Written in Fire

CHAPTER 21

Hawk was reading volume six of a graphic novel series when someone knocked on his door.

He didn’t really know if there was a difference between comic books and graphic novels, but the latter sounded better. A comic book might be some silly story of a rich duck and his nephews. What he was reading was a philosophical exploration of the devil’s continuing war with heaven. This devil wasn’t red and scaly, and he wasn’t exactly evil, although he certainly wasn’t good, either. More like doing his own thing, no matter what. He wanted free will, and heaven was all about predestination. Hawk knew on which side his mom would have fallen, and he was kind of falling the same way.

The knock was three soft raps, could be anyone, and so as he walked to the door, he let himself imagine it was Tabitha. Maybe asking for help with something. He was a better shot, maybe she wanted to practice—

John Smith stood in the hallway. “Hiya, Hawk.”

It was John who had first given him the nickname, and while Aaron had always liked Aaron Hakowski okay, it was no match for being the Hawk. He straightened and brushed his hair back. John had never come to his room before. Why would he? He was in charge of everything, and Aaron was just a kid whose mom had . . .

“Can I come in?”

“Ah, yeah, sure, of course.” He held the door open.

John stepped inside, took in the room, and Aaron suddenly saw it through his eyes, the crumpled blankets and piles of stuff all over the desk and, shit, a comic book propped open on his bed.

“What are you reading?”

“Nothing, just—”

“Ah.” John picked up the book, held it with a smile. “I love this series.”

“I—you do?”

“Great writing. Plus, I identify with him some. Plenty of people think I’m the devil, too. Risks of forging your own path.” John put it back on the pillow. “You mind if I smoke?”

“No, no, go ahead.”

“Thanks.” He slid a cigarette from the pack, snapped a silver Zippo. “Bad habit, but it helps me think.”

“Aren’t you worried about . . .”

“It killing me?”

Aaron nodded.

“Tell you the truth?” John shrugged. “I would be, if there was any chance I’d live long enough. Okay if I sit down?”

“Yeah.” Aaron took the chair from the desk, dumped a pile of books off of it. “So what do you mean about living—”

“I’m playing a game against the whole world, Hawk. I have been since I was eight years old. Do you know what happened to me then?”

Aaron shook his head.

“I took a test. It was new then, the Treffert-Down. Everyone was very excited about it, this scale for measuring brilliance. I’d been taught to do well on tests, so I did. I did so well, in fact”—John dug a Coke can from the garbage and ashed his cigarette into it—“that government agents came and took me away from my mom. They put me in an academy. They changed my name and started trying to break me. I spent ten years there. I watched them destroy my friends. Brainwash them, or worse. Sometimes much worse.”

“Mom told me about the academies,” Aaron said. “I’m really sorry.”

“I’m not.” John looked straight at him. “That made me. I realized when I was eight years old that that wasn’t a world I could live in. I decided to tear it down and build a better one. To pen a new history, one written in fire. And I’m going to succeed.”

“I believe you,” Aaron said.

“I’m going to succeed,” John continued, “but I’m not going to live. They’ll kill me.” He took another drag off the cigarette. “It’s pretty much guaranteed. So I can’t get too worried about lung cancer, you know?”

“But—can’t you run? Hide?”

“I ran for a long time. But now it’s time to act. And I can’t execute my plan and hide under a rock at the same time.” He leaned forward. “The other day you asked me about it. Do you still want to know?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You remember the man we brought in?”

“Dr. Abraham Couzen. You said he had discovered the most important thing in thousands of years.”

John smiled. “That’s right. Couzen discovered what makes people brilliant. More than that, he figured out a way to turn normals into abnorms. Non-coding RNA that alters gene expression.”

This must be a dream. If he’d opened his door to find Tabitha wearing lingerie and waggling a condom, it would have seemed more real than John Freaking Smith sitting on his bed and talking about graphic novels and non-coding RNA, whatever that was. “Does it . . . it works?”

“Yes. But that’s just the beginning. Do you know much about organic chemistry?”

From anyone else, the question would have been an insult, but Aaron realized that John meant it, face value. “No.”

“Okay, well, it was obvious that someone would discover the root causes of brilliance. I won’t bore you with the details, but there were indicators that it wasn’t too far down the line. Some of the best abnorm scientists are part of our cause, and I could have put them to work on it. But that’s a long-odds proposition. Better to let the world at large develop that, crowd-source it, if you will. Instead, we worked on a delivery mechanism. It started as a particularly nasty strain of flu, but that was a long time ago. Since then, we’ve refined and refined and refined it. We’ve created pretty much the most contagious cold the world has ever seen.”

