A Better World (The Brilliance Trilogy Book 2)

by Marcus Sakey

  People were standing now, starting to run. The loudspeaker boomed again, told everyone to stop, but hysteria had replaced fear. Ethan had a terrible image of the guns opening fire, strafing the crowd, but it was the spotlights instead, the soldiers hopping off the trucks and yelling.

  Ethan grabbed Amy’s arm, squeezed hard. The woods were—

  A sudden tapping sound made him jump. His first thought was that he’d been shot, but there was no pain, and the sound was too quiet.

  It was the window of the model home, the one they were hiding behind. A woman held a flashlight in one hand as she opened the window with the other. “Quick,” she said, with a come here gesture.

  He looked at her, a stranger in a tank top, her face twisted with urgency. Ethan grabbed Violet, pressed her into the woman’s arms, and then half boosted, half shoved Amy through the window. He gripped the edge of the windowsill and pulled himself up and over, the backpack making it awkward.

  More gunfire sounded on the road.

  The woman turned out to be named Margaret, and she was the wife of the guy Ethan had seen on the front porch, who now put out his hand. “Jeremy.”

  The five of them were in the basement of the model home, a finished space designed to be a family room, though at the moment it held just a couple of folding chairs and a conference table. Outside, the loudspeakers boomed commands. He could imagine the scene, people being rounded up and zip-tied, loaded onto trucks. The soldiers would be ID’ing each of them, looking for him.

  But why?

  He didn’t know. Maybe it was the DAR; maybe it was whoever kidnapped Abe; maybe it was a mistake. Regardless, it seemed best not to be the name read over the loudspeakers. Hoping his wife would pick up on what he was doing, Ethan said, “I’m Will.” His middle name. “My wife Amy. And this is Violet.”

  Amy didn’t miss a beat as she said, “Thank you for letting us in.”

  “Of course, sweetheart.” Margaret shook her head. “I don’t know what those boys were up to, shooting at people, but I couldn’t let you stay out there. Not with the little one.” She cooed down at Violet, now back in Amy’s arms. “My lord, she’s precious.”

  “You think the soldiers will search the house?”

  Jeremy shook his head. “Wouldn’t think so. The doors and windows are locked, so no reason for them to think people are here.”

  “We’re sort of caretakers,” Margaret said. “Watch over the place, make sure kids don’t come out to party, that kind of thing.”

  Ethan said, “We won’t stay long. Just until they leave.”

  “Nonsense. We’ve got plenty of room. It’s too late at night to be wandering around, especially with those soldiers all wound up.”

  “You know the guy they were looking for?” Jeremy asked.

  “No. We didn’t know any of those people. Just trying to get out of town, go stay with Amy’s mom in Chicago.”

  Jeremy swiveled a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. They seemed to have run out of things to say, and in the silence, a Humvee engine revved. They all listened, heads cocked, as the sound grew fainter.

  “We’ve got some food,” Ethan said. “It’s not much, but are you guys hungry?”

  It was the strangest Thanksgiving he could remember, although there was something wonderful about it, too. Margaret and Amy worked together over the camp stove, heating cans, while he and Jeremy set the table. Paper plates and plasticware, a Coleman lantern in the center of the table. The man wasn’t much of a talker, but Ethan learned that they had two kids upstairs—“boys’d sleep through Judgment Day”—and that Jeremy also worked as an electrician, wiring the housing development.

  Dinner was an odd mix: Campbell’s soup, black beans, jerky, peanut butter sandwiches. They all held hands as Jeremy said grace, and then everyone tucked in. Margaret kept up a steady stream of talk, all of it pleasantly inane. The food tasted better than it had a right to, and there were moments when Ethan forgot that they were huddled in a basement on the outskirts of a paralyzed city under terrorist attack and hunted by drones.

  Afterward, while Amy checked on Violet and Margaret cleaned up, Jeremy cocked his head at Ethan in a come with me gesture. They went out to the front porch. The street was abandoned, no sign of the chaos that had taken place just hours ago. Almost no sign: Ethan thought he could see a dark stain on the concrete.

