A Better World

CHAPTER 32

The air was cool and smelled faintly of ammonia.

There were sounds. There had been for some time, he realized, although he hadn’t been conscious of them. Just drifted in their currents. A hum and beep.

He opened his eyes. Light. Painful and purest white, no shapes or definition, light like the pearly gates, like the one at the end of the tunnel.

Is this heaven?

An image flashed across his memory. Todd’s face, inches away, his eyes blank and staring.

Hell.

Cooper sat up with a gasp. The world canted and wobbled, and he reached a hand out to steady himself, banged his right hand on something, the hand clumsy, and agony flashed up, slammed into the bubble-wrap feeling of heavy narcotics and punched right through. Searing pain dilated the world and took away everything but the throbbing.

Breathe, just breathe, breathe through it.

Slowly his vision widened again. A room, a bright light, hard surfaces and an ugly chair. He was in a bed, high, with rails. His right hand was a mass of bandages, and there were IVs running into his arms and a cable snaking into his chest.

It was real, then. It had happened. That man had come out of nowhere, a demon in the shape of a man, and had killed the guards and stabbed Cooper in the chest—a fatal wound, no way around that, so how was he alive?—and worst, worse than anything, had hit—

Todd’s head snapping sideways, too far, and his bright eyes going glassy.

Cooper gasped again, a sob coming from some deep place, splitting him. He started to reach with his right hand, remembered the bandages, used his left to grasp the IV tubes, started pulling them out. Next was the cable running into his chest, which slid out with a weird, slick, sick feeling. At the end spidery robotic arms no wider than a thread glistened and twitched. He fought the urge to vomit, kept it down. The beeping sounds had turned to shrieks. Tangled in blankets and drugs, he spun. Managed to get one leg out of the bed, then the next. Stood, wobbling.

The door opened. A woman in green scrubs hurried in. “What are you—”

Cooper staggered forward, grabbed the woman’s bicep with his left hand. “My son.”

“You need to get back in bed—”

“My son! Where is my son?”

The door was open and through it a hallway, and Cooper pushed past the nurse, barely on his feet. A hospital, yes, but not like any he’d seen, the hall too nice and too short, only a few doors, no nurses’ station, a side table with flowers, a chair, Scrubs coming behind him trying to grab his shoulders, and Cooper shrugged her off and pushed open the next door.

Another room like the one he had just left. Hard surfaces, bright light, beeping machines. A woman standing beside the bed, whirling at the sound. Natalie, her eyes red and cheeks wet, and in the bed . . .

In the bed, his son.

Natalie said, “Nick?” and there were volumes in that one word. It started with surprise, and he could imagine it from her perspective, the door banging open and a madman in a hospital gown staggering in, and then the pleasure at seeing him, at the fact that he was alive at all. But that was quashed by fear, fear for their son, fear that the gods were watching and any happiness tempted them. And then, last, the questions, the same asked by any parent standing over a child in a hospital bed:

How did we get here?

This can’t really happen, can it?

Will you take me instead?

He stepped forward and swept her into his arms, wrapped them around her slightness and squeezed, the two of them holding onto each other as though against gravity. Her body trembled, and her face was wet against his neck.

“Is he—will he—”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, they don’t know.”

The words hurt more than the dagger had. He leaned into her, and she leaned back. Behind them the nurse started to say something, then thought better of it.

After a long moment, he released her. “Tell me.”

Natalie wiped at her eyes, smearing tears around. When she spoke, he could hear the quaver in her voice. “He’s in a coma. There was internal bleeding.”

“Do they know when he’ll wake up?”

She shook her head. “They don’t know for sure if he will. Or if . . . if . . .”

He closed his eyes, squeezed them hard. The nurse said, “Mr. Cooper, please.” He ignored her, stepped forward. Todd looked tiny in the big hospital bed, his limbs slender under the sheet. Tubes snaked into his arms. Bandages wrapped his head, and they’d shaved the hair on one side. Todd would hate that, the weird haircut, would worry about what other kids would say.

Cooper reached out and took his son’s hand in both of his, the physical pain that rocketed up from the right nothing compared to the howling inside him. Then a thought hit. “Wait a second, where’s Kate? Is she—”

“She wasn’t hurt. She’s sleeping, finally.”

