Soren was lean, his kneecaps bony as he drove them into Cooper’s shoulders. Half his face was coated in blood, a trickle that oozed down his neck and soaked his shirt. His cheekbone was visible in the worst of the gashes, the meat of muscle laid bare. Reflected flames danced in his eyes and glinted off the edge of the knife, making it seem alive. Cooper tried to buck, but Soren could feel the play of muscles, had all the time in the world to redistribute his weight.
“You started,” Soren said, “with her eye.”
The knife slid down, the move slow, theatrical, giving Cooper time to see it coming, to anticipate the burning tear as it cut his flesh open, to imagine it plucking his eye from his skull. He wondered morbidly whether he would be able to see it happen through that eye. The drone was away, the militia was winning, Natalie would die in the battle, his children would be yanked from bunkers and murdered as the city burned around them and the world fell to darkness, and there was nothing Cooper could do about any of it. Soren had beaten him again, just as easily as before, but it would not be quick this time. Cooper could see the relish in the man’s face, the madness whirling within him, the pleasure he would find in dispensing agony as civilization cracked and collapsed.
The knife drifted downward. The tip caressed his cheek. Penetrated. Scraped against the bone of his eye socket. The pain was sharpened by terror. He knew what would happen next, could imagine the blade digging, the agony, the permanence.
A blast of blue radiance flared like a lightning strike.
For a moment Cooper thought it was his eye going, but no, Soren saw it too, he was staring at the sky, his features carved in electric blue and darkness, a word forming—
That light is the same as when the other drone blew, liquid hydrogen burning explosively.
And Soren is staring, but it’s not surprise or distraction that really has him.
It’s despair.
Shannon took out the drone. She gave her life to do it.
And gave you an opportunity.
Are you going to waste her sacrifice?
—“No,” he and Soren said at the same time, but where the other man was lost in his own time, staring upward in the slow revelation of his defeat, Cooper forced all thoughts of Shannon from his mind, knew what she would want him to do, that she hadn’t thrown her life away, she had given it, and it was up to him to honor that, and Cooper put everything into a fast buck of his hips, throwing his arms up to lock Soren’s wrist as he kept the momentum going, the two of them rolling, Soren’s back hitting the ground as Cooper rolled atop him and twisted his arm, the man fighting back now, but inertia and strength were on Cooper’s side and he used them, bending Soren’s wrist back and driving the knife through the soft underside of his chin, the flesh stretching and then parting as Cooper slammed the heel of his hand into the pommel, driving the blade through the tongue and the palate and into his brain. Soren spasmed once, twice, and then Cooper got a firm grip and twisted the handle with everything he had and it was over.
He collapsed atop the monster’s chest. Limbs weak and trembling. A shriek ripped from his lungs, a sound that wasn’t a word. Was barely human. An animal howl of rage and pain and dominance.
Then he pushed himself to his feet, wobbling.
At the end of the airfield, blue flames danced like demons as pieces of metal and plastic rained from the sky.
He took a breath, made his feet move, a fall that became a step that became an awkward loping jog. Everything hurt. Blackness throbbed at his vision even as the fire grew brighter, hotter. He reached the UAV first, a twisted sculpture of flame, a licking inferno that forced him aside, but it wasn’t the drone he was interested in. He kept moving, passing pieces of her plane, a teardrop wing bent awkwardly, the tail intact and upright, a rubber wheel belching smoke. The fuselage had snapped, the forward portion ahead and inverted. He ran to it, grabbed the handle, jerked his hands back from the heat, then took a breath and reached again, flesh scorching as he ripped the door open.
Shannon hung upside down, still belted to the seat, her torso packed hard in a white substance like Styrofoam but already melting, the impact foam dissolving to run thick and soapy to the tarmac, and something inside him gave the same way, a wash of warmth.
She opened her eyes. Met his. “Oww.”
“You fucking nutcase,” he said, laughing and gasping. “I thought you were dead.”
“No,” she groaned. “Not quite.”
His burned fingers were clumsy, but he managed to undo her seat belt, her weight sliding into his arms, the two of them collapsing amidst the bubbling remains of the safety foam. She lay in his arms, both of them panting, lit in blue. Finally, he said, “A parachute was too much trouble?”
“Old-world thinking, Cooper.” She smiled, and he bent down to kiss her, never mind the agony from his ribs, the shock from his splintered tooth.
There was another explosion, the UAV jumping and then crashing down again. They startled apart. Shannon said, “Soren?”
“Done.”
“Good. That’s good.” She shifted, then winced. “I think my leg is broken.”
“That’ll teach you.” He smiled, stood up, bringing her body with him, one arm draped around his shoulder, her body soft and warm against his.
“We won,” she said.
“Almost. One more thing to do.”
“What’s that?”
“What you’ve been bugging me about since we met.” He tried a wobbling step, found it okay, took another. He kissed the side of her hair, her hair smelling of smoke and sweat. “Tell the truth.”
CHAPTER 44
In the flare of light from his rifle, the man kneeling in the street looked different from the others. For one thing he was older, fifty or even a very fit sixty. But there was more to it. It seemed to Natalie that he had a serenity about him. He had fired just a single shot, not a screaming burst, and where the others were lit by ferocity or pain, he had a killer’s calm. As if this scene of horror was his home.
It scared her. And so when she lined up her sights on the place he had knelt, she didn’t hold back. She held down the trigger and unloaded the rest of the magazine at him. The bullets ricocheted off the concrete, sparked off his rifle, and though she couldn’t say for sure, she thought she saw his body fall.
She dropped to the floor, removed the magazine from her rifle, and reached for a new one. The bag was empty. She grimaced, said, “Jolene?”
As she looked over, she saw Jolene on the floor, arms outstretched and a strangely placid expression on her face. Staying low, Natalie hurried over. No point in checking for a pulse. There was a neat hole in her forehead.
Something tore in her then. She hadn’t known the woman long, had really only had the one conversation, but they had fought side by side, and that had connected them in a way she’d never understood before. Like her, Jolene wasn’t here for ideology, or Tesla, or even her own survival. She’d fought for a child. Natalie took a trembling breath. Laid a hand on Jolene’s eyes and closed them. Then she grabbed her dead friend’s spare ammunition and moved to the next window.
The moment she popped her head up, there was a fusillade of fire from the street below, flashes from a dozen spots. She dropped, fought the shake in her hands. The street had been filled with attackers, men sprinting across with impunity. For the first time in a long time, Natalie let herself look around.