“We got lucky,” Levi told him as he drove through the gale. “We couldn’t have gotten you out without this storm. It left them short-staffed. Satellites can’t see us with the clouds. Drones can’t fly in this wind. Zoe’s a gift from the Lord, Rangan. He sent her. So we could get you and these boys out.”

Rangan just grunted in reply.

Holtzmann lay on the floor, face down, eyes closed, pretending to be unconscious. His head ached where Rangan had punched him, shoved him against the wall. His right arm had long ago fallen asleep, pinned beneath his weight. His still healing hip ached at him. His Nexus OS was on the fritz, disrupted by the electrical shock through his system, not responding to his commands.

Stay still, he told himself. Just a little longer. Just a little longer.

In the end it was thirty-five minutes before Holtzmann heard running feet and a raised voice, before someone shook him and rolled him over.

He did his best to look and seem dazed, confused. The guard was asking him again and again, “What happened?”

Holtzmann groaned, put his hand to his head. “I was interrogating Shankari. The alarm went off. And then…”

Then the guard cursed, got up, ran off. A moment later a new alarm sounded, one Holtzmann had never heard before. A voice came on over it.

“Lockdown alert. Lockdown alert. This facility is now locked down. No one may leave or enter the facility until the lockdown is completed. Lockdown alert. Lockdown alert…” and on and on.

Now he just hoped that Shankari and the children were already off the campus.

They held him for two hours, not as a prisoner, but as a witness. More guards arrived, some sopping wet, others dry. A medic pointed a light in Holtzmann’s eyes, scanned him for any sign of concussion, pronounced him likely healthy.

Bit by bit, over the course of those hours, Holtzmann’s Nexus nodes came back to functionality, until the Nexus OS booted itself again. Idly, he wondered if his root access to his own brain had been restored? No, he told himself. Best not to check that. Best not to go down that road again. Never again.

While he waited, Holtzmann overheard bits of chatter across the radios. All-points bulletin. Local police. FBI. Hurricane problems.

They were doing everything they could to recapture Shankari and the children. And Zoe was fighting them.

The lockdown ended just before 10pm, but Zoe raged on, intensifying, as more of her pushed aground.

Shortly after, Holtzmann persuaded them that he’d answered all the questions he could. One of the guards escorted him to his office, opening the doors that Holtzmann couldn’t without his badge.

He thanked the man, sat down at his desk, waited for the guard to leave.

Then he got to work.