You’re alive! Feng yelled into his mind, their heads touching now, close enough to cut through Shiva’s amplified signal.

Shiva, Kade mentally yelled back. Upstairs.

Feng shook his head. Escape! This way! he yelled back, gesturing towards the end of the hall. Soldiers coming! Lots!

Kade pulled back, tried to look into Feng’s eyes. There was just a blur there, a faint distortion where he knew his friend was. He pushed his head forward until his brow touched Feng’s again.

I have to end this, Feng. He yelled, I have to go up. Can you hold off his soldiers?

Feng went silent for a moment, then he laughed into Kade’s mind, a bellowing, absurd laugh.

Yeah, he yelled back, and Kade caught a mental glimpse of a feral grin. I’ll stop them. Go stop Shiva.

Kade hugged Feng tight, then pushed himself, staggered into the banister for the next flight. He dragged himself up another step, and another.

He looked over his shoulder on the third step, but if Feng was there, grinning at the army bearing down on him, Kade’s eyes couldn’t see him.

Sam scrambled on hands and knees until she found the pistol, on the body of one of the men she’d killed. Her whole body was trembling now, her senses going haywire as Nexus nodes in her brain received their purge commands, detached from their host neurons, split into their component molecules to be swept back out through her blood-brain barrier, filtered from her blood by her kidneys and eventually pissed out of her entirely.

She was shivering, flashes of color and sensation and sound and smells wafting over her as this thing that had been part of her brain for months detached from her. There were tears in her eyes. Tears and memories of Jake, of the children, of meditation with Ananda’s monks.

For Kevin, she told herself. For Kevin.

She checked the gun, ejected the clip with trembling hands. Fully loaded. More than sufficient for her needs.

Killing, she told herself. All I’m good for. All I’ve ever been good for.

She put her back against the wall of the home, stared out into the night sky, out over the surging ocean, waited for the shivers and sensations to pass, and brought the gun up before her eyes.

Shiva yelled into his bracelet again. The sounds of gunfire came back, curses, cries of pain. Something boomed down below in the building.

And still Lane came closer.

Very well, Shiva thought. I’ll do this myself.

Kade climbed. A second flight. A third.

He felt a vibration through the floor. An explosion somewhere. Feng was fighting for his life back there. For Kade’s life. For more than he knew.

Have to make this count.

One shot. Just one shot at this. Shiva was strong, physically augmented, faster than Kade. The man could kill him with his bare hands.