Brilliance. Part 20

"Yeah, well, I wasn't expecting company." Cooper began to unlace his shoes. "This is just a place to ride out the storm. Once they realize we slipped past them, they'll make a last-ditch effort to catch us while we're close. They'll fan out across the Loop. They'll co-opt the CPD video camera system. They'll get cops to do door-to-doors, popping into every bar and restaurant, looking in the restrooms. They'll check hotels for new arrivals."

"Last I looked, this was a hotel."

"I booked it a week ago. Under the name Al Ginsberg."

She said, "'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked...'" She parted the curtains, looked out at the brick wall opposite, and the street below. "Never really understood the poem, but I like the way the words taste."

"Yeah." Cooper pulled the shoe off, shook it until the flashbang remote fell out into his hand. "Me too. Why'd you do it?"

"Huh?" She turned.

"The Exchange. Why blow it up? You killed eleven hundred people."

"No," she said. "I tried to tell you then. I was there to stop it."

"Bulls.h.i.+t."

"It was supposed to be empty. We'd called earlier that day, announced we had bombs in the building, that we would trigger them if they started searching. I was there to make sure it didn't blow, not with all those people there."

"Bang-up job. I noticed on the news how it didn't explode."

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Destroying it was supposed to be a symbol. The Exchange was built to counter us, to exclude us. We wanted to show that they can't build a future that doesn't include us. How would killing people have made that point?"

Cooper looked up at her. The width of her pupils, the calm in her fingers, the steady pulse at her neck, none of it suggested she was lying. But this woman could find a way to hide in an airplane bathroom. Controlling her body is part of that.

"Anyway, who are you to talk? You're the killer. Not me."

"Yeah? What about Bryan Vasquez?"

Her lips drew into a tight line. "He betrayed the cause."

"The defense of every terrorist masquerading as a freedom fighter."

"Said the storm trooper who protects the state by murdering its citizens."

He started to reply, caught himself. You've got three hours to convince her that she should help you. If she vanishes, you lose. He tied his shoe. His fingers were clumsy with post-adrenaline shakes, and his ribs hurt from where he'd hit the balcony. Cooper stood, went to the minibar fridge beneath the television. It opened with a squeal. He pulled out two miniature bottles of Jack Daniels for himself. "You want a drink?" He rifled through. "They've got red wine, cheap champagne-"

"Vodka."

"There's orange juice, I could make a screwdriver."

"Just vodka and ice."

"You want to watch me pour it? Murdering storm trooper and all?"

She stared at him for a long moment, and then one corner of her lips quirked up into a smile. "Gimme the drink already."

The world's tiniest ice tray was in the freezer. He cracked it, shook the cubes into a plastic cup, splashed Smirnoff over them. He pa.s.sed it to her, then poured his bourbon. The soothing warmth went right to work on his aches and shakes.

"So how long do we need to hang out here?"

"A couple of days."

"A couple of days?"

"I've got some canned soup in the closet, we'll eat it cold. But I was only planning for one, so we'll have to ration our provisions."

Her eyes went so wide they seemed to bulge. He cracked, smiled, said, "I'm kidding. Just till the evening rush, so we can get lost in the crowd."

The Girl Who Walks Through Walls laughed. It wasn't a throaty or sultry thing, a laugh as a pose; it was an honest sound of amus.e.m.e.nt. Cooper said, "That's better."

"Than what?"

"Than calling each other names. Which reminds me-"

"My name is Shannon."

"Nick Cooper."

"I've heard," she said dryly. "So what, we just walk out of here and that's that?"

"Were you thinking we'd pick flower arrangements, send out invitations?"

"Thing is, Nick-"

"Cooper."

"-you've put me in a bit of a bind."

"How's that?"

"You're not dead."

"Pardon?"

"I came to kill you. But you're not dead. And to anyone watching, it wouldn't have looked like I was trying to kill you. It would have looked like we were working together."

"So?"

"So the DAR already has me marked as a target for the Exchange. Now that they've seen us together, I'm probably higher priority than you. And now they know I'm here. Not only that, but until I can get to my people, they'll a.s.sume I've switched over."

"Why? Didn't they know you were coming for me?"

She shook her head. "This was personal. I didn't tell anyone. And now it'll look like just as the bad guys were descending, I hooked up with Equitable Services' top gun and we made a daring escape. What am I going to do, say, don't worry, all Cooper and I did was talk poetry and revolutionary politics?"

"How would they even know you were there?"

"We have people in the DAR."

"Really." He sipped his drink. He'd known that, worked it out by her appearance on the platform, but there was no reason to let her know that. "And your moles will report that you joined up with me."

"That's right. This burns me. In both directions. You burned me."

Cooper shrugged. "Sorry?"

"Listen, you smug-"

"Lady, I didn't burn you. You came to kill me. Not my fault you picked the wrong time. Besides, I could have left you. If it weren't for me, you'd be s.h.i.+vering in a white, well-lit room right now."

"And if it weren't for me, you'd be bleeding out on the platform at LaSalle and Van Buren."

They stood on opposite sides of the bed, both tense and braced, bickering like an old married couple, and there was something so backward about it all, about this woman-this terrorist-having saved his life from his former colleagues, about her referring to them as the bad guys, and about the fact that in terms of his continued survival she had a point, and it was all so absurd that he found himself chuckling.

"What?"

"Long day." He took another sip of whiskey and then crossed to the television-it was an old flatscreen, not a tri-d-and turned it to CNN. There was no way to know if this would make the news, and even if it did, it probably wouldn't be for hours yet.

