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“I agree,” Leahy said. “I don’t want to wipe out the gifted. But we have to dismantle the New Canaan Holdfast. And we have to implement the Monitoring Oversight Initiative. Sign it into law and we can have 95 percent of abnorms microchipped within three months. I know it sounds old-fashioned, but it will work.”

“What if they don’t comply? What if they’d rather fight to the death?”

“In that case—”

A blast of sound and force tossed him into the air.

Swirling sky, gray marble, then concrete rushing toward him, falling, he was falling, and he put his hands out as he slammed into the street, a shrieking hum in his ears like an endless scream, and all around smoke and fire and bodies and people staggering, bleeding, an agent staring at her left shoulder where her arm no longer hung, her face lit by the burning ruin of the limousine.

Leahy gasped, coughed, saw blood spatter the street along with flesh—he’d bitten part of his tongue off. There it was, part of his tongue, lying on the concrete.

Hands seized him roughly, hauled him up, and he flailed, threw an elbow that was blocked, his arms were pinned as two men dragged him, and he tried to tell the agents to wait, that he needed his tongue, but then one of the Escalades was in front of him, agents leaning against the hood with sidearms out, firing gunshots he could barely hear, aiming in different directions—it wasn’t just a bomb, it was an assault—and then the agents hurled him in the open door of the SUV where he collided with someone, the president, both of them landing in a tangle, the door slamming shut, someone thumping on it, and before either he or Ramirez could move, the driver jammed on the gas and the truck lurched, tossing them against the backseat, more gunfire, he could hear it more clearly now, fast pop-pop-pops, then a shivering crunch and they were flung again, the Escalade clipping something, out the window an inferno, the limousine, and then a burst of speed as the driver cleared it.

Leahy looked down, realized he was on top of the president. He started to move, then caught himself and shielded her body with his, lying on her like a lover, their faces inches apart, her eyes dilated and cheek torn. He could smell smoke and her perfume as his mouth filled with blood and the truck gained speed and the driver said something he couldn’t hear through the hum in his ears and the thought that kept repeating: a voice in his head saying, over and over, that this was on him.

CHAPTER 4

Luke Hammond woke screaming without making a sound.

The screaming: watching his sons burn alive.

Joshua burning in the sky as his Wyvern came apart around him, jet fuel exploding in a wash of light sucked into his lungs to scorch him from the inside out as he fell, endlessly. Zack burning in his tank, trapped in twisted metal, hair on fire and skin bubbling as thick black polymer smoke choked the world.

Every time he’d closed his eyes for the last two weeks, he watched them die.

The silence: forty years of service beginning on long-range recon patrol in Viet Nam. LRRP, meaning way the hell out of bounds, so at nineteen he’d learned to wake fully aware and in control, because those who woke foggy died.

Wan sunlight beat down from a white Wyoming sky. Ninety-three million miles away, the sun was, and since his sons had died that number somehow seemed to mean something. Not the digits, the distance, the way something that means everything can also be forever out of reach.

“He’s here.”

Luke sat up, leaned against the frame of the pickup bed. December, and chilly, though thankfully not much snow. Snow might have done them in. He’d retired from the army two years ago, but he still did an immediate situational assessment, just like every time he woke, even though until recently the sitrep went something like: 0317 HOURS, AWAKENED BY STRONG NEED TO URINATE.

Today, though—lately, though.

Situation report: The beautiful boys who used to run at you, arms wide, saying, “Up! Up!” are dead. The sun-stained hours pushing them on swings and dabbing hydrogen peroxide on skinned knees did not protect them. The moments they fell asleep in your arms and you, bone-tired and sore, stayed where you were because you knew that this transient sweetness needed to be drunk deep—those moments did not keep them safe. The thousands of times you told them you loved them provided no shelter.

Your sons are dead. Burned alive. They are ninety-three million miles away.

What is left of you is fifty-nine years old. Washboard belly and pincushion feet. You were sleeping in the cold metal bed of your pickup truck, five miles outside Rawlins, Wyoming, a town built for passing through. Surrounded by thousands of similarly wounded men and women, all gathered for a purpose none of you can quite name.

“He’s here.”

Luke pushed the blankets aside and slid out of the truck. To the soldier who’d woken him, he said, “They still coming in?”

“Yes, sir. Faster than ever.”