But all this pain came from love, and as Daniel allowed it all in, he gained strength from it, and he used the strength of that pain to block out the physical pain, and he struggled to his feet and moved forward with lurching steps, picking up speed, rushing at Noah.
Noah felt it coming. He spun to face Daniel, his arm raised to draw down a new bolt of glimmer, but he was too late.
Daniel wrapped his arms around Noah, and together they plunged off the rooftop and into the glimmer.
The images Noah had created scattered through the spaceless space, growing dim and distant and then disappearing altogether, and Daniel thought he could feel the ribbons moving apart.
And then Daniel felt himself slip away, as he and Noah both dissolved into fractals.
40
Daniel skidded to a stop behind the trees. He grabbed the rifle from the back seat and checked that a round was chambered, opened his door, and hit the ground running for the last tree in the stand, desperate to get close enough to call out to his friend, to try one more time, to say something that might reach through the madness and make Pat see what he’d become, remember what he once was, to make Pat see something beautiful in life, to make him see that this was a dream worth saving.
But as he ran, his peripheral vision picked up the convoy, now within Pat’s range.
Too late. He was out of time.
Daniel stopped and braced himself against the trunk of the last tree in the stand, fought to catch his breath.
Pat was fewer than ten yards away, lining up his sights on the approaching convoy.
“Pat!”
Daniel raised his rifle, sighting down on his best friend.
Pat turned his head from the scope and looked straight at Daniel, held his gaze for a moment, and Daniel thought maybe he’d reached him.
Then Pat swung his rifle, barrel sweeping toward Daniel.
Daniel squeezed the trigger, killing his best friend.
EPILOGUE
Bathsheba, Barbados
Daniel tied his tie again, thinking, Third time’s the charm. But this time it came out too long. He undid the knot and started over. There was a knock at the door.
“Come in, if you know how to tie a tie.”
The door opened and Julia Rothman bounded in.
“Hey, stranger!” Julia gave Daniel a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Congratulations!”
Daniel said, “Thanks. Glad you could make it.”
“Wouldn’t be anywhere else, silly. And I know how to tie a tie.” She reached forward and proved it.
“Thank you.” He checked her handiwork in the mirror. “Couldn’t have done it better myself.”
“Obviously. Little nervous, are we?”
“Nervous in a good way,” said Daniel, returning her smile.
“Big step.”
“Nah,” said Daniel, “the big step was a year ago. Just took a while to convince Maya to make it official.”
It was a fun way to tell it, but it wasn’t exactly true. Daniel thought back to the first night after he and Kara returned to Barbados, lying naked on tousled sheets in Daniel’s little cottage, spent and happy, listening to the tree frogs outside. After a while, Kara had said, “It feels like quantum entanglement, baby. You and me, from now to forever, like we’re permanently connected on some subatomic level.” And that was that. They hadn’t spent more than a day apart since. The real reason they’d waited a year was to be sure the Ian Shefras and Maya Seth identities hadn’t been compromised, before making it legal.
Julia smirked. “Maya, huh? And I’m really supposed to call you Ian from now on?”
“Yep,” said Daniel. “That’s who I am now.”
“Okay . . . Ian,” she said, trying it on. “What about Pat, does he have a new name, too?”
A brief surge of grief washed over Daniel. He still missed his best friend, and despite everything, he wished Pat could be here to stand as his best man.
“Pat died a year ago. A hero’s death, fighting to make a better world.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He deflected it. “Pat always said he’d never live to cash a Social Security check.” Pivoting to a happier subject, “I almost forgot—your paperback’s out next week, right? When do we get volume 2?”
“Be a while, I’m afraid,” said Julia. “AIT didn’t wane, didn’t taper off—it just bloody well vanished. Like one day there’s maybe a million people on the planet with AIT, the next day, zero. Like something shoved it out of existence. We haven’t uncovered a single case since the day it went away.”
“I know, I saw you on TV.” Daniel had no idea what his other half had done in Source, or what had become of him. But on the day Daniel killed Pat, AIT had vanished again, leaving no trace behind. As it had so many times throughout history, Daniel supposed.
“Maybe it just got bored,” said Daniel, “and decided to mess with someone else’s universe.”
Julia said, “My publisher keeps throwing money at me but they’d really like a book one of these days. Meanwhile there’s no phenomenon to examine, so I’m living under a mountain of medical reports from those who were being studied while it was here, trying to glean anything worth publishing. It remains a mystery. And it may remain so until AIT returns, if it ever does.”
If Julia someday managed to solve the mystery, she’d have another smash hit on her hands. But in the year since AIT vanished, the world kept turning and the public calmed as people got on with their lives, integrating whatever they thought AIT had been into whatever metaphysical world view felt comfortable. Fitting it into their reality tunnel, as Dana Cameron had once said.
The public never learned of the attempted assassination at Arlington Manor, the trade summit quietly shelved for later. The G7 session had gone ahead as originally planned, downscaling tensions by a notch, which as it turned out was enough.
And as the Earth rolled once again around the sun, humanity had narrowly missed several flashpoints, failing to trigger a new global war, settling back to the not quite global war that passed for status quo.
Risen apes, thought Daniel. Risen apes lashing out at the darkness, treating each other with savagery and tenderness, stumbling one step forward, two back. Two steps forward, one back. Ever onward.
