Written in Fire (The Brilliance Trilogy Book 3) (23 page)

He stepped away, walked closer to the video feed, still live. The militia had spread the children out across the breadth of the defunct Vogler Ring, guards keeping them in place while the rest of the mass moved through. Thousands on thousands of men. Not monsters; just men. Men who had lost loved ones or lost faith, who were too panicked to see beyond the animal side of themselves. Steeped in fear, hardened with pain, and released from bounds.

There’s nothing more dangerous.

Shannon was suddenly beside him, her eyes on the video even as her fingers found his. “The Vogler Ring is about five miles out of the city.”

Cooper nodded. “My bet, they’ll surround Tesla.”

“They’ve been marching for days. They’ll rest. Wait for night to fall.”

From behind them, Vogler’s voice said, “And then what?”

“Then we do the thing I’ve been trying to avoid,” Cooper said. “We go to war.”

CHAPTER 30

Natalie stood in the kitchen and stared at the news on her d-pad. A headphone in one ear, the other maternally tuned in to the sounds of Todd and Kate watching a movie in the living room. She’d offered them a daytime double feature with popcorn and Coke, and while they were surprised, they’d been quick to seize the opportunity before she changed her mind.

Funny to think that there had been a time when what she’d worried about was making sure they didn’t watch too much tri-d, that they ate their broccoli.

The news was limited, just live footage from one angle, a high-altitude drone aimed at the militia. A reporter babbled pointlessly, using a lot of words to say nothing specific. The existence of the Vogler Ring was an open secret, but the details weren’t public, and the reporter was clearly being cautious. It was only as it became clear that the kids were suffering that she started to sound like a human being, her voice cracking and fear spilling out.

Literally the last thing Natalie wanted to watch was children burning alive, but as their hands knotted in agony, as furious boils bubbled on their faces, she made a vow that she would not look away. That she would watch every second, no matter how horrible, because if she couldn’t do anything to save them, then by God she could at least stand witness.

Then, suddenly, it was over. Whatever force had been hurting the kids vanished, leaving them baffled and obviously fearful of its return. Her joy had been both overwhelming and short lived, because behind the kids, the endless column of armed men had started cheering.

That was Nick.
Her certainty was based on nothing, but it was certainty nonetheless, and her chest swelled with pride for the man she loved.

She continued watching the news, staring hypnotized as the New Sons marched ever closer. The sea of men began to split into two groups that would spill around Tesla, enclosing it like pincers. Natalie watched and listened to the reporter’s breathless string of nonsense, and waited for the knock at the door.

When it came, she plucked out the earbud and walked to the front window. They were still in the diplomatic quarters they’d been given three weeks ago. It was a lovely space, but it wasn’t home, and as she drew aside the sheer curtain, it felt like she was staring out a hotel window. She’d never seen the street below so busy, electric cars and mini-trucks bumper-to-bumper, bicycles zipping between them, nervous people in the street pausing to watch the video feed projected from the opposite building, the same news footage she had just been watching.

The SUV was an old-fashioned gasoline behemoth, muscular and black, and though the windows were tinted, she could see that a woman sat in the passenger seat, looking up at the window she looked down from. For a moment they stared at each other. Then Shannon raised one hand, and Natalie followed suit.

The knock came again. She dropped the curtain and opened the door for her ex-husband.

Nick looked tired but resolved, dark circles under his eyes but his shoulders high. She recognized his expression; she’d seen it before. It never meant things were about to get better. For a moment they just looked at each other. Then she said, “Come on.”

They’d skirted the living room, stepping lightly as the movie played loud. She could see Nick’s urge to join his kids, to drop down on the sofa between them and grab a handful of popcorn and tuck Kate under one arm and Todd beneath the other. Instead, they’d gone into the kitchen, where she’d set about making coffee. It had felt surreal to go through the motions of measuring beans, grinding them coarse, letting them bloom in the French press, all while Nick explained what she had already guessed, that he had convinced Erik to turn off the Vogler Ring, that in so doing he had saved six hundred children but set the rest of the city up for a war. Then he told her about killing John Smith, how he had shot him three times through the heart. Her husband—ex—had killed fourteen times that she knew about, and probably more that she didn’t, and while for most women that would be distinctly a turn-on or a turn-off, for her it had always been something apart. A piece of Nick that she would never fully understand, and yet was grateful for. She knew that every time cost him something. He paid that price because he believed that he was making a better world for their kids.

