by Rob Thurman
A single cold finger climbed my spine as if it were a ladder. Psychic. I didn’t know exactly how to classify what Michael and the other Institute children could do, but it had to occupy some twisted corner of the psychic realm. “Psychic? What the hell?”
“I know. As we said in the van, he’s a goddamn fruit loop. He calculated that if they would be stronger and faster, they would also have a heightened psychic ability. Of course, if he’d ever bothered to demonstrate all those abilities himself, maybe he wouldn’t be the pariah he is today.” I heard him yawn. “Shit, maybe I’m a chimera myself. Twice the sexy jammed into one body. Now that’s a science project worth the bucks.”
“Bucks? How about cents?” I replied absently. Michael had come out of the bathroom. Bare-chested, he was wearing a pair of my jeans that bagged ridiculously on him and a towel hanging around his neck. My eyes went instantly to the incision on his lower back. He’d said it hadn’t hurt when he’d gotten up this morning, and now I could see why.
It was gone.
The only sign the surgery had ever taken place was the thinnest of silvery lines, nearly invisible to the naked eye. I felt my mouth go dry. Stronger or faster, I didn’t know if there was truth in that or not, but Jericho had certainly proved resilient. It had to be the same resiliency that Michael was exhibiting. The recollection of his tattered feet from the night of the rescue hit me. The next day he’d said they were fine when I’d asked and had seemed puzzled by the question. At the time I’d thought he was reacting to a concern he was unfamiliar with, but it could’ve been simple confusion over what he thought a pointless question. Of course they’d been fine, no doubt completely healed.
Turning, he blocked my view as he dumped the towel and pulled on a long sleeve T-shirt. He caught me staring and raised his eyebrows in question. Shaking my head, I strong-armed my attention back to the phone conversation. Saul was still indignantly jabbering about my cheap shot and I interrupted without mercy. “So, you say he’s a pariah. Then what’s he been doing lately?”
“Once his pet theory became his only theory, he literally dropped out of sight. The scientific community probably wasn’t very sorry to see him go. The chimera line was on shaky ground, but then he went over the edge. Psychic research isn’t any more accepted now than it ever was, not when it comes to the big boys. These are the guys who have their eyes on the Nobel, and they don’t have the patience for anything that isn’t one hundred percent for that goal.”
“Then there’s nothing else? About the kids or the compound?”
“Nada. For nearly twenty years he’s been off the radar. Forgotten except for textbooks and old articles.” There was the explosive pop of a soft drink can being opened and then a long slurp. “But with what was in that room we saw there, he couldn’t have been up to anything good. And that’s above and beyond kidnapping kids.”
“Was there anything in the news?” Saul had made the 911 call the night we’d broken in, but I hadn’t heard anything on the radio over the following days regarding captive children held in a walled compound.
“Not a thing. Not a damn word. And if that doesn’t scream government connections out the ass, I don’t know what does. I even sent one of my people out there to take a casual look. It’s still locked up, but the guards are gone. I’m betting everyone else is too. They’ve pulled up stakes.”
And taken the children with them. I had my brother back, but there had to be more than thirty families out there whose sons and daughters and brothers and sisters were still missing—worse than missing. While I wished we’d been able to take more of them with us, I realized it might not have been so simple. The thought of that tiny porcelain Wendy on the loose in public was bone-chilling. As she skipped down the sidewalk, her fair hair floating behind her like spider silk, her huge eyes would be wax doll empty as people collapsed in showers of blood all about her. Wendy was a victim, I knew that, but was she a salvageable one?
I didn’t think she was. I really didn’t. But some would be like Michael or Peter. Some could be saved. But without the help of the authorities, I couldn’t guess how a large-scale operation like that could be pulled off—not now at any rate, but I wouldn’t forget those kids, and I didn’t think Saul would either. “Keep your ears open, Saul. Just in case. Okay?”
He promised he would, then hung up. Damn, I’d forgotten to ask if he knew how Jericho had lost his hand. The information probably wouldn’t be useful, but you never knew.
