Justin turned the knob and, as expected, found it locked. He held the shotgun up to the lock, turned his head, and pulled the trigger. The force of the explosion blew the door wide open and, dropping the empty shotgun on the floor, Justin stepped through.
This was a formal dining room. One wall was dominated by a large fireplace and a carved dark wood mantel. No fire was burning, and its absence made the room feel cold and harsh. There was a heavy oak dining table with fourteen oak chairs around it. There were three place settings arranged at one end of the table. He checked the door he'd shot open, saw that there was no lock from this side of the room. It could only be locked from the outside.
At the end of the room was another door. Closed. He crossed to it, moving quickly now. He turned the knob and pulled, but the door was locked.
There was a rustling noise. He spun, handgun up, extended and ready.
He was pointing his gun at a middle-aged woman wearing an indistinct white uniform. She could have been a nanny or a nurse or a housekeeper or a waitress in a diner. Her skin was very pale with a touch of red in her cheeks, and her hair was white. She was trembling as she stared into the barrel of the gun.
"Where's Kransten?" he said.
"Not here," she managed to get out. She sounded vaguely Irish.
"Where is he?"
She shook her head tightly, as if too much movement would be dangerous.
"Who else is here?"
"No one."
"Nobody else in this whole place?"
She shook her head again. The same tight movement.
"What were they guarding, those two guys, if there's no one here?"
"Nothing. They weren't doing nothing."
"What's behind here?"
Justin said, indicating the locked door.
"Just another room," the woman said. "Open it."
"I don't have a key."
Justin moved the gun several inches closer to her head. "Get the goddamn key," he told her.
The woman, her expression revealing nothing, reached into the front pocket of her uniform shift, pulled out a key.
"Open it," Justin said.
She stepped around him, put the key in the lock, and opened the door. He waved her forward and he followed her inside.
The room made his jaw drop open.
It was like stepping from the Middle Ages into the twenty-third century. The room was two or three times larger than the foyer and the ceiling was at least as high. It was all decorated in sleek chrome, thick glass, and light, modern wood. There was a balcony that ran around the entire room, extending out uniformly about ten or twelve feet, beginning perhaps twelve feet below the ceiling. All the furniture was angular and minimalist. The lighting was modern and bright white. A giant flat-screen television hung on one wall. Stereo speakers were mounted in each corner of the room. Built-in shelves were filled with thousands of CDs, videotapes, and DVDs. On a chrome-and-glass desk sat a computer with an LDC flat screen. As he surveyed the space, Justin realized that the walls of the balcony above him were lined with books, from its floor up to the ceiling.
He motioned the woman to open the door that led to the next room. She went to a key ring that hung on the wall by the television, selected a key, went to the door, and opened it. Again, Justin waved her through and then followed.
They were standing in the first room of an enormous bedroom suite, the decor decidedly feminine. The sweeping quilted curtains were woven in lush flower patterns that matched the quilt, bolsters, and pillows on the king-size four-poster bed. The carved wooden headboard was also quilted with the same fabric. This floor was carpeted, a thick, deep burgundy weave. Fresh flowers filled brightly colored vases scattered throughout. Books were stacked high on both end tables by the bed and on the desk positioned in the middle of the room. Another large-screen television was mounted on a wall. At first glance, it looked like a room for a queen. But the more Justin stood there, he began to think there was something prisonlike about it. Despite the flowers and the bright colors, the room felt lifeless and stifling.
"Whose room is this?" he asked. "Who lives here?"
The frightened woman didn't answer.
"Who lives here?" he asked again, waving the gun in her direction.
This time there was an answer. But it came from the doorway that led to a bathroom off the second room of the suite.
"It's my room," the voice said. "I live here."
The speaker stepped out into view. Justin realized she had been hiding in the bathroom.
He also realized that she was a little girl, perhaps eight years old.
"Who are you?" the girl asked.
"My name's Jay," he said. "Don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you." She was staring at him with a sense of wonder. He couldn't help but feel as if he were an alien whose spaceship had just crashed on a strange planet.
"It's okay," the girl said now to someone Justin couldn't see, and her voice was soothing and strangely adult, as if she was used to explaining things to people. "I think it's safe to come out now."
He heard another movement and then, from the bathroom, another woman timidly stepped out. She was also in a white uniform, also middle-aged with graying hair.
"Are you a new doctor?" the little girl asked Justin.
"No," he said. "I'm not a doctor. Are you sick? Do you need a doctor?"
"Don't talk to him," the first woman in white snapped at the girl. "Don't say nothing."
Justin waved the gun in her direction. He didn't have to explain to her what he meant. The woman stopped talking immediately.
"That's a gun," the little girl said and there was the sound of genuine astonishment in her voice. There was no fear. Just the opposite. Almost a feeling of joy at seeing something new and amazing. "Why do you have a gun?"
