And Soren, walking toward the house with that same absent calm, the long combat blade in his right hand.
Cooper yanked the fragment of glass down. His heart beat like a drunken drummer, heavy and out of whack. His palms were soaked, and blood dripped from a dozen small cuts.
No way to get to the rifles, not without facing Soren.
Options.
The back way might be clear. On the other hand, there could be a team of snipers back there who had been ordered to wait for their actual target. It made sense; Soren comes in the front and flushes them into fire.
Okay, a side window. They could climb out and haul ass, race into the woods. Only, same problem.
Plus, who are you kidding, Cooper? You can’t outrun Soren, not now. Ethan might be able to, but then he’s on his own, and that’s as good as killing him.
His hands shook, and he gasped a deep breath like swallowing straight razors. There were no options. They had to make a stand, and the best place to do that was in the cabin.
But how? The last time he’d faced this guy, he’d lost spectacularly. Now things were far worse.
Think! Everything you have is on the table, and that roulette wheel is slowing, the ball about to drop.
He couldn’t handle Soren, not in a fair fight. The man’s gift just made him too powerful. A T-naught of 11.2, my God. An eye blink would last a second, a footstep five. It was a strange and terrible gift, one that—
Wait. For most abnorms, their gift is just a part of them.
But Soren’s gift is different. In a very real way, he is his gift.
His perception of the world is entirely shaped by it.
He will depend on it utterly, and trust what it tells him.
—might be used against him.
Cooper scrambled across the floor, ignoring the pain. Unbelievable the risk. It wasn’t just his life on the table, it was Ethan’s, and the hope he offered the future. And it all depended on Cooper being right.
“Doc, I need you to trust me again.” Still carrying the shard of glass he’d used as a mirror, he glanced over his shoulder. Out of sight of the window. He rose quickly, took in the room. Measured angles in his head. “You see that closet? When I say, crouch down, move to it, and get in. Whatever you do, don’t look back.”
Ethan laughed. “Are you serious?”
Cooper shared the urge to laugh, didn’t. There was an archway out of the living room into what looked like a kitchen, the back way Shannon had taken. “Do it now.”
Lionel Clay sat at the head of the table and stared around the Situation Room at a world gone mad. Men and women in uniform were yelling at each other, talking into phones, but all of them were looking at the same thing.
The wall of tri-d screens, where American troops were massacring each other.
A high-angle recon shot showed a line of vehicles burning. Those that could still move rolled into exposed positions and continued firing on one another.
A helicopter gunship hovered over a platoon of running soldiers, spitting bullets and bright tracers. Men staggered and fell as if shoved from behind.
A soldier missing an arm clawed his way across the broken ground.
The dead lay everywhere. Killed in groups and mowed down one by one.
Streaks of light hurtled down from tactical drones, each finger missile thumping into the ground with an explosion that tossed heavy trucks like toys, that tore bodies apart.
“What’s happening?”
No one responded, and he realized his voice had been a croak. Clay pounded the table with his fist, said, “What’s happening?”
General Yuval Raz, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was a forty-year veteran, a man whose uniform sagged with medals earned all over the world. He looked like he wanted to crawl under the table. “It’s a virus. A Trojan horse. They must have had it waiting in all our hardware.”
“Can’t we shut everything down?”
“Nothing is responding. The virus has subverted manual control.”
“A computer program is massacring American soldiers by the thousands, and there’s nothing we can do but watch?”
“We’re working the problem, but so far—”
“General!” The interrupting soldier wore a lieutenant’s bar and held a phone to his ear. He needed a shave, though the scruff was patchy at best. So young, Clay thought. So many of them, so young. “We have an unauthorized missile launch, a BGM-117.”
“An Avenger?” Raz looked at Clay. “That will be out of Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne.” To the lieutenant, he said, “What’s the ETA to the Holdfast?”
“Sir,” the man said, eyes wide and face pale. “It wasn’t from Warren. Air command reports the missile was launched from the USS Fortitude, a Luna-class attack submarine at latitude 38.47, longitude -74.40.”
“North 38 west 74? But that’s . . .”
“Approximately one hundred miles east of Washington, DC.” The lieutenant swallowed hard.
General Raz laid his fingers on the table. “They’ve already tried the self-destruct?”
“No response, sir.”
“Activate all missile defense batteries.” Raz spun. “Sir, we need to get you out of here immediately.”
“It’s heading for the White House?”
Raz nodded.
“Can you destroy it?”
“We’ll try. Meanwhile, sir, you have to go. Right now.”
Lionel Clay stared. At the monitors, on which his soldiers burned and bled. At the officers surrounding the table. At the American flag hanging limp in the corner.
“Sir, the Avenger is our top-of-line technology. It’s capable of more than four thousand miles per hour, five times the speed of sound. You have to go.”
This was never what you wanted. Not the office, not division in America, not the war. You let others drive you here.
You knew better, and you let it happen anyway.
And now thousands are dying, and a missile is hurtling toward the seat of American democracy.
Where will you be when it lands?
“I ordered our troops to attack. I’m staying.”
“Sir—”
“That’s an order.”
The general gave him an appraising look, then a sharp nod. “Yes, sir.”
Clay stood up. Took his suit jacket from the back of his chair and slid it on. He’d been a history professor, not a mathematician, but the calculation wasn’t complicated. If the missile could cover four thousand miles in an hour, it could do a hundred miles in a minute and a half.
Which meant they had thirty seconds left.
“Sir, antimissile batteries on the Chesapeake Bay are firing now.” The lieutenant closed his eyes and bit his lip.
The White House was completed in 1800. It’s been occupied by every president but George Washington. For 213 years it has stood as a symbol of all that America is.
Everyone in the room stared at the lieutenant, the phone held to his ear with fingers clenched bloodless. There was nothing but the sound of breathing.
And then something in the young officer gave. His shoulders slumped, and his head fell.
It was over. They all knew it even before the man said, “Negative. No contact.”
Fifteen seconds.
Clay buttoned his jacket and straightened his posture. His eyes swept the room. Funny, only now did he realize who was missing.
You little shit-heel, Leahy. At the very least, you should be standing here too.