Raven: The Young Adult World of Genetically Modified Teens and the Elite (Swann Book 6)

by Ryan Schow

  “Don’t worry about him. He’s in a deep hole in the earth, buried alive, unable to escape. We killed him, but he has the ability to regenerate, too. He came back to life. But for what he did to you, and so many others, we thought him suffering an eternity stuck in a box in the earth was a long, fitting end.”

  “That’s not possible,” she says. Her lower lip is out again.

  “There are a lot of possibilities out there that would surprise even you,” I say. “And this is why telling you everything isn’t safe for your well being. At least not now.”

  After pondering this for a spell, she says, “So is he…I mean…can he still get to me?”

  “Dr. Heim?” I asked. She nods her head, still scared. “No. He’s in a coffin six feet in the earth where no one can possibly hear him scream.”

  “He could get out, though,” she says, worried.

  “No,” I say, reassuring her. “The way we made it, he dies and is reborn in the coffin day after day. His mind will turn spongy and fail long before his energy to escape withers. He is in the worst kind of hell imaginable, and it’s still not enough. But it will have to suffice until I can think of a more befitting punishment.”

  She straightens herself in her seat again, lets a minimal smile loose. “Good.”

  With that, I laugh.

  After small talk and a few bouts of silence, we pull up to the Swann house, to Brayden’s hearse and a gorgeous white Mercedes-Benz coupe.

  My heart stops at the sight of the hearse.

  “We’re here,” I say, my throat suddenly dry. I see Brayden in the front yard looking right at me. My heart now, it drops so unbelievably low, I swear it’s sitting in my shoe.

  “Brayden!” Rebecca screams, jumping out of the Porsche like an excited child.

  She gets out and runs to him and he hugs her so long and so hard it makes me miss both Brayden and Rebecca. If I was still Abby, she would’ve hugged me like that, too.

  Then fake Abby walked out front and she just looked at the girl like she didn’t even know her. It broke my heart. No, it freaking crushed it. Not only am I feeling gut-punched seeing this f*cking fraud with my family, all that love Rebecca denied me and would soon give that girl—an imposter—she never earned it and she wouldn’t appreciate it.

  For a hot second, when I see the Abby stand-in, a vision of violence goes off like a flash bomb inside me. I see myself getting out of Holland’s car, walking right up to her and strangling the ever loving shit out of her. Instead, I reach over the seat, pull the passenger side door closed and watch in horror as the scene unfolds.

  The jumble of emotion that roars like a freight train through my head shows neither in my eyes nor my expression. But there’s pain. The kind of personal agony that cuts way too deep.

  Then my father walks out the front door, sees who Brayden is hugging and heads toward her as well. Rebecca lets go of Brayden, hugs Christian just as deeply. Tears sting the backs of my eyes. I blink them away, wondering for a moment who the Mercedes coupe belongs to, but I can’t focus because too many truths are sticking their little invisible knives in me.

  I’m wounded. Wounded and alone.

  From the front door of my old house emerges the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. She’s so perfect, so lovely, my heart immediately leaps to her and pushes her away in hatred at the same time. I don’t want to know who my father is with now. I don’t want to know anything about the woman he’s using to mask his sadness about Margaret.

  And for shit’s sake, I’m beginning to detest the idea of perfection.

  The prickle of tears turns to flooding and all the sudden I can’t be here anymore. This is my family, but it’s not. I’m not Abby anymore. Christian is not my father, Margaret is not my mother and my friends are no longer my friends. They’re her friends. The stand-in’s.

  Holland’s bitch.

  Basically I have to come to terms with the fact that I no longer exist. Which means I’m loved by no one, wanted by no one, missed by no one. I have no responsibilities. No reason to be anywhere, ever. Consequently, I have nothing to run from and no one to save. If I choose, I don’t have to go to school again. Ever. I don’t have to do anything. I can live anywhere I want, rob banks, tell lies to complete strangers, f*ck on the random, piss in public and there will be no repercussions, and I hate this! I hate all these insane feelings!

