by Rob Thurman
“Because they’re not done playing yet.” My muscles tightened. The moment was coming. I’d put it off as long as I could—too long. This came from a combination of Institute-ingrained secrecy and something else. Once I was free, I’d picked up quickly the practice of denial. Inside Institute walls, it was impossible. Outside them, it was a drug—mental heroin. The more you did, the more you’d do. I was headed straight into cold turkey rehab now.
“Peter didn’t say play. He said punish,” Stefan said quietly, but without yielding. He’d been patient with my evasions these past few days, giving me the chance to prove I was the man I said I was. That patience was over. “Why do they want to punish you? What did all Peter’s bullshit mean?”
The moment was closer, its consequence-laden breath on the back of my neck.
I sat up slowly, Stefan’s hand bracing me. Godzilla slithered to the floorboards in search of more peanuts. I settled against the seat, giving my ribs a chance to get used to the change of position and increased pain. It was all done slowly, but not as slowly as I answered Stefan. “It means Peter knows more than he’s saying.”
“He’s not the only one, is he?”
The moment was here.
“No,” I said, “he’s not.”
It was time for the truth and I told it—the majority of it. There was one thing I held back. Among other things, I told them Peter knew about the cure. What I didn’t tell was the truth of the cure itself. I had to. If I hadn’t, the only cure for the chimeras would be a bullet to their brains. Killing thirteen teenagers and children, murderous or not, would be on Stefan’s and Saul’s consciences for the rest of their lives. I wasn’t going to let them carry that with them, especially when I couldn’t take part of that weight myself.
I wasn’t a killer; it was a vow to myself—not one that I wouldn’t break, but one that I couldn’t.
Not a killer, never again.
I was a liar, though.
And a manipulator.
A deceiver.
A hypocrite.
What good is a conscience if it lets you commit every evil under the sun save one?
No damn good at all.
Chapter 12
After the two-hour drive to Phoenix, we stayed at the first nice motel—hotel—I’d been in. Saul checked the three of us in while Stefan and I made our way cautiously along the shadowy recesses of the lobby. There were potted trees, fresh flowers, and furniture—the kind you could sit in without catching a venereal disease. An art deco–style chandelier of brightly colored blue and purple glass gave the large room an underwater feel. If a dolphin had gone swimming by, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
Or a girl with a mermaid tattoo.
Keeping our heads down, we waited for Saul by the elevators. We’d changed clothes in the car and cleaned the blood and grime from our hands and faces as best we could with napkins and bottled water. We couldn’t do anything about the hair, though. Pouring bottles of water over our heads at a rest stop had the mess going from dusty mop to matted, clumped hair that made the homeless on the streets the salon poster children for great hair care in comparison.
Saul met us and handed us a key card. “You don’t have to go through with this, Skoczinsky.” Stefan was carrying his duffel bag as well as mine, my backpack, and my laptop. The ribs would be better than new in a few hours, but the pain, dull and insistent, hadn’t left. That was why we’d stopped, although there was plenty of daylight left to keep going. The chip, which hopefully remained around Peter’s neck, was headed west toward Los Angeles. Stefan had said if they went on a wild, crazed murdering spree there, it wasn’t as if anyone would notice. LA, after all, was crazy central. We couldn’t do anything about it anyway. We needed time to stop and recuperate.
By “we,” he meant me. Here, I could sleep in a real bed and not in the back of an SUV bumping over every pothole in existence. I could shower in hot water, lie flat, sleep, eat more. The hunger had faded, but it would be back. I hadn’t forced myself to heal this fast before. But I’d never had anything close to these injuries since I’d learned to speed the healing process. When I was seventeen, I couldn’t control my healing very much at all. No chimera could. Your body healed at its own automatic, albeit, accelerated rate.
But as I’d gotten older, my body matured, and that, combined with relentless exercises in healing myself of self-inflicted cuts and burns, turned me into an athlete of healing—the best in the world. I wasn’t invulnerable, but I was harder to kill. Or that was what I’d thought before I’d been run down by a semi and had a house dropped on me. It was a wonder that passing Munchkins hadn’t sung a song and stolen my shoes before running for it up the Yellow Brick Road.
