“What’s taking so long?”
“Nothing, there’s just a lot of newspaper stuffed in here. I’m digging to see what’s underneath.” She held up the flashlight in one hand and began pulling out the paper with the other. After a few handfuls, her fingernails tapped something hard and smooth. The light reflected a square of glass with a pinkish substance inside. She removed a larger clump of paper and then plunged her arm in to feel around. It was a jar. A large one.
“It’s too heavy for me to pull out.” She wiggled back to the opening and swung her body through. She stood up too fast, feeling a rush to her temples. “Why don’t you go in and look.” She passed him the flashlight.
The light danced in the enclosure before finally settling in one spot, the glow crossing the top of the crate. Russ’ body blocked her view, as he plunged in with both arms. She placed a hand on the top of the makeshift doorway and peered in.
“What is it?”
“You won’t believe this.” He lowered his voice as he placed the object back into the crate. “I think its project MR dash two.”
Chapter 9
Edward waited until he heard Russ and Brina working in the attic. The room under the eaves was ample space at the time it was built, but now he wondered if it would be enough. The sheer oddity and the room’s contents should keep them busy long enough for him to do what needed to be done. Anyway, he thought, the more they knew, the deeper they were in.
He zipped his canvas jacket, flipped the collar up over his neck, and opened the back door. Wind threw snow across his path, replacing all the normal sounds of nocturnal animals and stirring leaves with a hypnotic hiss.
Mathew’s car was just out of sight, at the end of the drive.
Park ranger, indeed, he thought, as he shuffled down the steps. A real park ranger would’ve seen the car. The man who’d spoken to Brina was an imposter, and he had a good idea who that would be. The question was where? Where was he hiding?
Edward slipped on the icy gravel. His hand shot out to a low branch, and he caught himself before colliding with the Lincoln. Its gray metal body, sandwiched between two defrocked maples, had scored the bark like bear claws digging out insects.
When the potassium chloride had finally seized Mathew’s system, he had lost control, careening off the driveway. Edward’s seatbelt had tightened, pinning him to the seat while the car bounced through the brush. The final jolt hadn’t been so bad, at least not as bad as he’d expected.
Edward jerked open the driver-side door; Mathew was slumped over the wheel. His face was blue-gray in the poor light, and one hand gripped the wheel as if to steer it back to the road.
“Well, I guess you’re willing to listen now.” Edward clutched a fold of Mathew’s coat and pulled him out onto the ground. His body had cooled to match the weather, freezing him into a permanent bend. This wasn’t going to be easy.
Edward looked up, gauging the storm, and then back at his tracks already filling to soft indentations.
He eased himself into the car and turned on the ignition. The engine whined a few times before catching and sending out a cloud of exhaust. He backed through it and coasted a few yards down the drive to where a clearing opened up in the trees. He veered toward it and stopped.
He would’ve taken care of the car this morning, but the routine around the house was so irregular, it was hard to go missing for more than five minutes. The damned kid was all over the place too. Even if you managed to find a spot alone, he would show up in short time.
Cutting the engine, he left the gear in neutral and got out. A quick pull on the brake release allowed gravity to do the work. The Lincoln picked up speed, snapping first-year saplings, as it wheeled headlong down the bank and over the ridge into a frozen creek bed a hundred feet below. The crash reverberated up the hill, muffled by the deadening effect of the snow and ice-covered rock.
Now he just had Mathew to deal with.
Edward rubbed his hands together, his fingers numbed to stiff claws. His thin dress gloves were fine for driving but not for any prolonged exposure. He looked down at Mathew, now veiled in a death shroud of lacy snowflakes.
Edward pulled his gloves off and stuffed them in his pocket. Mathew’s thick, fleece-lined gloves would work much better, he thought. He plucked at the fingers until they slipped loose and put them on. “It’s not like you need them any more,” he said. Mathew stared back, eyes and mouth open in shock.
Edward squatted, picked up the body and hoisted the dead weight over his shoulder. The walk back would be a long one.
