Marcus Sakey - Brilliance

“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 assume 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 shivering 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 Analysis 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 passed 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 mass 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 nobody 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 bump 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 identity.”

“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.”