Written in Fire

by Marcus Sakey

  The horrifying, relentless discipline.

  “It’s not going to be released in just any city,” he said slowly.

  Shannon stared at him. He let her ponder, wanted her to check his math. Finally, she said, “You’re thinking it’s going to be released here. Against the New Sons. Because they’re all normals, all vulnerable. But he couldn’t count on them winning.”

  “It doesn’t matter who wins. If the militia burns Tesla to the ground, their war is over. They’ll scatter back to every corner of the country, as will refugees from Tesla, plenty of them normal. And if the militia loses—”

  “The same thing happens,” she says. “Thousands of survivors will run back home. My God. John provoked the attack—the war—for this. To infect the whole country.”

  “The whole world,” Cooper said. “Maybe not as completely, but still, if this is as contagious as Ethan thinks, how many people are going to die? Hundreds of millions? Billions?”

  “We have to call the president.”

  “And tell her what?” Cooper shrugged. “I mean, imagine we somehow convince her, and she sends in the marines. That’s just more normals, more vectors. It plays into Smith’s hands. The only way to stop this is to keep the virus from being released.”

  “How? We don’t have any idea where it is. And the militia could attack any minute.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, and took her hand. “But we have to figure it out. Fast.”

  “This isn’t what I do, Nick.”

  “It is now. It’s all on us. Like it or not.”

  She pulled away, wound up, and kicked a blackened desk. The legs gave way, the whole thing collapsing in a cloud of ash. “Okay.” She gritted her teeth. “If he’s infecting the New Sons, the canisters have to be here, in Tesla.”

  “Plus, Smith is dead. We’ve got that going for us.”

  “Right,” she said. “Right. So it would have to be something that would work without his involvement. Something he could trust.”

  “Not something,” he said. “He wouldn’t have planned all of this and then left it to a timer. It’s going to be a person. Someone he could rely on completely, even in death. His last contingency.”

  “Someone who would do it. Who wouldn’t be troubled by the catastrophe they were about to cause, the deaths of millions or billions.”

  “You know these people better than I do,” Cooper said. “Who would that describe?”

  “Jesus, I don’t know. Soren, but he’s . . .”

  For a moment they stared at each other.

  Then Cooper was running full tilt for the stairwell, Shannon right behind, her steps lighter but just as quick. He took flights in jumps, the floor numbers falling away, his hand trailing the railing as the impacts rang up his ankles and knees, his head spinning and heart racing and soul praying, thinking, Please, please, just one piece of good luck, that’s not too much to ask, is it?

  They hit the second basement, yanked open the door.

  A body sprawled at their feet.

  Another down the hall.

  In the prison control room, Rickard, the programmer who’d played the virtual torturer, sat in a chair. A pool of crimson surrounded him, the overhead light reflecting off his blood like the moon in a pond. His throat had been ripped open, his tongue yanked through the wound.

  Soren’s cell was open.

  CHAPTER 35

  Luke Hammond tapped the flare pistol and checked the time on his borrowed watch.

  5:57 p.m.

  The watch was mechanical, unaffected by the EMP. An hour ago he had synced it with a dozen others. A dozen men with a dozen flare guns, all watching the seconds tick away.

  It had been a long couple of days, but he wasn’t tired. Or rather, his exhaustion felt like it belonged to someone else. Partly his experience, he supposed—he’d been a boy when he became a warrior, and it was war that had forged him into a man, war and fatherhood—but also a purity of purpose. Looking around at the others, he could see it in them too. See it as they ate canned soup cold, as they checked and rechecked their weapons, as they huddled in small groups and joked edgily.

  They were ready. They may have started as thousands of rough men, wounded people who had lost things that could never be replaced. But in the past week, they had become, if not quite an army, at least a team. United in loss and pain and purpose.

  The sun had set half an hour ago, and darkness had fallen like a dropped blanket. The air was cold and smelled of fire. As the New Sons had surrounded Tesla, they had watched the abnorms burn their own buildings to deny cover. A few spots glowed still, the flames given over to embers and smoke trailing up to the sky. There would be more fire tonight, more smoke. Smoke to blot out the stars.