"Because people are trying to hurt me." Slowly, he stuck the gun back into his belt. "I've put it away now. I'm not going to use it anymore, okay?" To the women in the uniforms he added, "Unless I have to."
"Why are you here?" the girl asked. "To find someone."
"Me?"
"No," Justin said. He did his best to smile. "Not you."
"I thought everyone was looking for me," she said.
He started to say, No, don't worry, no one's looking for an eight-year-old girl, but before any words came out, his eyes narrowed and they gazed around the bedroom. The little girl's room. He saw the books on the table nearest to him. Manifesto of Surrealism by Andre Breton. Proust- Swann's Way. Next to her bed were copies of Madame Bovary and To the Lighthouse. And A History of Mathematics in America. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory and the Power of Myth. He turned back to the little girl, who now took her first step out of the doorway. She moved closer to him. Her movements were wary and tentative, as if directed toward an uncaged lion in the center of a circus ring. She was thin, he saw, with no hint of baby fat. Strongly muscled for someone so young. Her hair was dark and perfectly straight and hung down to her shoulders. Her skin was perfectly white and smooth, her eyes were strikingly blue and clear. She was wearing a light blue dress, a shift with thin straps over bare shoulders. The dress ended several inches above her knees. She wore no shoes or socks. It was all perfectly appropriate for her age, but Justin suddenly shivered. He stared into her eyes now, and in addition to her extraordinary beauty he saw something disquieting and disturbing. He saw a sadness there that belied her youth and a hunger that was frightening.
"You're looking at me funny," the girl said.
"I'm sorry," Justin mumbled, but he didn't stop staring.
"It's okay. I don't mind. You're the handsomest man I've ever seen in person," the girl said, and the hunger spread from her eyes all across her face.
"I'm not so handsome," he said.
"Yes," the girl whispered. "You're very beautiful. I've never seen anyone like you."
"Hush!" one of the uniformed women said.
"Oh my God," Justin said quietly. Then he said it again and the words rang with a strong sense
of wonder and horror and shock. And of pity and fear. Facing the small girl, looking at this exquisite little creature, the perfect eight-year-old girl, he suddenly understood. Maybe it was in the girl's eyes. Or maybe he was looking into her sad soul.
Justin remembered the word that Helen Roag's doctor friend had used: "ungodly." And now he understood who he was looking at. He didn't know how it was possible, but he was absolutely certain that it was.
"You're here to find my father, aren't you?" the girl asked him.
"Yes," Justin said, his voice barely audible in the room. "And my mother?"
"Yes."
"They'll be here soon. They're coming today."
"You be quiet!" the first woman in white hissed at the girl.
"No," the girl said. "I won't be quiet." She turned to Justin. "I've never spoken to anybody before, not real people, not strangers, and I'd like to talk to you."
"I'd like to talk to you, too," Justin breathed. And then he knew he had to say her name. Just to be sure. Just to know that he hadn't gone mad. "I very much want to talk to you…Aphrodite."
She smiled. "Everybody wants to talk to me. I know a lot of things."
"I'm sure you do."
"Would you like me to tell you everything I know?"
"Yes. I would like that very much." He knew he was speaking very quietly. He was almost afraid to look away or even breathe too loud, as if the slightest disturbance would cause this fragile thing to shatter as if she were made of glass.
"Will you do something for me?" she asked now. "If I ask you nicely and then I tell you everything I know?"
"Yes," he said.
"Anything?"
"If I can," he told her. "I'll try to do whatever you want me to do."
"Then I want you to find my mother and father," she said. "I want you to wait here until they come back."
"I will," he said.
"And then," Aphrodite said, "I want you to kill them."
35
They were outside walking down the path that led to the gate. The girl kept twirling around in delight and amazement.
"I've never been outside without supervision," she said.
Justin nearly began to cry. He couldn't help himself. He wished he hadn't sent Deena away now. He wanted her to be there so he could grab on to her arm, needing an anchor to a different reality from the one he was suddenly confronting.
They stepped over the broken gate and Aphrodite crossed the property line. She turned back to him and smiled hesitantly.
"I've never been here before. Never been outside these walls." She reached out to take Justin's hand. "It's frightening."
"Everybody's got walls that keep them somewhere they don't want to be," Justin said. "And it's always frightening to go someplace you've never been before."
She let go of his hand now, bent down to pick a yellow wildflower from alongside the road. "I don't want to go in," she said. "Ever."
He let her wander and gawk and touch. She kept reaching out and stroking tree trunks, picking up rocks and fondling them in her palm, kneeling down and stroking the grass. Justin knew she'd talk when she was ready, and soon she was. She stood in the middle of the road, turned and lifted her face toward the sun, and he listened while she told him her story. As he watched her, Justin had to tell himself over and over again that she wasn't what she appeared to be. He was not looking at a fragile eight-year-old girl. He was looking at a woman. A woman who was born in 1974, who had been kept locked away, an unholy experiment, for her entire life.
