by Ryan Schow
Inside, he went straight for the glass canisters and studied the subjects he’d received from Europe a few days ago. He’d been working on creating genetic variations of the men, all former soldiers, all superior physical specimens. He then made his way to the clone, a man so attractive Holland wondered if he could weave some of the subject’s genetics into his own DNA.
Seeing how perfect the genetically created man looked, it made Enzo wonder why anyone would ever leave the decision of genetics to God, or fate, or random sperm gunning for an egg they’ve never met.
“You are already too good looking,” he said to himself while studying the thing floating in stasis. Holland was no narcissist. Being better looking than he already was wasn’t the point. It was more important to blend in than stand out.
The genetic variations he’d already put together for future Astor Academy subjects were stable and in storage. He went through them, carefully reading his notes, then picked one particular DNA strand for Brayden. He studied the details of the strain, felt the crush of anger in his chest at the thought of being blackmailed by a kid.
Brayden James didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve perfection! Why should he get to be genetically sound? So Brayden had video of him as Gerhard and of the lab, so what?
So what???
His heart sank at the thought.
The boy, as much of a little puke as he was, he had Holland over a log, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to change it.
Savannah and Brayden, he thought with disdain, what a pair.
For a long, exhausting moment, Holland wondered if there was a way to blow the stink off this turd of a situation. If he couldn’t end the boy’s life (which would certainly result in Raven ending him) then he had to at least try for a win/win scenario.
Which wasn’t likely.
Still…
2
Everything was ready by the time the girl arrived. She walked into his lab and looked at him with divisive eyes. The pieces started to fall into place.
But…how the hell?
“What is this I’m seeing?” he asked, his mind grinding through the bottom gears, struggling for understanding.
“The Raven you know is gone, Holland. I didn’t think it was important for you to know this before now, but honestly,” she said, “you forced my hand.”
“Who did this to you? Who changed your…genetics?”
“A man like you,” Savannah said. “I didn’t give him much choice.”
Holland stepped forward, his eyes roving over her every feature. She just stood there. Let him look. He brushed her black hair out of her face, ran a hand along her cheek, stood back and studied her body, walking around her, marveling.
“My God, you are beautiful,” he said, unable to help himself.
“You noticed,” she replied, giving a brief curtsy.
He was not amused.
“I’m deeply saddened that my greatest work has a new look, and that you did not come to me first. Why would you let someone else do this to you?”
Barely a moment of his very long life had passed where he found himself stuck in a jealous tailspin. Be he was in a tailspin.
And he was jealous.
“I felt like changing my future meant cutting ties with everyone and everything tied to what Raven would become,” she replied. “Including you.”
“We’ll see how that works out.”
She frowned, took a deep breath and let it out.
He started to speak, but the ringing phone interrupted him. He looked at the number, picked up the phone to Brayden saying, “Can you let us in? It’s freezing out here.”
For the first time since she was fat Savannah, the girl who had become his greatest scientific achievement suddenly looked nervous.
“What is that?” he asked of her expression.
Her resolve hardened and she fixed him with a stare. “Just let them in, Josef.”
“Josef Mengele is a relic of a forgotten era,” he said, biting back his temper.
“Try telling that to a Jew.”
The girl had a cruel streak he not only loathed but once admired. Callousness had a certain elegance un-mimicked anywhere else in life. This trait of hers, however ingrained it was, was now off its leash. She didn’t need him anymore. She had a safety-net.
Someone else to look after her.
He didn’t want to look at her anymore. Now that everything was different, Enzo went from being this girl’s lifeline to being useless to her cause. And a useless man was a man without armor. A man whose life was in constant strain for even a morsel of significance. Still looking at her, but seeing her in a different light with new eyes, he realized she could (and just might) kill him if ever the inclination arose.
He swallowed hard, then tore his eyes away from her and went to let Brayden and his guest inside.
Choices
1
Brayden and Sabrina Baldridge stroll into the lab with Holland in tow. He and Brayden are bickering over the idea that any involvement Brayden had with him was to be strictly confidential. Sabrina was changed though, genetically, so Brayden figured it wasn’t the end of the world.
Brayden sees me and stops in his tracks, Holland nearly running into him. He doesn’t blink, can’t speak. Then: “You were at Cameron O’Dell’s funeral, weren’t you.”
“She lived a tragic life,” I say.
“Yeah, tragic for everyone else,” he replies. “Who are you?”
“Right now, I’m Holland’s assistant.”
“Yes, but…what do I call you?” he presses.
“Nurse.”
I look at Holland and he raises his eyebrows, as if to say, “It’s your turn to talk to him. Or talk him out of it.”
“Dr. Holland, Sabrina, do you think you could excuse us?”
“Do I know you?” Sabrina asks.
I roll her mind, blanch at the horrors, then pull out. I can’t believe she made the deal to have her mother sacrificed. And for the love of God, I can’t believe she let all those men have her just to be in the entertainment business.
