by Marcus Sakey
ABOUT WRITTEN IN FIRE
The explosive conclusion to the bestselling Brilliance Trilogy
For thirty years humanity struggled to cope with the brilliants, the one percent of people born with remarkable gifts. For thirty years we tried to avoid a devastating civil war.
We failed.
The White House is a smoking ruin. Madison Square Garden is an internment camp. In Wyoming, an armed militia of thousands marches toward a final, apocalyptic battle.
Nick Cooper has spent his life fighting for his children and his country. Now, as the world staggers on the edge of ruin, he must risk everything he loves to face his oldest enemy—a brilliant terrorist so driven by his ideals that he will sacrifice humanity’s future to achieve them.
From “one of our best storytellers” (Michael Connelly) comes the blistering conclusion to the acclaimed series that is a “forget-to-pick-up-milk, forget-to-water-the-plants, forget-to-eat total immersion experience” (Gillian Flynn).
Also by Marcus Sakey
The Brilliance Trilogy
Brilliance
A Better World
The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes
The Blade Itself
At the City’s Edge
Good People
The Amateurs
Scar Tissue
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2016 by Marcus Sakey
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781477827642
ISBN-10: 1477827641
Cover design by Shasti O’Leary-Soudant
For Joss, who burns so very bright.
CONTENTS
START READING
This must be. . .
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire.
—Robert Frost
This must be what God feels.
A single glance at my outstretched hand and I know the number of hair follicles covering the back of it, can differentiate and quantify the darker androgenic strands from the barely discernible vellus hairs.
Vellus, from the Latin, meaning fleece.
I summon the page in Gray’s Anatomy on which I learned the word and examine the diagram of a hair follicle. But also: The texture and weave of the paper. The attenuation of light from the banker’s lamp that illuminates it. The sandalwood scent of the girl three chairs down. I can evoke these details with perfect clarity, this utterly forgettable and forgotten moment that nonetheless was imprinted in a cluster of brain cells in my hippocampus, as every other moment and experience of my life has been. At a whim I can activate those neurons and scrub forward or backward to relive the day with full sensual clarity.
An unimportant day at Harvard thirty-eight years ago.
To be precise, thirty-eight years, four months, fifteen hours, five minutes, and forty-two seconds ago. Forty-three. Forty-four.
I lower my hand, feeling the extension and contraction of each individual muscle.
The world rushes in.
Manhattan, the corner of 42nd and Lexington. Cars and construction noises and throngs of lemming-people and cold December air and a snatch of Bing Crosby singing “Silver Bells” from the opening door of a café and the smells of exhaust and falafel and urine. An assault of sensation, unfiltered, overwhelming.
Like descending a staircase and forgetting the last step, empty air where solid floor was expected.
Like sitting in a chair, then noticing it’s the cockpit of a fighter jet going three times the speed of sound.
Like lifting an abandoned hat, only to discover it rests on a severed head.
Panic drenches my skin, panic envelops my body. My endocrine system dumps adrenaline, my pupils widen my sphincter tightens my fingers clench—
Control.
Balance.
Breath.
Mantra: You are Dr. Abraham Couzen. You are the first person in history to transcend the boundary between normal and abnormal. Your serum of non-coding RNA has radically altered your gene expression. A genius by any measure, you are now more.
You are brilliant.
People flow around me as I stand on the corner, and I can see the vector of each, can predict the moments they will cross and bump, the slowed step, the itched elbow, before they happen. I can, if I wish, screen everything down to lines of motion and force, an interactive map, like a fabric weaving itself.
A man jostles my shoulder, and I entertain a brief whim of breaking his neck, picturing instantly the steps to do so: a palm on his chin, a handful of his hair, a foot planted for leverage, a fast, sharp swivel building from the hips for maximum force.
I let him live.
A woman passes and I read her secrets from her sloped shoulders and the hair falling to screen her peripheral vision, the jump of her eyes at the taxi’s horn, the baggy jacket and ringless finger and comfortable shoes. The hairs on her pant legs are from three different cats, and I can picture the apartment she lives in alone, the train ride in from Brooklyn, perhaps, though not the fashionable part. I can see the abuse as a child—an uncle or family friend, not her father—that framed her isolation. The slight pallor and trembling hands reveal she drinks at night, most likely wine, judging by the teeth. The haircut indicates she makes at least sixty thousand dollars a year, the handbag assures she makes no more than eighty. An office job with little human interaction, something with numbers. Accounting, probably in a major corporation.
This must be what God feels.
Then I realize two things. I’ve got a nosebleed. And I’m being watched.
It manifests as a tingle, the kind fools attribute to notions of “the collective unconscious.” In truth it’s simply indicators gathered by the
senses but not processed by the frontal lobe: a tremor of shadow, a partial reflection in a glass, the almost-but-not-quite undetectable warmth and sound of another body in the room.
