And there was something else.
“The serum,” she said slowly. “Dr. Couzen’s work on replicating abnorm gifts. When you sent me into the DAR to find out about it, you never intended to share it, did you? To make it public.”
He didn’t respond, just held her gaze.
“I ask because I believed in you.”
“Shannon—”
“There’s a way out of all of this. And you aren’t using it.” She stared at him, seeing it all now, the whole ugly mess. All the things she had let herself ignore. “You want this war as badly as they do, don’t you? You want to march at the head of an army and conquer the world. No matter how much blood is spilled in the process.”
His eyes hardened. “I care about our blood. Not theirs.”
“Blood is blood.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not. And I won’t be the one starting this war. They’re the ones who will use military force.”
“They haven’t yet.”
“They will. Someone on their side will be so sure of the need to kill abnorms that they’ll launch a concerted strike against their own people. Maybe Clay, maybe someone on his staff, maybe some eighteen-year-old kid who gets nervous behind a trigger. They’ll attack, and when they do, they’ll unite the brilliants.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s happening. You may as well accept it.”
“I won’t.”
“You better. I understand that you had some notion of us all holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’ while we penned a new constitution, but it doesn’t work that way. Building a better world is a bloody business. And you better decide who you really care about.” He flicked the cigarette off the edge of the ridge. “Because you’re either us—or you’re them.”
CHAPTER 37
Soren aimed.
Through the telescopic sight, he watched the woman argue with John. Soren was four hundred yards out, but the scope had a magnification of twenty, and with the crosshairs on her forehead, it was easy to read her lips. He didn’t care for handguns; the recoil, magnified by his time sense, made for inelegance. But a sniper rifle was a matter of pure mechanics. Brace it, breathe properly, squeeze rather than pull the trigger, and it was just a projection of will across distance. Still, he was pleased not to have to kill her; John had told him she was close to Samantha.
After she got in her truck and left, he swiveled the scope back to John. His friend had an intense expression he remembered well from their games of chess. Lost in the permutations, following a chain of probabilities.
Finally, John looked directly at him and spoke. He used a normal speed this time, guessing—wrongly—that the distance would require it. “Cooper survived. That’s a problem.”
In the distance, the streaking jets sounded like angry insects.
“Everything is going as planned.” Smith rubbed at the back of his neck. “Only one thing can stop it now.”
Soren waited to hear what his friend needed.
“Dr. Couzen has a protégé named Ethan Park.”
The rest was obvious. Soren stood up and began walking.
CHAPTER 38
Cooper had been expecting a corporate jet. Something sleek and fast with leather seats and tri-d streamed to the headrests. “No, sir,” the pilot had laughed. “Not while the good men and women of the United States Air Force are paying us a visit. All private craft have been grounded. Only things cleared to be in the sky are cargo transports with high-priority freight. Some of the ballsier smugglers are making runs, but there’s a good chance of getting exploded, so Mr. Epstein suggested this route.”
“This route” was a cargo-modified Boeing 737, seats removed, windows plugged, and a big red cross painted on one side. Cooper had looked at it, shrugged. “So where do I sit?”
“Well, you can pick any crate you like.” The pilot grinned. “But it might get kinda cold at thirty thousand feet.”
“Right. Copilot it is.” He’d strapped in, ready to rock and roll.
Three hours later, they were still waiting on the runway. Cooper had railed and cursed, but the pilot had just shrugged. Nothing to be done about it; according to him, it was a lucky thing they were taking off at all.
When they finally did get clearance, Cooper had looked out the window at the troops below and felt his stomach fall. It was one thing to hear the numbers and another to see it. A wide arc of military force aimed right at the heart of the Holdfast. Quick-fab barracks and hangars, row upon row of heavy equipment, a mass of ant figures moving. It’d been almost a decade since he’d left the army, but he could imagine the activity on the ground, the tension growing in every chest, the nervous energy that made you wish the worst would happen just so you could stop waiting for it.
The soldiers might look tiny from this height, but that was an illusion; the truth was that he was the tiny one. One man barely out of a hospital bed heading off to search a country of three hundred million for one genius who didn’t want to be found. As wild a goose chase as the world had ever seen.
How about instead of feeling sorry for yourself, you get to work?
He had flicked open his d-pad and began to read.
If there was one thing Epstein had, it was information, and the time had passed quickly as Cooper tried to absorb everything about Ethan Park. His parents, his childhood, his itinerant academic’s pedigree, his work on epigenetics, his relationship to Abraham Couzen. The guy was clearly a brilliant scientist, but to Cooper’s eye, it looked like he was one of those who inspired and supported others, rather than led the way. A catalyst, a protégé, destined to be near greatness. That was useful; the difference between someone like Ethan and the guy accepting a Nobel was likely a raging ego, an important variable when it came to predictability.
All the while, something nagged at him. There was a clue here, some piece of data that he hadn’t yet assembled. He knew better than to try to force it, just acknowledged it and let his mind spin, fed it the data that served as gasoline to the engine of his gift.
Cooper was unsurprised, but not at all pleased, to learn that Ethan Park was on the run himself. Good news was that though Park had been visited by DAR agents, that didn’t appear to be why he had left his home. Instead, it looked like it had been the situation in Cleveland that had driven him out of town. A risky play, but one Cooper approved of; better chancing a difficult journey than waiting until there was no way out at all. An especially tough decision for a new father to make; Cooper found himself admiring the guy for his chutzpah.
The pilot spoke into his headset, and then as he came in for his approach—
Wait. Park had been visited by DAR agents. Why?
The DAR would have seen through Couzen’s faked kidnapping as quickly as you did. But why would the DAR even hear about a simple kidnapping, unless . . .
They knew what Couzen was working on. And when he vanished, the agent in charge took the logical next step, the one you’re taking right now.
He went after Ethan Park.
—the landscape shifted.
“Son of a bitch,” Cooper said.
“Sir?”
The nagging clue came into sudden sharp focus. Unbelievable. The answer had been in front of him before he even knew to look for it. Been in front of him the night he’d gone out for a beer with his old partner.