by Marcus Sakey
The Civil War had been the bloodiest conflict in America’s history. Three-quarters of a million dead, cities burned, infrastructure destroyed, disease run rampant—and that was all before Seraphim drones and Avenger missiles. Could positions be so hard-line, so intractably personal, that the people who held them were willing to risk the entire world?
“Yes,” Millie said.
Erik looked at her. “Yes what?”
She shook her head.
All right. If they won’t listen to reason, if terror of the consequences won’t work, maybe something else will. “You said the data was unclear.”
“Fluid.”
“There must be something that would help solidify it.” Cooper paused. “Something that we can offer you.”
Erik and Jakob shared a look. To a normal person, it might have seemed they were considering his words. But to Cooper, the meaning was clear. They had already decided what they needed. There was a price for their help.
And it took all of three seconds for him to work it out.
CHAPTER 24
Soren read.
Cooper:
Sovereignty. They want sovereignty for the NCH.
Clay:
The hell you say.
Cooper:
In return for which they’ll denounce the COD and all other terrorist organizations, and dedicate the full resources of the Holdfast to eliminating them.
Clay:
I will not go down in history as the president who allowed half of Wyoming to secede.
Cooper:
Sir, we need to consider this. Erik and Jakob confirm that John Smith is behind the Children of Darwin. We can’t act on that information without proof. But with their help, we could capture the COD and the most dangerous man alive in one move.
Clay:
In trade for which we have to create a new nation within our own borders and accord them diplomatic rights and privileges. Not only that, but a nation of gifted, the first in the world. That’s a deal with the devil, Nick.
Cooper:
When the devil is the only one dealing, sir, you look at his wares.
Clay:
I know you disagree with Secretary Leahy’s approach, but the Monitoring Oversight Initiative, combined with targeted arrests, may offer a chance—
Cooper:
Excuse me, sir, but it’s not that simple. If we don’t allow the NCH to secede, I believe that they’ll join the terrorists.
Clay:
They wouldn’t dare. Epstein knows we can reduce the Holdfast to rubble.
<2.9 seconds of silence>
Cooper:
Is that really what you want?
<4.2 seconds of silence>
Clay:
Start the conversation. But we’re going to need their full and unequivocal support. Not just on the COD, but into the future. A new special relationship.
When the file arrived on his d-pad, Soren had been in the middle of a novel, a baroque historical packed with architectural terms. It wasn’t very good, but he found it impossible to be nothing here. Too many sounds from too many people coming through the walls. Too great a sense of the weight of humanity around him. Even a poor distraction was better.
There was a knock on the apartment door, the handle turning at the same time. John, knowing that the greater courtesy was respecting his time rather than his privacy.
John Smith said, “Youreadthefile?”
“Yes.”
“Youunderstand.”
It wasn’t complicated. If the Holdfast allied with the American government before the jaws of John’s trap closed, the revolution would be over before it began. “Yes.”
“He’spowerful.”
Soren had read files on the new ambassador, had watched footage of his arrival. “Yes.”
“Canyoudoit?”
“Yes.”
“Willyou?”
When John had pulled him from his retreat, led him into the world with all its pressures, he had explained why. Everything hung in the balance. A war was likely. Millions would likely die. But things would be forever changed. The gifted would assume dominance in America, and from there, the world.
Soren didn’t care. The barriers that separated him from the world would never be toppled. Social change was irrelevant; prejudice had never been his problem. The revolution meant nothing to him.
But it meant everything to John, and to Samantha. The only two people in the world Soren cared about.
“Yes.” He set aside his novel and looked his friend in the eye. “I’ll kill Nick Cooper for you.”
CHAPTER 25
“Follow the money,” Quinn deadpanned over the video link. “Just . . . follow the money.”
Cooper rolled his eyes. “Really?”
“Hey, it won an Oscar.”
“I think it won them all. Do you have the files or not?”
Quinn said, “Sending.” The projection went half-transparent as he leaned too close to the camera.
Cooper sat in the office Epstein had provided, across the square from the apartment his family was staying in. It was stylish, modern, and no doubt bugged from floor to ceiling. While it might be possible to keep secrets from Erik Epstein, he didn’t imagine it was possible to do it in the New Canaan Holdfast.
It didn’t matter. Let him watch.
Cooper glanced at his d-pad. “Receiving.”
“For all the good it will do you.”
“Epstein has a hole card. Something we don’t know about.”
“My friend, he has dozens. We’ve had teams of lawyers and forensic accountants working full-time to decrypt Epstein’s finances for years. A third of a trillion dollars spread across hundreds of shell corporations in scores of countries. If you were to print out all the data I just sent you, you know how tall a stack it would be?”
“No, how tall?”
“Really tall.”
Cooper laughed. “As ever, I feel safer knowing you’re involved, Bobby.”
“I’m not involved. The special advisor to the president asked for a favor, and the DAR was happy to help.”
