by Allen Zadoff
I grab his wrist with both hands, pull the needle up and away from my chest, twist it hard—
And plunge it into the vein on the side of his neck.
I depress the syringe quickly, injecting the lidocaine directly into his venous system.
As a local anesthetic, lidocaine is safe and effective as a numbing agent. But intravenously and in sufficient amounts, it is a cardiac depressant.
I know this from my training. So does Father, because the instant it happens, his eyes widen in shock and terror.
I step away from him.
Father clutches first at his neck, then at his chest. He spins around, rushing toward the medical supplies on the bench behind him. He stumbles before he gets there, going down to his knees, his hand striving to reach the shelf.
He looks back at me, his eyes pleading as he clutches his chest.
“Epinephrine,” he whispers.
Epinephrine, also known as adrenaline. An epi injection would speed up his heart, stop the cardiac decline that is cascading inside him right now.
His face twists in agony.
A part of me wants to help him, to save his life.
I think about my mother, dying at the hands of The Program because she loved me too much to let me go. She risked everything to give me a chance to live a normal life.
I want that, too.
I look at my father as he makes one last grasp for the supplies, misses, and falls, rolling over onto his back, white foam forming at the corner of his lips. A sound like a growl comes from deep in his throat.
“I’m your father,” he says.
“I remember my father. You’re not the same man.”
He struggles to maintain eye contact as he fights for breath. But the drug is too strong inside him. Eventually he gives in and his eyes begin to close.
I watch my father dying in front of me.
Dying for the second time. It will be the last time. I’m sure of it.
His chest heaves twice, three times. Then he is still.
The room is quiet. I look around at the equipment, the scribbled equations on whiteboards, the tech equipment covering the worktable. It looks like insanity to me.
I sit on the floor next to my father’s lifeless body. I put a hand on his chest.
And I feel everything.
The man I loved in my childhood. The man who abandoned me and turned me into an experiment. The man I thought he was, and the one he turned out to be.
I think about him past and present.
And I say my final good-byes.
I should get up before someone comes, but my body is heavy with feeling. Eventually I fight my way to standing.
I have to get out of here. I have to find Howard.
Before I leave, I pick up the chip, my father’s masterpiece and his final achievement.
I drop it to the floor in front of me. And I crush it under my heel.
MOTHER IS ALONE, WAITING FOR ME ACROSS THE CAMPUS LAWN.
She waves a greeting when she sees me, and we walk toward each other.
She scrutinizes me, perhaps sensing something is not right.
“Your father told you the story of The Program?” she says.
“All of it.”
“He’s an amazing man.”
“He said you were the inspiration.”
Mother says, “I’m grateful to have played a small part.”
I make my face placid, blocking her from my true feelings.
“So it’s done?” she says, touching her own chest in the same location where my chip was to be implanted.
“The surgery? Yes.”
“How do you feel?”
“Different,” I say.
“I have to admit, I was concerned when your father told me his plan. I didn’t want us to do anything that might impair your performance, but he assured me this would be the best thing for you moving forward.”
“Forward. I agree that’s where our focus needs to be.”
Mother’s face softens. “It will take time for your new chip to fully engage. You may have to ride out some feelings for a while.”
“What then?”
I can see that Mother is choosing her words carefully.
“Then they won’t trouble you in the same way,” she says.
I understand what Mother is saying. From her perspective, feelings interfere with the mission. They create problems like doubt, fear, and hesitation. I’ve experienced all of those things in the last few months.
If she wants to control the mission, she must control the feelings of her soldiers.
But I will not be controlled anymore.
We stroll together through the campus. It’s a beautiful day, a blue, cloudless sky stretching above us. Some kids jog by at a clip, perhaps late for class.
A moment ago I killed my father, yet life goes on, stubbornly immune to tragedy.
I’ve seen this before on my missions. Now I’m experiencing it.
Mother stops at the edge of the campus, looking out at the residential neighborhoods far in the distance.
“Your father and I created a project that will change the world forever. How many people can say that about their work?”
I look at the houses laid out in neat rows in the valley below us. Normal people living normal lives, oblivious to the things The Program does here. What would they say if they knew the truth?
I think about Howard, a regular kid caught up in a secret world, all because of me. Maybe it was weakness that caused me to tell him about The Program back in New York. Maybe I was lonely and didn’t know it.
Whatever my reason, it was a mistake.
“Where are we keeping Howard?” I say.
I use the pronoun we. Let Mother think I’ve chosen The Program. Maybe I can get Howard out of here before she finds out the truth.
“Why are you asking?” Mother says.
“He could be useful to us. He’s a genius on the Web. He cracked The Program’s server at my request. I doubt anyone has made it inside before. And if he could do that to us, he could do it for us.”
“You want to recruit him,” Mother says.
“I already recruited him. I just need to widen his perspective.”
Mother smiles. I can see she is interested in the idea.
“He’s in an interrogation cell. I’ll take you there.”
