Written in Fire

CHAPTER 7

Bay Avenue was a collection of bleak warehouses, light industrial buildings, and garages. The palette ran from brown to gray, and the air smelled faintly of fish. When the winter sun flared through a narrow slit in the clouds, dull glints fired off broken windshields in the auto salvage yard.

Abe Couzen’s building was squat and ugly. No sign, no mailbox, and in place of a traditional lock, a thumbprint scanner. Just as Vincent had described.

The only problem was that the door stood open.

“Get behind me,” Cooper said, and Ethan moved with alacrity.

Other than a delivery truck rumbling in a loading dock fifty yards away, the block was quiet. Still, it was hard to imagine positive circumstances in which the good doctor had left his secret lab open to the public.

One way to find out.

Cooper pushed the door the rest of the way. The sunlight was weak tea, and what illumination spilled in didn’t reveal much. Stepping lightly, he eased inside.

There was a faint hum in the background and an antiseptic smell. A bank of switches was on the wall. He debated for a moment, decided sight was better than surprise, and flipped them on. Fluorescent tubes clicked and buzzed to life.

The tables were lined with centrifuges and sensors and apparatuses whose function he could only guess at. A row of contamination suits hung like limp corpses. In the center of the room, one of the benches had been knocked over, the shiny equipment left where it had fallen. Broken glass sparkled. Glossy crimson was splashed in a line across one bench, onto the floor, then up the near wall, as though by the flick of a giant paintbrush. A bloodstained shirt and hoodie lay on the floor by a stainless steel refrigerator.

Dr. Abraham Couzen was nowhere to be seen.

Cooper put a finger to his lips, then gestured to Ethan to stay put. He moved to the far wall. The first door led to a small bathroom. There was half a roll of toilet paper on the tank, and the sink held toothpaste and a brush, a disposable razor and a can of shaving cream. The other room was a makeshift bedroom, little more than a supply closet with an army cot in it. No one inside, and nowhere to hide.

Shit.

In the center of the room, Ethan dipped a finger into the blood spray, held it up red and shining. Still wet. Cooper moved to the discarded clothing. Beside the hoodie lay most of a ham-and-cheese sandwich on cheap white bread. Several bites were missing. He was starting for a bank of servers when he heard the rumble of a truck engine.

Idiot. How did you miss that?

He turned to Ethan, just had time to say, “Doc, don’t do anything stupid,” before men burst in the door yelling.

They wore full body armor and headgear like motorcycle helmets. Their assault rifles swept the room in lethal arcs, a dance of clockwork precision, and Cooper knew that was partly a matter of endless training and partly because those helmets had a HUD that showed the position of every other teammate, as well as video feed, heat vision, weapon assessment protocols . . .

“Hands on your head! Do it, do it now!”

Very deliberately, he raised his hands and knit the fingers.

“On your knees! Down, down, down!”

He complied, thinking, That delivery truck was running, and the driver in it was too fit and too alert.

Thinking, A squad of Faceless. The most elite tactical units of the DAR. I wonder if they killed Abe?

Thinking, I wonder if you’re next?

The commanding officer wore the same gear, but carried a sidearm, rather than an assault rifle. He stepped in front of Cooper and stared down, his visor reflecting the room. “Surprise.”

Even modulated by the helmet’s speaker system, the voice was familiar. Cooper shook his head, said, “Hey, partner.”

Lifting one hand to his ear, Bobby Quinn pressed a button that retracted the shield, revealing a wolfish grin. “Hiya, Coop. Still trying to save the world?”

“Same as always.”

“How’s it going?”

“Same as always.”

Quinn glanced at a kneeling and very pale Ethan Park, then turned to his squad. “They’re friendlies. Secure the area.”

The Faceless shifted into action smoothly, each commando moving to a task. Cooper took Bobby’s hand and let the other man pull him up. “How are the nuts feeling?”

“Cracked.” Quinn took in the fight scene. “You do this?”

“Huh-uh. How we found it. How long have you been watching the place?”

“We haven’t.”

“So then how . . .” He paused, caught Quinn’s cat-with-a-canary grin. “Oh, you shit. You’ve been tracking us.”

“Just since this morning. Didn’t know you were in town before then. But when I saw you take off after Couzen, I thought to myself, ‘Well, Bobby old son, you can run around chasing ghosts, or you can lie here clutching your yarbles and let Coop do the work for you.’ PLR, baby. PLR.”

“Path of least resistance,” Cooper said automatically. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to kick your ass, though. Dr. Park, you can stand up now.”

Ethan rose, walked over hesitantly. “Agent Quinn.”

“Your ass I’m definitely going to kick.”

“I’m sorry about running. I was protecting my family.”

“Stow it. Where’s your boss?”

Ethan shrugged.

One of the Faceless approached, said, “The building and surrounding areas are clear, sir. No sign of target.”

Quinn nodded. “Close the door and clear the street. If Couzen comes back, let’s not spook him. Meanwhile, secure and confiscate. Pack it all, every terminal, every piece of equipment, every cocktail napkin.”

