No, he thought. Nakamura had told Sam what she wanted to hear. He would double-cross them in the end, do his best to deliver Kade – and likely Feng – to the Americans.

Feng wasn’t about to let that happen.

He climbed on, his senses attuned to the man below him, his mind running through scenarios.

Nakamura paused at the top of the climb, still on the rock, just below the lip that would put them on the walkway atop the cliff. To his left the transparent outlines of Feng and Sam clung to the stone.

His retinal display tapped into the laser-delivered feed from the circling surveillance drones. They flapped their bird-like wings hundreds of yards away from the island and zoomed in their robotic eyes. Two men in the guardhouse a hundred feet north along the cliff. Another was passing by on his mobile patrol now.

Nakamura bounced instructions to the sub’s above-water antenna. Status rolled across his eyes. An aerial map of the region came alive in his senses. Out at sea, half-a-dozen green icons blinked in his vision, in a loose ring around the island, a thousand yards out from shore.

Positions, check.

Weapons, check.

Target locations, locked.

Nakamura turned his head slowly to his compatriots. Feng nodded. Sam nodded.

It was time.

Kevin Nakamura pulled a menu down with his eyes, clicked on an item, clicked again to confirm, and phase one of the assault began.

Chapter 80: Brave Girl

80

BRAVE GIRL

Saturday November 3rd

Ling cried for hours. She had never been so frightened in her life. Not even when her mommy’s body had died. Not even when they’d shut her off from her mommy and she’d been alone for the first time. She’d been sure it would end soon, that she’d have her mommy back and not be alone any more…

But now they were going to kill her mommy. Kill her dead, the way that humans died. She tried to reach out her mind for Feng again, for Kade again.

FENG! FENG, PLEASE! FENG, HELP ME!

Nothing.

KADE! KADE, I NEED YOU! KADE, PLEASE!

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Ling was alone. And only she could stop the humans from killing her mommy.

She cried curled up in a ball, the ampule and injector from the freezer clutched in her hands. She cried as softly as she could, so her father wouldn’t hear, so he wouldn’t know that she knew.

She watched her father in the house monitors. He was asleep, his breathing slow and regular. In just hours he would rise to murder her mother. Unless she did this. Did it now.

Ling Shu rose. She wiped her face with her dress, did her best to stop her sniffles. She was a posthuman. Maybe the only posthuman if her mother died. She had to be brave. She had to do the right thing.