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The thought didn’t bring relief. It brought disgust. Self-loathing that he had been fooled, and a faint contempt for the methodology. Just before the cutting had begun, Soren had thought that Cooper had been bluffing, that he wasn’t strong enough to do what was necessary. He had been right. Cooper’s will was not the equal of his, or of John’s.

Soren would teach him that tonight. He would finish what his friend had started and destroy everything Cooper had fought for. And when that’s done, find him, and repay the suffering. Let him die alone and screaming.

He had recoded the girl’s d-pad to his own thumbprint, and he activated it now. One of the files John had sent was a program to hack the drone controls. He executed it. A graphic of a radar ping appeared, the sensor line sweeping the circle once, twice, searching for signal recipients. When it found them, it gave way to a command screen.

The drones could be flown manually, and he considered it. There was a certain poetry to steering the engine of the world’s death and rebirth. But he knew nothing of flying, and in the end, chose to upload the autopilot patterns John had provided. Simple inward spirals, one clockwise, the other counter. They would circle Tesla until the liquid hydrogen fuel cells gave out. Hours, he assumed. Maybe days.

He stepped back to examine his work. The tanks detracted from the aesthetic. Unlike the camera package, they hadn’t been designed for this purpose, and they bulged like tumors on the bellies of the sleek machines. No doubt the drones’ efficiency would suffer as well, but they didn’t have far to go. As he had worked, the slow-motion thunder of the battle had, if anything, intensified.

Soren found the valve of the first tank and twisted it until he heard a faint hiss.

Then he pressed a button on the d-pad, and the engine spun to life.

Seconds later, the drone began to roll.

Cooper’s veins pumped fire and his head ached. Adrenaline made his hands tremble. They had been running at a full sprint since Shannon figured out where Soren was headed, slowing down only when they just-shy-of-literally collided with a group of militiamen. It had been a fast and brutal fight, five Sons to the two of them, but at close range the men’s weapons were useless, and he and Shannon had fought together with calm synchronicity, her spinning and sliding, never where they thought she would be, throwing high kicks and sword strikes with the edge of her palm, his approach more about churning through them, bulling right into one before stomping the heel of a second, twisting his arm back, and breaking it at the elbow. The third, a monster who looked like he could bench a truck, had gotten him in a bear hug, and it had taken a knee to the groin and two head-butts to the man’s nose to break the grip.

By that time the one he’d first knocked over had started to rise, but Shannon’s shotgun had put a stop to that. They had looked at each other, then leapt back into a sprint. The streets were dark, the buildings deserted, but behind them the battle raged on. The smell of smoke was in the air, and the sounds of dying men and women.

When they reached the airfield, his first thought was that she must have been mistaken. The runway lights were on, but there was no one around, no guards at the gate, no planes streaking down the field. Then he saw the glider at one end, already wheeled into position, the cable attached to the nose of it, the left-hand door open, and, crumpled beside the front wheel, the body of the pilot. Too far away to make out many details—other than a reflection of the moon in the pool of blood. Soren’s signature.

Too late? Fear skewered him; if Soren had already taken off, it was all over. Not just this battle, but the whole of the world he knew. John Smith’s virus would consume everything. It would destroy the government and bring ruin upon America, and perhaps the whole world. It would kill Natalie and corrupt his son and lead to the deaths of—

A small light danced in one hangar, the one marked with the Epstein Industries logos. Beneath the gunfire and growing louder was a sound. A hum, like a turbine, or . . .

An engine. “Shannon!” He didn’t wait to see if she would follow, just ran toward the hangar with everything he had, his heart ripping his chest and breath burning.

A shape rolled from the open hangar, low and predatory. It was a third the size of the Seraphim the military used, but he recognized the UAV easily enough, and, as it began to pick up speed, he saw something slung on its belly. A cylinder perhaps four feet long.

He weighed options—

It’s thirty yards away on a perpendicular path, and the engine is accelerating.

You don’t know that an explosion will destroy the virus.