“I can’t stay,” he said, nodding thanks as he took the mug of coffee.

“I know.”

“The New Sons will wait until dark. We’ll have a couple of hours to get ready.” A pause. “This is everything I didn’t want to happen.”

“I know.”

“Epstein is appealing to the president now. Maybe, with John Smith dead, he can convince Ramirez to help.”

“If the government wanted to stop the New Sons of Liberty,” she said, “they would have done it days ago.”

“Yeah.” He sipped his coffee. “There’s a bunker beneath Erik’s complex. You and the kids will be safe there.”

“No.”

“You will,” he said. “It’s under forty feet of rock. The doors are solid steel. Erik built it to—”

“I saw the bulletin.” It had flashed up on her d-pad only moments after the militia had passed the Vogler Ring. A brief message from the king of New Canaan, telling his subjects that the barbarians were at the gates. “Children fourteen and under, report to the bunker. The rest of you, get ready to fight.”

Nick paused, with that look on his face, the one that meant he was skipping conversational steps because he’d read her intent. It had always driven her crazy. He couldn’t help it, she understood that, and his intentions were good, she understood that too, but being married to someone who always knew where you were going—or thought they did—wasn’t easy. He said, “Natalie.”

“Nick.”

“Nat, don’t—”

“Nick, don’t.”

“Listen to me.” He set the mug down. “You need to get our children to that bunker, and you need to stay with them.”

“I’ll get them there.”

“This is bad. Those men out there, they aren’t soldiers. They’re a lynch mob. They’re wounded and angry, and they don’t see the people here as people. There is nothing they won’t do.”

“I know.”

“I will fight with everything I have. But I can’t be worrying about you and the kids while I do it.”

“I know.”

“So you’ll stay in the bunker?”

“No.”

“Natalie—”

“I love you,” she said. “I have forever. I loved you when my parents disapproved of us. I loved you when you started killing other abnorms for the DAR. I loved you when you went undercover to find John Smith and left me alone for six months, scared every moment that someone would firebomb our house. I loved you as you were dying in my arms. I will always love you.”

“I love you too. But—”

“But you are not the only one willing to die for our children. Or kill for them.” She saw the impact her words had, how profane the notion was to him. The dying, sure, but more the killing. She understood. It was profane to her too. Natalie locked eyes with him and said, “I’m going to take the kids to the bunker. And then like every other parent in this city, I’m going to get in a window, pick up a rifle, and fight.”

He opened his mouth. Nothing came out. Finally, he closed it.

“Now,” she said. “Let’s go tell our kids that they don’t get to watch the end of the movie.”

CHAPTER 31

“Mr. Secretary?”

It was still snowing, that fine stuff that looked more like fog whipping back and forth in the wind. Owen Leahy stared out the window of his Camp David office, a onetime guest room with a folding table in place of a bed, a tangle of cables running down from the back of it. Funny to see so many cords; in regular life, everything was wireless, meaning and message floating through the air. Here security had trumped that.
That could be your epitaph: “Security trumped it.”

“Sir, the call you’ve been waiting for.”

Leahy spoke to the window. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

In a career built on taking risks, the last hours had been the most brazen of them. After Luke Hammond had hung up on him, Leahy had called his chief of staff, still in DC, and told her what he wanted.

“Are you kidding?” She’d been nervous, but also exhilarated, he could tell. No surprise there. What he’d asked her to do was the stuff of spy movies, and who didn’t want to be pulling the strings?

“This is direct from the president,” Leahy had told her. “Screen all calls to any governmental office originating from New Canaan. No matter who it is, no matter what they say, they go to you. When it’s him, you send it to me.”

“Sir, that’s . . .” She trailed off. “Do you mind if I ask why?”

“Deniability,” he said. “Ramirez wants cover, and we’re it.”