  5:58 p.m.

  Luke took a deep breath, blew it out slow. His body felt loose and ready, and in his chest bloomed hints of the feeling to come. He wondered if his sons had ever known it, and felt sure they had. Josh and Zack had been warriors too. How fierce they had looked in their uniforms, how proud he had been of them. He had never pushed his sons toward the military, but they had understood the things he stood for. Had shared them.

  Raising binoculars, he surveyed his army. Once they had broken through the ring, they had split the New Sons into two, Miller leading one wing, Luke the other. Hard men stretched the breadth of the horizon, clustered in groups of fifty or a hundred. Their clothes were stained, their faces shrouded in beards, but their weapons shone. Luke wondered how the abnorms had felt as they saw the militia enclose their city like pincers. As they realized what it meant.

  If this had been a traditional battle aimed at taking the city, their army would focus strength in a few specific places and leave the enemy room to flee. But we’re not here to gain a point on a map. We’re here to cut that point out like a cancer. A brutal surgery, but necessary to save the body as a whole. Tomorrow the sun would rise on a nation that no longer needed to fear the terrorists in its midst. Tomorrow, the healing could begin.

  Tonight would come the scarring.

  5:59 p.m.

  He swept the binoculars toward the city. Beyond the smoldering buildings, the city rose in low towers. The main streets had been barricaded with cars and trucks, with toppled buses and stacked pallets of cinderblocks. Spotlights danced across the earth, scanning, scanning. Snipers would take those out first; one of the benefits of commanding an army of gun show enthusiasts, they brought a surprising amount of firepower. Ammunition for the long rifles wasn’t plentiful, but there was enough to ensure darkness.

  We will come in darkness, and we will bring fire.

  The defenders were using the terrain to their advantage. He could see men and women up in the windows of most of the buildings. They were jumpy as rabbits. Hit them hard and fast, shatter what confidence they’d mustered, send them scattering. Once the New Sons had broken into the city, there would be chaos, and civilians didn’t handle chaos well.

  Luke lingered on a ring of low-rise buildings, eight of them beneath a glowing corporate logo. There was a park in the center of the ring, a place the workers could relax on their lunch hours. On the day his sons died, it had probably been filled with abnorms staring upward. Joshua had been flying patrol when Epstein triggered his virus, and the footage of his son’s murder had been replayed a thousand times. The Wyvern tipping into a nose-down kite. Seeming to float for a moment before it collided with his wingman’s fighter. The two of them erupting in flames.

  Had the abnorms in the office park cheered? Had they howled and pointed while his son fell burning from the sky?

  Luke scanned the buildings, looked at the people in the windows. A man in his fifties with weathered good looks. A girl petting a dog. A black woman with the cheekbones of a queen. A pretty brunette with her hair pulled into a ponytail and a rifle in her hand. Atop one of the buildings stood a sculpture of a globe, a corporate logo wrought in strands of glowing light. A purple comet charting a wobbling orbit around it.

  That was where th
ey would hit. Climbing the barricades left them too exposed. The roads would channel them, leave them open to fire from every side. Better to attack directly. Push through the complex of buildings. Kill anyone who got in their way. Light the structures on fire.

  He looked at the watch. The second hand ticked once, twice, three times. The minute hand moved.

  6:00 p.m.

  Luke lowered the binoculars and raised the flare pistol.

  CHAPTER 36

  Soren trembled.

  Thoughts whirling and wild.

  A vision of Samantha, one eyeball dangling, half the skin of her face flayed away, screaming into her gag as the torturer leaned in again—

  A voice called to him, pulled him from sleep. It sounded like John’s voice, but Soren didn’t want to obey it. Waking meant remembering. Remembering what they had done to his love, his pale and perfect love, who wanted only to be wanted.

  But the thought of her, of what they had done, banished unconsciousness. How had he fallen asleep in the first place? He’d wanted to pass out while they hurt her, had wanted to die, but could do neither. So how could he have fallen asleep after watching what they’d done, right there in his cell, watching her blood arc slowly through the air—

  There was no blood on the floor, no blood on the wall.

