Genesis Alpha

by Rune Michaels

  I groan. “Aw, Dad! What’s the point of skipping school if I still get homework?”

  A ghost of a smile touches Dad’s mouth. He ruffles my hair, and like always, I twist my head away, and he pats my shoulder instead.

  “What about practice? Can I at least go to baseball practice?”

  Dad shakes his head. “Not a good idea, Josh.”

  “What about my friends? Can I go to their houses? Can they come over?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll have to play it by ear. See what happens.”

  “When can I go back to school?”

  “Next week, I hope. Maybe this will have blown over by then. We have private investigators working. They’ll prove Max’s innocence. But we’re not going to work today.” Dad takes a deep breath. “We both got a few days off. Lots to do. We’re seeing Max today. Short visit, supervised, but at least we get to see him.”

  “Can I come?”

  Dad hesitates. “Would you want to?”

  “Of course! I’ve never seen the inside of a jail.”

  Dad groans.

  “I mean, I want to be there for my brother,” I amend. Oops. Fortunately, Dad doesn’t mind ulterior motives. He says it’s mental multitasking, a sign of intelligence—even if it’s not always nice. “It just so happens that I’d also like to see the inside of a jail.”

  Dad shakes his head. “Not this time, Josh. We only have permission for the two of us. Maybe next time,” he adds when I scowl in frustration. “I’m sure you can find something to do while we’re gone.”

  No school. No homework yet, so I’m free. I can spend the whole day playing Genesis Alpha. I’ll play alone though, since most of my local friends will be at school, but some of the foreigners will be there, it’s already afternoon in Europe and evening in Australia and Japan. I munch on cereal while I calculate time zone differences and anticipate an uninterrupted day of space travel—and then I remember. My computer is sitting in an evidence room somewhere, being poked and prodded by forensic experts. In fact, there isn’t a single computer in the house.

  I feel like screaming, but instead I bang my fist on the table, making Dad jump.

  “What?”

  “My computer, Dad! I can’t get into Genesis Alpha without my computer!”

  “A day or two without Genesis Alpha. That’s indeed a catastrophe.”

  “Yes! It is! I’ve got plans, people are counting on me. . . . When do I get my computer back?”

  “I have no idea. Soon, I hope. It’s not like they’ll find anything. I’ll ask someone today if I can.”

  “What am I supposed to do until then?” I whine.

  Dad looks at me dryly. “I don’t know, Josh. Camp out in front of the TV like we did back in antiquity? There are a million books in this house. The cat shed always needs a good cleaning, and if you’re really bored, I’m sure we can find lots of chores.”

  Dad always makes good on threats like that. “I’m cool,” I say quickly. “Where’s Mom?”

  “In the study. Diane’s here, they’re talking.”

  Diane Ashe was one of Mom’s colleagues, back when she worked in the genetics laboratory. She helped Mom get pregnant with me, so she’s Mom’s big hero. She saved Max and gave me to Mom and Dad. So in return, my brother and I were her guinea pigs. Dr. Ashe got access to both of us for all sorts of tests and stuff, usually once a year, around my birthday. Last time I refused to participate, and Max dropped out ages ago. Mom wasn’t pleased. She says Max and I both owe Dr. Ashe our lives, and the least we can do is help her with her research.

  “What’s she doing here?”

  Dad scolds me with a look. He knows I don’t like Dr. Ashe, and I think he even understands why, but he doesn’t approve when I show it, and he yells when I call her Dr. Die-Hard, the nickname Max invented. But then he’s not the one she stares at like something under a microscope. When she looks at me, I feel like she’s still seeing a cluster of transparent cells, like she still has the power to flush me down the toilet or tip me in the trash.

  “Diane is our friend, Josh. She’s known both you and Max forever, and she’s just as distressed about this as we are. She’s hoping she can do something to help. She even offered to stay with you today.”

  I straighten up in alarm. “No!” If anything was worse than a day without Genesis Alpha, it would be a day with Dr. Die-Hard instead.

  Dad chuckles wearily. “I know, Josh. Don’t worry. She’ll be leaving with us.”

  I slump in relief. “Phew. Thanks, Dad. Nice save.”

