“Only here, it’s not a handful of ingredients; human DNA has more than twenty-one thousand genes, and they interact in very subtle, complex ways. Still, once we started looking at epigenetic alterations in gene expressions, specifically as they relate to telomeres, we found the pattern.”
“Simple as that.”
He smiled, cocked an eyebrow. “Pretty sexy, right?”
“So what was the root cause?”
“Hmm?”
“You said that something had happened to their ancestors that created the brilliants.”
“Oh, that.” He shrugged. “No idea. Science tends to be about stumbling onto the what, then spending decades understanding the why. My guess, there is no single cause. For a hundred and fifty years humanity has toyed with the planet. We’ve poisoned the seas and damaged the food chain and tested thermonuclear weapons and introduced mutated crops and just basically been mucking with things we don’t fully understand. And one of the results of that is the gifted.”
She stared at the fire, the light tracing the fine features of her face, making her eyes glow. “So you figured out what makes people brilliant. Why not share it?”
“Once we understood the pattern, it occurred to Abe that it might be possible to recreate it. That it might actually be pretty easy.”
“Easy? People have been working on this for thirty years.”
“Right. Locating the cause was hard. But replicating it isn’t. Call it the three-potato theory.” He saw her look and laughed. “A phrase of Abe’s. Say that the cause of the gifted is eating three potatoes in a row. Figuring that out, given the entire range of human experience, that’s hard. But once you realize it—”
“All you need to do is eat three potatoes.”
“Or in this case, design a target therapy using non-coding RNA to regulate gene expression.”
“And it works? You can make people brilliant?”
“Our proof-of-concept work was wildly successful. We were just trying to figure out how to move into phase one trials on human beings when Abe disappeared.”
Amy stood up and stalked away. The move was so sudden that his first thought was maybe she’d heard something, and he stood quickly. “What is it?”
She was staring out the window, her hands clenching and unclenching.
“Baby?”
His wife whirled. “You stupid, stupid little boy.”
Her words caught him like a sucker punch. It had been such a relief to talk to her, to tell her about his triumph. To sit in this stolen moment of comfort and show off for his wife. “I don’t—”
“What did you think would happen?” She hissed the words, and it was worse than a yell. “Did you think?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Are you really that blind?” Amy stepped forward, and the firelight that a moment ago had made her so lovely now only underscored her fury. “You and Abe. Two dumb geniuses.”
“Look, I know it’s off-the-reservation, but you have to understand, we were onto the biggest discovery since, I don’t know, splitting the atom.”
“That’s right. That’s exactly right. And what did they use that for?”
He opened his mouth, closed it.
“You have a family, Ethan. A daughter. And you and your buddy cook up this little science project—”
“Hey—”
“—that will change the whole world. I mean, change everything. And it didn’t occur to you that people would want to take it from you?”
“I.” He blew a breath. “I’m a scientist. I just wanted to know.”
“Well, congratulations. You’ve made history.” The scorn in her voice was shocking. The two of them were good liberal intellectuals, they talked, they listened. They fought, sure, but didn’t go for blood. In the years they’d been married, he’d never heard her speak this way.
That’s not true. It’s just never been directed at you. But you heard it last night, when she called on Jeremy’s god to damn him.
“Amy . . .”
“Be quiet, Ethan. Just. Be quiet.”
And he had, the rest of the day. He’d hoped a night’s sleep might clear it all up, but though they’d shared the master bed, she’d slept huddled up on the far edge, her body angular with fury even in her sleep. This morning he’d made breakfast, cooking eggs and brewing coffee.
She hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t, in fact, said anything to him until just now, when she suggested Violet was cold.
They started back toward the cabin. The boom of another shotgun rang out, closer this time. He wanted to talk to her, to beg her to talk to him, but he forced himself to stay quiet.
And at the back entrance to the cabin, she turned and held out her arms for Vi. Ethan passed her over in silence. Amy clutched their daughter and started away, then changed her mind. “Ethan, I love you. You know that. But I don’t know if I can forgive you.”
“Amy . . .”
“If it was just us, that would be different. But someone kidnapped Abe, probably killed him. Those same people are after you. Maybe that’s federal agents, maybe not, but it doesn’t matter because the DAR is chasing you too. You robbed a gas station yesterday—”
“I had no choice!”
“And all of that, all of it, is going to come down on us.” She hoisted their daughter. “On her. Think about that.”
Then she walked inside and slammed the door.
CHAPTER 34
He was a dead man, haunted by the words of another dead man.
“If you do this, the world will burn.”
Had it only been three months since Drew Peters had said that to him? Three months since he’d sat on a park bench outside the Lincoln Memorial with a bomb in his hands, deciding whether to set it off. Deciding that the world deserved the truth, no matter the potential costs.
You pitiable fool. What naïveté, what blind optimism, to tempt the universe.
As a direct result of his decision, Equitable Services had been shut down, and the DAR’s teeth had been pulled. John Smith had been exonerated in the court of public opinion and given free rein to act. President Walker had resigned and was facing trial, making room for a good man without the will or wisdom to be president, a man who was about to plunge them into the civil war Cooper had spent his whole adult life fighting to prevent. The mailed fist of the United States government was clenched just outside the city walls. And his son lay in a coma, lost in a world of nightmares for the sin of trying to protect his dad.
Yet again, his children were suffering for his actions. Not in some metaphoric way, but literally. The d-pad on his lap played the video again and again. The whole nightmare was only ten seconds long: Soren entering the restaurant, cutting the throat of one guard and the brachial artery of the other before turning. Cooper throwing the chair, leaping onto the table, attacking. The dumb look on his face as he stared at his hand cut near in half. Todd charging. The assassin spinning with his elbow up. His son’s eyes gone glassy and his body limp. Cooper hurling himself onto the dagger, the knife spearing him through the heart. Falling beside his son as Soren walked away.
Freeze. Skip back. Soren entering the restaurant . . .
He’d made himself watch it over and over, the impact never going away, the images never losing their horror.
Cooper rubbed at his eyes with his good hand. In the hospital bed, his son lay still, breathing and little else. Tubes running into his arms. A mass of bandages around his shaved head.
After the Epsteins had left, Cooper had convinced Natalie to lie down. She’d been reluctant, but exhaustion finally won over, and she’d curled up with Kate in the next room. Cooper, meanwhile, didn’t think he’d ever sleep again. His meds were wearing off, and it felt like talons were digging into his chest while a red-hot chainsaw spun in his hand. The pain was good, the tiniest penance for his hubris. Like watching the video again and again. Like picturing the troops massing outside New Canaan. Seventy-five thousand troops, a ridiculous excess of force. It wasn’t about subduing the Holdfast, it was about obliterating it. Even in this subterranean space, he could hear jets streak by overhead.