Martin Holtzmann closed his eyes and he was there again. The spray of snow stung at his face. The wind rushed by, roaring in his ears. His borrowed body leaned left, skis cutting in so perfectly to deep powder on this steep slope. Muscles flush with strength and youth pushed poles in and leaned right, carving around the next mogul like he hadn’t since…

An elbow dug into his side, and he snapped his eyes open. Joe Duran, head of Homeland Security’s Emerging Risks Directorate, and Holtzmann’s boss’s boss, was glaring at him.

“Pay attention,” the man whispered.

Holtzmann mumbled something in reply, shifted in his seat, bringing his eyes back to the podium. President John Stockton was speaking, addressing this assembled crowd outside Department of Homeland Security headquarters.

Holtzmann mopped sweat from his brow, beneath his shock of unruly white hair. Even at 9am, the Washington DC sun was brutal. Already they were on track for the hottest summer in North American history, coming just on the heels of the record-breaking heat wave of 2039. He wanted to just sink back into that memory of snow, that experience of another’s body, of youth, gleaned through the Nexus connection between Holtzmann’s mind and another’s.

“…have to protect our humanity,” the President was saying. “We must understand that some technologies, however exciting, put us on a path to dehumanization…”

Like the technology in my skull, Holtzmann thought.

Nexus 5. How could he resist it? As ERD’s Neuroscience Director, he’d led technical debriefing of Kaden Lane, Rangan Shankari, and Ilyana Alexander. He’d understood what they’d done. Something marvelous – taking Nexus and transforming it from a street drug and into a tool. Dangerous, yes. Full of potential for abuse. But oh, what a temptation!

And when Nexus 5 was released to the world? That horrible night when the mission to recapture Kaden Lane from that monastery in Thailand had gone completely awry? The night that Su-Yong Shu, one of the greatest minds of a generation, had been killed. The night his friend and colleague Warren Becker had died of a heart attack.

A terrible night. And to watch as thousands around the world got access to this tool… How could he resist? He’d taken that vial from storage in his lab, tipped it back and sent the silvery liquid down his throat, then waited as the nanoparticles found their way into his brain, attached themselves to neurons, self-assembled into information processing machines.