A Better World (The Brilliance Trilogy Book 2)

by Marcus Sakey

  He was supposed to protect his family, and instead they were wandering the countryside with nothing, no food, no shelter, no money. Not even much of a plan.

  Dawn had broken on the three of them hiking a back road, fleeing a burning city. Refugees, simple as that. They must have crossed the quarantine line sometime during the night without even knowing it. They’d seen a helicopter a while back, at a distance, but it had passed without incident.

  Not the most empowering feeling, though, to be huddling under a bush with his family, watching a helicopter circle.

  Last night you swore you’d do anything to protect your family. And you meant it.

  So take another step. And then another. And another.

  He switched Violet to his other arm, took the steps, and then more after them.

  “Hey,” Amy said.

  Ethan had been staring at the ground so intently that he was almost surprised to see the rest of the world was still there when he looked up. “What?”

  Amy pointed.

  A couple of hundred yards away, at the edge of the field, stood a gas station. Cuyahoga Falls.

  “We made it.”

  They used the gas station restroom to clean up as much as they could. Washed the dirt off their hands and faces, the blood off his feet. Changed Violet, although with no diaper to put her in, the term felt hollow. They’d ended up wadding up about ten feet of toilet paper as a makeshift diaper.

  While Amy used the bathroom, Ethan held his daughter, cooing to her as he paced the inside of the gas station. A minimart, just candy and soft drinks and the essentials.

  Including packs of Huggies and tubs of formula. He stood in front of them, staring.

  After a moment, he heard a cough. The clerk leaned on the counter, eyes alert. A bulky guy with grease stains under his fingernails.

  “I’m not a shoplifter,” Ethan said.

  “Good.”

  “Listen.” He opened his mouth, willed words to come, better ones than those that presented themselves. He was a first-rate scientist at the top of his field. Sought after by universities and research laboratories. A man who had always prided himself on finding a solution, who had always believed that if fortune turned on him, he would still manage, still be able to provide. That he would find a way.

  And what he was left with was begging.

  You promised the universe you would do whatever it took.

  “Listen,” he repeated. “We got robbed last night. My wife and I are okay, but my daughter is starving.” He picked up a tub of formula. “Is there any chance—”

  “Sorry about your trouble, but nope.”

  “I’m not a bum or anything, I’m just a guy having some bad luck.”

  “And I’m just a guy pulling a double.”

  “I’ll pay you back. Plus twenty bucks for the kindness.”

  The clerk yawned, looked back at a magazine on the counter.

  Ethan said, “She’s three months old. Come on. Be a human being.”

  Without looking up, the guy said, “Move along, buddy.”

  There’s another way. You still have the pistol in your waistband.

  The thought felt so good that he let himself indulge in the momentary fantasy of how much fun it would be to watch the clerk’s expression change as Ethan pulled out his gun.

  It felt good, but it was crazy. They’d have money again in a few minutes. Load up on diapers and food—somewhere else, no chance he was giving this gas station a cent—and then rent a car. Worst case, catch a Greyhound. Strange and bad as things had gotten, they were almost over. The three of them had made it out of Cleveland, had escaped the National Guard and faced down a shotgun and walked across a quarantine line, and they’d made it.

  Just get cash and get on the road.

  His bank looked the same in Cuyahoga Falls as it did in Cleveland. Blue and gray carpet, fake wood desks, bulletproof glass, a security camera over the door watching the tellers, eighties pop music playing in the background. He didn’t know how people worked in banks. Nothing wrong with it, just, how didn’t they go out of their mind?

  “Can I help you?” The greeter’s tone was polite but circumspect, her eyes sliding down his ragged clothes and bare feet. He was glad Amy had decided to wait outside with Violet; the three of them would have looked like a Dorothea Lange photo.

  “Yes,” Ethan said. “We got carjacked. Two guys with guns.”

  “Oh my God!” Her eyes wide. “Here?”

  “A couple of miles up the road.”

