Brilliance

by Marcus Sakey

  Don’t. Just don’t.

  Back in the bedroom, he dropped his d-pad on the desk, his gun in the drawer. The armchair was where he’d left it, pulled out of place and turned to face the floor-to-ceiling windows, a stunning panorama of lake and skyline. He sat down and sighed.

  “Home sweet home,” he said.

  Six months ago, when he’d shown up at Drew Peters’s door with a plan and a stomach full of reckless energy, his main concern had been convincing his boss. He’d known there would be costs, and he’d accepted them. Only after everything had been in motion had he first gotten that pit-of-the-stomach what now? feeling.

  It wasn’t as though he could just e-mail John Smith and say he wanted to change sides. Any attempt to reach out directly would be seen for the trap it was. And so instead, Cooper had to ask himself what he would do if he couldn’t do what he’d always done. If he wasn’t the good guy who believed that the system, for all its flaws, was the only way to survive; that it was the route to a better tomorrow. If he really had been cast out by the department, if they had pinned the explosion on him, had betrayed and hunted him, what would he do?

  And thus began a startlingly lucrative life as a criminal.

  There was a knock at the door. He let the waiter in, asked him to put the tray on the desk by the window, signed the check and a tip without processing the numbers. The salmon was perfect, the smoky sweetness offset by the sharp salt of the capers and the brightness of fresh lemon. He washed it down with icy gin, watching the sky slowly change colors.

  He’d been careful. He’d planned his moves with a rigorous devotion. After all, he had nothing else to do. No family he could share his life with. No boss to complicate his work. No friends who needed him. For a little while he tried sleeping with a woman he’d met in the hotel lounge. A magazine editor, smart and chic and very sexy, but neither of their hearts was in it, and the thing petered out on its own.

  It had been a surprise—and yeah, okay, a pleasure—to realize how very good he was at being bad. The same skills that made him the best agent in Equitable Services made him an exceptional thief and powerbroker. In the last six months he’d hurtled through the underworld.

  There had been some thrills on the criminal end, but far more dangerous than his new friends was his old agency. As they’d planned, Drew Peters had laid the explosion at Cooper’s feet. He was now one of the top targets of Equitable Services. Three times they’d tracked him down—in Dallas, Los Angeles, and Detroit.

  Detroit had been bad. He’d nearly had to kill an agent.

  Staying in cities was dangerous, but he had to be on the radar. Vanishing entirely might save him from the DAR, but it wouldn’t bring him any closer to Smith.

  Six months of hide-and-seek, building his reputation and his wealth. Six months of relentless caution and patience. Six months while his children grew up without him, while Natalie dealt with God knew what, while his former colleagues hunted him. Six months of never making the first step in John Smith’s direction.

  Until today. He could only hope that the table he’d set for Zane was tempting enough.

  He finished the salmon and licked his fingers. The clouds had broken, and the world outside glowed shadowless Easter colors. Magic hour. The double panes of glass canceled sound, turning the world into a mime show, a bright and dazzling spectacle for his eyes alone. That was the lure of wealth, he’d discovered: a throaty whisper in your ear that you were special, that it was all—this wine, this woman, this world—for you. That it in some way existed only so that you might partake of it. He liked it, a lot. Liked being part of the aristocracy, the one percent who had enough money to do whatever they chose.

  He’d trade it in a second to be back in the front yard, spinning his children in a whirling arc of joy.

  The phone rang. He rocked the chair back on two legs and stretched for it. Let it ring while he checked the display.

  Zane.

  Cooper smiled.

  CHAPTER 18

  Funny thing about Chicago’s business district—it had a faucet.

  Most of the day was a steady trickle, tourists, shoppers, and the like. At night, the faucet was cranked down to a bare drip. But there were certain moments when the thing was opened full stream, and the streets and sidewalks transformed to wild rapids of humanity. The first was the morning commute. The third was the evening rush back to the trains.

