Genesis Alpha

by Rune Michaels

  Mom looks at the laptop, frowning. “Where did that come from?”

  “Dr. Ashe brought it. So I could do my homework.”

  She nods. “I’m sorry we were gone so long, honey. We couldn’t help it.”

  “It’s okay. I’ve been playing.”

  Mom nods. “Tomorrow,” she says tiredly. “If you want to visit Max . . .”

  He looks pretty much the same, only tired and sad. Even inside a small prison visiting room, even in an orange jumpsuit with handcuffs around his wrists. He even smiles the same when we greet him, and when I try to hug him, and he can’t hug me back because of the handcuffs, I want to cry. The tight knot in my stomach loosens. It was stupid of me to doubt his innocence, even just for a split second now and then. This is Max, my brother. I’ve let everything get to me, I’ve allowed the media and a crazy girl in a shed to make me afraid of my own brother. Stupid and wrong.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he says. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You too,” I say. My voice sounds tiny in this room.

  We sit down opposite him. There’s a scarred green table between us. Max’s hands are folded on top of it, the sleeves on his jumpsuit almost covering up the handcuffs.

  His hands look just like normal hands, like my hands, but I can’t help staring at them. I stare at Max a lot, while Mom and Dad chat with him about weird things, like the weather and TV shows or car racing. I don’t say anything for a while, although Max keeps glancing at me, inviting me to say something. But I can’t think of anything. I just sit there, looking at my brother, trying not to think about Rachel and the knife buried deep in my junk drawer.

  There’s a pause in the awkward conversation, and Max looks at me. He grins and I automatically grin back. “How are you doing?” he asks.

  “I’m okay.” It’s not true, and I know Max knows that. I don’t have to tell him.

  “I’m sorry about all this,” he says. “Mom and Dad tell me the press has been on your case about the designer thing. Your picture next to mine in the papers and everything.”

  “It’s not that bad,” I mutter. Max has enough to deal with. He doesn’t need to worry about me. “I’m fine. Not your fault, anyway. They’ll have to apologize when they release you and find the real killer.”

  “Judge and jury,” Dad grumbles. “Why do we even bother with a judicial system when we’ve got both judge and jury in our living rooms around the clock?”

  Max stares at me for a bit. “I can see why they put our pictures together,” he says. “You’re looking more and more like me every day. I guess that can’t be easy right now.”

  I shake my head and blush because Max is reading my thoughts. I know how much I look like him, and if I went outside at all, it would probably be a problem. The short trip to the prison showed me that Mom and Dad were right to keep me home this week.

  I’m going to grow my hair long. Max’s hair is short. And he’s always neat. I’ve moved in the direction of scruffy. My jeans are torn, and I’m wearing an old denim jacket Dad owned ages ago. I shift in my seat, afraid Max has noticed, afraid he knows that I don’t want to be like him anymore. It’s not fair. I’m being disloyal to Max, over something that’s not his fault.

  “Are people giving you a hard time?” Max asks, frowning. I’m afraid to look at him, and my pulse has taken off, galloping without control. I don’t know why. I’m not afraid of Max. I have no reason to be. He’s my brother. He’s innocent.

  “You’re right, Josh doesn’t have it easy now,” Dad says quietly. “I know it’s worse for you, being locked up in here, but none of us has it easy these days.”

  “I guess you find out who your real friends are.” Max’s smile looks sad. “I wonder if I’ll have any friends left when this is all over.”

  “Of course you will,” Mom says. “For one, your roommate called yesterday. He sounded nice. He wanted to ask if there was anything he could do.”

  Max nods, and I think of Frankie. Maybe he’s figured out a way to dig up the pictures of Max’s room from the memory of his cell phone and has sold them to the highest bidder. How much would friendship be worth on eBay?

  “Is school okay?” Max asks me. “Or are they on your case there too?”

  “I haven’t been to school,” I say, and Max raises his eyebrows.

  “We pulled him out of school for now,” Dad says. “It’s for the best while this blows over.”

  “Well, at least there’s that,” Max says. “I guess even with this there’s a silver lining.”

  Mom clears her throat. “We have an appointment with your lawyer in five minutes, Max.”

  “My time isn’t up,” Max says, glancing up at the clock behind us. “I have ten more minutes. Maybe Josh can stay?”

  “Are you okay with that, honey?” Mom asks me. “We’ll be in a meeting room just across the hall. You can just pop on over when you’re done.”

  “Sure,” I say. I don’t like it in here, but for Max I can stick it out for a few more minutes.

  Mom turns to the guard standing behind us. “Our son’s lawyer is waiting for us in the meeting room, so we have to go—is it okay if his brother stays until time’s up?”

  “That should be okay. Ten minutes,” the guard says, moving closer, and Mom and Dad stand up to leave.

  There’s silence in the room after they’re gone. I even hear the guard’s breathing behind me, but I don’t mind. My hands are clenched together and I stare at the tabletop, at the scars crisscrossing it. I wonder what made them.

  “Hey, Josh?”

  I look up. Force myself to look into his eyes, and smile. “Yeah?”

  “You don’t think I did it, do you?” Max asks. I shake my head hard, but I want to ask him, I desperately want to ask him if he did it, because even though I believe in him, I need him to tell me that of course he didn’t. But I can’t. I don’t want him to doubt me, and if I ask, it’s like I doubt him. I don’t want him to think for a second that I’m not on his side.

  Max lifts his shackled hands. “Someone sure thinks I did.” He chuckles wearily. “So tell me. How are things in Genesis Alpha?”