  “What did the police say?”

  “My next stop. Is the manager around?”

  He was. A jocular guy in an off-the-rack suit, he introduced himself as Steve Schwarz, and led them into his office. “So sorry to hear about what happened to you. Is everyone okay?”

  “Yeah,” Ethan said. “Just rattled. And broke. They took everything. Our phones, wallets, everything.”

  “We’ll get you fixed up. Did you open your account here?”

  “Cleveland.”

  Schwarz cocked his head. “You coming from there?”

  “No,” Ethan said. “We’ve been on vacation.”

  “Do you know your account number?”

  Ethan slid into a seat opposite the man’s desk. “Never memorized it.”

  “Ah, me either. How about your social security?”

  He rattled off both his own and Amy’s. Schwarz typed away. “Since you don’t have ID, I have to ask a couple of security questions.”

  “Shoot.”

  They went through PIN numbers, the location of their preferred branch in Cleveland, recent charges, the rough total of their monthly mortgage payment. The manager was quickly satisfied, said, “We’ll get you new debit cards right now. Credit cards will need to be mailed, I’m afraid.”

  “Sure. Some cash too, please.”

  “How much?”

  “Say five thousand?”

  “No problem, Dr. Park.” More typing. “You got lucky, you know.”

  “How’s that?”

  “They didn’t take your wedding ring.”

  Ethan had been relaxing in the chair. He looked up to see Schwarz staring at him, a question in his eyes. Let him wonder. “Guess you’re right, we got lucky.”

  The man looked like he was about to say something else when the phone on his desk rang. “Excuse me,” he said, and picked it up. “Steve Schwarz, branch manager.”

  Ethan couldn’t hear the voice on the other end. But whatever they said, Schwarz hadn’t been expecting. He stiffened, his hand tightening on the phone. His eyes jumped to Ethan and quickly away again. “I understand.”

  Then he held the phone out. “For you.”

  What the—? He looked around; the office walls were glass, and he could see the rest of the bank, everything looking just as it had. But what had seemed comforting in its familiarity now seemed pregnant with menace. Ethan took the phone.

  “Hello, Dr. Park.” A man’s voice, assured and smooth. “This is Special Agent Bobby Quinn of the Department of Analysis and Response.”

  “Quinn?” It didn’t make any sense. That was the name of the agent who had come to his house, who had told him that Abe had been kidnapped. “What are—how did you know I was here?”

  “That’s not important. Listen, Doctor, I know we didn’t part on the best terms, and I apologize. But it’s crucial that we talk.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know that, sir, and I’m sorry. I’ll explain everything.”

  “Am I in trouble?”

  “No, no nothing like that. We need your help, Ethan.”

  “With what?”

  “I can’t explain over the phone. A matter of national security.”

  National security? What is he talking about?

  Then, Does it matter? He’s a government agent, and you’re an American citizen. “When?”

  “Just sit tight. I’m in DC, but I’ll requisition a jet and be there in two hours. If you’d like, I can bring fr
esh clothes and some shoes.”

  Ethan started to thank him, and then thought, Shoes? A tingle slid down the back of his thighs. Slowly, he turned.

  The security camera by the door had rotated to point into the bank manager’s office.

  Behind the counter, two more gazed unblinking.

  Out the window, a camera on a telephone pole stared at his wife and child.

  “My God.”

  “Dr. Park, we’ve taken control of every closed-circuit camera for a two-hundred-mile radius. That’s how important you are right now.”

  “The drone,” he said. “The National Guard.”

  This man has gone to enormous trouble to find you. A man you didn’t trust when you met him before; a man who lied about the reasons he was there.

  “That’s right. You’re starting to understand.”

  “No,” Ethan said. “I’m not. Why aren’t you having the police pick us up?”

  “I told you, I’ll come myself.”

  “But you said that time is a factor. And you’re in Washington, DC. So why not have the police meet us?” He shifted the phone to the other ear. Stared at the security camera. “Is it because you don’t want them involved?”

