by Ryan Schow
Again, he got more “Awe’s” from the girls. A guy could get used to this! And it would continue, so long as he didn’t sleep with any of them. Which was the downside of being friends with girls. You get to know them, see all the good in them, and that makes you want them even more, but the minute you do the horizontal in-and-out, all that goes bye-bye.
“Listen,” he said, “I’m going to unpack my things and let you girls have time catching up with each other.”
Cicely and Tempest both leaned forward and planted kisses on his cheeks and, swear to Jesus, it was the best he felt in maybe forever. Georgia kissed him on the mouth, like she had at the airport, and this both confused and excited him. Actually it confused and excited all of them. And that’s why later, when he saw Abby walking with Damien, it stung so much more.
She was not in the group. Not really in their lives anymore.
More to the point, Abby wasn’t Abby anymore. Yet she was here, alive. And with that handsome, narcissistic prick no less. Damien Rhodes. Abby saw Brayden, but didn’t bother to even acknowledge him.
Is this rock bottom? he wondered, feeling himself hitting a new low. Or is this one more bilious feeling I won’t be able to shake?
Then he started missing Maggie and it all got bad from there.
3
I’ve been warned.
Outside the door to the lab, I wait for Holland to finish getting up to speed on the arrival of the new models. The boys and girls in the tanks. He and Quentin then turn to discussions on Rebecca’s little survivor, how to replicate the birthing process, and if they can get a more regular supply of Monarch girls from the Richmond office. The distaste I sense in Holland’s mind at the mention of Monarch Enterprises is abysmal. No. Not abysmal. I feel it as a deep and ferocious hatred he bears for the Director. He aches to dismember the man. Even now, even in his healed state, murderous emotions simmer beneath the surface, waiting to take shape. He’s thinking the Director being dead will set him right. He is, after all, the man responsible for having Arabelle killed. For having Abby, me, killed.
The information stops me for a second, hits me like a punch.
The architect of my demise. Of Arabelle’s demise. Our killer.
The blood drains from my face as I flee from Holland’s mind. This crawling into the minds of others, I almost don’t know I’m doing it, that’s how effortless it’s become.
What he doesn’t know, what I may or may not tell him at some point, is Quentin Russell, a.k.a. Tate Russell, is also a responsible party to these deaths of ours. To Holland, Quentin says, “I’ll contact the Director, order three new girls. We can inseminate them right away.”
“Okay,” Holland replies, eyes pouring over Heim’s notes, “but we’ll need to use reduced doses of the Fountain of Youth serum. And add two intervals to the normal regimen.” Looking up at Quentin, he says, “For this to work, the donor has to survive every single time without all the…birthing drama, otherwise we’ll fail the clinical trials.”
“We don’t need clinical trials,” Quentin says.
“We’re doing them anyway,” Holland says. “I’m not cutting any corners. Not with this program, and not if you want to replenish your lost wealth by going public with it.”
Holland’s statement takes me by surprise. A man who was once nicknamed “The Angel of Death,” he isn’t one I would say has much of a moral compass, much less one pointing north. It must be his latest transformation.
Maybe he’ll be okay after all.
Then again, as much as I’m feeling good about his sudden brush with integrity in this set of experiments, what he’s doing is the same thing he has always done, and that is experimenting on unwitting humans. And in this case, it is countless girls being impregnated against their will in a test that has proven all but fatal, until Rebecca came along and surprised them all by living.
Still a monster, my mind says.
“And the child?” I hear Quentin ask.
I’m standing outside the door, eavesdropping the old fashioned way—with my actual ears. I consider penetrating their minds again, listening to the conversation from much closer, maybe even hijack their mouths and give my own opinion, but I refuse to do that. I can’t slip into their minds for long before I start seeing and feeling all the horrors locked inside.
I’ve been warned.
The doctor from Dulce who is neither human nor alien said I will use my powers and eventually die. Just like everyone else like me. If dying is a condition of using my powers, I will not use them, unless it’s an emergency. If anything, I want to prove that inhuman beast wrong.