“Good, because I need another. I want you to link my d-pad to Daria.”
“No way. She’s an agency resource.”
“And I work for the White House.”
“Cooper—”
“Bobby, please. With sugar on top. And presidential authorization.”
His friend blew a breath. “Fine.”
“Thanks.” Cooper tapped a button, and the projection of Quinn vanished. His d-pad showed that less than twenty-five percent of the file had been transferred. Considering the bandwidth available in the Holdfast, that was saying something. Maybe Quinn was right. How much could he expect to accomplish in the face of all of that information?
Cooper sighed, leaned back. There were three tri-ds mounted on the wall, and he had them all on, all tuned to news, all muted. The most interesting by far was the pirate station out of the NCH that hacked into the datafeeds to broadcast a distinctly partisan take on world events. Right now it was showing an image of former President Henry Walker, and as the host talked, someone doodled on the video, drawing a Hitler moustache and horns on the man. Not sophisticated, but kind of funny.
Okay. What are you doing?
On one hand, the answer was simple. He was using his gift for pattern recognition to sort through the finances of Epstein Industries, looking for anomalies that might give him a window into Erik’s intentions.
On the other hand, that was ridiculous. $300 billion was an incomprehensibly huge amount of money. If the Coca-Cola Company merged with McDonald’s, their combined market capitalization would still be $20 billion less than Epstein’s personal fortune. Cooper could stare at spreadsheets for a year and never see the same one twice, and he didn’t have a year.
So do it your way. Forget a brute-strength approach. Trust your gift. Look for the sharp edges and knotty corners. The parts you can catch on.
When he’d met Erik Epstein months
ago, the abnorm had asked Cooper to kill John Smith. It wasn’t personal; Epstein wanted Smith dead because he believed that the terrorist leader posed a threat to New Canaan. A belief borne out by recent events.
Okay, fine. But Cooper couldn’t possibly have been Epstein’s only plan to protect New Canaan. In fact, talking to Erik and Jakob earlier, it had been clear that while they’d hoped he would succeed, they hadn’t gone all-in on that notion. Why should they? They were intelligent men running a complicated empire. He had probably been a long shot.
There it was. The first clue. If he had been a long shot, that meant they had other plans in action as well. Plans that predated his arrival and that would have continued after he left.
Now you just need to figure out what they are.
His d-pad pinged softly, showing the connection had been established. Cooper switched to verbal control, and said, “Daria?”
“Hello, Nick. Department of Analysis and Response Inquiry Assessment, ready.” The voice was female, but the force behind it wasn’t a person. DARIA was a research tool, a personality matrix used to sift data.
“Sort largest expenditures, by category, in Epstein Industries and all subsidiaries, 2010 to 2013.”
“Complete.”
“Remove everyday costs of doing business.”
“Nick, I’ll need more precision.”
“Take out stuff like maintenance and legal fees, but leave in things like, I don’t know, product development.”
“Complete.”
“Display.”
A list scrolled. And scrolled, and scrolled. What had Bobby said? A third of a trillion dollars, spread across hundreds of companies.
“Filter for anomalous results.”
“Nick, anomalous in what way?”
“As compared to—” A flicker of motion caught his eye. Something was happening on the tri-d. All of the news stations were showing the same footage. “Um, other multinationals.”
“Nick, that will take several moments.”
“What? Fine.”
He tapped buttons on the desk, and the screens unmuted, audio pouring out from three sources at once, as the video showed . . .
Shannon?
Just flashes of her, moving fast. Dressed in black fatigues and carrying a submachine gun. She was racing down a hall somewhere, a dozen similarly dressed people behind her. The hall was painted a sad shade of green, and the windows were narrow. It looked familiar.
The announcers were talking over one another, and he muted two of them, left CNN running.
“—a terrorist attack on Davis Academy, an institution for advanced study located in West Virginia. The academy is an elite facility for the most powerful gifted—”
Davis. No wonder it looked familiar. That was the academy he had visited last year. The one where he had seen children manipulated into brutal fistfights. Learned that the kids were bugged so that their deepest secrets could be used against them. Where names were taken away and identities destroyed and personalities turned more docile, more fragile, and more compliant.
Where his daughter, Kate, would have ended up.
Holy shit. Shan. I should have trusted you.
“—terrorists stormed the gates and subdued the personnel, killing an undisclosed number of guards and teachers, including Charles Norridge, the facility director. Whereabouts of the more than three hundred students of the school are unknown at this time.”
Cooper’s hand flew to his mouth, a laugh bursting free. He remembered the anger that had pumped through his veins the day he listened to Norridge, the fantasy he’d had about hurling the director through the window. That was the day his eyes had started opening, the day he’d realized that the DAR wasn’t all he had hoped it might be.
He swapped the audio feed from CNN to the Tesla pirate station.
