Written in Fire

by Marcus Sakey

  “Fifteen so far. They were synchronized.”

  “John Smith.”

  Epstein nodded. “Your friend Valerie’s analysis was correct.”

  “You were listening in?”

  “Of course,” Erik said as though that were normal. “However, she was suffering from institutional bias. John Smith wasn’t acting against the DAR. And though we are in his endgame, this is not the master stroke.”

  “No,” Cooper said. “He thinks bigger than this.”

  “Agreed. Statistically—” He caught himself nervously. “Umm, I mean, logically, the purpose is to weaken existing power structures. For greatest efficacy, terrorists benefit from a desperate nation.”

  “Yeah.” Cooper looked at the screens. “Well.”

  “However,” Epstein said, “we’re no closer to John Smith than before. Perhaps we should use alternate methods.”

  “You mean start torturing Soren? No.”

  “Extreme interrogation doesn’t fit your personality matrix. Understood. But there are people suited for it.”

  “You think I’m squeamish?” Cooper made a sound that wasn’t a laugh. “After all that’s happened?” He shook his head. “I hate everything about the notion of torture, and I’d take Soren apart a piece at a time if I thought it would work. But it won’t.”

  “Expand.”

  “I offered Soren the one thing he’s always dreamed of and never imagined he might actually have. I’m sure you were watching. I even lied and suggested that it might be made permanent. And he pulled the plug out of his own skull.”

  “Still, perhaps pain would—”

  Cooper shook his head. “He’s too strong. I’m sure you could break him. But it would be his mind you broke, not his will. There are only two people in the world he cares about. Only two he even believes exist. You could drive him mad, but there’s no amount of pain that would make him betray . . .”

  He trailed off.

  Millie stared at him. “Wow. Are you serious?”

  Cooper turned away from her accusing eyes. Looked at Erik Epstein, pale and powerful and surrounded by images of a world in crisis. “I need you to get someone for me.”

  “Who?”

  “The other person Soren cares about,” Cooper said. “His lover, Samantha.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Hawk was reading volume six of a graphic novel series when someone knocked on his door.

  He didn’t really know if there was a difference between comic books and graphic novels, but the latter sounded better. A comic book might be some silly story of a rich duck and his nephews. What he was reading was a philosophical exploration of the devil’s continuing war with heaven. This devil wasn’t red and scaly, and he wasn’t exactly evil, although he certainly wasn’t good, either. More like doing his own thing, no matter what. He wanted free will, and heaven was all about predestination. Hawk knew on which side his mom would have fallen, and he was kind of falling the same way.

  The knock was three soft raps, could be anyone, and so as he walked to the door, he let himself imagine it was Tabitha. Maybe asking for help with something. He was a better shot, maybe she wanted to practice—

  John Smith stood in the hallway. “Hiya, Hawk.”

  It was John who had first given him the nickname, and while Aaron had always liked Aaron Hakowski okay, it was no match for being the Hawk. He straightened and brushed his hair back. John had never come to his room before. Why would he? He was in charge of everything, and Aaron was just a kid whose mom had . . .

  “Can I come in?”

  “Ah, yeah, sure, of course.” He held the door open.

  John stepped inside, took in the room, and Aaron suddenly saw it through his eyes, the crumpled blankets and piles of stuff all over the desk and, shit, a comic book propped open on his bed.

  “What are you reading?”

  “Nothing, just—”

  “Ah.” John picked up the book, held it with a smile. “I love this series.”

  “I—you do?”

  “Great writing. Plus, I identify with him some. Plenty of people think I’m the devil, too. Risks of forging your own path.” John put it back on the pillow. “You mind if I smoke?”

  “No, no, go ahead.”

  “Thanks.” He slid a cigarette from the pack, snapped a silver Zippo. “Bad habit, but it helps me think.”

  “Aren’t you worried about . . .”

  “It killing me?”

  Aaron nodded.