“But, sir—”

“If the president asks me to take the fall, I’ll do it with my head high and my mouth shut. I need the same from you, Jessica. It’s time to serve our country.”

“Yes, sir.”

A huge risk. But what choice did he have? At this point, nothing would stop the New Sons from burning Tesla to the ground. It wasn’t what Leahy wanted, but politics never worked out the way anyone planned. The trick was to maneuver circumstances as close as possible to the goal, then quietly redefine your goal.
“Quietly” being the operative word. If you can keep this quiet for a little while longer, no one ever need know you were involved.

Leahy turned from the view, said, “Thank you,” the dismissal clear in his tone. When the aide left, he walked to the mirror, adjusted his tie. He took a deep breath, then sat down and accepted the video call.

The air shimmered to life. Erik Epstein sat with his hands folded on the table in front of him. Beside him was another man, pudgy and pale, wearing a hooded sweatshirt. “Mr. Secretary?” Epstein sounded confused. “I’m sorry, I used my security code to access the president directly.”

“I know,” Leahy said. “She’s asked that you speak to me.”

“Mr. Secretary, I’m going to have to insist—”

“She has asked that you speak to me.”

“I see.” Epstein paused, looked at the man sitting beside him. The deferral was obvious.

“You,” Leahy said to the silent one. “I presume you’re the real Erik Epstein?”

“Yes. Hello.”

“Nice to meet you. We’ve known for some time that he”—gesturing at the well-dressed man—“wasn’t you.”

“My brother. Jakob.”

Leahy nodded. “What can I do for you, gentlemen?”

Again the two exchanged a look, then Erik said, “We surrender.”

Of course you do.
The irony was bitter. This was what he had been playing toward for years. For years he and a few other clear-eyed men had done what needed doing to bring about this exact moment. Not the destruction of the gifted, but the control of them. It was what the initiative to microchip the gifted had really been about; it was why the DAR had funding greater than the NSA, why more than a thousand civilians had died in Manhattan, why Leahy had snuck into Wyoming to meet with General Miller in the first place. It was victory—and it came just slightly too late.
No choice now. No choice but to stay the course.
“I’m sorry?”

“We surrender. Unconditionally. The Holdfast. We will open all borders. Share all technology. Join the government.”

“It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it? You’ve already murdered seventy-five thousand soldiers. Destroyed the White House. Killed our president.”

“Self-defense. Orders were given to attack, to bomb our city—”

“I know,” Leahy said. “I gave them.”

The silence that fell was so thick he could practically see Epstein’s thoughts, could follow as he rebuilt the lattice of his history. Jakob started to speak, but his brother gave the merest hint of a sideways glance, and he shut his mouth.

“Mr. Secretary,” Erik said, “the New Sons of Liberty have cleared the Vogler Ring. They’ve split up and surrounded Tesla. Completely encircled.”

“I know.”

“Strategic analysis yields only one reason to do that.”

“Yes.”

“Not an attempt to defeat. Not a military victory. They’re trying to annihilate. To kill everyone here. Civilians.”

Leahy thought of the moment, not a week ago, when he’d sat in a wind-whipped tent opposite Sam Miller and Luke Hammond and made a bargain with them. He would hold off the US military, and they would push into New Canaan. It had never been his intention to wipe out the gifted. True, there were tens of thousands of abnorms not in New Canaan. But nowhere on earth had so many collected in one place. They had helped secure American sovereignty the world over, had pushed technology forward faster than anyone imagined possible. He hadn’t wanted to destroy them; he’d wanted to tame them.

Damn the New Sons for pushing it this far.
Another ugly irony. For decades, American policy had wrought exactly this kind of result. Third parties invented and armed to fight monsters had ended up becoming monsters themselves. Pinochet in Chile. Noriega in Panama. Countless warlords in Africa and the Middle East.
That’s the risk of summoning a demon; they don’t tend to follow orders
.

On the other hand, better the demons consumed each other.

“There’s nothing I can do for you.”

“Mr. Secretary, please.” Erik Epstein’s face was pale and guileless. “There are thousands of children in this city.”

Leahy hit a button and severed the call. Then he rose and went back to the window.

The snow continued to fall.