Basilisk

by Rob Thurman

  When he was handing me his peanuts, crackers, chips, and soda, he said, “You’re planning on Raynor’s being there to help out, aren’t you? Not intentionally, but you think he can provide some sort of distraction.”

  My lips curved as I took his food. I used to try to make sure we both had equal shares on the run or at home, but we’d both come to realize that despite his doing it out of big-brother instinct, I actually needed more food than did either he or your average four-hundred-pound sumo wrestler. I’d stopped protesting then. In this particular case, anyone sane would have considered it a favor that someone else had taken the inedible airplane snacks off their hands.

  “He does have an Institute tracker, the same as we do,” I said. “And I don’t think Peter likes him any more than he likes me.” I opened the bag of peanuts and sighed as they spilled out stale and rock hard into my hand. Saul had the aisle seat and I leaned over Stefan to say in a low tone, “Is the you-know-what still with you?”

  “You son of a bitch. I didn’t buy that for a second. I know more about the S word than you ever will.” He couldn’t say smuggling. There are no secrets on airplanes. Sound travels and passengers these days were more than willing to take off their belts and try to strangle an orange-haired would-be terrorist/smuggler or a man who simply liked to walk around with a tranquilizer cartridge concealed in his rectum for no special reason.

  “Sure you do, Saul. And you weren’t disappointed that you didn’t have to bend over and take it like a man.” I’d learned that phrase on TV when I was fresh out of the Institute and Stefan had choked on his dinner when I’d asked him to explain it to me. “I believe you.” I went back to my peanuts and the SkyMall catalog. Godzilla, in his carrier under the seat in front of me, had his pointed muzzle through the crosshatch of metal bars and was vengefully biting the toe of my shoe. Flying didn’t seem to be anyone’s favorite activity today.

  “How many plans do you have for how this can go down?” Stefan asked. “It’s not as though there are too many hiding places on a bridge. I’ve been able to come up with one plan on this. Two if Raynor shows up.”

  I turned a page. They had the most absolutely needless inventions in this magazine. It was hypnotic. “Two.”

  “Not your usual ten or twenty? I think I’m unnerved.”

  I glanced over at him. His tone was light, but his face was serious, grimly so. “Only unnerved? I’m scared shitless.” And there was nothing theoretical about that.

  One of Saul’s subcontractors met us at the Portland International Airport—not that it looked international, but I supposed the designation was true. The FAA doesn’t let you lie about things like that. We had a car and enough guns for Saul and Stefan to take on an army, so all was right with their world if not Godzilla’s. He was still biting the carrier’s cage bars. Air flight had not agreed with him. If ferrets were meant to fly, as Stefan had commented midflight, then I would let him throw Zilla out the window.

  Before his man left, I asked Saul, “Could he take Godzilla? In case . . . just in case.” I dug through my backpack for our money and counted out a thousand. “And find him a good home if he has to?” I handed the guy the carrier and the thousand dollars.

  The man looked at Saul and at the money and replied in a drawl that originated far from Oregon, “I don’t mind. Hell, my sister does animal rescue. Has a houseful of furry critters.”

  “Give us at least a week to come back for him,” I warned, putting a finger through the bars to rub his small head. He promptly bit me and I smiled. It was two predators bonding, not a good-bye, because that was what I chose to believe.

  Once again we were supplied with an SUV. I didn’t have anything against the environment, but when you hauled around as many weapons as Stefan and Saul needed to feel comfortable, you required a roomy vehicle. “I’ll drive,” Stefan said.

  I claimed the passenger seat. Saul could sit in the back all but buckled into an infant’s car seat for once. “His sister rescues animals and he sells guns to anyone with the cash. People are strange,” I said, slamming the door behind me as Stefan began to navigate our way out of the airport parking garage.

  “Says the genetic superman riding around with an ex-mobster brother and an international criminal mastermind,” Saul pointed out.

  I didn’t know about the mastermind part, but the rest was true enough. It didn’t change the fact that people were strange. In our case I liked to think it was a good kind of strange.