“I don’t understand. How does making people sick help? Does it kill them?”

“I said contagious, not dangerous. The problem with biologicals as a strategic weapon is that they’re hard to use, hard to contain, and if effective, tend to wipe out their hosts. This is different. It doesn’t do much but give you the sniffles and a cough. But it’s so incredibly communicable, and so long-lived, that if we release it properly, we can count on most of the world being infected.”

“I don’t understand. How does it help us?”

“Because influenza is an RNA virus. Like Ebola and SARS. Which means we can piggyback Dr. Couzen’s non-coding RNA into it.”

Hawk wanted to ask an intelligent question, wanted it badly, but he had a feeling that if he opened his mouth all that would come out was ummmmm, so instead he kept it shut.

“Which means that more or less everyone will get my flu,” John continued. “And everyone who does will become gifted.”

Aaron’s mouth fell open. He hadn’t realized that happened, not really, not in life. “You . . . you’re going to turn the whole world . . .”

“Brilliant.” John dropped his cigarette into the Coke can. “Yes.”

“But that’s . . . it would . . . I mean . . .”

“It will be humanity’s biggest leap since the development of agriculture. Bigger. Because agriculture, like writing, and mathematics, and medicine, is just knowledge. Knowledge can be lost. This is different. This is evolution. The changes to gene expression will be heritable. Do you get what that means?”

“I . . .”

“I’m not just turning everyone alive today brilliant. I’m turning the whole human race brilliant—forever.”

Aaron had just managed to close his jaw, and now it fell open again. “My God.”

“Think about it. A whole new world. A better one, with better people. Smarter, more capable, unafraid. Think what that could look like. Imagine what humanity could accomplish if everyone was brilliant.”

“That’s amazing.” It felt like the bed was spinning beneath him. He had so many questions. But really, they all boiled down to one—Can I have some? He’d happily cut off a nut to be gifted. “What can I . . . what do you need from me?”

“Pardon?”

“Well . . .” Aaron paused. “I mean, there must be a reason you’re telling me. Right?”

For a terrible second, he thought he’d offended John. But then his friend smiled. “Smart man. There is. We know everything about the pathology of our modified flu. Our virologists have been refining it for years. Now we’ve got Couzen’s research, which we know works. And we’ve got detailed computer models of the two combined.”

Suddenly it all clicked into place. “But you haven’t actually tried it.”

“I’d take it myself,” John said, “but I’m already gifted.”

“So it won’t affect brilliants?”

“We’ll still get the sniffles. And more importantly, the inheritance trait. But it won’t change the way our gifts work.”

“So you need a . . . a guinea pig?”

“No. I need a pioneer. We don’t have time for clinical trials, Hawk. But I need to know how long this takes, and if there are side effects that we aren’t anticipating, things like that. Because this is it. This is the masterstroke. We either win everything, or we lose everything. And I want to win.”

It took all Aaron’s willpower not to agree immediately. It was the thing he wanted more than anything. He had ever since Mom had explained the difference between her and him. She’d been so sad and self-conscious about it, had tried so hard to make it clear that she didn’t think less of him because he was normal. And he knew she hadn’t. But it didn’t change the fact that he was less.

A thought hit him. “Dr. Couzen. You said he was going to die.”

“Yes.”

“Because he took his stuff?”

“The serum makes you brilliant, which means fundamentally changing the way the brain works. Couzen is too old for that not to have consequences. But you’re fourteen. I’m not saying this will be a trip to Disney World, but you’ll be fine. More than that. You’ll be brilliant.”

The phrase seemed to hang in the air. Aaron wondered what that might mean, specifically. Like turning into a superhero. “So old people who get this flu will die?”

“Some of them,” John said. “But it was old people who shaped this world. If building a better one costs the lives of the people who designed the academies, well, I’d rather them than you.”

Aaron bit at his thumbnail.

“Doing this,” John continued quietly, “would be a huge help to the cause. A huge help to me. But it’s up to you. It’s always up to you.”

He knew what Mom would want him to do. But she’d been his mom. It was her job to think he was perfect. Truth was, he knew better. Besides, this was his life, and his choice. He pointed at the cigarettes. “Can I have one?”

“You smoke, Aaron?”

“I don’t know.”

John looked at him appraisingly. Then held out the pack.

Aaron fumbled one free, put it between his lips. John Smith did the same, then snapped the Zippo again and lit both.

“Do me a favor?” Aaron held the cigarette. It felt weird between his fingers, but kind of good too. “Call me Hawk.”