For me, the original stimuli are easily examined, focused like a blurry image in a microscope. I call up my sense memory of the last moments, the texture of the crowd, the smell of humanity, the movement of vehicles. The lines of force tell a tale, much like ripples in water reveal rocks beneath the surface. I am not mistaken.
They are many, they are armed, and they are here for me.
I roll my neck and crack my fingers.
This should be interesting.
CHAPTER 1
They were running out of time, but even so, Cooper couldn’t stop staring.
There was nothing unusual about the rope, which was the kind of bright yellow synthetic cord used to lash down a tarp. What was unusual was that it had been tied in a noose and flung over a Manhattan streetlight.
What was unusual was that a corpse hung from it.
He’d been maybe seventeen. A good-looking kid, lean with strong features. He wore a McDonald’s uniform, and across the bright yellow shirt, whoever murdered him had markered the word TWIST. Not random, then. Lynched by neighbors, coworkers, maybe even friends. Somewhere along the line he’d lost a shoe, and that was what Cooper couldn’t stop staring at, the thin white sock, so exposed in the December wind.
“Jesus Christ.” Ethan Park panted the words; they’d been sprinting until they hit the crowd gathered around the body.
It had been two weeks since seventy-five thousand troops were massacred by their own equipment in the Wyoming desert, the result of a computer virus designed and implemented by abnorms. Humanity never took well to the exceptional. And liked it even less when the exceptional fought back.
He was just a boy, Cooper thought. The sky was pewter and pregnant with snow, and the body spun slowly in the wind. Scuffed tennis shoe, shock of white sock, scuffed tennis shoe.
“Jesus Christ,” Ethan repeated. “I never thought I’d see something like this.”
My whole life, I’ve been afraid of seeing exactly this. It’s why I’ve done all the things I’ve done: hunted my own kind, gone undercover as a terrorist, killed more times than I can recall. Taken a knife to the heart. Seen my daughter marked for the academy and my son in a coma.
And I still couldn’t stop it.
“Let’s go.”
“But—”
“Now.” Without waiting for a response, Cooper resumed his sprint. They’d covered half a Manhattan mile in the five minutes since the video hit had come in. Not bad, but not good enough. Not with Dr. Abraham Couzen only a few blocks away.
Ten in the morning and cold, the wind whipping down the avenue, channeled by redbrick buildings and construction barricades. The pedestrians Cooper shoved past carried coffee cups and purses, checked watches or spoke on phones, but to his eyes, they all had the edgy uncertainty of hostages told to act normal. In a deli window, a newspaper taped to the glass held a full-page photo of the smoking ruin that had once been the White House, the marble columns tossed like toys around the impact crater, beneath the words NEVER FORGET.
Not a problem, Cooper thought, and blitzed across 3rd, ignoring the scream of car horns. The tip had come from Valerie West, his old teammate at the DAR. Whispering like she was afraid of being overheard, she’d told him that a cluster of security cameras had face-matched Couzen. “Just standing there like he’s taking the air. The prick.”
An appraisal he shared. Dr. Couzen was the last hope of preventing full-scale war. All of the horrors of the last years—the academies where brilliant children were brainwashed, the rise of John Smith and his terrorist movement, the legislation to microchip abnorms, the devastation of three cities, the massacre of soldiers attacking the New Canaan Holdfast, all of it—they were just symptoms. The root cause was the inequity between normals and brilliants.
Abe Couzen and Ethan had found the cure. They had managed to replicate brilliance. To give normal people gifts. Once that was public, there would be no motive for war. No need for the majority to fear the abilities of a tiny minority, and consequently, no need for the few to fear the wrath of the many. No reason for the world to burn.
Except that instead of sharing their discovery, Abraham Couzen had packed it up and vanished. And the world had caught fire.
It might not be too late. If you can get to him first.
Pouring on extra speed, Cooper hit the corner and spun south, Ethan panting along behind. Valerie had done them a massive favor, but the same camera scan that had alerted her would have pinged others at the Department of Analysis and Response, not to mention moles in the DAR whose real allegiance was to the New Canaan Holdfast, or worse, to John Smith’s terrorist organization. No doubt a shadow army was converging on 42nd and Lex.
Under the circumstances, there hadn’t been time to come up with anything as refined as a plan. What he had barely qualified as an intention: get to Couzen first, and hope that Ethan would be able to convince his old mentor to see reason. If that didn’t work, option B was to knock him out and drag him. Which would be fun in midtown Manhattan.