It’s like Maggie, but worse. Much, much worse.
I stare at her, sad eyes, a broken heart, and I’m thinking this is my fault. If I hadn’t been with Tavares, if whatever program in my mind hadn’t made me kill him, she wouldn’t have had to suffer this, or to resort to this.
“You’re famous, aren’t you?” I say, answering Sabrina’s question. It comes out sounding cold, even to me.
“Not anymore.”
“You’re dating Lennox Carlisle, aren’t you?”
“Not anymore,” she says again.
“But you were.”
“I was.”
Niggling around in her brain, snatching fragments of her memories, but not sticking around long enough to get bogged down with her depression, with her absolute surrender to the idea of her life being over, I say, “Did you ever really see it work?”
“See what work?”
“That bolt-on-dick he drags around like it hasn’t been sewn on over her vagina.”
Mouths drop, crickets can be heard.
“I’d like to talk to Brayden now,” I say, “so if you’ll both please leave, I’ll come get you when we’re done.”
One final hit and run off Sabrina has me realizing she’s thinking if she wasn’t a ruined, run-through woman, she’d find Dr. Holland intensely attractive. WTF? Yeah, say what you will about my intuition, but I did not see that coming.
They both leave and then it’s me and Brayden.
2
Brayden just stares at me, waiting. There is so much I want to say, so much I need to say. Now, suddenly, I’m having a hard time knowing where to start.
“Please don’t do this,” is what leaves my mouth.
“Since when did nurses weigh in on their patient’s decisions?” he says, careless.
“I know why you’re doing this, but I don’t want you to.”
“Oh, and why am I doing this?”
/> “Because you’re free.”
He gulped.
“What do you know?”
“I know you’re done with the FBI, that you have your own money overseas, that your father loves you and wants you to walk in his footsteps one day, but you feel so small it’s easy to stay lost beneath his shadow.”
He just stares at me.
“I know you fell in love once, and though you’ve been with other women, it’s her you are still in love with. But you can’t have her. She’s gone.”
“Who’ve you been talking to?” he asks, short of words, fresh out of conviction.
“I also know you think that you will never look the way you want to look to attract the type of girl you truly want. But women are not like men. So many men are attracted to a woman first for how she looks, then for who she is. Women appreciate a man’s looks, but we’re attracted to them for who they are, not necessarily for their face or body.”
“That’s a relief,” he says sarcastically. “Are you trying to tell me there’s hope?”
“I find you attractive,” I say.
“No you don’t,” he replies, fishing his phone out of his pocket. He turns it on, presses the screen, the lets his hand and the phone rest at his side.
My phone starts to ring in my purse. He hangs the phone up and his eyes start to flood. He walks over to me and pulls me into a hug and says, “Why do you keep torturing me if you know how I feel?”
“I’m stupid I guess,” I say, choking up.
“You are,” he says.
“I love you, Brayden,” I say, trying on the words, moved by how real they feel. “I guess I’ve always loved you. From the day you ran the fart app on Cameron, to how you watched me through my transformation, to how you came with me to L.A. to kill Maggie’s music producer, to how you buried Heim when you were having a hard time keeping your head from breaking in two.”
“I’d do it again,” he says, his own voice trembling, his arms wrapped tightly around me.
“I know you would, and I would, too. But with you the way you are now. Not like someone else. I don’t want you to change. Please, you can’t.”
“You are so beautiful, and I’m not.”
“I bought you that nose, that chin. I paid for your eyelid lift and I nursed you back to health, well, not really that. But you stayed with us while I kept that from your father. You’re good enough, Brayden. I fell it love with you like this. Please…”
He stands back, looks at me with wet, loving eyes and asks me my name.
“Savannah Crawford-Swann.”
“Savannah,” he says, smiling like he likes it.
“Yes.”
“Savannah, I love you, too,” he says with the exact amount of tenderness I want from him. “But you have to let me do this. It’s how I worked everything out. This is how it’s supposed to be. I have a name and everything.”
Then it hits me. I don’t need to bump off his mind to understand.
“Augustin Sandino.”
Now he steps back, startled. “You reading my mind?” he asks.
“But you will prefer to go by August. Eventually.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because the two of us die together in about seven years. Well, technically, you, me and another me all die together.”
He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly.
He blanches, then: “That changes nothing.”
“I know.”
“So you’re going to let me do it?”
“I’ve never been in charge of you, Brayden,” I say.
“Will you be with me when I’m done? When I’ve changed?”
“Will you be with me?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Then kiss me with that face, and that mouth, and let me at least know what it feels like to do that before you go and erase yourself.”
Brayden steps forward, moves my hair out of my face. I look up in his eyes, my soul naked before him, my mouth wanting his, my intentions clear. He leans down, puts his mouth to mine and I swear to Jesus, I melt and gush at once.