Julia was saying, “And what about you? What’s in store for Ian Shefras?”
Daniel crossed to the window and looked out on the Roundhouse’s patio, one floor down. It had a perfect casual Caribbean charm, with white linen tablecloths and pink hibiscus everywhere, and John Holt playing on the stereo—and a stunning view of the Bathsheba hillside, down to the Atlantic Ocean, shimmering turquoise under a cloudless sky.
The small party mingled on the patio, sipping champagne. Like Julia, Ayo had flown in from New York, but the rest of the party was made up of local friends. Friends from their new life, who knew them only as Ian and Maya.
He said, “You know I never had a father, and after I left my uncle I spent my whole life seeking one . . . in Father Nick, in the Church, in God ultimately, or whatever I thought might be behind AIT.”
He looked back out the window as Kara—Maya—stepped out onto the patio wearing the light-blue strapless dress they’d bought last week in Holetown. She was carrying their son on her hip.
Daniel said, “I’m done looking for fathers. Having too much fun being one.”
“What’s his name?”
“Tim.”
“Perfect,” said Julia. “He’s beautiful.”
“They are.” Daniel waved at Kara from the window. She smiled and held the boy up and waved his little hand in response.
He pulled back from the window and checked himself in the mirror one last time, said to Julia, “How do I look? And feel free to lie.”
“You look like a happy man,” said Julia, “and that’s no lie.”
“See ya after.”
As he got to the door, Julia said, “Raised by a preacher, spent a decade as a priest . . . it’s funny, I know you left it beh
ind, but I still would’ve figured you’d have gone for some sort of church setting.”
Daniel said, “Look out the window. That is my church.”
He walked down the old circular stairwell and through the restaurant, considering Julia’s question.
What’s in store for Ian Shefras?
He honestly didn’t know. The time with AIT and the time he’d spent in Source felt almost like some dream he’d had. A dream that was now fading in memory, as dreams do. At the time, it had been so real that his life on Earth had begun to feel like a dream.
Daniel felt occasional pangs of grief for Source itself—for the loss of such an intensely sensate life, the freedom of spot-traveling, the intimacy of feeling another’s emotional state almost as your own. But it didn’t really matter. Earth contained all he needed.
And maybe Earth was a dream, but it was the only dream we’ve got. Daniel would go on dreaming it with the people he loved. He was done fighting against those trying to make it a bad one, becoming like them in the fight.
Ian Shefras would spend his life making it a better one instead.
He stepped out onto the sun-drenched patio and wrapped his arms around Maya and Tim. He took the boy from Maya and flew him around that patio, making airplane sounds as Tim burst into giggles.
“Okay, little man,” he said. “You’re gonna hang out with Uncle Natty, while Daddy gets married.” He handed the giggling boy off to Natty B, then he took Maya’s hand and walked with her to the edge of the patio, where they stood with the ocean behind them.
He looked into her green eyes. “Hey, you.”
She winked at him. “You ready?”
“Couldn’t be more ready,” he said. “Girl of my dreams.”
THANKS AND PRAISES
I might be the luckiest guy in the world. Not only because I get to play with my imaginary friends for a living, but because I do so with the support of such incredible people.
Dan Conaway: super-agent, friend, fellow lunatic. Also Simon Lipskar, Maja Nikolic, Taylor Templeton, and the whole gang at Writers House. And Lucy Stille, my film agent at APA.
The extraordinary publishing team at Thomas & Mercer: Gracie Doyle, Jacque Ben-Zekry, Alison Dasho, Caitlin Alexander, Sara Addicott, Lindsey Alexander, Karen Parkin, Tiffany Pokorny, Timoney Korbar, Mikyla Bruder, Jeff Belle, Sarah Shaw, Dan Byrne (great name!), Kjersti Egerdahl, Kim Bae, Christian Fuenfhausen . . . brilliant to work with, one and all.
Luke Daniels narrated the hell out of these books. I’m blown away by his performance, and couldn’t be happier with the audiobooks of this trilogy. Much thanks to Luke, and to everyone at Brilliance and Audible.com.
I’m also lucky to have such amazing early readers and brainstormers, who also happen to be loved friends and family. Barbara Chercover, Marcus Sakey, Blake Crouch, Dan Conaway, Greg Seldon, and . . .
. . . the love of my life, Martine Holmsen (aka: Agent 99), who I get to wake up beside every morning.
Finally, to Firedog, with a love beyond the measure of words. This book is for you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2013 John Keatley
Sean Chercover is the author of the bestselling thrillers The Trinity Game and The Devil’s Game and two award-winning novels featuring Chicago private investigator Ray Dudgeon: Big City, Bad Blood and Trigger City. After living in Chicago, New Orleans, and Columbia, South Carolina, Sean returned to his native Toronto, where he lives with his wife and son.
Sean’s fiction has earned top mystery and thriller honors in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He has won the Anthony, Shamus, CWA Dagger, Dilys, and Crimespree Awards and has been short-listed for the Edgar, Barry, Macavity, Arthur Ellis, and ITW Thriller Awards.
You’ll find him at www.chercover.com or @SeanChercover on Twitter.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
CONTENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
EPILOGUE
THANKS AND PRAISES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Savior's Game (The Daniel Byrne Trilogy Book 3) Page 21