  Dad puts his elbows on the table and rests his chin on his hands. “Josh—how are you feeling?”

  That’s my dad. His older son is in prison, accused of one of the most horrible crimes there is, and he’s settling down to a therapy session with me.

  “I’m okay.”

  Dad leans over and retrieves the newspaper. He pushes it closer, right under my nose, so I can’t avoid seeing our pictures. Max and me, side by side, two mug shots. “Are you okay with what they’re saying here?”

  I glance at the headline. “That they’re blaming me, you mean? Max didn’t do anything, so that cancels it out, doesn’t it?”

  Dad holds my gaze in that way he does, not allowing me to look away. “Yes. But if he were to do something terrible someday, how would that make you feel? Would you feel responsible in some way, because you saved his life?”

  The question nibbles at the edges of my thoughts, but I don’t allow it any closer, because it doesn’t matter. It isn’t relevant. Max hasn’t done anything bad.

  “Because that would be absurd, wouldn’t it, Josh? There’s a difference between being responsible for your own actions and taking responsibility for something that you had no control over, something you couldn’t possibly predict or do anything about. Isn’t there?”

  “I guess,” I mutter, and stuff my face with what’s left in the cereal bowl to avoid another in-depth philosophical debate with Dad. I suppose there is a difference. But then you’d have to be able to tell which is which.

  When Mom and Dad are gone, I have nothing to do. Out of habit I trudge upstairs and sit down at my desk, stare at my useless monitor and think about all the things I could be doing in Genesis Alpha right now. I could explore. Fight. Go on missions or solve quests. Play the stock market or trade. Chat and just hang out with aliens from all corners of the galaxy.

  Instead I’m stuck on planet Earth without a spaceship.

  I throw myself on the sofa in front of the television and flip between channels for a while, but nothing really catches my attention. I go through our movie collection, but there’s nothing there I want to watch either. I take a nap, glance through the paper, play with Click for a while, and finally, in desperate boredom, I grab the vacuum cleaner and get rid of most of the fingerprint dust from my room.

  The phones keep ringing all day, but they’re set on mute, so as long as I don’t look at that blinking red light on the answering machine they don’t bother me. The caller ID tells me when it’s someone I know, and Mom calls once, Dad twice, to check how I’m doing, but there’s no news, at least none that they’re telling me. The moment school is out, I can’t take it anymore. I call Frankie.

  “Wow, this is huge!” is the first thing he says. I hear noise around him. A lot of echo. He’s probably passing through the main hall on his way out of school, and I wish I were there. If I could go to school, I might be able to sneak into Genesis Alpha for a few minutes using the library computers. I’d at least be able to post on a message board, let everyone know I’d be out of commission for a few days. “They’re talking about you all over school, man,” Frankie continues. “Everybody’s asking about you and Max.”

  I roll my eyes. I’m curious about what they’re saying, but I’m not sure I want to hear it. “Well, they pulled me out of school for now. I’m stuck at home for a while. Maybe all week. I can’t even go to baseball practice or anything.”

  “That sucks. Hey, I’ll come over. I can be ther
e in ten.”

  “Okay. But take a shortcut through the backyard,” I tell him. “In case the press is still hanging around. They were all over our street yesterday.”

  “They don’t scare me,” Frankie says. He hangs up, and ten minutes later the doorbell rings.

  Frankie’s back is to me when I open the door. He’s craning his neck in all directions. “No press,” he says, sounding disappointed when he shuffles inside. “They were at school today, you know. Two of them, hanging out outside the gates. They asked us loads of questions until the principal ordered them to keep their distance or she’d call the police. Were the police here? The news said they got a search warrant for your house and everything.”

  Frankie sounds way too excited about this whole thing. I want to tell him to shut up, but I clench my teeth and just shrug. “Want to watch a movie?”

  “How about a couple of hours on Genesis Alpha?” Frankie asks. Sometimes he borrows Mom’s computer and we both play at my house. “You missed a great battle yesterday. We nearly didn’t make it, but Ace came through in the end. We got some great loot. I got an antique sword with a healing function. It’s even better than yours.”

  “Wow.”

  “Why didn’t you show? Were you busy with the police? Did they interrogate you and all? Are you in trouble too?”

