Genesis Alpha

by Rune Michaels

  The night isn’t silent. I’ve never noticed that before. There’s not only the sound of an occasional car passing, but also the wind, touching the trees, the roof. There’s the distant sound of a plane, the squeak of a bird, all sorts of tiny sounds, which have me thinking of Rachel, grinning as she holds the knife to her cheek, and of Max, in his cell, his eyes open in the darkness. In the end I crawl under the duvet with my clothes on. The light is on and my back is to the wall as I try to fall asleep with my eyes open.

  I don’t know how, but finally I sleep. In the morning my mother wakes me up, even though I don’t need to go to school. “Honey, we’re leaving,” she says, half her attention on the PDA in her hand. “We’ve got an early meeting, and then we’ll probably be gone all day. Will you be okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t answer the phone unless it’s someone you know. Diane will look in on you around lunch, okay?”

  I sit up fast. The duvet slips, and I remember I fell asleep in my clothes, but I manage to pull the duvet up to my chin before Mom notices. “Mom, I told you, I don’t need a babysitter. I’m fine on my own. I don’t want her around.”

  “Don’t be like this, honey,” Mom says. “She’ll just be checking in on you, not babysitting you.” She puts the PDA in her pocket and sits on the edge of my bed, brushes the hair from my forehead. “We feel terribly guilty leaving you alone every day, sweetie. At a time like this.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’m fine. And I’m more fine on my own than with Dr. Die-Hard hounding me.”

  “Of course you’ll be fine. And she’ll check in on you just to be sure,” Mom says firmly. “There’s plenty of food in the fridge. Call us if there’s a problem, or if you need anything. If you can’t reach us, leave a message, then call Diane if it’s urgent. Okay?”

  “No freaking way am I calling her,” I mutter, but it makes no difference. Mom leans over and kisses my cheek. Then she’s gone, and a few seconds later Dad appears at my door and gives me more or less the same message. A few minutes later I hear the front door close.

  I get dressed, sit down in Dad’s office, and even though I haven’t been able to download those e-mailed assignments, I do homework. For an hour I can almost fool myself into believing everything’s normal, that the worst thing in life is a looming math test.

  I wonder if Rachel is still out there, or whether she’s left. I can see the corner of the damn structure out the window, but there’s no sign of her. Nothing except the curious absence of cats from the house, which Mom would have noticed by now if things were normal.

  She must still be there.

  But not for long. She doesn’t have anything to eat out there except cat treats. She’ll leave when she gets hungry.

  At twelve o’clock on the dot, Dr. Ashe arrives. I knew to expect her, but when she appears in the doorway to the study, I nearly yelp. I should have guessed Mom had given her a key.

  “Hello, Josh.” She looks at me, and I almost feel her zooming in and out, like she did when I was flattened out on the laboratory slide. She’s wearing jeans and a sweater, like a regular person, but in my head she’s always wearing a lab coat. She always looks smaller in real life too, especially now that I’m taller than her. She smiles. “How are you doing?”

  “Fine. Doing homework,” I add, to show her just how fine I am.

  She nods in approval but doesn’t turn around and leave like I’d hoped. “Mathematics?” she asks, spotting the book on my desk. “Doing well in math, I’m sure? You have a natural aptitude for math . . . you both do . . .”

  It’s all I can do not to grind my teeth. Stupid aptitude tests. “I’m doing okay.”

  Seconds pass in awkward silence. Dr. Ashe has no kids, only a little girl who died long before I was born. I guess I should feel sorry for her, but she isn’t too good at talking to kids, and I’m not too good at talking to scientists who’ve known me since I was a zygote.

  “It’s a terrible situation . . . ,” Dr. Ashe murmurs at last, almost like she’s talking to herself. She looks down, frowning. “I’m so sorry about this, Josh. So sorry.”

  I don’t know what to say. So I don’t say anything.

  “Is there anything you need?” she asks at last. “If there’s anything I can do. Are you okay for food? Has anyone been bothering you?”

