After George was out of the room, Gabriel looked at the door he’d used to leave and made a raspberry noise with his tongue, blowing a long, wet note.
Evelyn tried to keep a straight face and a frown of disapproval, but her exterior cracked and she let out a small laugh, covering her mouth with her fingers to muffle it.
“You’re impossible, Gabby.”
Gabriel smiled, that warm, lovely expression lighting his face. “He’s just so… stuffy.”
She waved her fingers at him. “Eat your dinner. Shameless. You are shameless.”
“I am my mother’s son.” He spoke softly with his usual dry wit. And she realized he was right. He was her boy and hers alone. She thought of Bobby and how much she missed him and then pushed that aside. Bobby was the past. Gabriel was today.
After a few seconds she started eating again, curious as to what would happen at the old offices. Gabriel sat with her, both of them content to share a comfortable silence.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Hunter Harrison
Was this a trap? No. Anyone who wanted them trapped wouldn’t have gone through this much effort. It would be easier and less costly to just get each of them separately. And even if it was a trap, what else did he have at this point?
He opened the door and marched into the building, ready for almost anything and hoping he’d get a chance to see Joe Bronx in person, just so he could kick the bastard’s face in.
He came to a dead halt when he saw the small empty room that would have been a reception area in most cases. Light gray carpeting still lay across the floor and he could see where a desk had been. There were holes in the walls from where pictures had been hung, and he could see the light stains on the walls where bookshelves and file cabinets must have rested.
There was a second door that led deeper into the building, and on that door’s surface was a sign much like the ones he’d dealt with for the last few months. The letters were bold and written in black marker. THIS WAY was all the sign said.
He didn’t hesitate. Hunter pulled the door open, scowling, his heart beating harder and harder as he looked around the area. Most of the building looked to have been stripped away. There was evidence that cubicles had been built into the floor previously, but everything of importance had been gutted, down to the scraps of paper that might have told them something.
A good seventy feet in, there was a cheap TV set, a videocassette player and six chairs.
“Are you serious?” His voice echoed off the distant warehouse walls.
The Rothstein kid walked past him and looked around. “Yes. I think they’re serious. I don’t know who’s being so obscure, but I think they’re very serious.”
“Well, this is crap!” His voice rose in volume and echoed off the distant walls, and Hunter had to force his hands to unclench from the fists that wanted to swing at everything around him. Months of his life for a promise of answers and all he got was a chair and a video? He couldn’t believe it.
Kyrie walked up and stood next to Gene. She bit her lower lip for a moment and then looked toward Hunter with wide, worried eyes. “So what happens now?”
Gene answered. “Why don’t we do what someone obviously wants us to do and listen to whatever is on the tape?”
Hunter stared for a long moment and finally nodded. Without being asked, Cody walked over to the setup and turned on the screen. A moment later the tape was playing and everyone was settling into one of the chairs.
After a few moments, an image formed on the old TV. The guy looking at them appeared to be in his late teens. He was ripped, solid muscle and sinew, with a hard face and dark eyes that looked at the camera like maybe it had called him a few names.
“Hi. There should be six seats, none of them empty. If there are any empties, that means someone didn’t bother. Pity, but there it is.”
Hunter did a quick count. Five total, including him.
The man in the image leaned toward the camera and slid slightly out of focus for a moment. “My name is Joe Bronx. I’ve contacted all of you at least once, sometimes a lot of times. I’m here to give you some answers and I have to tell you, you’re not going to like all of them.” For a man who was about to give out bad news, he seemed pretty comfortable.
Hunter stared hard at the screen. Joe Bronx. He recognized the voice, of course. He knew it intimately and hated it. He had not, however, ever seen the man before and now that he was seeing him, he was worried. In a perfect world Joe Bronx would be a skinny little puppy of a man he could break with ease. The reality was not nearly as comfortable. Joe Bronx was heavy with muscles but not steroid, Mr. Universe meat; no, he was solid with the sort of muscles that a person earned with hard workouts, calisthenics, push-ups, swimming a hundred laps a day or maybe running the occasional marathon. He was sitting down, but every move was graceful and showed the play of muscles under the black T-shirt he was wearing. Hunter was surprised by his own physical shape, but this guy? He was slightly in awe of the boy on the video. He looked… dangerous.
“Kiss my ass.” The words were whispered, but heartfelt.
Joe Bronx chuckled on the screen, almost as if he could hear Hunter’s anger.
“I bet Hunter is there. I bet he’s just as angry as can be, too. Well, that’s all right. I haven’t made his life easy. I’ve been working Hunter like he was my secretary and without any hourly wages.” He leaned in closer again and damned if his eyes didn’t pick exactly the spot where Hunter was sitting to fix his stare.
“Here’s how this works. I have packages of information that I’ll give to you soon. First, we go over some basics, because much as I wish I could tell each of you about this stuff in person, that hasn’t been possible.” He paused and took a sip of a soda. “First, you’ve all been having blackouts. What do I mean? You’ve all had a few occasions lately where you wound up in the wrong spot. Went to bed in your room, woke up in Brooklyn, wasn’t it, Gene?” He chuckled. “You probably think you got the short end of that stick, my friend, but next to Cody you’ve had it easy. Cody woke up in jail. He got out, but since then, well, his life hasn’t been a happy place.”
