Abomination: The Young Adult World of Genetically Modified Teens and the Elite (Swann Book 7)

by Ryan Schow

  That’s when I see my future self—a vision of her the way she lived hundreds of years into my future: she’s locked away, dead in space, being beaten on earth, sent back in time four centuries to be tortured and maimed. I see this and I don’t want any part of it. My future self came here to die. She wanted me to kill my future self. So I killed her.

  I killed her!

  Her death wasn’t the end though, I tell myself. It’s a do over. A way out of all the corners we paint ourselves in with our anger, our jealousy, with our love and lust, with our unclean preoccupation with righting all the world’s wrongs.

  I can’t be her. And I can’t be me. Yet I am.

  Succeed or fail, I’m me.

  Her.

  3

  How can I leave the scene of this crime without first checking on Black? He might have saved my life, I tell myself. Turning around, seeing him holding his ribs and struggling to get up, I crawl his brain. It’s a habit now. Inside him, I see his body, fixing itself like I fix mine, but on a slower, more painful scale. He doesn’t know how this is happening, and he can’t understand how I did what I did to the boy.

  Walking over to him, he scoots against the wall, unwilling to wince at the pain, unwilling to fear me in public. I can see his problem though. It’s his broken ribs.

  “What…what are you?”

  “The next generation of you. In fact, I’m several generations ahead of you. You want to know how your body is fixing itself? I can tell you. It won’t make your mind right, though. All those dead women and children you can’t shake from your mind, they’ll never leave you. None of it will. Not the victims, and not the way you murdered and desecrated those terrorists. What you did left a mark so hot and foul on your soul, and there’s no coming back from that. Trust me, I know.”

  “H-How do you…know these things?” he says, the pain in his face evident, no longer hidden.

  “You have to live with it. All of it. Same as I have to live with the things I have done, and the things that have been done to me. So to answer your unasked questions, those questions now turning over in your brain, you were fixed with genetics from a civilization you will never see, and your mind will not heal. But those broken ribs? They’ll be okay in a day or two.”

  “Did you kill that boy?” he asks. He’s not referring to the boy with twisted hair. He’s asking about Tavares.

  “I wanted to love him, but there are people who wish to control me. To make me their weapon. Tavares is dead because of me, because of what I am and how I was once controlled by sadistic people the likes of which you or I will never understand.”

  “So you did it,” he says.

  “Regretfully, and against my every will, yes, I killed him.”

  People were watching us from afar, talking about how the blown-up-boy looked exactly like the burned-to-death-boy before they both died. The words impossible and twin were thrown around a lot. I would tell them the truth if I could, but would they understand? Hell no. So I let them gossip and panic and vomit, because the bloodletting of yet another kid was an impossible horror their small minds could hardly stomach or understand.

  I barely understand it.

  Had I not journeyed through my future self’s mind, or met future Alice, I wouldn’t know what the hell was going on. Had other people taken the same journey, they would not want me alive. They would see the misguided terrorist I became and demand my death. They might have even thanked the twisty-haired boy for what he’d done if he had succeeded.

  “I have to take you in,” Black said, trying to get to his feet, looking around for his weapon and realizing it was destroyed.

  “You saw what I did to that boy you were trying to kill. What do you think I’ll do to you if you try to take me in? Where would you take me, huh? What would you do? Lock me in some black site? Drop me at Guantanamo Bay? There is not a prison in the world that can hold me, and neither you nor anyone else can do a thing about it. Not yet. Not for hundreds of years.”

  He visibly deflates.

  “I have to go,” I say.

  “Where will you go?”

  “Away from here,” I say, looking at the bystanders, and how they’re looking at me.

  “Did you set him on fire?” Black asks. I troll his mind and see the smoking remains of a boy charred. Georgia. She must have done this. But after I wiped her mind, why would she do this?

  “Yes, I burned him.”

  “So do it again,” Black challenges. “Burn your evidence.”

