by Rob Thurman
Now, though, looking at what was left of him on my computer screen, I wished I’d tried to find out more of who’d been behind the killer. Was there more to him? I’d had the skills at reading people, same as now, but I hadn’t used them. Everything, the entire world, was so damn new then that Stefan was all I needed and all I could handle. I didn’t want or need a father, I’d thought at the time, especially one who’d given up on me.
“Be kind to Stefan.” I remembered those words.
I looked at the bones and chunks of decomposed flesh on the screen. He’d been in a lake. Lake Michigan. Floaters aren’t pretty and I honestly couldn’t remember if I’d learned that at the Institute or on one of the thousand TV cop shows since. Wherever I’d heard it, it was right. He was roadkill marinated in a swampy Everglades ditch. He was in pieces and the pieces didn’t fit together to make anything that looked human. They’d identified him by dental records. I clicked on the next picture. These weren’t the kind available to your average Internet surfer, but I wasn’t your average anything. If there was a place that cybertendrils didn’t extend into, I hadn’t found it yet. Chimeras were trained to fool people. I’d found that fooling machines was far easier. If there was a data stream, I rode it; a path of pixels, I walked it. I saw it all, saw through everything as if it were made of glass.
Not like Anatoly.
“Be kind to Stefan,” he had said. He hadn’t been much of a human before or after he died, I’d thought, but he’d loved his son. He hadn’t loved me; I could tell. I didn’t read him, but I didn’t have to search his face or catalog his movements and words to know that. Love is easy to see; no effort required. Other emotions took effort, but love was simple. I didn’t know why he hadn’t accepted me like Stefan had. Maybe I’d been gone too long. Maybe he’d wiped me out of his heart and mind. The reason didn’t matter.
I did know it now, but it didn’t matter. Anatoly had ceased to matter to existence itself.
I couldn’t read him emotionally any better today than then—it was hard to read pieces. But I could read what had been done to him. Brutal, vicious, and messy, but effective. I could’ve done it more quickly and neatly, but there weren’t many of my kind around. Others had to make do with chain saws. This hadn’t been done for punishment or fun. It would’ve taken too long. Psychopaths, such as the Mafiya, as much as they liked chain saws, were generally into immediate gratification. This had been done methodically by someone looking for information.
I searched the screen. I’d seen Anatoly and what had been done to him. It was what was behind his tangible, rotting memory that I’d noticed: a man. He was in all the pictures. In the ones where they’d pulled Anatoly’s remains from the lake, loading him into the coroner’s van, in the autopsy room—he was always there. The suit, short fringe of dark hair, opaque sunglasses, and inscrutable expression said government, but his dedication in following the body from place to place implied more dedication than FBI or IRS, the major bloodhounds on Anatoly’s tail according to Stefan.
I clicked on the next picture and zoomed in on those deep-set black eyes in the one picture where he’d removed the glasses. Not entirely inscrutable. There was interest there, a deep and passionate desire. But for what? Anatoly was beyond indictment and prison. What was left that could be that fascinating?
The knock on my bedroom door had me automatically switching to another computer window. Stefan stuck his head in. He looked at the computer screen and groaned, appearing more than a little worried. “Again? Seriously, kiddo, you’ve got that live girl at the coffee shop made of mostly human parts, you’ve got porn at your fingertips, and you’re wasting your time on that?”
I glanced at the Lolcats site. “There has to be a logic to it. It’s idiotic, but people say it’s funny. Unless all people are idiots, I’m missing something. I’m going to figure it out.” It wasn’t strictly a lie. It was not volunteering information and . . . waiting. And waiting wasn’t wrong, not if you thought of it in the correct way. My mind was an Olympic gymnast at twisting and bending to see things in the manner that benefited me the most.
“Cats are intelligent.” It was a diversion, but it was also true. “If they could talk, then I’m quite sure they could spell.” My eyes were drawn back to the screen and the idiotic U haz hareball on fut under the picture of an evidently highly annoyed cat biting someone’s ankle. There had to be something to it . . . but what in God’s name it was, I couldn’t figure out. “Maybe their owners can’t spell, but they could.”
