I learned this later, from someone else's flash of insight, born of coincidence and mischance. That’s how longshot powers worked: they ebbed and flowed. Nothing stayed the same. There were no rules, no certainties. Not tidy little thematic powersets or convenient 'achievement unlocked' badges. The answer was always ‘maybe.’

But while Rachel and I were talking in that hotel room kitchenette, a backgammon player headed into a city park where he spread a board on a granite table. He adjusted his bulk on the bench with a happy sigh; he didn't mind hustling in Bryant Park, but it was good to be home.

Not to mention, this close to Wall Street, he sometimes got $50 a point. That meant the difference between buying his granddaughter a Christmas present and seeing the worry in her mother’s eyes.

The backgammon player wrapped his hands around his coffee. A bit early in the day, a nippy September morning, the city tense from the bombing, everyone holding their breath.

He didn’t expect much profit, with the TV news blaring hysteria and extra cops on the street, but he watched the passersby, looking for a player. His attention drifted toward one man in particular. Dressed more like a professor than a banker, wearing a gray wool jacket and slacks over a pair of rawhide-looking boots, and smelling of money. Money and something harder, his bland face somehow intense.

The Professor saw him looking and sat down opposite. "No takers yet?"

"Not unless you’re interested, sir." The backgammon player hadn’t called a man ‘sir’ in years, but the word slipped out.

They agreed on ten dollars a point, and played in silence. The Professor rolled a two and four and said, "Where did you serve?"

"Vietnam." And after a moment: "And Cambodia."

The Professor's long gaze searched his face. "Task Force Shoemaker? That makes you … 11th Cav."

"Yessir."

"You did a fine job, soldier."

The player looked at the board to hide his misting eyes. He felt himself sitting a little straighter, and didn’t know why the other man affected him so much. That was another lifetime.

The Professor rolled again. "In 1936, the Nazis invaded the Rhineland. Are you familiar with the history?"

"A little."

"That was the first step in the rise of the Third Reich. A few years later, Hitler said that if the French had moved against him, he'd have withdrawn with his tail between his legs." The Professor shook his head. "Yet the French did nothing. Why do you think that is?"

"Because they're French?"

"Don't underestimate the French. They've got a long, bloody history of warfare, despite the stereotype. No, they did nothing because a man named Jacques Bonet convinced them that uprooting the Nazis would cost thirty million francs per day. One man--forgotten by history--could’ve stopped a world war and saved sixty million lives, if only he’d feared doomsday instead of bankruptcy. Sometimes we fight the wrong wars, that’s true, but the opposite of war isn’t peace; the opposite of war is Armageddon."

They played together, quiet and intent, and the day seemed better somehow, bright with purpose and resolve.

In the middle of the next game, the backgammon player did a double-take. "Whoa! Where’d that come from?"

A cube squatted beside the table, an uneven bone-white box, maybe four feet square, slotted and jointed and inlayed with white on white.

The Professor rested his palm on the cube. "Been here all along. I wonder if you’d do me a favor?"

"What do you need?"

"See that girl with the red-tinted hair? Would you point her in my direction?"

"Sure."

The Professor slipped a wad of cash onto the board. "And make yourself scarce."

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The backgammon player inspected the man for any trace of pity­--he didn't accept pity, and he didn't accept charity--but saw nothing but flat expectation in his bland face.

"You’re doing me a service," the Professor said.

The backgammon player weighed the cash in his mind. At least five hundred dollars. He folded his board and stood, and resisted the urge to salute.

"Miss!" he said, bustling after the girl. "Miss, wait."

She turned, her face a knot of wariness.

"That fella there in the park--" he started.

The red-streaked girl smiled when she spotted the Professor, and her wariness fell away. She jogged into the park without even a thank you, but the backgammon player didn’t mind. Never too early to pick up that Christmas present.

----------------------------------------

Carson Boone watched the backgammon player's retreating back, pleased that he’d taken the cash. Then his expression changed, watching Maddie trot forward. She stopped five feet away, glanced toward the white cube, and waggled her fingers in a tentative wave.

"I was wondering why I’d come," Boone said, patting the bench in invitation.

Maddie sat beside him and he felt the faint radiance of her brain waves, a pressure centered on the misshapen lump of warm metal--the bullet--embedded inside his skull.

"I wanted to see you," she said. "I needed to see you."

"And here I am," he said.

"Like magic. How do you do that?"