  I nearly growl. “Of course I’m not in trouble. But we can’t play. The police took my computer. They took all the computers.”

  “The police took them? Oh man!” Frankie almost jumps from one foot to another, glancing in the direction of the stairs. “Can I, you know, peek into Max’s room?”

  “No! What for?”

  “Just curious. You know . . . just curious.”

  “Well, no, you can’t! Let’s go to my room.”

  I lead the way up the stairs, although I’ve almost changed my mind about having Frankie here. I push open the door into my room, but Frankie isn’t following me. I look back and see him in the doorway to Max’s room. “Hey!” I yell. “I said not to go there!”

  Frankie doesn’t hear me. His mouth is open as he looks around. The room still looks like a war zone, and there’s fingerprint powder everywhere.

  “Wow,” he whispers. “Were the police looking for fingerprints? What are they looking for? I mean—did he bring the girl here or something? He didn’t actually do it here, did he?”

  I kick him. Hard. It’s a reflex, like when a soccer ball lands right in front of your foot, it just happens automatically. He jumps away and bends down, grimacing, rubbing his shin. “Ow! What the hell is your problem?”

  “What the hell is your problem?” I shout. “You’re talking about Max. Remember Max? My brother, the guy who used to fix our bikes when we were little? The guy we play Genesis Alpha with every week? He didn’t do it! He didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “I just . . .” Frankie stutters. I clench my hands and want him gone. Want to drag him out of the room, punch him in the face and scream at him never to come here again.

  But I’ve been alone all day and I’m sick of it, and if we could just stop thinking about Max and instead talk about Genesis Alpha or even school or something, everything would be okay. So I swallow my anger even though it’s burning hot in my chest. “Come on. Let’s watch a movie or something.”

  “Yeah, sure. Okay.” Frankie has his back to me, still rubbing his shin. There’s something strange in the way he’s moving, and then I hear a tiny click.

  His cell phone.

  He’s using it to take pictures of my brother’s room.

  Cell phones are pretty sturdy. I’ve always been careful with mine, but obviously I don’t need to be. Frankie’s phone doesn’t even crack when I hurl it from the top of the stairs to the tiled floor in the entrance. “Are you nuts?” Frankie yells. He shoots down the stairs and dives for it, and I do too, and then we are rolling on the floor, fists pounding, feet kicking, screaming and yelling so the house echoes with the sounds.

  Nobody wins. Nobody loses either. After a while the fight sort of peters out and we’re sitting on the floor, breathing heavily and staring at each other like we’re mortal enemies.

  “I can’t believe I ever thought you were my best friend,” I spit out at him. “A best friend wouldn’t do something like that!”

  “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I’ll delete the pictures.” Frankie gestures at the phone, lying near the front door, a hairline fracture in its screen now from when I banged it against the floor while Frankie held my head against the wall and tried to twist my ear off. “If you don’t trust me, you can do it yourself. Okay?”

  I crawl toward the phone, not taking my eyes off Frankie, but he just sits there, wheezing after our fight. I flip through the photo file in his phone. He’s taken three pictures, blurry and dim images of the chaos in Max’s room, and I delete them all, making sure everything is gone from the deleted folder too. I slide the phone across the floor back to Frankie. He looks at it, stares at the cracked screen, but he doesn’t say anything about it. “Sorry,” he mutters. “I guess I shouldn’t have. I just thought it would be cool . . . you know. Because everybody at school is asking me . . . I just . . . it’s not like I’d planned to sell them or anything . . .”

  “Jerk,” I mutter, and I’m so angry I almost feel like crying. My shoulder hurts and my lip is throbbing. Blood is leaking down my chin. Frankie doesn’t look any better, and Dad’s going to have my hide for this. “You’re such a jerk, Frankie. Max didn’t do anything.”

  “Are you sure?” Frankie asks. “I mean, how can you be sure? They arrested him. They don’t go around arresting people for no good reason.”

  “Go away!” I yell. “Just go away and leave me alone!”

  Frankie leaves, and I don’t know if he’s ever coming back. I don’t know if I ever want him to come back. We’ve been friends since kindergarten, and we’ve fought plenty of times, but usually we pretend nothing happened next time we meet.