“Misha.” His lips quirked. He was tired and darkness was in him, shadows filling up a flesh and blood pitcher. “Thanks for taking one of the more crappy days and making it better.”
“By making a tourist vomit and giving you a chance to take out your frustrations by kicking him in the stomach?” I asked curiously, tearing my eyes away from the screen before it burned my retinas with its idiocy.
The grin was quick and fleeting, but it was there. “Don’t do it again, but, yeah, I enjoyed it. I shouldn’t have—a few of my old ways creeping back. But sometimes you need a distraction, and you, little brother, are always that. I needed it today. Now, get your ass off the computer and go to bed. It’s past midnight and we both have to go back to work tomorrow as if nothing happened.” Because as far as anyone knew, nothing had, but it didn’t stop the darkness in him from beginning to overflow. He needed time to remember, time to put those memories in all those tiny boxes we have inside us. To put them away for another day—a day when they would be bearable again.
“Go.” He pointed at my bed where Godzilla was curled up on my pillow. “And . . . thanks.”
He closed my door. I didn’t sleep, though Godzilla snored through a tiny deviated septum. I was nineteen and far beyond curfews and bedtimes, but Stefan’s trying to take care of me made him feel better about Anatoly, so I didn’t argue. I simply didn’t obey, and by the morning I had more than enough reasons for Stefan to take back that thanks he’d given me.
I iz up shit crick, haz no paddle.
I now liked all animals except cats, which, if they’d allowed this travesty to go on, weren’t as smart as I had thought they were. Kind of like me, I thought grimly before correcting myself. Self-blame, so sayeth Jericho, was destructive to the mission, any mission, including staying free and alive. I should’ve seen it sooner. I hadn’t. It was time to move on to more constructive thoughts.
Stretching, I yawned, but only lightly. We healed faster, and as I got older, I started sleeping less too. Four hours were as good as eight to me. Less downtime, double the assassinations—Jericho had Walmart beat hands down for sales efficiency. I hadn’t told Stefan yet about the change in my sleep patterns. I wanted to be as normal as possible in his eyes and with all the other genetic baggage I had, that was not easy. I got out the chair, showered, fed Godzilla, Gamera, and Mothra, and was waiting for Stefan in the kitchen with breakfast and a stack of pictures I’d printed off my computer.
He stopped in the doorway, which was also freshly painted—the mobster who’d traded his gun in for a paintbrush, or had switched hands with them anyway. Paint with the right, keep a weapon in your left. He didn’t look much better than yesterday, especially with the addition of dark stubble that his scar ran through like a road to nowhere. “You cooked?” He rubbed the sleep crust from his eyes and took another look. “And it’s healthy. That can’t be good.”
Cheese omelet with butter-fried potatoes, sausage, toast, coffee, and orange juice. Compared to my usual chocolate chip pancakes or cinnamon-banana waffles, it was healthy. He sat down and started digging in, every fork stroke a testament to massively overacted resignation. “I’m rebuilding the garage, you know,” he mumbled around a mouthful of food. “Poison ivy. Splinters. You couldn’t have waited until winter to blow it up? When all the poison ivy, oak, and whatever else was dead?”
“You are such a drama queen,” I said drily.
His eyebrows shot up and he almost choked on his eggs. “Sara at the coffee shop
taught me that one,” I explained. “It seems to fit.”
“Glad you’re picking up all the slang, but cut me some slack and at least give me drama king.” He put down the fork and reached for the coffee. “Go on, spill. Let’s get whatever it is out of the way. What could be worse than the garage, because I have houses to paint and you have tourists to not piss off today.”
“Eat first,” I ordered. He wouldn’t feel like eating after, not for a while.
“Misha . . .”
“Eat.” I folded my arms.
“Michael, I’m serious.”
