by Marcus Sakey
Best Luke could tell, he was all that was left of the town of Cloud Ridge, the last outpost before Tesla.
Over the last days, the New Sons had traveled almost seventy miles, each one of them earned. Epstein may have run out of bombs, but he continued to harry the New Sons. Snipers dogged them at a distance, too far away and too poorly trained to score many kills, but every time there was the crack of distant gunfire, the whole army jumped. All day long, gliders kited silently above, their pilots dropping everything from bowling balls to Molotov cocktails. All night long, the abnorms used their audio projection trick, blaring taunts and sirens and loud music. None of it did much real damage, but it was wearing the men out. They were tired and radiated twitchy violence.
The horses, at least, had turned out to be a stroke of genius. Since the EMP disabled the vehicles, they pulled the bulk of the supplies. Miller had ordered hundreds of vans and SUVs gutted, the engines removed and seats discarded to transform them into makeshift wagons. The symbolism of the situation didn’t escape Luke. A ragtag army leading a horse train against a small minority capable of projecting their voices from the heavens. It was the norm-abnorm conflict made a metaphor and underlined in blood.
Cloud Ridge was more a town than a city, with just over two thousand inhabitants. It was unlike any place Luke had ever seen. Instead of growing organically over decades, as most places did, it had been designed by urban planners and laid down as a unified whole in a matter of months. Everything was organized for function and efficiency, from the broad avenues surrounding the town park to the solar farm, hundreds of automated panels moving in perfect sync.
And all abandoned. Luke wasn’t surprised, but he was disappointed. After the ass-kicking Epstein’s drones had laid down and the constant harassment since, it would have been gratifying to face a battle. Even if every man, woman, and child in town had lined up against them, the New Sons could have smashed them. Which, of course, was why the place was empty. Their enemies weren’t fools.
“Put it down, old man!” The militiaman was one of a dozen surrounding the porch, all clearly hoping for a fight. But the geezer just turned and spat.
Luke said, “Howdy.”
“You the guy in charge?”
“One of them.”
“Well, screw you, then.”
“Why didn’t you go on to Tesla yesterday with everybody else?” The timing was a guess, but one he was confident in. No doubt Epstein had tracked the militia’s progress with drones, plotted it on radar, used computer simulations to project their progress. The order to clear out would have been given with exactly the right amount of time.
“This is my home.”
“Son or daughter?”
“Huh?”
“You’re too old to be an abnorm. Plenty of sympathizers came here, but I’m guessing at your age, it’s something else.”
“Aren’t you the clever one.” The man shifted, and a dozen fingers touched a dozen triggers. “Granddaughter.”
“Your whole family came here?”
“My son, his wife, their kids. The youngest, Melissa, she’s gifted, and none of us were gonna let her end up in an academy.”
Luke nodded. He’d never put much thought into the academies before—they were only for the most powerful abnorms—but after the other night, he had a new appreciation of the dread they inspired.
“Your boys can relax, I’m not gonna fight. I don’t have much food, but if you want to fill your canteens, be my guest.”
Luke smiled. “Poisoned the supply, huh?”
“Worth a shot.” The old man grinned back, fillings glinting in his teeth. “So now what?”
“Well, if you lay down that weapon and surrender, we’ll let you go.”
“Yeah? While you chase after my boy and his family?”
“You know,” Luke said, “I had sons too. Your people burned them alive two weeks ago.”
“Sorry for your loss,” the guy said. The wind picked up off the high desert, whistling between the spindles of the porch rail. There was a gunshot from somewhere in the mid-distance. Another resident of Cloud Ridge, Luke supposed. “Last chance. Why don’t you put the gun down and start walking?”
“Why don’t you come on up here, unzip me, and—”
Luke pulled his sidearm and made a clean shot through the man’s skull. The blast echoed off the gray belly of the sky. For a moment the grandfather remained sitting. Then as his muscles relaxed, his body slumped, slipping off the chair and thumping the boards of the porch. The shotgun clattered beside him.
