When the attack started, there had been eight of them spread out across the floor. Eight men and women, including Jolene and Kurt and the pudgy girl with the dog. Jolene was down, Kurt was nowhere to be seen, and the dog was whimpering and pawing at the girl’s body. Best Natalie could tell, she was the only one left.
Their line had failed. The Sons had broken past the building. It was over.
You don’t know that. They’d been hit hard here, but maybe the rest of the city hadn’t taken as much fire. She had to believe that, because otherwise it meant the militia was streaming in everywhere, and how long could it be before they reached the city center and the bunker where her children hid?
She didn’t dare even crouch, instead crawled across the floor, pushing aside broken glass and spent shell casings. Her file cabinet was shredded, the metal punched with scores of holes through which paper scraps bled. The d-pad was already active; she’d left it up so that she could glance at the map as she reloaded, although she had been too focused to actually do it very often.
The city glowed in swirling colors like fire. It wasn’t just their position that had broken. The Sons had gotten in through a dozen spots, and pitched battles raged all over the city. Epstein’s towers still held, but the colors showed the militia drawing closer from every direction.
They’d failed. Somehow everything hadn’t been enough.
Natalie stared. Tried to think what to do. She was low on ammunition and wildly outnumbered. The situation had flip-flopped, and now she was on the outside, and the killers were between her and her children. There was no way she could get through town.
She imagined Nick in this position and knew what he would think. Fight until they kill you. She loaded a fresh magazine, readied herself to face that fire again.
As she was about to stand, the battle map disappeared from her screen. There was a flash of an image, and not only from her d-pad, she saw, but from Jolene’s. Others across the floor lit up too, casting bright lights against the ceiling. A ten-foot wall screen mounted on the opposite building glowed to life. And on all of them, the same image. A surreal, impossible picture.
Her ex-husband.
CHAPTER 45
When he’d thought of the idea earlier, Cooper had imagined a tri-d studio—lights, makeup, and more importantly, a professional. A newscaster, maybe, or Jakob Epstein. Someone who talked into cameras for a living.
“Time is a factor,” Erik said over their video link. “And credibility.”
“Exactly. That’s why it should be someone who knows what they’re doing—”
“They will not listen to us.”
“What makes you think they’ll listen to me?”
“Statistically also unlikely. Odds of success are—”
“Okay,” Shannon cut in. “That’s enough confidence-boosting, Erik. Is the link ready?”
“Yes. We’ve activated dormant Trojan horse software. Estimated efficiency puts the message on 96.4 percent of screens in America.”
“Jesus Christ,” Cooper said.
Shannon lowered the d-pad. “Give us a second.”
They were still at the airfield, in the drone hangar. The lights were on, and Cooper felt strangely exposed under them, their sodium glare blasting out against the darkness of the city outskirts. The steady pop-pop-pop of gunfire continued in the distance, although it seemed quieter than before, which he was having a hard time imagining was a good thing. Shannon sat on a stool with her broken leg extended. His gift could read her pain in the sheen of neck sweat and the too-wide pupils. She said, “You okay?”
“I know this was my idea.” He rubbed at his eyes. “But all of a sudden I don’t know what to say.”
“Just open your mouth and let the truth come out. I believe in you.” She quirked her crooked smile at him. “So don’t blow it, okay?”
Before he could respond, she pointed the d-pad camera at him, said, “Now, Erik.”
“Activating.”
Cooper swallowed his retort. Stared at the lens. Tried to imagine his face suddenly appearing on every d-pad, every phone, every tri-d in the country. Quickly decided that was a bad idea. Panic seized his belly. What was he supposed to say that could change the world?
Don’t talk to the world.
Talk to Todd and Kate.
“My name is Nick Cooper,” he said. “I am . . . I was a soldier, then an agent at the Department of Analysis and Response, an advisor to President Clay, and an ambassador to New Canaan. I’m an abnorm, I’m a patriot, and above all, I’m a father fighting for his children.”
He took a breath, let it out. The air rushing past his broken tooth sparked electric. “Tesla is under attack by an illegal militia. The sound you hear is gunfire. Right now people on both sides are dying. Normals and gifted, men and women.
“Thirty years ago the world changed. We didn’t ask for it. We didn’t expect it. Since 1980 we’ve been trying to deal with it. We’re doing a lousy job. And lately, both sides seem to think that war is the only way to make things right.
“But the words right and war don’t belong together. War may sometimes be necessary, but it’s never ethical. There is no such thing as a moral war.” He thought of his children, huddled in a bunker. Of jets falling from the sky and a missile destroying the White House. Of Soren, trapped in a virtual hell Cooper had imagined. “It makes monsters of us all.
“Worst of all, war is never contained. It has no rules, no boundaries. We tell ourselves that we are fighting for our children. But it’s our children who suffer the most.”
Todd sat on the bunk with Kate and stared at the screen. The bunker was bright and had been noisy, thousands of kids all talking at the same time. But now all of them were quiet as they stared at the screens in their hands or those mounted on the wall.
He could barely breathe. Dad. Dad was alive. He looked terrible, his lips swollen and face dirty and a gash beneath his eye and blood between his teeth, but he was alive.
“A smart woman once told me,” his father continued, “that there wouldn’t be a war if people didn’t keep going on television and saying there was. That the problem wasn’t in our differences. It was in our lies.
“I have to believe that. I have to believe that by telling the truth, we can stop this. Not the politicians’ truth, or the terrorists’, not the part of the truth that we find convenient. The whole truth, even the stuff that stings.
“We are different, and dealing with those differences isn’t easy. We’re all scared. We’re all hurting. And most of us just want to live our lives. We don’t want to take to the streets, we want to put in a day and then have a beer and play with our kids.”
Kate squirmed against him, and Todd looked down, saw her eyes were wide and wet. She said, “I told you he’d protect us.”
“Shh.” He wiped snot from her nose, put his arm around her, and tilted the d-pad so she could see better.
Dad said, “But this isn’t happening far away, to people we’ll never meet. It’s happening to our children. We know it’s wrong, and we’ve been letting ourselves ignore that.
“And there are people who are taking advantage. Extremists on both sides doing it for power. Some think they know better than you. Some are just scared. In the end, it doesn’t matter. The fanatics don’t care about you, and if you let them, they will push us into war for their own benefit.
“I’m talking about people like John Smith. And Secretary of Defense Owen Leahy.”