Written in Fire (The Brilliance Trilogy Book 3)

by Marcus Sakey

  You’ll go on missions too, Aaron Hakowski thought to himself. Maybe you and Tabitha together.

  He’d wanted to tell her to call him Hawk, but he’d been afraid she’d laugh. Still, there was the comfort of her word, vigil. Like he was a knight. A holy warrior. The Hawk, keeping his vigil with silent dedication. After all, they were behind enemy lines. Or, maybe not really enemy, because the Holdfast was for gifted, but still, Erik Epstein’s security forces could discover them at any moment, everybody said so. Aaron didn’t exactly want that to happen, but if it did, and he was on watch, maybe he could warn the others. Or even help. Drop down behind the intruders and steal one of their guns.

  Idiot. They’d be brilliants. What would a fourteen-year-old normal be able to do against them?

  Still. They wouldn’t be expecting it. And if he took down the one inside the door, he could sneak up on the others. He was a good shot, had practiced until his trigger finger bled. If he had a rifle and was behind the soldiers, they would be dressed in black and have helmets that made them look like insects, and they’d be pointing their guns at Tabitha, who for some reason was wearing a torn white teddy—

  Fast footsteps snapped him to attention. Two scientists were hurrying down the hall, carrying a gurney between them. As Hawk watched, a fist of cold wind punched open the front door. Haruto Yamato, who they all called sensei when he taught hand-to-hand classes, staggered in along with Ms. Herr, who scared Aaron. Between them they slung an old guy to the gurney and dumped him. Next through the door was a big man who moved gingerly, like something hurt pretty bad.

  John was last, but like always, it seemed like he was first. Aaron had put a lot of thought into why that was, and he suspected it had something to do with the way everyone looked at him. Like they were all compasses and he was the North Pole. John spoke to the scientists, who quickly strapped down the old man’s wrists and ankles.

  “Charly, Haruto, handle security. You’ve seen what Couzen is capable of. I don’t want any surprises. Paul, go with them, get that wound looked at.”

  “No, I’ll stay with—”

  “Paul.” John put a hand on the big man’s shoulder. “I’m going to need you.”

  Aaron felt a stab of jealousy, imagined John doing that to him, putting a hand on his shoulder and looking in his eyes and saying, “I’m going to need you, Hawk.”

  Don’t be dumb.

  The old guy on the gurney was directly beneath him, and Aaron took a careful look, mindful of what Mom had always said, how most people wandered through life with their eyes closed. That led to a flash of memory, in a car, golden sun, a couple of years ago, coming back from McDonald’s, both of them munching fries from an open bag while she quizzed him, asked him what the nametag of the cashier had read, how much the order was for, the colors of the cars that had been parked next to theirs when they’d left, and the way she had glanced over with a grin when he’d known all the answers, that smile where she showed her teeth, not the polite one she did in pictures but the real one when he made her laugh—

  Stop.

  The old man was thin, with a big nose and a bald head. He was unconscious, but still looked angry. There were vicious scratches all over his face, which was weird, because Aaron couldn’t imagine Sensei Haruto scratching like a little girl, and Ms. Herr definitely wouldn’t have, not even when she’d been a little girl, if she ever had, and so Aaron looked closer, and that’s when he noticed the stains under the old guy’s fingernails.

  “One, two, three,” said one of the scientists, and on three he and the other guy stood up, raising the gurney with them. Sensei and Ms. Herr and the muscular guy followed. They were headed toward the lab, and he thought about following. But John wasn’t going; he stood by the wall until they were out of sight, and then he sagged, like a lot of weight had landed on his shoulders. He sat down on a bench, elbows on his knees, staring at nothing.

  Without looking up, he said, “Heya, Hawk.”