“I could say I’m sorry,” he said over his shoulder. “But I’m not. It was a bad time to get a conscience. Bringing them all here, and for what? What were you thinking? This isn’t some damn family reunion.” At least one of them had shown up, but what about the others? How many more were there?
Edward paused every five or six yards to catch his breath. Once he’d had the strength to do anything he wanted. At least he still had his wits, and he counted experience in his favor. Adrenaline was helping make up the years; his heart pounded in sync with his breath, and his muscles remembered how to balance the dead weight.
The house was getting closer. “Mathew, I was right, and you knew it, they’re all dangerous.” Dangerous and smart—and too close. Mathew just couldn’t stop pushing; always taking risks and willing to let someone else clean up the consequences. “Well, now it’s over.”
He made the final stretch in silence, opening the door and carrying Mathew through the kitchen.
Edward struggled with the weight, knocking the chairs askew and grunting. Mathew was finally not a threat to his every move, sabotaging his work and attempts to cultivate other areas of genetic study. It all amounted to years of confinement in Mathew’s professional prison.
He shuffled down the lab stairs to where the big walk-in refrigerator hummed in the back corner. It served their laboratory needs and doubled as food storage.
Edward wedged Mathew’s stiffened corpse against a crate of tissue samples and plastic-wrapped cold cuts.
“You see, I do like you. If I didn’t, I’d have left you in the car for the vermin to eat.” Edward glanced at the labels on the cartons and packages lining the shelves. “The Egyptians surrounded their dead with wealth.” He placed a Styrofoam carton by Mathew’s hand—a tissue sample from Roman. “I’m leaving; enjoy your riches.” Mathew stared back, his ability to disagree stripped away.
Edward grabbed a paper-wrapped stack of steaks from the freezer section and then let the heavy stainless steel door swing shut.
Sweating, he loosened his coat and used the handrail to pull himself up the stairs. He fumbled along the doorjamb for the right spot and then hit it with the side of his fist. At his feet, a plank flipped open, revealing controls to the lab’s security system. He first turned off the emergency lights that still illuminated the lab below and then punched in a code, sending a stained wood panel, matching the ones that lined the hallway, down to the floor. The wall looked seamless. He pressed a sequence of numbers into the keypad and then jerked his hand out of the way. The panel sealed itself, blending in with the row-upon-row planks of the hardwood floors.
He walked back to the kitchen, pulling Mathew’s gloves off, and looked out at his tracks. The line was visible almost to the drive before the darkness blanked his view.
His plan had been coming together in his mind for quite some time, finally showing him that this was the way out. He had access to what he needed to move on. He’d been signing Mathew’s name to invoices and documents for so many years; a few more wouldn’t be questioned. The lingering part of the equation was the hired help and the evidence, namely Roman. With a little planning, maybe he could get the two problems to take care of each other.
Edward hung his coat on the peg by the back door. The snow caught and reflected the light from the house in yellow squares across the back yard. A figure skirted the light, moving from the house to the garage. “Ah, so there you are.” Edward opened
the door, squinting up at the windows facing out from the back of the house. The one next to Brina’s was open.
Chapter 10
“How sick does it get? Did you know about this?” Brina put a hand over her mouth as the sting of vomit burned the back of her throat. It was becoming apparent that Mathew and Edward had been single-mindedly pursuing one goal longer than either of them knew.
Russ backed out of his confinement. “You see some pretty disgusting things in med school, but nothing like that.” He brushed his hands on his pants, as his shoulders gave an involuntary convulsion. He looked up at Brina’s disbelieving stare, “What?”
“Tell me exactly what’s in there.” She stood to the side, moving away from Russ, the jar and gaping hole in the wall, a tiny step at a time.
“It was a specimen jar.” Russ walked to the attic doorway, intersecting her path, and looked down. Brina kept a constant distance from him. “I think Edward is still outside,” he said. Sweat dotted his forehead, and he wiped it away in a jerky motion. “My guess is”—he motioned to the room and jar—“he was about seven months gestation at the time of termination.”
