by Casey Hays
“Maybe,” I ponder it a second. “Probably. And,” I pause. Actually, I have a few theories of my own. I hesitate, study Liza’s concerned expression, and then I say it. “You know how our defense stems are triggered by an imminent threat?”
“Yeah?”
“I think Nick is creating his own scenarios of what danger is.” She blinks; I shrug. “And right now, he sees Stephen as the enemy. A threat somehow.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the Serum is confused.”
She straightens, her jaw dropping. “That can happen?”
I pause, shake my head. “I don’t know. Just a theory. I could be wrong.” I swallow once. “But I could be right.”
“So Nick deliberately tried to kill Stephen.” Liza’s voice softens as she absorbs her own words, but she said it already; Nick is targeting Stephen. Liza stands, hands on hips, and paces.
“What are you going to do?” she finally asks, pausing in front of me. With a sigh, I raise my hands, palms up.
“Talk to Nick again, I guess. See if I can help him get a handle on the aggression.”
“You really think that will work?” She shakes her head, dropping her arms to her sides. “It won’t. It’s not like you can reason with the Serum. Nick may not even understand what’s going on inside him. ”
“Well, it’s the only plan I’ve got for now. Until Penelope pinpoints something.”
I connect with her. In reality, I don’t know what to do anymore, and she senses this in me. I’m defeated. She purses her lips, crosses her arms, and paces some more. With a sigh, I fall back in my chair, slink low, and stretch my long legs out into the middle of the room. Liza faces me.
“Maybe…” She hesitates, eying me guardedly. “Maybe it’s time to talk to your dad.”
Now this, I’m not expecting. I stare up at her in utter disbelief.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No… not really.” She drops to her knees in front of me. “Look, you’ve only got two cages. So you’d best figure this out while it’s only Nick.”
“I’m not going to Dad.” I shove up to a sitting position. “He’ll want to see the kids.”
“So don’t let him.” Her voice is firm, settled. “Just… take Penelope’s findings to Eden and have him review them there. That’s safe enough, right?”
“It’s too risky.” I shake my head. “Even minimally involving him opens the door we shut years ago.”
“Justin—”
“No, Liza.” I cut her off and stand, pushing her out of the way in the process. “Why are you so bent on me talking to Dad?”
She shrugs. “Because… maybe…” She comes to her feet, facing me, a wariness in her voice. “Things are getting out of hand. Maybe it’s time to reexamine.”
“Reexamine?” I snap, my irritation mounting. “We vowed to protect these kids from Dad. We vowed to prevent him from ever doing this to another child. Despite what’s happening with Nick, that hasn’t changed. In fact, it’s all the more reason to keep Dad in the dark.”
“Your plan is to reason with an out-of-control, indestructible toddler.” She steps in close, her voice full of frustration. “Do you hear how ludicrous you sound? And it’s not only Nick we have to worry about; Serum runs hot through all of them. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not having great vibes about Stephen’s behavior tonight, either. Something is brewing in him.” She waves her hand in the direction of the hallway. “I think you need an expert.”
“Penelope is working on it.” I clench my lips.
Liza slowly shakes her head. “Justin, I love Penelope as much as you, but she is not Uncle David. She’s a doctor, and she’s brilliant, but she has not dedicated her life to working with Serum. She will not be able to fix this.”
“I thought we saw eye to eye on this,” I test her.
“Maybe we did once. But trudging back and forth between here and Eden allows lots of time for thinking.” When I shake my head, jaw clenched, she raises her hands, pleading. “Just listen, will you?”
With a sigh, I sit. “Fine.”
She nods, a relieved breath mingling with the tense air. “I’ve been here for less than a week, right?”
I lift my hands despondently, not interested in her statements of the obvious.
“In that time, Nick has violently attacked Stephen, not once but twice. And your one and only solution has been to lock him up. But for how long? And how many times?”
I peer up at her, but I say nothing. There’s not much to say. After a second, she squats in front of me.