“—liberating more than three hundred kidnapped children before planting explosives and blowing the shit out of the symbol of horrific oppression that was Davis Academy. The chief torturer, Charles Norridge, was killed in the attack, and we all feel real sad about that. Bravo to the brave freedom fighters who pulled this off. You’ll never pay for a drink again. Mama! Daddy! Your babies are free!”
As a representative of the government, he knew he was supposed to be horrified. Knew that this was an attack on the status quo. An act of terrorism that would further upset the already delicate balance of the country.
And he just didn’t care. The Tesla pirate station had it right: bravo. And it was Shannon’s doing. What had she said last night, in the midst of their fight? “I’m going to West Virginia. I’m going to do the best thing I’ve ever done.”
My God. What a woman.
Right, Coop. But remember what she said next? “Watch the news. And fuck off.”
The first reaction was bile in his throat and an oh shit feeling, a sense that he’d screwed up. But the second was—
Before that. You were accusing her of trying to steal bioweapons—which, by the way, you know Shannon wouldn’t do—and she said she was there for something else.
A magic potion.
The phrase must have stuck in your head, because that’s what you said this afternoon.
That was what made Millie laugh.
—more important. He muted the news.
“Daria. Retask. Do you have access to the information stolen from the DAR earlier this week?”
“Nick, I have a topical list, but no details. That information was sequestered—”
“Yeah, I know. It was primarily information about research facilities, right?”
“Nick, that’s correct.”
“Run a correlation pattern against all Epstein Industries expenditures. I want to know if Epstein was funding any of the labs that Shan—that the terrorist stole information about.”
“Nick, there’s one match. The Advanced Genomics Institute.”
He leaned back, feeling that tickle in his brain that told him his gift was close to finding a pattern. “Tell me more.”
CHAPTER 26
The last time he’d been in New Canaan it had been the height of summer, and even so the evenings had been chilly. Now, midnight in late November, it was twenty degrees. Even standing in a crowd, the wind on the airfield cut through the leather jacket he’d brought, and he stomped his feet and blew into his hands.
Too bad you ditched your security detail. They probably could have lent you a proper coat.
It had not been the most diplomatic move, slipping out the second-story window of his loaner office and hailing an electric cab. But he wasn’t on the airfield as an ambassador.
With a last roar, the 737 came to a stop on the runway. Ground crew drove a stair car up to the side of the plane as the engines wound down. Around him, the crowd surged with barely restrained desire.
“Can you believe it?”
The man who’d spoken was in his midfifties, his face leathery and lean. No one had water fat in Wyoming, but it was more than that. The guy looked like someone who had fallen asleep and woken up in misery every day for a long time. Cooper said, “Son or daughter?”
“Son,” the man said. “Peter. He’ll be fifteen now.”
The more Cooper looked, the more he realized he’d been wrong about the man’s age. Biologically, he was probably forty. It wasn’t hard to figure out why he looked so ragged. The Treffert-Down test that identified abnorms was administered at age eight. The man hadn’t seen his son for seven years.
“We never gave up. Every year on his birthday we’d have a cake, try to sing. Last year my Gloria died.” The guy’s voice was soft. “After that, it got harder to believe.”
It got harder to believe. Truer words. Seven years ago, Cooper had just been promoted to agent status in Equitable Services. He had been a believer then, eager to hunt the targets Drew Peters had given him. While he’d never been affiliated with the academies—hadn’t seen one until last year—it would take the worst kind of self-deception to suggest that his work hadn’t landed children
in them.
For all Cooper knew, he had been instrumental in stealing this man’s son.
The thought was a railroad spike of guilt. For a moment, Cooper’s defenses fell away, and he realized the full weight of the stakes he played for. Even striving every day to do the right thing, working to create a better world for his children, he had made unforgivable mistakes, caused unimaginable pain. And meanwhile, despite his best efforts, every day the world had gotten more complicated, the solution farther out of reach. It was, indeed, getting harder to believe.
With a clunk, the door of the 737 opened. The crowd chatter died, leaving just the whine of the dying jets and the howl of the wind.
A figure stepped out onto the stairs. Shannon wore the same black fatigues he’d seen in the news footage and held a little girl in her arms. Even from a distance, something about her looked different. When he saw the girl’s face, Cooper understood.
It might be getting harder to believe, but Shannon had found a way.
The scene was happy chaos, and even desperate as he was to talk to Shannon, Cooper waited. Children streamed off the plane, the little ones first. Their reaction was uniform; they froze at the doorway of the jet, staring, hoping, straining. Some of them saw parents in the crowd and raced down the stairs into their arms, mothers and fathers openly weeping, crushing their stolen children to their chests, swearing never to let go.
Others milled, the hope in their eyes draining slowly. Of course—not every parent would be here. At least, not yet. Cooper had a feeling several hundred families were about to uproot their lives and join the NCH, and screw the consequences.
It was the older ones he really felt sorry for. The teenagers had spent half their lives in that academy. It had become their reality, and they had the darty eyes and nervous bearing of felons released from prison.