  I don’t know about this time.

  I’m alone again. Just me and the cats.

  I like the cats, which is good, because I look after them a lot. I’m home from school earlier than Mom’s home from work, so they’re my responsibility for a couple of hours. Sometimes we have to hand-feed a kitten because it’s too weak to suckle. Sometimes kittens die. There’s a tiny kitten cemetery in the corner of our backyard. All our kittens get names, even the ones who are born dead. We carve every name into the side of the cat shed, in a sort of family tree. Mom’s been breeding cats almost all my life, so that’s a lot of names.

  When it gets close to dinnertime, there’s another message from Dad that they’re not sure when they’ll be home, and I should just throw something in the microwave for dinner. I get bored enough to go clean the litter boxes. The cats have the run of the house, but they have an outdoor cage, too. A cat-size tunnel leads there, and then they get to taste the wind and dig their claws into the grass inside the big wire enclosure. Their litter boxes are inside a waterproof shed, where we also keep the gardening tools and our bicycles and stuff. Mom thinks that’s pretty ingenious. No nasty smells in the house.

  The cats mostly use the outdoor cage in the summer. They don’t like snow and rain much, so in the winter they only use the tunnel to get to their litter boxes. Mom pays me to clean them. It’s not that big a deal, and the cats are curious and grateful. They gather around me while I work, and line up to use the boxes afterward.

  Before Max left for college this was his job. He’d spend an hour out there every afternoon, cleaning up and playing with the cats. He was our family vet too. He’d read up on kitty problems online and stay up all night when they were about to give birth. Even after he went off to college, Mom called him for advice if there was a problem.

  If Max were a monster, he wouldn’t have been nice to the cats.

  I put on my jacket and boots, open the back door. It hasn’t snowed for a while, so there’s still a worn path through the snow toward the shed from my last visit. I unlock the
shed door and slip inside.

  I like it out here. It’s a nice place to be alone, especially in the spring and autumn, when it’s not too cold and not too hot. I have an old MP3 player in the cupboard with the huge bags of litter, and there’s an old mattress on the floor where I can lie with my eyes closed, listening to music with cats purring on my chest. I also keep a dartboard here, which I’m not allowed to have in the house. It was Max’s originally, but he passed it on to me when I took over the shed. Mom would go nuts if she knew about the darts. She wouldn’t trust us to be careful enough around the cats.

  We have a battery-operated lamp in here, but I don’t bother turning it on. There’s still some daylight coming in through the grimy windows stretching along the ceiling. I get the trash bags out and kneel down to scoop cat poop, but then I freeze.

  There’s movement in the dark corner, where the old lounge chair is. Where I sometimes sit with a cat on my lap, holding on to a paw while I cut their claws.

  There’s someone there.

  For an absurd moment I think it’s Max, and fear flows through me, an electric charge zapping through my nerves. It’s ridiculous, and I get furious at myself. I have no reason to fear my brother.

  But my pulse, the blood pounding in my veins, the metallic taste in my mouth—my body is telling me something different. It’s not fair. It’s not right. My fear is a betrayal of Max. It’s horrible. It’s much worse than what Frankie did. Frankie is just a friend. Max is my brother. More than my brother. If I don’t believe in him, who will?

  I swallow. Anger balloons out to push away the fear and the suspicions, and even though the stranger is skulking in the shadows like a shy cat, I don’t need to see who it is. I know it can’t be Max.

  “Who are you?” I bark, trying to sound scary. “What are you doing here?”

  A cat jumps out of the shadows, startling me. It’s Cleopatra, one of our three females. She’s pregnant, due to give birth soon. She rubs against my ankles, purrs, then saunters toward the tunnel leading back to the house.

  But she’s not the only one in here. There’s a human-size shadow in that corner, between me and the door. There’s a smell here too, and I should have noticed it sooner. A human smell. Soap. Shampoo. It stands out against the cat smells. “Who are you?” I repeat. Is it someone from the press? Would they be crazy enough to trespass like this? I put my hand in my pocket, curl my fingers around my cell phone, pull it up, and press a button so the screen lights up. “I’m calling the police,” I say, pressing 9 and moving my finger to the 1.