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The scientist sidestepped a falling man, flowed like mercury through the hole, turned left, stopped completely until a space miraculously opened between two shoving women. He slipped through, ducked under the arm of a guard, and pushed toward the far edge of the chaos.

Cooper stared, looking for a—

If you can’t catch him, you have to guess his destination.

Trains leaving the city are sold out, but the subway can take him pretty much anywhere in town.

There must be a hundred places to hide effectively, especially given this chaos.

He took down four agents in a second, but he’s running from you.

Got it.

—solution. He jumped off the trash can and raced back the way he’d come. Once out of the main concourse, the crowd thinned, and he was back on the street in no time, nearly colliding with Ethan, who said, “Did you—”

Cooper shook his head and sprinted west, then north on Vanderbilt. If he’d read the situation right, Abe would have assumed that he was with the DAR. After all, they’d arrived just as Bobby Quinn tried to arrest him. He must have presumed Cooper was backup, probably one of many.

Abe Couzen was a genius. If he was running from the DAR, he would know that the first order of business was mobility. Hide, and the department could shut down Grand Central, access the security cameras, search room to room if they had to. Board a subway, and that train could be stopped remotely, transformed into a cage. Fight, and there would always be another agent. No, if Cooper was right, Abe would want to get back out on the street as soon as possible, and the closest door was—

Right there, where the scientist was stepping out. Cooper smiled, then strode forward. “As I was saying—”

“That’s him! That’s the man with the gun!” Abe was pale and shaking, pointing a finger in his direction.

For the benefit, Cooper realized, of the soldiers who stepped out behind him. Three of them, young, on edge, fingers on the triggers of their assault rifles.

It only took thirty seconds and his old DAR badge to clear things up.

But by then, Abraham Couzen had vanished.

CHAPTER 2

“I don’t understand,” Ethan said, for about the ninth time. They were in a cab, crawling westward. “Abe beat up those guys?”

“What’d you think, they slipped on banana peels?”

“I figured you did it. Those were DAR agents, right? Abe is in his sixties. And not a ninja.”

Cooper snorted. He was used to people running—mostly that’s what happened when he chased them—but this was different. He’d miscalculated, and the stakes were too high. He thought of the moment when he saw the doctor’s pulse literally double from one beat to the next. Control of the endocrine system to manipulate his own adrenaline level. Probably norepinephrine too, for focus, maybe even cortisol and oxytocin. Enough of those and anyone is a ninja. “We should have guessed. Damn it.”

“Guessed what? Cooper, what’s going on?”

“Your old pal has gone and turned himself brilliant.”

“What?”

“The little lab project you two whipped up, the magic potion that turns normals into abnorms? He must have taken it.”

Ethan’s mouth fell open. For a moment he just sat there, his eyes unfocused. “Holy shit.” A grin split his face. “It works. I mean, the test results were off the charts, I knew it would, but we hadn’t gotten to clinical trials.”

“Looks like Abe skipped that step.”

“What can you tell me about symptom manifestations? I wonder what physical effects he’s feeling. How did his gift distinguish itself? Did you notice any—”

“Doc.”

Ethan caught himself, laughed. “Yeah, sorry. I’m just . . . I’m having a sciencegasm.”

“Try to breathe.” Cooper sighed, rubbed at his eyes. “One way that his gift distinguished itself is that he had a bunch of them.”

“You mean corollary abilities?”

“Nope. I mean distinct gifts.”

“That’s impossible. I mean, in children, sure. That’s why the Treffert-Down Spectrum isn’t administered until age eight. Before then, gifts are a free-floating proclivity toward patterning, manifesting mathematically one day, spatially the next. But as their brains continue to develop—”

“You’re not hearing me.” Cooper turned from the window. “I watched Abe’s pulse double. Instantly. That’s conscious endocrine control.”

“So what? Something like 13 percent of brilliants have some level of CEC.”