  It was an hour and a half from Portland to Cascade and in that time I told them my plan, which, compared to all the other plans I’d engineered in the past years, was beyond simple. We went to the bridge, I did my best to stop Wendy from killing us, we shot the chimeras with the tranq guns, everyone was cured, and we went back to another nice hotel. And if Raynor showed up, he could simultaneously distract the chimeras while we shot them, again with the tranq guns, and Stefan could beat him to a pulp afterward.

  “Sad to say, that’s my plan too,” Stefan admitted. “But it’s a crappy plan. We’re on a bridge with no place to hide or set up an ambush, although since I imagine they’ll be waiting for us, that’s a point in our favor. At least they can’t ambush us either. If they were ordinary people, weak, puny, and not too bright like Saul and me”—he punched me casually in the arm—“I’d say our chances were good. Saul kicked ass in the military, I kicked ass on the streets, and you are the self-proclaimed Einstein of our times.”

  “I’d say that’s an accurate description,” I agreed without a hint of a smirk, although I’d seen couples at night cross the street if they saw Stefan coming. Hell, I’d seen three or four men cross the street. Weak and puny he was not. He looked not like what he was all the time, but like what he was capable of being anytime—a wolf in human skin.

  “A suicide run with a couple of smart-asses,” Saul mumbled. “I hate my life.”

  Stefan continued. “But they’re not like Saul and me. They’re like you, Misha. They’re fast and strong and smart as fucking hell. And Peter has them doing whatever he says, which makes him something even more than them.”

  “Except for Peter and maybe Wendy, they shouldn’t be as fast and strong as I am. That comes with maturity, and the rest of the chimeras are years younger than Peter.” Except one. “And Raynor is smart as well. In a different way and in this case it might be a better way,” I said. “We’re trained to take out targets, usually one—maybe two or three. We didn’t need to worry about defensive tactics, because no one would suspect us. Someone falls over because of a natural death and a cute sixteen-year-old waitress who was serving him dinner goes into hysterics. Who’s going to blame the waitress for a heart attack because her hand brushed his when she handed him his glass of water? No one. When Raynor kills people, chances are everyone in the area is going to know it and Raynor is vulnerable. He can be killed much more easily than a chimera. Don’t think he doesn’t know that and that he doesn’t value himself very highly.”

  Stefan nodded. “I wondered if you’d see that. You know, then. Raynor won’t be coming alone.”

  “You were testing me?” I scoffed. “The fully trained assassin?”

  “You said it yourself. Chimera warfare is different than human warfare. You’re like a single bullet, elegant and deadly. Humans are like ten thousand NASCAR fans, each one with his own tank. If our lives are at stake, we are bringing all we have, all we can borrow, and all we can steal. Raynor is definitely not coming alone. Whoever he brings won’t know a damn thing about chimeras. That’s Raynor’s secret. But they’ll be shooters and the kind that don’t mind mowing down a kid or two to get the rest to cooperate. Not to mention Tasers, the rubber bullets like Raynor used on you.” He tapped a finger on my head. “Not as hard as it seems. Who knew? Raynor goddamn knew, Misha. So if something happens to me or Saul, remember that. Raynor is more than a distraction to be used. He’s a genuine threat.”

  He was. He was human, but I couldn’t dismiss that he’d caught me and had me chained in
his car. ’“I’ll remember, but nothing is going to happen to you.”

  “Hello? I’m along for the ride too. How about nothing is going to happen to me?” Saul complained.

  Stefan ignored him to say, “And Saul and I might not have USDA-grade assassin stamped on our asses, but between the two of us we’ve killed a shitload more people than you care to know about. So don’t be so quick to jump between me and a bullet this time. If you can keep Wendy from doing her creepy thing, I can take care of myself. Okay?” He waited until I confirmed it.

  “All right.”

  “If we’re lucky, we’ll all get out of this in one piece,” he finished. Then he gave me a hell-on-wheels grin and quoted my favorite word: “Theoretically.”

  I tried to grin back, but I didn’t feel it. I planned on this working, but I thought that Butch and Sundance had planned on eventually leaving Bolivia in one piece too. I wished now I hadn’t given us their names while we’d lived in Cascade.

