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The elevator doors opened, and they stepped out into a bare concrete hallway. Soldiers and civilians moved through the unpolished guts of the arena: electrical conduit above, forklifts parked in alcoves, a faint tang of stale urine to the air.

“Speaking of residents and best interests,” Cooper said. “Vincent is literally our only lead, and we’re going to be asking him to betray Abe. Depending what your old boss means to him, he may not want to do that.”

“I got ya,” Ethan hammed in a bad film noir accent, “you’re saying we might needs to get rough, show him the wrong end of a pair a pliers.”

“I’m saying that he is going to help us, period.”

“Wait. You’re not kidding?” Ethan stopped walking. “Come on, man. That’s Gestapo crap.”

Maybe it was the leftover frustration from this morning, or the way the world seemed desperate to destroy itself, or the urine smell of the corridor. Maybe he was just tired and sore and hadn’t seen his kids in too damn long. Whatever the reason, the rage surged snake-quick, and without consciously planning the move, he spun and put Ethan up against the wall. The scientist yelped in surprise.

“I am sick,” Cooper enunciated carefully, “of being compared to the Gestapo.” A voice in his head said, Easy, easy, but another pointed out that he’d had two chances to kill John Smith, that he had brought down one president and failed another, that hard as he had tried to make a better world for his children, all that had happened was that he’d hastened the end of it. “America is at war because I didn’t act like the Gestapo. Seventy-five thousand soldiers died because I didn’t act like the Gestapo. That boy was lynched because I didn’t act like the Gestapo.”

It was only as he said it that he realized that was what was haunting him. A dead teenager missing a shoe. That was the real reason he’d beaten three men senseless this morning. And why just now his muscles had moved ahead of his mind. He made himself take a deep breath, and saw the fear in Ethan’s eyes, and his own rage drained away as swiftly as it had arrived.

“I’m sorry.” He let go of the doc. “I’m just tired of people who never have to make these decisions telling me that I’m a monster.”

Ethan stared at him. Opened his mouth, closed it. “Soren would have killed my whole family. You saved my wife and daughter. We may not always agree, but I will never think you’re a monster.”

Cooper nodded. Started away.

“A wee bit temperamental, maybe.”

Cooper had anticipated a crowd of milling thousands, had envisioned loud conversations and the yells of children and maybe even some laughter. Instead, there were about a hundred people listlessly wandering the floor of the arena, speaking in whispers, their eyes carefully downcast. Dozens of armed soldiers watched them. The feeling was of a prison yard, or a zoo.

Beyond the floor, the seats had been removed, and the slope built out in tiers of prefab rooms like LEGO blocks, row upon row rising into darkness. The cavernous stadium was hauntingly quiet, the murmur of voices from the floor faint against the weight of all that space.

Someone planned it in advance. Cooper heard Ethan’s voice in his head. What are the odds they did it out of the goodness of their hearts?

The soldier at the base of the Section C stairwell had a spray of pimples across his chin. He scanned their badges, then said, “Need me to unlock one, sir?”

“They’re kept locked?”

“Yes, sir. For safety.”

Cooper stared at him, said, “C-6-8.”

The guard started up, and Cooper followed, one hand tracing the rail, smelling old beer and counting. Seven to a row, twenty rows to a section, twenty sections, just shy of three thousand of them. Three thousand cages.

Cages for people like you.

When they reached Vincent’s, the guard swiped his ID card, then readied his rifle and said, “C-6-8! Coming in.” He reached for the handle. Cooper stopped him. “I’ve got it.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” He waited for the guard to walk away, then opened the door.

The prefab was maybe eight feet by four, the size of a walk-in closet or a sheet of plywood. A windowless box with just enough room for a bunk and a chemical toilet, the reek of which filled the air. The man lying down had the fine features of actors in scotch ads, although the black eye and broken nose diminished the impact of his good looks. Without shifting his gaze from the fluorescent, Vincent Luce said, “You’re not a guard.”

“My name is Nick Cooper. We need to talk.”

“About?”

Cooper gestured at the door. “Want to get some air?”