The Doomsday Equation by Matt Richtel

Her half of the bargain.
    N OW JUST MILES away, the bearded man listens to the voices in the corridor. “Adam.”
    “Come out, come out, wherever you are. Adam.”
    Adam. Hearing the name, the bearded man grits his teeth. He hopes he didn’t kill someone named Adam, a holy name.
    This Adam, the bearded man thinks, now packed beneath piles of socks, destined for some low-cost retailer.
    Outside, the waves have stopped. The storm has passed. Thebearded man closes his eyes, presses himself in the dark between the containers, tries not to make any sound that would alert the searchers to his presence. He calms himself with the knowledge of his purpose, the purity of his purpose. I am, he reminds himself, a Guardian of the City. He wonders: How many others have faced much worse peril with much more courage? How many have acted on the basis of such faith, anonymous contacts and dead drops and unseen allies? He considers the rumors, the whispers: that there are now so many allies, the belief and wisdom multiplying beyond any previous comprehension.
    How many others like me are out there, right now, en route to undo a century of calamity, millennia of political folly? Are they enjoying this much good fortune?

C HAPTER 13
    W IKIPEDIA DESCRIBES TANTALUM as deriving its name from the Greek mythological hero Tantalus. He was the son of Zeus, condemned for eternity to stand in a pool of water beneath a tree of low branches bearing sumptuous fruit that is just, just, just out of reach. The son of God, relegated to an eternity of suffering with satiation just out of reach. Jeremy feels like he can relate.
    He’s hoofing it down the Embarcadero, reading his iPad, impervious to the drizzle, trying to focus on substance, not his suffering. He can add his building manager to the sources of it.
    The asshole actually took a look inside Jeremy’s apartment and shook his head. His head, clad in a fucking beret.
    “Who else has a key to your place?”
    “Does it seem like I’d give the key to a crazed samurai?”
    “Are you saying they were Asian?”
    “That they did it with a knife. This knife.”
    “Your knife.”
    “Are you seriously being hostile with me? Condo board’s gonna love this.”
    “I’d call the police.”
    “I could call the police. I was trying to involve you in the process.”
    “What are you asking of me, Mr. Stillwater?”
    “Security tapes.”
    The building manager gets it. “I’ll make a backup.”
    “We should call the cops.”
    A few minutes later, Jeremy sat in the manager’s office while the guy did paperwork and called to back up the security tapes—kept on some server somewhere—but he wouldn’t access or let Jeremy see them without getting the proper permissions. The fat jerk seemed reluctant to call the police but promised to do so; Jeremy dismissed a momentary suspicion this guy might’ve attacked his apartment and remembered the manager just generally doesn’t like the police, having once been questioned by the cops about a resident’s harassment claim.
    Jeremy, anxious to get to Harry, buries himself in his iPad, lost in the latest feedback from the computer, biding his time. Getting his homework done so that when he confronts Harry face-to-face, he’ll be armed with all the material, about the computer, the alleged changing variables. Aware of the clock, counting down.
    56:30:00.
    56:29:59.
    But counting down to what? An attack, or something else? Nothing at all?
    He’s not fully admitting to himself that he’s going to get answers from Harry but, maybe, depending on what the old man has to say, he will let himself ask Harry for help. Or maybe he doesn’t need to. He thinks he knows Harry well enough to understand the message. Not over the phone. Translation: get over here. Harry knows something.
    Jeremy remains marginally puzzled by the other thing Harry said: “statis pugna.” A pidgin of ancient Greek and Latin that he’s heard Harry say before and that reflects an underlying