“I want the new serum injected into them, too,” Holland says. “Reduced levels, though. Do a fifty percent dosage overall, and reduce components D738 through D745 and component P238 by twenty percent. Oh, and make sure you add the new protein variant. This should give the kids a good long life without making them like…like Raven. Or me.”
“The variant for the kids is different than what we’ll use for the embryos, right?”
“Yes,” Holland says. “It’s not fully ready though.”
“How long?” Quentin asks.
“Soon.”
“That girl scares the shit out of me,” Quentin says, changing topics. “Raven.”
Oh, so now we’ve changed subjects to me? Great.
“She’s just a girl,” Holland spits, as if offended Quentin even gave me mention.
“I shot her in the face when she woke up,” Quentin says. He’s whispering now, too low for me to hear, and this forces me to jump into his head. I want to know what he’s thinking.
Even though I’ve been warned.
“The minute she opened her eyes,” Quentin continues, “I pulled the trigger. The bottom half of her face opened up like a goddamn gore-show, but then she…she stopped time man.”
“You’ve got an overactive imagination,” Holland replies. Looking at Holland through Quentin’s eyes is quieting. Holland doesn’t believe what he’s saying and Quentin knows it. “I suggest you focus on this and our miracle child and let me handle Raven.”
“She didn’t just stop time, Holland, she reversed it. She drew the pellets out of her face like…magically or something…and then she started to heal. Right before my eyes.”
“So?”
“You don’t find that—”
“This world holds very few surprises for me, Mr. Russell. And after awhile, it will hold very few for you as well. In the mean time, I will talk with Raven. I think it’s time.”
Time for what? I wonder.
I pull out of Quentin’s mind and hurry back to the break room where Alice is watching reruns of the MTV Music Awards. When I sit down on the couch beside her, she doesn’t even seem to notice. She just sits there like a doll. No expression at all.
A few minutes later, Holland appears. “Raven?” he says. I get up, brush past him and walk out of the room, heading straight to his office. Pulling out the chair in front of his desk, I take a seat and wait.
“You knew what I wanted?” he says, following me into his office. “That I wanted to talk to you, here, in my office?”
“I always do. Already told you that.”
“In Dulce,” he says, “I remember. I just thought that after this latest transformation—”
“Different in some ways, the same in others,” I say.
“Well then—”
“I know you have this idea of how our conversation is going to go, but I don’t want to have that conversation.”
“Oh?” he asks, settling into his plush leather chair.
“I need money and a more permanent place to stay, not that I don’t appreciate living in your home with you and the gang.”
“What do you suggest?” he says, bristling at my sarcasm. He slides open a desk drawer (which I learned two semesters ago has a chiller built into it), pulls out a frosted bottle of Vodka and pours himself a glass. The bottle is beautiful. It says Beluga. I get the feeling it’s not cheap Vodka. My eyes
drill down into his as he takes a pull from his glass. He licks his lips, satisfied, then says, “Are you in my head right now?”
“Do you feel that niggling on your brain, like your eyes aren’t exactly yours and your body could be hijacked from you at any minute?”
“No.”
“Do you feel me tasting your Vodka for you, or me bending your will?”
“No.”
“Did you say the word ‘no,’ or did I say it for you?”
He puts his hand on the Beluga, almost like it’s a security blanket, or a place of peace. “I said it.”
“There’s your answer,” I reply. “I have a proposition you need to say yes to.”
He takes another long drink, finishing the glass in one swallow, then says, “Fine. If you insist.”
“I will work for you, keep doing what Arabelle did—and you can pay me—but not what you paid her. I want to learn things. I want to know everything you know. Molecular biology, genetics, all that stuff. Call it a partnership. Which means I want ‘the partnership percentage’ of your earnings as well.”
He gives a little dismissive laugh, refills his glass. “All my partners are dead, except for Quentin.”