  “I’m okay. I wish I had my computer, but otherwise I’m fine.”

  “Your computer?”

  “The cops took it,” I say. “Looking for evidence.”

  “Oh.” Dr. Ashe looks uncertain. “That’s too bad. You need your computer to do your homework, of course.”

  I nod. Well, it’s almost true. I do use it for homework, too.

  Her face suddenly clears and she grins at me. “Aha—more importantly, you need a computer for games, right? Stuck at home day after day, and no computer games—that’s got to be terrible!”

  I feel chagrined. I don’t want Dr. Ashe on my side. “Yeah,” I mutter reluctantly. “That too.”

  “I can get you a laptop,” she says, still smiling, like she’s actually happy there’s something she can do for me. “We’ve got some extras at the lab, for people to take on conferences and such. Would that help?”

  “Yeah!” I try not to get my hopes up too high. I might not be able to play Genesis Alpha on a laptop, but just getting online would be fantastic. I could check out the message boards, maybe plan some missions, play some other games if that’s all the laptop can handle. “That would be great.”

  “No problem. I’ll bring it by tonight,” she says. She reaches out, almost like she wants to pat my shoulder, but pulls back, turning the gesture into a halfhearted wave. I breathe easier when I hear the front door close behind her.

  Mom and Dad call a couple of times that afternoon, but there’s nothing new. Nothing they’ll tell me, anyway, and I’m going crazy wondering what’s going on. It must be even worse for Max, locked in a cell somewhere, but maybe they at least tell him something.

  I watch the news, and Rachel Crosse is still missing. It’s the top local story. The press is speculating about the possibility of Max not being the killer after all, that the real killer may have abducted Rachel. They also talk about that other possibility Dad mentioned, a copycat. They bring up the runaway theory, too, and a psychologist is consulted, spouting clichés about the stresses of a bereaved family, how Rachel might have run off to escape the oppressive presence of Karen’s absence from the home, something weird like that.

  I had hoped she was gone, but the cats have been absent from the house all day, which probably means that Rachel is still out there. She must be hungry by now, even if she’s snacking on cat treats.

  I have to be certifiable, but when the six o’clock news says Rachel Crosse is still missing, I don’t call the police. Instead I raid the fridge. I don’t take too much, just enough to keep her from starving. Two pieces of fruit and some yogurt. There is a sink and running water out there, so she’s not going to die of thirst, but I take her a can of soda too. When I step into the shed, I put the bag down by the door and don’t say anything about it.

  She’s on the mattress, my MP3 player at her side, two blankets draped over her legs.

  The cats are still all over her. They’re purring. She’s not. She snatches the headphones off and glares at me but doesn’t say a word.

  “Everybody’s looking for you,” I tell her. “Your family’s worried you’ve been murdered. You have to go home.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” I sit down on the other end of the mattress. “You do.”

  She cranes her neck and looks toward the door. “I don’t see anyone out there waiting for me. Did you call the police? Did you tell your parents?”

  I shake my head, and Rachel looks smug. “Why not?” she asks as if she knows the answer.

  I feel like shaking her until she stops smirking. I know I should tell Mom and Dad. I should call the police and let them know Rachel Crosse is not dead, she’s right here, alive and
okay—well, sort of okay.

  But something about the way she mentioned Genesis Alpha yesterday gives me the creeps, and I need to find out what she meant. I don’t want her to know though, because then she’d never tell me. So I can’t ask. I have to wait for her to bring it up again.

  “You didn’t, because you can’t,” she jeers. “You know what I’ll tell them.” She stands up, and the cats jump off her lap and from her shoulders. She rolls up her sleeves and holds her arms out. “See?”

  I take a step back and have to bite my lip to keep from gasping out loud. Her arms are black and blue, like someone has punched her again and again. There are also cuts, deep scratches with rough edges and torn skin.

  “Who did this to you?” I breathe. Some of the cuts are old, some are fresh. It looks horrible. “Who hurt you like that?”

