The area suddenly brightens as everything slows around him. Chaney’s rasping voice crawls to a dull echo.

Jacob cannot see the bullet, but he can see the gelatinous ripples as it pushes through waves of energy, angling down from the distant white tower.

He jumps to his feet, his Hunahpu mind dissecting time and distance—

Jacob!

Jacob’s heart skips a beat. He sees her standing in the twentieth row, an azure-eyed vixen whose fluid movements, as she approaches, separate her from the rest of the crowd.

Lilith … please—not now!

You deserted me!

Gelatinous ripples widen as the bullet appears.

I came here for you, Jacob. I’m offering you a last chance.

Ignoring her tantalizing presence, Jacob leaps—

A bucket of crimson explodes from Jacob Gabriel’s black suit as he and former President Ennis Chaney tumble sideways off the dais.

Pierre Borgia smiles, then turns suddenly at the elevator bell signal. Reaching into his pocket, he fumbles to load another .50-caliber exploding round into the chamber.

Dominique steps out of the elevator.

‘You?’ Borgia slips the bullet into place, his finger at the trigger. ‘I should have killed you and your wacko patient when I had the chance!’

‘You tried. Now it’s my turn.’

Borgia raises the rifle barrel—

—as Dominique’s flexes her right biceps, commanding the microwave pain-cannon to fire.

The blast of searing heat separates assassin from gun, sending Pierre Borgia writhing on the ground, his nerve endings sizzling.

Desperate cries rend the crisp November air.

Waves of onlookers at the west end of the park drop for cover. Secret Service agents sweep President Rallo into an awaiting vehicle. Congressmen and guests disperse, some for their limos, others for the interior of the Lincoln memorial, where Secret Service agents huddle around the bloodstained body of Jacob Gabriel.

Rabbi Richard Steinberg grips the white-haired youth’s lifeless hand and prays as a dozen news hovercams jostle for airspace overhead.

A terrified physician pushes through the throng. With quivering fingers he gently unbuttons Jacob’s suit coat, revealing an undergarment drenched in blood. He shakes his head.

The horrified crowd yields to an ambulance. Word carries with the panic: ‘The other Gabriel twin’s been shot! Jacob’s dead!’

Seconds later, the insanity of the moment is interrupted by screams coming from the park’s east end as a window shatters atop the Washington Monument and a body—the body of Pierre Robert Borgia—hurtles through the air, splattering like a sack of scarlet flour at the base of the Monument below.

A wisp of thought, in the consciousness of existence.

Jacob?

Where are you, son?

Where are you …

PART 6
ADULTHOOD

‘To succeed is nothing, it’s an accident.
But to feel no doubts about oneself
is something very different: it is character.’

—MARIE LENÉRU

There is no security on this Earth, this is only opportunity.

—DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

21
SIX YEARS LATER

NOVEMBER 19, 2033: SATURDAY AFTERNOON,
MABUS TECH INDUSTRY ORANGE BOWL,
BISCAYNE BAY, MIAMI, FLORIDA