  Mopping up my tears, an even worse revelation occurs to me: I now have to find a way to take care of myself. No longer being a Swann, no longer being the daughter of a billionaire, this means I no longer have money. Or privilege.

  I’m on my own. Perfectly alone.

  Christian looks my way, but it’s Brayden who starts toward me. The way he’s fixated on me, how it feels like he’s studying me, it’s haunting. To have one of your two best friends look at you and not know you, to know you will never tell him who you really are, is an agony worse than death.

  My mind says stay. It says go. My mind says, go now!

  So I obey.

  I slide the SUV into gear and pull away before Brayden can get a good enough look at me. Deep down, I’m sad to see everyone from my past getting smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror. But this is what I signed up for, isn’t it? When I died? When Abigail the fraud took over my life and I asked Holland to make me different?

  As I’m leaving Palo Alto, I wonder if I’ve left the Abby stand-in in harm’s way. Maybe I have. Maybe there’ll be another bald boy in her future. Or another Dulce makeover. Or perhaps she might be just fine and I’ve paved the way for her happily-ever-after.

  My foot gets extra heavy on the gas pedal as I’m raging over how that little horse’s ass stole my life. But she didn’t steal it, I rationalize. Holland did this. He stole my identity, and he gave it to her. Which makes me really want to go straight to his lab and bring him back to life. I want to look him in his eye right f*cking now and tell him I’m going to kill him, and then I want to rip his gosh damn throat out and hold the slop of it up for him to see.

  My fingers open on the steering wheel. They open and shut, gripping the steering wheel, flexing, hating. He should’ve just let me die.

  Any time I want, I reason, I can take my life back. I can make Holland change me back to Abby and I can squeeze the life out of my stand-in. Or not. Who am I fooling? I won’t kill an innocent girl. Or disappear her. And the life I had, all the problems resulting from it, I don’t think I want that back. Not the rejection. Not Astor Academy. Not my dysfunctional mother.

  Or do I?

  My foot gets light on the gas again as fresh tears sting the backs of my eyes. The Porsche is slowing to sixty. Fifty-five. God I’m so tired of crying! It’s like that’s all I ever do anymore! I’m tired of crying, and not knowing what to do. I look in the rear-view mirror and say, “You’re stronger than this. You’ve got this.”

  Angry drivers swerve around me, honking, flipping me the bird and all I can think of as I struggle with my composure is Maggie listening to Lana Del Rey’s haunting song Born to Die on her iPod. I think I understand it the way Maggie understood it. She was deep into the futility of her life, held hostage by the controlling things around her, unable to assert even an ounce of free will.

  The girl I used to be, I’m not her anymore. My body is a weapon, my mind distorted and torqued sideways in so many awful ways. And powerful. OMFG, it’s powerful! Too powerful! I’m super human. Like for real, super-freaking-human! The problem is, in the wake of delirium, I feel a creeping depression in knowing that super humans never live regular lives amidst regular people. So what the hell am I supposed to do?

  I signal right and pull over to the side of the road, slap the SUV in park and really let my emotions run their course. Forget holding it together. It’s time to cry. To let it all out. As I sit there, sobbing on the side of the road, it becomes clear: I have to let the Abby stand-in become a more permanent me. I’m no longer me. I’ve become something more.

  My tears slowly diminish; my strength is retu
rning. Even my shaking hands grow still. I don’t really know my way around this life anymore, but maybe acceptance is key. Signaling left, I put the Porsche into gear and accelerate to forty, merging back into traffic.

  Sore Tits

  1

  The spotting began on the first day of school. She wasn’t supposed to have her period for another week, but there it was in her white underwear, that dime-sized, brownish red stain.

  “Damn,” she said.

  Netty was sitting on the toilet going pee when she saw it. It’s no biggie, she told herself. Then again, she thought of sex with Brayden, how he really put his all into it, into her, and then she wondered if he tore something inside her.

  In the bathroom, girls were laughing and touching up their makeup. And some girl next to her, she was taking a quiet dump, the sneaky kind where you never heard the shots fired, but you smelled the aftermath like it was sitting wet on the floor next to you.

