Written in Fire

CHAPTER 1

They were running out of time, but even so, Cooper couldn’t stop staring.

There was nothing unusual about the rope, which was the kind of bright yellow synthetic cord used to lash down a tarp. What was unusual was that it had been tied in a noose and flung over a Manhattan streetlight.

What was unusual was that a corpse hung from it.

He’d been maybe seventeen. A good-looking kid, lean with strong features. He wore a McDonald’s uniform, and across the bright yellow shirt, whoever murdered him had markered the word TWIST. Not random, then. Lynched by neighbors, coworkers, maybe even friends. Somewhere along the line he’d lost a shoe, and that was what Cooper couldn’t stop staring at, the thin white sock, so exposed in the December wind.

“Jesus Christ.” Ethan Park panted the words; they’d been sprinting until they hit the crowd gathered around the body.

It had been two weeks since seventy-five thousand troops were massacred by their own equipment in the Wyoming desert, the result of a computer virus designed and implemented by abnorms. Humanity never took well to the exceptional. And liked it even less when the exceptional fought back.

He was just a boy, Cooper thought. The sky was pewter and pregnant with snow, and the body spun slowly in the wind. Scuffed tennis shoe, shock of white sock, scuffed tennis shoe.

“Jesus Christ,” Ethan repeated. “I never thought I’d see something like this.”

My whole life, I’ve been afraid of seeing exactly this. It’s why I’ve done all the things I’ve done: hunted my own kind, gone undercover as a terrorist, killed more times than I can recall. Taken a knife to the heart. Seen my daughter marked for the academy and my son in a coma.

And I still couldn’t stop it.

“Let’s go.”

“But—”

“Now.” Without waiting for a response, Cooper resumed his sprint. They’d covered half a Manhattan mile in the five minutes since the video hit had come in. Not bad, but not good enough. Not with Dr. Abraham Couzen only a few blocks away.

Ten in the morning and cold, the wind whipping down the avenue, channeled by redbrick buildings and construction barricades. The pedestrians Cooper shoved past carried coffee cups and purses, checked watches or spoke on phones, but to his eyes, they all had the edgy uncertainty of hostages told to act normal. In a deli window, a newspaper taped to the glass held a full-page photo of the smoking ruin that had once been the White House, the marble columns tossed like toys around the impact crater, beneath the words NEVER FORGET.

Not a problem, Cooper thought, and blitzed across 3rd, ignoring the scream of car horns. The tip had come from Valerie West, his old teammate at the DAR. Whispering like she was afraid of being overheard, she’d told him that a cluster of security cameras had face-matched Couzen. “Just standing there like he’s taking the air. The prick.”

An appraisal he shared. Dr. Couzen was the last hope of preventing full-scale war. All of the horrors of the last years—the academies where brilliant children were brainwashed, the rise of John Smith and his terrorist movement, the legislation to microchip abnorms, the devastation of three cities, the massacre of soldiers attacking the New Canaan Holdfast, all of it—they were just symptoms. The root cause was the inequity between normals and brilliants.

Abe Couzen and Ethan had found the cure. They had managed to replicate brilliance. To give normal people gifts. Once that was public, there would be no motive for war. No need for the majority to fear the abilities of a tiny minority, and consequently, no need for the few to fear the wrath of the many. No reason for the world to burn.

Except that instead of sharing their discovery, Abraham Couzen had packed it up and vanished. And the world had caught fire.

It might not be too late. If you can get to him first.

Pouring on extra speed, Cooper hit the corner and spun south, Ethan panting along behind. Valerie had done them a massive favor, but the same camera scan that had alerted her would have pinged others at the Department of Analysis and Response, not to mention moles in the DAR whose real allegiance was to the New Canaan Holdfast, or worse, to John Smith’s terrorist organization. No doubt a shadow army was converging on 42nd and Lex.

