by Ryan Schow
“And if neither geneticist will comply with your not-so-subtle demands?” Quentin says with furrowed brows.
For some reason, and maybe it’s a ton of reasons stacked together, the fragile hold inside me starts to splinter and I feel myself getting pissed off. It’s its own black force, something that once released might not be all that controllable. God, even my voice…it’s devolving, too. Into something vicious, something more like a snarl. Like I’m spitting fire with every word.
“If they refuse, tell them there’s a highly motivated freak of science who will personally find and slaughter their friends and family, even their pets, if one of them doesn’t get their ass down here and I mean right fucking now. And if you think I’m anything less than one thousand percent serious on this, if there’s even the tiniest shred of doubt, just test me.”
My heart has become a nuclear bomb. The shivering madness of it works its way into my brain. Something bad is going to happen. It’s inevitable. Plumes of smoke waft off my eyes. My hands become fists at my side. This anger, it’s spiraling into something deeper, more primal. That’s when a loud, sharp crack! startles Quentin. Looking down at the floor beneath my fists, several tiles have pressure snapped in thirds and fourths.
Jesus H. Christ, did I do just that?
Get control!
Jolted by the noise, Quentin backs up two steps, mortified by the things he’s seeing in my face, in my eyes. “Okay,” he says, breathless. “I’ll call now.”
“Go.”
And he does.
Within the hour, arrangements are made, and for all our sakes, my threats proved to be unnecessary. The only thing that made any difference in the lead geneticist’s mind was the name Josef Mengele. Apparently even scientists love the idea of an immortal mass murderer.
When Quentin returns to the lab, he finds me standing beside Rebecca’s canister, staring at the girl. With her beautiful red hair fanned out around her, and her pale body unblemished and lovely, I want to empty her out of that thing and hug her. I almost cry for her, for what’s been done to her. My senses flare and I look down. Alice is at my side, looking at Rebecca. She slips her little fingers into mine and I let her hold my hand this time.
“Get her out of there,” I say about Rebecca.
With no further prodding, Quentin begins the process of waking her up. “What will you do with her?” he asks.
“Take her home.” The first signs of exhaustion hit me. I feel all my strength, my anger, withering away, and all I want is to sleep in my bed.
But I don’t have a bed. I don’t have a home. And I no longer have a family.
Alice lets go of my hand, leaves the lab having never said a single word about it. The girl confuses me, how she can make me boil with revulsion one minute, then come to me the moment I need a human connection in the next. What an enigma she’s become.
Rebecca’s canister floods with a mixture of chemicals designed to awaken the patient in a gentle stir. She starts to move. To stretch. Quentin presses another button and the canister shifts from its vertical position into a horizontal position. He activates the drain pump and with a light sucking sound, the pink liquid begins to empty out of the canister.
“Where’s home?” he asks as we watch the fluid levels lowering.
When Rebecca’s face is out of the liquid mixture, I open the canister door, turn her onto her side and wait as her body purges fluid from her lungs. When she’s done draining, while her eyes are fluttering but she’s not yet conscious, I roll her back over, facing up. Her body seems to relax again.
“Her home is Palo Alto,” I reply having almost forgotten the question.
Quentin knows nothing of Rebecca’s ugly history. Her father murdered her mother and then tried to kill Rebecca. Something about ruining his dreams of country music stardom. She was removed from her home by CPS and sold into slavery by an atrocious woman to Holland’s (then Dr. Wolfgang Gerhard) associate, the immortal mass murderer and Nazi war criminal Dr. Aribert Heim, a.k.a. Dr. Death, a.k.a. The Butcher of Mauthausen.
When I broke into Gerhard’s lab, assaulted Arabelle and Dr. Heim, it was because I was desperate to save one of the clones from bondage. It was either extremely foolish or brilliant; I haven’t decided yet. Either way, I took Rebecca home with me only to learn she was no clone. She was, in fact, a genuine person used as an experimental subject of sorts. One of many. In the midst of fully developing my savior complex, I promised Rebecca I would find her mother and return her home.