“What did you find out?”
Damp hair neatly combed, Michael was sitting cross-legged on the other bed opposite me. Skin pink, eyes bright, he was apparently healthy as a horse. Yeah, a horse whose racing was done in healing, not on the track. Scrubbing both hands across my face, I filled him in on what Saul had told me. That Jericho was involved in genetics wasn’t news, but the chimera aspect was. I mentioned the stronger, faster, and smarter, keeping the accelerated healing to myself. I wanted to discuss that separately.
Michael was a chimera; that couldn’t be avoided. The question was whether he had been born one or whether genetic manipulation had taken place after he was kidnapped. Saul had mentioned a chimera could be found by way of a blood test. If Michael was a natural chimera like Jericho, that information could’ve been obtained surreptitiously from the hospital where Lukas was born or from his pediatrician. I had a hard time buying that natural chimeras had always been among us and no one had noticed their so-called superhuman qualities. Maybe Jericho had been the first of his kind, a new breed of chimera. And it wasn’t that far a jump to believe Jericho could have used his knowledge of genetics to somehow force other normal chimeras into the same mutation. That had led to the creation of the accelerated healing and fatal talent for cellular destruction, although so far Jericho hadn’t shown any signs of the latter. That must have been an “improvement” that he stumbled upon during the process. He’d made something amazing and frightening, half wonderful and half dire. He was a cruel god, Jericho.
“Smarter,” Michael mused. “Yes, I can see that.”
“Uh huh, I’m sure you do.” As for stronger, he had seemed stronger than a kid his age should be when he dragged me to safety across the parking lot, but not freakishly so. I stood and felt my joints howl from the drug-heavy sleep of the night. “I’m going to grab a shower, Einstein. Try not to formulate any theories while I’m gone.”
“Just as well. I’m not sure that any theory could explain you.”
Smart-ass kid.
The hot water eventually loosened up my muscles enough that I was able to gingerly wash my hair. But first I simply stood there, head hanging while I leaned with my hands against the mustard yellow tile. The water poured over me and whirled down the slow-working drain. It was hypnotic . . . liquid glass spinning in lazy rotations until it was swallowed from sight. It wasn’t as soothing as it should’ve been. Jericho was still out there. I’d hoped the son of a bitch had died there on the asphalt, in midmaniacal laugh. But now . . . I was less optimistic. Even with Michael’s chip gone, I didn’t like the idea of Jericho’s still trolling the waters looking for us. It might take him longer to find us, but it was by no means impossible. It could be done.
Hadn’t I done it?
It had taken years and years to find Michael, but I hadn’t had government help or at least not the kind Jericho had at his disposal. I didn’t think it would take Jericho as long—not nearly.
By the time I finished showering, shaving, and dressing in jeans and socks, it was nearly a half hour later. Feeling slightly more alive, I walked back out into the room to see Michael watching porn. “Holy shit!” I bounded over to the TV and turned it off. The directions for the play-for-pay channel were labeled clearly on top of the television. They were easy enough for a self-proclaimed genius like my brother to comprehend. “You little otradbe.”
“Brat?” He blinked with an innocence that was suspect at best. “A curiosity about the human body is natural in a teenager my age.”
“So’s an
ass kicking. You wanna place bets on which is the more natural?”
As he lay on his stomach with pointed chin resting on folded arms, his air of amused disdain couldn’t be missed. He’d seen all I had done and was yet willing to do to keep him safe. To say that put a serious kink in any future disciplinary threats I might make was putting it mildly. That I was thoroughly screwed was the more accurate assessment. Giving in was not in my nature, though, and dumping the batteries of the remote into my hand, I tossed the device back to him. “Knock yourself out.”
“Foiled again,” he said, grinning. “How will I ever cross nearly three feet to turn it on manually? It boggles the mind.”
“Silicone rots the brain, kid. Hang in there. We’ll find you a nice girl closer to your age and basic chemical makeup.” Tossing the batteries into the nightstand drawer, I gathered up the first aid kit for a bandage change.
