A Better World (The Brilliance Trilogy Book 2)

by Marcus Sakey

  “Look at their army,” John said. “Statistically, about seven hundred and fifty of them are gifted. Want to bet how many are officers?”

  “You think I don’t know that? But starting a war to fix it is insane.”

  “I agree,” he said. “I was an activist, remember? I tried to change the system. Well, the system doesn’t want to change. It will fight to the death to destroy anything that tries to change it.”

  “Save that act for the coeds, John. Tell me there’s a reason for all this.”

  “There is,” he snapped, and turned to face her. “Shannon, they enslave children. They want to microchip our friends. They murdered families at the Monocle to make people fear abnorms, and they blew up the stock exchange with eleven hundred people in it to fan the flames. They’ve quarantined their own cities, and when their citizens begged for food, they tear-gassed and shot them. They will never, ever, let us be equal. The only world they can conceive of is the one they have, and they will do anything, spill any blood, to keep it.”

  “So you play into their hands by trying to kill a peace envoy?”

  He started to respond, stopped. Reached into his vest and took out his cigarettes. “Trying?”

  Oh shit. “You know what I mean. How could murdering him help us? How can it lead to anything but an attack on the NCH?”

  He looked at her appraisingly. Opened the pack, shook out a smoke, and lit it with a Zippo, his eyes never leaving hers.

  The truth sank in. “You want them to attack.”

  “They will. And when they do, they’ll doom themselves.”

  “How? There are seventy-five thousand troops out there, one armed soldier for every man, woman, and child in the NCH. And millions more where they came from.”

  John took a deep drag. Smiled. “Shannon, this isn’t something I came up with in the shower this morning. I’ve been planning for years. I crippled an agency and took down a president to do it. If war is the only way for us to get what we deserve, then by God, they’ll have their war.”

  Shannon stared at him, wondering, whirling. She’d known John for years, and for him she’d risked prison and faced soldiers and killed more than once. But while she knew he wasn’t afraid of conflict, she’d never imagined that he wanted open war. Good God, what would that even look like? Brilliants were outnumbered ninety-nine to one. There was no way, shy of genocide and slavery, for them to take what John believed they deserved. Equality would have been fine by her, a world where the government tried to serve the people, all of them, instead of manipulating the truth to serve those at the top.

  And there was something else.

  “The serum,” she said slowly. “Dr. Couzen’s work on replicating abnorm gifts. When you sent me into the DAR to find out about it, you never intended to share it, did you? To make it public.”

  He didn’t respond, just held her gaze.

  “I ask because I believed in you.”

  “Shannon—”

  “There’s a way out of all of this. And you aren’t using it.” She stared at him, seeing it all now, the whole ugly mess. All the things she had let herself ignore. “You want this war as badly as they do, don’t you? You want to march at the head of an army and conquer the world. No matter how much blood is spilled in the process.”

  His eyes hardened. “I care about our blood. Not theirs.”

  “Blood is blood.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s not. And I won’t be the one starting this war. They’re the ones who will use military force.”

  “They haven’t yet.”

  “They will. Someone on their side will be so sure of the need to kill abnorms that they’ll launch a concerted strike against their own people. Maybe Clay, maybe someone on his staff, maybe some eighteen-year-old kid who gets nervous behind a trigger. They’ll attack, and when they do, they’ll unite the brilliants.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s happening. You may as well accept it.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You better. I understand that you had some notion of us all holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’ while we penned a new constitution, but it doesn’t work that way. Building a better world is a bloody business. And you better decide who you really care about.” He flicked the cigarette off the edge of the ridge. “Because you’re either us—or you’re them.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Soren aimed.

  Through the telescopic sight, he watched the woman argue with John. Soren was four hundred yards out, but the scope had a magnification of twenty, and with the crosshairs on her forehead, it was easy to read her lips. He didn’t care for handguns; the recoil, magnified by his time sense, made for inelegance. But a sniper rifle was a matter of pure mechanics. Brace it, breathe properly, squeeze rather than pull the trigger, and it was just a projection of will across distance. Still, he was pleased not to have to kill her; John had told him she was close to Samantha.

  After she got in her truck and left, he swiveled the scope back to John. His friend had an intense expression he remembered well from their games of chess. Lost in the permutations, following a chain of probabilities.

  Finally, John looked directly at him and spoke. He used a normal speed this time, guessing—wrongly—that the distance would require it. “Cooper survived. That’s a problem.”

  In the distance, the streaking jets sounded like angry insects.

  “Everything is going as planned.” Smith rubbed at the back of his neck. “Only one thing can stop it now.”

  Soren waited to hear what his friend needed.

  “Dr. Couzen has a protégé named Ethan Park.”

  The rest was obvious. Soren stood up and began walking.

  CHAPTER 38

  Cooper had been expecting a corporate jet. Something sleek and fast with leather seats and tri-d streamed to the headrests. “No, sir,” the pilot had laughed. “Not while the good men and women of the United States Air Force are paying us a visit. All private craft have been grounded. Only things cleared to be in the sky are cargo transports with high-priority freight. Some of the ballsier smugglers are making runs, but there’s a good chance of getting exploded, so Mr. Epstein suggested this route.”

