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“Well. I’ve got bad news and bad news.” Ethan started out of the closet. “There’s a ton of information here, years’ worth of clinical notes. But just looking through the last couple of days, it’s clear that Smith’s people were successful in mounting the serum onto a disease vector, a custom strain of the flu. A nasty one, best I can tell, something they’ve been working on for a long time. Influenza is an RNA virus and our serum is built around non-coding RNA, so they basically could just splice it into junk genes included for that purpose. They fast-bred it, used an aerosolized suspension medium, total volume about three hundred CF.”

“In English?”

“They made what John Smith wanted. A lot of it.”

“And the other bad news?”

“According to the lab notes, the virus was stored in standard high-pressure tanks. Two of them, each about four feet tall, probably fifty pounds apiece.”

“So?”

“So,” Ethan said, and gestured around the lab, “you see anything that looks like that?”

Cooper looked, but he already knew what he’d find. On some level, he had already known the moment before he shot John Smith. Killing me isn’t the same as beating me.

“Oh,” said Shannon. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah,” Ethan replied drily. “That about sums it up.”

Cooper wanted to scream. It was a feeling he’d had a lot lately. All of this. All he’d done. And even dead, John Smith was outplaying him.

“Okay,” he said. “Focus on the job.”

“What does that—”

“You’re in charge here, Ethan. Run your team. See if you can figure out where those tanks went. Failing that, figure out how we can beat the virus.”

“Cooper—”

“A vaccine. A shot. A fucking antidote. I don’t care. But you dig in and you work until you find something, you hear me?” Cooper gripped the man’s biceps, squeezed hard. “This was your project, Doc. You and Abe built this. Clean up the mess.”

“But—”

“Just do it.” He stalked away, had to find a place to think, to reach out to Epstein, figure out the next move. Maybe together they could pattern John Smith well enough to guess what he intended. Everything had happened fast, Smith couldn’t be that far ahead of them—

His phone rang, and he was about to silence it when he saw the name. He answered, said, “Natalie.”

Across the lab, Shannon stiffened. He didn’t blame her, but there wasn’t time to worry about dating niceties right now.

“Nick? Are you okay? You don’t sound good.”

“Busy. John Smith is dead.”

“Are you sure?”

“I killed him.”

“Oh,” Natalie said, her voice strange. Why? Natalie had never loved violence, but she had always known what he did. And after the way they had mourned Bobby Quinn, he would have expected, maybe not elation, but something other than the flat tone she used as she said, “That’s great.”

“What’s wrong?”

“So you haven’t seen the news.”

“No.”

“The militia, the New Sons of Liberty. They’re approaching the Vogler Ring.” She took a ragged breath. “And they’re marching children in front of them.”

CHAPTER 28

“—this footage, streaming live from a CNN newsdrone, shows the New Sons of Liberty approaching the farthest borders of Tesla, capital of the New Canaan Holdfast. Now, at this altitude it’s a little hard to make out details, but when we zoom in, you can see that these smaller figures at the head of the column are children, approximately six hundred of them. Given current relations with the Holdfast, information is limited, but sources have confirmed that all of these children are abnorms captured by NSOL since their dramatic attack—”

The news was always playing in the Situation Room, and the Laurel Lodge conference room at Camp David was no different. What was unusual was that the volume was turned up, and the people around the table were silent.

It can’t be considered a positive, Owen Leahy thought, when the American president is watching the news to find out what’s happening.

Beside the tri-d was a larger screen showing a similar angle, although this one was far more distinct. Government satellite footage, dialed up high enough to make out individual faces. The video rotated through different perspectives, a montage of roughly edited abominations:

A ten-year-old girl weeping as she walked, tears carving clean streaks down her dirty face.

A teenage boy carrying a four-year-old child in one arm and a ratty stuffed bear in the other.

A kid stumbling, rising hurriedly, his pants torn and his knee stained with blood, fear in his eyes as he looked over his shoulder.

And behind them, a long line of men carrying rifles. The ones in the front had them aimed at the children. The column stretched for half a mile.

Leahy checked his phone for the fiftieth time. Still no response.

The newscaster continued, “The New Canaan Holdfast has long been rumored to have a defensive perimeter surrounding the city of Tesla, and we presume that the purpose of these children is to serve as a kind of human shield—”