  The thoughts coming fast and hard now, dots connecting. True, the serum was years away from being publicly available. But it worked. They could give normal people gifts.

  Which was revolutionary in every sense of the word. Not just get-astonishingly-rich revolutionary; change-the-world revolutionary.

  Maybe the DAR doesn’t want the world to change. Not this much.

  “If local police picked us up,” Ethan said slowly, “there would be an arrest record. Processing. A trail. Not to mention a number of cops who knew we had been taken.”

  “What difference do you think that would make?”

  “If there are no witnesses, it’s easy for us to just disappear.”

  “Disappear?” The agent laughed. “Dr. Park, you’re being paranoid.”

  “In the last few days, my boss has been kidnapped, my city quarantined, my house put under surveillance, and military drones tasked to search for me. I’ve had four guns pointed at my head, two of them by soldiers, and been robbed of everything down to my shoes. Last night I watched the National Guard kill an innocent man. Guardsmen you just admitted you sent for me. I’m starting to think I’m not being paranoid enough.”

  “Ethan. Listen—”

  And then another connection. Abe. Dr. Abraham Couzen. A genius. A massive pain in the ass who had found the answer to a question the whole world had been asking for thirty years. A question that had shaped everything, changed everything. That had given rise to the DAR—and to the Children of Darwin. And now he was gone, his work missing, blood in his lab.

  Ethan said, “Agent Quinn? Where’s Abe?”

  There was a long pause. When the government man spoke again, what he said was, “Dr. Park, what you’re thinking of doing? Don’t.”

  But by then Ethan had already dropped the phone and started running.

  CHAPTER 30

  He’d never wanted this job. Hadn’t, in truth, wanted the vice presidency either. The Senate had been the limit of Lionel Clay’s political ambition: a place where he could craft the laws and dialogue of the nation, where a strong argument and a persuasive voice could still change the world the same way Cicero had in Rome.

  The first time the RNC had come to him to feel him out on the idea of running as Walker’s vice president, Clay had said thanks, no. Henry Walker wasn’t his taste, and that was more limelight than he needed. But they’d kept coming, with charts and stats, with arguments about the social importance and need for an academic perspective and, finally, with the honest truth, which was that he won Walker the South, and that was the ball game.

  Even as he’d agreed, he’d known that accepting the position was a mistake. And now, walking into the Situation Room, he was more certain of that than ever. Everyone stood as he entered, and he waved them down. “What happened?”

  Leahy coughed. “Sir, about twenty minutes ago, at 9:43 local time, Nick Cooper was assassinated in Tesla, New Canaan.”

  Clay had been about to sit down, and the words froze him. He took a deep breath, then lowered himself to the chair. “He’s dead?”

  “Yes, sir. An abnorm named Soren Johansen entered a restaurant where Mr. Cooper was having breakfast with his family, killed two plainclothes bodyguards, and then stabbed Cooper in the chest. The blade punctured the left ventricle of his heart. He was rushed to Guardian General but pronounced dead on arrival.”

  “His family?”

  “His son Todd was wounded in the attack. He’s in critical condition.”

  “And this assassin, Soren Johansen?”

  “We’re still getting a clear picture. But it appears that he escaped.”

  “My God.” Clay leaned back. “How did this happen?”

  The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Yuval Raz, exchanged glances with Jen Forbus, the director of the DAR. Mentally, Clay sighed. So much of politics was a matter of everyone covering their collective asses. After a moment, General Raz said, “Our information at this moment is very preliminary.”

  “Understood.”

  “We haven’t intercepted any evidence of a conspiracy. However, Johansen walked past a team of Epstein Industries diplomatic security. He killed the two inside the restaurant, but . . .”

  “Epstein is complicit in the attack?”

  “His team at least failed to prevent it.”