  No straitjacket, no chain.

  No bruises on his arms, no fingernail wounds in his palms.

  And in that moment he realized the truth. He’d been tricked. They hadn’t harmed Samantha. It had all happened in his head, in a virtual hell Cooper had constructed. Relief flooded him like warm water. Samantha was okay. She hadn’t been destroyed, hadn’t suffered, hadn’t even really been here. It was just a computer program, a construct, just like the Roman choir. None of it had been real—

  Except his betrayal of John.

  Warmth calcified into the deepest cutting cold. His oldest friend. The man who had been the boy who had saved him at Hawkesdown Academy, who had brought him the only relief he had ever known, who had seen him when no one else could, who had helped him when no one else would, and Soren had failed him.

  Not failed. Betrayed.

  John spoke again, impossibly, in the cell. Saying, “Soren. Myfriend.”

  Saying, “Getready. Getfree.”

  Saying, “Thenlookformymessage.”

  He had risen from the steel bunk he’d lain on. No sign of his friend. Of course. A speaker system, some sort of intercom. John must have taken control of it. One of his hackers. The movement had moles everywhere, even in Epstein’s organization.

  Soren had stretched. Cracked his knuckles. A moment later, the door to his cell had swung open of its own accord.

  The room beyond was an octagon, doors on each face, banks of terminals. And the torturer sitting in a chair. Rickard’s mouth fell open. He started to rise. Slowly. So slowly.

  Soren had crossed the room like a god, one hand lashing out in a nerve chop that dropped the torturer back into his chair.

  The man’s throat tasted of sweat as Soren closed his teeth on it and ripped it open.

  Blood slashed his face, coppery on his lips as he reached inside to grip Rickard’s living flesh and yank it through the wound he had made.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Not the torturer. Not the guards outside. It would never be enough. Cracking the world would barely be a start.

  Soren sat on a bench and trembled. Staring at his hands, the blood crusted on them.

  “Are you all right?” A teenage girl with a rifle stood before him, a pack slung over her shoulders. Her face was twisted, lips screwed up in a grimace of concern. Soren rose, took her head in his hands, and snapped her neck. Her body went limp instantly. So fragile, life. It could be taken with little more than will.

  And it was only then that he remembered John’s last sentence. Look for my message.

  He took ten of his seconds to think. Then rolled the corpse over and looked in her bag. Water, a flashlight, a jacket, a hunting knife, a d-pad. Yes. He lifted the girl onto the bench, her warm body heavy and smelling of urine. Sat down alongside and let her head fall on his shoulder as he used her thumbprint to access the d-pad.

  The message was in a private mail account established years ago and never used. A number of files, and a video.

  John’s face filled the d-pad. “Myfriend. Forgivethecliché, butifyou’reseeingthis, I’mdead.”

  A howl rose in Soren’s chest. He had a flash of John’s smile as a boy. His charm, his smile, were weapons he’d used against their enemies. But for his friends, John’s smile had been a true and precious gift that had made Soren proud to be the recipient.

  In the video, his dead friend did not smile. He said, “I’msorrytoaskthisofyou.”

  He said, “Youaremylastcontingency. Readthesefiles.”

  He said, “Ineedyourhelp. Willyouhelpme?”

  I betrayed you, John.

  If you’re dead, it’s my fault.

  There is nothing I will not do.

  In the distance, a burning flare of light angled into the sky. Another followed, and another. Like fireworks. Like the soul of his friend, streaking brilliant and finally free.

  And sitting on the bench beneath star-smeared skies, a dead girl leaning against him like a lover, Soren read the dying wish of the friend he had murdered.

  CHAPTER 37

  Natalie watched the flare carve a red scar in the night sky. Higher and higher it arced, burning as it went. Consuming itself.

  She felt a sudden desperate urge to pee. What was she doing here? She was a lawyer, a mother, not a soldier. She hadn’t been in a fight since Molly McCormick had taken her Twinkie in the second grade and the two of them had ended up rolling around pulling each other’s hair.