“Ah, the Virginia Company.”
“Yes,” he says, looking at his filled glass. “Don’t need more partners. Don’t want more partners.”
“We’re going to be partners.” I tell him. “Think of me as being in charge of oversight.”
“I don’t need a teenage babysitter,” he says, running his index finger along the rim of the glass and then putting it in his mouth for a less generous sip than before. “And I won’t have you putting a damper on my creativity with your ignorance and youthful morality. If it’s money you require, I’ll oblige you, seeing that your not a Swann anymore.”
“Penniless is my current state of affairs.”
“Money is not an issue.”
“It is for me. But so are your ethics. Rather your fluctuating ethics.”
He finishes the Vodka in a single gulp. “You barely have a concept of life,” he says. His voice is venomous, laced with impatience. He pours another glass, three fingers worth.
“Nevertheless, tell me we have a deal.”
“I’m one hundred and four years old, one hundred and five in March. And you? You’re a child. Barely, what?—sixteen? Seventeen?”
“I turned seventeen in April.”
“Whoopdie-fucking-doo. Seventeen. I’ve got shoes older than you and you want to run oversight on me?”
I jolt forward, smoke him with my eyes. “You’re damn right I want to run oversight on you. You’re impregnating children against their will and they’re dying. Dying.”
“No.”
The staring contest begins. He breaks first, but only to refill the glass tumbler. Then: “I am not going to play this silly game at the expense of my Beluga,” he says, holding up his glass like it’s Exhibit A.
“I can make you say yes and mean it, Holland. Gerhard. Mengele.” I snap off each and every name like I’m breaking steel in half. Like each name is an assault on his character. “But you already know that, don’t you? All it takes is me losing my temper. Is that what you want? Because I’m on the verge these days. More so then ever.”
“You are who you are because I made you that way!” he says, slapping the flat of his hand on his desk. It sounds like a gunshot in the room.
“Not just you,” I say, calmly, leaning back in my chair with a crooked smile. “Dulce.”
He takes a deep swig of his Vodka and I cross my legs, like the conversation is boring me to death even though we’re both so agitated the oxygen we’re breathing feels charged with static. Then, sitting up, I reach toward him with one hand out. There’s still two feet between us, but he looks worried. I slip my invisible hand into his chest, clamping imaginary fingers around his fast beating heart. In my mind, my fingers clutch the muscle, then squeeze. He snorts out loud—an embarrassing sound—then sets his drink on the desk with a shaking hand. He grabs at his chest, bucking forward, eyes shot through with disbelief.
“I can end your life, Holland,” my mouth says, calmly. “Any time I please, I can put an end to your very existence. Me, a child of just seventeen.”
With my free hand, I point a finger at his chest and draw an invisible line down his shirt. The fabric burns in a brown line beneath my will. Then it flaps open exposing his brand new chest. A perfect, young looking chest. My pointing finger becomes a hand full of claws that—even from this distance—start digging into the air between us. My efforts play out on his skin, that flawless new flesh with that fresh-out-of-the-wrapper smell.
The way I’m feeling right now, it’s better than euphoric. It’s…godlike. My face grows warm, the room growing and shrinking in shades of white and black.
Five finger-divots appear in his chest, red, pressing and deep. The skin hits bone, starts to split and weep. He’s struggling to breathe. But at the same time he’s pawing at his chest, trying to contain his panic, even though that’s an impossible task. My invisible fingers work in through his ribs, threatening to break them, to snap them like old sticks.
“I’m going to pull out your heart and show it to you, Enzo. And then I’m going to cut off your head and burn the whole mess of you. Then, when I’m done sweeping up your ashes, I will scatter them in each of the four women’s toilets where pieces of shit like you belong. You think you’re immortal? Four flushes of four toilets say you’re not.”
His face is a strange shade of purple, because my grip on his heart is growing tighter and tighter. Surprisingly, it feels justified. Liberating. Part of my mind is like, just do it. Just end him. But the other part says, you’ve been warned. Dulce. The doctor. The man who’s neither human nor alien.
