Cooper had anticipated a crowd of milling thousands, had envisioned loud conversations and the yells of children and maybe even some laughter. Instead, there were about a hundred people listlessly wandering the floor of the arena, speaking in whispers, their eyes carefully downcast. Dozens of armed soldiers watched them. The feeling was of a prison yard, or a zoo.
Beyond the floor, the seats had been removed, and the slope built out in tiers of prefab rooms like LEGO blocks, row upon row rising into darkness. The cavernous stadium was hauntingly quiet, the murmur of voices from the floor faint against the weight of all that space.
Someone planned it in advance. Cooper heard Ethan’s voice in his head. What are the odds they did it out of the goodness of their hearts?
The soldier at the base of the Section C stairwell had a spray of pimples across his chin. He scanned their badges, then said, “Need me to unlock one, sir?”
“They’re kept locked?”
“Yes, sir. For safety.”
Cooper stared at him, said, “C-6-8.”
The guard started up, and Cooper followed, one hand tracing the rail, smelling old beer and counting. Seven to a row, twenty rows to a section, twenty sections, just shy of three thousand of them. Three thousand cages.
Cages for people like you.
When they reached Vincent’s, the guard swiped his ID card, then readied his rifle and said, “C-6-8! Coming in.” He reached for the handle. Cooper stopped him. “I’ve got it.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” He waited for the guard to walk away, then opened the door.
The prefab was maybe eight feet by four, the size of a walk-in closet or a sheet of plywood. A windowless box with just enough room for a bunk and a chemical toilet, the reek of which filled the air. The man lying down had the fine features of actors in scotch ads, although the black eye and broken nose diminished the impact of his good looks. Without shifting his gaze from the fluorescent, Vincent Luce said, “You’re not a guard.”
“My name is Nick Cooper. We need to talk.”
“About?”
Cooper gestured at the door. “Want to get some air?”
The quietest space they’d been able to find was the old press box, where tri-d cameras would once have recorded Knicks games. Vincent leaned against the exterior wall, his eyes staring out at the arena-turned-prison, battered face reflected in the glass. “Is this where you do the waterboarding? I should tell you, I don’t know any secret abnorm plans.”
“I want to talk about Dr. Abraham Couzen.”
“Are you kidding me?” The abnorm spun, fire in his eyes. “Unbelievable.”
Cooper had been about to explain, but stopped himself. That’s not defensiveness.
“First he outs me to my fascist asshole neighbors, who . . .” He caught himself, bit off the sentence. “And when I make the scared, stupid decision to come here, he wants to save the day? Screw Abe. I’d rather stay than have him be the one who gets me out.”
“I thought . . .” Cooper paused. There was something he was missing here, something obvious.
“What, is this his idea of a romantic gesture?”
Oh. Cooper glanced sideways at Ethan, who gave a hey, news to me shrug. “So you and Abe are a couple?”
“We broke up a year ago. If you could call us a couple anyway. To be together you have to respect each other. He never saw me as a person. More like a fetish.”
“What do you mean?” Cooper pulled out a rolling chair and sat down.
“He likes twists,” Vincent said. “It was never me that turned him on, it was my gift. Look at his work. He could’ve cured cancer, and he spends all his energy figuring out how to make normal people brilliant.”
“Wait,” Ethan interjected. “He told you about our research?”
Vincent cocked his head. His fingers, long and slender, tapped out a rhythm on the glass. “You’re Ethan Park.”
“Umm. Yeah.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you. So much that I almost used to be jealous.”
“I . . . me too. You.”
Vincent smiled coldly. “I doubt that. Abe didn’t talk about things he didn’t care about. But you were his bright boy. He said your work on telomere sequences was crucial. Part of the reason he now knew what God felt like. Asshole.”
“When was this?”
“The day before yesterday, when he was showing me around his lab.”
“What?” Cooper said at the same time Ethan said, “His lab?”
“Huh.” Vincent looked back and forth between them. “I just figured it out. Abe didn’t send you. You’re chasing him.”
Cooper thought about lying, decided against it. “Can you tell me about his lab?”
“That’s why you’re after him? Because of his work?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to hurt him?”
“No.”
“If I tell you,” the man said, slowly, “will you get me out of here?”
“You got my word.”
Vincent turned to Ethan. “Can I trust him?”
“Yes,” the scientist said without hesitation, and despite everything, Cooper had to admit that made him feel good.
A buzzer sounded, dull through the glass. The people wandering the arena floor reacted as if they’d been kicked, hurriedly forming lines, their eyes down and hands at their sides as they filed back to their cages. Staring out the glass, Vincent said, “My music is too advanced for most listeners, but Abe loved to watch me play. He’d always ask me to dual-solo. Play a separate solo with each hand, at the same time.” The man shook his head. “I thought he liked the sound. But that wasn’t it. He just wanted to watch my gift.”
He turned to face them. “His lab’s in the South Bronx, on Bay Avenue. He made a big deal out of what a secret it was, how he’d funneled money to build it, how even Ethan didn’t know about it. I don’t remember the address, but it’s a one-story brick building, no windows, across from a salvage yard.”
Cooper took his d-pad from his pocket, uncrumpled it with a flick, then called up a map. The street was near the river, and only half a mile long. He felt that old flush of certainty, the sense that he was right behind a target.
“What are you going to do to him?”
Still looking at the map, Cooper said, “You’ve seen how bad things are getting. We’re headed toward a war or worse. Abe’s work could prevent that.”
“How?”
“By leveling the playing field.”
“You’re not concerned about the side effects?”
Cooper looked at Ethan, then back again. “Side effects?”
“Senator, respectfully, it’s not a matter of grounding airplanes and taking missiles offline. The system that brings fresh water into your house is controlled by computer. Same with the system that manages sewage. The electrical grid is dependent on computers. Local, regional, national, and global communications. Oil wells. Televisions. Traffic lights. Vending machines. Food transportation and refrigeration. Automatic locks. Medical care. The limousine you arrived in. The watch you’re glancing at now. There isn’t a facet of modern life that doesn’t rely on computer control at some level.
“So when you ask what is required to guarantee our safety from another December 1st, the only answer I can give is this: buy a rifle and move to a cave.”
CHAPTER 6
Normally she liked the train. It was something about the dissonance between the seeming stillness of the ride and the dizzy blur of the outside world. The juxtaposition was comforting—symbolic, perhaps, of the way she chose to live. But today all of Shannon’s focus was on one of her oldest friends, and whether she would be able to kill him.