DAVID WALKED DOWN the hall to Max’s office.
They’d met only briefly when David had first gone to Miami, but he and Max had spent a lot of time together since then. Max, David learned, was Simon’s right-hand man, the guy who kept tabs on everything so Simon could spend his time chasing models or getting thrown out of bars.
Max’s executive assistant—a blonde packed into a tight outfit who seemed to have come straight from a naughty-librarian fantasy—escorted him in, and then left them alone.
As always, the office seemed almost unused. There was never a coffee cup on the desk, or even any papers. It was like he came in only for these weekly progress reports with David.
Unfortunately, there was no progress to report.
David was explaining that he had found nothing in the latest round of DNA testing when he noticed that Max wasn’t paying attention.
“Hey,” he said. “Are you listening to any of this?”
Max focused in on him again and gave him a sharp smile. “Not really,” he said. “I sort of lose focus after you tell me you’ve failed again.”
David was never sure exactly how much of the work Max understood. He was the same age as Simon and, like Simon, always dressed in an impeccable suit. But where Simon was unrestrained, Max spoke as though each word cost him money. He waited for others to step out of line, and then knocked them back into line with a cold, well-chosen sentence.
David was in no mood for it. He was exhausted. “This isn’t like mixing a drink,” David told Max. “There are millions—billions—of factors that play into what we’re trying to do.”
“Oh God, spare me. I don’t need to hear again how complicated it all is.”
“Then we should probably skip these meetings altogether. I could get more done in the lab.”
“You sure?” Max shot back. “Doesn’t seem like it. We’ve handed you a solution, David. All you have to do is copy it. Are we not paying you enough?”
David took a deep breath, trying to hold on to his temper. He reminded himself that he was here to ask Max for a favor.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I’ve looked everywhere. I’ve eliminated the possible causes and agents inside the human body. Whatever this is, it’s in your serum. I’ve done what I can from the results. I cannot go forward without a sample. I need the liquid, Max.”
“You can’t have it,” he said flatly.
“I want to talk to Simon about this.”
“You think he’ll give you a different answer?”
“He said anything I wanted—”
“Except that,” Max shot back. “You just started working for us, and you want a sample of the greatest medical breakthrough in history?”
“You think I’m going to steal it?”
Max smiled at him. “I believe people are fallible. No one is above temptation. No one knows that better than Simon. That’s why there are rules. You were given the rules. I’m not going to break them for you.”
“Let’s ask Simon, then.”
“Well, unfortunately, he’s out of town.”
“They don’t have phones where he is?”
“I’m sure they do, but it’s hard to hear when you’ve got your head between someone’s thighs. Probably difficult to speak clearly, too.”
The whole time they’d been talking, Max had been staring at his computer screen and occasionally tapping his keyboard. David assumed Max was checking his email. Now he shifted in his seat and got a good look at Max’s monitor.
It was running a screen saver. Max wasn’t even playing a video game.
David’s fists clenched. He stood. It was probably a good idea to end a meeting before you punched your immediate superior in the face. “Great. Well, then you’re paying me a lot of money to waste all of our time.”
Max finally looked away from his computer. He seemed to relent a little bit. “I’ll pass on the message. In the meantime, you keep trying.”
“I need that sample,” David said. “Without it, I’m just running in place.”
Max went back to pretending to check his email. He spoke without looking up. “You’re a smart guy, David,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”
AFTER THE WHORE LEFT, Max sat alone in his darkened apartment, thinking about his meeting with David that morning.
The lights around the bay looked like a small galaxy from the patio of his high-rise apartment. He didn’t really see them on a conscious level anymore. Instead, he noticed the streaks on the glass of his floor-to-ceiling windows, the layer of dust on everything in the apartment, despite the money he paid to a white-glove cleaning service to visit twice a week. He ran his finger over the stereo, which he’d bought only six months before. Like the one it replaced, he’d never even switched it on. He didn’t really care for music.
So much of his life was like that: repetitive maintenance, time and money spent keeping up appearances, the constant polishing of his disguise.