  Cooper sat in the window of a falafel joint, waiting for the second. Outside the smudged windows, cars weaved slowly south. The concrete-chasm effect was even more claustrophobic here on Wells, where the tracks for the El cut the sky into thin slivers. He checked his watch. Almost…

  Lunchtime.

  The sidewalks were suddenly thronged, people hurrying and jostling in braided vectors. Cooper picked up his plastic shopping bag and joined them. As always, the crowd made him uncomfortable. Too much stimulus, too many intentions.

  The day was clear and cold. He craned his neck upward, saw nothing but the towers of industry rising to a pale blue sky. Half a block north he climbed the stairs up to the El, careful to move within a crowd, a cluster of twentysomething businessmen laughing and talking. His right shoe was tight and awkward, but his body felt loose and strong, tingling with anticipated adrenaline. Cooper swiped his card and walked through the turnstile. A portico shaded the platform. Holographic ads for beauty products and movies danced along the railing overlooking the street. The buildings pressed close; ten feet off the edge, people in office buildings did…well, whatever people in office buildings did. He’d never been sure.

  Cooper walked halfway down the platform. He tossed the plastic shopping bag at the trash and missed, the bag landing at the base of the metal can. He left it there and took a seat on the third bench. The portico hid the sky.

  In five minutes Zane’s hacker would be here, or not. He was betting on not.

  A train rounded the curve, ungodly noisy. There had been talk for years of retrofitting the tracks to allow a maglev train, faster and quieter, but the money had never been in the city’s budget. Cooper was glad of it; he liked the El the way it was. Old-world thinking, sure, but the rattle and clank made him happy. He rested his arms on the back of the bench, crossed his legs.

  As the Brown Line pulled in, the platform erupted into a mass of motion. People jostled to get off as others fought to get on. Conversations, phone calls, music. Excuse-mes and curses. A man rapped to himself as he walked, completely unself-conscious. The wave of humanity crested with a recorded tone and the announcement that doors were closing. The tide pulled away with the train, leaving the platform suddenly empty.

  Except for a very, very pretty girl who had not been there a moment ago.

  Cooper blinked, startled. His palms went sweaty and the back of his neck tingled.

  The Girl Who Walks Through Walls wore boots to the knee, soft tights to the hem of her skirt, a fitted shirt, and a loose jacket that had plenty of space in the cuff to conceal the snub-nosed pistol she was pointing at his chest.

  She said, “Get up.”

  Cooper stared—

  She is not part of the plan. She’s a surprise on a day with no margin for error. In about sixty seconds, everything is going to explode.

  Why is she here? Why now? She can’t be working with Zane.

  There must be sources within the department. John Smith has informers.

  And how the hell does she do that, anyway?

  —at her, conscious, suddenly, that his mouth was open. He closed it. Was this how other people felt about what he could do? Her ability to move unseen was uncanny. He could have sworn he’d been looking right at that spot. “You made it out of the Exchange, I guess.”

  “Stand up. I won’t say it again.”

  He read her intent in the lines of her shoulder, the set of her mouth, the fury in her eyes, and he stood up. Slowly. “I don’t work for the DAR anymore,” he said. “Shooting me won’t help your boss.”

  “I’m not here for that. I’m h
ere for Brandon Vargas.”

  His bafflement must have shown on his face. Her lips tightened. “Of course. You don’t remember. He was just another number to you. Walk.” She gestured with her head, not the gun. A pro.

  Cooper glanced in the direction she indicated. The nearer exit. She meant to take him off the platform before shooting him. Normally he’d have welcomed that, knowing that every second he was alive he’d have a chance to turn this around. But not today.

  Today stepping out from under the roof was a death sentence.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “There’s something you need to know.”

  “Start moving or I’ll shoot you right here.”

  “I don’t think so. You’re not actually invisible. You may know how to be where people aren’t looking, but I’m betting once they’re staring, you’re just as screwed as anyone else who fires a gun on an El platform.”

  “Maybe I’ll risk it.”

  “For Brandon Vargas?”