  “Tell you the truth?” John shrugged. “I would be, if there was any chance I’d live long enough. Okay if I sit down?”

  “Yeah.” Aaron took the chair from the desk, dumped a pile of books off of it. “So what do you mean about living—”

  “I’m playing a game against the whole world, Hawk. I have been since I was eight years old. Do you know what happened to me then?”

  Aaron shook his head.

  “I took a test. It was new then, the Treffert-Down. Everyone was very excited about it, this scale for measuring brilliance. I’d been taught to do well on tests, so I did. I did so well, in fact”—John dug a Coke can from the garbage and ashed his cigarette into it—“that government agents came and took me away from my mom. They put me in an academy. They changed my name and started trying to break me. I spent ten years there. I watched them destroy my friends. Brainwash them, or worse. Sometimes much worse.”

  “Mom told me about the academies,” Aaron said. “I’m really sorry.”

  “I’m not.” John looked straight at him. “That made me. I realized when I was eight years old that that wasn’t a world I could live in. I decided to tear it down and build a better one. To pen a new history, one written in fire. And I’m going to succeed.”

  “I believe you,” Aaron said.

  “I’m going to succeed,” John continued, “but I’m not going to live. They’ll kill me.” He took another drag off the cigarette. “It’s pretty much guaranteed. So I can’t get too worried about lung cancer, you know?”

  “But—can’t you run? Hide?”

  “I ran for a long time. But now it’s time to act. And I can’t execute my plan and hide under a rock at the same time.” He leaned forward. “The other day you asked me about it. Do you still want to know?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You remember the man we brought in?”

  “Dr. Abraham Couzen. You said he had discovered the most important thing in thousands of years.”

  John smiled. “That’s right. Couzen discovered what makes people brilliant. More than that, he figured out a way to turn normals into abnorms. Non-coding RNA that alters gene expression.”

  This must be a dream. If he’d opened his door to find Tabitha wearing lingerie and waggling a condom, it would have seemed more real than John Freaking Smith sitting on his bed and talking about graphic novels and non-coding RNA, whatever that was. “Does it . . . it works?”

  “Yes. But that’s just the beginning. Do you know much about organic chemistry?”

  From anyone else, the question would have been an insult, but Aaron realized that John meant it, face value. “No.”

  “Okay, well, it was obvious that someone would discover the root causes of brilliance. I won’t bore you with the details, but there were indicators that it wasn’t too far down the line. Some of the best abnorm scientists are part of our cause, and I could have put them to work on it. But that’s a long-odds proposition. Better to let the world at large develop that, crowd-source it, if you will. Instead, we worked on a delivery mechanism. It started as a particularly nasty strain of flu, but that was a long time ago. Since then, we’ve refined and refined and refined it. We’ve created pretty much the most contagious cold the world has ever seen.”

  “I don’t understand. How does making people sick help? Does it kill them?”

  “I said contagious, not dangerous. The problem with biologicals as a strategic weapon is that they’re hard to use, hard to contain, and if effective, tend to wipe out their
hosts. This is different. It doesn’t do much but give you the sniffles and a cough. But it’s so incredibly communicable, and so long-lived, that if we release it properly, we can count on most of the world being infected.”

  “I don’t understand. How does it help us?”

  “Because influenza is an RNA virus. Like Ebola and SARS. Which means we can piggyback Dr. Couzen’s non-coding RNA into it.”

  Hawk wanted to ask an intelligent question, wanted it badly, but he had a feeling that if he opened his mouth all that would come out was ummmmm, so instead he kept it shut.

  “Which means that more or less everyone will get my flu,” John continued. “And everyone who does will become gifted.”

  Aaron’s mouth fell open. He hadn’t realized that happened, not really, not in life. “You . . . you’re going to turn the whole world . . .”

  “Brilliant.” John dropped his cigarette into the Coke can. “Yes.”

  “But that’s . . . it would . . . I mean . . .”