“If you’re only goal is to contain this, by all means keep locking him up.” She pauses, a hand on my knee. “But if you’re serious about finding out what’s wrong with Nick, would it hurt to ask for your dad’s advice? Don’t you owe it to Nick?”
I hold still, absorbing her reasoning. I hate to admit it, but a part of me sees her points. The only catch? Liza hasn’t been here day in and day all these years. She doesn’t know what it’s like to devote every waking second to shaping these children into something other than a destructive force. And as for Nick, we’re only beginning to see what he’s capable of, and my dad is to blame for it. Dad has done enough damage.
I stand, resolute. “We’ll find a solution. Without Dad.”
She rises, her back to me, shoulders slumped, and she doesn’t look at me when she speaks.
“Have you ever thought that maybe he could have fixed this a long time ago?” She turns slowly, fixing her gaze on me. “Like… do you ever wonder… about a cure?”
I clamp my lips shut. Of course I think about a cure. I think about it a lot. But this Serum… it’s not the answer.
“What if we cut Uncle David off too soon?” she asks.
“We didn’t.” I insist.
“You don’t know that. He was able to make babies shift at birth.” She presses her palms together, moving in closer. “That was progress.”
“Progress.” I plant my hands on my hips. “Do you know how much work it has been to get these kids under control? Years of strict discipline. My dad’s progress? It has Nick locked inside a cage. And why? Because a four-year-old should not have shifted.” When she doesn’t answer, I squint at her. “A whole world of Nicks. That’s the risk we take when we give babies this Serum. And you want to just hand that over to Dad?”
At that, she just looks at me, a sadness suddenly flooding over her features.
“You think you know so much.” A tear pricks her eye, and her bottom lip trembles, but she lifts her shoulders and shoves her emotions down. “Here you are cooped up on this farm, safe from the rest of the world. You don’t have to see it, but I see it. Every day another baby dies from the virus. That’s the other side of this coin, and I am so tired of witnessing it.”
I digest her words; my heart sinks. I get it. I do. But when my mom ordered me to destroy the Serum stores and the files containing all the formulas, it wasn’t so I could hand it all back to my father on a silver platter. His ambition started a war. The madness had to end.
“I’m sorry, Liza.” I take a deep breath “The answer is no.”
“Justin—”
“I said no,” I retort, firm.
She stands there frozen, arms crossed tightly over her chest. Slowly, she begins to nod.
“Fine,” she whispers. “As always, have it your way.”
She shoves past me and exits the house. I know she isn’t telling me something. She’s a sensible girl; she didn’t just come to this position overnight.
Drained, I fall into a chair and rub at my eyes. I’m done for tonight. But tomorrow, we’ll train like no one’s business. We’ll train and teach and test until these kids are as pristine as fine-tuned machines. And somehow, I will get to Nick. I’ll teach him to control the Serum myself.
I will never go to my father.
Chapter 9
I’m restless all night. No matter what I do my brain won’t shut off. It relives the day’
s events and plays my conversation with Liza over and over again on a reel. To top it off, Dad’s face emerges, accusatory and full of hatred. It’s miserable.
The idea of a cure haunts me. It passes through my thoughts every day. Because if my dad had been successful, he would have saved countless lives.
If he’d been successful…
But he wasn’t.
In the morning, I’m on edge, and Nicholas knows it. In the dim light, he stares at me through the space that divides two titanium bars. His face is stoic, unreadable. I swear he must have grown a foot since Liza threw him in here yesterday. He hasn’t, of course, but this doesn’t quash my unease. I do my best to return his gaze with the same intensity, and I ask my question again.
“Nicholas? What should you do?”
No answer. A barely perceptible movement of the Serum begins to flicker in his eyes. He holds them steady. My heart churns heavy in my chest.
I’m frustrated, that’s a given. I don’t want to believe that Nick would be capable of manipulation, but I think he may be doing just that. He relishes in my frustration; I sense it. I rub at my temples with a sigh. I’m beginning to lose faith in reaching Nick at all, especially if his aggression is tied to the growth of Serum, and I have no doubt it is.
