Free Brilliance by Marcus Sakey

realized the blow wasn’t in the air. A faint wind howled along the edge of the glass, and somewhere far away, a car horn. Finally, he moved to the desk and slumped awkwardly in the chair on the other side, all angles and elbows.
    “I know this is hard,” Cooper said. “But you’re doing the right thing.”
    “Sure.” The word drifting across the table.
    “Can I tell you something?” He waited until the other man looked up. “Everything you said the other day about the way gifted are treated? I agree.”
    “Right.”
    “I’m an abnorm.”
    Bryan’s face crinkled in conflicting directions: surprise and disbelief and anger. Finally the guy said, “What is it for you?”
    “Pattern recognition, a sort of souped-up intuition. I read intention. That can be really specific, like knowing where someone is going to throw a punch. But personal patterns work, too; I get to know somebody, my gift forms a picture of them, helps me guess what they’ll do.”
    “So if you’re gifted, what are you doing—”
    “—working for the DAR?” Cooper shrugged. “Actually, pretty much the same reasons you helped your sister.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “It’s not. I want my children to live in a world where abnorms and straights coexist. The difference is, I don’t think you get there by blowing things up. Especially when one group vastly outnumbers the other. See, normal people, like
you
,” he gestured with palms together, “if you decided to, you could wipe out all the people like
me
. Every one of us, or close enough it wouldn’t matter. It’s a numbers game. You have ninety-nine to every one of us.”
    “But that’s exactly why—” Bryan Vasquez stopped. “I mean.”
    “I know how you feel about the way Alex is treated. But you’re an engineer. Think logically. The relationship between norms and brilliants, it’s gunpowder. You really want to strike sparks?”
    He pulled the stamp drive from his pocket, set it on the desk, halfway between them. “Don’t forget,” Cooper said, “you’re not doing this for me. You’re doing it for Alex.”
    It was a calculated play, backing up the philosophical get-out-of-jail-free card with a personal imperative. And it was far from the first time he had lied to a suspect.
    So why am I feeling guilty about it?
    The academy. Seeing that place had stirred up issues he thought he’d made peace with. Cooper pushed away thoughts of the playground, of the woman with the placard, and locked down his expression.
    Bryan Vasquez took the stamp drive.
    Cooper said, “Let’s go.”

    “This is Quarterback. The ball is in play; repeat, Delivery Boy is moving. Headquarters, confirm.”
    “Confirmed,” Bobby Quinn’s voice crackled in his ear. “Both signals are strong.”
    The square across the street looked as planned and uninviting as ever, the black branches of manicured trees tossing in the wind. A couple of hardy souls huddled around the entrance to the nearest building, rocking from foot to foot as they sucked on cigarettes. The entrance to Metro Center Station had a steady stream of traffic. A row of newspaper dispensers, bright red and orange and yellow, ran along a low wall; at the end of it a man in a wheelchair shook a paper cup at passersby.
    Cooper kept his stance casual, pitched his voice low. “God, what have you got?”
    “Delivery Boy is heading north on 13th.”
    “Clear view?”
    “God sees all, my son.”
    Everything is in place. You’re about to be a step closer to catching the most dangerous man in America.
    Across the street, the agent at the FedEx truck finished loading his dolly and started for the near building. In a bench on the square, two women in business casual chatted as they picked at salads. One looked like the assistant principal of a middle school; the other was petite and lithe as a soccer player.
    “How you doing, Luisa?”
    “Never thought I’d say this,” dabbing at her lips with a napkin to cover the motion of her lips, “but I