I looked up at the ceiling. There were cracks there. Three formed a completely perfect equilateral triangle. I’d measured it one day just to be sure. If there was a God, the bipolar one who was wrathful and vengeful in the Old Testament and raining fluffy kittens of love in the New Testament, it wouldn’t be in the sky or the sea or the inexplicable saving of a life. It would be in a perfect, equal-sided triangle. God would be the universe; the universe is physics; physics is science. Therefore God would be science. I wondered if I could cut it out of the ceiling and sell it on eBay. People did that with tortillas all the time and you couldn’t measure the Madonna, Mother of God. I had proof. Surely that would get me a higher price.
“Fine. Jesus. You are such a brat,” he grumbled. I lowered my gaze and narrowed my eyes. “Okay, okay.” He threw up his hands. “You’ve got me. You’re not a brat; you’re not a kid; you’re an adult. And one who pushes me around as if I were a toy car and half the time I don’t realize it.” He snorted and started finishing off the breakfast.
“I am the puppet master,” I said with appropriate darkness and doom in my voice. It should’ve been a joke, but unfortunately it was appropriate in real life this morning as well.
“You’re Darth Vader without the asthma and black cape,” he countered, scraping up the last forkful of potatoes.
“That too.” I didn’t mind. I liked Darth before he became a whiny mama’s boy. The whole choking people without having to touch them hit a little close to home, but it was a big pop culture thing I’d missed at the Institute and it was entertaining. I had all the Star Wars movies—the good three and the blasphemy-against-nature three. I’d watched the first three at least twice each. At least I’d stopped before I bought a light-saber to hide in the closet, although I still firmly stood behind the view that Han had shot first. The man wasn’t an idiot. Of course he shot first. I’d been younger then, by two years, and I had missed the excitement of everything being new and engaging. Things had popped up now that were new, but not engaging.
Not in a good way at least.
Stefan got up, dumped his empty plate into the sink, and said, “Okay, you’ve made sure I’m fed and watered just like your little monsters, so tell already.”
Tell I did. As he braced his hands on the back of my chair and looked down over my shoulder, I brought out the pictures I’d had hidden under my plate and laid them out. “I went back to look at the news on Anatoly.” I didn’t wait for a reaction, rushing on. “I thought something had seemed peculiar.”
“Weird,” Stefan substituted absently. He tried to help me get the language right for someone my age and my pretense of a lifelong coffeehouse career ambition.
“Weird. Something seemed weird.” I pointed at each photo. “This man. He’s in every one of them. Where they found Anatoly, when they put him into the coroner’s van, at the autopsy.” Stefan knew better than to ask where I’d gotten the autopsy photos. I could tell you who killed JFK if you wanted to know, but you really didn’t.
“I was curious,” I said. “There’s nothing Anatoly can do for the FBI or IRS now, but he looks like government. Then I ran him through my facial recognition program.”
That one did get to him. “You have a facial recognition program? You’ve got to be shitting me. Like the government and the TSA?”
“No, nothing like theirs. Mine is ninety-nine point nine percent accurate. They wish they had my program.” I pointed at the last picture. “This is him coming through the Miami airport the day after you broke into the Institute, grabbed me, and they moved. I hacked into the rental car place he used—video cameras are everywhere in airports—it’s great—found the car he rented under his own name, which definitely makes him government. Overconfident. I downloaded that car’s GPS information and guess where he went.”
Stefan didn’t have to guess. There was only one place that would have me going to this much trouble. He had gone to the Institute. “Who is he? Who is the son of a bitch?”
“Hugo Raynor. He’s been with the CIA, NSA, and now Homeland Security. He’s forty-two, five foot ten, best marksman at the Farm.” This was where CIA applicants trained when they were young and relatively untarnished. Raynor was far beyond the Farm and as blackened with tarnish as fifty-year-old tin. I’d bet he was still a good marksman, though. You’re never that good at something unless you love it, and if you love it, you don’t give it up.
