Crux Quotes
"Kade could feel the sweat on her brow, her breath coming fast."
"Kade could hear the music in her mind, feel the music."
"You’re not human anymore. You’re like me now."
"The pianist’s mind in turn was linked to the other musicians’."
"There was no conductor here, none but the emergent sum of their minds."
"No audience, but someday, someday they would play with a full orchestra."
"He could feel the walls between the musicians’ minds dropping."
"Stabilize the patient, she told herself through the bubbling madness of her own mind."
"She couldn’t touch the inner loop, couldn’t touch the most basic parts of the algorithms that ran her brain."
"Lucidity came and went. Delusions came, in the long void between contacts from the outside."
"Data was a blessing. News. Something from the outside, not the crazy swirls that came from her own imagination."
"Touch my body, then, husband. She’d dropped to her knees in their loft, begging him, all pride gone."
"Your clone is not my wife, he’d told her, disgust plain on his face."
"The daughter she loved more than she’d ever loved anything."
"You’re a respected scientist, Martin," Barnes replied, smiling that unnerving smile of his.
"She was there, pondering her own weakness when she got the news. Ilyana Alexander was dead."
"The hypocrisy was acid inside him. The risk of being caught was a cold dread."
"Nexus OS came back online as the Nexus nodes restored themselves."
"He ended the day at his desk, clearing the backlog of work that had built up while he’d been at the White House and on Capitol Hill."
"Just this once, Holtzmann told himself. A special exception."
"Why don’t you do something more useful with that mouth?" she said lightly, as she slowly lowered herself.
"He knew what he needed. Not a little one. More."
"Bodhisattva. Heroic-minded one. Bringer of light."
"Bullets smashing him a million bullets a billion bullets."
"Her daughter. Ling. The daughter she’d made."
"Amid all the pain and horrors of the world, there was so much beauty in the world."
"Those million minds could be like this, connected, merged, mutually comprehending, more than the sum of their parts."
"You are the brave ones. You are the ones who’ll build a better world. You are the beginning of something much bigger."
"Do you really know that you’re not a holy man?"
"I still believed in people, still believed they’d use this mostly for good, despite the abuses."
"The streets were its arteries. The cars and trucks and scooters and pedestrians its blood."
"In this world a being able to process information more rapidly than humans was the ultimate threat."
"If you ever loved me ever cared please help please."
"All of those had their time and place. All of them could be justified under the right circumstances, when fighting for the right noble cause."
"My conscience is clear, Shiva observed. He nodded to himself."
"Predators and prey. And the only way to deal with an anti-social predator like this was to put it down."
"What choice did he have? To let ignorant savages kill his people with impunity?"
"He felt the old anger rising. Those monsters deserved worse, far worse than the fate he’d given them."
"In days his new agent would reach every corner of the Nexus world."
"The problem was one of linkability. His phone was linked to the site by its presence there when the deaths happened."
"We’re the Neanderthals, and we need to nip this problem in the bud, before we aren’t able to keep up."
"They might accomplish things we can only dream of."
"We're here now. My job is to protect the citizens of the United States of America."
"The world would have less art, less science, less of everything we value, all those inventions of culture that the Neanderthals couldn’t have achieved."
"The groups mingled. They even mated. But the modern humans were just smarter, faster, better able to think and communicate and invent things."
"And there’s no way that I’m going to allow a threat to them to develop, no matter what wonderful world you think might come later, after we’re extinct."
"She forced a smile, forced happy thoughts, and stepped forward to hug the children goodbye."
"Sarai threw herself into Sam’s arms and Sam held her tight, kissed her on the brow, told her she loved her."
"Jake turned, but Sam smiled and spoke first. 'I’ll get it!' she told them, grateful for something to do."
"The light lit them from behind, rendering them black silhouettes."
"Then the man pulled out his gun and started firing."
"His feet left the ground and for a moment he was in free flight."
"Sam dove through the doorway into the boys’ room as the man opened fire."
"He checked its definition again. The Fire function took two arguments, the object identifier and an offset from that target."
"Then her foot stomped down on the forearm of his gun hand, pinning it as she stepped over him."
"Sam raised her gun to fire but Sarai was there, in the line of sight, screaming now."
"Sam heard gravel crunch outside. They were coming towards her."
"She threw herself forward with all she had, sent her body into a horizontal leap, arms extended."
"The palms of her hands were lacerated from her fall."
"Holtzmann needed this out of his head. He needed to forget."
"Holtzmann searched and searched and searched, finding dead end after dead end."
"The answer was clear. The President had the most to gain."
"Sam put her hands on his shirt, ripped it open as gently as she could, tried to see the wound better."
"Tears rolled down Sam’s face. A sob ripped its way out of her."
"She couldn’t feel his mind at all, but she knew it was there, knew he was running Nexus."
"Then she rammed her foot home into his testicles and a scream burst out of his mouth."
"Sam felt the soldier die below her. But she’d seen enough. She knew where to go."
"Breece woke too soon, his heart pounding in his chest."
"He couldn’t shake this dread. Couldn’t shake this fear that he’d been so wrong."
"Breece woke before dawn, Ava wrapped in his arms."
"Soldiers patrolled the filthy streets, shooting the looters and rioters they found."
"Chen numbed himself to it. Only one thing mattered."
"Kade fell fast asleep after they returned from the club."
"Kade woke abruptly, something flashing in his mind."
"Feng pushed his will down Martin Holtzmann’s pathetic mind."
"Kade wrapped his mental fist around the man’s brainstem."
"Kade felt the power he held over Holtzmann’s life, the supremacy, the absolute control."
"Holtzmann tried to scream as the alien mind invaded his."
"Sabrina smiled as it rang. She was about to make a cool grand."
"Shiva watched the feeds as his soldiers stormed the building."
"Kade sat at the bar with Feng and watched the club heat up."
"Shiva listened as the bounty hunters’ channel burst into noise."
"Kade felt his pulse picking up, his breathing coming heavy."
"Breece pulled the trigger. The boom echoed like a cannon in the small space."
"Feng felt the sting as something bit into his neck."
"Regen genes were already knitting the long fibers of her muscle back together."
"Her engineered clotting factors had cut off the bleeding almost immediately."
"If Jake had had those advantages… If the technology wasn’t locked up for soldiers and spies…"
"The needs of the living trumped the needs of the dead."
"She wished she could do something for him, bury him, treat him with the tenderness he deserved."
"Sam swallowed the bitterness, washed out the wound, gritted her teeth at the pain."
"She’d leave him here, the most peaceful place she knew."
"A tear made its way down her face, a sob threatened to emerge."
"He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious."
"I need Nexus to feel other people, please I need it to be real."
"He could nudge the world, could pull strings from behind the scenes, could direct scientists and engineers towards the right problems."
"All it would require was the key that would open a million minds today."
"Holtzmann slipped out of bed at 6am, while Anne still slept."
"His head pounded and his mouth was dry. His body felt stiff. His stomach was unsteady."
"And now Zoe’s track was bending again, turning it towards north by northwest."