I’ve been warned.
In retaliation to that thought, I withdraw my invisible hands. He slumps forward, gasping for air. “I really hope you realize you’re not in control here. You realize that, right? Just think it and I’ll know.”
His brain thinks it. It thinks that he’s not in control. He takes another breath and the red holes in his chest begin knitting themselves back together.
Sounding breathless, smoothing back his black hair, Dr. Holland says, “This is…a rather unbecoming abuse of power…young lady.”
“Change the face, change the past, change the future, but I’m still me. Still that sarcastic, violent little shit you can’t scrape off the bottom of your shoe.”
“You’re a miserable nuisance is what you are,” he says, resting a shaky hand on the glass of Vodka. He lifts it a good six inches, pauses, then sets it down. “How much do you want?” he asks, still too breathless to soak his voice with the hatred he feels for me. “For pay?”
So many numbers roll around in my head. One hundred thousand keeps popping up, but my father said if ever you’re about to negotiate, think of what you want, then add a little more so you can negotiate down to your number, if need be.
“A million.”
“Fine,” he says, like a million is no big thing. Shit. I’ve left money on the table. “And thirty percent of the bottom line on the projects I participate in,” I add.
“As pay for oversight?” he practically barks. The outburst belabors the pain that started to recede inside his chest, sparking it up again. He folds forward the slightest bit, reaches for his chest, but stops. He’s mortified that I’ve bested him. He refuses me further satisfaction.
“Amongst other things,” I hear myself say, completely unconcerned. At this point, I have got to believe it’s all just theatrics with him.
He pushes the Vodka away, then looks at me with freshly bloodshot eyes. “Such as?”
I relax a bit, say, “Consultant. Or assistant. Whatever it is you need me to do to justify my percentage.”
“You’re a goddamn terrorist,” he spits.
I reach out my hand and say, “So we have a deal?”
He refuses to shake my hand. Instead, he gets out his checkbo
ok and writes me a check for one million dollars. The writing isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t look like it was written during a massive earthquake either. He tears it off, flings it at me.
“A boatload of good this is going to do me,” I say, looking at the blank space where there should be a name. My name.
“If you give me your full name, I’ll create an ID packet for you. Then you can fill it in.”
“I want to be twenty-one,” I hear myself say. “Not because I’m dying to be older. Or vote.”
“Then why?”
“It’s stupid,” I say. “Really stupid.”
“Everything about you is stupid,” he snarls, coughing.
The truth is, I want to be twenty-one because Jake won’t be with me until I’m of age. Abby isn’t twenty-one, but that doesn’t mean Raven can’t be. And I’m dying to be with Jake. This truth, however, is mine. Not worth admitting to a psychotic, ex-Nazi death camp doctor.
When my mouth stays closed long enough to make my lack of an answer known, he says, “I need a last name, Raven. I can’t just write Raven.”
“I’ll have to get back with you on that one.”
“Take your time,” he says. “I’m earning eight grand a month in interest on that money.”
I swipe the check off the desk and head back up front to where Arabelle’s old romance novels sit in two stacks: one stack for those she read (there are nine of them and the spines are worn), and another stack of five she planned to read, judging by their flawless exteriors.
It takes me awhile to understand Arabelle, but reading the backs of these books helps me see her better. Each novel is—to one degree or another—about a broken woman being swept up and saved by a handsome, successful man. Like the heroines in these novels, I suspect she only wanted to be saved. In the end, however, Arabelle died a horrible death.
The first book I consider reading is about a Russian immigrant and his young family, and how they fled Stalin’s reign and found freedom. The novel centers on the immigrant’s daughter, a sixteen year old named Tatyana who was beaten by members of Stalin’s army and raped before she was saved by her father and whisked off to America. There she supposedly meets a princely lawyer, eventually the family attorney, and from there it’s anyone’s guess.