“You mean they killed him?”
“I don’t know.” Russ’s said as he thought it through. “I knew there were experiments that didn’t work out. It could have died of natural causes.”
“I wouldn’t call any of this natural.” Brina took in a gulp of air, stifling the urge to run.
“What I mean is,” he said, pulling her down to sit on top of the trash bag, “it took a lot of trying to get it right. The samples would degrade and mutate, or adapt—however you want to look at it—and end up with a latent defect from five generations back or cancerous growths or some other terminal problem. It took a while to figure out how the genes would behave in the new combinations. It’s an exact science that’s inexact because it’s never been done before now.”
Brina’s mind pictured the pinkish substance in the jar and then drew in the rest of a small body with Roman’s face. Russ’s hands had moved down to hold her own. Newspaper ink etched lines in the skin on the back of his hands, crossing in a tangle of geometric angles. Her own hands were red and scratched, with paper cuts stinging her cuticles.
A thump sounded as something blew against the roof. The security alarm beeped. Edward was back from wherever.
Brina lowered her voice. “Let’s board it up and be done with it.” She pushed back from Russ, leaving the bag of clothes to topple onto the floor.
Without much talk, they stacked the last two boxes inside, fit the boards in place, and hammered the nails back into their previous slots. Signs that a room existed gradually disappeared.
“You can tell we’ve been in here.” Russ pointed to their foot- and handprints all over the attic. Four streaks marked where they had moved the armoire. He brushed his hand over the front to scatter the dust, but that only made it worse.
“Hold on, I have an idea. Where’s the vacuum?”
“Hallway closet.”
“I’ll be right back.” Brina went downstairs, coveting the warm air, and pulled the metal and plastic contraption from the closet. She pressed two catches on the side and pulled out the half-inflated bag.
“Bri!”
“Yikes!” Brina fell over, swallowed in a cloud of allergens that mushroomed out of the bag. Roman stood barefoot in the hallway outside his room.
“Roman, go back to bed.” He didn’t move. “Go.” She pointed. The cloud settled over her, the floor, and the vacuum.
When his stubbornness outwaited her pointing, she set the bag down and steered him through the door. The room was freezing; curtains floated loose out from the window, with snow melting on the carpet underneath. “Roman, did you open the window? How did you figure that out?”
She picked him up and put him in the bed, pulling the quilt up to his nose. It was cold and wet like the one on the old beagle she’d had as a kid. He was shivering.
Brina kissed his nose. “It’s okay, I’m not mad.” She crossed the room and pulled the window shut and locked it. The storm blurred everything outside to a dingy, mass.
“Get some sleep. And stay away from the window. It’s dangerous.” Roman blinked, then turned over with a sigh and rolled his body into a ball under the covers.
She left the door open and headed back to the attic with the vacuum cleaner bag.
“What took so long?”
“Roman woke up; I had to put him back to bed.” She held up the bag. “I’ve brought camouflage.” She turned it upside down and sifted dirt, carpet fur, and lint over the bedpost and floor.
Coughing, Russ waved an arm through the homemade smog. “Ingenious. You’ve done this before?”
“What? Hide incriminating research documents that could send me to jail for the rest of my life?” She kicked a clump under the armoire. “I used to hide my diary in the attic, and I learned this trick to keep my brother from finding it.”
Russ backed down the stairs, watching her. “You never mentioned you had a brother. Come to think of it, you never mention much of anything.”
“Neither do you. And neither does Edward. That makes us all even.”
The dust settled, landing on them as much as anything. “Hand me the key.” Brina locked the door, only this time she put the key on top of the doorframe.
“This way we’ll know where it is.” She turned around. Russ faced her, his head level to her chest and one hand on the wall to keep his balance.
“Let’s go.” She motioned for him to descend.
“After we clean up, you want a drink?” he asked. His weight landed heavy on each step, sending a shudder back up the stairs.