The rancid woman we found in Reno, Mary Connor, was not her mother. She was in fact the CPS asset who sold her into slavery. Rebecca was devastated. So I brought her back to Palo Alto with the notion of asking my father to adopt her as my sister. That’s when the maniacal Dr. Heim kidnapped her back and nearly burned me to death in the process.
So here I am now, dead and resurrected and turned into something inhuman as a result of trying to make her mine. I have her now. She’s safe with me and no one will ever take her from me again. She’ll finally be safe.
Despite the warning from the creepy Dulce doctor, I enter the mind of Rebecca, resolute to understand what happened to her after I died. But what fragments I can delve from her fragile mind feel more like snippets of a horror show than a complete biography.
Apparently she had several babies pulled and cut from her in between the time I was shot and killed and now. Untethering my mind from hers, I turn my eyes on Quentin.
I want details I can hear, not details I have to live through and experience.
“Tell me about her children,” I tell Quentin. I already know Alice killed one. I know this, but only because I took a quick stroll through the five year old’s twisted little head.
“One died, two lived. Then another died, but not of natural causes, whatever that means. It’s what Holland says. You’ll have to ask him if you want to know more.”
“So the surviving child is with Brooklyn?”
“Yes. Brooklyn is my assistant. One of two. The other is Jasmeka. The surviving child is staying with Holland and Alice, and sometimes me, but not for long. Too many people in too small of a space makes me jumpy. Especially a crying baby.”
“Girl or boy?” I ask.
“Girl.”
“She can’t be around Alice,” I say.
“The girl’s harmless,” he says. “She’s a strange bird, but harmless.”
I take a step toward him; he takes one back. “That little…thing, she’s a demon dressed as an angel.”
“Ha!” he says, less sure of himself, but still not seeing it. He doesn’t know her the way I do.
Suddenly my senses are cresting. I want in the head of Rebecca’s child, in the heads of Quentin’s assistants. Just to make sure the baby is safe.
My tethers go out, find the three of them. To my relief, they are indeed safe. And there’s nothing in their minds that would indicate Alice has been a problem. No one told Quentin’s two assistants Alice dropped the baby out the window to its death. It’s probably best it stay that way.
“Are your assistants experienced with children?”
“Yes. But not like this one. She’s a miracle child, you know. Brought to full term inside this girl in less than three months.”
“The girl’s name is Rebecca.”
“Yes,” he says. “Rebecca. Okay.”
“As excited as you are,” I reply, “her survival to me is more than an opportunity for you and Holland to make money. She’s my friend. As close to me as a sister.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Her death will result in your death, do you understand?” He nods, a well trained animal. Which is judicious because having people comply with my wishes without me having to run the whole twenty-questions racket every single time—it’s a hell of a lot easier than threatening them.
“And keep Alice away from the child.”
“You’re serious,” he says.
“You really don’t know about her, do you?”
I see it in his face, the hesitation. He has that look like he’s forgotten something critical and he can’t exactly fathom how. “Apparently I don’t.”
“That girl can turn your insides into a fiery gut stew inside of seconds if you piss her off. What do you think she will do if the surviving child upsets her? Two survived, Quentin, yet now there is but one baby left. Think about that.”
Okay, I shouldn’t have said anything, but I can’t help it. I have a flare for the dramatic.
“Are you kidding?” he asks, genuine.
Looking at him, it occurs to me he has no idea who any of us are, what we have become. “Only now is it becoming clear to me that you’re way out of your league, Quentin.”
“This isn’t my first day on the job—” he says, and I realize he doesn’t know what to call me. It’s time I say my name aloud. The one I decided.
“Raven. That’s my name.”
