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“The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.” —Marcus Tullius Cicero
Lawson smiled. “Well, yes.” He stuck a finger in the air to punctuate his point. “But moreover, that desperation and an utter lack of viable choices can and has, historically, led to some of the biggest triumphs the world has ever seen. History has taught us, again and again, that there is no regime too big to topple, no country too small or weak to make a real difference.” He winked. “Think about that next time you’re feeling like little more than a speck in this world.”
Maya was sixteen, and dangerously smart. She had clearly inherited her mother’s intellect; she would be a senior that coming school year by virtue of having skipped the eighth grade. She had Reid’s dark hair, pensive smile, and flair for the dramatic. Sara, on the other hand, got her looks entirely from Kate. As she grew into a teenager, it sometimes pained Reid to look at her face, though he never let on. She’d also acquired Kate’s fiery temper. Most of the time, Sara was a total sweetheart, but every now and then she would detonate, and the fallout could be devastating.
Yesterday my biggest problem was keeping my students’ attention for ninety minutes. Today he was white-knuckling a lever to a bomb while trying to elude Russian terrorists. Focus. He reached the corner of the building and peered around its edge, sticking to the shadows as best he could. There was a silhouette of a man, a pistol in his grip, standing sentry on the eastern façade.
Reid took no time to appreciate the beauty of the wondrous city. Funny, he thought, that it used to be the tax-collecting hub of Roman provinces nearly two thousand years earlier, and now one of the world’s financial capitals. If we live through today, maybe we can come back and see it again sometime. Kent’s voice—it was his own inner voice, but the Kent side—teasing him.
Cartwright could do little more than shake his head and stare blankly at a coffee ring on Mullen’s desk. It certainly sounded like someone they knew—someone they had known. Near the end, Zero had gotten reckless, unpredictable, wild even. One of the higher-ups had referred to him as “feral.”
“Jesus, Kent, what happened to you?” Maria spotted him as he limped out of the steel door to the skating rink. She hurried over and slung his arm over her shoulders to help steady him.
