A Better World

CHAPTER 36

The sound of a low-flying plane pulled her from the deep black.

Shannon blinked, rolled over. The hotel bed had half a dozen pillows on it, and she’d used them all. Her cocoon was warm and soft, and her body felt heavy in that good way. She yawned, then glanced at the clock.

10:12 a.m. Good lord. She’d slept for . . . eighteen hours?

Being awake for two days straight will do that to you.

After Nick had left last night—well, the night before, she supposed, but not to her—she’d waited in the Tesla airport for Lee and Lisa to arrive. Molded chairs, bad music, her body aching and her eyes grainy, she’d sat vigil as her goddaughter slept. Shannon had stroked the girl’s hair and watched people walk by and waited out the gray hours.

It had been almost dawn when she saw two figures running down the concourse. She hadn’t seen Alice’s parents in months, not since the night she and Cooper had stayed at their Chinatown apartment. A night that had ruined their lives, had landed them both in prison and their daughter in Davis Academy and Shannon in the emotional purgatory she’d been dealing with ever since. The two of them had aged years in those months, deep circles etched beneath Lisa’s eyes, a stoop to Lee’s shoulders she’d never seen before.

But when they caught sight of their daughter, it was like the moment a campfire caught, a sudden flare of warmth and light. Shannon had shaken the little girl in her lap, said, “Sweetheart?”

Alice opened her eyes, and the first thing she’d seen had been her parents racing toward her. She’d leapt up and hurled herself at them, and the three had collided in a group hug, arms entwining, words flowing, love and loss and joy. They had all been crying, and Shannon, standing there feeling useless, had clenched and unclenched her fists.

Finally Lee Chen had turned to her. Shannon had dreaded this moment, the first look from her old friend; she had been devastatingly careless, and he had paid the price. She deserved every hurtful thing he was about to say to her.

“Thank you.” His face was wet, his nose red. “Mei-mei. Thank you.”

And at that she’d lost it too, had joined the hug, all four of them crying and laughing.

Shannon yawned and stretched, then flipped the covers aside. Padded to the bathroom, peed for half an hour, splashed some water on her face. Her cheeks had pillow lines. No kidding, lazy girl, her dad said in her head. She smiled.

One of her favorite things about hotels was bathrobes, and the one hanging beside the shower was a beaut, thick, soft terrycloth. Even better, there was a coffeemaker in the room. She put two packets of coffee into the machine, stood waiting while it gurgled and hissed, remembering the warmth of Alice’s head in her lap, the feel of the girl’s hair between her fingers.

She’d splurged on the suite, and the décor showed it. The room was a study in minimalism, the walls white, the furniture low profile. One wall was solar glass, the surface mellowing the harsh winter glare. Shannon took her coffee out to the balcony, shivering and tightening the belt of the robe. Wyoming in November, no thank you. You need to find a revolution based out of San Diego.

Still, cold as it was, it felt good, bracing, and the contrast made the coffee taste even better. Tesla spread out below her in all its blocky, preplanned glory. The mirrored walls of the Epstein Industries complex reflected cold desert sky. There was a growling roar coming from somewhere, traffic probably. She wondered how Nick’s meeting with Erik had gone, whether the billionaire had admitted what his scientists had created. The thought of the serum still blew her mind, a feeling like the morning after she’d had sex for the first time, the way the whole world looked the same and yet different, and what was that roaring, because it sounded an awful lot like . . .

The sound was suddenly more than a sound, it was a presence all around her, full and huge, strong enough to lean against, growing fast and all-consuming, a blasting howling wail coming from not one or two but three fighter jets streaking overhead, a formation of predatory triangles flying low enough that she could make out missile clusters hanging beneath the wings.

What the hell?

Shannon gripped the balcony railing, watched the planes kite through the gray sky, the roar echoing and bouncing. She didn’t know much about military aircraft, couldn’t have said what make they were, but she had been a soldier her whole adult life and recognized a threat when she saw one.

She hurried back into the suite, leaving the door to the balcony half-open, a chill wind creeping in. The tri-d was sleek and stylish, more modern art than entertainment center, but all she cared about was finding the damn power button and the controls to jump the channels. The faded kitchen of a faded sitcom, the hyperkinetic animation of some kid’s show, a commercial for a personal injury attorney, and then, finally Fox News, the middle of a flashy graphics package. Bombastic music played in the background as three-dimensional letters tumbled in to spell AMERICA ON THE BRINK, then the letters exploded, replaced by a stylized map of Wyoming on fire behind the title SHOWDOWN IN THE DESERT. A fast serving of patriotism bouillabaisse: flag, stars, White House, eagle’s screech, fighter jets.

