“Which is how he waltzed in,” Jakob added. “Point of interest, John Smith once referred to Soren as the only person he’d ever met who truly understood him. The d-pad has everything we have on him, which includes everything the DAR has on him. We’re pursuing him ourselves, of course, as is your government. But we had a feeling you’d want the information yourself.”
Cooper balled the pad and jammed it in his pocket. Didn’t say thanks, and didn’t plan to.
“As for your son, I’m sure you’ve spoken to the doctors. I won’t go back over it. What I will say is that there is literally nowhere in the world where people can do the things we can here. And your son arrived in far better shape than you. After all, he was alive.”
Cooper had been preparing a response, found it withering on his lips. “Huh?”
“The actual time between Soren hitting Todd and stabbing you was 0.63 seconds,” Erik said. “To a T-naught of 11.2, that means he had 7.056 seconds to position his attack. The wound was perfect, tearing open the left ventricle of your heart. Death was almost instantaneous.”
“You’re saying . . .” He glanced around. “What, I was dead and you brought me back?”
“Nick,” Natalie said, “it’s true.”
He turned to her. “Yeah?”
She nodded. “I watched you die.” Like most things Natalie said, the statement was bald and direct. She didn’t play games, didn’t obfuscate or work agendas. Which didn’t mean that that simple statement wasn’t shaded with meaning. Beyond the fact, he heard the pain, the loss, the regret—and the joy and hope of his impossible reprieve. She continued, “This isn’t a hospital. It’s their private underground clinic.”
“There are advantages,” Jakob said, “to living in a place with more brilliants than anywhere else. Especially if you’re in charge of it, and you couldn’t give a shit for FDA policies and ethics review boards.”
“Greatest danger postmortem is cellular damage due to lack of oxygen,” Erik said. “Solution is obvious: reduce metabolic demands to near zero, suspending patient. Then repairing the damage is a matter of tissue engineering using adipose stromal stem cells harvested from fat.”
“You mean I have a . . .” He looked down at his chest, remembered only in that moment he was wearing a hospital gown. Shit. Hard to look dignified in one of them. Gently, he eased the neckline out. A small shunt rose out of the puckered scar in the center of his chest. Fluid had leaked from when he pulled the cable out. He remembered the robotic arms, and panic rose quick, a feeling of being too deep underwater with no air. He paused, took a breath, then another. “What, a mechanical heart?”
“Of course not,” Jakob said. “What do you think this is, 1985? Your heart is still your heart. We didn’t even have to cut you open. Our doctors used the wound as an entry point, injected your own harvested stem cells to seal the tear in your ventricle. Like patching a leaky tire.”
“But . . . they’ve tried that at Johns Hopkins, at the Mayo. They’ve never been able to get the cells to—”
“This isn’t Johns Hopkins,” Erik snapped. “This is new. Your rules don’t apply here.”
Cooper stiffened. He’d gotten in the habit of thinking of Erik as a lovable nerd and Jakob as the real power, when in fact the opposite was true. Jakob was a good talker and a smart guy, but everything around them—including the black clinic that had brought him back from the dead—began and ended with Erik.
And now your son’s life is in his hands.
Slowly, he said, “I need to talk to the president.”
“Shortly after he heard that you had been assassinated,” Jakob said, “President Clay ordered the military into Wyoming. They’ve seized the towns of Gillette, Shoshoni, and Rawlins, effectively cordoning off the NCH. The air force is flying patrols over every city. More than seventy-five thousand troops are involved, from every branch of the military.”
“Seventy-five thousand?” Cooper rubbed at his eyes. “But once the president knows I’m not dead—”
“He still has to act the same way.” Jakob shook his head. “Clay doesn’t have any choice.”
“Storm clouds,” Erik said. “Birds of prey. Vectors with mass. Frightened people want action more than they want correct action. It’s in the data. Clay has no choice.”
Cooper said, “Why are you still lying to me?”
That caught Erik off guard, so he followed the jab with a hook. “I know that you’ve found the source of the abnorms. That you’ve even developed a serum that can give normal people gifts.”
Natalie said, “What?” She’d been staring at Todd, but Cooper’s declaration had caught her. “Is that true?”
Cooper looked at the Epsteins. After a moment, Jakob nodded. “There’s a lot to iron out, but it works.”
“That’s the real protection for the NCH,” Cooper said. “Not me killing John Smith or sovereignty or their billions. So I’m asking again. Why are you lying to me?”
“What do you mean?”
“You talk about people being terrified, about Clay not having a choice, but you don’t mention that you have a magic potion that changes the world. Most normals don’t want a war; they’re just scared that they’re being made obsolete. This changes that, or at least gives them the option. So all you have to do is . . .” He trailed off, because it hit him that—
Jakob’s arms are crossed; Erik is biting the inside of his cheek. Negative reactions. Why?
They can’t be holding out for financial gain; they have more money than anyone alive.
Besides, they’re facing a full-scale attack. Sharing the truth about the serum is the only thing that might prevent the destruction of the Holdfast. Not to mention stopping a civil war.
And yet they’ve gone negative.
—he’d been missing something.
“Wait. Yesterday when we talked, you said there wasn’t enough time. You were talking about this, weren’t you? Even your bid for sovereignty was calculated to buy you more time.” He stared back and forth, brother to brother. Both smart, both well-meaning in their own way, and the three of them somehow responsible for saving the world, and how exactly that had happened didn’t matter anymore, because his gift had jumped ahead and answered the question for him. “Which means”—he rubbed at his forehead—“you don’t have the serum, do you?”
“The scientist behind it is a difficult person,” Jakob said. “Dr. Couzen would only accept our funding if he had complete autonomy. He shared progress reports, test results, but never the formula itself.”
“So?”
“Dr. Couzen was kidnapped a week ago,” Jakob said.
“By the DAR,” Erik added. “Your government wants a war.”
Revolution? You’re an idiot. You don’t even know what that word means. Forget your precious Mao and Che and Fidel. If they’ve appeared on a T-shirt, they haven’t changed shit.
You want revolution, look at Alexander Fleming. Penicillin transformed the world in ways Lenin and Washington only dreamt of.
Now sit down and shut up, you autocratic frat boy. It’s adult swim.
CHAPTER 33
The pond was shallow, the edges rimmed with toppled cattails, their stalks broken. The water smoothly mirrored the hazy November sky, and the air was crisp with the scent of pine and a promise of the snow the winter would bring.