She pounded her tiny hands against the wall instead, channeled the rage towards something that would not lead them to her. Her fists pounded the wall.

And one of the panels slid away. There behind it was the freezer. The freezer she’d known was here. The freezer that held no food. The freezer that held something else entirely.

Chapter 74: A Last Debate

74

A LAST DEBATE

Saturday November 3rd

Kade came to slowly. There was an aching pain in his head, in his right hand. Light was shining in behind his closed eyelids.

He opened his eyes to find himself back in the room he’d occupied for the last week. A splint and bandages covered his right hand and most of his forearm. He didn’t even want to think about the damage he’d done to that.

Breakfast was laid out for him already. His body was hungry, but he couldn’t bring himself to eat.

So stupid, he thought. He played me so easily.

Now Shiva had one of the back doors. And with that… he’d become a tyrant. Kade had seen it. A well-intentioned tyrant, at first. But that sort of power. It would corrupt anyone.

Like you? Ilya asked in his mind.

Yes, he told Ilya. Like me.

Shiva came to see him an hour later, a Nexus jammer around his neck. Smart man. Even now, he didn’t think he’d plumbed Kade’s depths. And he was right.

“My hand is still extended to you, Kade,” Shiva said. “Join me. We can save the world together.”

“Don’t do it,” Kade pleaded with him. “This can’t work. People have to find solutions on their own. It has to be from the bottom up.”

Shiva shook his head. “You’re naïve, my young friend. The world has no time left. Your way is a luxury we can’t afford. My way is the only option left to us.”

Kade shook his head. “You can’t keep it a secret,” he told Shiva. “They’ll find out what you’re doing. They’ll catch you. They’ll hate you for it. You’ll go down in history as a monster.”

Shiva held Kade’s eyes. “Let them call me a monster. At least they’ll have a future to do it in.”

Shiva stood atop the roof of his home. His eyes drank in the magnificent sea and sky. He spread his arms wide and the cool breeze blew his white cotton robe behind him like a cloak, like the wings of some supernatural being.

The code he’d captured from Kade had passed every test. Now vast machinery, long prepared in anticipation of this moment, leapt into action. Data centers around the world began humming. Microsatellites in low earth orbit began transmitting. Software tools flipped into an active mode.