  I turn and concentrate, then after a moment, the meat pile that was once a boy bursts into flames. If I can do one good thing on my way out, it’s cover for Georgia.

  “Freaking unbelievable,” Black says. But he doesn’t say ‘freaking.’ The man was a government mercenary, a spook, a man with an impressive kill list, and unorthodox methods of following orders, and he’s telling me I’m freaking unbelievable.

  Molecular Inheritance

  1

  All my stuff at Astor Academy, I’m just going to leave it there. Abandon it. Everything except for my car, a change of clothes and some toiletries.

  At the airport, I leave my Audi in long term parking. When I touch down at JFK International Airport in New York, it’s with a stomach full of either butterflies or worms.

  If I go through with this, I think to myself, it insures everything will be different.

  The New York office looks very different from Holland’s lab. It looks more like a Beverly Hills post-op treatment center than a holding cell for kidnapped children and clones. A brief scan using what skills I have reveals a sub-basement floor containing a startling number of holding tanks. In these tanks are human specimens, all of them clones as far as I can tell. Below that floor is the incinerator room.

  I enter the lab using my mind to unlock the door. At the front counter, a geneticist strolls by and stops short when he sees me. He looks startled.

  “How did you get in here?” he demands to know.

  A brief crawl into his psyche tells me this is the doctor who oversaw the transformations of both my parents.

  “You did Margaret and Atticus Van Duyn,” my mouth says.

  “I’m afraid you have the wrong address, young lady. Now you’ll need to leave before I call the police.”

  “You won’t call them,” I say. “Not with the bodies downstairs, or the incinerator just below that. Can you imagine the questions they would ask? Or the answers you would have to provide? No, I don’t think you’ll call them.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I was originally Savannah Van Duyn, disgraced daughter to Margaret and Atticus Van Duyn, your clients. Since then, under the care of Dr. Enzo Holland, I have become Abigail Swann, and now Raven de’ Medici. I no longer have the genetic makeup to prove I’m there only daughter, but I would gladly surrender it if that would convince you.”

  The doctor merely listens in disbelief. He feels practically paralyzed as he wonders if I’m here to blackmail him, or expose him. I can all but feel his heart pounding in his chest.

  “I’m here for a treatment I will not pay for,” I announce.

  “Every treatment bears a charge,” he replies. “It’s the contract that protects us all.”

  “I’ll sign a non-disclosure agreement if that’s what you want, and my payment will be better than money. The way I will pay you is by me sparing your life.” It’s astonishing how much cooperation you can get when the threat is real. It’s like they can sense it in you. Really grasp your seriousness.

  “You’ll sign a contract and you will pay money. That’s how it works.”

  Okay, I assumed too much with this one.

  “I trust you know Enzo Holland?” I say. He shakes his head, no. I hate name dropping, but it’s worse if you think the name will make a difference and the person doesn’t even know the name you’re dropping. “Forgive me for my oversight. Wolfgang Gerhard, from Astor Academy in California, has recently taken on the identity of Enzo Holland. You know Gerhard, yes?�
�

  “I do,” he says, swallowing hard.

  “I share your distaste, Doctor,” I say. His back stiffens to the assertion. “I’m assuming by that look on your face you know he has certain predilections to genetic modification, yes?”

  “We all do.”

  “Are you aware that he is not only performing the same treatments you are performing, but that he is weaponizing certain subjects?”

  “I was not aware of that,” he says, his voice sounding more grave.

  “How do you think a man like that could take a child and turn her into a weapon?”

  “I will not pretend to know the musings of a sadist of that sort.”

  “I can tell you exactly, Doctor, because I am his greatest subject. I am weaponized, unkillable and very, very dangerous. So when I tell you payment in return for your services will be the sparing of your life, it’s best not to question me, or assume otherwise.”

  “You’re…weaponized?”