His tongue finds mine, and our bodies meet; I feel him everywhere, in my head, against my breasts, his mouth to mine. Can I do this? Just let him go after finally admitting he’s the one I’ve always been in love with? I don’t know. His hand circles around my back, draws my pelvis to his. I feel him against me, wanting me, needing me, then pulling away.
“I have to do this,” he says.
It takes me forever, but I manage to get the words out of my mouth.
“I’ll get Holland.”
3
I find Sabrina crying against Holland’s shoulder. She told him. She said how she escaped, the kind of trouble she’s in. How her life is basically over. Part of me squirms with revulsion. I wouldn’t cry on Holland’s shoulder if you cut my tits off and he was the only human left on earth.
But that’s me.
Sabrina is holding out. She didn’t tell him about the sacrifices she’s made with her body and her family. A girl like that—a girl who’s barely hanging on to her sanity, a girl who’s half a tragedy away from suiciding herself—she’d never let something like that slip. Never just offer it up to a stranger, even one as good looking as Dr. Enzo Holland.
“Brayden’s ready for you,” I say, fighting the need to stop the madness ensuing here.
“Give me a moment,” Sabrina tells Holland, looking at the tear spots she left on his shirt. “I’ll meet you in there.”
Holland stands and leaves, refusing me his eyes. I stay put. “What do you want?” she asks me, embarrassed by her breakdown.
“Nothing,” I say.
“There’s something. I can see it in your eyes.”
“Okay, there is.”
“And?”
“I want to tell you the truth,” I say.
She wipes her eyes and says, “Which is?”
“That your life is not over.”
“Did Brayden tell you what happened?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know shit.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
“A little thing like you would never understand,” she says, pulling herself together quickly now. Really throwing herself into being defensive with pretty little me.
“Where will you go when Brayden’s under for a week or more?”
“Maybe I could stay here.”
“In the lab?” I laugh.
“It has a roof, a bathroom, a couch and a TV.”
“You’ll never know true peace, Sabrina. Your body will remember those men who took you. It will be like a scar, or a broken limb that never quite healed right.”
The actress’s face pales, her body falling still.
“But worse,” I continue, “you’ll remember everything beautiful and chaste about your mother and that she’s gone. You envision her death even now. How it must’ve been. How you got the gist of her murder from detectives and how it must’ve taken a long time for her to die.”
She sits up straight, a flash of indignation firing up her eyes. “Who are you?!” she asks, her face wrought with overt defiance.
My eyes aren’t intimidated; I sit still, unmoved by her emotional flip.
“I’m a girl plagued by similar memories,” I confess.
“So you say,” she barked, crossing her arms. “You fucking freak.”
I surprise us both with a cynical laugh. Then: “I was an experiment. A tool used by the elite to exact revenge. This all took place against my will. There was a computer program installed in my brain solidified by hypnosis and advanced military technology. This chip brought out an alternate personality with only one mission. A mission created for me. A pre-programmed mission set to run against my will. If that failed, then my programs went to software, the instructions loaded through hypnosis in my head.”
“So you’re some kind of a girl soldier?”
“More like an unconscious mercenary.”
“But you’re haun
ted by the things you’ve done,” she taunted. “Is that it? That’s your big hurting secret?”
“It is.”
“Well join the crowd.”
Taking a deep breath, I say, “We’re both haunted by the things I’ve done.”
She stares at me, contemplating my words, not quite understanding, but on the verge of it.
“I was with a boy whom I was falling in love with. He was beautiful and innocent, not even aware of the Chess game he was involved in. This beautiful boy was the casualty of a game of politics and ego—”
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head, her body failing her as understanding crept in. “Don’t say it.”
“We were making love when the program took over. The thing inside me, that thing that was not me, will never be me, it took a straight razor from the nightstand and slashed his throat open. I couldn’t stop it.”
“Shut up!” she screams, tears rushing to her eyes once more.
Once my brain decided to spill the truth, my mouth just wouldn’t shut up.
“He bled out on me while I lay there sobbing, my mind every bit as ruined as yours when you told Garrison Rich that it was okay to kill your mother to save your father.”
I saw it before it happened. Her slapping the crap out of me. I saw her, felt her rage like it was my own, felt every bit of it breaking over me with the same force as a tidal wave breaking over a child.
The slap hurt, I won’t lie. If it was just that—one vicious strike—I could deal. But it’s more than that. The way she’s all over me, physically attacking me, clawing at my face and screaming, the girl goes from zero to bat shit freaking crazy in like half a second flat. My face and body are the targets for an emotional torrent of epic proportion. This is a God-sized tantrum if ever there was one!
She draws first blood, but it isn’t enough blood. She wants me dead. Of course, I make some half-hearted attempts to defend myself, but deep down I know she won’t feel what she needs to feel if I overpower her.
So I don’t.
When she’s exhausted herself beating me up, when the tirade has drained her fully of her strength, she stands there, frantic eyes looking at me through a wet haze, spit draped from lip to chin, nostrils flaring with that out-of-breath huffing.