  “Don’t you say his name. His life was shit because of men like you. Men like you put him in an academy. Men like you made him a slave. And when he refused to join the government after he graduated, you killed him. You’re the boot of the system, Cooper. It’s your job to step on human beings. And you don’t even remember them.”

  “I shot Brandon Vargas thirteen months ago,” he said quietly, “behind a biker bar in Reno. We talked first. He smoked a cigarette, a Dunhill Red. Then he made a run for it, a reckless one. Tell you the truth, I don’t think he was trying to escape. I think he wanted me to end things. Wanted me to stop him.”

  A spectrum of emotions rolled across her face. The detail about the cigarette had been the clincher. Had Brandon been friend, family, or lover? If it was the first, he might be able to talk her down. If it was one of the latter two…

  “I remember everyone I’ve killed,” Cooper said. “I didn’t go after Brandon because he wouldn’t join the DAR. I went after him because he started robbing banks and shooting people. In the last one it was a woman and her two-year-old daughter. The girl was in a stroller. It was an accident, but she’s still dead.” There was motion in his peripheral vision. People coming onto the platform. He desperately wanted to turn and look, but didn’t dare. “Yes, his childhood sucked. But I don’t think that buys him a license to shoot two-year-olds. Do you?”

  Her eyes were large to begin with, and the mascara made them huge. He stared at them, trying to read her thoughts, and more than that, her next move, whether she was going to pull the trigger just because that was the plan. He could feel the seconds ticking away, and the motion in his periphery drawing closer, and then he could no longer take it, and he turned and looked at the steps.

  Just as he had expected. Zane, thank you for being the traitorous, opportunistic piece of weasel shit I thought you were.

  He turned back to the Girl Who Walks Through Walls. She was on the train side of the platform. The roof would cover her from one direction, but not both. “Listen to me,” he said. “Take exactly two steps forward and face east. Do it now, or they’ll kill you.”

  “Who?”

  “Do it now.” She would listen or she wouldn’t. Either way, he had to focus. He turned.

  Pouring out of both entrances to the east were men and women with neat hair and good shoes and the chest bulk of people wearing body armor. They carried shotguns and SMGs and pistols, carried them properly, aimed down and left, safeties off but fingers outside trigger guards. Three at the far stair and five at the near. Agents from Equitable Services. His former colleagues. There would be dozens more nearby, scores, covering every block. And for a little salt in the wound, both Roger Dickinson and Bobby Quinn were among them.

  Ah, well.

  They were yelling, telling him not to move, standard law enforcement technique, disorient and overwhelm. Their guns coming up. The handful of civilians on the platform had turned to stone. Slowly, palms out to show he meant no threat, he raised his hands. Showed that he was complying. They fanned out in a precise tactical arc, giving every agent a clean shot. The barrels of eight guns were locked on his chest. No one pointing at his head, no hotshots. If he so much as twitched his finger, they would blow his chest across the platform. He could see it in the white tension of a forefinger curled on a trigger; in the unblinking fish stare framed by submachine gun sights; in the locked shoulder muscles and flared nostrils. Roger Dickinson’s lips were twisted into a snarl that looked almost like a smile. They wanted to shoot. They hated him, and they feared him.

  All but Quinn. Quinn wasn’t sure. Cooper locked eyes with his friend and partner. Let the sounds wash over him, their yells and howls and the rumble of an incoming train, all of it static, like the burbling of a river, out of sync with the motion of their lips.

  And then he used his toe to trigger the remote he’d jammed into the front of his shoe, and the flashbangs in the plastic shopping bag turned the world into a blazing roar.

  Even facing east, with his back to them, the glare left spots in his eyes, and now static really was all he could hear. All of the agents in their textbook-perfect arc had been staring directly into eight million candelas’ worth of white-hot flare. They reeled back, hands going to eyes, weapons flailing.

  Ten seconds.

  Cooper turned, saw the girl standing beside him, facing east. She started forward, but he lashed out, caught her wrist. “No!” He was shouting but could barely hear his own voice. “Snipers!” He let go of her, turned to the west, and began to run.