  Aaron felt a flush of something he couldn’t quite name, similar to but different from the feeling he’d gotten when Tabitha smiled at him. He thought about working his way back to the electrical pipe, but instead he grabbed the bottom of the strut and lowered himself to dangle. He regretted the move immediately, the floor seeming somehow to get farther away instead of closer, but the only option was to wriggle and kick his way back up, and no way was he doing that in front of John, so he just took a breath and made his fingers open before he could think too much. The fall was about ten feet, and landing hurt, but he was proud that he didn’t show it. “Hi, Mr. Smith.”

  “John.”

  That flush again. “Hi, John. Who was that?”

  “A scientist named Abraham Couzen.”

  “A brilliant?”

  “No. Just a genius.”

  “He’s going to help us?”

  “You could say.”

  Aaron thought about that. “So he’s not one of us, but he knows something.”

  The smile that crossed John’s lips was brief but pleased. “That’s right. He developed something very important. Maybe the most important thing in the last couple of thousand years.”

  “Wow.” Aaron paused. “Will he tell us?”

  “He doesn’t need to. I already have it.”

  “Then why do we need him?”

  “Partly so he can’t tell anyone else. And partly because I want to see what happens to him.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “He’s going to die.”

  “Oh.”

  John looked up then. He was different from most grown-ups, who only really looked at the kids when they were mad. That was one of the things Aaron loved about him, that John saw him, looked at him and talked to him like he mattered, not like he was just another kid, another war orphan whose mom had—

  Stop.

  “You okay?”

  Aaron shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Why is he going to die?”

  “He’s too old.”

  “He didn’t look that old.”

  John seemed to be about to say something, then didn’t. Instead he patted the bench beside him. Aaron sat down.

  “You know, your mom was very proud of you.”

  I know, was what he wanted to say, but when he opened his mouth he realized he couldn’t trust himself, and so he didn’t say anything, just looked at his boots. Don’t cry, don’t cry, you little pussy, don’t you cry.

  There was the sound of a lighter, and then the sharp smell of smoke. John said, “Wanna know a secret?”

  Hawk looked up, nodded, faster than he meant to.

  “We’re about to win.”

  “We are? Because of Dr. Couzen?”

  John Smith took a deep drag off his cigarette. “Partly. He’s the last piece of a plan I’ve been working on for a very long time. A plan that changes everything.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I’m pretty smart.”

  “I know, Hawk.” John’s voice sounded almost hurt. “I know that.”

  “I mean, of course I’m just a normal. I wish I weren’t, but there’s nothing I can do about it. But I’d do anything for . . .” Aaron caught himself just before he said you, amended it to “. . . the cause.” Then he wondered if he’d caught himself in time after all, because the way his friend was looking at him had changed. “What?”

  For a long moment, John just stared at him, the cigarette held almost to his lips but not quite.

  As if he’d forgotten it was there.

  CHAPTER 13

  Soren stared.

  His cage was made of metal tiles eighteen inches across. Six squares high, six wide, and ten long. The floor was concrete. A metal door replaced exactly ten tiles.

  Each tile was enameled glossy white and pierced by a lattice of pinholes, which were the only source of light. A constant pale illumination glowed behind them, never dimming or brightening. The only change occurred when gas flowed through the holes from
all directions at once, and he would find himself in a sudden swirling mist, like flying through a sunlit cloud.

  When that happened there was little choice but to breathe steadily and wait.

  Twice each day a tray with a sludgy soup of proteins and amino acids slid through a slot in the door. The tray was attached, and the only eating utensil was a wide paper straw. A plastic toilet fixed to the floor took his waste. Doubtless he was being watched, his vitals recorded by sensitive instruments hidden behind the metal tiles.

  The first occasion the gas had flowed was after he had refused food several times in succession. He’d awakened on his bunk (two tiles wide by four long), still naked, a raped feeling in his throat from the scrape of the tube they must have used to feed him. In several other instances, he had clearly been bathed. On one memorable recent occasion, slight chafing around wrists and ankles suggested that he had been strapped down while unconscious, and so perhaps taken somewhere, although there was no way to be sure.