The package cut to an aerial shot, moving slowly, a news drone. A military encampment of prefab buildings buzzing with activity. Rows of tanks and trucks. An airfield packed with helicopter gunships. And thousands and thousands of soldiers.

The landscape was dusty brown and cold-looking, the sky the same color as the one out her window, and if it looked familiar it was only because she’d been through it half a hundred times: Gillette, the eastern gateway of the New Canaan Holdfast. Shannon gasped, not believing what she was seeing.

American troops occupying an American city.

The newscaster’s voice, saying, “Military forces continue to gather in Wyoming in what the government is describing as ‘antiterrorism exercises.’ There is no word on whether these exercises will involve entering New Canaan Holdfast land.”

The shot switched to a map of Wyoming, the gerrymandered blob of the NCH shaded a bloody red. There were only three routes into the Holdfast, massive highways flowing from Gillette, Shoshoni, and Rawlins. All three cities were marked with stars that looked rather like bullet holes.

“Army spokesmen confirm that a joint force of as many as seventy-five thousand troops are involved in these maneuvers.”

Cut to a shot of a runway somewhere, a military base, jets streaking away.

Cut to a line of tanks, huge metal monsters surrounded by soldiers loading ordnance.

Cut to a barricade across a freeway, Humvees angled to block it. Men leaned on heavy machine guns. A snarl of semis ran to the horizon.

“Access to the New Canaan Holdfast has been suspended, against the complaints of local government, who note that most basic necessities must be shipped in.”

Cut to a foppish man in a good suit and glasses, behind a podium. The crawl read HOLDEN ARCHER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY, as the man said, “All efforts are being made to ensure a swift and peaceful solution to this situation. Meanwhile, let’s remember that three American cities are still without power and food as the direct consequence of terrorist actions—terrorists we believe to be harbored by the NCH.”

On cue, the screen cut to a photograph. A handsome man with a good jaw standing beside a podium.

“Senior White House sources confirm that orders have been given for the arrest of activist and public speaker John Smith. Once considered a terrorist leader, Smith was exonerated of his crimes in dramatic fashion when evidence surfaced of former President Walker—”

From outside, the roar grew again, louder and louder. At first it sounded like a stereo turned to maximum; then thunder rolling overhead; then the howl of the crowd in a stadium. Finally the sliding sound of the jets blasting by. The hotel windows shook.

The newscaster continued, “While tensions have been running high since the initial attacks by the Children of Darwin, the Unrest Index currently stands at an unprecedented 9.2 . . .”

There was a knock on the door, and Shannon about jumped out of her robe. Coffee sploshed onto her hands. “Crap.” She muted the tri-d, yelled, “No housekeeping, thanks!”

“Shannon?”

She froze in the process of wiping her fingers on her robe. She knew that voice, though she wouldn’t have expected to hear it under these circumstances. Setting the coffee on the table, she walked to the door. A mirror over the side table bounced her reflection back, and she grimaced. There were lines on her cheek from the pillow, and, yikes, her hair. She ran a hand through it, accomplishing nothing at all. Then she took a breath, straightened her shoulders, and opened the door. “Hello, Natalie.”

Nick’s ex-wife looked pale and tired. “Hi.”

They stood like that for a moment, either side of the door, and then Shannon said, “Everything okay?”

“Can I come in?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” She held the door open, gestured. “The coffee hasn’t kicked in yet.”

Natalie walked into the suite, turned slowly, taking in the modern décor, the view, the obvious expense. Shannon could almost see her appraising it, imagining Nick here, judging the woman he had chosen instead of her.

Stop that. She’s never been anything but gracious. It’s not her fault that you’re falling for her ex.

The thought caught her, and she did a mental double take.

“Falling for”? When did “dating” become “falling for”?

The answer was obvious. Last night at the airport. Not because of what he did for Lee and Lisa, and not because he’d given her the right answer about the serum. She was glad of both, but grand gestures and political conscience were not the bedrock of love.