In Greek mythology, the raven is a symbolic figure. One theory is that the bird carries the souls of the dead safely to the other side. Another has them escorting the living to see the dead on the other side. In America, however, the raven is a supernatural entity and a trickster; it’s the hero and the villain, and more often than not, it is one and the same. Like me.
I’m trying to be the hero, but really I’m thinking I might be the villain for awhile.
“What I’m saying, Raven, is I know what I’m doing.”
“Only because Holland told you what to do, not because you understand any of this on a genetic level or any of what’s happening to the effected people. People like me and Rebecca. People like Alice.”
And that’s when I slip into his brain, see the man he used to be: the multi-millionaire playboy with devastating good looks and rock solid game, Tate Russell of…oh my God…the Virginia Corporation. The group my father founded to develop the serum that turned me from fat Savannah into Savannah version 2.0. The group—sans my father—voted to end me when I threatened to expose them for their inhumane, largely unethical ways. Wow. This is the exact same group who eventually succeeded in having me killed.
Now I know who hired the psychotic bald boy.
Hands becoming fists, my heart turned poisonous with hatred. “Do you know who I am?” I ask through clenched teeth, my eyes burrowing down into him with weight and force.
“Raven, you said.”
My teeth are gnashing; blood vessels in my eyes threaten to pop. “You were there, in the room with Jamison DuPont, Christine Kennedy and Warwick Bundy when everyone voted to kill me.”
“Kill you? I don’t even know you!”
“You voted to kill Savannah Van Duyn, who later became Abby Swann, who is now standing right before you as Raven.”
The way the news impacts him, you could literally watch the color drain from his face, leaving behind perfect porcelain flesh. He bears a vampire’s complexion. No, when the terror first hit, he looked like a heroine addict strung out after a week-long bender. Now, he’s scared.
He backs up a step or two, his features ashen. “Impossible.”
Tiles start to splinter all around me, my body quaking with too much power. “You tried to melt me by triggering Caesium-132 inside my body—”
“New security protocol for transformations gone rogue,” he says, still backing up.
“—and you almost succeeded.”
He was talking fast now, stuttering his words, realizing what this meant. “We all thought you were a danger to us. And you were. You were trying to expose us, our life’s work. We had no choice!”
“And then the company you hired to murder me,” I say, pulling this and so many more details of my execution from his brain, “when that failed, Monarch Industries sent one of their mind controlled slaves after me and he succeeded. I died. But so did he.”
Then the surge or rage inside me slows. I let it bleed power. Breathe, I tell myself. Just stay calm. Fists become open hands. The tension in my chest loosens.
“But you’re alive,” he says, not understanding. And then he does. After he shot-gunned me in the face and I lived, after stopping time and healing perfectly inside of twenty minutes, he is starting to catch a clue.
“I can’t die, Quentin. And not just because I can slow time or manipulate people and things or even rapidly heal. I can’t die because what Holland did to bring me back from the dead, where he sent me and with whom he left me,” I say, thinking about Dulce and its staff of eccentrics, “I have become something more than human. If you thought I was a threat to your way of life before—”
He lifts his hands in mock surrender and says, “They’re all dead. Jamison, Warwick and Christine. Monarch sent a girl out to kill all of us. But I got her first. And that’s why I changed, why I gave everything up. That’s why I’m here now.”
“I know what you did, Quentin. I know everything.”
“But how?”
“I know it because you know it.”
“That’s not possible.”
Smiling, tilting my head and making my voice cotton candy sweet, I say, “Everything about me is impossible.”
“But—”
“The fact that you think something like me is unimaginable…that you didn’t even know Holland was another variant of Mengele, that you had no idea about Alice—that motherfreaking harbinger of death—and that Rebecca is not another bought and paid for clone but a stolen child, this all makes me wonder not only if you’re vastly out of your element, but if you’re completely useless all together.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” he says, clearly not wanting to argue.
What final bursts of anger, or hostility, swirl around in me, they empty out completely at his admission, which makes me relax. “Now that’s the first intelligent thing you said all day.”
