Brilliance (30 page)

“What the hell?” He spat the words as Cooper and Shannon climbed the steps.

“Excuse me?”

“Paying for my ID. You trying to be the big man? You think you know me?” The abnorm shook his head. “You don’t know me.”

“Whatever.” Cooper started past, but the big man grabbed his arm. The grip was stone.

“I asked you a question. What do you want?”

Cooper glanced down at the man’s hand, thinking,
Twist sideways, right elbow to the solar plexus, stomp the arch of the foot, spin back with a left uppercut.
Thinking,
So much for good deeds.
“I want you to get out of my way.”

Something in his tone made the man hesitate, and the grip loosened. Cooper brushed his sleeve, walked past.

“I didn’t ask for this. I don’t owe you nothing.”

He stiffened, the irritation growing. Turned. “You do, asshole. You owe me six months of your life. The phrase you’re looking for is ‘thank you.’”

The man crossed his arms. Held the stare. “I’m not anybody’s slave. Not Schneider’s, and not yours.”

“Bravo,” Cooper said. “Congratulations. You’re an island, alone unto yourself.”

“Huh?”

“I’m so tired of people like you. Of
twists
like you. Schneider claimed six months of your life on nonsense, and you just laid down and took it. Okay, fine, your choice. But then an angel bought you that time back. And what’s your first thought? He must want something. He can’t just be trying to bear his neighbor’s burden. He can’t just be an abnorm who doesn’t like seeing another one treated that way.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “Nobody does nothing for free. Abnorm or not.”

“Yeah, well, no wonder we’re losing.” Cooper turned away and walked for the door. Over his shoulder, he said, “I don’t want you to be my slave. I want you to not be one at all.”

Then he yanked open the door and stepped inside. Behind him, Shannon chuckled. “You’re a piece of work, Cooper.”

“Let’s go find Schneider.”

The forger saw them coming, gestured for them to follow without waiting to see if they would. Cooper felt his irritation growing.
Just get what you came for and get out.
Time to head for Wyoming, find John Smith, and finish this. Maybe it wouldn’t solve all the problems in the world. But it would solve one of them. And it might buy a little time for the world to grow the hell up.

For a man of his means, Schneider certainly hadn’t spent much on his office. Cinderblock walls painted white, a chipboard desk with a lamp and a phone. The only expensive item was a custom-looking newtech datapad, sleek and machined. The forger sat down, opened a drawer, and took out an envelope. “Passports, driver’s licenses, credit cards.” He tossed the packet on the desk.

Cooper opened it, pulled out a passport, and saw his picture above the name Tom Cappello. He flipped the pages, saw that he had traveled extensively, mostly in Europe. The document was faded and worn soft. “The microchip matches?”

“What do you think I am?”

“I’m getting tired of that question. The microchip matches?”

“Of course.” Schneider leaned back, crossed his ankle over a bony knee. “More important, your information has been hacked into all of the relevant databases. A complete profile—spending habits, mortgages, voting record, speeding tickets, all of it.”

Cooper opened the other passport, saw Shannon’s picture. It must have been from a security camera somewhere in the building, but the shot was clean, the background suitably bland. Then he saw the name. “Are you kidding me?”

“What?” Shannon moved beside him, took the document. “Allison Cappello. So what?”

“He made us married.”

Schneider smiled his dental horror show. “That a problem?”

“I didn’t ask for it.”

“The profiles support each other. Minimizes the risk of the data insertion.”

“Yeah, for you. For us, it means we have to be able to play a married couple.”

Schneider shrugged. “Not my problem. Now listen. You both exist, but only at a superficial level. Your new identities have been implanted into the baseline systems. But it will take time for it to propagate. That’s the only way to do it. No way to modify every computer that would have a record. Instead, I plant your identities like a seed, and they grow.”

“How long?”

“You could probably clear a basic New Canaan security check now. But in a few days you’ll have recursive backup, with your identities spread throughout the whole system. Wait till then if you can.”

Cooper didn’t answer. He put the passport back in the envelope and turned to go.

“And Poet?”

“Yeah?”

