by Marcus Sakey
“Yes.” If there was such a word, Cooper didn’t know it. “I’m sorry to interrupt dinner.”
“It’s okay. Want something?”
“No, thanks.” With that, the small talk sputtered and died.
Peters said, “Let’s talk in the study” and then led Cooper through the house, past school photographs and framed macaroni art.
The “study” was a windowless room off the back of the house, with a desk and a couch, a sidebar, two muted tri-ds running the news. There was a silver-framed photograph of Elizabeth, the director’s wife, gone eight years now and buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. Was it only this morning Drew had told him that story?
The room sported a few less-traditional features as well: inch-thick plating beneath the drywall, hydraulic steel door, buried hard-lines running to the DAR and the White House, a panic button that would seal the place like a vault and summon an assault team. The director poured two scotches, sat down, and looked at Cooper expectantly.
So Cooper took a breath and a sip of scotch and told him everything that had happened that day, every moment of the pursuit, how close he’d been to the bomber, how he had almost stopped things. And then he shared the idea that had struck him on a NoHo street—How you gonna tell the good guys from the bad guys?—the proposal that had driven him back here despite the distance and the impropriety and especially the magnitude of sacrifice it would involve.
Drew Peters said, “That’s a preposterous notion. Absolutely not.”
“It’s not preposterous. It’s perfectly feasible.”
“I can think of a dozen ways it could fail.”
“I can think of a hundred. But it gives us a chance, a real honest-to-Christ chance, to get close to him.”
“He’d see through it. See you coming.”
“Not if we went all the way with it.”
“All the way.”
“Yes. That’s the only way to get him,” Cooper said. “We’ve been doing this wrong for years.”
Peters picked up his silver pen, spun it between long fingers. If he was offended, it didn’t show in his offhand “Oh?”
“The way we’re working now, we have to bat a thousand just to tie. Say I’d been able to get to the bombs today. If I disarmed four of them and the fifth went off, it’s a win for Smith. If I disarmed them all but the press found out they’d been planted, it’s still a win. He can hit us anywhere, anytime, and any hit is a victory. We have to protect everywhere, all the time, and the best we can do is tie. A perfect defense alone never wins.
“If we want to end this, if we want to keep things from escalating, if we want to win, we have to neutralize John Smith. And this is a way to do it.”
“Not a way,” Peters said. “A chance.”
“That’s better than no chance.” Cooper took a swallow of scotch. He was exhausted, and the drink smoothed some of the rough edges. Cooper waited. The director gave nothing away, but the tiny muscles of his nose, his ears, the miniscule tensing of his shoulders, all said he was considering it.
“You understand what would be entailed? Just naming you rogue wouldn’t be enough,” Peters said. “I’d have to designate you a target.”
“Yes.”
“I won’t be able to hold back. The preliminary reports I’ve seen put the dead at more than a thousand. And this attack was in the heart of Manhattan. There will be no half measures. I’d have to cast you down like Lucifer. I can keep you off the news—probably—but within the agency, there’d be nothing I could do for you.”
“I know.”
“You’ll be more hated than John Smith ever was. Because you were one of us, and you betrayed us. Every resource in the department’s power will be aimed at you. There will be thousands of people hunting you. Literally thousands. If you’re captured, I can reveal the truth. But—”
“But no one is going to try to capture me. If they have a shot, they’ll take it.”
“That’s right. And meanwhile, you’re going to be on your own. No resources. No requisitioned helicopters, no phone taps, no surveillance teams. No backup. Nothing.”
Cooper just sipped his scotch. Nothing Peters was saying was a surprise to him. He’d had time to think it out on the flight down.
All commercial flights had been grounded, so he’d badged his way onto a Marine Corps C-130 and ridden in with a squad of jarheads. The boys were extra gung ho under the circumstances, but he could see the hurt under the oo-rah. America wasn’t used to being hit this way, to an attack in the heart of its strength.
The response would be devastating. There would need to be a blood payment. The country would demand it.
It wouldn’t be long before it got out that the bombing was John Smith’s work. And in America’s overwrought state, most people wouldn’t make the distinction between abnorms and abnorm terrorists.
After all, it was abnorms who had forced the stock market to close in the first place. Abnorms who were taking the lead in every field. Abnorms who were making the rest of humanity feel small and secondary.
You can’t stop the future. All you can do is pick a side. Alex Vasquez’s voice in his head.
Not an easy choice. And more complicated than she would have admitted. Was he a government agent hunting terrorists, or a father whose daughter was in danger? Was he a soldier or a civilian? If he believed in America, did that mean he had to accept the academies?
All right, Alex. I’ve made my choice. But right now, this hour in the sky, this hour is for me. He’d leaned against the metal skin of the airplane, felt the thrum of the turboprops, the cold of the air rushing past, and he let himself think of what he was about to risk. All that he might lose. The staggering costs of the plan he was proposing.
And when he landed, he’d pushed that kind of thinking aside and begun to act. Now he stared across the table at the director, at the man’s pale, calm eyes, and he said, “I can do this.”
