Marcus Sakey - Brilliance

“What if you killed an innocent man.”

“What if I killed an innocent genius. A doctor who could have saved thousands of lives.”

It seemed there was nothing to say to that. He didn’t blame her; he couldn’t come up with a reply either. The water trickled, trickled, trickled away.

“I’ve been used. Haven’t I?”

She nodded.

He made a sound that wasn’t much like a laugh. “It’s funny. All my life, the thing I’ve hated most was bullies. And it turns out, I am one.”

“No,” she said. “Misled, maybe. But you meant to do the right thing. I know that much about you. Believe me,” she said, and did laugh, “I didn’t want to think so. Remember on the El platform, I told you that you’d killed a friend of mine?”

“Brandon Vargas.” The abnorm bank robber who’d killed a mother and her two-year-old. Reno, Vargas smoking a Dunhill behind a biker bar, his hands shaking.

“Once upon a time Brandon and I were close. So I wanted revenge. John had told me that you were a good man, but I didn’t believe it. I wanted you to be a monster, so I could get payback.” She brushed hair behind one ear. “But then you turned out to be. Well. You.”

He weighed those words, the freight behind them. “Brandon. Was he really—”

“Yes. He really did rob those banks, and he did kill those people. The Brandon I knew was a sweetheart. He’d never have done that. But…he did.” She turned to him. “Not every moment of your life has been a lie. Some of the things you did for good really were for good.”

“But not all.”

“No.”

He rocked forward, hugging his knees. “I want it not to be true.”

“I know.”

“And if it is, then I want to die.”

“ What? ” Her body tensed and her face changed. “You coward. You don’t want to make it right. You don’t want to fix it. You want to die? ”

“How can I make it right? I can’t take it back. I can’t bring Rudy Turrentine—”

“No. But you can tell the truth.”

It tripped alarms up and down him, a tingle and vibration up his spine. “What are you talking about?”

“Your boss, your agency—they’re evil. They are everything you say you’re against. You hate bullies? Well, guess what Equitable Services is?”

“And you have an idea how to fix that.”

“Yeah. I do.” She brushed the hair again. “There’s evidence. Of what your boss, Peters, what he did. At the Monocle.”

Now the laughter did come, though there was no humor in it. Of course .

“What?”

“That’s why you really came out here, isn’t it? You’re step two. Step one, make me see the truth. Step two, set me on some mission for John Smith.”

It was hard to gauge the full depth of her reaction in the darkness, but he could see her eyes change. Recognition, and maybe a sense of being caught. But something else, too. Like he’d wounded her.

“I’m right, aren’t I? He wants me to do something.”

“Of course,” she said, and stared at him unblinking. “Why else would he take these chances? And I want you to do it, too. And if you’re done with the woe-is-me bullshit, so do you. Because even if there is a step two, step one was tell you the truth .”

He’d been about to reply, to talk about how he didn’t work for terrorists, but that hit like a kidney punch. The truth. Right. Cooper scooped up a handful of pebbles, shook them. Tossed them, one at a time, to plunk in the stream.

After a moment, Shannon said, “You remember what I said in that shithole hotel? We were watching the news. They were reporting on what we’d just done, and none of it was true.”

Only a week or so ago, and yet it felt like a lifetime. The memory was clear, the two of them bickering like an old married couple. “You said maybe there wouldn’t be a war if people didn’t keep going on TV and saying there was.”

“That’s right. Maybe, just maybe, the problem isn’t that there are normals and brilliants. It isn’t that the world is changing fast. Maybe the problem is that no one is telling the truth about it. Maybe if there were more facts and fewer agendas, none of this would be happening.”

There was something in the way she said it, clean and no bull, just fire and purity of purpose. That and the way the moonlight glowed on her skin, and the way his whole world had turned upside down, and the animal need for comfort, and the way she smelled, and the way she’d felt against him that night in the bar, and tired of thinking, he just leaned over.

Her lips met his. There was no surprise and no hesitation, maybe just the hint of a smile, and that gone in the moment. Cooper put a hand on her side and she wrapped both of hers around his back and their tongues flickered and touched, the warmth against the chill of the night as sensual as it was sexy, and then she shoved him.

He fell, landed on his back on the hard ground, pebbles digging into him. Surprise took his breath, and for a moment he wondered what she intended, and then she climbed on top of him, her knees straddling his hips, her body writhing against his. Light and strong, delicate and fierce, her breasts raking his chest, those clavicles like the wing bones of birds, the taste of her.

She broke the kiss, pushing away a playful couple of inches. A knowing smile and a fall of bangs. “I just remembered something else you said.”

“Yeah?” His hands slid down her back, cradled her midriff, slim enough his fingers almost touched.

“I said you must be a hell of a dancer. And you said, maybe if somebody else led.”

He laughed at that. “Lead on.”

She did.

“Wake up.”

Cold. It was cold. He heard the words through a haze, far away. Ignored them, grabbed at the covers and found—

“Wake up, Cooper.”

—a clump of something like pine needles in his hands, and the bed hard. Cooper’s eyes snapped open. He wasn’t in a bed, and there weren’t covers, just half-discarded clothing piled atop them. A pine grove, and the trickle of a stream, and Shannon making sleepy murmurs. A shape above him, a man.

John Smith said, “Come on. I want to show you something.” He turned and started walking.

Cooper blinked. Rubbed at his eyes. His body had gone stiff and sore.

Beside him, Shannon stirred. “What is it?”

“We fell asleep.”

She sat up suddenly, and the jacket they’d been using as a blanket slipped down, revealing her breasts, small and firm, the nipples dark. “What’s going on?”

“He wants me to go with him.” He gestured after the figure. The sky had lightened enough to bring faint color to the trees.

“Oh,” she said. Still coming round. “Okay.”

“I can stay.”

“No.” She rocked her neck to one side, the vertebrae cracking. Winced. “This is twice we’ve woken up badly. We’re going to have to work on that.”

“I’m willing to practice if you are.”

She smiled. “You better go.”

Smith had kept walking, wasn’t looking back to see if he would follow. Because he knows I will. Cooper looked at her, saw that she knew it, too.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Really.”

He stood creakily. Remembering the way they’d moved, like partners who had been dancing a long time. Her riding him under the moonlight, her head thrown back, hair flying free, Mediterranean skin gone pale against the spill of stars, the Milky Way. Both of them delaying, taking their time, slow fast slow, going until they were exhausted, and when they were spent, her collapsing against his chest. The feel of her sweet and warm, they wouldn’t fall asleep, they’d just take a minute…

“Well, that was a first.”