  “This route” was a cargo-modified Boeing 737, seats removed, windows plugged, and a big red cross painted on one side. Cooper had looked at it, shrugged. “So where do I sit?”

  “Well, you can pick any crate you like.” The pilot grinned. “But it might get kinda cold at thirty thousand feet.”

  “Right. Copilot it is.” He’d strapped in, ready to rock and roll.

  Three hours later, they were still waiting on the runway. Cooper had railed and cursed, but the pilot had just shrugged. Nothing to be done about it; according to him, it was a lucky thing they were taking off at all.

  When they finally did get clearance, Cooper had looked out the window at the troops below and felt his stomach fall. It was one thing to hear the numbers and another to see it. A wide arc of military force aimed right at the heart of the Holdfast. Quick-fab barracks and hangars, row upon row of heavy equipment, a mass of ant figures moving. It’d been almost a decade since he’d left the army, but he could imagine the activity on the ground, the tension growing in every chest, the nervous energy that made you wish the worst would happen just so you could stop waiting for it.

  The soldiers might look tiny from this height, but that was an illusion; the truth was that he was the tiny one. One man barely out of a hospital bed heading off to search a country of three hundred million for one genius who didn’t want to be found. As wild a goose chase as the world had ever seen.

  How about instead of feeling sorry for yourself, you get to work?

  He had flicked open his d-pad and began to read.

  If there was one thing Epstein had, it was information, and the time had passed quickly as Cooper tried to absorb everything about Ethan Park. His parents, his childhood, his itinerant academic’s pedigree, his work on epigenetics, his relationship to Abraham Couzen. The guy was clearly a
brilliant scientist, but to Cooper’s eye, it looked like he was one of those who inspired and supported others, rather than led the way. A catalyst, a protégé, destined to be near greatness. That was useful; the difference between someone like Ethan and the guy accepting a Nobel was likely a raging ego, an important variable when it came to predictability.

  All the while, something nagged at him. There was a clue here, some piece of data that he hadn’t yet assembled. He knew better than to try to force it, just acknowledged it and let his mind spin, fed it the data that served as gasoline to the engine of his gift.

  Cooper was unsurprised, but not at all pleased, to learn that Ethan Park was on the run himself. Good news was that though Park had been visited by DAR agents, that didn’t appear to be why he had left his home. Instead, it looked like it had been the situation in Cleveland that had driven him out of town. A risky play, but one Cooper approved of; better chancing a difficult journey than waiting until there was no way out at all. An especially tough decision for a new father to make; Cooper found himself admiring the guy for his chutzpah.

  The pilot spoke into his headset, and then as he came in for his approach—

  Wait. Park had been visited by DAR agents. Why?

  The DAR would have seen through Couzen’s faked kidnapping as quickly as you did. But why would the DAR even hear about a simple kidnapping, unless . . .

  They knew what Couzen was working on. And when he vanished, the agent in charge took the logical next step, the one you’re taking right now.

  He went after Ethan Park.

  —the landscape shifted.

  “Son of a bitch,” Cooper said.

  “Sir?”

  The nagging clue came into sudden sharp focus. Unbelievable. The answer had been in front of him before he even knew to look for it. Been in front of him the night he’d gone out for a beer with his old partner.

  “When will we be down?”

  “About three minutes.”

  “Okay.” Cooper tried to flex the bandaged wreck of his right hand. The palm felt like it might split, and ribbons of flame shot up his fingers, but he gritted his teeth and did it anyway. “I’m going to need two things.”

  “Name it. Mr. Epstein said carte blanche.”

  “First, I need a secure telephone line the moment we land.”

  “And second?”

  “A really fast car.”

  It was a tribute to the sheer muscle of billions that despite the fact that they were in Akron, Ohio, at a small airport Cooper had never heard of, fifteen hundred miles from New Canaan, a man in a jumpsuit was hustling across the tarmac holding a bulky phone before their engines had even spun down.

  Cooper unbuckled himself from the copilot’s seat and met the guy at the top of the rolling stairs. He started to reach for the phone with his right hand, caught himself just in time. “This is secure?”

  “Yes, sir. Epstein Industries executive-level encryption.”

  Which is probably safer than anything the DAR has. Cooper looked at the pilot until the guy said, “Right. On my way.” He closed the cockpit hatch behind him.

  Cooper dialed the number, one of a few he had memorized. There had had been a time he called it a dozen times a day. It rang twice, three times, Cooper thinking, Come on, pick up, and then there was the sound of connection and a familiar voice.

  “Quinn.”

  “Bobby, it’s me.”

  Silence. A long beat of it. Then, an edge to his voice, Quinn said, “Whoever this is, you should know that I have initiated trace algorithms. Enjoy whatever cute little game you’re playing, because in a few seconds, when I find you, I’m going to direct a drone strike.”

  What? Oh. Right.

  “Bobby, I’m not dead. Erik Epstein pulled a medical rabbit out of his hat, an illegal newtech surgery, saved my life.”

  “Keep talking, asshole. How long do you think your encryption can hold up against the DAR?”