Under the circumstances, there hadn’t been time to come up with anything as refined as a plan. What he had barely qualified as an intention: get to Couzen first, and hope that Ethan would be able to convince his old mentor to see reason. If that didn’t work, option B was to knock him out and drag him. Which would be fun in midtown Manhattan.

Lexington was five lanes here, southbound, a moving mass of taxis and buses. He sprinted past a Duane Reade, shoved between a couple of tourists with cameras, leapt into the street and back to avoid a pack of schoolgirls. The sidewalks held enough people that it took all of Cooper’s attention to screen his moves. His gift afforded him an enormous advantage one-on-one, but was jammed by crowds; subconsciously, he kept trying to calculate the intention of every individual at the same time. Cooper gritted his teeth and kept pushing until suddenly he was free.

Too suddenly. And too late.

Fifteen feet away, a group stood in an edgy cluster. The one in the center was stoop shouldered and frail, with the jerky mannerisms of a bird. For all his accomplishments, Dr. Abraham Couzen looked like the kind of cranky homeless man who yelled at ATMs.

The four men surrounding him had broad shoulders and an air of intense alertness. Their suits were decent but not high end, and tailored to conceal shoulder holsters. Field agents. And, surprise surprise, the man in charge was Bobby Quinn, his old partner. Which meant the Department of Analysis and Response had beaten them here. Not by much, but life could change in—

Making Couzen’s work public is the last hope for preventing a war.

Bobby Quinn could be convinced, but it might not be his call.

So what, then? Attack four DAR agents, including your buddy?

Well, they are focused on arresting Couzen. If you—

Holy shit!

—seconds.

It happened as fast as Cooper had ever seen. One instant the doctor’s heartbeat was seventy-five beats a minute, slightly elevated but in line with the circumstances. The next it had leapt to a hundred and fifty.

Cooper started to shout a warning, but before he could, the scientist stiffened the first two fingers of each hand and jammed them knuckle-deep in an agent’s eyes, flowed into simultaneous flat-hand chops to the tracheas of two others, then slammed his knee into Bobby Quinn’s groin, twice. Before it had begun, the fight was over. The agents fell away, gasping and groaning.

Abe Couzen took a deep breath. His fingers trembled, and a trickle of blood ran from one nostril. Even so, Cooper sensed a stillness to him. Somehow, after having taken down four armed professionals in less than two seconds, the scientist was calm.

Until Ethan arrived, staggering to a halt beside Cooper. At the sight of his former protégé, emotions flashed in quick succession across Abe’s face: pleasure, puzzlement, suspicion, anger. “You’re with them?”

“What?” Ethan panted furiously. “No, I’m . . . this is . . . he’s . . .”

“I’m not with anyone, Dr. Couzen.” Cooper kept his hands low and out. “But I’m here to help.”

Around them, the world was catching on to the fight. Most people started to move away. A few pushed forward to see what was happening. Somewhere a woman gasped. Cooper ignored it all, just watched his target. He wasn’t a reader, couldn’t pick up deep secrets from body language. But what Abe was thinking was no secret. He was weighing the idea of killing them. All of them: the agents, Cooper, even Ethan. A pure and viper-cold calculation, laced with certainty. He believed he could do it.

Instead, he turned and ran.

Horns screamed and tires squealed as the man leapt into traffic. A cabbie stomped his brakes, the car a yellow blur slewing sideways, colliding with a Honda. Abe didn’t even slow, just shot past the accident in progress, the cars missing him by less than a foot. Cooper leapt into pursuit, but his angle was bad, and by the time he’d made the opposite sidewalk, his quarry had put thirty yards between them. He leaned into the run, not taking his eyes off the man’s back as he dodged through foot traffic grown suddenly heavy, a stream of people exiting from—

Shit. Grand Central. Abe shoved in the doors, sending a woman sprawling in the process. By the time Cooper had reached the door, she was rising, saying, “What’s your problem, asshole?” just before he knocked her back down. He sprinted the length of the hallway, past displays for d-pads and the new Lucy Veronica line of suits, and into the sweating cool of the concourse.