  Soren had sought nothingness most of his life. But a blank and unchanging cage was not nothingness. It was his curse made physical. An ocean of time to drown in. No books, no window, no visitors, not even a spider that he might become. His memories were largely not a place to retreat. There had been a few moments of true contentment or even happiness, and he treasured them, striving to recall every detail of a chess game with John, or the way sunlight shadowed the soft hollow of Samantha’s neck. But the mental movies had been screened so many times the colors were fading, and he feared losing them altogether. He could exercise, and meditate, and masturbate, but that left the bulk of the hours untouched.

  So he counted.

  The sum could be calculated: the pinholes were in offset rows of 48, totaling 2,304 holes per tile. 182 tiles meant 419,328 holes. Minus the 3,456 blocked by his bunk, that left 415,872 holes.

  The number itself held no meaning. Its purpose was to provide a benchmark. A way to recognize that he had erred, had missed a pinhole or double-counted one. At which point it was time to return to the beginning. Like Sisyphus, endlessly rolling his boulder up a mountain in Tartarus, endlessly losing it, endlessly beginning again.

  Camus had written that one must imagine Sisyphus happy, for his absurd struggle mirrored the efforts of humanity to find meaning in a world devoid of it, and thus the struggle itself must be enough. But Camus had never been in this cage. Neither the physical one nor the one in Soren’s head, where his curse made one second into eleven. With nothing to separate one day from another, it was difficult to say exactly how long he had been here, but perhaps two weeks of “real” time.

  Almost six months to him. Six months spent counting pinholes.

  So when the door began to move, he did not believe it. Hallucinations had come before. But when he turned his head to look, the door did not snap soundlessly shut. Instead, it crept farther open. It took nearly twenty of his seconds to reveal the man standing behind it. For a full minute of his time they simply looked at one another.

  Nick Cooper said, “Hi.”

  Cooper had tried to prepare himself.

  When civilians said that, they meant taking a deep breath and clenching their fists. But the trick was to go much farther. To imagine the possibilities, good and bad, in detail. To visualize them the way astronauts prepare for a space walk, spending weeks considering what to do if this gasket leaked or that valve failed. It was a method that had served him well in the past, a way to walk into a room already knowing what he might face and how to respond to it.

  But no visualization exercise could have prepared him.

  The first surge was fear. Raw, primal, deep-chest fear. On some level far below his control, his subconscious mind, his very cells, recognized Soren as the man who had killed him, had slid a carbon-fiber blade into his heart. Even having survived, even having fought back, even having won, the initial fear had a horrifying purity to it.

  Quickly, though, other emotions swirled in. Fury at this monster who had attacked his son, had nearly killed his beautiful boy, one of exactly two things Cooper had created that he knew beyond a doubt improved the world. A dirty sense of power which tickled the lizard part of his brain that wanted to root and relish and dominate. A certainty that Soren knew something that could help him, and a voice in his head reminding him of the stakes.

  Least expected and least welcome, pity. Something in him was sorry for the shell that stood naked and trembling.

  “Hi.” He closed the door and set down the chair. It was just a simple ladder-back, but it looked wildly out of place in this pale prison. Which was part of the reason he’d brought it, of course. A scuffed wooden chair, the kind of furniture no one noticed, and yet here it seemed almost to have its own gravity. He trailed a hand along the slats, then sat down.

  “I bet,” Cooper said, “you never expected to see me again, huh?”

  Soren just stared. His whole manner had a reptilian blankness to it. It was how he’d beaten Cooper in the first place. Everyone else’s body betrayed their intentions, but Soren’s perception of time meant that he essentially had no intentions.

  Remember the restaurant. One second you’re having breakfast with your kids, the next there’s screaming and a rain of blood, and this man showing the same lack of expression as he analyzes the motion of a second bodyguard and puts his knife where it will do the most damage.

  He killed two guards, bisected your hand, and stabbed you in the heart, and the only time you knew what he was going to do was when he put Todd in a coma.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  Nothing.

  “I realize that you’re not exactly a people person,” Cooper said, “but the whole interaction thing works better if you use your words.”