Lexington was five lanes here, southbound, a moving mass of taxis and buses. He sprinted past a Duane Reade, shoved between a couple of tourists with cameras, leapt into the street and back to avoid a pack of schoolgirls. The sidewalks held enough people that it took all of Cooper’s attention to screen his moves. His gift afforded him an enormous advantage one-on-one, but was jammed by crowds; subconsciously, he kept trying to calculate the intention of every individual at the same time. Cooper gritted his teeth and kept pushing until suddenly he was free.
Too suddenly. And too late.
Fifteen feet away, a group stood in an edgy cluster. The one in the center was stoop shouldered and frail, with the jerky mannerisms of a bird. For all his accomplishments, Dr. Abraham Couzen looked like the kind of cranky homeless man who yelled at ATMs.
The four men surrounding him had broad shoulders and an air of intense alertness. Their suits were decent but not high end, and tailored to conceal shoulder holsters. Field agents. And, surprise surprise, the man in charge was Bobby Quinn, his old partner. Which meant the Department of Analysis and Response had beaten them here. Not by much, but life could change in—
Making Couzen’s work public is the last hope for preventing a war.
Bobby Quinn could be convinced, but it might not be his call.
So what, then? Attack four DAR agents, including your buddy?
Well, they are focused on arresting Couzen. If you—
Holy shit!
—seconds.
It happened as fast as Cooper had ever seen. One instant the doctor’s heartbeat was seventy-five beats a minute, slightly elevated but in line with the circumstances. The next it had leapt to a hundred and fifty.
Cooper started to shout a warning, but before he could, the scientist stiffened the first two fingers of each hand and jammed them knuckle-deep in an agent’s eyes, flowed into simultaneous flat-hand chops to the tracheas of two others, then slammed his knee into Bobby Quinn’s groin, twice. Before it had begun, the fight was over. The agents fell away, gasping and groaning.
Abe Couzen took a deep breath. His fingers trembled, and a trickle of blood ran from one nostril. Even so, Cooper sensed a stillness to him. Somehow, after having taken down four armed professionals in less than two seconds, the scientist was calm.
Until Ethan arrived, staggering to a halt beside Cooper. At the sight of his former protégé, emotions flashed in quick succession across Abe’s face: pleasure, puzzlement, suspicion, anger. “You’re with them?”
“What?” Ethan panted furiously. “No, I’m . . . this is . . . he’s . . .”
“I’m not with anyone, Dr. Couzen.” Cooper kept his hands low and out. “But I’m here to help.”
Around them, the world was catching on to the fight. Most people started to move away. A few pushed forward to see what w
as happening. Somewhere a woman gasped. Cooper ignored it all, just watched his target. He wasn’t a reader, couldn’t pick up deep secrets from body language. But what Abe was thinking was no secret. He was weighing the idea of killing them. All of them: the agents, Cooper, even Ethan. A pure and viper-cold calculation, laced with certainty. He believed he could do it.
Instead, he turned and ran.
Horns screamed and tires squealed as the man leapt into traffic. A cabbie stomped his brakes, the car a yellow blur slewing sideways, colliding with a Honda. Abe didn’t even slow, just shot past the accident in progress, the cars missing him by less than a foot. Cooper leapt into pursuit, but his angle was bad, and by the time he’d made the opposite sidewalk, his quarry had put thirty yards between them. He leaned into the run, not taking his eyes off the man’s back as he dodged through foot traffic grown suddenly heavy, a stream of people exiting from—
Shit. Grand Central. Abe shoved in the doors, sending a woman sprawling in the process. By the time Cooper had reached the door, she was rising, saying, “What’s your problem, asshole?” just before he knocked her back down. He sprinted the length of the hallway, past displays for d-pads and the new Lucy Veronica line of suits, and into the sweating cool of the concourse.
A roar overwhelmed him, the echoed overlapping of thousands of conversations. Over the loudspeaker a strained voice pleaded, “People! There are no more seats on the Metro-North Hudson Line. I repeat, there are no more seats on the Hudson Line. Please, please, stop rushing the platform—”
Everyone in Manhattan appeared to be trying to leave. Beneath the starry dome of the main concourse, ticket lines had degenerated into formless throngs, the peace barely kept by uniformed soldiers slinging assault rifles. Every outbound train on the board was listed as sold out, but the voice on the loudspeaker did nothing to stop people from pushing toward the platforms, ticket or no. It wasn’t a crowd, it was a mob, a howling, throbbing, reeking mob, everyone shoving and yelling, luggage slung over shoulders, children clutched in arms.
Bad enough for anyone, but Cooper hated crowds, felt dizzy and lost in them. His gift, never under his control, read the impulses and intentions of everyone at the same time. It was like trying to focus while the dog howled and the baby shrieked and the phone rang and the radio blared, only there were a thousand dogs and babies and phones and radios all going at once.