Even the whore tonight had been something barely felt, a response to a small tug of lust, a minor itch easily scratched.
Max tried to remember when he last actually felt something deeply, but abandoned the effort after a moment. Simon needed to be told his latest savior was failing.
He picked up his phone from the side table, struggled to remember how to work the damned thing, and then pressed the button. It was not actually a button, of course. It was a mirage, a trick of light on glass. There was a time he would have thought something like this was witchcraft. Now he simply found it infuriating. He hated these toys. He and the others could barely work them. They were one of the things that made him feel truly old.
He tried to put his irritation aside as Simon answered, after the usual delay. Simon wasn’t good at working his phone, either.
“What?”
“Where are you?”
“Beijing,” Simon said. “Some of our creditors here are a bit nervous about parking any more dollars with us.”
“I don’t blame them.”
There was a deep sigh over the line. “Max, I hope you have more impor-tant things for me than your attempts at humor.”
“It’s David. He’s requesting a sample of the pure, undiluted Water. Again.”
Simon hesitated. “I’d hoped he would make more headway with what we’d given him. Tell him to work harder.”
“He works fourteen hours a day.”
“What’s he doing with the other ten?”
“Nothing that we don’t know about. I have one of our security contractors shadowing him at all times. He works, and he goes home, and he runs. He talks to no one outside the labs. Oh, he does do some volunteer work.”
“Where?”
“All Children’s Hospital. He reads to the sick children. I suspect it’s his way of being with his dead sister again. Aside from that, all he does is work. He’s quite obsessed.”
“And that’s why he is the one who will find the answer. He views death as a personal enemy. He will deliver a solution for us. I am sure of it.”
“I know you believe that.”
“You don’t like him, do you?”
“Quite the contrary. He is decent and responsible and moral. And that’s the problem. I worry he might actually believe in something greater than his own needs. A man with principles is dangerous.”
“Fortunately, there aren’t many of them.”
“This isn’t a joke, Simon. What happens if he does find the answer? Do you plan to take another member into the Council?”
Another pause. “I haven’t decided.”
After all these years together, Simon still thought he could get a lie past Max. Max smiled.
“What are you doing, Simon? What is your plan?”
“The same as always. To save the world. In spite of itself.”
“I was talking about your more immediate goals.”
“We need him, Max. We need someone more comfortable with this era. We need someone smarter. We need new blood. And most of all, we need a solution. Do you honestly think I chose poorly?”
Max looked at the lights again, and again did not really see them at all.
“I wish I could say yes,” he said. “But no. He is brilliant. Truly. He’s burned through all the false paths it took the others years to discover. I’ve done everything I can to stall him. I believe he is right. The answer is in the Water itself. Not in anything it touches. And that is why he’s doomed to fail. We cannot give him what he asks. Not without revealing ourselves.”
Simon brooded about it for a moment. “We might not have a choice. This is about our survival, after all.”
“You’re not seriously considering—”
“No, of course not. Give him more time. He will surprise himself. And you.”
“May I ask one favor?”
“You know that’s a ridiculous question.”
“I’m not so sure these days.”
“Max. It’s late. Ask your favor.”
“Please tell me before you extend your offer to David. Before you reveal us to him. He might react badly. As I said, he’s more ethical than our previous candidates. He might surprise us badly.”
“You’re wrong,” Simon said flatly. “In the end, all he cares about is solving the problem. That is the only principle he really has. If we give him a way to do that, he will not care about the morality behind the mystery.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I’ve gotten us this far, haven’t I?” Simon said. “You just need a woman.”
“I just had one.”
“Have another.” Simon hung up.
Max considered throwing the phone against the window, then remembered that meant he’d have to go through the torture of learning to use a new one. He set it back on the side table.
He knew what he needed. More of the Water. He needed to bathe in it, soak in it, let it saturate him and fill him.
They all needed this, but he was the only one who knew it. He wasn’t sure when he’d realized it, but it became increasingly obvious with every passing year: they were slowly petrifying, becoming stiff parodies of the people they’d used to be.
