by Lia Black
“No, but... never mind. Are you going to tell me about the third one, or wander off into fantasy land again?”
Mercury paused to ponder the suggestion. After a moment he said, “Mars, of course.”
Right. He’d expected as much. “Your younger brother,” he ventured.
“A prime example of where incest goes wrong. My brother yet my son. Father wanted to see what would happen if he mixed a bit of me with my dead sister’s DNA. He added a few other things and created a pitiable creature that was supposed to be a perfect weapon of destruction.”
“So you’re just an ingredient,” Sean concluded.
Mercury frowned at him. “I am the meal. They took a little piece from me and tried to mix it with something that was flawed in its inception. Poison eventually taints all that surrounds it.”
Sean wasn’t entirely certain how much stock to put in Mercury’s story. He didn’t think Mercury was lying, but from what he’d seen, Mercury sometimes had a problem with distinguishing fantasy from the real world. “Then why not Mars? Why doesn’t he go after your father? Why didn’t you bring him with you?”
“I’ve only seen Mars a few times. He should have been put out of his misery when he was first born. But my father thinks of himself as an artist. He tried to add more clay, more paint, more everything to salvage the work. What he got was a mess that can never be cleaned up. Mars has a mind that knows only to destroy. He’s a dumb beast who can’t be trained, so he’s kept locked up—something to strike fear into the hearts of anyone who ever crosses my father.”
“I don’t get why you claim that Sol Labs would take funding to make something like you and Mars. What’s in it for the investors?”
“Its an investment in their futures, I suppose, although I’ve never understood that. See the cupcake, eat the cupcake, otherwise it becomes stale...is there any more pudding?”
“No.” Sean grimaced. Mercury had turned his attention to the knotted wires and handcuffs on his wrists, likely trying to figure a way out of them. The soldiers that had attacked them were wearing the Sol Labs logo on their armor. Mercury had a tattoo on his head with the same design. Sean couldn’t be certain, but that big thing Rodney had been heading towards was possibly Sol Labs. As much as he wanted to wave all of this off as more of Mercury’s delusions, knowing what he knew made it plausible. Logical, even. It was screwed up, and he wasn’t entirely convinced of just how much to believe, but he knew what he’d seen.
“Warden Lyttel and the LunaMax Corporation see it as an investment in a cost-effective solution for prison guards. Bred to follow orders, spliced and sequenced to avoid the need for sunshine and vacations.”
“What?” Sean had heard him, loud and clear. Worse still was that he was beginning to believe him.
Mercury blinked at him, eyes wide with the simulated innocence of a southern belle. “What? Oh, that? You didn’t know? Well of course you didn’t. Only expendable people would have been sent with me.”
14
Mercury didn’t understand why Sean disliked him so much. The man’s body language contradicted his words. Despite what Sean kept saying about justice, Mercury still didn’t know why Sean hadn’t just left him when the light in his head became too bright. It seemed like a foolish thing to do unless Sean wanted something from him, but so far, he hadn’t asked for much. He’d been smart to put on the metal handcuffs. Individually, Mercury might be able to break the bindings, but together with the wire knotted around his wrists, it would be a lot more difficult.
Sean was gazing at him again when he finally returned his attention there.
“You know, your attempts to teach your father a lesson, or whatever it is you think you’re doing, have cost a lot of innocent people their lives,” Sean said. His voice was low and graveled.
“Only children are innocent. I haven’t hurt any children.”
“What about the innocent spouses of the people you’re after?”
“Would you marry someone without knowing a thing about their political beliefs? Could you marry someone you find morally detestable?” Mercury could see by the way that Sean was working his lower jaw that he was having a difficult time constructing a valid argument. He liked that about him: Sean almost always knew when to shut up. “I give money to charities all the time. I’m paid up as far as collateral damage,” Mercury reasoned. Apparently Sean didn’t like something he’d said because he was on his feet and pacing, raking his hand through his short hair as he ground his teeth to powder in his mouth.
“Unfucking-believable. You seriously think that you can pay off your moral debts with money?”
He looked like he was waiting for an answer, so Mercury gave him one. “Yes.”