6
Somewhere between Brayden’s hotel and her home, Netty’s mood unraveled. First she was in a fit of anger. Then she broke into tears. Which seemed totally ridiculous. She wondered, have I not been through this already? Apparently not. Boys could still hurt her feelings.
With Brayden, she’d given up that thing she coveted most: her virginity. She’d given it to a boy who loved another girl: Netty’s deadish best friend. A girl who was no longer her best friend but a subject lost to science.
But that wouldn’t be the worst part of her day.
The worst part of her day was when she walked in on her mother and some random hottie eye-humping each other in the kitchen. The guy (OMG he was sooooo sexy!) had that predatory gleam in his eye. The one that said he was about to totally drill her mom before Netty breezed in and spoiled everything.
Her mother’s face was flush, her underdressed body an open invitation.
And the Christian Grey looking guy with the thousand dollar suit? With the strain of his boner against his suit pants? Yuk! The Fifty Shades of Grey thing going on in her own home, it was too much. Way too much!
“Really?” she said, like she hadn’t just gone and done what she did with Brayden. She could feel how red her eyes were from crying, and she knew the pissy look on her face was the screaming voice of teenage angst, but whatever. She wasn’t in the mood.
“I didn’t realize you were coming home so soon,” Irenka quipped, giving Netty that as if you have room to talk look. Her messy hair had that freshly fucked look and she was in a pair of short shorts with a tank top and no bra. At least the shirt was black. The last thing she wanted to see was the dark shadows of her mother’s areolas. Things were already not cozy. And now she was wondering if she walked in on something about to happen, or if this was a case of post coital interruptus. “Oh, that’s right,” Irenka continued, “wait a minute. I expected you home last night. Since you’re still a child and all.”
“Mom,” she snapped, pointing at her mother’s friend’s crotch, “he’s got a hard on. In our house!” Her mother gasped. And the Fifty Shades guy, he crossed his legs to suppress it, though it looked like he was taking his discomfort to uncharted levels.
Netty watched
him open his mouth to say something witty or polite or whatever when she fired him a look and said, “The best thing you can do right now is sit there and shut that beautiful mouth of yours.”
“Netty!” Irenka barked. Then in Russian, she said, “You will not be rude to my guests!”
“You’re not supposed to fuck your guests, mom,” Netty fired back in English.
“I’ve done no such thing!”
Fifty Shades was squirming now. Breathing in and wanting to say something, breathing out and knowing he was caught in the middle of something much larger than himself.
“For Christ’s sake, he’s ten years younger than you, and ten years older than me. And he’s so…tan! It’s practically obscene for a woman your age.”
“I’m thirty-seven!”
Fifty Shades of Discomfort finally spoke. “You’re thirty-seven?”
“Yes,” Netty snarled. God he’s so freaking hot, she was thinking. “Thirty-seven and married. Married!”
“I didn’t know,” he said. His blistering expression confirmed he was telling the truth. Well, Netty thought, at least there’s that. Wait…
“You didn’t know she was old, or that she was married?”
“I’m not old!” Irenka said.
“She’s not old,” Fifty Shades of…whatever, replied.
“When my father finds out about this,” Netty said, “he’s going to have you killed.” And then she stormed out of the room, slammed her bedroom door and went for her iPod. She found Deadmau5 and turned it up. The Dillon Francis Remix of Some Chords was positively amazing. So amazing that when her mother came in her room five minutes later she didn’t even look at the woman except to show her the middle finger.
Seconds later, headphones were torn violently from her ears, her iPod confiscated. Netty started to argue, but her mother slapped her cheek so hard her whole world spun and went fuzzy, but only long enough for a sharp pain to radiate throughout her entire head.
“What the hell?!” Netty said, cupping her face.
“If you ever talk to my guest like that again, I swear to God you won’t recognize yourself when I’m done with you!”