  “Take a moment and imagine the worst ways he could modify me. Imagine, if you will, what you would do to a person if you stumbled upon a rare strain of DNA that allowed the impossible to come true. Immortality, telekinesis, mind manipulation. Do you have a picture in your mind, Doctor?”

  “I do,” he says, unsure of me, unsure of what I’m about to do.

  “Now imagine it ten times worse and that’s me. So this is what I want you to do. I want you to combine the genetics from Christian Swann and Orianna Crawford, my parents, and I want you to infuse me with them. You needn’t add sedative to your solution because it doesn’t work on me anyway. I am immune.”

  “You’ll be awake through the procedure, though,” he says. I nod, genially. “It will hurt.”

  “It hurts more than you can ever imagine, Doctor. But you’ll do it anyway. And not because I don’t trust you. My first transformation, it was the same way.”

  “It will take time to create the right blend,” he says.

  “I know,” I tell him. “Time is a luxury I can afford.”

  “How do you know I won’t call your parents while you are in the tank?”

  “Pick a number between one and one billion,” I say. Then: “No, not two.” He gasps, and I say, “Again.” Ten seconds later, he has the number. “Eight-hundred million, three hundred seventy-two thousand four hundred and eight point oh six seven three.” His eyes flash wide and I say, “That’s how I’ll know if you try to call my parents.”

  “But you’ll be in the tank,” he replies. He is doing this not to test me but to make me want to leave and never come back. It’s not working. It’s not working at all but to test my patience.

  Using my mind, I wrap invisible arms around him so tight, he squishes up like a caterpillar in a cocoon. His lab coat looks crushed beneath my invisible hug, and that’s when I say, “Whatever it is you think you can do to dissuade me is not working, so I suggest you just get to work and do what I ask so I don’t have to ask in ways you and I will both regret. Oh, and if you think me being in the tank makes me any less dangerous, just imagine me now, but with very little patience.”

  When I let go, he straightens his coat, pops his back and neck, then says, “Follow me.” I do, and from there we practically become besties.

  2

  The doctor watches me undress, trying with all his might not to marvel at my perfection as he knows I can read his mind. He takes my hand, helps me into the glass canister. When he presents me with a needle, something Holland has never done in conjunction with the glass canister and his pink solution, I crawl his mind, then relax. This man’s process guarantees the same result as Holland’s, but his methods are subtle in their differences. More humane. Resting easy, I let him push the needle into me, then fill me with a solution that will forever put an end not only to Raven de’ Medici, but to the future me and all her future deeds and misdeeds.

  Within days of floating in the amber solution (I miss the pink solution for the color alone), I melt away, the waste of me sloughing off in heaps and piles at the bottom of the glass tank. So much of me is gone, I wonder if I’ll ever be the same again. And the pain…oh my God!…if I can never again have this pain, it will be too soon!

  Just when I fear I’ve disintegrated into nearly nothing, I begin to grow back, to change. Over the next week, I feel my rejuvenation taking place. Each day feels better than the last. Inside of nine days, I become someone far different from whom I used to be, and this fills me with hope.

  The doctor pulls me out of the canister with a smile.

  “How do I look?” I ask, my voice sounding different. More melodious, not so…militaristic.

  He smiles and says, “Gorgeous, my dear. Not that I should be patting myself on the back. Your father—who chose both his and Margaret’s genetic make up—has an outstanding comprehension of the genetic order.”

  Sitting down on the closest chair despite being wet and naked, I say “If I look half as good as you say, please, pat yourself on the back until your f*cking arm falls off.”

  He reels at my use of the f-word, but inside I’m beaming. All is not lost. Raven is as dead as Abby and Savannah, but not all the way dead. I’m still me.

  I’m still in here.

  When I finally stand before a mirror, looking at myself, I think, I just re-wrote hundreds of years of not only my own history, but of the history of the world. With this single act, I either saved or ended thousands of lives. Millions, perhaps. Billions. From this point on, Raven de’ Medici will never be. If I have this right, I’ve successfully done what future me wanted: I killed her, and I killed me.

