“Now I’m going to have another.” Cooper slammed the drink, then gestured with the glass.
“I meant—”
“I know what you meant.” Neon light fell on dusty bottles. He rubbed his eyes. “Three weeks ago we had John Smith in a burnout with a gun to his head, and decided to do the ‘right thing.’ Should have killed him.”
“Three weeks ago everything was different. Funny world, huh?”
“Hilarious.” They went silent as the bartender filled the glass. Cooper waited for him to step away before he sipped at the bourbon. “What’s your play for Smith?”
“No play.”
“You’re going to let him get away?”
“The whole world is on fire, and there’s a shortage of water.” Quinn shrugged. “Smith has avoided capture for seven years. No reason to believe that’s gonna change. Besides, he’s not the priority he was.”
“What do you mean?”
Quinn gave him a funny look. “Maybe you saw the news? A big white building blew up?”
“Erik Epstein isn’t the problem, and neither is the New Canaan Holdfast.”
“A lot of corpses would argue with you.”
“That was self-defense,” Cooper said. “If the schoolyard bully is coming after you, it isn’t enough to trade punches. You lay him flat and you kick him hard. Show everybody that attacking you has consequences.”
“So in this analogy,” Quinn said stiffly, “America is the bully?”
“I’m just saying, Epstein stopped. He didn’t have to. He could have ordered missile strikes on every military base, rained nukes on the country. Instead, he showed restraint.”
Quinn’s knuckles went white on his glass. For a long moment, he said nothing. When he did finally speak, his voice was brittle. “I can’t see that particular shade of gray. And my old partner couldn’t have either.”
It was true. The man he had been would have wanted to knock the teeth out of the man who sat here today. What a difference a year makes.
“You haven’t been to the NCH,” he said softly. “Everybody is talking like it’s an army of slavering rapists. But they’re just kids, Bobby. A bunch of brilliant kids out in the desert trying to build a new world because they’re scared of the old one. Rightfully scared. Remember?”
Quinn had been ready to retort, but that last word caught him off guard, and Cooper could see him considering the things they had learned together, the abuse of power by those who were supposed to wield it to protect. The president ordering the murder of his own citizens; someone in the government triggering the explosion at the stock exchange and blaming it on John Smith; the plan to implant microchips in every abnorm; the academies where children were brainwashed. All of the things normal people had done not because they were evil, but because they too were frightened.
“Maybe you’re right,” Quinn said. “But they attacked us. They killed our president and our soldiers.”
“Despite what the last fifty years of American policy would suggest, ‘They hit us so we’re hitting back’ is not a military strategy. I was taught that successful wars are waged for measurable goals. What’s the goal here? I’d really like to know. What does victory look like? Leveling Wyoming? Killing all the gifted?”
His partner sighed. Reached for his soda, then said, “Screw it.” He waved over the bartender. “Set me up with one of those, would you?” As the man poured, Quinn said, “All right, I’ll bite. Tell me why I should keep after Smith.”
“Because of Couzen. You know he took his own medicine, right? Made himself into a brilliant.”
“Figured that this morning,” Quinn said. “Only way to explain how he fought. But so what?”
“Ethan’s theory is that the serum doesn’t just make people brilliant. It makes them the ultimate brilliant, with a full spectrum of gifts.”
“So you’re thinking Smith wants it for himself. Drink the magic potion, buy a cape, turn into a supervillain?”
“No,” Cooper said. “Ethan says their work would have no effect on brilliants. Something about the existing epigenetic structure of abnorms. He tried to explain, but my eyes kept glazing over. Point is, this would only affect normals.”
“So what’s the angle?” Quinn shook his head. “The agency interpretation is that removing the barrier to brilliance would lessen tensions, not raise them. If anybody can be gifted, there’s less reason for fear. That doesn’t play to Smith’s agenda. Unless he just wanted to take it off the table?”
“No way. He came personally. There’s only one reason he would ever expose himself like that—if he sees victory. Couzen’s work is crucial to his goal.”
“How?”
Cooper sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
“I don’t know yet. But I’m right. This is John Smith. He doesn’t gamble, he plans. The strategic equivalent of Einstein, remember?”
“I don’t know, buddy. I think you’ve lost perspective. John Smith is an asshole, but he’s got what, maybe, maybe a couple of thousand dedicated followers? I just don’t see how that matches up to three hundred million Americans.”
“It’s not about meeting on the battlefield. Look at what the Children of Darwin accomplished. A tiny offshoot of his organization, maybe thirty people in total. And yet they managed to seal off three cities, shut down the grid, and turn normal people against each other. Civilization is fragile. They’re just now getting food into Tulsa and Fresno, and Cleveland burned to the ground. And that was just a stage in Smith’s master plan.”
Quinn finished his whiskey, set the glass on the bar. For a moment they sat in silence punctuated only by the clacking of pool balls and the mutter of the tri-d. The man had always been Cooper’s planner, the strategist to his tactician, and Cooper let him think.
Finally, Quinn said, “It wouldn’t take very much right now. People are hoarding food, fleeing the cities. And we’re heading into winter.”
“Whatever Smith has planned is going to make that all worse. Confusion and disarray are his favorite weapons. He wants America to slide into chaos. Wants every neighborhood to become its own nation-state. He can’t face us directly, but if things get bad enough, if there’s looting, riots, tribalism, local warlords, mass starvation, rampant disease . . .”
“Then he doesn’t have to. He can pick off one target at a time.” Quinn made a sound that wasn’t a laugh. “Even if you’re right, there’s nothing the DAR can do about it. We’ll happily take a shot at Smith if he wanders into our sights, but the department—hell, the country—is focused on the Holdfast. Like I said, the whole world’s on fire.”
“I know,” Cooper said. “But I may ask you for some help.”
“Doing what?”
“Finishing what I started.” He set his drink on the bar and stood up. “I’m going to find John Smith. And I’m going to kill him.”
Dear comrades!
As we continue to demonstrate the spirit and might of the great Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in our eternal advance to the confident light of glorious victory, we offer a message of hope to the oppressed supermen of the world.
In the darkness of the failed systems in which you were born, your gifts are held against you, as always when dogs govern tigers. And so it is in the corrupt nations that the mighty of soul and purpose are mistreated, shamed, scorned.
Thus I extend an invitation overflowing with love for those who wish only to dwell in the sunlight of revolution. Come to us, our gifted friends, come to us, our brilliant compatriots. Come home and join your people, who live pure in purpose and clear in mind.