That sent Sean into a spluttering, swearing, gesturing frenzy, which Mercury found mildly entertaining. Pretty was so interesting when he was angry. Passion—yes, that’s what it was. He’d never met anyone like him. Sean was different from the others—different from Princess. He was an unhappy man who did his duty not for the glory, but because he genuinely believed it was right. That was admirable, if misguided. Mercury wasn’t the bad guy. He wasn’t the Witch Blackheart. He’d suffered as a child, and everyone knew that children who were raised in such environments of suffering grew up to be the heroes...Right?
“Let me see if I’ve got this right.” Sean’s entire body looked tense as he stopped pacing, his hands even shaking a little when he made a gesture as if he were trying to hold something down. “You somehow escaped from Sol Labs, built yourself a criminal empire, and your plan was to cripple the lab’s finances by killing all of the investors?”
Mercury pouted. “You make it sound so trivial when you say it like that, but yes— that was part of my plan. I’m a very expensive project and one that my father won’t give up on, even if it kills him— which, of course, is the end part of my plan. He’ll have to cut down on paying his staff, and no one who works at Sol Labs is there for a greater good. The first to go will be the lower-paid scientists. That will make his militia nervous— well, that and the fact that I am coming to kill everyone— so they will start to desert. Without the protection they offer, the higher paid scientists will look for safer jobs with other companies. Then, when the man is at his weakest, I will storm in and destroy him. I think it’s poetic irony that a man is destroyed by his own creation, don’t you?” Mercury had replayed this fantasy over and over in his mind. Sometimes, before he pulled the trigger, his father would tell him that he loved him. Sometimes he’d apologize. Sometimes he’d remain arrogant throughout. That was the thing with fantasies: one was really never certain of how it would actually go, so playing out every scenario would ensure no surprises. No matter what Dr. Frederickson Sol said when the time came, Mercury had planned a clever retort punctuated by splattering the man’s brains all over the impossibly shiny tiles of Sol Laboratory’s floor.
“But you were arrested. You were betrayed by your own organization.” Sean reminded him, though he wasn’t bothered by that. Pretty was a simple man and he needed to work through these conclusions.
“Well, that is a concern when you hire criminals, but they were the only people willing to do the job. As for Princess... it was my own poor judgment. He was charming and smart and very nice in bed. He looked very strong so others showed him respect. You want that in a general.”
“Did he tell you he loved you?” Sean sneered.
Mercury shrugged one shoulder. “Everyone does when they are fucking me. Well, everyone but you, Pretty.”
Sean’s jaw worked, and he clenched and unclenched his fists, shifting his weight between his feet. It took him a few moments to respond. “You know they all lied to you.”
Something sharp and cold sliced through Mercury’s chest, making his heart cramp as it froze. He looked down, though he knew he’d see nothing. The blade of ice was invisible. Often, his anger melted it away, but for some reason, he didn’t feel angry. The ice had frozen him through, making him heavy, unbreakable unless someone f
ound the cracks and began chipping away. He understood that’s what Sean was trying to do. “I knew it then.” He smiled as he always did when telling an absolute truth, and he knew it was the truth by how much it hurt.
“Did you love Princess?” Sean asked him, his tone slightly less condescending than before, but not much.
“He was just as expendable as everyone else,” Mercury said. He never let his gaze waver, though it felt like an untruth. Not a lie, because feeling that way would have been logical. It was his own fault for letting his loneliness tint his vision, making everything that had been black and white into runny shades of gray.
“You’re a psychopath—incapable of thinking about anyone but yourself.”
Mercury opened his mouth to argue, but found he had no immediate reply. He couldn’t help what he was, how he was made both biologically and emotionally. “I am a lot of things.”
“And you’re doing all of this to prove a point. So you had a shitty childhood. Get over it.”
Sean gave him an ugly look and Mercury lowered his gaze. Was it a shitty childhood? Probably, though he had little to compare it to while he was growing up in the lab. What he saw later in life—the relationships between fathers and sons on Earth—well, none of that made sense.
“I remember once, when I used to venture out among people, there was a little boy at the park with his father. His father told him not to stand on the swing. The little boy did it anyway and he fell down, skinned his knee, and he was crying. His father rushed to him and held him in his arms...he kissed his forehead, rocked him and hugged him until the boy calmed down...” The pain in Mercury’s chest spread and his eyes started to burn and blur. When he tried to speak, his throat felt tight. “I don’t understand...the boy was wrong...why wasn’t he left to suffer?”