“He speaks five languages,” I continued, “amateur” running through my mind, “and repeated a course in advanced psychological and physical interrogation. He got the top score both times. I guess it was like a good book; once isn’t enough.” I leaned back in the chair and said what had to be said, although Stefan probably already knew it by now. “The mob would’ve been quicker with Anatoly. The autopsy report says what was done to him was slow. Someone wanted to know something. The mob wants to find you too. King Anatoly is dead. . . . Long live King Stefan.” The man who’d taken Anatoly’s place in the mob would want to make sure Stefan wasn’t coming back to stir up old loyalties. “But they’re not patient, not like this.”
“Raynor. Goddamn it.” He sat back down. “We knew the Institute had to have some sort of government contact to get away with what they did, but that he tracked down Anatoly when even I couldn’t have.” He shook his head. “That makes him one dangerous son of a bitch. Pack your shit. We’re going. If this bastard is involved with the Institute, and he obviously is, what he wanted from Anatoly is you. Anatoly didn’t know where we are, but it’s too close. This mother-fucker is too close.” He stood. “Go on. Get your stuff. You know the drill. Hell, you wrote the drill because mine wasn’t efficient enough. Fifteen minutes and we’re in the car. Go.”
I had mildly tweaked the drill, but that wasn’t the point. He was right, but . . . I didn’t want to leave. This was home. The first I’d had. “But—”
“Fifteen minutes,” he said, cutting me off, “and I toss you and your smelly, evil pets in the trunk of the car and drive until dark. If you don’t want to live in those clothes for the next week, I suggest you start packing. Don’t bother with the pictures of Raynor. Keep one; I’ll take care of the rest.” True to his word, fifteen minutes later, Stefan did take care of the rest.
He burned down the house.
Burning down the house had not been in my emergency drill. It should’ve been as it was the most efficient way of eliminating evidence and wayward genetic material such as hair or skin particles. I turned to watch out the back window as the Bumble—as my home—burned a cheerful red-orange against the green of the trees. Stefan had already called 911. They would get there in time for the house to burn to the ground but not for the fire to spread, which was good. I’d turned Mothra loose. He’d pecked me on the head and flown to freedom, wing as good as new. Gamera I’d put in the woods where he crawled off with a speed twice that of when I’d found him and eyes bright and open to the world. He was still old; he’d die sooner or later, but now it would be later.
You do what you can to make up for what you’ve done in the past.
We followed the bend in the road and there was only smoke to see then, a black fist hanging in the gray sky. No more rusty water out of creaking taps. No more raccoons squabbling in the attic every night. No more crickets or fireflies, the smell of free coffee from work soaking the air every day, no more wall of shelf after sagging shelf that held close to five hundred of my movies and old TV sh
ows. Bottom line. . . .
No more home.
And no more “Harry,” the friendly but not overly friendly in a pedophile kind of way handyman. Harry was gone and while Stefan was always himself when Harry was officially out of sight of the townspeople and off duty, now Stefan was back all the way and then some, full-time. Almost three years had done a lot for me. I’d learned more things than I’d imagined existed; I’d developed social skills—of a sort; I became whole. Not normal, but as whole as I could hope to be, and that was good enough for right now.
That same amount of time had done something for Stefan too. I’d progressed and he’d regressed, but that wasn’t a bad thing for him. He’d lost some of the guilt he’d been drowning in. When I remembered Stefan first coming for me, it wasn’t a man in a black mask or a crazy guy shoving Three Musketeers bars at me as he tried to convince me that I was his brother. I remembered an ocean, dark as a universe without stars—black with guilt, despair, rage, violence, self-loathing. All I could see was his hand reaching out of the water; the rest of him was buried in a liquid Hell he couldn’t escape.
All of Jericho’s children could see, because we’d all been trained to look. I’d seen every one of Stefan’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities—I’d seen him as a target long before I’d seen him as a person.
But the past years had taken his hand and pulled him up, pulled him out. He hadn’t been on the shore, but he’d been in the breakers, close to being free. If he laughed, he meant it. If he was happy or at least content, he didn’t have to fake it. Now he had to step farther back into the water, if only for the violence. I watched the smoke disappear behind us, because I didn’t want to watch Stefan. He was a good man and when good men have to do bad things, that ocean will never let them go.