She turns away from the vista of the town, and I follow her back onto the quad.
“When you came to us in the beginning, Zach, it wasn’t by choice. Your father and I wanted to make amends for that.”
“Is that why you brought me back?” I say.
“We wanted to give you the opportunity to make the choice. As an adult.”
“I’ve made it,” I say.
At that moment, an alarm sounds through the campus, high-pitched bursts that echo across the stone walls. Children begin streaming out of the buildings around us, moving toward what appear to be assigned defensive positions around the campus.
Before Mother can say anything, Mike rushes toward us, accompanied by a small group of teens carrying automatic weapons.
“What’s going on?” Mother says.
Mike ignores her, his gun aimed at my chest. “Step away from her,” he says.
Mother turns to me, stunned.
I take slow steps back. The teens surround Mother, pulling her safely away from me.
I watch Mike. The normal calm of his features is gone, replaced by something dark and menacing.
“Dr. Abram is dead,” he says to Mother.
“Oh my God,” she says. She looks at me. “You killed your father?”
“I told you. I made my choice.”
Mother’s eyes grow cold. She types a code into her phone, and the alarm stops as thick metal poles rise out of the sidewalk around the perimeter of the campus.
They are crash barriers, preventing any vehicles from entering or exiting.
Mike says, “Get away from here, Mother. Let me deal with it.”
She locks eyes w
ith me for what seems like a long time. I can see she’s making a decision. Finally, she breaks eye contact.
“Finish this,” she says to Mike.
Then she hurries away, guarded on all sides by the teens.
Now Mike and I stand alone on the quad, facing each other.
“You stupid idiot,” he says. “You killed the only person who cares about us in the world.”
“He didn’t care about anybody,” I say.
“You’re a liar!” he says, wiping snot from his nose. “He loved you. He always loved you, no matter how much you screwed up.”
What is Mike talking about?
“No matter what I did or how impressive I was, it didn’t matter. You were his son, and you were the favorite.”
I’ve never seen Mike express emotion, but there’s no hiding it now. He’s distracted, his gun hand hanging at his side, the weapon no longer pointed at me. His face is red and blotchy, his eyelids puffy. That’s when I realize:
Mike is jealous.
Something is dawning on me, some understanding of Mike’s behavior that I didn’t get before.
“Why did you tell me my father was dead?” I ask.
“What does it matter now?”
“You tried to kill me, too, or you seemed to be trying. But when you finally had the opportunity after Tanya stabbed you, you ran away.”
“Why would I kill you,” he says, “when it was better for you to kill yourself?”
“I don’t understand. You wanted me to escape and go to the mayor?”
He chuckles and shakes his head.
“I was on your side for so long,” Mike says. “I kept your secrets in New York and New Hampshire. I gave you every chance to be a part of The Program again, even when you had doubts, even when you screwed up. It took a long time, but I finally realized you were a lost cause. I could see it so clearly, but your father refused to see it. You were his son, and he was blind to your failings.”
“Even after the helicopter crashed? Even after Father died?”
“You killed the third in command, but even that wasn’t sufficient. Your father felt there were extenuating circumstances that led to the crash. He wanted you to be brought back and reprogrammed. That was the breaking point for me. I knew he would never see the truth. There was nothing I could tell him that would make him betray his bond with you. You were going to have to destroy that bond yourself.”
His face is changing as he speaks, the grief receding, replaced by something dark and more familiar.
He says, “All the years I spent being the perfect soldier, and none of them mattered. Not compared with the bond of blood you shared. No matter what I did, I would always be the poor stepchild. So, you see, it wouldn’t make sense for me to kill you. I needed you to kill yourself.”
“Then you would be the favorite.”
“That was the plan,” he says. “But you destroyed any hope of that today.”
Mike stares at me, seething. “You finally found your father,” he says. “And you killed him.”
“I found someone,” I say. “He wasn’t my father. Not anymore.”
“That’s convenient to think, isn’t it? To take some of the guilt off you. You never had a stomach for killing. I should have known when you hesitated on that bitch in New York. You deviated from the mission, and I gave you a pass. So that’s on me.”
He steps sideways quickly. I counter with a step to the right.
He moves again, and I counter.
He smiles. “We’ve been doing this dance for five years,” he says. “I’m tired of it.”
“You and me both,” I say.
Mike places the gun at his feet.
“I doubt I’m going to need this,” he says as he assumes a combat fighting stance.
I tense my body, testing muscle groups in rapid succession. I am not at my best, but I am functional. That might be enough to take on Mike, or it might not. I won’t know until it’s over.
Mike moves to the left, dancing on his toes. I step back, putting a little more distance between us, letting him telegraph his moves to me if he will.
“Your father told you the truth, didn’t he? How does it feel to know you’re a laboratory animal? A testing subject.”
His tone is mocking. He’s trying to agitate me and throw me off my game. It’s the same technique I’ve been taught. A psychological advantage can be more powerful than a physical one. So I retaliate.