  As omens went, it wasn’t a good one.

  Chapter 14

  It shouldn’t have felt like coming home with Peter and the others waiting to punish me, and if “punish” wasn’t to kill slowly and painfully, then my imagination wasn’t all that I knew it was. It did though—it felt like coming home. We’d been gone only a few days, but I’d missed it. It didn’t stretch my mind, make me learn faster, soak up more knowledge, instinctively fit in better as the adrenaline rush of being on the run did, but it was a nice place all the same. It felt the same as when I watched one of my favorite movies for the fifth or tenth time. I knew every line of dialogue, every explosion, every wave that crashed against a sinking ship, every gunshot, but it was as good as the very first time I watched it . . . better almost. It was warm, familiar, and safe. I’d not had a moment of that in the Institute. I learned the value of it when I’d escaped.

  The Bridge to the Heavens was blocked off on Cascade’s end by the sheriff’s car. Sheriff Simmons was dead on the road beside it, and I saw Jess Quillino, his deputy, her legs showing beyond the bumper from the other side of the car. Other than that, there were no other people around—none alive. The bridge over the dam didn’t go anywhere too important, definitely not to an infinity of heavens. If you crossed it and drove about forty miles on a single-lane road, you’d get to a town small enough that it made Cascade seem like New York City. Hardly anyone made the trip from this direction and if they were coming from the other direction, that end of the bridge was blocked by the Institute bus, long GPS disabled; I was certain.

  I passed out the tranq guns, tightened my lips, and went with one hope—that I didn’t get us all killed. “Stoipah, Saul, just remember one thing. They’re not kids. They never were. If something goes wrong, they’ll kill you and they’ll laugh while they do it. If it goes bad, use your guns, not the tranq ones. And be sure to shoot them in the head. So—” I inhaled, exhaled hard, and opened the car door. “Let’s go.”

  We walked around the sheriff’s car and I didn’t look at the body too closely. He’d been a nice enough man. He’d given me a break with the fake tourist. He’d played pool with Stefan. He had a wife and a little boy. If we’d never come to his town, he’d still be alive. Those thoughts weren’t helpful at the moment and I shoved them down as we headed onto the bridge.

  They were waiting halfway across. We stopped forty feet short. The thirteen of them were waiting in various poses. Some stood, some sat cross-legged on the road, Wendy—my eyes locked on Wendy—sat on the threefoot-tall concrete wall that kept cars from plummeting into the river boiling at the base of the dam. Dressed in a small blue sweat suit with a spray of rhinestone flowers across the top, she was kicking her feet idly against the concrete, her fair hair lifted in the wind. She waved at me. “Hi, Michael. Hi, hi, hi. Did you see the birds? They fell like they were a part of the sky at night. Black, black everywhere. I did that. That was me.”

  “I know.” Keeping her in view, I turned my attention to Peter who stood in front of them all. Peter who’d led us on this chase, had tried to kill my brother and my friend over and over, who had taken down the Institute from the inside practically on his own. Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater. Peter, the Pied Piper of death. “I’m here, Peter. Now what? How are you going to punish me?” I was tense on the inside, tense enough I could feel the sharp ache of it . . . of waiting for Wendy to try anything aimed at Stefan, Saul, or me.

  Peter smiled at me, that same charismatic, smug smile I was sick to death of. He said nothing. “All of this and you’re going to stare at me like an idiot? This is it, Peter. You said I had to pay. I had to be punished. Where’s your big punishment?” I wasn’t waiting. This was a perfect chance and I was taking it. Without their leader, they’d be confused if only for a fraction of a second. It would have to be enough. While I was still talking, I shot Peter in the chest with the tranquilizer cartridge at the new dosage. He had the speed—my speed—to avoid it, and I was ready to keep shooting until I hit him.

  But he didn’t move—not before the shot, during, or after. He simply stood and the smile slowly fell off his face.

  He looked down at the dart, puzzled, and said, the words already slurring, “What do I say, Wendy? What do . . . I . . . say . . . now?” He dropped bonelessly to the concrete, unconscious.