  Cooper sighed. “You’re divorced. Your daughter’s name is Maggie. Three months ago, you, me, and Shannon threw Director Peters off a roof in midtown DC.”

  A pause. “Cooper and I went out for drinks not long ago. Where did we go?”

  “I don’t remember the name of the bar, but it was a dim place, Christmas lights. We drank beer and whiskey and talked about kidnapping John Smith.”

  “Jesus Christ! Cooper? Is that really you?”

  “It’s really me, man.”

  “Oh God. Oh shit.” The man’s voice was fast, relieved, an overflow of emotion. “What the hell, Coop? I thought you were dead. We all did.”

  “I was.”

  “Huh?”

  “Apparently, medically, I was. They did some kind of suspended animation thing, repaired my heart. Something to do with stem cells, I don’t know, but listen, I really don’t have time—”

  “What about Todd?”

  A rush of warmth for his friend hit at the same time as a terrible stab of guilt and pain. “He’s . . . they say he’s going to be okay.”

  “Thank God. I was so scared—my God. Coop! You’re alive.”

  “Hey, keep your voice down, would you?” He pictured Bobby’s office, how many people might walk by at any moment. “That’s not public knowledge.”

  “Why not?”

  “There are advantages to being dead. If I’m alive, I should call the president and follow orders. But dead men can do what they want.”

  “Oh crap.” Bobby was suddenly serious. “What are you up to?”

  “Saving the world, same as always.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Same as always. Listen, we’re on the clock. That night in the bar, you said you’d just gotten back from Cleveland. That you’d been working a target there, a scientist who had run.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was Dr. Abraham Couzen, right?”

  More silence. “I’m not sure I can confirm—”

  “I know it was Couzen, and I know you were there to work his number two, a guy named Ethan Park. Right?”

  A sigh. “Yeah.”

  “I know what Couzen developed. And so do you. He found the root cause of the brilliants, and he was working on a way to replicate it.”

  “You know I love you, man, but this is way, way above—”

  “Bobby, no kidding, this is not the time. I can be your old boss, or a special advisor to the president, or just your best friend, whatever you need to cut the crap right now.” He put steel in his voice, let Quinn hear the desperation. “Can you do that?”

  A long pause. “What’s going on?”

  “Couzen faked his kidnapping. I was trying to figure out why he would do that, and it finally came together. He did it because the DAR came looking for him, right? Somehow you found out what he was working on, and you wanted it.”

  “Shit, man, everyone wants it. Thing like that could change the world. Maybe even stop what’s about to happen.”

  “My thinking exactly. That’s why I need to find it, and right now.”

  “Good luck. Couzen may not be much at faking a crime scene, but he’s turned out to be aces at lying low. I’ve been running every protocol we have to catch the guy, but no luck.”

  “And now Ethan Park is on the run too. He’s my target.”

  Another pause. “Is that right?”

  Cooper hated the phone. In person, he could have read the layers of conflict behind what Bobby was saying, parsed it. But without the tiny physical cues, the twitches of muscle, the hint of nerves, his gift was useless. Second time that’s happened recently. Maybe you’re relying on it too much, Coop.

  Maybe it’s time you used your brain instead.

  “In Cleveland, you said that you’d braced Park. My guess, you put him under surveillance, right?”

  “Sure. But then things got stupid in Cleveland. When the riots hit, my men were pulled off to help. That’s when he bolted.”

  “You think he knew about your team?”

  “Nah. Just dumb luck. A lot
of people tried to leave Cleveland then. Once I realized what had happened, we ran a video scan, found his car. I got drone surveillance on it, found him and his family hiking south. The National Guard was supposed to pick him up, but some hothead shot a refugee, and then it was chaos.”

  “You lost him?”

  “For a while, then picked him up in a bank, lost him again, got him robbing a gas station.”

  “Seriously?” That was way out of character with the pattern he’d built. “I thought he was a geek. He turned criminal?”

  “Yeah, well.” There was a note of embarrassment in his friend’s voice. “I took a risky play, called him at the bank and tried to talk him in. He panicked.”

  “Where was the gas station?”

  “Place called Cuyahoga Falls, outside of Akron.”

  Cooper laughed. “You’re kidding me.”

  “Nope. Why?”

  “Guess where I’m calling from?”

  “No shit? Huh.”

  “What does ‘huh’ mean?”

  “Well, our boy Ethan is smart. He took the gas station attendant’s truck, but he didn’t try to run. Laid low instead. It took some time to scan satellite feeds, but we found him. He’s in a cabin not far from there. I was just about to send cops in to pick him up.”

  “Local PD? No way. Bobby, we can’t lose him. If some rookie sees he’s got a gun and takes a shot—”

  “Yeah, I know, but I got no choice, Coop. I have no resources, none. Have you turned on a tri-d? Everything is focused on Wyoming. Right now, I couldn’t order a pizza.”

  “So sit on him. You’ve got him tagged; he can’t go anywhere.”

  “That was the plan, until your playmate turned up in Ohio.”

  “My playmate?”

  “Soren Johansen. You remember, asshole with a knife?”