“What about you, Mike? You’re the Alpha. That means you were the first to get the chip. Did my father give you the upgrade? Or was that reserved for me alone?”
“I got the goddamn upgrade, you better believe I did. I’ve been a full generation ahead of you for a long time.”
He pulls up his shirt. On one side I see the damage from Tanya’s knife attack, neatly bandaged. On the other side there is a scar, much like the one on my chest, but his is just below the rib cage.
“My chip is under the ribs,” he says. “More protection that way. The surgery hurt like hell, but that didn’t stop me.”
I slip off my jacket and open my shirt to reveal the stitches over my scar. “I lied to you, Mike. My chip is gone. They took it out.”
“Bullshit,” Mike says. “There is no you without the chip.”
“It’s gone and I’m still here,” I say.
He shakes his head.
“You want to fight with a disadvantage, that’s your prerogative,” he says. “I’m going to do my thing either way. I’ve got a new legacy to build.”
“What legacy is that?”
“I’ll be the assassin who killed the assassin who tried to destroy our Program. That sounds alpha to me. Way fucking alpha.”
Mike pulls a knife from his belt and waves it in the air. A glint of sun catches the blade on its deadly arc through the air.
He watches my reaction.
“You’re afraid of knives, aren’t you? At least since I stuck one into you on graduation.”
He comes at me, the blade a liquid blur. I step back and dodge, but he slashes down and a cut opens on my forearm.
It happens so quickly, it takes several seconds for the pain to catch up to the strike.
I look at the ground and see spots of blood appearing on the asphalt by my feet.
Mike seizes the advantage, coming at me again.
I pick up my jacket and wind it around my forearm, the thick leather a shield against the blade.
“Nice move,” he says.
“I don’t need your approval.”
“Times have changed, huh?”
He comes at me, the blade whistling in front of his body. He slashes at me from underneath and I parry, extending my forearm to take the strike. The knife slices through the leather with a whisper. But it does not make contact with my flesh.
He rushes in again, this time coming down from above, using gravity and inertia to slice at my arm. The blade makes contact with the jacket zipper, and sparks fly.
I back up and look at the jacket. There are two deep slices, the leather separating to reveal hints of fabric beneath.
One or two more strikes, that’s all the jacket will take before it is useless to me.
I look around for anything I can use as a weapon. We are now on an open concrete pathway, no stones or loose gravel, nothing at all within arm’s reach.
I turn my attention back to Mike, attempting to judge the angle of his next attack. He comes in low but moves high at the last moment, the knife held down by his thigh.
His bare hand is dangerous, but the blade is deadly.
He strikes with both simultaneously, his fist coming in for a neck blow while the knife goes low for a belly strike.
I stop them at the same time, one hand at his throat, the other catching the wrist of his knife arm.
He twists hard, bringing the blade up toward my chest. We are leaning in head-to-head, arm-to-arm, locked in the struggle. The blade inches closer to its target.
“You still have the scar, don’t you?” he
says. “Do you remember how you got it?”
I think back to graduation day, the final battle with Mike that ended with my being stabbed.
“I remember,” I say. “And I remember that I graduated despite you.”
I was hurt, but I was not defeated.
Mike says, “You think you stopped me from killing you that day.”
“That’s exactly what happened,” I say.
“You’re wrong.”
Don’t listen to him. This is another mind game. Defeat your opponent in the head, and you will defeat him in the world.
He says, “You thought I was trying to kill you, and you were strong enough to prevent it. You think that’s the reason you graduated.”
“I know why I graduated,” I say.
Mike shakes his head. “Your father wouldn’t risk my killing you. My job was to challenge you like you’d never been challenged before.”
“You stuck a knife in my chest. If that’s not trying to kill me, I don’t know what is.”
“You want to know why I stabbed you, Zach? I was making a hole. Those were my mission orders. Make a hole so your father could hide the chip inside you. That way you would never know about it.”
Is it possible that the entire fight was staged to create the illusion that I had defeated Mike?
I release my grip on him. He smiles and steps back.
“I pulled my strike,” he says. “I kept the blade from penetrating deeper. Do you remember in the clinic afterward, what Mother told you?”
I remember Mother showed me the CT scan. She told me I was two millimeters away from death. Just a little deeper and the blade would have nicked my aorta and I would have bled out.
Mike grins ear to ear. “Pretty good, huh?”
“Pretty good.”
The grin disappears. He waves the knife in the air.
“I have different mission orders this time,” he says. “You heard Mother. She told me to finish the job.”
“Do your best,” I say.
“With pleasure,” he says.
I look at Mike preparing for his final attack, and a strange feeling comes over me. This is the boy I’ve hated, the one who took my old life from me, who let me think he had killed my father. This boy who was the source of so much of my suffering. I know I should hate him, but looking at him now, I just feel sorry for him.
I push the feeling away. There is no room for compassion in a fight. It is dangerous, even deadly.