  Netty wiped, then stuck a couple of squares of toilet paper in her underwear and flushed. Outside the stall, the two girls talking, they must have caught a whiff of the girl shitting death in the stall next to hers and said, “Oh my God, courtesy flush please!”

  The girl stinking things up, she flushed and said, “Sorry,” but not like she meant it.

  Netty pulled up her underwear, then straightened her skirt. She washed her hands next to one of the girls she knew and despised, a popular girl who was bitchy and mean, and on her way to becoming unquestionably hated by the masses.

  “You okay, Netty?” she asked. Netty nodded, but felt peaked. The girls just stared at her a minute, and then they went back to gossiping and fixing their eye shadow. After a moment, the dumping girl emerged from the stall, and for how sweet and churchlike she looked, you wouldn’t think she could stink that freaking bad.

  “Corned beef and cabbage last night,” she said, as if that explained everything.

  “That’s gross,” the girl beside her said.

  Netty walked out.

  The first day of school was forgettable, except for the bathroom stink bomb. She was on her way to sixth period, however, when some sophomore girl bumped into her in the jam-packed hallways so hard she actually reached out to grab the girl’s hair. She missed, but not before the girl saw the pissed-off look on Netty’s face. Netty felt like the girl elbowed her tit, even though she knew it wasn’t on purpose.

  “Watch where you’re going!” Netty snarled, cupping her assaulted breast.

  “I didn’t mean it,” the girl said as she was sucked further down the hallway packed with hoards of kids heading to class. “I’m sorry!”

  “Bitch,” Netty snarled as she walked to class.

  After sixth period, Netty stalked the hallways looking the entire time for the Sophomore who hit her. She didn’t know what she was going to do when she saw her, maybe punch her in her own breasticles, until she remembered Sensei Naygel said fighting outside the dojo was not allowed unless one were forced to defend herself. She wasn’t forced to defend herself. And she wasn’t this mean, so what was wrong with her?

  Why was she so angry?

  2

  The last week of summer break passes and I can’t believe it’s gone. With help from New York’s geneticists, a revised serum for Holland starts to successfully reverse his grotesque condition. If there’s any silver lining here, it’s that his features are finally returning to normal, the slough-off of muscle, sinew and flesh piling up in the bottom of the canister by the hour.

  For some reason, I can’t help but watch him and wonder if it’s possible to breed the evil out of a person. Deep down, in the vile recesses of his psyche, however, I know the murderous side of him will be lying in wait.

  I don’t know how I know this, I just do.

  The man who was Josef Mengele, a.k.a. the Angel of Death, a.k.a. Dr. Death, he’s a man who will forever be wrong. Damaged. A blight upon everything good and safe in the world. Is it strange that I want him awake? That I’m dying to know what he’s become?

  They say patience is a virtue.

  Lately, however, that’s a virtue I don’t possess.

  For the first few days of me being Raven, I squat at Holland’s downtown apartment. Me on the couch, it’s the best I can manage. To my utter dismay, it’s a gosh damn madhouse I’m living in. This same apartment I now share with Quentin, his two assistants, the screaming miracle kid and a psychopathic fire starter (Alice), but whatever. It’s better than being homeless. Of course, that’s what I thought at first. Wake up a few times with a demon child who can turn your guts to hot sauce staring at you while you sleep and suddenly, sleeping on park benches or in dumpsters sounds inviting.

  Night after night, as I lay there in brooding silence, my body sore from the placement of the cushions, I can’t help thinking I have to find a way to make some money. Get my own place. And I don’t mind saying, this having no money thing feels pretty f*cking debilitating.

  A couple of nights, while I toss and turn in the dark thinking of my new life, my old life, and the lives of those I care most and least about, I find myself thinking about the mutation that is Dr. Holland. My creator. My enemy. My motherfreaking salvation. To save him just to kill him feels right. But not just yet. I still need things from him. Important things. Maybe, at some point, I will need or want him to change me again. Or not. Who knows anymore? At this point, I guess it depends on how much trouble I get myself into.