  “Poor Peter,” Wendy chirped before her voice hardened to stone. “He was always so hopelessly stupid.”

  She stopped the kicking and leaned a little as if to study me more closely. “The same as you, Michael. You reek of stupidity. You always did. You’re soft and worthless as a human, even worse than one actually because you have the gift. Not much of one, but enough. You never had the will, though.”

  “You. God, I should’ve known. Peter was nothing special other than loving to kill, but you—you were always special.” She’d fed him every line, every word, all along. Every action that had been taken, the entire plan, the rebellion, it had all been her. I’d grown. I’d become a man. Wendy had grown and I had no idea what she had become.

  As Saul would’ve said, we were well and truly screwed now.

  “As special as they came, that I am. And that was a problem. A very large fucking problem.” Her voice had gone from little girl to adult and now it went to as rich with hate as a death row inmate. “I was bored. I’d been bored forever and they kept running out of people for me to kill at the Institute. They also started thinking,” she said, her smile coldly vicious, “and they should have. What would happen when I was bored and the Basement and animal labs were empty? I couldn’t let them think about that too long, could I? Because they knew what would happen. I wasn’t Jericho’s favorite anymore. He was gone and Bellucci—he was always afraid, from the first day he took Jericho’s place. But even if they hadn’t been starting to think I was more than they could handle, it wouldn’t have mattered. I was bored, bored, bored, and there weren’t enough people in the Institute to entertain me. The world, though, the whole, entire world—how much fun would that be?”

  I saw something I hadn’t guessed at when Wendy and I shared a prison. “You were never obedient, were you? Of all of us, some more than others, you never were at all.” I thought she had been. Their goal and hers were the same—death. She had appeared perfectly happy and content. But I’d been blind. The likes of Wendy wouldn’t bow to anyone—not even to her own creator, if he’d lived.

  “When I was young, I pretended. Now that I’m not . . . I stopped pretending.” She was ten years old and she thought—she knew she wasn’t young anymore. Her face, rosy pink from the wind, hardened. “They should’ve graduated me when I was three, because even then I was the best of all of you in every way.” She kicked again. It was to be shocking in its cuteness, to entertain herself by making our brain rebel at the incongruity of what she was, the inner and the outer mismatched enough to make your stomach churn. “Bellucci wasn’t Jericho of course. Security became lax. Lax, lax, lax. I like that word.” She smiled, pretty as a picture. “Until one day there was a new researcher—
an older woman with a deeply buried maternal instinct that would’ve had Jericho screening her out simply by looking at her. It took a while, but I am sweet and adorable and she, like you, Michael, was stupid. I asked one day if she’d show me how to play a game on her computer. After I popped a few cells in the decision-making part of her tiny brain, she could see no harm in that.” Chimeras were never allowed on or near a computer that could access the Internet—with good reason. “That was that.”

  All it took for her to learn a way to reach the outside world was one woman who wasn’t quite as soulless as the rest of the faculty. She’d have obtained her password. Gotten access to “play games” now and again, but now and again was all Wendy would need.

  “I learned how much more lay outside the Institute than they ever told us. How many more people. Endless numbers of playthings. I also found a friend.” From her lips, “friend” was a word in an incomprehensible alien language. “I found one of us who’d taken care of their owner, brutally I hope, and found freedom. It made me think. What would I do if I were free?” Her smile was hideous. “What wouldn’t I do?” She looked past us. “Lily One, come say hi, hi, hi to your boyfriend.”

  Stefan and Saul shifted their stance enough to see whose footsteps were coming up behind us . . . although they already knew. I’d told them. When I’d told them about everything else, I’d told them this too—that she was a chimera. It had been one reason I hadn’t worried when she’d disappeared at McDonald’s. No one could take care of themselves as she could. She stepped into sight, her smile more natural and familiar than Wendy’s. Her eyes, now chimera blue and green instead of just blue, were clear and happy. She was as she’d always been: glorious.

  “Ariel.” I nodded. “I was wondering when you’d turn up.”