Written in Fire

CHAPTER 38

Staring at the d-pad, Shannon said, “Got him.”

Cooper nodded, eyes locked forward. The last thing they could afford was an accident. There weren’t many other vehicles on the road, but no one was obeying stoplights or speed limits. All the buildings were dark too, although he caught flickers of motion behind the windows. No sign of the attackers here yet, but gunfire cracked from every direction, like being in the center of a storm. Epstein had concentrated the defenders at the edges of Tesla, but no one believed they would be able to contain the militia. Every block would be a battlefield. “Where is he?”

“On the outskirts of town.” Shannon’s fingers danced on the screen. “Looks like he’s past the line.”

Twenty minutes ago in the prison control room, Cooper had stepped through the pool of blood to touch Rickard’s forehead. Still warm. That meant Soren had broken out only moments before, probably while he and Shannon had stood in the ruined upper floor putting John Smith’s plan together.

They were being outplayed by a dead man.

Their shoes leaving blood prints behind them, they had sprinted to Epstein’s inner sanctum. Erik stood in the center surrounded by 360 degrees of video. The outskirts of Tesla as seen from the center, the view an angel might have atop Epstein Industries. Above the street scenes ran a row of aerial footage taken by drones circling high above. The computer stitched all the pieces together as well as it could, but the video came from hundreds of sources, none of them aligned quite the same, and the result was a world turned to facets, something like the way insects saw. Bright flashes lit the night in every direction. The New Sons of Liberty were pushing in from all sides. Erik spoke in a high-speed monotone, giving orders to his computer and his commanders in a steady, unpunctuated stream. Jakob paced, running his hands through his hair. Millie sat in a chair, her legs tucked up and arms wrapped around them.

“Soren escaped,” Cooper had announced, when it was clear Erik had no intention of acknowledging them.

Jakob said, “We’re a little busy here.”

“Trust me, you care.”

“Cooper, at this point I wouldn’t trust you to wipe my—”

“Jakob,” Millie said. “It’s important.”

He squinted at her, then sighed and nodded. “Talk fast.”

Cooper did. By the time he was done, Erik had stopped his monologue to listen. The brothers looked at each other. The abnorm nodded a confirmation, then went back to his low babble of command. Jakob said, “I’m not sure what you think we can do about that.”

“We have to stop him. If Soren is able to infect the militia, none of this matters.”

“The people who live here might feel differently.”

“Jakob—”

“Cooper, look at those screens.” He gestured. “We’re matching housewives against soldiers. The New Sons have more men than we have guns. If you hadn’t convinced Erik to drop the Vogler Ring, the militia would still be miles away—and not at risk of infection. So if you think that we’re going to abandon our defenses to chase after Soren, you’re dreaming.”

“Shannon and I can take care of Soren. But we need your help finding him. If Erik can just run a video search—”

“We don’t need to.”

“Hundreds of millions of people could die—”

“We don’t need to search for him,” Jakob continued, “because you can just use the tracker.” He saw Cooper’s face. “We implanted a subdermal transmitter when he arrived. Soren is unbelievably dangerous, not to mention John Smith’s best friend. What kind of assholes do you think we are?”

Finally, something goes right. “Jakob, I could kiss you right now.”

“Glad you approve.” He gave them the access information. “Now you just have to get to him.”

“On it.” Cooper turned and started for the door. Paused. “One more thing.”

The idea had started forming while talking to Shannon; something had sparked when she’d said that they had built this world one lie at a time. But then Ethan had called, and he’d back-burnered it. And the way things are looking, that may be where it stays. Still. He told Jakob what he would need if everything went right. “Could you do that? Technically, I mean?”

“I think so.” Jakob looked to his brother. “We had a call with the SecDef earlier that might be worth including.” He paused. “Interesting idea, Cooper. Why not just do it now?”

“Won’t work unless we stop Soren.”

“Then why are you still standing here?”

They’d lingered only long enough to gear up. A shotgun for her and ammunition for his assault rifle, a couple of flashbangs. He’d considered a vest, decided against it. Light as they were these days, they would limit his mobility, and against Soren that would be fatal.

Shannon said, “Go right,” and Cooper yanked the wheel, tapping the brakes just enough to keep the SUV upright as they squealed around a corner. The streetlights were on, but the avenues were abandoned, and the result was an eerie middle-of-the-night feeling, heightened by the sense that they were being watched, that behind those windows, people tracked their motion with guns. Natalie is out here somewhere. A rifle in her hand.

“What does it look like?”

“Pitched battle,” she said. “Every direction.” Her d-pad was wired into a tactical heat map, the city laid out from above, blue in the center, a rippled ring of red and orange around the outskirts. Live intel gathered by drones, allowing regional commanders to assess weak points and direct reinforcements and supplies. “Soren is past the line.”

“He make it there before it started?”

She shook her head. “Looks like he cut his way through.”

He remembered the way the man had moved, the lethal grace and precision afforded by his time sense. Cooper had hoped that the militia might at least slow him down, but it had been an idle sort of hope. No normal would stand a chance against Soren. Cooper wasn’t sure he and Shannon did, either.

The gunfire was growing louder, not the steady crack-crack-crack of a firing range, but the clustered, hectic overlap of thousands of human beings trying to kill one another. He had a flash of memory from earlier this year, running down an abnorm hacker who had created a computer virus for John Smith. What had her name been? Velasquez? Vasquez. Alex Vasquez. Just before she put her hands in her pocket and hurled herself headfirst off a roof, she had told him that war was their future. That there was no stopping it, you just had to pick a side.

He’d been a DAR agent then, and filled with certainty. Certainty that humanity was too sane to get to this point. That cooler heads, heads like his, would prevent open conflict.

And now here we are. An army ready to slaughter the greatest concentration of brilliants in America—and an abnorm terrorist poised to wipe out everyone else.

Vasquez had been wrong. This wasn’t war. It wasn’t about picking a side. There was no winning a genocide—only measures of loss.

Shannon said, “Left.”

They turned the corner to find a wall of fire.

The barricade spanned the width of the street a block ahead. The base was pallets of bricks, but atop them lumber and furniture had been piled, gasoline poured, a match struck. Flames leapt twenty feet in the air. A couch burned blue-green, and tires guttered thick black smoke. Cooper could feel the heat through the windshield. Sourceless gunfire cracked back and forth beyond it. “Can you find a hole?”

Shannon shook her head. “Nothing we can get the truck through. Tesla was built to be barricaded.”

“The hard way, then.” He pulled the SUV to the curb and killed the engine. As he swung out of the seat, a wave of battle noise crashed into him, screams and gun blasts and the roar of fire. Cooper opened the back, took his rifle and spare magazines. Shannon crumpled her d-pad, then tucked handfuls of shotgun shells in her jacket pockets.

For a moment, they looked at each other. Her face was lit orange, infernos reflecting in her eyes. The heat washed in waves, like the whole world was burning. “Don’t hold back out there,” she said. “Don’t hesitate, and don’t play fair.”

“They’re here for my children.” Cooper shook his head. “Fair’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Good. Let’s go kill some assholes.”

He leaned forward, grabbed a handful of her hair, and pulled her close. Their lips mashed together, tongues dancing, her teeth nipping at him, a kiss as fierce and raw as any he’d known. After far too brief a moment, she broke it. Grinned at him.

Together they headed into hell.