“There will be no going back. None. You succeed or you die.”
“I know.”
“Even a chance to get rid of John Smith is worth a gamble. If we don’t, he may well tip this country into outright civil war.” Peters looked away and tapped his fingers lightly on his desk. The news channels were playing footage of the explosion, and reflected in his rimless glasses, the Exchange fell again and again.
Finally, he said, “Last chance, son. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes. I’ll kill John Smith for you.” Cooper set his glass on the desk and leaned forward. “But there’s one condition.”
Natalie’s house.
A tantalizing hint of silhouette flickered across one of the curtains. The lights were on, and the windows glowed buttery warm. Del Ray was too much part of the city for the sky to be truly black, but the queasy purple of light pollution was lonelier than night. It made those windows, and the life within them, all the more attractive.
Cooper stared out of the windshield. Took a deep breath, blew it out. There was an emptiness in his stomach, a hollowness he hadn’t felt in years. A childish sort of yearning pain, the way he’d felt when he was twelve and all the rewards he’d ascribed to adulthood—love, freedom, certainty—seemed a million years away. The emptiness of the morning bed after a glittering dream of girls and adventure.
Now that things were in motion, he wanted more than anything to stop it all. To beg the director to call it off. It was too much. The costs were too high.
But then he remembered what this was really about, and he put childish fantasy away.
He climbed out of the Charger—something else he’d have to abandon soon, his beloved car and its even more beloved license-to-speed transponder—and crossed the street. The night air nipped but didn’t bite. Everything smelled clean. He was sore and tired, but he tried to record every detail, to move with heightened awareness. It would be a long time before he could walk this path again.
At the front window, he paused just out of the spill of light. The curtains were parted a couple of inches, and t
hrough them he could see his children. Todd was staging an elaborate action-figure battle, the pantheons all mixed up, armored knights fighting alongside World War II soldiers and space monsters. The tip of his tongue protruded from the corner of his mouth as he mounted a robot on a horse. Kate sat on the sofa with a picture book in her lap, turning the pages backward and talking softly to herself. Through the open archway he could see Natalie in the kitchen, washing dishes. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her hips swayed as she scrubbed, semidancing to music he couldn’t hear. The quiet peace of the scene, the warmth and safety and domesticity, was a jagged knife through his belly. Cooper closed his eyes. You’ve already chosen sides.
He took out his phone and dialed. Through the window he saw his ex-wife dry her hands on a towel and pull her phone from her pocket. “Nick. Are you okay? I called you a bunch of times and left messages—”
“I know. I’m okay. But I need to talk to you.”
Even at this distance, he could see her stiffen. “Is it about Kate?”
“No. Yes. Sort of. Listen, I’m outside. Can you come out?”
“You’re outside? Why didn’t you knock?”
“We need to talk first. Before the kids know I’m here.”
“Okay. Give me a minute.”
Cooper pocketed his phone. Took one last look through the window, felt his stomach slip and his heart squeeze, and then stepped away. He moved over to the lone tree, a maple down to a last handful of leaves. Quick flash of memory, the tree as it had been when he and Natalie had bought the house, a runty little thing held in place by wires.
Natalie came out a few minutes later. She paused on the step, screening her eyes from the porch light, then spotted him leaning. The subtle shifts of expression on her face might have barely registered with a stranger, but each emotion was as distinct to him as if the words had been projected on her forehead. Happiness that he was alive. Guarded concern about the way he’d asked to meet her. Fear of what he had to say about Kate. A quickly overcome desire to run back inside and slam the door. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
She tucked her hands in her pockets and looked him in the face. Knowing him well enough to recognize that he had something to say, and waiting for him to start. That cool, levelheaded forthrightness that he had always loved. A siren sounded nearby, and it quickened his heart. He glanced at his watch. Tick-tock.
“Am I keeping you?”
“No, I…” He took a breath. “I have to tell you something.” He glanced at her, at the yard, at the window. Had that been motion in the curtain?
“For Christ’s sake, spit it out.”
“I’m going to be going away for a while.”
“‘A while’? What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe a long time.”
“Something for your job.”
“Yes.”
“Something to do with today.”
“Yes. I was there. Manhattan.”
“My God, are you—”
“I’m fine,” he said, then shook his head. “No, that’s not true. I’m pissed and I’m frustrated and I’m hurting. I was trying to stop it, Nat. I almost did stop it. But I didn’t, not quite, and all those people…”
“Did you try as hard as you could?”
“Yeah. I think so. Yeah.”
“Then it’s not your fault. Nick, what is this? What’s going on?” A miniscule widening of her eyes flashed her fear up at him.
“The explosion today. It was John Smith.”
“You can’t know that yet. Maybe it was—”
“It was John Smith. The worst terrorist attack on America in history, and it was an abnorm who did it.”
“But…that’s going to…things are going to…my God, it’s going to get worse. They’re going to come after abnorms. Really come after you.”
“Yes.” He stepped forward and took her hands in his. “So I’m going after him. John Smith. Not the same as before. Something different.”