“If you refuse to answer me, you’ll spend another day in here.”
He blinks again, and a half-smile forms on his lips. “Okay.”
He picks up a piece of toast from a plate on the small table next to his cot and chomps into it. I frown.
“Which is it? ‘Okay’ you’ll answer me, or ‘okay’ you’ll stay in here?”
“I’ll stay,” he shrugs, chewing.
I aim the flashlight straight at him. He stares me down, challenging me. As I’ve feared, there is not an ounce of remorse left. Only smug satisfaction. An eerie chill climbs my spine. What is going on inside his little head?
I stand, pace the floor a few seconds before I pause, wrap the fingers of one hand around the bars and shine the light on him. I’ll try a different angle. Something more personable.
“Do you remember hurting Diana?”
He nods, expressionless.
“And is that what you wanted? To hurt someone who loves you so much?”
He shrugs. “She got in my way. Next time, she’ll know better.”
I stare at him. Even this regret is gone. His voice is different. No emotion. My pulse quickens. My fingers tighten around the bars as I work to control my anger. Carefully, I test him.
“What should you do when someone makes you mad?”
“Kill them.”
The answer is so pointed, so abrupt, that I actually gasp. The flashlight clatters to the cement floor, the momentum causing it to spin away from the cages and cast an oblong shadow across the wall. In it, the cage and its occupant grow two sizes bigger.
A childish giggle fills the sudden silence. “Did Stephen die this time?”
Another wave of shock. I stare at him, a deer in the line of fire. “No. No, Nick. Is… is that what you wanted?”
“I don’t care.” A smile creeps onto his lips. “What are you going to do about that, Justin?” Nicholas’s small voice taunts me. “Are you going to make me die?”
Fear shoves in followed by another sudden wave of anger, and they are two ferocious monsters vying for champion of emotions. I slide away from the cages and stare at the boy inside. A boy that, in this moment, I don’t recognize. And to think, just recently, I fooled myself into believing we were making progress. Boy, was I wrong. The Serum inside me heats up, pumps thick. Clicking. Reacting to my emotions.
“Nicholas…” My voice trembles. I struggle to control the fear tapping me on the shoulder as it tries to shove my anger aside. “Stephen is your friend. He’s not a threat to you. The other children are your friends, too.”
“No,” he counters. “And you aren’t my friend, either.”
“That isn’t true, Nick.” I take a deep breath, rein in my roiling emotions, and sink down in front of the cage, eye level. “I love you, buddy. I just want you to be a good person. I want you to make the right choices.”
“You want me to be weak. You want all of us to be weak so you can control us.”
I absorb his assessment, amazed by his conclusion. This is not the mind of a four-year-old. And I shouldn’t be surprised considering his mental capacity, but I am. More than that, I ache for this little boy who will never be able to lead a normal life, even to the degree that normalcy can be granted to someone with Serum in their veins.
“You need to let me out,” Nicholas concludes.
His words echo, reverberating in my skull, and the Serum inside me clicks in response. And then a sensation floods me, as if someone pulls on a string that tugs at the center of my chest. It stings like an electric shock. I can’t explain why, but suddenly, in the blink of an eye, every inch of me wants to do as he says. I stand, take a backwards step. The Serum boils beneath the surface of my skin, drawing up a familiar feeling—one that dwells with me all the time these days. Guilt. Nick plugs into this. I don’t know how, but he urges me from the inside out. He compels me forward even as my brain screams that this isn’t right. I cannot—I will not—let Nicholas out of this cage.
The pull is magnetic. In the midst of the struggle, I begin to search for an emotion strong enough to counteract the one he uses against me. I dig deep, pushing between the continuous clicking… remembering, collecting, hoping to find something to combat the sudden desire to let Nick control me. I rewind, I hone in on how furious I was at him last night. I see Stephen, helpless, near death. I remember Diana’s inert body by the hearth, the boys’ fear, Nick’s expression as he plunged the poker into Stephen’s heart. And Stephen’s face—unrecognizable.