I wondered if I could genetically engineer a flying monkey.
I jerked back to the subject at hand. This time the mental meandering was from exhaustion, and with not too many endorphins. “I wouldn’t blame you,” I said. “Thanks to me, you didn’t come into this with open eyes.”
He considered Stefan first. “Having a friend is a pain in the ass. But you’re easier, Smirnoff. You pay me big bucks for the really entertaining illegal work. The rest of what I do—find someone, lose someone, suggest a reputable hit man, break a kneecap on a slow day, obtain and deliver rolls of plastic, duct tape, and three identical khaki green shirts when all the stores are closed during a Miami hurricane; the usual crap—it gets boring and before you know it I’m watching The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills to see whose skin is stretched the tightest. But you? Lots of money, a yearly Hanukkah card, and occasionally crazy, wild shit that Spielberg would find unbelievable. You keep me on my toes.”
Saul zeroed in on me next. “As for you, you played things close to the chest, but so do I. Occupational hazard. And despite everything, it doesn’t change our plan or hopefully the end result. If anything, it gives us an edge we didn’t have before. Besides, dropping your ass means dropping Stefan, and I like his money too much.” As the elevator dinged—a low, expensive sound that could’ve been an ancient Tibetan gong—Saul grinned and shot me with his finger. “Looks as though you’re stuck with me, Mikey.”
Skoczinsky giveth and Skoczinsky taketh away.
The elevator was paneled in dark, rich wood, intricate crown molding, and a bench against the back wall covered in sedate black and gold striped cloth. The small discreet TV above the doors was the single exception to the British library look. “And books,” I muttered. “What’s a library without books?”
I didn’t realize I’d said it aloud until Stefan told me to hold it together; we were nearly at the room. Adept as I was at reading people, a murderous mind is a terrible thing to waste; I had no idea what he was thinking. Since telling him and Saul almost all of what I’d held back, I’d been waiting for my brother’s reaction. He hadn’t shown one. He’d given me one last sandwich, had asked frequently how I was doing, had eased me out of the vehicle as I kept my arm wrapped around my complaining ribs, and had taken all the bags, but mainly he was quiet, deep within himself.
When the moment had come, it hadn’t come alone—but hand in hand with a trail of consequences. It wasn’t the truth that made a man, but standing face-to-face with the cost of deserting that truth. Whatever that cost was, I’d accept it. I took the key card from Stefan and opened the door wide, both of us visually checking out the room. That was the best I could do. Stefan could look under the beds for chimeras or bogeymen. My reserves were running out and I needed to save them. Saul’s door to the room beside ours shut, but not before I heard him on the phone arranging for a massage.
Eat, drink, and be massaged, for tomorrow we may die.
I went into our room. The beds were huge and the color orange was nowhere in sight. There were white puffy bedspreads. When the motels we stayed in had the option of charging by the hour, a white cover would last all of five minutes. There was a TV hidden away in a massive entertainment center, a refrigerator, coffeemaker, microwave, and the bathroom had a whirlpool tub and a showe
r. I saw it all in one swift scan. There was the soft snick of our door shutting, but I didn’t move out of Stefan’s way for him to dump our bags. Instead, I put my hand on his forehead, his chest, and then his abdomen. My ribs were a work in progress and my body fought my mind, but I was close enough to being whole that I was able to wrench enough control to assess Stefan. Normally I could’ve touched him on his arm and felt all of him at once. If there were anything wrong anywhere within him, I’d have sensed it. But close to whole wasn’t whole and I had to put more effort into it.
“You’re a human MRI, huh?” It was a comment, but the emotion behind it was impossible to interpret.