“Come back anytime. I can always use your money.” The forger laughed.

When they walked back through the loading dock, the big man was gone. Just as well. In his current mood, Cooper might have used him as a practice dummy.

“We could probably stay with Lee and Lisa for a few days.”

Cooper unlocked the car, shook his head. “Let’s get on the road.”

“You want to drive to Wyoming?”

“Might as well. We need the time, and it’s safer than an airport.”

“All right.” Shannon thumbed through her passport. “Tom and Allison Cappello.” She laughed. “If that’s your way of trying to get me into bed, you get points for originality.”

“Cute.” He started the car and pointed it east. “So how did we meet?”

“Hmm?”

“We’re married. If we get questioned, we need to be able to look married.”

“Right. Well, at work, I suppose. It’s true, after all.”

The layers of irony in that made him smile. “Maybe a different job, though. Something boring, so no one asks follow-up questions about it.”

“Accounting?”

“Anybody asks me about their tax return, we’re done. How about…logistics. For a shipping company. No one wants to know how things get from place to place.”

“Okay. I worked there first. We met when you were transferred to Chicago. No, Gary, Indiana. No one wants to know about Gary, Indiana, either,” she said. “You were smitten with me, of course.”

“Actually, I think you chased me. I played it cool.”

“It was totally obvious. You kept pulling puppy-dog faces. And making excuses to come by my desk.”

“You ever actually have a desk?”

“Sure, in my apartment. It does a great job of holding up my fake plant.” She leaned back and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “We went to the movies for our first date. You were a gentleman, didn’t try anything.”

“But you were hot to go. You kept touching my arm and tossing your hair. Fiddling with your bra strap.”

“You wish.”

“And panting. I remember a lot of panting.”

“Shut up.”

Cooper smiled and merged onto the highway. Their rhythm was easy, natural. He wasn’t flirting, exactly, but the banter was fun. They kept it up, kept it light, as he drove back to Chinatown. Lisa had made them promise to have lunch before they left, and it seemed as though they had the time to spare now. He pulled up a mental map of Wyoming. The Holdfast spanned a good chunk of the middle of the state, an ugly sprawl of desert and badlands cobbled together in a thousand real estate transactions, with a border like a gerrymandered congressional district. He figured it was about a twenty-five-hour drive. They could take it slow, get some rest along the way. Stop somewhere and buy a couple of wedding rings. And he could use the time to make a plan. Getting to Erik Epstein wouldn’t be easy, and that was only a stepping-stone on the way to John Smith.

“The Amalfi Coast of Italy,” she said. “That’s where we honeymooned. We rented a room on the side of a cliff, with a balcony where we drank wine. Every day we swam in the ocean.”

“I remember. You looked dynamite in that suit.”

“The red one?” She looked at him through dark lashes. “You always liked me in red.”

“It’s good with your body,” he said, the words spilling out before he could stop them. The memory of last night flashed back, the soft whisper of her shirt sliding off, and the image he’d invented. He felt a little heat in his forehead, glanced over at her.

She wore a half smile. “My body, huh?”

“Your skin, I mean. You said your dad is Lebanese—what’s your mom?”

“French. All burgundy lips and flowing hair. They were quite the couple. He was a businessman, a very sharp dresser with a pencil moustache. The two of them were like something out of an RKO flick.”

“Were?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” She set her shoulders, and he read the active change in topic there, marked it to the pattern that she was becoming in his mind.

He was just about to ask where they lived when he saw the Escalade. Traffic had been getting steadily worse as they’d drawn closer to Chinatown, which he’d chalked up to tourists and the lunch crowd. But the truck—

Late model Escalade, black, tinted windows.

Parked half in, half out of the street. Like it stopped suddenly. Right at the intersection of Cermak and Archer, two of the arteries of Chinatown.

Engine running.

Government plates.

Shit.

—sent a warning tingle down his spine. Cooper sat bolt upright, fingers tightening on the wheel. Shannon picked up the move, followed his eyes, said, “No.”