  Amy was right. The life we knew was olden times.

  “Listen, I want to thank you again,” Ethan said. “You saved us there.”

  Jeremy nodded. “Wife’s got a big heart.”

  “So do you. Thanks.”

  The man stepped off the porch and reached behind a drain pipe. He came out with a pint bottle of whiskey, unscrewed the cap and took a pull, then sighed. “Margaret doesn’t like it, but sometimes a man needs a drink.”

  “Amen.” Ethan took the offered bottle.

  “She your first?”

  “Violet? Yes.”

  “Changes you, don’t it?”

  “Changes everything.”

  For a moment they stood listening to night sounds, rustling trees and the sigh of the wind. Ethan took another swig and passed the bottle back.

  “It’s a good thing,” Jeremy said. “Fatherhood. I used to do roofing, up spreading tar in the heat of summer, no shade. By June my neck would have cracked and peeled and burned again. I was eighteen, thought that was hard. Then I had children.”

  “It’s crazy, isn’t it? You think you know what you’re getting yourself into, but you have no idea. None at all. Everybody talks about all the overwhelming love, and that’s true, but that’s not really it. It’s the overwhelming everything. The idea that for every second of the next eighteen years, you’re responsible.”

  Jeremy took another tip of the bottle, offered it. Ethan shook his head. The man capped the whiskey, then returned it to its hiding place. He stepped back up on the porch and put his hands in his pockets, looked up at the sky. “These are strange days, Will. Maybe the last days.” He turned. “You take care of that little girl, you hear?”

  “I will. I’ll do anything I have to.”

  “Hear that.” Back inside, Jeremy left them the Coleman, and everyone said their goodnights.

  The moment Jeremy and Margaret were out of sight, his wife spun on him. “Okay, what the hell is going on?”

  “Amy, I swear to God, I have no idea.”

  “They knew your name. Knew that you were a PhD. They said there was a drone looking for you.”

  “Yeah.” He bent to spread out the sleeping bag. Amy had already made a nest for Violet, and his daughter lay splayed on her back, arms and legs out, head to one side. “All I can think of is that it has something to do with Abe going missing.”

  “So it was the DAR?” She frowned. “But if they wanted to talk to you, why wouldn’t they have just knocked on our door?”

  “I’m wondering if they were watching the house, hoping whoever took Abe would come after me.” He sat down, unlaced his boots. “Only, we left, and that surprised them.”

  Amy considered it. “But a drone? They must really want to talk to you.”

  “I guess,” he said.

  “You think they’re after your work.”

  “Yeah.”

  She settled onto her sleeping bag. “I know how much it means to you, baby. And I know how strict Abe is about his nondisclosure. But this is the government. The DAR. Maybe you should—”

  “Right now,” he said, “all I care about is getting us somewhere safe. We’ll deal with the DAR after that.”

  She nodded slowly, but she didn’t seem entirely convinced. He didn’t blame her. He wasn’t entirely convinced himself.

  Ethan turned out the lantern, then crossed his arms behind his head and stared upward. Thinking of burning cars and a line of refugees. Thinking of fireworks and a spatter of blood. Thinking of how close he and Abe were, and whether their own government intended to steal their work from them.

  The pistol in his
waistband was heavy but strangely comforting.

  For the sake of olden times.

  CHAPTER 20

  The guard was young, with all the screw-you swagger that implied. Which was impressive considering he was kneeling on the floor with a gun to his head.

  “You’re both dead.” His voice had a thick West Virginia drawl. “This is a DAR facility. We’ll know who you are, where you live. You may as well give up now.”

  “Sweetie,” Shannon said, “I promise you. The DAR already knows who we are.”

  She nodded at Kathy Baskoff, and the commando jammed her submachine gun barrel deeper into the guard’s neck. His swagger disappeared. After all, he’d watched Kathy kill his partner without hesitation.

  And you have no idea how much she’d like to do the same to you.

  Shannon took a roll of silver duct tape from her kit bag and yanked the end free. She wrapped a dozen loops around his wrists, then another dozen across his chest, binding him to the chair.