  “It will be humanity’s biggest leap since the development of agriculture. Bigger. Because agriculture, like writing, and mathematics, and medicine, is just knowledge. Knowledge can be lost. This is different. This is evolution. The changes to gene expression will be heritable. Do you get what that means?”

  “I . . .”

  “I’m not just turning everyone alive today brilliant. I’m turning the whole human race brilliant—forever.”

  Aaron had just managed to close his jaw, and now it fell open again. “My God.”

  “Think about it. A whole new world. A better one, with better people. Smarter, more capable, unafraid. Think what that could look like. Imagine what humanity could accomplish if everyone was brilliant.”

  “That’s amazing.” It felt like the bed was spinning beneath him. He had so many questions. But really, they all boiled down to one—Can I have some? He’d happily cut off a nut to be gifted. “What can I . . . what do you need from me?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Well . . .” Aaron paused. “I mean, there must be a reason you’re telling me. Right?”

  For a terrible second, he thought he’d offended John. But then his friend smiled. “Smart man. There is. We know everything about the pathology of our modified flu. Our virologists have been refining it for years. Now we’ve got Couzen’s research, which we know works. And we’ve got detailed computer models of the two combined.”

  Suddenly it all clicked into place. “But you haven’t actually tried it.”

  “I’d take it myself,” John said, “but I’m already gifted.”

  “So it won’t affect brilliants?”

  “We’ll still get the sniffles. And more importantly, the inheritance trait. But it won’t change the way our gifts work.”

  “So you need a . . . a guinea pig?”

  “No. I need a pioneer. We don’t have time for clinical trials, Hawk. But I need to know how long this takes, and if there are side effects that we aren’t anticipating, things like that. Because this is it. This is the masterstroke. We either win everything, or we lose everything. And I want to win.”

  It took all Aaron’s willpower not to agree immediately. It was the thing he wanted more than anything. He had ever since Mom had explained the difference between her and him. She’d been so sad and self-conscious about it, had tried so hard to make it clear that she didn’t think less of him because he was normal. And he knew she hadn’t. But it didn’t change the fact that he was less.

  A thought hit him. “Dr. Couzen. You said he was going to die.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because he took his stuff?”

  “The serum makes you brilliant, which means fundamentally changing the way the brain works. Couzen is too old for that not to have consequences. But you’re fourteen. I’m not saying this will be a trip to Disney World, but you’ll be fine. More than that. You’ll be brilliant.”

  The phrase seemed to hang in the air. Aaron wondered what that might mean, specifically. Like turning into a superhero. “So old people who get this flu will die?”

  “Some of them,” John said. “But it was old people who shaped this world. If building a better one costs the lives of the people who designed the academies, well, I’d rather them than you.”

  Aaron bit at his thumbnail.

  “Doing this,” John continued quietly, “would be a huge help to the cause. A huge help to me. But it’s up to you. It’s always up to you.”

  He knew what Mom would want him to do. But she’d been his mom. It was her job to think he was perfect. Truth was, he knew better. Besides, this was his life, and his choice. He pointed at the cigarettes. “Can I have one?”

  “You smoke, Aaron?”

  “I don’t know.”

  John looked at him appraisingly. Then held out the pack.

  Aaron fumbled one free, put it between his lips. John Smith did the same, then snapped the Zippo again and lit both.

  “Do me a favor?” Aaron held the cigarette. It felt weird between his fingers, but kind of good too. “Call me Hawk.”

  CHAPTER 22

  When Natalie opened the door, her eyes, red and sunken, brightened with relief. “Oh thank God,” she said, and then, “Come here,” even as she opened her arms and came to him.

  Cooper clutched at her, the familiar scent of her hair mingling with a faintly humid whiff of tears. Natalie always smelled different when she’d been crying. There was a permission in it, and he felt tears of his own close to the surface. When was the last time he’d cried? When Dad died?

  “I was watching the news,” she said into his shoulder. “I knew you weren’t there, but I couldn’t help it, when I saw that building, the same complex you went to work in every day, I just lost it.”