He glanced in the rearview, half expecting to see black SUVs bearing down on them, but there was nothing but a long line of cars. If it was a trap, the other side hadn’t swung shut yet. A U-turn? Conspicuous, a last resort. It could just be a coincidence, a DAR crash vehicle down here for something else, with a different target.

“Lee and Lisa,” Shannon said, and jerked as if she’d been electrocuted. “No, no, no.”

“We don’t know—”

“The traffic,” she said. “Damn, I should have seen it. Stop the car.”

“Wait, Shannon, we can’t—”

“Stop the car!”

He saw it then—the traffic hadn’t just been slowing. It had been creeping to a stop. This wasn’t a matter of a crowded street or a backed-up stoplight. Something was blocking the flow of cars. It could be an accident. A collision, with police on the scene.

Yeah. And I suppose the DAR is here to write tickets.

Cooper bumped the car up over a curb into a small strip mall. Shannon was out the door before the wheels had finished rolling. He shut off the ignition and followed her, the two of them sprinting through the parking lot.

In the distance, a sound, loud and mixed. Not one source, but hundreds overlapping. His first thought was that it was a parade, some sort of festival, but he knew that was wishful thinking. He’d seen SUVs just like that a thousand times, had called them in a hundred times.

The DAR’s private paramilitary police force, a blend of riot cop and SWAT team. They wore black body armor and helmets with visors that completely hid their features. The visors functioned as a heads-up display, enhancing targeting, displaying map coordinates, and allowing night vision. The department called the units tactical response teams.

The public called them the faceless.

Ahead of him, Shannon dodged past the end of the strip mall, leaped a short fence, and sprinted for Archer. Cooper poured it on, hit the fence without breaking stride, and pushed himself over it. She was halfway across the street, dodging through the snarled traffic. A small green space surrounded an apartment building, and she blitzed through the middle of it. He lost sight of her as she rounded the building, leaning into the run, his breath coming fast with the sudden transition to motion.

Half a block to the north, another black Escalade was parked at the entrance to a bank. The doors were open, and he spotted three faceless in defensive positions. Bulky with armor and with blank glass for a head, they resembled predatory insects. Each man held a submachine gun with a folding stock. Shannon was racing south now, right down the middle of the street. Car horns added their screams to the roar of the crowd, closer with every step. Cooper caught up to her just as she made an abrupt turn. He followed.

And saw what was making the noise. The sidewalk and alley were jammed with people, most Chinese, all facing the other direction. They yelled and shook their fists. The group was densely packed and pushing forward without making any progress. Over their heads, Cooper saw a dozen faceless with riot shields cordoning off an alley.

The alley where Lee’s social club was located.

No.

Shannon had hit the crowd already, slipped into it like an arrow into the ocean, her gift showing holes and vectors. Cooper followed as best he could, shoving his way through. The noise was unbelievable, a fury of anger and fear in a foreign language. As he watched, a man at the front scooped up a stone and hurled it. The rock bounced harmlessly off a shield. The commando stepped forward and snapped the shield into the guy hard enough that Cooper could almost hear the crunch of the man’s nose shattering. He dropped, blood pouring, and the crowd roared louder. Cooper looked around frantically, taking in the low buildings, the fire escapes, the alley farther south, trying to find an opening he knew they couldn’t risk.

DAR Tactical Response Team Protocol 43: In the event of an extraction from a dense and hostile environment, first establish a perimeter operating zone. Limit force application unless targets possess a significant strategic advantage and a demonstrated intent to employ that advantage.

Translation: unarmed people on the ground just get hit, but if anybody climbs on a building, shoot them.

Shannon had made it halfway through the crowd before stalling out. Even her gift couldn’t find a way through the mob. The faceless held the mouth of the alley shoulder to shoulder, with Chinatown’s furious residents layered twenty deep against them. Cooper grabbed a man in front of him and yanked, tangling the guy’s foot as he went. The man staggered back into the crowd, and Cooper slid in behind Shannon.

“We need to go,” he shouted over the roar of the crowd. Right now the primary team would be searching Lee’s gambling den and the apartment above. They’d have thermal scans and dogs, and it wouldn’t take them long to realize that he and Shannon weren’t there. “They’ll search the crowd for us.”