Either taking pity on me or being more curious about what I was doing, Michael ignored the television for the moment and sat up to watch me work. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I began to strip away the wet bandage from my side. When the graze, red and puffy, was revealed, he immediately frowned.
“Something’s wrong.”
It seemed all right to me, a little inflamed, but there were no other signs of infection and no fresh blood on the bandage. “What? It looks okay.”
“It hasn’t healed at all.” He moved in for a closer look. “It should be nearly half closed by now.” Brown brows met in an ominous scowl. “That man. That doctor.” His mouth twisted as if he wanted to spit the word. “He did something, didn’t he? Poisoned the wound, infected it.”
The prime opportunity to bring up the healing issue had just appeared. “Whoa, Misha, you’re jumping the gun there.” I looped fingers around his wrist and squeezed gently. I’d never been one for physical displays of affection. Mom had been, Lukas too. As a child, he had been all about spontaneous hugs and football tackles. I’d taken more after our father in that respect, but if ever someone needed some tangible affection in his life, it was Michael. And changing my ways hadn’t turned out to be as difficult as I might have imagined it to be. “You don’t know, do you?”
He didn’t. It was plainly seen in his puzzled and wary expression. “Know what?”
Jesus. Where to start? And how could he not be aware of a difference between us that was so fundamental? “Your back. It’s healed already, right? I saw it.”
He nodded, still perplexed. “Of course it’s healed. It’s been almost twelve hours, and it was a small incision to begin with.”
Releasing his wrist, I stalled a little as I squirted out a generous wad of antibiotic cream onto a square of gauze. I wanted to phrase this in a way that he wouldn’t feel any more to the left of normal than he already did. “It’s like this, kiddo.” I applied the cream and hissed at the raw bite of it. “Your average Joe takes a while to heal. Something like those won’t completely scab over for days; it’s too big. And it won’t fully heal for weeks.” If I were lucky. “It seems, along with the extra dose of smarts you seem so sure you received, you and the other kids have some kind of accelerated healing. Jericho too.” Holding the gauze in place, I nodded at him to rip me off a few pieces of tape. “See? You can do something good. Pretty damn miraculous in fact.”
Independently of the rest of him, his fingers mechanically tore off sections of tape and handed them to me. “I don’t under . . . I didn’t know. We heal more quickly?” His gaze moved to the bruise that he’d given me. There, on my wrist, which wasn’t covered by a shirtsleeve now, was more evidence of what I was telling him.
“And then some.” I taped the gauze into place and began to clean up the supplies. “About ten times faster at least.”
“We didn’t seem any different from the people in the movies.” The statement was both stubborn and wistful. It reminded me of when at the ripe age of six I’d found out there was no Easter Bunny. I’d denied the truth and yet mourned it all the same. Miraculous or not, this was simply one more thing that set Michael apart from the rest of the human race. In his eyes, that wasn’t anything to celebrate.
“The movies?” I gave a nostalgic smile of my own. “No, I guess not.” When he watched the hero get shot in one scene and scale fences in the next with only a tiny bandage as a memento, why wouldn’t he think that was just the way things were? After all, that was the way he was. As for his education, I’d already reasoned it was aimed at making the perfect assassin. The body’s mechanisms of overcoming trauma, not to mention the timetable involved, had probably been low on the list of classroom topics. At best, it was irrelevant; at worst, it might cause sympathy for the prey. Maybe it was something they told them before “graduation.” Maybe they never told them at all. I couldn’t begin to second-guess the twisting paths of Jericho’s reasoning. The sick son of a bitch . . . making children over in his own image, but not for a longing for his own kind. No, he’d made them to be killers; made them to sell. Bastard.
“It’s a good thing, Misha,” I reiterated. “I swear.” Picking up the shirt I’d laid out, I put it on and winced as the action pulled at my side. “Trust me. Right now I’d love a little bit of that myself.”
He didn’t look as though he believed me, but, more than that, he was regarding me with something very close to betrayal. “You—all of you.” He wrapped his arms around himself and said grimly, “You’re all so fragile. So breakable. No wonder it’s so easy to hurt you.”