  “We’re go,” she said, then stepped over the body of the other guard and into the cold predawn.

  There were engine sounds, and the headlights of four trucks rolling up the hill. Light splashed across the heavy sign that read DAVIS ACADEMY, carved in granite and sitting there like it should have read YALE.

  “This was my academy,” Kathy said. “From age eleven to eighteen.”

  “I know,” Shannon said. “That’s why I picked you.”

  In the dark, the commando’s thin-lipped smile looked carnivorous.

  A Jeep and three heavy trucks pulled forward, engines chugging. Shannon waited for them to line up. “All of you, listen.” She had the urge to yell like William Wallace urging the Scots to battle, but she knew the earpiece would carry just fine. “You all know why we’re here. No matter what they call this place, no matter what they pretend so they can sleep at night, every academy is a prison. Some of you, like Kathy, spent time in them. Some of you didn’t. That doesn’t matter now. What matters is that tonight the first is falling. We’re done playing nice.”

  She heard whoops through the truck walls.

  “Every adult here is complicit. Guard or janitor, they all sat by and watched children be brainwashed and tortured. If they surrender, fine. If not”—she shrugged—“even better.”

  The whoops were replaced by laughter.

  “But remember. Our first goal is to get every single kid out of here. So check your targets. Don’t pull the trigger unless you’re sure.” She walked to the passenger side of the Jeep, pulled herself up. “Let’s roll.”

  “Where to?”

  “Administration. There’s someone there I want to talk to.”

  Shannon had been planning the attack on Davis Academy for two months. Her penance, a way of making good on her sins. She’d pored over satellite photos, memorized reports written by former “students,” analyzed the list of attendees. She’d even spent a week camped out in the woods near the perimeter, watching vehicles come and go, and she was not a camping girl. After all of that, the inescapable conclusion was that there was simply no way to do it that didn’t put her team—and the children they were rescuing—in serious danger.

  For a while, she’d even wrestled with bringing Cooper in on it. His knowledge of DAR systems would be invaluable, and together they were pretty unstoppable. Besides, the sin was his too.

  It had seemed such a minor thing at the time. Three months ago, when she was delivering Nick to John Smith, they’d been on the run. They’d been in Chicago, hunted by the DAR, and when they needed a place to sleep, Shannon had suggested a friend’s apartment.

  She just hadn’t thought it through, that was all. Hadn’t realized the massive force arrayed against them. How far the government would go to catch them, and what it would do to anyone in its way.

  Tonight you wash those sins away.

  In an ironic twist, it was John and his crazy mission that had made this possible. She’d agreed to rob the DAR for him, but in trade, his programmer had to make sure they lifted the things Shannon needed, too.

  Like the bypass code for the alarm system.

  Like the duty roster and guard post locations.

  Like detailed maps of the administration building, including the residence.

  Information is usually more dangerous than bullets.

  The most dangerous part had been sneaking up on the outer gate post. Low profile was the way to go, so dressed in tactical blacks and night vision goggles, she and Kathy had crept in alone. Taking their time, staying down, branches snagging at clothing, animal sounds magnified.

  When they’d reached the guard booth, Shannon eased alongside the door and knocked. Things had gone fast after that, Kathy coming in hard as Shannon shifted into the guard hut, blocking the panic button.

  One guard had gone for his weapon. Kathy’s silenced submachine gun had made a single whoomp, and he was down, a hole in his forehead, which bled surprisingly little.

  The other had decided to settle for talking tough. She hoped he was enjoying the show on the monitors.

  Now, rolling through the night in an open-topped Jeep, the air cold, she felt a crystalline clarity. Most times on a job she was surfing adrenaline, getting off on the rush of whatever ridiculous stunt she was pulling. But this was different. She wasn’t working solo tonight, for one thing. Instead of a spy or a scout, tonight she was a soldier, and she knew that some of her fellow soldiers might die.

  But it had more to do with a fear of what she might find. A fear that all of this might not grant the absolution she was looking for. The redemption for her terrible error.