Growling, I rip myself free from Nick’s grip on me. The Serum suddenly shifts, feeding off of me, and I leap for the cage. In one swift motion, Nick scrambles upward the length of the bars to meet me face to face. Clinging, his feet propped against the bars to hold him in place, he stares me down.
An explosion brews inside me. Two wars waging. The Serum wants me to react… to reach through the three inch space and crush his skull, yank his heart out of his chest, stop him forever. Because in this moment, the Serum in me sees this little boy as the enemy. And it’s no secret; I am programmed to kill the enemy. Nick senses it.
“I dare you,” he whispers. His eyes, so close, don’t resemble him at all. The Serum floods them full, constantly moving, shifting… teaching. Teaching him all the things I’ve tried to help him avoid.
“This isn’t you, Nick,” I say through gritted teeth as I work to hold myself back.
My chest feels heavy; my head pounds. I look away, connect with the Serum the way Ian trained me to do. Unlike him, it doesn’t react naturally for me. I have to plead with it, ask it to do my bidding because, always, it does the opposite. Always, it has a mind of its own.
What I need is a complete shutdown. The Serum rattles in my brain, confused. I squeeze my lids tighter; Nick giggles.
“Open the cage, Justin.”
The words rattle through me. My fingers tighten around the cool bars, the growl growing louder, the tug pulling harder. I shake my head, desperately longing to clear it. I need a focus.
Focus!
I scream into my own mind until Diana floods into my head—the one constant that keeps me centered. Her smile captures me. Bright, blue eyes hold me in suspense as I wonder what thoughts lie behind them. She runs a hand through my hair, tousling it before she laughs and runs away through a row of corn. And there is my peace.
The Serum begins to slow, cooling off until it’s nothing more than a humming in my bones. Exhausted, I refocus on Nick.
He sits cross-legged in the center of the bed, his eyes honed in on me, flashlight in hand as if he’s been sitting there all along being a good little boy. I loosen my grip and straighten.
“Fine,” he says. “You win again. One day, you won’t.”
He sta
res at me another long minute, then rolls away to face the back wall, curling his body into a ball. The flashlight beam spans out from his chest, then flicks off.
A huge sigh explodes from my lungs. Still leaning heavily against the cage, I hang my head, and then slide to my knees.
God? What am I supposed to do?
There is no answer. I heave a weary sigh. This was by far the worst therapy session ever. I’m drained. I’m lost. I scoop up my flashlight and take a final look at Nick. He’s a little boy again, sleeping silently in his bed.
The bars keeping him hostage are the only indication that something must be terribly wrong.
***
“He was controlling me, Penelope.”
I sit on a stool in her lab, head in my hands, only half believing what I just experienced. On the computer screen, an x-ray image of Stephen’s cerebral cortex from his latest scan glows in milky white against a grayscale backdrop. Penelope is quiet, rearranging a few items on the desk before facing me.
“I know,” she says.
My eyes dart up to meet hers. “You do? How?”
“He did the same to me when I took his breakfast down this morning.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I haven’t seen you until now.”
I straighten, running a nervous hand through my hair. “Did he try to get you to open the cage?”
She nods, full of concern. And I suddenly feel heavy once again with a burden that seems far too large for me to carry. I lean back, hands on my knees.
“How is he doing it?”
“I have no idea.” Her voice drips with sadness. “I’d planned to do a scan on him today, but clearly, that’s impossible at the moment. We can’t release him.”
My heart sinks at her words. I knew it even before she said it. Until we know how to combat this new development, an eight by eight titanium cage will be home.
I clench my jaw. I hate this. I hate what’s happening to Nick, and I hate that none of us seems to know what to do about it. Last night’s conversation with Liza spins into my thoughts for a split second before I manage to shove it away.
“I did find something new on Stephen’s scans,” Penelope says, bringing my attention back into focus. “If you look closely, you’ll notice a little speck of red light, just barely visible right there.”