“Finally?” Of course. The cable in his chest, the elaborate bandages on his hand, the drugged feeling. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand, saw that it was five in the morning. Twenty hours since they were attacked. “Did they get him?”

Natalie shook her head.

The nurse said, “Mr. Cooper, it’s amazing that you’re even alive. The left ventricle of your heart was torn open. The surgery that saved you is beyond radical. You have to go back to bed.”

“No.”

“Sir—”

“I’m not leaving my son.”

There was a long pause and then a dragging sound, Scrubs bringing a chair from one wall. “At least sit. Please?”

Without taking his eyes from Todd, he sat. Natalie stood beside him, one hand on his shoulder, one on Todd’s shoulder.

The machines beeped and hummed.

He sensed them before he heard them. A tingle in the back of his mind, his gift patterning relentlessly away, even as he did little but stare at the rise and slow fall of his son’s chest while thoughts brittle and dry as autumn leaves chased themselves in pointless circles. Prayers and bargains and threats, but beneath it all—and he hated himself for this—his mind patterning away.

It wasn’t long before he heard the nearly imperceptible sounds of elite security personnel, rubber-soled boots and efficiency. A trained voice, vaguely familiar; Patricia Ariel, the NCH’s communications director. From unseen staff, the murmured tones of sycophancy. And finally, two pairs of shoes: the click of Italian oxfords counterpointed by the squeak of Chuck Taylors. He listened to them walk down the hall, listened to them step into the room and stop.

Without turning around, Cooper said, “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t break both of your necks.”

“Your son.”

He rose fast to face Erik and Jakob Epstein. “Are you threatening—”

“No,” Jakob said, his hands up. “We’re not. But the most advanced medicine on the planet is being practiced here. You want that for him.”

Natalie said, “Nick, calm down.”

“Calm down? I brought you here. I trusted the security of our family to these two. And some asshole waltzed in and . . .” He saw the point of the man’s elbow driving into the soft hollow of Todd’s temple, lost his breath. “I don’t think I’ll be calming down anytime soon.”

“Good,” Erik said. “Your efficiency is improved when angry.” He pulled a d-pad from his pocket and uncrumpled it with a flick of his wrist. A photo filled the monosheet, a plain man with hollow cheeks and dead eyes. “Soren Johansen, tier-one temporal.”

“Which is how he waltzed in,” Jakob added. “Point of interest, John Smith once referred to Soren as the only person he’d ever met who truly understood him. The d-pad has everything we have on him, which includes everything the DAR has on him. We’re pursuing him ourselves, of course, as is your government. But we had a feeling you’d want the information yourself.”

Cooper balled the pad and jammed it in his pocket. Didn’t say thanks, and didn’t plan to.

“As for your son, I’m sure you’ve spoken to the doctors. I won’t go back over it. What I will say is that there is literally nowhere in the world where people can do the things we can here. And your son arrived in far better shape than you. After all, he was alive.”

Cooper had been preparing a response, found it withering on his lips. “Huh?”

“The actual time between Soren hitting Todd and stabbing you was 0.63 seconds,” Erik said. “To a T-naught of 11.2, that means he had 7.056 seconds to position his attack. The wound was perfect, tearing open the left ventricle of your heart. Death was almost instantaneous.”

“You’re saying . . .” He glanced around. “What, I was dead and you brought me back?”

“Nick,” Natalie said, “it’s true.”

He turned to her. “Yeah?”

She nodded. “I watched you die.” Like most things Natalie said, the statement was bald and direct. She didn’t play games, didn’t obfuscate or work agendas. Which didn’t mean that that simple statement wasn’t shaded with meaning. Beyond the fact, he heard the pain, the loss, the regret—and the joy and hope of his impossible reprieve. She continued, “This isn’t a hospital. It’s their private underground clinic.”

“There are advantages,” Jakob said, “to living in a place with more brilliants than anywhere else. Especially if you’re in charge of it, and you couldn’t give a shit for FDA policies and ethics review boards.”