One of the New Sons started to laugh. It was high-pitched and ragged, an edge of the hysterical in it.
“Pass it down that Miller’s order not to drink the water stands,” Luke said to no one in particular. “Check the houses as you move. No fresh food, just canned goods, ammunition, blankets.”
The laughing soldier kept going, hinged at the knees and looking miserable. Luke glanced at him, then at the man standing beside him, a young guy with a patchy beard. “Then burn it.”
“His house?”
“The town. Burn it to the ground.”
CHAPTER 24
Soren woke.
Hips aching and back stiff from the metal bunk, he began the slow process of sitting up. As ever, his mind ranged ahead of his muscles, processing the sound that had awakened him. It was the door to his cage opening. Normally his captors just flooded the room with gas and did with his unconscious body as they liked.
So little changed in his tiny kingdom. Whatever this was, it would not be pleasant. He focused on calm, centering himself in nothingness.
The men who came had the broad shoulders and beefy necks of wrestlers. They wore dull uniforms marked with the rising blue sun of Epstein Industries, and leveled Tasers. In the leisure of his perception, Soren watched one squeeze the trigger, saw the pop of gas as the metal probes flew, cable looping through the air like a striking snake, and then the fangs hit his naked chest and tens of thousands of volts surged through him, washing away conscious thought and control. His muscles spasmed and a guttural sound wrenched from his throat.
The guards moved forward and wrestled his twitching body into a garment he was too scrambled to recognize at first. It wasn’t until one of them used a length of steel chain to lash him to the wall that Soren realized he wore a straitjacket.
Torture, then. They evidently didn’t understand him after all. He supposed they imagined his lingering perceptions of the agony would make it worse. From a certain perspective, they were right, but the results wouldn’t be what they wished. He would simply retreat into nothingness and let them destroy him. Better than an eternity spent counting.
There was even room for victory of a sort, he realized. Simply not revealing the things they wanted to know would be the foundation. But the triumph would be in rising above. He would not scream. He had spent his whole life in pain. There was nothing they could do that he could not endure.
Once the guards had him bound to their satisfaction, they left. A stranger entered. Slender and unremarkable, with dark eyes and prominent cheekbones. He carried a chair in one hand and pushed a rolling tray laden with shiny instruments. Soren almost laughed at the theatricality of it.
Until Nick Cooper walked in, dragging a woman behind him, his fingers clenched around her arm. Pale and perfect. Samantha. She gasped when she saw him, then jerked free and ran to him, and he watched her come, slow, so slow, her brown eyes broad with horror, golden hair drifting behind, arms flung wide, and then she was on him, hugging him, her lips on his, the warmth and scent of her filling his world. Samantha was trembling, her mouth forming sounds more like whimpers than words.
“That’s enough.” Cooper yanked her away.
Soren lunged, but the straitjacket held his arms uselessly to his sides, and the chain snapped taut when he’d gone no more than an inch. He strained, the muscles of his legs knotting and locking fruitlessly as the only woman he’d ever loved, the only one who understood him, was for
ced into a chair, her arms and legs cuffed to it, a belt lashed around her narrow waist and duct tape stretched across her perfect mouth.
Cooper said, “I offered you a better way.”
Soren stared, his nothingness shredding like a spiderweb in a hurricane. “I’ll tell you. Everything.”
“See, that’s the problem.” Cooper shrugged. “You’re still negotiating. If you had just started telling me everything, maybe I’d feel different. But right now, I can’t believe what you say.”
Soren stared at him. Opened his mouth to share the things he knew. John wouldn’t want Samantha hurt any more than he did. Besides, what could it matter? His friend planned for every contingency. He must have planned for this one.
But he might not have.
Then, Cooper isn’t the type to do this. It’s a bluff.
Soren hesitated.