“Sure, I’ll meet you in the study.”
He went to his room, and the sound of running water soon followed. In the second-floor hallway, the bedrooms insulated all the sounds from outside. The rooms they didn’t use were locked. Brina wrestled the vacuum back into the closet and closed Roman’s door. He had stayed in bed this time and was sleeping soundly.
Inside her room, the windows rattled. She dropped her clothes on the bathroom floor and turned on the shower, running a hand under the spray of warming water. Slowly, her reflection in the mirror clouded over in the steam. She didn’t need to look at herself to know what was there. Time and stress had marked her in small lines around her pale green eyes and lips, and her brown hair was turning gray from underneath. She pulled a few tangles of dirt from her hair and let them flutter to the floor.
Every day spent in Mathew’s house tested her resolve. The jar in the attic was a sick reminder of what might happen to Roman. Brina plunged her body under the hot spray and let the drops massage her face.
She felt certain of where Edward stood if the situation turned ugly, but, as far as she knew, Russ had never taken sides.
Chapter 11
“I knew you’d be here somewhere.” Wind caught the door and banged it against the side of the garage. Edward grabbed the metal handle and pulled it shut. The plastic seal sucked around the door, cutting off the draft. The garage was warm. The windows were blacked out with paper bags, and a homey little setup, complete with a cot and stove, occupied the rear corner. Mathew’s truck took up one side; on the other, a green Jeep occupied the space vacated by the Lincoln.
Edward snorted, pleased at having his suspicions confirmed.
“It looks like you’ve been here a while.” Edward sat on the cot and put his hands toward the kerosene burner, where a pot of vegetable soup steamed. He’d seen a body lying outside by the edge of the yard; the real park ranger was his guess. A battered wood table beside the stove held a fleshy silicone nose and chin. Edward picked up the tube of adhesive. “Clever. Well, Mathew, are you coming out or not?” Saying the name nauseated him. Mathew Roman had named each of the living specimens after himself. Edward had lost count of how many were still out there., but he was reasonably sure he knew which one this was. Funny how they all had a habit of disappearing and then reappearing at the worst times
.
“You’re stupid to come out in the middle of a blizzard. You could die in a storm like this.” The voice, sounding so like and unlike Mathew at the same time, drifted through the garage.
“Eventually, we all die. I believe, for tonight, I’m safe,” said Edward
A shuffle from behind the truck turned to footsteps on the cold concrete, and a slightly skewed version of Mathew Roman stepped into the light. He juggled a set of keys in one hand and smiled. “Almost like old times, except for—what’s missing here? Yeah, I know: restraints, needles, slow torture.”
Edward sat still, studying Mathew. His muscular body filled out the clothes and ski jacket, yet this Mathew’s eyes were creased, and lines folded around his mouth with premature aging. He stomped snow from his boots, then leaned against the truck. Edward knew he had a balance problem, a side effect of the seizures he suffered. Psychomotor epilepsy was extremely hard to identify and repair in the re-sequencing process—that is, of course, if you’re trying to repair it. Edward had made sure all the survivors had a flaw that would take them young—his own precaution.
Mathew’s expression was a cross between a glare and a cautious smile. “I tried talking to Roman, but he wouldn’t budge. He acted like he was afraid of me.”
“You’re a stranger to him.”
“I am him.”
“I thought we’d seen the last of you.” Edward slid his hand into his pocket to feel the snub nosed, nine-millimeter Beretta. He’d rather not leave a mark if it came to that, but this Mathew was smart, and fast. Edward didn’t think he’d have time for a neater solution.
“Freedom was intoxicating, for a while.” Mathew’s body twitched as he spoke, “Then I thought about all the test tubes, the incubators . . . my whole family laid out for execution.”
“They weren’t your family,” Edward sighed with relief, not empathy. He might be able to get something helpful out of this. “They were cells—no brains, no nervous system; they could never have survived on their own.”
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