"I’m blessed--or cursed--with certainty. It's my only remaining ability." He touched the white cube. "Well, one of the few."

Maddie ducked her head. "You were changed by the … the accident?"

"It was no accident, Madeline."

"No, right, right." She flushed. "The ... the gunshot. What do you mean, 'certainty'?"

"Every so often, I feel an upwelling of knowledge, a sudden certitude. I find myself simply knowing things."

She bit her lower lip. "And they’re always true?"

"So far--though usually incomplete. For example, I might find myself driven to loiter in a city park, without knowing why, until you arrive."

"Like the collective unconscious whispering in your ear."

"Sometimes I wish it’d speak up a little," he said, with a gentle smile. "What do you need?"

"Your, um, daughter is here." Maddie looked at her hands. "In the city. She got Lark away from PJ."

Boone closed his eyes, letting the impact of the words wash over him. "Now that, I didn’t know. Tell me everything."

He listened as she spoke, and when she finished, he asked, "How is PJ?"

"Stressed. Angry and paranoid."

"He's still planning on the deployment tomorrow night"

She nodded. "As soon as he gets Lark. He wants him bad. Him and your daughter."

On the ground beside Boone, the white cube rippled, like a thousand knuckles cracking: Nomika.

Madeline's gaze shifted toward the street. "I, um, I asked PJ to let me talk to Lark. Before he did anything. To try to convince him to join us."

"Are your personal feelings getting in the way of your professional judgment?"

She swallowed. "M-maybe. I’m sorry, I--I’m trying to fight off PJ. He's in my head a little, even though I don't think I've breathed through my nose in days. It' s just me and Lark go back and … I’m sorry. "

"Don’t apologize," Boone said. "I made the same mistake, once. Except unimaginably worse, and I was old enough to know better. Can you convince him to join us?"

"Lark? If I get him alone, maybe."

"Then get him alone. And if he isn’t convinced by your charm, he’ll be convinced by PJ’s powers."

She nodded, started to speak--then stopped.

"There’s nothing you can’t ask me," Boone told her.

"Well, I just--" She exhaled sharply. "You made the same mistake? With your daughter?"

"Ah, of course. You met her."

"Only from a distance."

"How does she look?"

Maddie thought for a second. "Smaller than I expected."

He laughed softly. "Rachel is bigger than she looks."

"I guess I don’t understand why the two of you aren’t on the same side."

"I'm not sure what side Rachel thinks she's on. She believes that I'm cruel and fanatical, and she is right. But the alternative is much crueler. The alternative is unimaginably worse." Boone watched the pedestrians for a moment, then looked back to her. "Sometimes we are called upon to sacrifice those things we love the most."

"I’m sorry," Maddie said. "You don't have to tell me. It doesn’t matter."

"It matters, Madeline. Nobody escapes judgment. Certainly not me. Rachel and I had a special bond, and I'd wanted her to follow in my footsteps. I spent years trying to activate her. I failed. Then I did the one thing she couldn't forgive. I turned my attention to Audrey."

"But you were trying to help her, to improve her."

"Was I? Or was my pride wounded, that my favorite daughter wouldn't bend to my will? My one real strength, Madeline, is my focus on the big picture, on acting before a catastrophe strikes. On the millions of lives we might lose to uncertainty and inaction. Yet I abandoned all that for a merely private feeling. I turned back on the world, for my family. That’s an unforgivable lapse."

"What … what happened?" she asked, faintly.

He touched the back of his head. "This."

"How did you survive? I mean, getting shot in the head …"

"I'm not sure. I think I activated my own dying body, somehow. Enough to heal myself. And to change myself." Faint lines appeared between his eyebrows. "My previous powers burned out, but I gained this … certainty. And I'll tell you the one thing I'm most certain of."

He paused, and Maddie watched him with rapt eyes, even more fiercely loyal after his admission of failure--precisely as he’d expected.

"I’ll never make that mistake again," he told her. "I’d sacrifice you, or myself, or Nomika, or my daughters. I’ll send suicide bombers to raze this city before I betray the only thing that matters. The stakes are too high. The lack of will killed sixty million people--I won’t allow that to happen again."

"Sixty million people?"

"My grandfather's name was Jacques Bonet--a good family man, and an excellent accountant. I’ll tell you about him one day, but it’s time for you to return. You’ll get Lark alone?"

"Yes," she said. "And I'll give him to PJ."