“Yeah. What I thought.” Cooper grimaced. “I wish I didn’t have to do this, I really do. But today your friend killed two thousand of mine. And he’s got worse planned for tomorrow.” He nodded to the other man. “Go ahead, Rickard.”
The dark-eyed torturer made a show of bending over the tray, fingering instruments. He lifted a scalpel to the light, brushed a bit of dust from the tip, then replaced it on the tray and chose another, a short, jagged blade curved like a grapefruit knife. Even from here, Soren could see the silver flicker of the edge.
Rickard stepped behind Samantha and trailed the point up her cheek, not quite touching. She moaned against the tape and strained at the handcuffs. Inside the straitjacket, Soren clenched his hands so hard his nails broke the skin of the palms, thinking, A bluff, it’s a bluff, they won’t—
With a smooth motion, the slim man pushed the blade through the lower lid of Samantha’s left eye, slid it sideways to open a broad red ribbon, and then, with a deft scoop, popped the eyeball out of the socket, the optic nerve trailing behind, a mess of blood and fluid spattering her cheek as the gory thing dangled.
Soren screamed.
But Rickard wasn’t finished.
Not even close.
Cooper clenched his fists, fought a rising in his stomach.
This has to be done.
He looked at the hologram, saw Soren twitch and jerk. The man’s eyes were closed but moving frantically behind the lids as he lay on his bunk, the cable running up from the wall and to the interface in the back of his neck.
Beside him, Rickard typed frenetically. The terminal was layered with windows and wireframes that reacted as the programmer tweaked the controls. It was strangely chilling to stand in the control room outside Soren’s cell, this bland computerized space, watching the holo of the man sweat and convulse.
“Pretty impressive, right?” Rickard’s fingers danced. “No display as high-res as the one in our skull.”
The audio of the virtual reality was turned low. The effect was like listening to a slasher film in the next room. Soren’s screams were high-pitched and raw, skating on the edge of sanity. Samantha—no, not her, just a digital construct, a program, nothing more—moaned strangled sounds through the duct tape.
“Gotta hand it to you, never thought of this application. I designed the system as a game, you know, run around shooting aliens, get to feel the adrenaline and see the blood and stuff. We developed the personal scans so that people could do it together, save the universe with a buddy.” Rickard smiled. “Not that I minded scanning her. I mean, damn, but that chick is something.”
One of the display windows showed Samantha the way Soren saw her, and when Cooper looked at it, he fought a gag, bile burning the back of his mouth.
“What?” Rickard looked up, his bland expression changing when he saw Cooper’s. “We didn’t actually hurt her. Just a multi-angle camera scan, skin scrapings, hair samples. Exactly like before your little trip to Rome. The subconscious does the heavy lifting. Same as when you have a dream, and you know someone is your wife, even when they look like your mom. It’s not real. We’re not torturing anybody.”
“We’re not torturing her. But look at that”—Cooper pointed at the quadrant of the display showing Soren’s vitals, the indicators deep in the red line on heart rate, respiration, hormones—“and tell me we’re not torturing him.”
“Sure, but it’s not real.”
“He’s still living it. As far as he knows, someone is cutting her up in front of him.”
“Hold on,” Rickard said, and tapped a command to trigger a subroutine. In another window, a digital version of Cooper said, “Are you ready to tell me where Smith is?”
In response, Soren wept and whimpered.
Digital Cooper said, “Rickard. Continue.”
Cooper made himself watch as he said, “Why use yourself as the torturer?”
“Just easier. I’ve got myself thoroughly scanned.” He took one hand off the keyboard, brushed back his hair to show the interface implant in his neck. “Did it when I was developing this.”
“And you’re okay with it? Being a torturer?”
“Well, I mean . . . it’s not real.”
“So you keep saying.”
The programmer looked up. “Didn’t this guy kill you?”
“He also put my son in a coma and tried to murder an innocent family, including a baby. And those are just the ones I was around for.” Cooper paused. “If a dog is rabid, you have to put him down. But you shouldn’t enjoy it.”
