A Better World

CHAPTER 40

Soren drifted.

He couldn’t try for nothingness, not in a moving Escalade with the radio news in the background, announcers practically selling war bonds; not with three strangers checking their weapons and talking in rough voices. Nothingness would have to wait. For now, he simply leaned back in the seat and let his eyes go soft. Let the world wash over him, past him, a leaf on a river swept away in the current.

He understood John’s decision to send Bryan VanMeter along. The situation was fluid, and if Ethan Park had moved, they would need to hunt him. Better to have a team that could talk to people, could persuade and bribe and convince, things Soren could not do. Still, he felt the presence of the three soldiers, the testosterone charge and rough competence grating at him, making the moments longer.

You need to go back into exile. All this noise. You’re losing your nothingness.

Soon. John would have his war. The grand cause and glorious battle meant nothing to Soren, but he hoped that his friend was happy for it.

For himself, he hoped only that Samantha would come with him. There hadn’t been time to say good-bye, the kind of irony that had never amused him. The flight here had been on a military jet, as fast an option as existed, but with his time sense, he had perceived it as more than thirty hours long. A day and a half on a plane, and yet no time to see his love.

You are a leaf, and the current will carry you away.

VanMeter briefed his team, and Soren tried to ignore it.

“Cuyahoga Valley National Park . . .”

“No neighbors in sight, but . . .”

“Tactical advance, two front, one rear . . .”

Out the window, faded pines scraped at a gray sky. The wind stirred dead leaves. The knife was so light that he had to concentrate to feel it, a good meditative exercise. Be the muscles of your chest, be the skin against your shirt. He wondered how Nick Cooper had survived. Remembered the look in the man’s eyes as Soren’s elbow met his son’s temple, the raw agony in it, as damaging a blow as piercing his heart had been. Idly, he wondered what it would be like to have a child, to have created life. If that would be the thing that brought meaning to the endlessness, or if it would only make things worse.

“Okay,” the one called Donovan said, “but why all the trouble? He’s an egghead. Let’s just roll up, do the thing, get out.”

“You’re a hump, you know that?” VanMeter grimaced. “We flew here on a military jet. That pilot was a sleeper, an asset, and John burned him to get us here. Hell, can you even imagine the amount of influence he’s had to use to find this guy, with the DAR looking for him?” The soldier shook his head. “I don’t know how he did it, and I don’t know why John wants the guy dead. All I know is that he needs this done, so we’re going to do it right, we’re going to do it clean, and we’re going to do it completely. You get me?”

“Completely? You mean—”

“Orders are to eliminate everybody there. Wife and baby too.”

“Baby?” Donovan sucked air through his teeth. “Shit.”

“Makes you feel better, they’re normals, all three.” VanMeter turned to Soren. “Sir?”

He raised an eyebrow.

“We’re less than a minute out. Anything you want to add?”

The trees had grown denser, the driveways between them fewer and farther between. He could see the one where Dr. Ethan Park and his family waited.

Soren said, “You’re weak.”

Soon, this tiresome walk through the world would end, and he could return to his nothing.

“I’ll kill the child.”