  Rachel smiles. Her stretched mouth reminds me of the painted smile on a doll. A horror movie doll. “You did, of course. You grabbed me and you shook me and you punched me with your fists and you cut me with that knife. Remember?”

  I stare at her arms, and then I discover something. Most of the cuts and bruises are on her left arm. I lean back in horror. She’s even crazier than I thought. “You did this yourself.”

  Rachel calmly rolls down her sleeves. “If you tell anyone I’m here, I’ll tell them you did it, and everybody will believe me.”

  I close my eyes. Why is she doing this?

  But the thing is, I know the answer.

  “Nobody will believe you,” I say.

  “They’ll put you away,” she says. “Lock you up in a cage, throw away the key, shave your head, and put the chair on sizzle. Just like they’ll do to your brother.”

  “Stop it! Why don’t you just go away and leave us the hell alone?”

  “Why? So you can finish school and go to college and find a girlfriend and have a life, like my sister never will?”

  She pushes Click and Cleo to the side with her foot and settles back down on the mattress, her back to the corner, her arms around her legs. “When they checked which embryo matched your brother, they did it by taking one cell away from you. Did you know that?” She looks at me with her eyes narrowed, but I don’t answer. “I read about it,” she continues. “They took one cell from you, out of just a few. Yanked one cell out of the bunch, ripped it off. That’s a rather big chunk of you they cut off and threw away. I can’t tell by looking at you, but there’s a huge part of you missing.”

  “It doesn’t work that way.” She should know that. If she’s read this much about the procedure, she knows the details. “The same DNA is in all the cells, and they’re identical at that stage. Nothing is missing. The cells divide and make up for the loss.”

  “Oh, great, a biology lecture,” she says, raising her eyebrows and making me feel like a total idiot. “But can you be sure nothing is missing?”

  I don’t have an answer to that. The truth is, I’ve often wondered what happened to that part of me they took away. I know they didn’t really take any of me away. Mom and Dad explained it all to me long ago, when they first told me I was the miracle that saved Max. Since then I’ve read about it myself, too.

  But still, it’s a strange thought that such a big part of me was cut away. I almost feel like I should be missing a hand or a foot, or something even more important.

  “The whole is more than a sum of its parts,” Rachel says. “Like, if they built a human being, cell by cell, there might still be something missing. Maybe your missing cell contained some essential part of your whole. Maybe your soul.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Was it worth it? Were you worth it? Do you think anyone’s happy you saved your brother’s life? Is anyone happy you exist?”

  Rachel wants to hurt me. I let her. I’m angry somewhere deep inside, but piled on top of all that anger is tiredness and hopelessness and the knowledge that she’s hurting worse than I am.

  “Have you visited him at the jail?” she asks.

  “You mean Max?” I wait for her to nod, forcing her to acknowledge his name. “No. Not yet.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Maybe two months ago. He came home for a weekend.”

  “Did you touch him?”

  It’s creepy the way she won’t say his name, and her questions are weird. But I can’t help answering them.

  “Sure. We shook hands when he said good-bye.” Max also put his arm around me, both when we met and when he left, in a sort of hug, but I don’t tell her that.

  Rachel is suddenly there, standing in front of me. She’s a bit shorter than I am, but not by much. She still smells of flowers. Flowers and cats. She takes my hand. Hers is cold.

  “Like this?”

  Her hand is smaller than Max’s hand. Softer. “Yes.”

  “How did he hold it? Show me.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Show me how.”

  I shake hands with her like I do with Max, palm against palm, my fingers around her hand. I feel like an idiot, and I don’t know why I’m doing this. “Just a regular handshake.”

  “Just a regular handshake,” she repeats. “Do you know how he killed my sister?”

  “He didn’t kill her.”

  She stares at me. Still holding my hand. I could yank it away if I wanted to, but she’s holding very tightly. “Do you know how she died?”

  “Of course I know.”

  “Did he tell you?”

  “No! Everybody knows. It’s been all over the news.”