  Eight seconds.

  The platform ran another thirty yards. Benches and trash cans were strung along the length. He leaned into the run, hoping she could keep up. The beginnings of a potential next step were assembling in his head, and she was at the heart of it. No time. He reached the end of the portion with a roof.

  Here went nothing.

  Five seconds.

  Something angry and hot burned past his arm, and sparks popped off a trash can ahead. He did a quick zag to the left. A patch of concrete burst. He faked right and then went left again. The hipster he passed collapsed, hands clutching at his leg, which seemed to have exploded from the inside. Cooper never heard the shots, hadn’t expected to. The flashbang was part of it, but also the snipers—there would be at least three—would be on upper floors hundreds of yards away.

  Two seconds.

  He hit the end of the platform at a dead run, planted his right foot without slowing, leaped upward, got his left foot onto the railing, and flung himself into space, arms whirling, wind on his face, heart in his mouth.

  Below him, the street. Unforgiving concrete and the buzz of cars. Empty air. He just had time to wonder if he would make it, and then he hit the fire escape of the building opposite. It wasn’t a graceful landing; he pretty much collided with the railing, ribs banging into it. He gasped, then hauled himself up and over. Turned to see if—

  —she landed like a cat, flexing her knees down to a squat crouch, her hands catching and pushing her up.

  Goddamn.

  Cooper pushed aside his appreciation. They were out of time. A flashbang worked by throwing enough photons that it activated all light-sensitive cells in the eye, temporarily blinding anybody nearby and facing it. But ten seconds was as much as he could hope for before the team would be able to see enough to start moving. Maybe even to risk a shot. He lunged for the corner railing, ripped off the strip of duct tape, and yanked the crowbar free, then whirled and smashed the window with one blow. Hauled it back across the bottom to clear the worst of the shards.

  He turned to gesture to the girl, and found her no longer there. Right. He leaped through the window as gunfire cracked behind. He hit something, her, and the two of them tangled and fell. He landed on top of her, not a suave action-hero move but a clumsy, wind-losing collapse. He caught a whiff of female sweat and some spicy sort of perfume, and then they were both squirming to their feet.

  A thin man with thinner hair sat on the opposite side of the desk. His mouth wa
s wide open. He stared at them like, well, like they had just exploded through his window. Cooper snorted a laugh—something about a fight, he always found synchronicities and amusements when he couldn’t afford them—and went for the office door. She followed. An office like any other, cubicles and filing cabinets and fluorescent lights. He walked steadily, nodding at people he passed, just another office drone. The stairwell was by the elevator. He hurried in and up. His ears rang and his ribs hurt. He went up one flight and then paused on the landing and checked the time.

  “Why are you stopping?”

  “Waiting for them to get here. All of the units in the area will be rerouted to this building.”

  “What? This is a trap?”

  “No. They’ll surround it, secure the exits. Then tactical response teams will move in. That’s when we move out.”

  “Screw you. I’m not waiting.”

  He shrugged. “Okay.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve had this all planned.”

  “I figured Zane would sell me out.”

  “Then why show up?”

  “Because there was a chance that he wouldn’t. Besides, I’ve run a million of these. I know the playbook.”

  “Right,” she said, her voice cold. “You’ve run a million of these on other gifted.”

  “Yes. And right now there are about a hundred agents converging on this building. You think you can slip past them all, be my guest. Otherwise, do what I say, and we get out of here.”

  “Why would you help me?”

  He paused, mind racing. He’d figured Zane would betray him; had been depending on it, in fact. The DAR was no doubt paying a hefty bounty. Not only that, but while the agency didn’t care about common criminals, it had pull with agencies that did. Selling Cooper out might buy Zane insurance later. It was simple math to assume he would call the DAR, and that the department would come in full force. Come loudly and publicly. Which had been the purpose of the whole exercise. It was a test balloon. A message. It would show John Smith that Nick Cooper was, beyond a doubt, no longer on the DAR’s payroll. And just maybe it would be the first step toward the terrorist.