“And that killed him?”
“Not the serum itself, but his mind’s reaction to it.” Ethan took a breath. “You’re tier one, right? And so is Shannon and Epstein and that Soren asshole. But you’ve had your gifts from the beginning. They were part of you as a child. Now imagine that suddenly you also saw the world the way Shannon does. And the way Epstein does. And the way Soren does. That it all happened at the same time, in a span of a couple of days.”
“It would be confusing, but—”
“It wouldn’t be confusing,” Ethan said. “It would be shattering.” He paused. “Okay, look. Imagine you were born underground. A pitch-black cave. You grew up there, connecting with the world by touch and sound and smell. Completely unaware of vision. That was your normal for sixty years.
“Then there was a rockslide, and light flooded in. You wouldn’t have the first idea what was happening. I mean that literally—your brain wouldn’t have developed neural pathways for processing vision. You’d have no concept of scale, motion, even color. No way of knowing if a shape was your wife or a boulder about to squash you flat.”
“I get you, but—”
“Now imagine it’s not just sight, it’s also sound, and touch, and taste, all at once,” Ethan said. “Christ, man, Soren perceives time differently.”
Cooper opened his mouth. Closed it. Said, “Okay. So you’re saying this could be fatal?”
“I’m saying Abe clawed his own eyes out to stop his vision and scratched at his cage until his fingers were bone. And this was a man with a first-rate intellect who knew what was happening to him. The human mind cannot survive that level of change. There just isn’t the neurological flexibility. Not once we’re fully developed.”
“Which is when?”
“The frontal lobe stops forming around age twenty-five.” Ethan paused. “Best guess? It wouldn’t be easy on anyone, but kids’d be fine, teenagers would be okay, people in their twenties would have a shot. Much past that . . . I don’t know. I think you’d be looking at survival percentages in the single digits. And along the way you’ve got confusion, panic, delirium, uncontrollable rage, homicidal impulses—”
“All in the most powerful gifted ever born,” Shannon said. “Jesus Christ.”
A gust of wind shook the plastic sheeting. Beyond it, the world was losing focus. In December, in Wyoming, the sun went down fast, and in the time they’d been talking things had darkened considerably.
Ethan said, “You have to stop this. Somehow. Please. My daughter—”
Cooper hung up the phone. Thought about hurling it right through the fucking wall.
“He’s right,” Shannon said. “We have to stop this.”
“I know.”
“We got distracted. The militia, saving the kids, preparing for war. We took our eyes off the ball.”
“That’s what John Smith does.” Cooper had that feeling, almost a tingle, that he’d learned to identify as his gift patterning furiously, nearing an answer. “This isn’t an accident, a glitch of timing. He planned all of this to happen at the same time.”
“Sweetie,” Shannon said, “that’s paranoia.”
“It’s true. He even told us, remember? ‘Killing me isn’t the same as beating me.’ I’ve been chasing Smith forever.” Cooper shook his head. “I should have known that was too easy. He may be dead, but he’s still trying to win.”
“But how could he have predicted the attack?”
“He didn’t.” A lattice of connections was starting to fall into place. Cooper could feel the truth bobbing just out of reach, like stretching for a beach ball in a swimming pool. Press too hard and you’ll only push it away. Just follow the logic, let the currents draw you in. “He didn’t predict it. He provoked it.”
“That’s crazy. The assassinations, bombings, the organization, the stock exchange, the Children of Darwin—are you saying that was all so the Holdfast was under attack at just the right moment to distract us?”
“Not specifically to distract us. But yes, this was his will.”
Shannon started to argue, but he could see that she was considering it, reevaluating her past in light of new information. “The last time I saw John, before today I mean, I accused him of wanting war. And he told me I was right. That the normal world would attack, and that they would doom themselves. He said he didn’t care how much blood was spilled, so long as it was their blood, not ours.”
“Which fits his virus perfectly,” Cooper said. “It only affects normals. It kills everyone over twenty-five, which means pretty much the whole power structure. And everyone who survives is left gifted.”
“Elegant,” she said, “but tricky. There are a lot of fail-safes against biological attacks.”
“Yeah.” Another node of the pattern revealed itself. “But remember, this is just the flu. Every year the flu affects millions, and no one panics. And superficially, this is a mild one. It’s only Ethan’s serum that makes it dangerous, and no one knows to look for that. Hell, no one knows it exists. Plus, those fail-safes depend on a functional world. We’re on our third president in a year, there are lynchings in Manhattan, a civil war. The government already played the quarantine card with the Children of Darwin, badly. I think Cleveland is still burning. All of that orchestrated or at least nudged by John Smith. Not to mention today’s attacks—” He froze. “Oh shit. Today’s attacks.”
She thought for a moment. When it hit, the blood drained from her face. “The CDC, in Atlanta. If there was a place equipped to realize what this flu really is, it was the Centers for Disease Control. So he burned it down. That was the real target. All the rest was a smoke screen.”
“Even the bomb at the DAR that killed my best friends and about a thousand other people.”
“Everything we’ve done the last years, all the stuff he claimed was for equality. It was just John pushing the world far enough into darkness that defenses are down.” Shannon paused. “Even so. Even if he releases it in a city, in a couple of cities. Even if millions die. That won’t spread it far enough, fast enough.”
That was it. Suddenly, the whole pattern came clear to Cooper. Like a curtain had been yanked away.
The perfect, crystalline clarity he must have had.
The detail involved. Years of working toward the most complex series of dominos in history.
The horrifying, relentless discipline.
“It’s not going to be released in just any city,” he said slowly.
Shannon stared at him. He let her ponder, wanted her to check his math. Finally, she said, “You’re thinking it’s going to be released here. Against the New Sons. Because they’re all normals, all vulnerable. But he couldn’t count on them winning.”
“It doesn’t matter who wins. If the militia burns Tesla to the ground, their war is over. They’ll scatter back to every corner of the country, as will refugees from Tesla, plenty of them normal. And if the militia loses—”
“The same thing happens,” she says. “Thousands of survivors will run back home. My God. John provoked the attack—the war—for this. To infect the whole country.”
“The whole world,” Cooper said. “Maybe not as completely, but still, if this is as contagious as Ethan thinks, how many people are going to die? Hundreds of millions? Billions?”
“We have to call the president.”
“And tell her what?” Cooper shrugged. “I mean, imagine we somehow convince her, and she sends in the marines. That’s just more normals, more vectors. It plays into Smith’s hands. The only way to stop this is to keep the virus from being released.”