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Cooper dropped his empty assault rifle and caught the shotgun in the air, then yelled, “Wait!” Couldn’t think what to add after that, and it didn’t matter, because Shannon didn’t.

He was about to start after her when a figure stepped from the hangar. Lean and graceful and filled with menace. Cold fingers seemed to wrap around Cooper’s torso. As though his heart had a memory, knew what it faced. The man who had only weeks ago slid a knife into his chest. Who had put his son in a coma and killed Cooper without breaking a sweat. The fear that gripped him was primal. Brain stem stuff, deep and certain, and with every step Soren took, it magnified.

Then a thought occurred to him.

They had to stop that drone. Neither his life nor Shannon’s meant anything compared to that. She would realize that. He knew his warrior woman, knew that she wouldn’t hesitate.

But maybe he could spare her the choice. Soren had launched the drone; he might be able to stop it. To bring it down before Shannon was forced into the only course of action available to her.

Cooper raised the shotgun. The stock was still warm from her cheek. Soren was twenty feet away. He stopped when he saw the gun come up. He had no intention to read, no plan Cooper’s gift could use. Calm as unmoving water.

Yeah? Make some waves.

Cooper aimed, exhaled, and pressed the trigger. The gun bucked in his hand.

In the instant his finger began to squeeze the trigger, Soren spun like a dancer, took two quick twisting steps and stood smiling and unscathed.

Fear’s talons dug in. Soren’s T-naught was 11.2. Even the fraction of a second it took Cooper to pull the trigger stretched out to full Mississippis for him, seconds during which he could see the angle of the gun, gauge Cooper’s aim.

It wasn’t dodging bullets, but it was—

This is a pump-action Remington tactical shotgun. Seven shells.

If you fire rapidly and wide, you can catch him.

But she was shooting at the drone. How many times? Five?

Assume you have one shot left. Two if you’re very lucky indeed.

—close enough. Cooper took a step left himself, aimed, faked a trigger pull. Soren didn’t budge. The time dilation again. Trying to fake him out would be like a man on crutches trying to juke Muhammad Ali.

Behind him, he heard a snap and a whir, and knew what it was. The gliders were launched via massive winches that yanked them a mile in seconds. Shannon had just taken off. He had at most a minute before she sacrificed herself. And that was assuming she could make it at all; if not, the drone would loose its payload and everything they had done would be moot. The militia would kill Natalie and their children, and the virus would kill the country he had fought for his whole life.

Can’t dodge, can’t plan, what can you do?

Get reckless.

Cooper yelled through gritted teeth and charged at Soren, the shotgun held in one hand at waist height. He could see the man’s confusion flicker quickly, and for just an instant Cooper’s gift had a hold. There was no time to aim, just hope, and so he pulled the trigger as he ran, the recoil ripping his wrist back, pain shooting up it.

The blast jerked Soren halfway around. When the man turned back to face him, there were deep gouges across his right cheek. His ear had been shorn away. Blood flowed slick and dark down his face. His smile had vanished.

Cooper considered gambling on another shell in the gun, but if it was empty everything was over, so he just kept going, bringing the shotgun up to hold it by the barrel, the heat of it scorching his hands as he swung it like a club.

Soren stepped aside and jammed two locked fingers into Cooper’s shoulder. His hand tingled and his fingers opened automatically and the gun flew off to skitter across the tarmac. He tried to use the momentum to crash into Soren, get him on the ground and land on top of him, but his opponent just wasn’t there, he’d slid sideways and kept one foot out and braced to catch Cooper’s, and now it was him falling, one arm numb, the other unable to get up in time to keep his face from colliding with the concrete, an electric shock through his teeth and a flash of white in his skull. Everything jumped, became two worlds that didn’t line up. Before he could process the stereoscopic images, Soren grabbed Cooper’s hair, yanked his head back, then slammed it into the concrete again. Fireworks exploded behind his retinas.

His body was distant and trembling, nothing working quite right, but he tried to rise, had to get off the ground, the ground was death in a fight, but there was a pressure against his shoulder, Soren’s foot, he realized, pushing him so that instead of rising to a crouch he flipped over onto his back.