  In the distance, a white spark flared. A second or two later she heard the bang. It was a gun. Someone was shooting at them. Another spark flashed in the same place, but this time, before she heard the report, something shattered, like a champagne flute hurled at concrete. Out her window, the world grew suddenly darker.

  They’re shooting the floodlights.

  In the twilight, the New Sons of Liberty had moved closer to town. It was hard to gauge, but she guessed that muzzle flare had been maybe half a mile away. Which was scary for another reason; she’d been married to a soldier and had some idea of the kind of weaponry and skill required to shoot at that range.

  Another flash, and another spotlight died. She set down the rifle and wiped her hands on her jeans, breathing fast and shallow. She should be used to fear by now. As a girl, she’d been effortlessly bold, but once she became a mom, worry had entered her life, a subsonic buzz that never went away. Worry that a cough was meningitis, that a tumble down the stairs could break a neck. Then, later, worry that Kate was gifted, and once that was confirmed, worry that she would be taken away, sent to an academy. Worry that Nick would get careless and one day she would find Bobby Quinn on her front porch with pain for eyes.

  When Nick had gone undercover, worry became fear. For six months fear had marked her every moment, sometimes a nagging ache, sometimes an open wound. No, that was wrong; it hadn’t ended with his return. She and her children had been kidnapped at gunpoint. They had watched cities burn. Seen Todd attacked by a killer, suffered the endless hours of his surgery. Held Nick as he bled out on a restaurant floor.

  She was no stranger to fear. But this. This was something different.

  Why? Are you so frightened of dying?

  She didn’t think so. She wasn’t eager or anything, but death was just leaving the party, and everybody did that eventually. No, it wasn’t for herself.

  It was for them. For Todd and Kate. The fear had less to do with dying and more to do with failing them.

  Realizing that made the difference. She forced a deep breath, and then another. Held her fingers out in front of her face and willed them to stop shaking. After a moment, they obeyed.

  Then she picked up the rifle, flipped off the safety, and looked out the windo
w.

  One by one, the floodlights died. And with each, the darkness crept closer, until the only light came from the glowing globe and from the embers of buildings. Slowly her vision acclimated enough for her to make out shapes.

  Some of them were moving.

  Use the fear.

  “Jolene.”

  Twenty feet away, the woman sat at the base of a file cabinet, those cheekbones making her eyes seem even bigger than they were. Natalie pointed to the logo, then spun her finger in a circle to suggest the orbit of the purple light. For a moment, Jolene just stared, then she got it. Nodded, shouldered her own rifle, pointed it out the window.

  Natalie stared into the darkness. Hard to tell what was a moving shadow and what was just a speck in her eyes. She made herself take steady yoga breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Waited with the rifle braced on a filing cabinet, the metal cold on her forearm, finger soft on the trigger.

  As the star swung around the front of the logo, her world washed purple, and then it passed, the purple light spilling out across the ground and the men creeping along the edge of a building thirty yards away.

  Natalie stared down the barrel. Tried to line the sights upon the nearest man. The luminous dots swung and bobbed with the beat of her heart and the whistle of her breath. The man was moving at a crouch, a weapon in his hands. She inhaled. Let it out steadily.

  Pressed the trigger.

  The crack of the rifle was like God clapping. Her ears rang. The flare of light stole her vision.

  But not before she saw the man fall.

  There were answering flashes from the street, and the roar of guns. Glass shattered somewhere. A ricochet whined. Natalie aimed at the flashes, pressed the trigger. Again, and again, and again.

  CHAPTER 38

  Staring at the d-pad, Shannon said, “Got him.”

  Cooper nodded, eyes locked forward. The last thing they could afford was an accident. There weren’t many other vehicles on the road, but no one was obeying stoplights or speed limits. All the buildings were dark too, although he caught flickers of motion behind the windows. No sign of the attackers here yet, but gunfire cracked from every direction, like being in the center of a storm. Epstein had concentrated the defenders at the edges of Tesla, but no one believed they would be able to contain the militia. Every block would be a battlefield. “Where is he?”