"-the site of yet another in a string of terrorist attacks in recent weeks." The woman standing on the El platform was plastic-pretty and overeager, a local reporter getting her big break. "Earlier today, an unidentified man planted a bomb during Chicago's lunch rush."

The image cut to her holding a microphone to a man Cooper vaguely remembered from a seminar in DC two years before. The words Terry Stiles, Chicago Bureau Captain, Department of a.n.a.lysis and Response were printed over the lower third. Stiles said, "We've been tracking this individual for several weeks and were able to apprehend him before he could detonate a bomb on the El. However, we were unable to prevent him from firing on the crowd. Several civilians were wounded, as well as two agents."

"Who is he?"

"I can't comment on that at the moment," Stiles said, "other than to say that we suspect he was working with abnorm terrorist groups operating out of Wyoming."

"Does he have anything to do with John Smith and the March 12th explosion?"

"I can't comment on that."

The video cut to footage of an emergency crew wheeling out a gurney. The man on it was the hipster caught in the sniper crossfire. Over the footage, the reporter continued. "Wounded civilians are being rushed to local hospitals and are expected to survive."

Another cut, and the reporter's overly concerned expression again filled the screen. "This sort of scene has become familiar in recent months, and abnorm splinter groups warn that the violence will escalate if the government proceeds with the Monitoring Oversight Initiative. The controversial bill, which yesterday pa.s.sed the House, makes it mandatory for all gifted individuals to be implanted with a-"

Suddenly the television blinked off. Cooper turned as Shannon tossed the remote onto the desk with a clatter. "I was watching that," he said mildly.

"I can't stand those lies. They make my skin crawl."

"You know the game. Stories like that keep people calm. There was a bad guy, and we stopped him. It's clean and simple. It's better than the alternative, the ma.s.s panic and mob violence that would result if-"

"If what? If you told the truth?" Shannon fixed him with a hard stare. "That news report just talked about an abnorm attack, which there wasn't. It said the terrorist-that's you, by the way-shot agents and civilians, when actually the agents shot the civilians. And it said that Big Brother had things under control, when in fact we walked free. The only part of it that was true, literally the only part, was that there was a brilliant on the El platform today. Two, in fact."

"What's your point?"

"What's my point?"

"Yeah. Apart from the idea that the truth shall set you free, and other lines no one believes. People don't want the truth, not really. They want safe lives and nice electronics and full fridges." He just couldn't seem to avoid sparring with this woman. "You think I want abnorms microchipped? You think I like the academies? I hate it, all of it. But we are vastly outnumbered. Normal people are frightened, and frightened people are dangerous. The fact is, we, abnorms, brilliants, twists, we cannot survive a war. We will lose."

"Maybe," she said. "But maybe there wouldn't be a war if you people didn't keep going on television and saying there was one."

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Finally he said, "Maybe you've got a point. But watch the 'you people' stuff. The department burned me. They needed a scapegoat for March 12th, and so they hung the explosion on me. My old friends are trying to kill me. But let's not forget. It was your boss's handiwork they blamed me for."

"I told you-"

"Yeah, I know. The building was supposed to be empty. But did John Smith plan the attack? Did he arrange the explosives? Did he have them planted?"

She was silent.

"There's n.o.body here who's clean," he said. The angle was coming to him, the right way to play her. "Not you, and not the DAR. And I'm tired of it. All I want is out of the game."

He dropped to the bed, lay back with his hands crossed behind his head. The ceiling was stucco, and the low light of afternoon turned every b.u.mp into a sundial. Not another word. It's a lousy salesman who talks too much.

Shannon put her feet up on the bed, legs crossed at the ankle. Leaned back in the chair to pull one drape aside. Her face glowed sunset colors. Still staring out the window, she asked, "What was Zane supposed to do for you, anyway?"

"Get me a new ident.i.ty."

"What, fake papers?"

He snorted. "I've got a dozen driver's licenses. To Zane I was T. S. Eliot, and to the front desk here I was Allen Ginsburg, and I could walk out of here Chuck Bukowski. But this is the DAR we're talking about. If I want a new life, it'll have to be as a new person. New papers, but also a new history hacked into a hundred places, a new face, the whole thing."

"Why not just go to Wyoming?"

"Right."

"I mean it," she said. "It may not be sovereign yet, but the DAR doesn't plan raids in New Canaan."

"It would be a death sentence. If Zane had come through, maybe, but he didn't." Let her sell you. Let her think it's her idea.

"New Canaan is different than the normals' world. Everyone comes there with a past. Everyone has baggage. You can get a fresh start."

"Yeah. Until the brother of someone I killed sets my house on fire. No, if I have to spend my whole life watching my back, I'll do it somewhere prettier than Wyoming." He glanced at the clock, then closed his eyes. "I'm gonna crash for a few."

A long minute pa.s.sed, and then another, as he stared at the back of his eyelids. Come on. Come on.

"There might be a way," she said.

Gotcha. He opened his eyes. "Yeah? What, take a jackknife to my nose, call it plastic surgery?"

"Hear me out. You could be safe in New Canaan, even as yourself." She raised her hands to forestall his objections. "Not as you are now. But if the right person vouched for you, that could change everything."

"I am not a terrorist." He said the words flat and hard. It couldn't look like he was eager. Even the tiniest hint of his true intent and this would all crumble. "I will not work for John Smith."

"I wasn't thinking of him."

"Who were you-"

"Erik Epstein."

Cooper stiffened. "The billionaire? The King of New Canaan?"