Pedro—Max could not call him “Peter” without a bad taste in his mouth—was still a child, desperately fascinated by the latest toys, buying cars and computers and boats and planes and anything else that was shiny and made interesting noises. He still longed for the chance to play war, even though soldiers had been surpassed by drone strikes and cruise missiles. Sebastian had never been a complex man, and time had refined him down to a few points. He was accustomed to being worshipped for his physical beauty, and that was enough. Max sometimes wondered if everyone who was born with such genetic gifts was the same way, if they just accepted the world as it was, because for them it was nothing but pleasant attention. Carlos was hidden away somewhere in South America, a prisoner of his own paranoia. And Aznar—well, Aznar had become even more like himself.
They were all clinging to being human, when they should have been reaching for the next step, evolving into something more.
If a sip of the Water could do so much, what would happen if they drowned in it? What would happen if they gave up the idea of all limits? What would they become then?
Simon wouldn’t hear of this. Max tried to tell him, but Simon was content to play his games and dance around the real problems. He was still enamored of the idea that this world was perfectible. He still believed that this gift—all the additional years the Water had given them—was meant to allow him to push the rest of humanity into some kind of order.
That was truly frustrating, for of all of the Council, Simon was—had always been—the most brilliant, the most perceptive. It was maddening that an intellect, a spirit, like his should be so chained by nostalgia.
In their lives, they had already redrawn the maps of the world several times. They’d toppled governments and moved behind the scenes of history. They controlled entire economies of wealth. They were the secret chiefs of the Earth.
And what had they really changed?
Not a damned thing.
There was always an excuse, always an inherent barrier to the changes Simon wanted.
The truth was, people did not want to change.
Take, for instance, their efforts to finally sever their homeland from the inbred and antiquated monarchy that was suffocating it. They’d backed a movement they thought would unite the country and would force it to fulfill its potential, to retake Spain’s place as a world power.
But sentimental loyalists, malcontents, and opportunists saw their own chance at power. The ensuing chaos forced them into an alliance with foreign powers who were hell-bent on war with the entire world. It took years to recover from their tactical error in joining with the Axis, and years more to accept the fact that Spain would never again be the empire of their youth.
Since then, every one of their efforts in the world, while profitable, had become tediously predictable to Max. They would plan and strategize, and carefully shift money and influence and people. And inevitably some little bastard would undo all their hard work with greed and incompetence.
It was like trying to play chess with toddlers: every time you set up the board, they knocked all the pieces onto the floor and covered them with snot.
Now Simon thought he’d found someone who’d find an answer. This boy David.
Simon believed if he could find the secret of the Water, then he’d finally be free of all limits. He could force the world to behave by giving the gift of endless years to his followers and punish those who dissented with their natural lifespan. Eventually, the only survivors would be the ones who obeyed.
Max smiled. Because it’s worked so well in our little group.
Max wasn’t so blinded by hindsight. He could see that the Council was afraid. They were still thinking like men. They didn’t know what they would be without their old habits. But he was chained to them, his ability to move forward limited by Simon’s stubborn refusal to give up any more of the Water than absolutely necessary.
So his life became a holding pattern.
Simon didn’t seem to realize—or perhaps did not want to realize—that it didn’t matter why the Water worked. They had been given a gift. They’d been given a chance to surpass their mere humanity. To pursue anything else was a waste of time.
And despite all appearances, their time was not unlimited.
Max knew what had to be done. He’d known it since before David Robinton was born, in fact. But he’d hoped Simon would wake up.
Now he saw the truth. If Simon believed he could find the secret of the Water—or if, by some miracle, David actually succeeded—it would be more wasted years at best. At worst, it would be the end of their lives, because there was no way they could share the secret and survive.
If they were going to make the leap, if they were going to transcend their humanity, then they had to leave Simon’s dreams behind. The world would not tolerate men like them, if it knew they existed. Once the secret was out, their days were numbered, no matter how much of the Water they had.
Simon had to be made to face reality. One way or the other. Yes, they needed a replacement for the Water. But once they had it, they wouldn’t need David Robinton anymore.