“Greatest danger postmortem is cellular damage due to lack of oxygen,” Erik said. “Solution is obvious: reduce metabolic demands to near zero, suspending patient. Then repairing the damage is a matter of tissue engineering using adipose stromal stem cells harvested from fat.”

“You mean I have a . . .” He looked down at his chest, remembered only in that moment he was wearing a hospital gown. Shit. Hard to look dignified in one of them. Gently, he eased the neckline out. A small shunt rose out of the puckered scar in the center of his chest. Fluid had leaked from when he pulled the cable out. He remembered the robotic arms, and panic rose quick, a feeling of being too deep underwater with no air. He paused, took a breath, then another. “What, a mechanical heart?”

“Of course not,” Jakob said. “What do you think this is, 1985? Your heart is still your heart. We didn’t even have to cut you open. Our doctors used the wound as an entry point, injected your own harvested stem cells to seal the tear in your ventricle. Like patching a leaky tire.”

“But . . . they’ve tried that at Johns Hopkins, at the Mayo. They’ve never been able to get the cells to—”

“This isn’t Johns Hopkins,” Erik snapped. “This is new. Your rules don’t apply here.”

Cooper stiffened. He’d gotten in the habit of thinking of Erik as a lovable nerd and Jakob as the real power, when in fact the opposite was true. Jakob was a good talker and a smart guy, but everything around them—including the black clinic that had brought him back from the dead—began and ended with Erik.

And now your son’s life is in his hands.

Slowly, he said, “I need to talk to the president.”

“Shortly after he heard that you had been assassinated,” Jakob said, “President Clay ordered the military into Wyoming. They’ve seized the towns of Gillette, Shoshoni, and Rawlins, effectively cordoning off the NCH. The air force is flying patrols over every city. More than seventy-five thousand troops are involved, from every branch of the military.”

“Seventy-five thousand?” Cooper rubbed at his eyes. “But once the president knows I’m not dead—”

“He still has to act the same way.” Jakob shook his head. “Clay doesn’t have any choice.”

“Storm clouds,” Erik said. “Birds of prey. Vectors with mass. Frightened people want action more than they want correct action. It’s in the data. Clay has no choice.”

Cooper said, “Why are you still lying to me?”

That caught Erik off guard, so he followed the jab with a hook. “I know that you’ve found the source of the abnorms. That you’ve even developed a serum that can give normal people gifts.”

Natalie said, “What?” She’d been staring at Todd, but Cooper’s declaration had caught her. “Is that true?”

Cooper looked at the Epsteins. After a moment, Jakob nodded. “There’s a lot to iron out, but it works.”

“That’s the real protection for the NCH,” Cooper said. “Not me killing John Smith or sovereignty or their billions. So I’m asking again. Why are you lying to me?”

“What do you mean?”

“You talk about people being terrified, about Clay not having a choice, but you don’t mention that you have a magic potion that changes the world. Most normals don’t want a war; they’re just scared that they’re being made obsolete. This changes that, or at least gives them the option. So all you have to do is . . .” He trailed off, because it hit him that—

Jakob’s arms are crossed; Erik is biting the inside of his cheek. Negative reactions. Why?

They can’t be holding out for financial gain; they have more money than anyone alive.

Besides, they’re facing a full-scale attack. Sharing the truth about the serum is the only thing that might prevent the destruction of the Holdfast. Not to mention stopping a civil war.

And yet they’ve gone negative.

—he’d been missing something.

“Wait. Yesterday when we talked, you said there wasn’t enough time. You were talking about this, weren’t you? Even your bid for sovereignty was calculated to buy you more time.” He stared back and forth, brother to brother. Both smart, both well-meaning in their own way, and the three of them somehow responsible for saving the world, and how exactly that had happened didn’t matter anymore, because his gift had jumped ahead and answered the question for him. “Which means”—he rubbed at his forehead—“you don’t have the serum, do you?”

“The scientist behind it is a difficult person,” Jakob said. “Dr. Couzen would only accept our funding if he had complete autonomy. He shared progress reports, test results, but never the formula itself.”

“So?”

“Dr. Couzen was kidnapped a week ago,” Jakob said.

“By the DAR,” Erik added. “Your government wants a war.”