Kade gripped the man’s mind tighter, then took stock of the rest of the situation.

Bogdan couldn’t breathe. His heart was pounding. There was something in his mind. Something in his mind!

He tried to get up but the stranger had control of his limbs. He tried to break the connection but he was locked out.

Oh God, he thought. Someone else has a back door. A back door into me!

Kade let himself breathe deeper. The man named Arkady was physically unharmed. He’d gotten here in time. He broke the bonds on Arkady’s mind, and the Russian rose to his feet, and ran, screaming.

Kade rifled through Bogdan’s mind. Where was the coercion code? Ahhh, there. Files opened for him. He skimmed through them. More patterns to block in the next version of Nexus. More abuse paths that he could cut off from everyone.

Bogdan had given out hundreds of doses of Nexus loaded with this code. Thousands. Kade would need to send out a virus, hunting for them, rewriting code to fix these exploits when it found them.

Who are you? Bogdan asked.

Kade shook his head mentally. I’m the last mind you’ll ever touch.

Please, Bogdan thought at him. I have money. I have friends.

Kade ignored him. He downloaded the code to add to his libraries, then went to work.

He removed Bogdan’s administrator privileges to the Nexus OS in his own mind, locked him out of any control over the nanobots that infested him, took away Bogdan’s ability to modify, upgrade, or even remove Nexus in the process.

No! Bogdan screamed.

Kade locked Bogdan out of Nexus communication, then. His brain would be hermetically sealed, never to touch another’s. Only Kade would be able to access it, via his own back doors.

Fuck you! Bogdan raged. You can’t do that.

Now the rest.

How many times have you done this? Kade asked Bogdan.

None! Bogdan replied. This was the first time! And I didn’t!

Memories came back, streaming from Bogdan’s mind. Corfu. Ibiza. Mykonos. Three Nexus-aided thefts. One leading to a murder.

And worse. He caught a glimpse of a girl, terrified, senses mentally crippled, her clothes half ripped off, her body held down by Bogdan’s will and his perverted code as he…

Kade grimaced, and yanked himself away from Bogdan’s memory. Thousands of miles away, his stomach rose up. His fists clenched.

You’re disgusting, Bogdan.

Kade started in on the rewiring, tying neural circuits together. Bogdan’s knowledge of programming. His understanding of Nexus. His concept of violence. His capacity for sexual arousal. All of these Kade tied to nausea, to crippling anxiety, to pervasive pain.

The man yelled at him. What are you doing?

I’m neutering you, Kade told him, grim satisfaction rising in his thoughts. You won’t ever steal, or kill, or fuck again.