A roar overwhelmed him, the echoed overlapping of thousands of conversations. Over the loudspeaker a strained voice pleaded, “People! There are no more seats on the Metro-North Hudson Line. I repeat, there are no more seats on the Hudson Line. Please, please, stop rushing the platform—”

Everyone in Manhattan appeared to be trying to leave. Beneath the starry dome of the main concourse, ticket lines had degenerated into formless throngs, the peace barely kept by uniformed soldiers slinging assault rifles. Every outbound train on the board was listed as sold out, but the voice on the loudspeaker did nothing to stop people from pushing toward the platforms, ticket or no. It wasn’t a crowd, it was a mob, a howling, throbbing, reeking mob, everyone shoving and yelling, luggage slung over shoulders, children clutched in arms.

Bad enough for anyone, but Cooper hated crowds, felt dizzy and lost in them. His gift, never under his control, read the impulses and intentions of everyone at the same time. It was like trying to focus while the dog howled and the baby shrieked and the phone rang and the radio blared, only there were a thousand dogs and babies and phones and radios all going at once.

He took a breath, clenched and unclenched his fists. There was a trash can near one wall, and he climbed atop it, staring at the crowd, trying to sort faces, to spot one needle in a needlestack. A nearby soldier yelled to get down, but Cooper ignored him, kept scanning—

Saw him. Abe had glanced over his shoulder to check the pursuit, and in that moment Cooper caught a glimpse of his face. Despite the crowd, the scientist had doubled the gap between them.

Impossible. The mass of people was a living wall, packed shoulder to shoulder. No one would be able to get through them.

That’s not quite true. Shannon would.

Before he’d known her name, before they’d saved each other’s lives, before they’d become lovers, Cooper had called her the Girl Who Walks Through Walls. Shannon read people as vectors, could anticipate where a sudden hole would open, predict the spot others would avoid, sense which people would collide and slow everyone around them. “Shifting,” she called it, and where he hated crowds, she thrived in them, could move untouched and unseen.

Abe Couzen was moving the same way.

The scientist sidestepped a falling man, flowed like mercury through the hole, turned left, stopped completely until a space miraculously opened between two shoving women. He slipped through, ducked under the arm of a guard, and pushed toward the far edge of the chaos.

Cooper stared, looking for a—

If you can’t catch him, you have to guess his destination.

Trains leaving the city are sold out, but the subway can take him pretty much anywhere in town.

There must be a hundred places to hide effectively, especially given this chaos.

He took down four agents in a second, but he’s running from you.

Got it.

—solution. He jumped off the trash can and raced back the way he’d come. Once out of the main concourse, the crowd thinned, and he was back on the street in no time, nearly colliding with Ethan, who said, “Did you—”

Cooper shook his head and sprinted west, then north on Vanderbilt. If he’d read the situation right, Abe would have assumed that he was with the DAR. After all, they’d arrived just as Bobby Quinn tried to arrest him. He must have presumed Cooper was backup, probably one of many.

Abe Couzen was a genius. If he was running from the DAR, he would know that the first order of business was mobility. Hide, and the department could shut down Grand Central, access the security cameras, search room to room if they had to. Board a subway, and that train could be stopped remotely, transformed into a cage. Fight, and there would always be another agent. No, if Cooper was right, Abe would want to get back out on the street as soon as possible, and the closest door was—

Right there, where the scientist was stepping out. Cooper smiled, then strode forward. “As I was saying—”

“That’s him! That’s the man with the gun!” Abe was pale and shaking, pointing a finger in his direction.

For the benefit, Cooper realized, of the soldiers who stepped out behind him. Three of them, young, on edge, fingers on the triggers of their assault rifles.

It only took thirty seconds and his old DAR badge to clear things up.

But by then, Abraham Couzen had vanished.