“We’re tougher than you think,” I countered immediately. What I meant, of course, was that I was. Michael had lived years without anyone to rely on, his whole life from his incomplete memory. Now he was asking himself how he could possibly depend on me. Hell, I could trip over a curb and die when I hit the pavement, right? Fragile . . . never in my life had someone entertained that notion about me. “I’ve stayed alive these past few years in a business that doesn’t exactly pull its punches, kid. I might heal a little slower than you, but I do heal.”
He didn’t look convinced, and I didn’t think words would change that. Only time would prove to him I was here to stay, healing impaired or not. I couldn’t completely reassure him, but maybe I could cheer him up. The batteries went back in the remote and I handed it over with a sigh. “Go on. Just take it in small doses, would you?”
I made calls while he surfed. He gave equal time to naked women and a documentary on ancient Egypt, but from the stiff punching of the remote buttons, he still had enough attention set aside for less pleasant considerations. Keeping a concerned eye on him, I dialed my cell phone. I knew tracking down our father wasn’t going to be anything but difficult, but it didn’t make the futile call after call any easier to endure. Most of the numbers I’d memorized two years ago at Anatoly’s order either rang endlessly or were disconnected. I was hoping he would show up at one of the numbers still working. On the run himself, he nevertheless had the resources and the manpower that would make our chances at survival a little less grim.
“The landlines are too easy to trace, aren’t they? That’s why you use your cell phone.”
Twenty useless minutes had passed when Michael’s quiet question came from the other bed. Calling it quits for the moment, I switched the phone off and rubbed a hand across a grumbling stomach. “Yeah. Cells can too, but it’s more difficult, especially when you’re on the move and they’re disposable. That’s why I picked up a few when we stopped for the dye.” I bent down with care and felt for my sneakers under the bed. “You want something to eat?” There was an unnecessary question if ever I’d asked one, but Michael didn’t need someone else taking complete control of his life . . . telling him where to go and when. He needed to be included in decision making, at least as much as was possible in our situation. Independence was important to any seventeen-year-old; it would be doubly important to him.
We missed breakfast but caught lunch in a small café. Close to Gainesville, we drove on in to find a strip mall with restaurants, stores, and a putt-putt course. Volcano
es belched smoke and water dyed turquoise tumbled over rocks as wildly colored plaster jungle animals crouched frozen to swallow golf balls whole. Gracious enough to let me drive this time, Michael ogled it the second he climbed out of the car. “That’s . . .” Craning his neck for a better look, he tried again. “It’s . . .”
“Tacky? Hideous? A crime against God and nature? What?”
“Amazing,” he breathed.
We ended up playing for more than an hour, and he beat me every time. I consoled myself with the fact I was a wounded man, but the reality was that he would’ve beaten me anyway. By the time I dragged him to the café, I was disgruntled, my stomach was devouring itself, and I had a fast-growing phobia of artificial grass. After dual orders of bacon cheeseburgers, old-fashioned malts, and steak cut fries, we hit the bookstore.
“What are we looking for?” Michael asked curiously. “I haven’t had a chance to finish the ones we bought at the drugstore.”
“This is for work, not fun.” I dug out a sheaf of bills and passed it over to him. “I want you to pick up something on genetics. Anything that might help us understand more about Jericho and what he’s done to you and the other kids.”
He didn’t exactly brighten—that wasn’t the right term—but his focus definitely sharpened. “You want me to do research?”
“Who better than a smart-ass . . . I mean, a smart guy like you?” I grinned. “I’m going to grab a chair and take a break. Come and get me when you’re done. Then we need to haul some ass.” I’d wanted to buy him some more clothes, but with the miniature golf excursion setting us back, we really didn’t have the time. And leaving Michael alone in the store while I shopped elsewhere wasn’t something I was willing to do. The chip was gone and Jericho was hopefully down for a few days at least, but it didn’t matter. Life had taught me all about careless moments. I wasn’t going to have another.
The road to Hell . . . shit.
