“How? We don’t have any idea where it is. And the militia could attack any minute.”
“I don’t know,” he said, and took her hand. “But we have to figure it out. Fast.”
“This isn’t what I do, Nick.”
“It is now. It’s all on us. Like it or not.”
She pulled away, wound up, and kicked a blackened desk. The legs gave way, the whole thing collapsing in a cloud of ash. “Okay.” She gritted her teeth. “If he’s infecting the New Sons, the canisters have to be here, in Tesla.”
“Plus, Smith is dead. We’ve got that going for us.”
“Right,” she said. “Right. So it would have to be something that would work without his involvement. Something he could trust.”
“Not something,” he said. “He wouldn’t have planned all of this and then left it to a timer. It’s going to be a person. Someone he could rely on completely, even in death. His last contingency.”
“Someone who would do it. Who wouldn’t be troubled by the catastrophe they were about to cause, the deaths of millions or billions.”
“You know these people better than I do,” Cooper said. “Who would that describe?”
“Jesus, I don’t know. Soren, but he’s . . .”
For a moment they stared at each other.
Then Cooper was running full tilt for the stairwell, Shannon right behind, her steps lighter but just as quick. He took flights in jumps, the floor numbers falling away, his hand trailing the railing as the impacts rang up his ankles and knees, his head spinning and heart racing and soul praying, thinking, Please, please, just one piece of good luck, that’s not too much to ask, is it?
They hit the second basement, yanked open the door.
A body sprawled at their feet.
Another down the hall.
In the prison control room, Rickard, the programmer who’d played the virtual torturer, sat in a chair. A pool of crimson surrounded him, the overhead light reflecting off his blood like the moon in a pond. His throat had been ripped open, his tongue yanked through the wound.
Soren’s cell was open.
CHAPTER 35
Luke Hammond tapped the flare pistol and checked the time on his borrowed watch.
5:57 p.m.
The watch was mechanical, unaffected by the EMP. An hour ago he had synced it with a dozen others. A dozen men with a dozen flare guns, all watching the seconds tick away.
It had been a long couple of days, but he wasn’t tired. Or rather, his exhaustion felt like it belonged to someone else. Partly his experience, he supposed—he’d been a boy when he became a warrior, and it was war that had forged him into a man, war and fatherhood—but also a purity of purpose. Looking around at the others, he could see it in them too. See it as they ate canned soup cold, as they checked and rechecked their weapons, as they huddled in small groups and joked edgily.
They were ready. They may have started as thousands of rough men, wounded people who had lost things that could never be replaced. But in the past week, they had become, if not quite an army, at least a team. United in loss and pain and purpose.
The sun had set half an hour ago, and darkness had fallen like a dropped blanket. The air was cold and smelled of fire. As the New Sons had surrounded Tesla, they had watched the abnorms burn their own buildings to deny cover. A few spots glowed still, the flames given over to embers and smoke trailing up to the sky. There would be more fire tonight, more smoke. Smoke to blot out the stars.
5:58 p.m.
Luke took a deep breath, blew it out slow. His body felt loose and ready, and in his chest bloomed hints of the feeling to come. He wondered if his sons had ever known it, and felt sure they had. Josh and Zack had been warriors too. How fierce they had looked in their uniforms, how proud he had been of them. He had never pushed his sons toward the military, but they had understood the things he stood for. Had shared them.
Raising binoculars, he surveyed his army. Once they had broken through the ring, they had split the New Sons into two, Miller leading one wing, Luke the other. Hard men stretched the breadth of the horizon, clustered in groups of fifty or a hundred. Their clothes were stained, their faces shrouded in beards, but their weapons shone. Luke wondered how the abnorms had felt as they saw the militia enclose their city like pincers. As they realized what it meant.
If this had been a traditional battle aimed at taking the city, their army would focus strength in a few specific places and leave the enemy room to flee. But we’re not here to gain a point on a map. We’re here to cut that point out like a cancer. A brutal surgery, but necessary to save the body as a whole. Tomorrow the sun would rise on a nation that no longer needed to fear the terrorists in its midst. Tomorrow, the healing could begin.
Tonight would come the scarring.
5:59 p.m.
He swept the binoculars toward the city. Beyond the smoldering buildings, the city rose in low towers. The main streets had been barricaded with cars and trucks, with toppled buses and stacked pallets of cinderblocks. Spotlights danced across the earth, scanning, scanning. Snipers would take those out first; one of the benefits of commanding an army of gun show enthusiasts, they brought a surprising amount of firepower. Ammunition for the long rifles wasn’t plentiful, but there was enough to ensure darkness.
We will come in darkness, and we will bring fire.
The defenders were using the terrain to their advantage. He could see men and women up in the windows of most of the buildings. They were jumpy as rabbits. Hit them hard and fast, shatter what confidence they’d mustered, send them scattering. Once the New Sons had broken into the city, there would be chaos, and civilians didn’t handle chaos well.
Luke lingered on a ring of low-rise buildings, eight of them beneath a glowing corporate logo. There was a park in the center of the ring, a place the workers could relax on their lunch hours. On the day his sons died, it had probably been filled with abnorms staring upward. Joshua had been flying patrol when Epstein triggered his virus, and the footage of his son’s murder had been replayed a thousand times. The Wyvern tipping into a nose-down kite. Seeming to float for a moment before it collided with his wingman’s fighter. The two of them erupting in flames.
Had the abnorms in the office park cheered? Had they howled and pointed while his son fell burning from the sky?
Luke scanned the buildings, looked at the people in the windows. A man in his fifties with weathered good looks. A girl petting a dog. A black woman with the cheekbones of a queen. A pretty brunette with her hair pulled into a ponytail and a rifle in her hand. Atop one of the buildings stood a sculpture of a globe, a corporate logo wrought in strands of glowing light. A purple comet charting a wobbling orbit around it.
That was where they would hit. Climbing the barricades left them too exposed. The roads would channel them, leave them open to fire from every side. Better to attack directly. Push through the complex of buildings. Kill anyone who got in their way. Light the structures on fire.
He looked at the watch. The second hand ticked once, twice, three times. The minute hand moved.
6:00 p.m.
Luke lowered the binoculars and raised the flare pistol.
CHAPTER 36
Soren trembled.
Thoughts whirling and wild.
A vision of Samantha, one eyeball dangling, half the skin of her face flayed away, screaming into her gag as the torturer leaned in again—
A voice called to him, pulled him from sleep. It sounded like John’s voice, but Soren didn’t want to obey it. Waking meant remembering. Remembering what they had done to his love, his pale and perfect love, who wanted only to be wanted.