A Better World (30 page)

“He’s seeing math?”

“That’s what he said. Angles and stuff, and he needs to be able to pick up the ball and throw it. Then when he does, it does crazy trick stuff and bounces off things and people and no one can get it and it just, like, rolls past you.”

Cooper fought an urge to laugh.
Remember when you said a city of mirrors would be cool, kiddo? Welcome to a world of them.
“So they’re changing the rules. No one says the rules have to be the same all the time.”

“They
do
. That’s what rules means.”

“You’re just mad because you lost,” Kate said.

“I didn’t lose. They cheated.”

“I like it,” Kate said. “Nobody here thinks it’s weird that I organize things.”

“That’s not weird, sweetie. You’re not weird.”

“I’m weird at home. Can we stay here?”

Cooper laughed. He was about to reply when a knife slid across the throat of one of his bodyguards, and a fountain of sudden blood sprayed across three tables.

Soren rode.

Passenger side, the backseat of the cab. The driver had a mole on his neck, a hair growing out of it. Out the window, momentary flashes turned into still life paintings. A man and woman walking hand in hand. Look at it slow and notice that her hand clutches harder than his, that his eyes are on a display window, that her neck showed age ten years past her makeup, and his belt was buckled but pants unbuttoned. Grace, permanence, purity—they were illusions. People were just fluids and flesh, meat and hair and bone.

The weapon was what he had asked for, a Fairbairn-Sykes. A fighting knife, dagger-tapered and razor-sharp, thin enough to slide between bone. Made famous during World War II, although those had been steel and this one was carbon-fiber. The edge wouldn’t hold, but it was so light he could move it without any momentum at all, just an extension of his hand. A knife good for killing and little else. His fingers rested on the pommel.

The car began to slow. It would be almost a minute before it stopped. Soren used the time to read the security outside the restaurant. As John had predicted, it was a diplomatic protection team, all gifted, all armed, all wired via earpiece. Guards used to escorting high-value assets, attuned to threat at all times. They
would have constant situational awareness, evaluating everything in terms of risk.

So he became a tourist from Missouri, wide-eyed and unthreatening. He had all the time in the world to slip into character. He paid the driver with the mild excitement of someone for whom a cab ride was a novelty, something more often seen on tri-d. Told the driver to keep the change, a buck too much, exactly enough to be appreciated and forgotten. Stepped onto the sidewalk and looked around, trying at once to pretend that he belonged here—keep the muggers away—while simultaneously taking everything in. After a minute and a half that was eight seconds to the rest of the world, he turned and walked into the restaurant, consciously putting a little pleasure in his step, anticipating a meal unlike any he could get in good old MO.

The team registered him, watched him, and dismissed him. Even the reader by the door. Readers amused him. They were so attuned to everyone else in the world, yet his gift meant that to them he was like the optical illusion of a tire rim spinning backward as it sped along—an incorrect approximation based on flawed perception.

Inside, the restaurant was chaos and noise. So many people, all being. Just sitting there being, and so loud about it, volume and intensity. But he was ready, became nothing at all as he walked to one of the two bodyguards and slit his throat, the blade’s edge so sharp that the skin sprang apart at the touch, the carotid neatly bisected.

Arterial spray gushed out in an arc. It was rather pretty, the fluid dynamics of it, and he spent a few seconds admiring it before heading for the other guard. That one was drawing his gun, a smooth and practiced move, and Soren took the time to look at the angle of the man’s arm, the way his left hand was bracing his right, and positioned himself so that the man’s own momentum brought his inner elbow into contact with the blade, the force of
the guard’s motion driving the knife through cloth and flesh and muscle and tendons to sever the brachial artery.

There was screaming, but not in his nothing.

For some reason, Soren found himself thinking of the spider, the one he had spent time being when John came to get him. Why? Ah. The calm immobility that preceded lethal motion. Yes.

He turned. The two bodyguards crumpled at about the same rate, as if they had choreographed it.

Soren took in the still life. Nick Cooper was on his feet, his eyes appraising. No hesitation or paralysis. Interesting.

It wouldn’t be enough, of course. But it was interesting.

Cooper was on his feet without thought, reflex taking over. But by the time he had stood up, the second bodyguard was done, a textbook-perfect slice splitting the inner bicep to the bone. He’d have a few seconds of consciousness before the long fall into darkness.

The man with the knife turned, his face calm. Behind him, the two guards collapsed, not clean and quick like on tri-d, but messy, arterial spray lashing like a hose each time their hearts beat. A woman coated with blood screamed a ragged, inhuman sound.

Cooper took in the scene in an instant, his mind patterning for the fight to come. The killer was lean and slight, the knife he carried modeled after the old British commando daggers. He looked at Cooper, and then—

His knuckles aren’t white. His breathing is steady. The pulse in his neck is maybe seventy beats a minute. He just murdered two highly trained guards in three seconds, and he is perfectly calm.

This isn’t an abnorm with a grudge, the brother of one of your old targets. This is an assassin.

Which means he was sent for you. Probably by John Smith.

And your children are here.

—started walking toward the table.

