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Triple shit.
“Wh-what are you—” While he wasn’t looking, she scooted back by a shaky step. “I mean, how did you get—”
He laughed harder, spinning back around. “Please, Trace. Give me some credit. I figured Franzen would end up somewhere in the neighborhood—though I have to give him credit for finagling something here on the base and not going straight home. It’s been kind of amusing, watching his family crying their way through the days and nights. I really thought the mighty John Franzen would cave to that kind of pressure. The man has a will of iron.” He paused long enough to drop a heavy-lidded stare down the length of her body. “About some things.”
Tracy barely disguised her shiver from the new bugs he brought, skittering from her scalp to her toes. It was time for another tactic. Now. Gee-buddy-nice-to-see-ya-again clearly wasn’t the black and white safety zone it once was between them.
A lotof things weren’t the same between them.
Especially that safety zone.
Had it ever really been there at all?
Nothing but a black hole opened in her heart as her answer—the dark space once occupied by her warm affection for this man. This friend who hadn’t been one at all. This person she hadn’t known at all.
What the hell had she missed? And when? Or had Sol’s mask been that good, that polished? And for how long? When had his betrayal begun? And why?
The queries bombarded. Fed the insects. Gave them wings. They ate into her like locusts in a corn field, making her shake again.
In fury.
“I don’t think you’re in a position to make a quality call about anyone’s willpower, Mr. Wrightman.” She emphasized the last of it with gritted teeth, letting him know how close she’d been to substitute another name entirely.
At once, his own locked teeth appeared from his sneering lips. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Tracy.” The expression exploded into a caustic bark. “Are you kidding me? Willpower?” His hands clawed at his head again. “You want to know about willpower? My whole fucking life, for the last fifteen years, has been about nothing but willpower.”
That thudded the air between them like a four-foot wide cannonball. Tracy shook her head. “That’s really all you’re going to give me?” she snapped back. “All you feel you owe me, Sol? I find out you’ve helped the monsters who murdered nearly every leader in the free world, and this is all—”
“No.”
She jogged her chin up. It wasn’t hard now. Anger sure felt a hell of a lot better than fear. “No what?”
“No.” He diminished the space she’d gained with two hard stomps. “It wasn’t murder.”
She almost laughed. Raw grief, spurred by the memories of Craig and Norene Nichols, turned it into a jagged choke. “Fine. You prefer assassination? Execution? Slaughter? Multiple homicide?”
“Cleansing.” He growled the word with such virulence, she again wondered if she’d imagined it—until he jabbed a glare to join it, just inches from her face. She jerked back, breathing hard. Sol yanked her back, shackling her upper arm in his grip. “I prefer cleansing, because that was exactly what we did.”
No more hard breaths. No more breathing, period. Her heart and lungs collided, racing toward each other in disbelieving horror.
“S-Sol,” she stuttered. “You—you aren’t—you can’t be serious.”
He rolled his eyes. The casual move was a bizarre contrast with his vicious snarl. “Fuck. Why does everyone always say that? You think I’m just kidding about this? That I’d joke about something like the future of our world…our entire goddamned planet?”
Deep gulp. Then compelling the breaths in, one by one, until words finally emerged again. “Okay. All right,” she murmured. “You’re not joking. So—so help me understand, then. Help me see—”
“But you see already.” His fingers closed in tighter, pinching until she had to clench against a wince. “You see, Tracy, don’t you?” His stare intensified, starting to remind her of a religious martyr from some medieval painting. “You see the beauty of it. All of it. The world…our world…it has cancer, right? And to cure the cancer, you have to cut out the tumors. Rip them out…at their sources.”
“Oh, God.” It blurted from her, compelled by nauseated shock, before she could think twice. Who the hell was she kidding? She wasn’t thinking. She was only reacting. Struggling like hell to wrap her mind around what she was hearing. That Sol, her vibrant and responsible and frenetic and fervent Sol, was actually a lunatic who bought into this insanity… “Rip out…their sources…”
“Exactly!” He lifted his free hand, snapping his fingers hard enough to sound like a whip. Tracy’s whole body coiled as if he’d wielded the latter. “And filling all that blackness with new light. New energy…”
“A unified world regime.” She could hardly believe she was saying this. That this idea existed outside badly written sci-fi, much less been a fantasy coup in secret development, across multiple countries and continents, for what Sol claimed to be fifteen years.
“A new day.” Sol nodded, once more appearing like the crazed martyr—about to have his eyes gouged out. “A new order.” His head ticked, clicking his weird focus straight back at her. “You do get it, don’t you? Oh, Tracy.” He clutched her by the other shoulder, using the hold to yank her against him. “I knew you did. I knew you would.”
Quadruple shit.
And was it even working keeping track now? If she even could. Panic, hideous and hot, rushed her veins. It collided with a new freeze of fear, spinning her senses and faltering her balance, as she scrambled for what to do. Sol wasn’t spouting the credo of a typical political coup. This was his declaration, proud and bold, of membership in a worldwide cult. A sect of insanity.