  I try to pull away, but she tightens her grip, and I can’t believe it, I can’t believe she’s stronger than I am, and I feel stuck, stuck to her, unable to get away, unable to escape, ever. “Let go!” I yell in sudden panic.

  She lets go. Drops my hand so suddenly that I lurch back and almost fall. She wipes her own hand on her jeans, hard. “Just a regular handshake,” she repeats with a sneer.

  That evening, after my parents have called to say they won’t be home for dinner, I’m eating microwaved lasagna and watching MTV when Dr. Ashe appears again.

  “Hi there,” she says. She smiles as she puts a large laptop case on the dining-room table and pats it with her hand. “Here you go. It’s the most recent brand we have, and the biggest screen. I hope it’s sufficient.”

  I stare greedily but remind myself not to get my hopes up. Laptops and Genesis Alpha aren’t always a great match. “Cool. Thanks.”

  “It should help you pass the time,” Dr. Ashe says. She puts a plastic bag with a familiar logo on top of the laptop case. “I got you some new video games, too. I don’t know what kind you’re into, but the guy at the store said someone your age would definitely appreciate these.”

  “Oh.” I stare at the bag. “Thanks.”

  “No problem, Josh.” She hesitates. “Are you doing okay?”

  “Sure. I’m fine.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “No . . . the laptop is great. And the games. I really appreciate it.”

  “Okay.” She puts her hands into her coat pockets and looks around. “Good. If there’s anything I can do while your parents are busy, let me know. Anything. You have my number?”

  “Yeah, sure. And, thanks. I mean, for the games and stuff.”

  “You’re very welcome, Josh. And I mean it, if there’s anything I can do . . .”

  As soon as she’s gone, I leave my dinner half eaten on the kitchen table and run upstairs with the laptop, booting it up as I go.

  Not bad. I slide down in my chair, put the computer on my desk, and plug it in. It’s a laptop, so not optimized for games, but it will do. I may have to lower the graphic settings so it doesn’t stutter, but it should be good enough for Genesis Alpha.

  I can’t connect to the Internet. I rush down to Dad’s study to check the router. It’s gone too. I shout out in frustration, but then I remember the laptop has wireless, and I run back upstairs and fiddle with the settings until I connect with our neighbor’s wireless router.r />
  I start by downloading everything I need to enter Genesis Alpha. While it installs, I connect the laptop to my monitor, connect the keyboard, the mouse, then the speakers. After that I check my mail.

  Hundreds of e-mails. I weed out the spam, but that still leaves lots of messages.

  From Frankie, other friends, from kids at school, the homework from my teachers.

  And a bunch from strangers. Most of the time the subject line is all I need to trash the messages. When they’re not calling my brother a monster, they’re calling me one for saving his life.

  In the end I stop reading and trash everything that’s not from someone I know.

  Even those I’m not sure I want to keep. They’re too interested, too excited, and it makes me angry and claustrophobic.

  This isn’t a TV reality show. It’s real reality, and they have no idea. It’s not fun. It’s not exciting.

  I log out of my mail without replying to anyone. I don’t check anything else at all, not even to look up Rachel Crosse or check what’s on the news about Max—or about me. I wait for Genesis Alpha to install, and then take a deep sigh of relief as the familiar opening screen greets me. I settle down in my spaceship and send a quick hi to my online friends.

  I’m bombarded with messages and questions, both on my screen and in my ears. My friends from school are there, but everybody, even most of my foreign friends, seems to know what has happened.

  “I’d rather not talk about it, guys,” I tell them all. “I just want to play, okay?”

  They don’t give up easily, but when I turn off chat and block messages, they get the idea, and we just play. It’s like being deaf. The sounds of the game come through, and being back on Genesis Alpha is like being home, but without my friends’ chatter filling my ears and their messages cluttering my screen, I feel isolated. It’s not the same.

  But it’s close enough.

  “Josh?”

  I jump at the sound of Mom’s voice and turn away from the screen. I’d forgotten everything, and time has passed. My stomach growls despite the lasagna dinner, and when I look at my watch, it’s past midnight.