In one move, Cooper spun, grabbed the back of his chair, circled back around, and hurled it at the assassin, an easy throw at ten feet, the chair not heavy but massy enough to tangle the guy up, lessen the advantage of his knife. Cooper kept the momentum going and hopped right up on the table, the shortest distance between a killer and his children being a straight line. He dropped down the other side, following the chair, thinking,
Go low, sweep his leg, then stomp his wrist, groin, wrist, neck—

Only when he got there, the chair had flown through space undisturbed, the man somehow standing calmly to one side of it. Not even blinking as a chair missed him by a fraction of an inch.

Fine. Cooper slid into a fighting stance, light on his feet, knees bent, arms up to block. The trick to facing an opponent with a knife was knowing you were going to get cut, period, and maintaining an attack despite that. Act like prey and you became prey.

The assassin’s face was composed. He seemed barely awake. Cooper shifted his weight, watching the man, gauging his next move . . .

And getting no sense of it. Nothing. It was like the man in front of him had no plan, no intent. He was a void.

It didn’t matter. Cooper faked a jab, then put his weight behind a devastating hook to the man’s left kidney, followed it with an uppercut that caught his chin and snapped his head back, exposing the neck for an elbow strike that crushed the assassin’s trachea.

Only the man didn’t react to the fake, and when Cooper threw his hook, instead of flesh, he found himself punching the edge of the dagger, the thing held parallel to his knuckles so that the edge slid right between his second and third fingers and split his hand halfway to the wrist.

Oh.

Shit.

He took a half step back, his arms up to guard, only his right hand was a mess of gore, half of it sort of flopping, no pain yet, the edge of the knife too sharp, and shock setting in so that for a fraction of a second all he could do was stare at his hand, thinking, wow, how weird was that.

Still no expression on the man’s face, just the flicker of his eyes to one side as—

He’s immune to your gift. Exempt from it.

He can’t be. Everyone shows intention. Our bodies betray our minds. But somehow his doesn’t.

Which means that your gift won’t help you. This fight isn’t like any you’ve ever had.

And what’s he looking at?

Oh. No.

—Todd, somehow on his feet, ran at the man.

No!

It all slowed down then, not an effect of his gift but the by-product of a massive spike of adrenaline and terror, Cooper thinking faster than he could move, and harder than he could bear, trying through sheer force of will to make the universe not allow what was happening, his son yelling as he ran at the man who had hurt his dad. Ten years old and tall for his age but a boy, just a boy, skinny legs and skinny arms and good intentions but no business doing what he was doing, and Jesus oh Jesus no, don’t let this happen, Cooper trying to block Todd with one arm, an arm hurled with all his force, better to knock the kid back and take the breath out of him and maybe even bang him up than let him anywhere near this empty-eyed killing machine who even now was spinning with terrible force, arm up and elbow out, no no no not my son you bastard, me, take me but not my boy—

The assassin’s blow was square, the arm locked, the elbow conveying all the force of the move directly into Todd’s temple. His son’s head snapped too far sideways and his eyes went glassy.

Cooper screamed as he threw himself at the killer, ready to strip the skin from his body and tear the tissue from the bones as, moving like he had all the time in the world, the man continued his turn and buried the dagger in Cooper’s chest.

Slick cool plastic parted skin and muscle, slid between his ribs, and pierced his heart.

He knew he was dead then.

Tried to fight anyway even though he couldn’t move his arms, but it didn’t matter because the guy was already turning and walking away, his mission accomplished, his target assassinated.

Cooper fell down.

Natalie was suddenly there, her face filling his vision, black spots dancing, holes in her head, and she was yelling something, couldn’t hear, the blood coming fast and on the floor he landed beside Todd, his beautiful boy, the son he and Natalie had made, and it couldn’t be that his son was on the ground, that he wasn’t breathing, and this couldn’t be the last thing it couldn’t it can’t remember instead a whirl of green and your kids clinging to each arm as you spin them on the front lawn of the house you’d shared with Natalie all of them smiling and laughing and the world a whorl a whirl a beautiful world.

CHAPTER 29

It wasn’t that Ethan was tired, though he was. Exhausted, in fact, walking-dead tired—there were the zombies again—bleary-eyed and wasted, his arms leaden from holding Violet. Twelve pounds didn’t seem like much until it was sagging deadweight carried for miles.

And it wasn’t the pain, although there was plenty of that. His hips and back felt like hot steel rods had been inserted into them. His knee had swollen up. Worst were his bare feet. Before bed, Amy had taken off her socks with her shoes, and so once they’d left Jeremy’s, he’d peeled off his own and insisted she take them. Hours of walking through the darkness across fallow cornfields and state park land had cut his soles ragged, and he tracked blood with every step. It would have been easier on roads, but they were done with roads.

Still, it wasn’t any of that. What was killing him was the helplessness. He’d never felt so goddamn
useless.

Violet had woken up an hour ago and had been crying ever since, piteous, confused howls of hunger, and he had nothing to feed her.

A man had pointed a shotgun at the people he loved, and he hadn’t been able to do anything about it. Even with a gun in his belt, he hadn’t been able to do anything. His belly still burned at the memory of that. He knew he had made the smart move, knew that what he was feeling was just leftover monkey stuff, but it didn’t matter.

He was supposed to protect his family, and instead they were wandering the countryside with nothing, no food, no shelter, no money. Not even much of a plan.