“Wait, you can’t do that—”

“Dr. Park, you are really going to want to watch that tone.”

Ethan took a breath, held his palms up and out. “Sorry. I just meant, you don’t want to move the equipment yet. Some of it will lose settings if you power it down, and we need to know what they were.”

Quinn sucked air through his teeth. “Okay. You’ve just been deputized. Help the team secure everything.”

Ethan looked at Cooper. He nodded. The scientist hurried off, saying, “Wait, don’t touch that, please . . .”

Quinn removed his helmet and tucked it under one arm. “How’s Todd?”

“Awake. The doctors say no permanent damage.”

“Man, that is great news. Where are they?”

“In Tesla.”

Quinn’s face darkened. “They’re in the Holdfast? What are you doing here, then?”

“No choice. Couzen’s work is the best hope to stop a war.”

“Sir.” The soldier who interrupted had his visor up, and Cooper was reminded just how young most of them were. “Everything’s been cleared out. The server drives are gone, machine settings wiped out.”

“What about physical notes?”

“No, sir. But we were able to access the security system.” The man hesitated. “I don’t think the target will be coming back.”

Quinn paused at that, then turned and walked to the man’s terminal. Cooper followed.

In the security footage, the lab was neat, the bench still standing, equipment unbroken. The time stamp read just half an hour previous. Dr. Couzen stumbled in, stripping off his blood-soaked clothes. The man looked ragged, and he was too involved in the act of getting a sandwich from the refrigerator to notice that he wasn’t alone.

Not that it would have made much of a difference.

“Ho-lee shit.” Quinn stared. “That’s—”

John Smith stepped out of the bedroom, flanked by a man and a woman Cooper recognized. He should; he’d maintained active kill orders on both of them when he was with the DAR. Haruto Yamato and Charly Herr. Tier ones wanted on a long list of terror and assassination charges.

Abe must have heard something, because he spun. For a fraction of a second, the four stared at one another. Then Abe dropped the sandwich and sprinted toward the door. He’d made it halfway there when a muscular man stepped out to block the entryway.

“I don’t know that one.”

“Paul York,” Quinn said, eyes on the screen. “Bombed the recruiting centers in Cali.”

Three notorious terrorists, not to mention Smith himself. That’s a lot of force for one scientist.

Then, on the heels of that, Smith never does anything without calculation.

The three fighters closed in. Against them, Abe looked frail, his chest sunken and spotted with age.

Right up to the moment that he tipped one of the heavy lab benches over, the force of the move actually lifting it a few inches off the ground to slam into Herr, as in the same motion the scientist caught a scalpel out of the air, whirled, and sliced a deep gash across York’s chest. A rope of crimson splashed out across a bench, onto the floor, and up the nearest wall. The muscleman staggered back, and Abe turned to face Yamato, who had sidestepped the falling equipment and assumed a fight stance. Yamato’s eyes were closed, but his hands flew in a dizzying array of blocks and counters against the storm of blows the doctor unleashed—

John Smith raised a slender pistol and pulled the trigger. Abe’s hands snapped to his neck and touched the tiny dart protruding there.

Then he fell over.

On the video, everyone got to work without instruction. York spray-foamed his chest wound while Yamato bound Abe Couzen. After pulling her hair back, Charly Herr went to town on the computers, field-stripping them fast and yanking their storage units. John Smith stood in the center of the lab, turning in a slow circle. When he spotted the security cameras, a tiny smile bloomed on his lips. Through a distance of time but not space, he and Cooper stared at one another.

Then John Smith blew him a kiss.

For a moment, Cooper couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. His hands shook and he heard a roaring in his ears that seemed louder than blood. He was barely aware he’d moved when Quinn said, “Where are you—”

“There’s a bar on the next block.”

Cooper didn’t really think the bourbon would help. So far he was right, but he figured persistence was a virtue. Beside him, Quinn sipped a club soda and eyed his glass with unabashed envy. “Now what?”

“Now I’m going to have another.” Cooper slammed the drink, then gestured with the glass.

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant.” Neon light fell on dusty bottles. He rubbed his eyes. “Three weeks ago we had John Smith in a burnout with a gun to his head, and decided to do the ‘right thing.’ Should have killed him.”

“Three weeks ago everything was different. Funny world, huh?”

“Hilarious.” They went silent as the bartender filled the glass. Cooper waited for him to step away before he sipped at the bourbon. “What’s your play for Smith?”

“No play.”

“You’re going to let him get away?”

“The whole world is on fire, and there’s a shortage of water.” Quinn shrugged. “Smith has avoided capture for seven years. No reason to believe that’s gonna change. Besides, he’s not the priority he was.”

“What do you mean?”

Quinn gave him a funny look. “Maybe you saw the news? A big white building blew up?”

“Erik Epstein isn’t the problem, and neither is the New Canaan Holdfast.”