  “That may be because of the nature of our assassin,” Forbus added. “Soren Johansen’s gift is temporal, with a T-naught of 11.2, an exceptional rate. That means that what we experience as one second, he perceives as slightly more than eleven. With that much difference, it’s possible he simply had time to do everything right.”

  “How do we know that?” Clay asked.

  “He was academy-raised. At Hawkesdown.”

  “Hawkesdown Academy?” Clay steepled his fingers. “The same as John Smith.”

  “Yes, sir, and at the same time, although Smith is two years older. However, after graduation, Soren disappeared. If he’s political, he’s been very quiet. There’s no evidence tying the two together. But my gut says that John Smith is involved.”

  “Mr. President,” Leahy said, “we’d like to detain John Smith for questioning.”

  Marla Keevers, quiet until now, said, “That’s a political nightmare. He’s got enormous goodwill following the Monocle revelations. He’s been on the talk shows, the speaking circuit. His book has been a New York Times bestseller for weeks. Arresting him will have major blowback.”

  “We’re past that point,” Leahy said.

  Clay studied the man. A former soldier, Leahy had spent the last three decades in the intelligence field, rising to run the CIA before being appointed secretary of defense. To say that his résumé prepared him to view the world militaristically was an understatement of massive proportions.

  That doesn’t mean he’s wrong. After all, Owen was against sending Cooper in the first place.

  “Detain John Smith,” he said.

  Leahy nodded to General Raz, who picked up a phone and began to speak into it quietly.

  “In addition, sir, we need to move forward with a military response against the New Canaan Holdfast.”

  “Why? If we believe that Smith—”

  “Cooper was an ambassador for the United States. His assassination has to be treated as an act of war.”

  “What does Epstein say?”

  Leahy looked around the table. “Sir, we haven’t been able to reach him.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It could be that things are just happening too fast. But ultimately, there are two possibilities here. Either Epstein and the NCH are themselves acting as terrorists, or their government”—Leahy said the word with distaste—“is riddled with them. Either way, an American advisor was murdered on a diplomatic mission during a time of unprecedented unrest. Three ci
ties are under martial law, without power or food. We can’t afford to consider our options.” Leahy paused. “Sir, it’s our recommendation that you order preparations for a full-scale military invasion of the New Canaan Holdfast.”

  Clay glanced at Marla. She shrugged, said, “People are scared. Calling in the cavalry demonstrates that the government of the United States is still in charge.”

  “General Raz, what would an invasion look like?”

  “We’d establish air superiority with F-27 Wyverns operating out of Ellsworth Air Force Base. Ground all but humanitarian flights in the region. Units from the Fourth Infantry Division, First Armored Division, and 101st Airborne would then seize Gillette, Shoshoni, and Rawlins, the entrance points for the NCH, cutting it off.”

  “How many troops would be involved?”

  “Approximately seventy-five thousand.”

  “Seventy-five thousand? That’s almost equal to the entire population of the Holdfast.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s important to bring overwhelming force to bear. We’re not proposing a fair fight,” the general said, “we’re demonstrating that we can annihilate them. It makes the idea of resistance ridiculous. Ultimately, that will save lives on both sides.”

  A dozen faces stared at him. Men and women in uniforms heavy with medals, the commanders of every branch of the military and intelligence community. Lionel Clay took pride in having lived an honorable life. He had been a teacher and a leader. But he had never been a soldier.

  And my God, did I never want to be the person making this decision.

  “You’re talking about a military attack against American citizens.”

  “We’re talking about preparing for one,” Secretary Leahy said. “Moving troops into position. It’s a reminder to our enemies that they are facing the combined might of the finest fighting force the world has ever seen.”

  “What’s the endgame?”

  “Sir?”

  “If I give the order to attack. What happens after we take the NCH?”

  Leahy looked around again. “That’s up to you, sir. But our recommendation is that all leaders and tier-one and tier-two abnorms be held in temporary internment camps. The NCH itself should be evacuated and destroyed.”