15
They’d been having a satisfying conversation about Mercury’s level of crazy when he started to cry. Sean had seen many criminals cry throughout the years. Usually it was the younger guys—the small-time drug dealers or gang-bangers—who realized that life wasn’t a game as they sat in a holding cell with the drunks, and the kind of men they would grow up and become. It was almost a rite of passage, and very few learned to steer clear of that future, though failure had been prophesied and manifested right in front of them. He’d seen murderers and rapists sob when their final sentence was handed down. In some cases, he believed, it was relief, but in most others it was self-pity. They didn’t care about the people they’d hurt. It was arrogance, not ignorance. They’d been unmoved by tears or pleas from their victims. He never felt sorry for them; never considered what may have contributed to their criminal behaviors. But this seemed different. Damn it, Pearl, for putting these ideas in his head. “You seriously don’t understand?” He could see it on his face. Mercury was sucking on his lower lip, his features gone slack. He gave a small sideways shake of his head.
“Pretty— did you have a father like that?” Mercury’s voice was barely a whisper, and Sean suspected he’d read his lips more than heard the question.
Sean felt a weight settle onto his shoulders and he sat down. He seriously didn’t want to go there. Not necessarily because it was painful, although it still affected him, but sharing a fireside chat with a fruit-loop like Mercury Fie was not going to be therapeutic for either of them.
Mercury met his gaze with teary-eyed confusion. But Sean wasn’t certain how much of it was real, and how much was manipulation.
“I don’t know what that’s like,” Mercury said when Sean didn’t answer. “No one paid much attention to me except to tell me where I couldn’t go. I could never go see my father. I suppose I was only a product to him, just like you said. I spent most of my time in a little room, learning about things from the TV shows they let me watch.”
No wonder Mercury had a moral compass set by cartoons, it sounded like they had been the only family he’d known. Sean crushed down the expansion of sympathy threatening to work its way out. Granted, Mercury had a miserable childhood. He was broken, just like billions of other people who had suffered as kids. But Sean wasn’t here to fix him. Nobody would fix him. What was the point of fixing something that was going to be destroyed anyway?
There was no way that Mercury would ever see the light of day once final judgment was passed by the Intergalactic Tribunal. He’d probably be kept alive long enough to make the media happy, then he’d be executed. It would be public knowledge but privately delivered. Few, if any, would mourn his loss.
The rain hammered louder on the outer hull, accompanied by lightning crackling across the dirt outside. Sean got up and finally took off the armor he’d been wearing, then he grabbed a couple of blankets from the bag and wrapped one over his shoulders. The other he carried to Mercury and placed over his back. Sean crouched to pull the blanket forward over Mercury’s body. When their eyes met, Sean looked away. As he moved to the other side of the cabin, he could feel Mercury’s gaze upon him. He hated the fact that it made him so uncomfortable, or the fact that he felt anything at all. Despite Mercury now being the one tied up, this situation reversal had done little to change who was in control.
“I’ll kill Mars too.” Mercury’s voice was a gritty murmur. “Not because I hate him, but because he’s suffering; and things that are suffering should be put out of their misery, don’t you agree?” he asked.
Sean glanced at him as he settled down on the floor a few feet away. He would not say anything that might sound like encouragement. “Why were you made?”
Mercury cocked his head. “Why were you made, Sean?”
“Condom broke. Just answer the question.” He had visions of a skeletal pilot half buried in the cockpit behind them with a full pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. Damn it, but he wanted a smoke. He was getting too agitated too easily, and this situation had turned his earlier meal into hot tar in his stomach.
“I think my father just wanted to see what he could do. He didn’t have any natural-born children, so he wanted his legacy to be useful. My body is a prototype for an assassin.” Mercury stretched out his long legs, flexing his feet in the boots he wore. Sean shook his head when he realized that Mercury had made them by ripping one of the armored suits off at the knees. He wouldn’t have been surprised if there had still been legs in them when he’d done it.
“Is that what they told you?”
“Mm, not in so many words so directly. But look at me. I’m agile, silent, strong, and fast. Those sound like the kinds of qualities you would want in an assassin.”
“Lets not forget remorseless,” Sean sneered.
But the statement didn’t seem to bother Mercury. “Yes, that too,” he agreed. “I also have enhanced neuro-abilities.”
“Like messing up electronics?”
Mercury nodded. “I can do it at wide range or focus a small charge to a particular point.”