  Nothing.

  Cooper leaned back and crossed a leg at the knee. He studied the man. Skin pale and pulse steady, though elevated from the readings he’d noticed on the monitor outside. No tremor in the hands. No widening in the pupils.

  Could he have lost track of reality? This place would be enough to drive a normal man mad, much less Soren.

  There was a scar on his left shin, healing but still shiny. No surprise; the last time they’d met, Cooper had stomped the leg with enough force to snap the tibia and drive it through muscle and skin. Adopting a smug smile, he gestured at the scar. “I see they fixed you up.”

  The muscles around Soren’s eyes contracted, and his nostrils flared. Just the tiniest flicker, but enough for Cooper to catch, and he pushed his advantage. “How about the hand? Jerking off lefty since I broke all the fingers on your right?”

  Again, the quick flash, there and then gone.

  “I know you understand me,” Cooper said. “The lights might be off, but you’re home. So let’s make this easier. Take a seat.”

  For a moment, the man stood still. Then he moved to the edge of the bunk and sat down. Each play of muscle was precise, each motion graceful.

  Sure they are. He’s got eleven times longer to make them.

  “So. Where to begin.” Cooper laced his hands behind his head. “You’re in New Canaan, and I have to tell you, every day since I kicked your ass has been better than the one before. First, the Holdfast and the United States came to an agreement, and the army left without firing a shot. Then, as a display of good faith, Erik Epstein put his rather formidable resources to work. Last Thursday John Smith was shot and killed.”

  Though he’d been projecting cocky ease, Cooper’s eyes never left Soren’s face. He saw the pulse jump, saw the intake of breath, saw the faint flush in his cheeks and the sheen of his eyes. For a moment, he looked almost human. Gotcha.

  It had been one thing to know that Smith and Soren had gone to the same academy, to hear Shannon describe them as friends. But there was no telling what that actually meant in Soren’s case. Finding out was the main point of this exercise.

  And now you have. Turns out, this stone-eyed psychopath does care about someone.

  Let him sit with the loss of that
for a while.

  “There’s more, a lot more, but you’re getting the general trend. Crisis averted, revolution over, much rejoicing. At this point, we’re basically mopping up. I tell you so that you can consider your position.” There was the temptation to keep pushing, but basic interrogation technique said to let the guy stew, and that would only be more powerful here. Cooper stood and stretched. “We’ll talk more. When we do, you can help me or not. Honestly, I don’t much care—but then, I’m not the one in a cage.” He scooped up the chair and stepped toward the door.

  “Wait.”

  The voice came from behind, and it was only in that moment that Cooper realized he’d never actually heard the man speak before. He turned. “Yeah?”

  “Do you know what I do in my cage?”

  “Not much, from what I’ve seen.”

  “I relive moments. Again and again. Moments like you dying.” Soren’s voice was flat. He stared with blank eyes. “Beside the broken son you couldn’t protect.”

  Cooper smiled.

  Then he spun from the hips, bringing the chair up as he did, the legs of it cracking into Soren’s face. The force knocked the man sideways, his hands whipping back in a failed attempt to catch himself. He tumbled off the bunk and hit the ground hard as Cooper stepped forward, bracing the chair in both hands and raising it high, already visualizing the maneuver, a brutal downward stab, and another, and another, the solid wooden legs tearing the skin of Soren’s neck open and crushing his trachea, spasms and panic soon fading to nothing but the twitches of a—

  Soren has a T-naught of 11.2.

  It took you maybe half a second to swing that chair. Which would have felt like six seconds to him.

  That’s an eternity in a fight. But he didn’t move.

  And he’s not moving now.

  —dead man.

  “No.” Fingers clenching, teeth aching, Cooper made himself take a breath. He stepped back. Slowly, without turning away, he moved toward the door. “It won’t be that easy.”

  On the ground, Soren rocked up on an elbow. Spat blood.

  And staring right into Cooper’s eyes, began to laugh.