I nodded. No concussion, no brain damage. I moved my hand to his heart. “Improving my own self-healing wasn’t enough. All those sick animals I found, all the blind turtles, birds with broken wings”—and the chipmunks that escaped foxes but not soon enough. The rabbit with a broken leg, probably from a stray dog—“I fixed them. I’d thought for a long time: If I can take things apart, why can’t I put them back together? It’s the same principle, the same ability to manipulate cells. On the first day we moved to Cascade, I found Gamera in the woods, blind as a bat. That’s when I started to practice.” Last, I put my hand on his stomach. Good. There was no internal bleeding. He had bruises and cuts, but he was all right. He’d walked away from a collapsed building and I hadn’t. Human 1–Chimera 0. Life loved to mock our egos.
I wanted to go to bed and sleep for a few years, but in this place, I couldn’t imagine getting a speck of dirt on their immaculate bed. I headed for the shower, but I kept talking. “I thought it would be simple, but it wasn’t. It’s always easier to destroy than to create; easier to break something or someone down than to build it up. Luckily, Gamera was in no hurry.” I stripped down and neatly folded the clothes I’d changed into to try to pass as something more than a guy who lived in a box on the street. “It took six months to cure Gamera of cataracts—basic, simple cataracts. A doctor could’ve done it in less than an hour.” I stepped into the shower, pulled the curtain, and turned on the water.
It was hot, almost scorching, and good—too good. It loosened every muscle in me and I decided to take the shower sitting down. I should’ve used the whirlpool tub, but I wanted sleep more than jets to ease any residual aches. Washing my hair with one hand, I let the other one lie idle. No more aggravating the nowcracked ribs. No longer broken—bones were difficult—but I was getting there.
“I’m listening.”
I moved to scrubbing the dirt from my neck and chest. The EMTs hadn’t wasted any time in cutting my shirt down the middle to slap on the electrodes hooked up to the cardiac monitor. “You are? I thought you were putting on a wig and grabbing a butcher knife. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“Norman Bates? I doubt I could find an old lady’s dress that would fit my manly shoulders. Think the Terminator instead, and, yeah, I’m listening.” There was the creak of the door frame as he leaned against it. “You told us the rest, but the healing thing, but you were pretty succinct. You don’t seem a hundred percent sure about that. As you’re most often one hundred and fifty percent positive about everything you set out to accomplish, it seems weird. And no bragging on your brilliance? That’s not you. You’re your number one fan.”
One hundred and fifty? I was one hundred percent positive on the cure, seventy-five at best on being able to deliver it. “People are different from birds and chipmunks. They’re bigger and I haven’t healed one before.” Belatedly I remembered this wasn’t quite true and added, “Except for the kid in the taco joint. I cured his tonsillitis, the little monster. I should’ve left him as he was. Oh . . . and I worked on that cut on your forehead from the plane crash. I barely gave it a boost, enough so you won’t have another scar with my name on it.” Another memory popped up. “Ahhh, yeah, and you and Saul. The chlorine gas in Laramie was the real thing, not a weak version. I didn’t exactly tell the truth on that one either.”
“You don’t exactly have telling the truth down to an art, do you?” he commented mildly. I’d have felt better if he’d growled it. I was still waiting on that other shoe. “Regardless, whether you can heal other people a little or a lot, that seems like a good thing to me.”
It did? I sat in a puddle of water as the dirt ran off me in streams. I’d told him, but not clearly enough. “The healing isn’t about healing, Stefan. It’s good to have, but that’s not why I learned how. It’s about Wendy.
“If we can’t get the drop on Wendy, surprise her and take her down before she knows we’re there, then I have to be able to protect us. This was the best thing I could think of to try.” We’d always planned on rescuing those left in the Institute and I’d known all that time it wasn’t Bellucci we had to worry about. It was Wendy.
As Wendy’s abilities were purely destructive, I might be able to keep her from killing us at a distance by blocking her with the same ability, only turned on its end. Reconstructive. Opposites collide and cancel each other out. All we needed was a second to shoot her with the tranq gun. Three years I’d been thinking and practicing. If I managed to buy us that one second, I’d be damn grateful. Hard work had made me more than Jericho could’ve guessed and three years of fully maturing on top of that made me ten times what I’d once been. My chances seemed good . . . until I thought of what three years of growing up might have done for Wendy.
