His mind responded. He opened his eyes and he could see clearly again. Shiva’s transmission was still an incredible weight pressing on him, but he could think.

Kade pushed himself up, but the pain from his burnt and broken body was still incredible. It sent him back down.

Fuck!

Crawl! he ordered himself. Crawl!

He put his doubly ruined right hand forward, put his weight down on the bandages around it. Pain flared out from it, even through the endorphins, but he forced himself to move on. His knee next, covered in fresh burns from the explosion in his apartment. It flared in agony as he moved but he couldn’t stop. Left leg. Burning pain. Left hand, rending pain in his right as it took his weight.

Pain is an illusion, he whispered.

Pain is an illusion.

Again. Again. Again. Move across the courtyard, move towards the building, towards the stairs. And then up.

There was only one way he could win. Only one. He had to get close. Close enough that his own signal could cut through the interference Shiva was sending through his repeaters. He had to get his own brain within feet of Shiva’s, within inches, if he could. And then he could end this.

Sam knelt, her body racked by sobs, her goggles fogging up from her tears. Kevin. Oh my God, Kevin.

Shiva’s mind yelled at her, pushed her down, tried to send her deeper into despair and surrender.

Evil. Pure evil. That’s what this was. A perversion. A tool for slavery, for possession, for abuse. For rape and for murder.

“Get out of my mind!” Sam screamed. She knew what she had to do. She had to have this thing out of her mind.

She went into her head, found the command she had to execute.

[Nexus purge]

The system answered her:

[This command will erase Nexus OS and purge all Nexus nodes from your brain. All stored data and applications will be lost. Are you sure you want to continue? Y/N]

[Yes]

Sam executed the command, felt her mind begin to change at once, felt this abomination start to leave her.

And then she turned, and started looking for a gun.

Kade crawled down a long hall, dark and deserted. Shiva’s mind blared out from him from every direction. Sleep. Give up. Stop struggling.

Signal strength wasn’t everything. The signal was still digital. Its effect on Kade depended on how precisely it mapped to his own neurons. Yet Shiva’s amplifiers gave him a huge advantage, allowing him to saturate the signal for every single Nexus node, and to maintain that signal indefinitely, tirelessly, in a way no normal human – even with Nexus 5 – could.