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Cooper could see the SecDef preparing another veiled insult, but before he could fire it, a curved door in the southwest wall opened. President Lionel Clay stuck his head out, said to his assistant, “Push everything nonessential,” then turned and walked back inside, gesturing over his shoulder for them to follow.
    In the flood of morning sun, the Oval Office glowed, light bouncing off every polished surface. Keevers, Leahy, and Archer walked in comfortably, like it was any other room. Cooper squared his shoulders and tried to do the same, still hearing the same gentle roar in his ears he experienced every time.
    “Owen, what’s our status on the Children of Darwin?”
    “We’re getting a more complete picture, sir, but slowly.” The secretary of defense began to brief the president, but it was clear that there had been no significant progress made.
    Cooper had become something of an expert on the terrorist organization since joining Clay’s administration. He’d devouredevery memo on the Children, met with the DAR and the FBI and the NSA, spent hours staring at photographs of truckers burned alive. Yet for all the time he’d spent, he still didn’t know very much. The terrorist organization seemed to have sprung to life full-formed. No one knew how large it was, where it was based, how it was funded, if it had centralized leadership or was just a loose network of terror cells.
    “What it comes down to, sir,” Leahy continued, “is that we’ve learned a lot in the last days—the bombs at the food depots illustrate their technical knowledge and chemical access, surveillance video shows that they used stolen police cruisers when attacking the trucks, our analysts are gaining insight through data-mining patterns—but none of it is giving us actionable answers.”
    “Maybe that’s because they’re fanatics. Lunatics,” Keevers said. “They burned people alive. Why are we talking about the COD like a foreign regime instead of a cult?”
    The president rubbed at his chin. “Nick? What do you think?”
    Only his ex-wife Natalie and Shannon used his first name, but somehow he didn’t feel comfortable asking the president of the United States to call him Cooper. He cleared his throat, took a moment to weigh his words. “Think how furious the whole nation was at what they saw on the Monocle video. Their own president planning to kill them.”
    Clay maintained a mild expression, but the three staffers exchanged glances, shuffled papers. He could feel them edging away.
Let ’em. As long as you’re here, you may as well tell the truth.
“Well, now consider the brilliants’ point of view. Tier-one children are forcibly taken from their parents and sent to academies. Without due process or a jury, the DAR terminates abnorms it deems a threat to society. Thanks to the Monitoring Oversight Initiative, every American gifted will be forced to get a microchip implanted in their neck—”
    “We’ll see about that one,” Clay said. “I’m not a fan.”
    “That’s great to hear, Mr. President. But even if you are able to get the law repealed—and you should—it won’t change the fact that gifted are treated like second-class citizens.”
    “I’m not sure,” Leahy said, “that I’m seeing the tactical value to this analysis.”
    “It’s this,” Cooper said. “Fanatics they may be, but they’re not lunatics, and they have cause to be pissed off. I’ve spent my life hunting terrorists. I hate everything they stand for. But let’s not pretend that they haven’t been provoked.”
    “And let’s not forget,” Leahy said, “that they’ve killed thousands, burned innocent men and women alive, and are trying to starve three American cities. What do you propose, we sit around a table and chat about our differences?”
    “No,” Cooper said. “We can’t negotiate with terrorists.”
    “So then—”
    “But we could get someone to negotiate on our behalf.”
    President Clay looked thoughtful. “Who