I was hoping practice made perfect.
I leaned my head back against the shower wall and let the water beat down on me. My eyelids drooped and I was headed fast for sleep when Stefan spoke again. “And the cure? If you have some doubts about Wendy, what about this cure? Will it work—now that you’ve included me in your need-to-know circle that was formerly you and the ferret?”
I winced and it wasn’t my ribs. Exhaling, I put a hand on the edge of the tub, heaved myself up, and turned off the shower. I caught the towel he tossed me and dried off. When I looped it around my hips, I repeated what I’d been thinking. “The cure is one hundred percent effective. If I have a chance to give it, it’ll work. There’s no question about that.”
“None?” He moved aside to let me out. I took the few steps necessary, dropped the towel, and climbed under the covers and cool sheets. They felt better against me than any clothes I owned. If we did survive, I was sneaking more money from the Caymans for better sheets. I rolled carefully onto my stomach, increased my endorphins enough to take away the remaining pain, and closed my eyes. “Peter looked goddamn perky as he ran off with not one but two darts in him,” he pointed out.
“I’ll quadruple the dose. I promise you, Stefan. It will work.” The world was slipping slowly away. Cocooned in warmth and darkness, I didn’t mind.
“You want me to trust you on it?” Right before I heard Stefan shut the shower door, I heard him murmur, “When you think why I should, Misha, you let me know.”
He’d trusted me time and time again, but I’d lied time and time again—calling it anything but lying to fool myself. When was too much? When did that last straw come along? It was lucky that I had time to sleep on it, because right then I didn’t have a good answer for his question or mine.
The only one I had, the only true rebuttal, neither of us would want to hear.
Days ago I’d been thinking I wouldn’t lie to my brother, but I had been, more or less, for three years. Call them lies or omissions or secrets—all the things we said we wouldn’t do—but at the end of the day we never failed to. Sometimes they were a convenience or a habit or at times the only kindness you could give someone. Stefan should know that.
He had a secret too and it colored every part of his life.
And mine.
I woke up to the smell of eggs, bacon, coffee, and pancakes. I savored the moment: soft bed, sheets that weren’t comparable to one-ply toilet paper, and no pain. My ribs were whole and healed.
“Room service. I know that has to be high on your list of the most incredible things invented in the history of
time,” Stefan said.
“You can’t eat a pyramid.” I opened my eyes and sat up. Through the curtains, I could see the sun rising. “I slept that long?”
“Hit by a truck and a building. That sort of thing deserves a few extra hours. Give yourself a break.” He was already at the table, munching on bacon. “And if you want any food, you’d better hurry. I’ve had too much fast food lately.”
I climbed out of bed, dressed, and took a seat to rapidly fill my plate. He wasn’t serious, but food was just below sex in life’s great pleasures. I wasn’t taking any chances. “I thought about what I said last night.” He started, pouring more coffee. The scrapes and tiny cuts on his face were going to make shaving a bitch this morning. “And I was an asshole. Your badass mobster big brother got his delicate feelings hurt and I projected.”
He covered the smile, faint but there, with his cup of coffee. After he swallowed, he added, “See? I listen to all your psycho-techno babble. My eyes glaze over, yeah, but I listen.” He picked up a triangle of toast before dropping it, interest gone. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Misha. It’s that after all this time, you don’t trust me. Buying planes, recruiting drug dealers, the pipe bomb thing—Jesus, the pipe bombs—the healing and, damn, that’s the least of all the rest you told us. You didn’t tell me any of it.”
I leaned back in the chair and pushed away my plate before I took a single bite. It took one painful topic to kill both our appetites. “I didn’t keep it to myself because I don’t trust you. Well, except for the pipe bombs. You never would’ve gone for that. It was because I want to be normal, Stefan. I want to be like my big brother. Isn’t that what all younger brothers want? When they’re little, they tag along. When they’re grown, they want to be half the man their brother is.”