  When Holland’s transformation is finally complete, when his body looks almost normal again—except for the addition of two inches in height and fifteen extra pounds of lean muscle—Quentin starts the revival process. He injects the pink solution with the wake-up serum, then he monitors Holland’s vitals as he starts the draining process. After pressing a sequence of buttons, the glass canister tilts from vertical to horizontal, and the liquid begins to drain.

  Quentin’s assistant, Jasmeka, waits patiently through the draining process. She could be ready for anything, or prepared for nothing. One second inside her head tells me how much she hates the racist prick that is Enzo Holland and that she wouldn’t be here if Quentin hadn’t asked.

  When Holland opens his eyes, he blinks a lot. Seeing things, seeing nothing. I move in next to Quentin, over the top of Holland. Finally his eyes clear and he locks in on me.

  “Abby?” he says, his voice like scraped rock, his head cocked slightly sideways because my face is new. My gaze, however, is not. And these purple eyes…

  “It’s me.”

  Holland’s face is the picture of youth, similar to his days as Mengele, but new enough for people not to make the connection. Even the gap between his two front teeth is gone. He will be pleased.

  “It’s Raven now.”

  “Raven,” he repeats, trying the word on. He struggles to clear his throat, but it’s no use. “Am I okay?”

  He looks so helpless like this. This is a side of him I’ve never seen before. I can’t help thinking this would be a perfect time to squish his brain into a hot, gummy stew, but I mind my manners. Even at the promise that his eyes would bleed red and he would die an awful death, I refrain. Perhaps I’ve got more humility than I thought. Still, I tremble thinking there would be no more of him left in this world. Nothing of the man who circumvented God, who decimated countless lives, who so methodically stamped out entire generations of people.

  “Whether or not you’re okay depends,” I say in my most monotone, I-could-give-a-f*ck-about-you-voice. “We have to run some tests.”

  He looks down at his body, raises his hand, makes the face like something’s amiss. “I’m not supposed to be…this small? I’m supposed to be much bigger.” He looks up at Quentin with questions and accusations in his eyes.

  “Things…went wrong,” Quentin starts to say. “But we fixed you.”

  “You’re two inches taller and more muscular,” I say, “but you’re not a war machine. Or whatever in God’s name you were trying to make yourself, you freaking psycho.”

  “What
do you mean things went wrong?” he asks Quentin. I hate how he ignores me, as if my opinion means nothing. The rancorous way I’m feeling right now, I’ve got half a mind to roast his eyeballs. But I have a better idea…

  They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I stuff my memories of his grotesquely misshapen body into his head. Like a data transfer of thoughts. I do this by making a physical connection to him: my palm to his face. I prompt him to relax against the pressure of my hand, but when the memories of him in that overgrown state crash into his mind, he bucks against my grip.

  Everything and everyone tenses.

  I lock down Holland with my mind, pinning his arms, legs and torso to the rounded glass backing of the canister. When my memories of him are emptied into him, I let go and step back.

  He opens his eyes, slowly.

  Quietly, deferentially, he looks at Quentin and says, “I told you to kill me. To kill us.”

  “I tried,” he says.

  “You should’ve at least killed her,” he hisses, glancing my way.

  “Again,” he says, “I tried.”

  For a second Holland can’t understand the statement. Then he zeroes in on me and says, “You stopped him?”

  “Yes.”

  Looking down at him, feeling his gigantic lack of gratitude, I say, “Get out of that thing, you’re man parts are shriveling, and it stinks of your old self in there.” All kinds of jellied flesh and bone sit smooshed against the glass bottom, trapped in mass under his back and shoulders. His transformation, it wasn’t a small one. A lot of flesh and bone mass bled out in the last few days. Enough to nearly clog the drainage system.

  He climbs out of the canister, his privacy towel forgotten. I look away. He doesn’t seem to care. To be honest, I don’t know why I care either. It’s not like I could be attracted to him. I practically hate the man.

  When he’s cleaned up and dressed, he says, “What day is it?”

  “Thursday,” I tell him.

  “The date,” he says, irritated that he has to ask twice. I tell him. He takes the news with a deep breath, then stands in perfect stillness for a moment before speaking. “School is starting next week,” he says, looking at me. “We need to pack everything up and move back to Astor.”