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  She heard the things he couldn’t say, and stiffened. Leaned back without breaking the contact of their bodies, her eyes widening. “Bobby?”

  “And Val, and Luisa.”

  Both her hands went to her open mouth, as if to contain the sound. But the cry made it through anyway. “Are they—are you sure?”

  “I was talking to them when it happened. I . . . I saw . . .” He closed his eyes, sucked air in.

  “Oh God, baby. Oh, Nick.” She pressed herself against him, hands tightening around his back, strong fingers digging in. He heaved a gasping exhale that felt like it tore something. She held him, rocking slightly. “Come with me.”

  Cooper let her lead him into the apartment, through the kitchen, and down the hall to the bedroom. He was strangely aware that they’d made love the last time he’d been here, and then he realized he’d never get the chance to tell Bobby about that, to share his confusion and hear his old friend make an inappropriate joke, something funny and wrong that would get them laughing, and that was when he did start crying. Natalie climbed onto the bed and leaned against the wall and gestured him into her arms, and he crawled up after her and put his head in her lap and clutched her legs while she stroked his hair and knew better than to tell him it was all right.

  It hadn’t been all right for a very long time, and he was starting to doubt it ever would be again.

  The tears didn’t last long—he’d never had a problem with crying, he just didn’t very much—but after they ceased he stayed where he was, head on her thighs, staring at her feet and the gauzy curtains beyond which the day died slowly. She ran her hands through his hair and waited, infinitely patient and present.

  “It’s wrong,” he said at last. “It’s just wrong. You know how many times Bobby and I were in danger? How many doors we kicked in, how many suspects we took down? Hell, the day of the stock exchange, he took a shotgun blast to the chest, broke two ribs. I was there, I knocked him down and . . .” He trailed off.

  Natalie just ran her hands through his hair. After a moment, he said, “We were agents. We knew the risks. But . . . not like this. Not a bomb in the middle of the workday. No warning, no fighting back. Just boom, dead. He deserved bette
r than that. A better death.”

  “There’s no such thing as a better death, baby. There’s just death.”

  “Yeah, but for Bobby Quinn it should have meant something. He should have been doing something that mattered.”

  “He was,” Natalie said. “He was at work, trying to protect the country.”

  “It’s not the same. He wasn’t prepared.”

  “Who is?” She shrugged. “Bobby was a hero, and so were Luisa and Val and all the rest of them. But it’s only in movies that heroes get to count on the big moment of glorious sacrifice. Real life is messier than that.”

  “I know, but . . . In a second. I mean, we were joking around when it happened. He said that beer was on me. Those were his last words. ‘Just remember, the beer is on you.’”

  Natalie made a sound that was almost a laugh. “Sorry, I just . . .” She paused, and this time she did laugh, though it was thick with sorrow. “If you asked Bobby, he’d have said those were pretty good last words.”

  The sentiment caught him off guard, and he found he could picture it, could picture his partner sitting at a bar, spinning a cigarette he didn’t intend to light, and saying, Hey, man, top that.

  “I don’t mean to laugh.”

  “No, you’re right. He’d have liked that.” They lay quietly for a moment, his face mashed against her leg, his own pulse echoing in his ear.

  “God,” Natalie said. “His daughter.”

  “Shit.” Bobby had been divorced, and not on the same terms with his ex that he and Natalie maintained. His daughter lived with her mom, and Cooper hadn’t seen her in a while. “Maggie must be . . . eleven now?”

  “Twelve,” Natalie said. “Her birthday’s in June.”

  “How do you remember that?”

  “I loved him too, Nick. So do the kids.”

  Worse and worse. He’d have to tell them that Uncle Bobby was dead. Like they hadn’t been through enough. “Kate and the academy. Todd in a coma. Maggie without her dad. All the way back to the kids in the Monocle restaurant. Why is it always children that suffer?” A thought struck him, and he turned his head. “Wait, where are—”