“What?”
“The only way to get close is if he thinks I’m on his side. So I’m going to be. I’m going to leave the agency and go on the run.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The bombing. They’re going to blame it on me.”
She stared at him. He could practically hear her mind working. “Wait, no, it doesn’t make sense. He’ll know. John Smith, he’ll know you weren’t in on it.”
“Right. But he’ll also know that all of the DAR thinks I was. That I’m on the run, and that I’m being chased. That the agency I’ve served for years, the one I’ve killed for, has betrayed me. That’s enough to make someone start thinking differently. And what a coup for him if I came over to his side! Think how much I could help him. Not only what I can do, but what I know.”
“But for that to work—”
“Yeah. They’re going to have to chase me. Really, truly chase me. I’ll be designated a target. No one but Drew Peters will know the truth. Everyone will think I really went over.”
“No!” Natalie yanked her hands from his. “No, are you crazy? They’ll kill you.”
“Only if they catch me.” He tried a grin, aborted it quickly. “It’s dangerous, I know, but I can do it. And it gives us a chance to get—”
“No. Take it back. Go to the director right now and tell him you’ve changed your mind.”
“I can’t do that, Nat.”
“Why not? Don’t you understand? You have children. I hate John Smith as much as you do, but if I had the choice between him being dead or Kate and Todd having a father, I wouldn’t hesitate.”
“It’s not that simple,” Cooper said, and held her gaze. It took only a handful of seconds. He watched the revelation hit. Her mouth fell open and her eyes widened.
“Kate.”
“Yes,” he said. “Kate. If I do this, she won’t be tested. Ever. That was my price. She gets to grow up and live a normal life. She won’t be taken from us. She’ll never see the inside of an academy.”
Natalie steepled her hands over her nose and mouth. Her fingers were shaking. She stared at his chest. Cooper knew enough to wait her out.
“She’s tier one, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
She rolled her shoulders and straightened her back. “There’s no choice?”
Cooper shook his head.
“The things we do for our children.” Natalie managed a thin, tight smile. “When do you have to go?”
“Soon. I want to see the kids first.”
“Do you want to…you could stay. The night.”
A warm feeling bloomed in his chest. When they’d split up, they’d both agreed that sleeping together was a bad idea, that it would confuse the kids and maybe risk complicating the friendly relationship they had. It had been a mutual decision and a good one; much as they loved each other, neither wanted to be involved romantically, and so it had been years since they’d shared a bed. For her to offer that now, tonight, it touched him. “That’s a tempting offer. I really wish I could. But they’re going to be looking for me.”
“Already?”
“Soon.”
“All right. You’d better come in, then. What are you going to tell them?”
“Nothing. Just that I love them.”
She blew another breath, wiped at her eyes, then started across the yard. Her shoulders slumped, and the muscles of her neck were coiled cables. Cooper caught up with her, took her hand, and spun her around.
“Listen,” he said, then realized he had no idea what to say next. Tell her that there was nothing to be scared of? There was. Even as they stood here, Director Peters was designating him a target. The most powerful agency in the country would be hunting him, thousands of people with billions of dollars. And even if he could manage to escape them, he was walking into the monster’s den and begging for an audience.
“I’ll be okay,” he said.
And for just a second, a tiny moment, he could see that she believed him
.
It was enough.
PART TWO: HUNTED
My fellow Americans.
Today our nation, our very way of life, suffered an attack of the most grievous nature. The victims were men and women of all kinds, all walks of life. Social workers and attorneys, bankers and artists. Mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives were snatched away in the most cowardly fashion imaginable—by terrorists who planted bombs in the heart of our great nation.
The individuals responsible want to disrupt our way of life. By killing innocent people, they want to cow us, like children afraid of monsters shivering beneath their blankets.
But this is not a society of children. We do not hide from monsters. We find them, and we defeat them.
Our intelligence community is united in the belief that this attack was perpetrated by gifted terrorists. Our military and security forces are the strongest in history. They are already at work to track down the people responsible. Make no mistake: we will find them, and they will be brought to justice. Anyone who aids them, anyone who hides them, anyone who supports them in any way will face our wrath.
Since the emergence of the gifted thirty-three years ago, our world has faced a challenge never seen in all of history. A small minority of human beings now possesses a massive advantage. How can men and women on both sides of this divide live together, work together, form a single, more perfect union?
The answers will not be simple ones. The road will be difficult. But there are answers. Answers that do not include bombs and bloodshed.
And so tonight, as our nation mourns its dead, I ask you all for tolerance and patience and great humanity. The gifted as a whole cannot be held responsible for the actions of a violent fringe. Just as those who hold hatred in their heart cannot define the rest of us.
It’s said that the strongest partnerships are formed in adversity. Let us face this adversity not as a divided nation, not as norm and abnorm, but as Americans.
Let us work together to build a better future for our children.
And let us never forget the pain of this day. Let us never yield to those who believe political power flows from the barrel of a gun, to the cowards who murder children to achieve their aims.