  I’ve successfully killed us both.

  “Have you thought of a name?” he asks, clearly thinking of the ID package he promised to put together.

  “Yes,” I say. “Savannah Crawford-Swann.”

  “It’s very fitting,” he says.

  “I want a middle name, I just don’t know which one yet. Give me an hour or two, if you will please.”

  3

  I fly into San Francisco International a week later. Most of what I did in New York was sightseeing to pass the time waiting for my ID package to be printed and take effect. Now that I’m in my RS5, rather Raven’s RS5, I’m on my way…not home.

  How can I go home?

  With Orianna in one house and my father in another, mine is a broken home. It doesn’t have to be like that. I check into the Four Seasons and dial Orianna’s number.

  “Hello?” my mother says.

  “Mom, it’s me.”

  “You don’t sound like you,” she says, “but then again, you never really do. Not anymore.”

  I laugh, and it’s a breezy, almost effortless thing. Like the lightness in my chest is making its way to the surface of me and I’m becoming a bright and decent person again.

  “Where are you?”

  “Here and there,” I say. “Vacationing.”

  “You’re vacationing?” she asks. The familiar disappointment in her voice sounds more like jealousy.

  “Yeah, I totally need it.”

  “And school?”

  “I don’t need school, mom. Not now.”

  “So when are you coming home?”

  “As soon as you get back together with Christian,” I say, “I’ll come back home.”

  “Oh, honey—”

  “Don’t ‘Oh, honey’ me, mother, just go home. I know you want to. I know you want him.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “He’s being stubborn, I know. He was always stubborn and insecure around you. Show him safety. Show him monogamy. Make him see you’re not the rotten version of you anymore. That the woman who destroyed his heart is gone, but you are not. And neither is your marriage. You changed everything for me, mom. But you changed for him, too.”

  “When did you get so stinking smart?” she asks me in a voice both proud and sad.

  “Last night, mom. Or this morning, I don’t know. Just go to him. And when you make him take you back, when he finally agrees, then call
me and I’ll come home.”

  “What are you going to do in the mean time?”

  I’m ready for anything. Anywhere. But right now I can’t decide between going back to SoCal, or up north to Oregon. “I’m going to get away from everything that made me who I was. I’m going to indulge.”

  “That’s fine as long as there are no drugs, and no sex,” Orianna says.

  “Ah c’mon, mom, what fun is that?”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Okay,” I say. “No drugs. Can’t promise anything else, though.”

  Then we both laugh and she says, “So, no sex?”

  “Call Christian.”

  And I hang up. The next morning I’m on a plane heading to Miami. The minute I arrive, I track down a beach house for rent, pay too much, then get like ten hours sleep. When I wake, it’s just me.

  No strings attached.

  4

  Sitting on the beach, there isn’t a cloud in the sky. The waves roll in slowly, and kids and adults alike are in the water splashing, screaming and generally enjoying themselves like in a little less than seventy years their entire bloodline won’t be turned to ash by nuclear death. There are girls in bikinis, guys in board shorts, kids in all manner of disarray. Watching them lazily enjoying their day, acting like they don’t have a care in the world, it’s a reminder that I am not her.

  Not Raven.

  Just like in Big Sur, I dig my toes into the sand. It’s warm, and a smile creeps on my face, this new face I barely recognize but love regardless.

  Is this what it’s like to feel good? To love not someone, but a feeling? An experience? A sliver of your life? The better question is, can this feeling sustain?

  The air is clean, save for the underlying taste of too much sunscreen being put on kids and adults all around me. I watch a few twentysomething guys breeze by with their gym bodies and their gym egos and I realize I could care less what they’re thinking. What I really want is to not know all the things that people are thinking because the freedom of not knowing, the ignorance of this is bliss, an emotion I want to forever embrace.