He paused again, and Hunter nodded. Joe Bronx was smart. He was waiting deliberately, giving them time to absorb what he was saying, before he dropped the next bomb.
“I’m going to explain that and you’re probably going to decide I’m full of shit. That’s okay. You don’t have to believe me. It’ll make your lives easier, but there’s no one that says you have to trust anything I say.
“So let’s start this one the easy way. First, you’re all adopted.” Hunter flicked his eyes around the room and saw Gene twitch like someone had slapped his face. The only person who didn’t seem shocked by the notion was Kyrie. “Yes, adopted. Some of you already know that. Maybe a few of you thought it, but I bet a couple of you had no idea. That’s okay. You weren’t supposed to know. You weren’t supposed to meet each other, either. I’m the one who set that up. I’m the one who decided you should all meet so you could learn a few uncomfortable truths.” He stood up from his seat, and Hunter recognized the view. The wall behind Joe Bronx was the same wall he was facing now. He could see the faint marks from where the filing cabinets had rested. He could also see that, in addition to being broader and more heavily muscled, Bronx was taller than he was by at least a few inches.
“Here’s the deal. I’m doing this on tape for a lot of reasons, but mostly it’s so you can all sit around and discuss your options. There aren’t as many as you think. Afterward, maybe, we can come to understand each other a little better.
“Don’t go looking for your real families, because they don’t exist. You don’t have parents. You are, all of you, genetic experiments.” He grinned. Even his smile had menace in it. “I know. Science fiction, right? Welcome to the twenty-first century. It won’t be slowing down anytime soon. You aren’t clones and you aren’t exactly test-tube babies. Every one of you in that room was designed for a special purpose. You were create
d to be perfect soldiers. Perfect spies, really.”
Cody laughed out loud. “Okay, seriously? Is anyone buying this shit?” He flexed an arm that had virtually no noticeable muscle definition. “I’m a soldier? ’Cause if I am, that army’s gonna suck, dudes.”
Bronx shook his head. “Bear with me, people. We’re not done yet. I said you were designed to be perfect spies. Guess what? They failed. You were supposed to be amazing, perfect killing machines that could be called into action with a code phrase.”
He paused for a moment and tilted his head in thought. “Have you ever heard of the book The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? A good read. You should try it. Anyway, the story is about a doctor who makes a potion to unleash the parts of himself that he would normally hide away. It doesn’t go so well for him, but in the process he creates his second identity, Mr. Hyde. The doctor is all polite and friendly, does good deeds, the whole thing. Mr. Hyde is more like an animal. He lets his baser instincts take over the show. He goes out and parties instead of behaving, and he’s faster, stronger and in a lot of ways completely different from the doctor.
“The guys who created this program didn’t have a potion. It’s all built into you. Instead they had the phrase. Once that phrase was called out, you’d change into faster, stronger and, hell, even smarter teenagers. You’d have increased senses. See better, hear better, even smell things that no human being would normally notice.”
Bronx shrugged. “It didn’t work. You, all of you, are a part of an experiment that didn’t live up to the expectations. You are the failures. Or so they thought.” He shrugged again, but there was nothing of apology in the gesture. “The idea was to make you, train you and then sell you to the highest bidders. Think about it. Don’t go getting all freaky, just think about it for a minute. Take five or six kids, send them off to, oh, say, France. Send them to Paris and let them have some fun, and then, when the time is right, give them the command and watch how they change. Watch those kids who were raised together, who already know each other like brothers and sisters, watch them become a perfect infiltration team. They sneak in as teenagers, and then they get bigger and stronger and use all the training they don’t even know they have to sneak into an embassy and steal top secret information, or maybe they take motorcycles from Paris to Rome and assassinate the pope and then just melt back into the background. Why? Because if the assassins were seen, they were obviously a group of soldiers, not a bunch of kids who were just there to wave at the pope and check out the Vatican’s gift shop.”
He leaned toward the camera again and Joe Bronx’s eyes looked around as if they were searching for someone, as if he could, somehow, see through the TV and find the person he was looking for. “Or, even if they were arrested, a few hours later they’d wake up in a jail cell and instead of being a group of trained assassins, they’d just be a few teenagers, scared shitless and wanting to go home to mommy. Sounding a little more plausible now, Cody?”
Cody pushed his seat back as Joe Bronx started laughing softly to himself.
“That’s bullshit!” Cody jabbed a finger at the TV screen, his eyes were watering. “That’s stupid!”
Kyrie was there a second later. She put an arm around his shoulders and leaned in closer and for just a second Hunter thought the skinny kid would pull away or take a swing at her, but then he calmed down a little. “Just listen. We can decide if it’s real afterward.” Her voice was soft and soothing and Hunter watched the tension leak out of Cody’s shoulders.
“I know. It’s impossible. I used to feel that way too.” Joe Bronx leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest. “You don’t know how long I’ve been dealing with this now. I’m not quite like the rest of you. I have been aware of what I am since I was old enough to walk.”