Rickard was about to reply when something on the display caught his attention. “His betas are shifting.”
“Huh?”
“This monitors his brainwave activity. He’s been high beta, which makes sense given the stress. But the pattern is shifting.”
“Which means?”
“He’s about to talk.”
In his private virtual hell, Soren yelled, “Stop!” He hung his head.
Then, in a halting voice, he began to tell them what Smith planned.
Cooper said, “Holy shit.” He leaned forward and thumbed a button. “Epstein. Are you watching?”
“Yes.” Erik’s voice came from the speaker. “Readying a strike team now.”
“I’ll lead them.”
“The NCH tactical division—”
“Isn’t as good as I am,” Cooper said.
“Negative. Two previous opportunities. Both failures.”
“That’s why it has to be me. This is John Smith we’re talking about. I’ve been chasing him for almost a decade. No one knows his tactics the way I do.”
For long seconds there was only silence. Cooper could picture Epstein in his cave, his face lit by a mass of data. That’s the answer. “Erik. Put aside personal concerns. What course offers the statistically highest probability of success?”
More silence. For a moment, Cooper wondered if the abnorm had already broken the line. Then the speaker sounded again. “What do you need?”
“Your best people. Transportation. Weapons. And schematics, not only for the building, but for the surrounding blocks, as well as all civic and maintenance structure diagrams.”
“Yes.”
“One more thing.” Cooper paused, smiled. “Shannon is in Newton. How fast can you get her here?”
CHAPTER 25
“Okay,” Cooper said. “On the surface this is a simple breach-and-clear. But you all know the stakes. It needs to be textbook.”
The moving truck was dim and crowded, humid with the breath of thirty muscular men and women. Though Epstein had no standing army, his tactical operatives were hard core. Technically the Wardens were part of the corporate police force that provided security for the Holdfast, but to Cooper they most resembled US Army Rangers—flexible, elite forces constantly training in everything from search-and-rescue to urban warfare. They sat on benches hurriedly placed against the truck walls, automatic rifles between their knees, black body armor stretched over broad chests.
“As you know, our target is John Smith. He cannot be allowed to escape. Teams Alpha and Bravo will breach the front and rear doors at th
e same time, then push through, clearing room by room and meeting in the lab. Charlie Team will remain outside to secure the street and all possible exits. In addition, we have snipers already in position on nearby buildings . . .”
It had taken Epstein a bit more than an hour to fetch Shannon via helicopter. Her travel time had defined Cooper’s window to review schematics for the building and make a plan. One hour to organize an operation to catch the most dangerous man alive.
Yet brief as that was, it was longer than comfortable. By hacking the feed of government spy satellites, Epstein’s programmers had been able to confirm that Soren was telling the truth. John Smith had arrived at the facility two days ago. According to the footage, he hadn’t left yet. But for all Cooper knew he was packing his bags at that very moment. They couldn’t risk more time, not now, when they were so close.
There’s an ironic way to put it. “So close” is right. Was John Smith hiding in the Congo, or a cave in Afghanistan, or even a secret lair beneath New York?
No. The bastard has been in Tesla, not five miles from the house where your children sleep. He’s been preparing a biological weapon right around the corner.
As grave as the situation was, it was funny, but there hadn’t been time to laugh about it. This was his last shot. He had to be sure he thought of everything. For years Cooper had hunted Smith, tracked him, studied him. Pored over his chess matches, watched footage of his speeches. Twice he’d caught up with the man: a year ago, when Smith had fed him half-truths that aimed him like a warhead at his own government, and then again a few weeks ago, when he and Bobby Quinn—Bobby—had hijacked Smith only to decide executing him might turn him into a martyr.
Now everything he had learned in that time, every pattern he had built, every sense of the man’s tactics was about to be tested.
“Shannon.” He turned to stare at her. It had taken all his effort not to notice the smell of her, the warmth of the spot where her thigh pressed against his. “You’re our ace.”