Nope. You started full-on falling for him when he apologized. When he said he would never doubt you again.

It was that last word that really did it. The semi-stated promise of a future that means something.

She realized she’d been standing blankly, and she shook herself. “Can I get you anything? Some coffee?”

“Listen,” Natalie said, turning to face her. “I don’t know where things stand between you and Nick. Or for that matter between me and Nick. But you saved my children’s lives. I’ll never forget that. And even if you hadn’t, I’d still be here, because you deserve to know that he’s alive.”

What do you mean, between you and Nick? I thought you two were—wait a second. “Who’s alive? What are you talking about?”

Natalie said, “You know, the first time he killed for Equitable Services, we sat up all night talking. I’m not some movie wife who doesn’t know her husband is a secret agent.”

“I—what? I never thought that.”

“I can’t do kung fu, and I can’t help him find terrorists. But we’ve made dinner together a thousand times, made love a thousand more. He fed me ice chips and rubbed my back while Todd was born. I held him when his father died.”

Shannon had been in a car accident once, gotten clipped from behind and spun into traffic, only an oncoming truck had kicked her car back around the other way, just in time to be hit again. Standing here in a hotel bathrobe, she was feeling that same dizzy vertigo. Fighter jets, mustering troops, cryptic proclamations, and now whatever this was. “Natalie—”

“Just let me finish, would you? I need to get this out.”

Shannon tightened the bathrobe, nodded.

“What I’m trying to say is that I’m not an idea, a concept of an ex-wife. Nick and I, our history, it’s real. He was my first crush, and he’s the father of my children.”

Oh God.

She’s still in love with him.

Astonishingly, the idea had never occurred to her. She and Nick hadn’t had a typical courtship, hadn’t faced the everyday awkwardnesses of a couple coming together. Hell, they’d barely had much that counted as a date: dinner, a bottle of wine, small talk. All things that Nick must have done with Natalie years ago. She knew Cooper loved his children, but she’d always assumed that, romantically, he and Natalie were done.

“I’m not telling you what to do,” Natalie said. “Honestly, I don’t even know what I want. And you can’t claim a person like calling shotgun.” She paused, as if reconsidering, pondering doing exactly that.

And if she does, what then? Badly as you want Nick, are you going to get in the way of a woman trying to put her family back together?

Before Shannon could answer that question, something on the muted tri-d caught her eye. It wasn’t the speed and efficiency with which the paramedics were working on the figures on the floor. Nor was it the fact that she thought she recognized the restaurant. It wasn’t even the security team holding back a screaming woman.

It was that the screaming woman was Natalie.

Nick’s ex-wife followed her gaze, saw the video. She winced. “I need to get back. My son is still—”

“Natalie,” Shannon said, “what happened?”

“A man attacked us yesterday morning at breakfast. He was after Nick, but Todd got in the way.”

“Oh my God.” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Is he—”

“He’s in a coma, but they say he’s going to be okay.” Natalie said the words steadily, facing them. She was strong, no question about that. “We were lucky. If this had happened anywhere else, Cooper would be dead.”

Natalie told the story in clipped sentences: The assassin taking down the guards like they weren’t there. Stabbing Nick. His heart stopping. The medics, not regular first responders but elite doctors in Epstein’s employ, somehow suspending his fading metabolic processes, then transporting him to a clinic for a surgery that sounded like science fiction. Nick waking to find his son in a coma and his country tearing itself apart. All of it happening while Shannon was unaware, while she tramped back from the airport and booked this suite and collapsed into bed.

“Can I see him?” Shannon started for the bedroom. “Let me get dressed.”

“He’s gone.”

She paused, turned slowly. “Gone?”

“Epstein is arranging a jet for him. He’s trying to get to Ohio.”

“He’s . . . what?”

Natalie’s exhale wasn’t quite a laugh. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

“There’s a scientist who has developed something extraordinary. Something Nick thinks might be able to prevent war.”

“I know,” Shannon said, “I’m the one who told Nick about it.” Not a jab, she told herself, not an attack, but there was nothing wrong with claiming her space. Natalie had history with Nick; she had this, this strange, intense life they both lived on the edge, and it wasn’t nothing.

“Right.” The other woman’s lips thinned slightly. “Well, Dr. Couzen has gone missing. Nick is trying to find him.”

“Yesterday morning he was having heart surgery, and today he’s going to Ohio?”