  You couldn’t have known. There was no way to predict that spending a night in your friend’s home would mean their daughter was shipped off to an academy.

  Besides, it’s going to work. In fifteen minutes, you’ll be leading 354 children out of prison.

  Including her.

  In the distance, she heard faint thumps, the sound of silenced gunfire. Suppressors didn’t work as well in real life as they did in the movies; bullets were propelled by explosions, and there was only so quiet you could make those.

  By now, academy security would know that they were under attack. They’d be following protocol, retreating to checkpoints, tripping panic signals that were supposed to bring down the might of the US military. Under normal circumstances, special forces teams in attack choppers could land within seven minutes of the first alarm.

  But not tonight. Tonight, you guys are the defenseless ones.

  Something woke him.

  It had been a disheartening thing to realize, as he grew older, that a solid night’s sleep was the province of children. Rare indeed was the evening that he didn’t get up thrice to use the restroom.

  But it wasn’t his bladder that woke Director Charles Norridge. It was a sound, a loud crack that had snapped through his dreams. Fireworks? Perhaps some of the older kids had snuck out, were playing at homegrown terrorist again. If so, there would be boys in the stockade come 9:00 a.m. A crude device, but effective. Far more useful than the physical discomfort was the shame; at this age, there was no more effective teaching tool than humiliation.

  “Hello, Chuck.”

  With a click, his bedside lamp turned on, revealing a slim woman with dark hair. Behind another woman, bigger, stared at him with unmistakable hatred—and a large gun in her hands.

  “Who are you?” His voice came out weaker than he hoped, and he coughed, summoned an imperious tone. “I don’t find this funny.”

  “Really?” The slender woman smiled. “I think it’s kind of hilarious.”

  More cracks in the distance. Gunfire, he realized, not fireworks. “What’s the meaning of this?”

  “What’s the meaning?” She brushed her hair behind her ears. “That’s a tricky question. Like, politically? Ideologically? Morally?”

  How dare she. “This is a school. I’m an educator.”

  “This is a prison. You’re a warden.”

  “I never hurt
anyone,” he said. “I love my students.”

  “I wonder if they’d say the same of you?”

  He started to slide out of bed, froze when she said, “Uh-uh.” She sat on the edge of the mattress. “I’m going to give you a present, Chuck.”

  “Do I know you?”

  “My name is Shannon. You’ve known plenty of my friends.” She gestured at the woman by the door, the one carrying the gun. “Like Kathy.”

  Norridge looked. The woman had a restless energy to her; even standing still, she seemed to be fidgeting. “I’ve never seen you before. Who are you?”

  “My name is Kathy Baskoff.”

  “I don’t know any Kathy Baskoff.”

  “Sure you do. You just called me Linda.” The woman smiled without warmth. “Linda Jones.”

  Until that moment, as frightened as he’d been, it had all felt at a remove, too. The aftereffects of a bad dream, nothing to be taken seriously. Now his bladder hit, a sudden icy tightness. “I never hurt you.”

  “You don’t even remember me. How many Linda Joneses have you had at this school? A hundred? A thousand?”

  Shannon said, “Kathy, what was the worst part about being here?”

  The dangerous-looking one paused. “It wasn’t just that you took us from our families. That you renamed us. That you turned us against each other and poisoned our minds.” She raised the gun, stared down the barrel at him. “It was living in fear. Every single minute, in fear, and knowing we were trapped. That there was nothing we could do about it.”

  Suddenly the one called Shannon gripped his forearm. Charles tried to pull away, but she was surprisingly strong. She snapped something around his wrist, cold and metal, and then jerked his arm up and fastened the other end to the bedpost. Norridge yanked, and the handcuff bit into his skin.

  Shannon said, “Listen.”

  He waited for her to speak again; when she didn’t, he realized she meant it more generally. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “That’s right. No gunfire.” A pause. “Your guards are all dead. No one is coming to save you.”

  Something wet coated his thighs, and Norridge realized he’d lost control of his bladder. The shame that washed over him felt hotter than the urine.