Written in Fire (The Brilliance Trilogy Book 3) by Marcus Sakey Page A

Erik said. “Your delay was inappropriate. Time is a factor.”
    “Time is always a factor.” Cooper looked around, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. Wearing a hoodie and Chuck Taylors, Erik stood in the center of the room, pale ringmaster to this digital circus. His eyes seemed more sunken that usual, as though he hadn’t slept in a week. Beside him, his brother Jakob was the picture of refined cool in a five-thousand-dollar Lucy Veronica suit. The two couldn’t have seemed less alike, Erik’s extreme geek set beside Jakob’s air of easy command, but in truth, they functioned as a team; Erik was the brains, the money, the visionary, and Jakob was the face and voice, the man who dined with presidents and tycoons. “And I don’t work for you.”
    “No,” Jakob said, “you’ve made that abundantly clear. In fact, you’ve failed to do everything we’ve asked of you.”
    “That’s not quite true. I did convince President Clay to let you secede. Of course, that was before you murdered him.” It probably wasn’t a good idea to be so flip, given that he was talking to two of the most powerful men in the world. But Cooper just couldn’t make himself care. Part of it was that flippancy let him tamp down his seething fury; no matter what he’d said to Quinn, no matter that he understood their actions philosophically, they had still murdered soldiers, and that he could never forgive.
    The other part might have to do with last night. There were reasons he and Natalie had divorced, good ones, but they had nothing to do with the bedroom. A fact that had been demonstrated rather thoroughly last night, leaving Cooper with a loose-limbed jauntiness.
    They hadn’t discussed it this morning. The kids were up, and neither of them wanted to confuse Kate and Todd. But while last night had been rooted in the past, he knew now that Natalie was interested in the future. And she wasn’t the only one. It wasn’t just the sex, or even Natalie herself. They were good together. Easy. There had been a moment, as he took a break from cooking pancakes to hand her a mug of coffee, that felt as comfortable as slipping on an old pair of jeans and a favorite T-shirt. It felt like home.
    “You’re different,” a small voice said. Cooper squinted, then saw the girl huddled in a chair, her knees tucked up in front of her, a screen of purple bangs hiding her downturned face. Millicent, Erik Epstein’s near-constant companion and one of the most powerful readers Cooper had ever met. She sensed the inner fears and secret darknesses of everyone around her, had intuited Daddy’s weaknesses and Mommy’s cruelties before she could speak. A ten-year-old girl whose insight shaped billion-dollar deals and resulted in murders. As always, Cooper felt a flush of pity for her; too much, too much.
    “Hi, Millie. How are you?”
    “You’re different. Did something happen?” She lifted her head, stared at him with ancient eyes set in a little girl’s face.
    Natalie astride you, her thighs clamped around your hips, her head thrown back . . .
    “Oh,” she said. “Sex. But I thought you and Shannon were doing it.”
    For the first time in a decade, Cooper found himself blushing. To cover it, he turned to the Epsteins. “You’ve taken care of Ethan Park?”
    “Yes,” Jakob said. “We’ve given him a facility that exceeds anything he’s known, along with a staff, all brilliant. With his knowledge of Dr. Couzen’s process, rediscovering the gene therapy to create gifts is just a matter of time.”
    “Which you don’t have.”
    “Uncertain,” Erik said. “The data is unclear. Disparate factors, personality matrices under exceeding stress, unexplored variables. Predictions are below threshold of utility.”
    “Yeah?” Cooper pointed at a video feed hanging between graphs, a high-angle perspective on the rocky ground outside New Canaan’s southern border. The camp was a hive of activity, twenty thousand people preparing for war. “They