“You know. He’s trying to save the world.” She made a gesture something like a shrug. “I have to get back to my son. I just thought you deserved to know he was alive.”

Shannon nodded, walked her to the door. “Thanks.”

“Yeah. Take care.”

“You too.”

And then she was walking away, a woman in a ponytail and a borrowed coat, her shoulders up despite the weight on them, and Shannon watched her go. The jets screamed by once more, and Natalie was still in love with Nick, and Nick had been dead and now reborn, and if there was a pattern here that was better than everything circling the drain, she wasn’t seeing it.

Shannon shut the hotel door and went to the bedroom. Her phone was on the night table. She typed a sequence of digits she’d never used before. Hesitated over the wording of the message, decided screw it, be blunt.

She pressed SEND, then went to the bathroom, spun on the shower tap. The hotel was lux indeed, and instead of the navy shower she was used to in the NCH, the water ran consistently and hot. When she stepped out, she saw the response on her phone.

The rental was an electric, but she managed to get a pickup with decent tires. The GPS coordinates demanded it; not backcountry by any means, but more than a mile off the road, bumping and bouncing up an old streambed gone dry. The landscape ran the spectrum from tan to ocher: dust, rocks, even the twisted little bushes were shades of brown. Her tires kicked a haze of dust behind her, a gloomy brown line back to the highway.

Shannon spotted the meet location before she got there, an empty ridge maybe fifty yards high. She parked the truck at the base, next to a Humvee, an actual gas-guzzler, dusty and weathered. The man who leaned against it held his assault rifle with the loose calm of a professional. His fatigues had no flags on them, no rank, but his belt held two spare magazines and an eight-inch knife. “Hey, Shannon.”

“Bryan VanMeter,” she said. She flashed back to a job in Boise a year or two ago, doing a scout on a bank that he and his team later robbed. One of the forgotten details of revolutions was that they required money, and she’d pulled more than one heist for the cause. She and VanMeter hadn’t worked together since, but she’d been impressed; he was competent without being macho, able to work without her worrying that he might start shooting strangers. “That’s serious kit. You invading something?”

“President Clay”—he hawked and spat—“gave the order yesterday. Feds are looking to arrest John.”

She caught the use of his first name, thought, Smart move. Make this guy your friend, not your employee. Then she remembered that she called John by his first name too.

Sure, but with you it’s different.

Was that true? It was hard to be sure. Bryan VanMeter wasn’t just muscle—he’d been an Army Ranger before he saw the light—but Shannon had never thought of him as someone who kept counsel with Smith. I wonder if VanMeter thinks the same of you?

“Where is he?”

“Up top. Watch your footing, some loose stuff.”

She nodded and started up the path. It was steep but simple enough. The day was raw and cold, angry clouds whipping along, a figure silhouetted against them. If he heard her approaching, he showed no sign of it, just kept staring out at the horizon. John Smith had traded in his suit for rugged work pants and a long-sleeve shirt with a down vest, a knit gray skullcap. Both his eyes had big ugly shiners turning yellow and green—courtesy of Nick, those—and coupled with the outfit, he looked different. Less a politician and more a battle-scarred warrior.

She said, “Tell me there’s a reason.”

“Hello, Shannon.”

“I saw the news. I know it was your old academy buddy who attacked Nick and his family. The time freak. Don’t tell me you didn’t send him.”

“His name is Soren. And yes, I sent him.” His tone was matter-of-fact.

She clenched her fists, released them. “You know that Nick is a friend of mine—”

“A friend?”

“—and you sent someone to kill him anyway.”

“Yes. I’m sorry, but it had to be done. This is bigger than personal feelings.”

“It better be,” she said. “Because putting aside my relationship with Cooper, what I can’t understand is why. He was an ambassador to the president of the United States. He was here to make peace. And even if you didn’t believe that, you had to know that murdering him might start a war.”

John’s laugh had no humor in it. He gestured with his chin. “Might?”

Out across the barren scrubland, five miles away, stood the skyline of Tesla. It looked pitifully small from this distance, a spread of low buildings expanding out from the silver towers of Epstein Industries. A city of unarmed dreamers huddling beneath angry skies. And even from here, she could see the jets circling. See helicopters buzzing low. See Humvees bouncing around the desert floor. An arc of troops longer than the city itself, poised and ready.

“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.”