

“Shiva… He’s trying to create a posthuman intelligence. Succeeding. He has dozens of children there. Kids born with Nexus in their brains. And he’s subverting them. Bit by bit.”

Nakamura listened as Sam told him everything. His mind whirled. Her story dovetailed with Feng’s. She hadn’t been coerced. She’d flipped in that raid.

Which meant that he was a danger to her. A conduit through which the CIA could find her. And what would they do when they learned she hadn’t been coerced? Nothing pleasant, he was sure.

“Your turn, Kevin,” she told him. “Why are you here?” She tensed as she asked. She tried to hide it from him but he saw it in her.

“Lane,” he said. “Shiva has him. I’m here to get him out.”

“And then what?” Sam asked.

He looked into her eyes and thought of lying to her. But he couldn’t. And even if he did, he doubted he’d fool her.

“CIA wants him. Wants his help. To counter the Nexus assassination attempts.”

“You can’t,” she said softly.

“I know you got close with him, Sam…” he started.

She shook her head. “No. It’s what’s in his head. The back door. You can’t give that to CIA.”

“This isn’t ERD,” he told her. “I’m here to get him before they do…”

The wheels were turning in his head as he spoke. The cloak-and-dagger briefing with McFadden. The stealthed sub. The absolute secrecy. The separation from all other agencies. The black-on-black mission that only a handful of people knew about.