Radar swept over them twice as they approached. The combat display in Sam’s goggles alerted her, identified the sources, offered firing vectors to neutralize them.

The house and cliff ahead of them were augmented in her vision, 3D topology subtly enhanced. If she chose she could zoom in, pass through those walls and into schematics compiled by satellite and drone data, zoom through the key locations for their plan. Her teammates were arrows at the periphery of her visual field, their proximity high and their statuses both showing green.

God, I’ve missed technology, Sam thought.

Feng interrupted her thoughts. Do you trust him? the Confucian Fist sent her.

Sam didn’t turn, didn’t look at Nakamura, didn’t show any sign that Feng was speaking to her.

Feng continued, He’s not going to take Kade back to the CIA?

Sam hesitated. Do I trust Kevin? Really?

Then she felt ashamed of herself, ashamed for not trusting the man who’d run into a burning building, who’d picked her up off of that floor, who’d jumped from a third-story window to save her, who’d raised her as much from that point on as her foster parents had.

Yes, she sent it back to Feng, firmly, clearly. I trust him.

They brought the inflatable boat ashore on the narrow strip of tumbled rocks at the base of the cliff, in a ripple of the rock that would hide them from the view of the guardhouse.

Sam shook her left shoulder out. It was stiff, but her posthuman genetics had healed most of the damage left by the bullet a week ago. She stretched, then took point on the climb, with Feng behind her and Nakamura in the rear.

The cliff was granite, vertical but run through with cracks and irregularities. Her combat goggles painted green contour lines on it, showed her every indentation and protuberance, animated a path forward for her, gently flashed location of every hand and foot hold that would keep her out of view of guards and cameras.

Sam put a hand on the cliff, and the gecko grips in the palm of her glove adhered her to it. Then she started to climb, strength and skill and technology eating up the three-hundred-foot ascent, chameleonware turning her into little more than a faint distortion against the rock.

Above, the children waited.

Feng climbed, his eyes on the rock. His body was sore, still aching from the wounds he’d taken, but better than it had been days ago. Posthuman genes, ample calories, and the medkit Nakamura had given him access to saw to that.

Feng focused his eyes and hands on the climb, but part of his mind still spun. Nakamura. Would the man truly allow Kade and Feng to go? Would he betray his CIA masters that way?