“A lot of corpses would argue with you.”

“That was self-defense,” Cooper said. “If the schoolyard bully is coming after you, it isn’t enough to trade punches. You lay him flat and you kick him hard. Show everybody that attacking you has consequences.”

“So in this analogy,” Quinn said stiffly, “America is the bully?”

“I’m just saying, Epstein stopped. He didn’t have to. He could have ordered missile strikes on every military base, rained nukes on the country. Instead, he showed restraint.”

Quinn’s knuckles went white on his glass. For a long moment, he said nothing. When he did finally speak, his voice was brittle. “I can’t see that particular shade of gray. And my old partner couldn’t have either.”

It was true. The man he had been would have wanted to knock the teeth out of the man who sat here today. What a difference a year makes.

“You haven’t been to the NCH,” he said softly. “Everybody is talking like it’s an army of slavering rapists. But they’re just kids, Bobby. A bunch of brilliant kids out in the desert trying to build a new world because they’re scared of the old one. Rightfully scared. Remember?”

Quinn had been ready to retort, but that last word caught him off guard, and Cooper could see him considering the things they had learned together, the abuse of power by those who were supposed to wield it to protect. The president ordering the murder of his own citizens; someone in the government triggering the explosion at the stock exchange and blaming it on John Smith; the plan to implant microchips in every abnorm; the academies where children were brainwashed. All of the things normal people had done not because they were evil, but because they too were frightened.

“Maybe you’re right,” Quinn said. “But they attacked us. They killed our president and our soldiers.”

“Despite what the last fifty years of American policy would suggest, ‘They hit us so we’re hitting back’ is not a military strategy. I was taught that successful wars are waged for measurable goals. What’s the goal here? I’d really like to know. What does victory look like? Leveling Wyoming? Killing all the gifted?”

His partner sighed. Reached for his soda, then said, “Screw it.” He waved over the bartender. “Set me up with one of those, would you?” As the man poured, Quinn said, “All right, I’ll bite. Tell me why I should keep after Smith.”

“Because of Couzen. You know he took his own medicine, right? Made himself into a brilliant.”

“Figured that this morning,” Quinn said. “Only way to explain how he fought. But so what?”

“Ethan’s theory is that the serum doesn’t just make people brilliant. It makes them the ultimate brilliant, with a full spectrum of gifts.”

“So you’re thinking Smith wants it for himself. Drink the magic potion, buy a cape, turn into a supervillain?”

“No,” Cooper said. “Ethan says their work would have no effect on brilliants. Something about the existing epigenetic structure of abnorms. He tried to explain, but my eyes kept glazing over. Point is, this would only affect normals.”

“So what’s the angle?” Quinn shook his head. “The agency interpretation is that removing the barrier to brilliance would lessen tensions, not raise them. If anybody can be gifted, there’s less reason for fear. That doesn’t play to Smith’s agenda. Unless he just wanted to take it off the table?”

“No way. He came personally. There’s only one reason he would ever expose himself like that—if he sees victory. Couzen’s work is crucial to his goal.”

“How?”

Cooper sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.”

“I don’t know yet. But I’m right. This is John Smith. He doesn’t gamble, he plans. The strategic equivalent of Einstein, remember?”

“I don’t know, buddy. I think you’ve lost perspective. John Smith is an asshole, but he’s got what, maybe, maybe a couple of thousand dedicated followers? I just don’t see how that matches up to three hundred million Americans.”

“It’s not about meeting on the battlefield. Look at what the Children of Darwin accomplished. A tiny offshoot of his organization, maybe thirty people in total. And yet they managed to seal off three cities, shut down the grid, and turn normal people against each other. Civilization is fragile. They’re just now getting food into Tulsa and Fresno, and Cleveland burned to the ground. And that was just a stage in Smith’s master plan.”

Quinn finished his whiskey, set the glass on the bar. For a moment they sat in silence punctuated only by the clacking of pool balls and the mutter of the tri-d. The man had always been Cooper’s planner, the strategist to his tactician, and Cooper let him think.

Finally, Quinn said, “It wouldn’t take very much right now. People are hoarding food, fleeing the cities. And we’re heading into winter.”

“Whatever Smith has planned is going to make that all worse. Confusion and disarray are his favorite weapons. He wants America to slide into chaos. Wants every neighborhood to become its own nation-state. He can’t face us directly, but if things get bad enough, if there’s looting, riots, tribalism, local warlords, mass starvation, rampant disease . . .”

“Then he doesn’t have to. He can pick off one target at a time.” Quinn made a sound that wasn’t a laugh. “Even if you’re right, there’s nothing the DAR can do about it. We’ll happily take a shot at Smith if he wanders into our sights, but the department—hell, the country—is focused on the Holdfast. Like I said, the whole world’s on fire.”

“I know,” Cooper said. “But I may ask you for some help.”

“Doing what?”

“Finishing what I started.” He set his drink on the bar and stood up. “I’m going to find John Smith. And I’m going to kill him.”