Free Apex: Nexus Arc Book 3 by Ramez Naam Page A

before…”
    The medic stared at her.
    “Please,” Sam said.
    “Physical trauma only,” the medic said, and closed up her kit.
    Sam’s fists clenched tighter.
----
    T hey sealed them up in a large-ish briefing room, with soldiers positioned outside, while Colonel Atwal awaited her orders on what to do with them. Only when Sam complained loudly did the soldiers bring any food and water, or allow bathroom trips, always under the guard of multiple armed soldiers.
    Her heart kept pounding. They weren’t being treated as guests. They weren’t being embraced. They were prisoners here.
    Kevin died again and again at her hands.
    She pushed it away, focused again on the children, held Sarai, held Aroon, held Kit, held all the children to her, wishing she could touch their minds. And shuddering with the horrible memory of killing the man who’d raised her every time she even thought of taking Nexus again.
    We’ve got a plan, she told herself. They want something. They want Kade .
    Stay cool. Stick to the plan. Make the kids safe. I come later.
    After a few hours Colonel Atwal came to them again.
    “My orders have come through,” she told them. “We’re sending you on to Delhi.”
----
    K ade collapsed into a window seat in exhaustion, pain flaring up from his midsection as he did.
    The aircraft to Delhi was larger, a military passenger jet. With all of them on board, more than half the seats were still empty. It was also Faraday caged, effectively shielding Kade and everyone else in the passenger compartment off from the electromagnetic world outside.
    They were prisoners once again.
    Kade could see Shiva’s private jet sitting on the tarmac as they taxied past it. He had the access codes to that plane, as he did to almost everything of Shiva’s now. He wouldn’t change those access codes. He wouldn’t steal, wouldn’t divert resources from wherever Shiva’s estate or the courts eventually sent them. But, for the time being, he could reach out to that aircraft, or innumerable other assets of Shiva’s, and they’d respond. If he wasn’t inside this Faraday cage, that was. If the Indians ever allowed him to touch the net again.
    They lifted off into early morning sky. Behind him, in plentiful seats, Kade could feel the children nodding off to sleep after their long ordeal, hear low voices talking, Sam’s voice, speaking in Thai. He could feel Sarai’s mind back there, befuddled, confused, longing. Longing for Sam, for the touch of a mind that was no longer there, no longer linked by Nexus.
    The exhaustion pulled at Kade harder. The grief, the sorrow at all the death. The physical pain of everything he’d been through. He needed to rest, to regroup, to be ready and focused. He closed his eyes.
    Then Feng lowered himself into the seat next to him, his left arm bound up in a proper sling now.
    You think this is going to work? Feng sent. The transmission was tuned for Kade’s brain alone, a tight beam, at minimal power. Even via this method, Feng was taking no chances.
    Kade shook his head mentally. I don’t know, Feng. He sent it back just as carefully. Then he thought better, thought that was too bleak, and tried to be more cheerful. What’s the worst that could happen?
    Feng was silent for a moment. Then: Well… they throw the kids into an orphanage. Torture you, me, and Sam until we tell them everything. Mostly you. Feng paused. Then… they sell us to your American friends?
    Kade turned, surprised, and found Feng grinning at him.
    Then Feng laughed, and laughed, and laughed, a bellowing raucous sound, filling up the plane.
    Kade shook his head, a chuckle coming out of him unbidden, and turned back to the window, to the ever receding blue of the Indian Ocean below, the vast stretch of water they still had to cross to reach the Indian mainland.
    It’ll work , he sent to Feng. Probably.
    Feng shrugged, good humor radiating from his mind.
    “Hey, why no in-flight entertainment system?” the Chinese soldier