"It was my mother's idea," she told him as they strolled. "She'd read Skinner back in the sixties. He was the psychologist who talked about raising his children in a cage so he could control their environment and study the effects. My mother liked that concept. I think she gave birth to me so she would have someone to put into a cage.
"My father started his experiments in 'seventy-two. You said you know about them, the ones in New York. When they began to come to fruition, they needed someone they could study from a very early age. He's told me often how they used to long to experiment on a newborn baby, how they thought they could double the human life span if they only had the opportunity to get someone early enough. He's always told me that no one ever wanted a child more than he and my mother wanted me. He says that no child in the history of the world has ever been loved so much or been so valued by her parents."
"What about friends?" Justin asked. "Did you ever have any friends?"
"Not allowed. At first, I was too young to know what I was saying so they couldn't take a chance that I might reveal something without realizing the consequences. Eventually I was old enough to understand what they were doing to me and, of course, then they really couldn't let me in a room with strangers. I might say something knowing the consequences. I've seen the doctors and scientists, of course. The house was filled with them up until a month or so ago. And I've had caretakers over the years. Those two women, the ones you locked in the bathroom, they're the latest. One of them's been there eight years. They keep me company but mostly they're there to make sure I stay behind locked doors. I've been locked inside that house since I was born."
"Jesus…"
"I've got almost everything I could possibly need," Aphrodite said matter-of-factly. "I'll bet I'm the best-read person you've ever met. And I've probably seen more films than anyone my age in the whole world. I can speak four languages, too. Well, five, counting English: French, Italian, Russian, and German. I spend a lot of time on the Internet, although always under supervision. They can't take a chance that I'd contact someone or get into a chat room that might expose them."
"Why did they leave?" he asked her. "You said the house was filled with doctors and scientists until a month ago. What happened a month ago?"
"They finished."
"Finished?"
"With the experiments. The formula."
"What do you mean, finished?"
"They're all done. The treatments they started administering thirty years ago. They've come to fruition. They don't need to do anything else. They've got what they've always wanted."
"And that is…?"
"They can do to other people what they've done to me. They can provide a fountain of youth for anyone who wants it."
The sun had moved along in the sky now, and she walked slowly to the far side of the road so she could remain in its warm stream of light. "I'm almost thirty years old," she said now. "Mentally and emotionally, I'm an adult. Physically, outwardly, I'm a child. I can't talk to anyone who looks like me because we're not remotely on the same level. And I can't talk to anyone my own age because they'd view me as a freak and a monster. I see the way you look at me while I'm talking. You think I'm a freak too."
"I'm sorry," Justin said. "I don't mean to. I just can't reconcile what I'm hearing with what I'm seeing."
"It's all right. I am a freak. I've never been in love, I've never had sex. I'm probably twenty years away from even menstruating. I have no pleasure in my life and none to look forward to. I think about almost nothing but killing myself, but I have never even been given that opportunity. If I keep taking the drugs and supplements and hormones I've been given my whole life, I will probably live another hundred and thirty years.
"That's why I want you to kill them. So I can finally escape from what almost every other person on earth would pay millions of dollars for."
"What happens if you stop taking the treatments?" he asked quietly.
"I don't know," she said. "That's the one thing no one knows. I could go on as I am or…"
"Or what?" Justin said, when she didn't finish her sentence.
"Or my body will stop functioning on its own because it's forgotten how." She cocked her head now, and she looked across the horizon. She crossed back to his side of the road to stand directly in front of him. "Listen," she said. "Do you hear it?"
Justin cocked his head too. Heard a familiar whirring noise off in the distance.
"His helicopter," Aphrodite said. "
They're back." She took Justin's hand now. "You should be in the house. It'll be easier if they're inside."
He let her lead him back toward her prison. Her hand felt warm inside his.
"They're going to offer you anything you want," she said. "I know them. And they've got a lot to offer."
"I'm not for sale," Justin said.
"My father has kept the scientists separate. They all know pieces. He thinks that no one has access to the final formula but him. He thinks that no one can really put it all together but him."
"But that's not true?"
"I know everything they've done to me. I've kept track of everything since I was fifteen years old. Every medication, every injection, every pill. I've read and studied the exact same materials and experiments my father's scientists have read and studied. They talk to me-they've explained things to me. I've had nothing to do my entire life but learn what it is I am and why."
Justin saw the helicopter now. It flew into view and headed for the landing strip several hundred yards behind the house.
"I can give you anything and everything that they offer," Aphrodite said. "Anything at all."
"There's only one thing I want," Justin said, and he told her what it was.
They were at the front door now. She told Justin how Kransten and Marshall would enter, where they would go. She told him exactly where to wait for them. Then she asked him to bend down.
When he did, she reached up and put her hands around the back of his neck. She stood on her toes and she kissed him. Her lips grazed his and lingered, pressing against him. Justin didn't move. Stood absolutely still until she released him.
"Thank you," she said. "I've been dreaming about a kiss for almost twenty years."
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