“He gets tired!” Feng roared. “Get it? Tired?”

Kade laughed. Feng’s jokes were as endless as his stamina.

“Yeah, I get it, Feng.” Kade reached up to adjust the straps of his pack once more, settling the load more comfortably on his back. His right hand ached as he did so, still weak and painfully fragile, even six months after the regeneration genes had been injected. He forced himself to use the hand, regardless. Keep working it, the doctors had told him. Give it every reason to grow stronger.

“Kade,” Feng said up ahead, more seriously now.

Kade looked up at his friend. Feng had stopped, at a spot where a clearing in the jungle gave them a view off the side of the trail and down the mountain. And now he was pointing, smiling.

Kade squinted into the morning sunshine. His cloned right eye watered in the glare, more light-sensitive than the left. He brought one hand up to block the sun, followed Feng’s pointed finger.

Down below them on this winding mountain path, tucked away in the lush green jungle that clung to these slopes, he could see buildings. The ornately sloped red roof of a pagoda. Two smaller buildings tucked away.

“Chu Mom Ray,” Feng said with a grin. “Welcome to Vietnam.”

Kade smiled in return, then nodded in satisfaction. Chu Mom Ray. They’d made it.

Feng turned, moving faster down the trail now, buoyed by the nearness of their destination.

“Hey Kade,” he called from up ahead. “You know what Confucius said about the man who runs behind a car?”

Kade laughed, struggling to keep up. “What, Feng?”

“He gets exhausted!” Feng sang out. “Exhausted!”

Kade groaned, and chased his friend down the mountain.

It took another hour to make their way down to the tiny monastery, scrambling down the trail, whacking their way through brush, inhaling the lush green scent of the jungle. The monks greeted them as heroes, Kade as a holy man. He did his best to deflect their adoration, laugh with them, diffuse the power imbalance as always.

I’m just like you, he tried to show them. Just another novice.

The monks let them wash themselves in the cold mountain water. It felt amazing in the heat. Then the novices brought them clean clothes and led them into the kitchen to be fed.

Kade watched the cooks with joy. They were preparing the midday meal, peeling, chopping, stirring, spicing. They moved as one, wordlessly, bridged by Nexus, a six-armed being, human yet more than human, moving with a single purpose.

This, Kade thought. This is what Nexus can be. Total coordination. Emergent order. Another symphony of mind.