The boy looked away from the camera for a few moments and Hunter studied him. There were similarities. He didn’t like it, but he could see it. The picture on his ID could even be Joe Bronx, but a younger one. They didn’t look the same, no, but they looked like they could be related. Like cousins. “I found out about this little problem when I woke up. See, Joe Bronx is just the name I chose for myself. I’m not like you. I’m not from a happy little family that decided to raise the poor little orphan boy.” The man’s voice took on an edge. “Unlike all of you, I didn’t get to have a family and friends and a lifetime of memories. What I got was to wake up one day and realize that it was the first day of my life. And then…” He leaned forward again and planted his hands on his knees. “Then I got to run around for a couple of hours before I was locked away again.”
Hunter shook his head. So somebody had made him a prisoner? Then shouldn’t he have been less likely to do the same thing to Hunter?
Joe Bronx looked at the screen again, his brow knitted and his mouth turned down in a scowl. “This is the part where you’re really going to have trouble, boys and girls.” He sneered. “All of you, you’re the ones who are supposed to be seen by the public. Me? I’m what was supposed to be the perfect soldier. I’m the one who’s stronger, faster, smarter and designed for killing.”
Hunter’s heart seemed to stop in his chest, and his mouth watered with sour spit, like he tasted right before he started puking his guts out as a kid.
“The reason I can’t meet with you in person is because I’m one of you.” He stood up and started pacing, a hungry predator with nothing to stalk. “If you guys are the Dr. Jekylls in this equation, I’m one of the Mr. Hydes.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Cody Laurel
Cody laughed, but there wasn’t any humor in it. Kyrie’s arm was around his shoulders and he almost shrugged her away, but part of him needed the comfort. She was warm and soft and wonderful in a world that was rapidly turning into a cold wall of sharp angles and points. Without something decent in his life, he thought maybe he’d go insane, and right then the only thing close to decent was the hot girl standing next to him and holding him.
“I need to call my parents. Maybe my dad won’t kill me after all. Turns out I really am crazy.” His voice shook with the desire to scream.
Kyrie shook her head. “If you’re crazy, so am I.”
His firm belief that he’d lost his mind gave him courage. “You can’t be crazy. I think there’re rules against pretty girls being nuts.”
She shook her head again and took her arm from around his shoulders. He desperately wanted her to put that arm back. “Just listen, okay? Please?”
He looked back at the screen, and Kyrie, God love her, put her arm around his shoulders again.
“Hopefully you’ve all calmed down by now.” Bronx’s voice still held an edge. “I’ve spent a lot of time looking for answers. I didn’t even know that any of you existed at first. I thought I was the only one of my kind that was left. I watched a few others die off and then I escaped.”
Bronx sighed. “It’s a long story and it’s boring as hell. After I was on my own, I started thinking about the people that had done this to me, and I started thinking that maybe they could fix the problems that came up.” He paused again. “We’ll get to the problems in a minute. First, I had to figure out where they were. That took some time because all I had was a name. Janus. They’re the group that started this. They’re the ones that can fix it.
“I started searching for Janus. They’re very good at hiding, but now and then everyone makes mistakes.” He settled down in his chair again and faced the camera. “After that, well, I started looking for other names, other tips. I’ve been at it for almost four years. I had to find information, make money to pay for information, hell, kids, I did things you wouldn’t believe to get what I have and what I’m going to share with you. Hunter here had to find the rest of you for me because I was working on the answers we all want and need.” He smiled. There was nothing of joy or kindness in the expression.
“You’re the failures. You were supposed to be controllable. You were supposed to change when they wanted you to, but there was no indicat
ion that you had anything special. They did tests and all they found was that you were perfectly normal babies.” He snorted that short burst of angry laughter again. “They didn’t understand that they’d actually succeeded.”
Joe stood up again and reached into his back jeans pocket. “All of you were from the same lot. None of you were anything special, according to their test, and so you know what they did? They started killing off all of the babies that were just plain normal.”
Tina shook her head and spit, actually spit on the floor. Her face was hard, set and deeply angry and she said nothing, but every move she made said she was furious. Not upset because of the joke, but seriously pissed off because maybe the man on the TV was telling the truth.
Cody stared at her for a second and then looked away before she could catch him staring. He thought maybe the look in her eyes right then would have melted steel.
“Sounds horrible, I know.” Bronx got an almost comically shocked look on his face. “Killing little babies is wrong and no one would ever do that.” He shook his head. “The Egyptians did it to the Jews according to the Bible. Hitler did it to the Jews, according to the reports of the Holocaust. He also did it to Gypsy children and the physically deformed.” Joe Bronx leaned in close again. “It’s happened lots of times. Hell, it’s happened in the United States, just in case you’re feeling all self-righteous. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, big bad nuclear bombs, wiped out thousands. Lots of babies in those towns. Oh, and of course there are plenty of rumors of orphans being fed radioactive oatmeal just to see what happens when they get too much radiation.” He grinned. “But you were the lucky ones. A lot of the babies they created were deformed. You looked normal enough for someone to decide you needed saving.”
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