Sean remembered the little spark that Mercury had produced on the shackles. Yes, that would also be a useful skill for an assassin—the ability to mess with security systems so he wouldn’t get caught, or fry circuitry to the point of turning it against its owners. “If you were made to be an assassin, then why weren’t you used as one?”
“As I said, I believe I am a prototype, and perhaps the investors didn’t think that something like me was that useful. They wanted something with most of my abilities but in a bigger, dumber package. Imagine a monster who has the strength of twenty men, yet can only blindly follow orders given to it by its master.”
“So that’s how Mars happened,” Sean said.
“Yes. A bit too heavy on the dumb, and with an added sense of uncontrollable bloodlust. At least six of the research scientists found that out the hard way. He ate them.”
Sean made a little sound as his stomach rolled.
“Oh, not all at once,” Mercury said, shaking his head. As if that was any better. “My father wants to go back to the drawing board, and I am the drawing board.”
“But what about what happened to yo
u in the forest? What was that? Some defect?”
“I—” Mercury began to speak, but grooves creased his forehead and his mouth hung open. He closed it with an audible clack of his teeth, taking a breath before finishing. “I don’t know what that is. An enhancement maybe, that’s not working right. Sometimes I can feel it in there.”
“It?”
Mercury blinked at Sean as if only just noticing he was still there. “There’s a teddy-bear in my memories. The doctors cut open its head and shove a castle inside, then stitch it back up. Good as new, except it’s not. The castle is heavy and sharp. I don’t want a teddy bear like that. It seems like something you shouldn’t give to a child because its softness is a lie.”
From zero to crazy in less than two seconds. Maybe he would have been better off stuck with Mars.
Mercury continued. “But I want something to hold. I want to go to sleep with something warm and safe that wants nothing but to be soft for me...”
“I thought you said that you don’t sleep.”
Mercury offered him a rueful smile. “That’s the point, Pretty.”
A ridiculous idea came to him and he started laughing. “So you wouldn’t have been a mass-murderer if somebody had given you a decent teddy bear? Fucking hell.”
Mercury raised his eyes to the ceiling, following a seam. “Maybe.”
Sean couldn’t stop laughing. “Wow— we could completely solve the problem of crime by giving every sociopath a goddamned stuffed animal.” He dabbed at his eyes with the edge of the blanket, tears welling as his laughter bordered on hysterical. Christ, he was exhausted, and the irony just pushed him over the edge. If he actually lived through this, at least he’d have some wild stories to tell.
“Tell me about your father, Sean. Please.”
And just like that, Sean no longer felt like laughing as the tar deep in his stomach turned into lead. One of the first rules they stressed in his military and police training was to never open up to the enemy. The moment you began to trust someone enough to reveal a little of yourself, a bond would be created, one that could be easily used against you. But Sean had long ago gotten over the story of his own life. The wounds of his childhood had scabbed over and shed into thick scars years ago. He coughed a little and recomposed. “My father, huh? He was a cop, and a man who probably shouldn’t have had kids—at least not a kid like me. Wasn’t so bad when I was younger. Strict, sure. I got smacked around when I did something stupid, but that was just his way. He had a bad temper and it got worse when he was drinking. He started drinking a lot when he found out my mom was having an affair and she was pregnant with some other guy’s baby.” As a child, Sean couldn’t understand why his mother would do such a thing. It wasn’t until he got older and fell in love for the first time that he realized that he’d never seen his parents share any genuine affection. His mom had been lonely. “My dad got pissed off one night when I was about ten years old and beat my mom up pretty bad. She left—didn’t call the cops because the police wouldn’t betray one of their own. I chose to stay with my dad. He was kind of a sorry mess and I believed my mom was every rotten thing he said about her. Things really went to hell from there. When I was sixteen, I walked into the kitchen to see that he’d shot himself in the head. I wasn’t a bit surprised.” There had been no fight; in fact there had been no real talking at all. And no indication whatsoever that his dad was contemplating suicide. They’d had breakfast—pancakes with maple syrup. The weather was warm and their cooling unit was on the fritz. His dad hadn’t opened the windows, and the atmosphere was oppressive like a fever. Sean had gone out to get some fresh air. When he came back he smelled the sharp tang of the gun’s discharge and the earthy scent of blood. He remembered that his father’s eyes were open and looking at him, his mouth a grim line. It was the same expression he usually gave Sean, except he was missing half of his skull.