The last sound he heard was Bobby screaming endlessly, in mind and voice, as they dragged him kicking and thrashing away from his father’s dying body.

Chapter 2: On the Move

2

ON THE MOVE

Mid October

Kade wiped sweat from his face, batted away leaves with his good left hand. The heat was brutal, even this high in the mountain passes that separated Cambodia from Vietnam, even this early in the morning, even shielded by the jungle.

“Today,” Feng called from up ahead. “We’ll get there today.”

Moving. Constantly moving. That’s what life had become.

Cambodia had been good for a while. Months, really. They’d been safe, shielded in the monasteries. Kade had worked with the monks there, learning what they knew, their techniques for stilling and guiding their own minds through meditation, for sinking into that egoless state where their minds, bridged by Nexus, could become one. In exchange he’d taught what he knew – neuroscience, the rudiments of programming Nexus, ideas for apps that could augment meditation.

He’d seen beautiful things in those months, in Cambodia and across the net. The mentally and emotionally scarred, healing. Patients in comas being touched and restored to consciousness. Scientists tapping into each other’s perspectives, making breakthroughs they never could have alone. Artists creating new forms that they didn’t even have names for, that immersed you in experiences unlike any other.

And union. Minds coming together. Walls dropping. Consciousness spanning bodies. Group minds, self-assembled, voluntary, greater than the sum of their parts…

But then someone had used Nexus to try to kill the President. And the ERD had put a bounty on his head. Wanted alive, for questioning.

Men had come asking about him, a tall, gangly Westerner, young, head shaved to look like a monk. They’d shown pictures of him. In Khun Prum. In Kulen. In Pou. Kade and Feng had taken to moving every two weeks, then every week, then every few days, leaning hard on the extraordinary generosity the monks showed them.

Then Ban Pong. Kade and Feng had been there less than two days before the news came. Men were looking for him, in the village below. It was time to move again.

This was the only way left to them. Off the grid. Off the roads. Into the jungle-covered mountains to the east, on the unmapped trails that led from Cambodia to Vietnam, with nothing but the packs on their backs and a destination – the monastery at Chu Mom Ray.

Today was day seven. Feng could have made the trip in two days, Kade figured. His pack weighed at least twice what Kade’s did, yet the Chinese ex-soldier never slowed, never tired. Kade was the weak link here.

“Hey, Kade,” Feng called from up ahead. “What did Confucius say about man who runs in front of car?”

Kade smiled and shook his head, brushing away more foliage from his face. “I don’t know, Feng. What?”