  “About the same,” I say, almost dizzy at discussing Genesis Alpha in here. I remember Rachel’s cryptic question.

  Does your brother miss Genesis Alpha?

  How did she know? Why does it matter?

  “Did you finish the Toxic Mountain mission?”

  “No, I couldn’t by myself. Way too tough. I wouldn’t even make it through the gate, let alone down to the engine room.”

  “You could get someone else to help you. You don’t really need someone at my level. As long as you get someone close to your own level, if you’re careful, you should be okay. If there are three of you, it’ll be a piece of cake. Just make sure to bring lots of medical supplies and repair kits. Those guys can hit pretty hard, but it’s worth it. Lots of good drops down there, and loads of mission points.”

  I shake my head. At least in this I can show my loyalty to Max. My faith in him. “No. I’d rather wait until . . . until you can play again.”

  “Might be a while,” he says. “It’s all circumstantial evidence, but Harris says it’s enough to hold me for a couple of weeks.”

  “He’ll get you out. He’s a good lawyer, and they have no proof. They can’t hold you in here forever just because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Max leans back. The handcuffs scrape the top of the table, and I guess I know now why the tabletop is so scarred. “Yeah. So what have you been doing with yourself?”

  “Not much. The police—” I stop, dig my teeth into my lower lip because I shouldn’t have brought up the police.

  Max looks at me keenly. “The police what?”

  “They took our computers,” I mumble reluctantly. “So I couldn’t do anything for a couple of days. Yesterday I got a laptop from Dr. Ashe, so I’m back online. But I’ve also got a ton of homework e-mailed from school, and Dad will probably make me do it all, and then
some.”

  “Yeah, he will.” Max grins. I can’t believe we’re talking about Genesis Alpha and homework over a green table boxed off by four concrete walls. I can’t believe there are handcuffs around Max’s wrists, and I can’t believe there’s a prison guard behind me, listening to every word we say. It’s not such a bad feeling, though. It’s kind of like being inside a computer game. The best kind of computer games, like Genesis Alpha, feel totally real at times. But most of the time when you’re playing, there’s a comfortable feeling of knowing it doesn’t matter how much trouble you’re in, it isn’t really real—you can always reload or start from scratch. That’s what this feels like. Like it can’t be real.

  “Dr. Die-Hard got you a laptop? She still hanging around?”

  I nod glumly. “She pops up every day. Totally sucks.”

  “Hey, you’re Diane’s pet project, remember?” Max says. “She created you. She picked you out. So she likes to keep an eye on you. You’ll probably never get rid of her.”

  “Yeah, well, she can go grow an ear on a mouse or something. I’m not in her lab anymore.” I make a face. “But Mom and Dad ask her to check on me when they’re gone all day.”

  Max smiles. “Yeah. I guess you really can’t get away from her right now,” he says.

  “Pretty much. I’m stuck at home. People stare too much if I go outside.” I don’t tell him today was my first trip outside since all this happened. I don’t tell him how a man outside the prison spat at us. Dad nearly attacked him—Mom had to drag him away.

  Most of all, I don’t tell him about Rachel.

  “You do look a lot like me,” he says again. “It’s funny, isn’t it, how alike we look? Maybe I took something more from you than just a few stem cells.” He grins. “Ever thought of that? Maybe I got a lot more from you than we know.”

  He’s sounding weird now, despite the light tone. But it’s not really him. It’s me. I’m imagining things because we’re locked inside, because he has steel chains around his wrists, because we’re in a cage meant for monsters. The atmosphere here makes me see monsters where there are none, even in my brother’s face.

  I’m getting claustrophobic and I clench my fists. I hate this place, but for my brother I have to tolerate it just a few minutes more. I can stand up anytime and leave if I want. Max can’t. I owe it to him to stick it out. I force myself to sit still.

  Max is still staring at me. “What do you think, Josh? Do you think I got the essence of your soul along with your stem cells?” He smiles, and I start to sweat, because the prison walls distort everything and his smile looks strange, making my chest tighten, making me forget that this is my brother, this is Max. Just Max. “After all,” he adds, and his voice seems louder, coming at me from all directions in the eerie echo of this horrible room, “you were created just for me.”

  Max hates me.

  The realization is stunning. Like someone hit me in the head and I’m left stumbling, wondering what happened and why, what is going on and who the hell I am.

  My brother hates me.

  Why?

  Then the look is gone. Max is drumming his fingers on the table, and he looks tired and depressed, not scary at all.

  “Just kidding,” he says with a sigh. “That was a stupid thought. You think about the weirdest things when you’re locked up twenty-four hours a day.”

  I imagined it.

  I must have imagined it.

  Sweat trickles down my back. My breathing seems loud, and I focus on the ticking of the clock behind me, yet I don’t want to turn around to check it. I don’t want to turn my back on Max. I don’t dare turn my back on Max.

  Why?

  It’s this place. It’s not my brother, it’s just this place. It’s making me scared and paranoid and stupid.

  Max is my brother. He doesn’t hate me, and he’s not a monster. I don’t need to be afraid.

  I tell myself all that, but I can’t bring myself to turn around and check the clock.

  “Time’s up.”

  I shoot to my feet while the guard’s words still echo in the room, and I’m ashamed of my relief. Did he notice?

  Max looks annoyed. “Time isn’t up,” he says. “We’ve still got a few minutes.”

  “Time’s up,” the guard repeats, his face impassive.

  “It’s okay,” I say quickly, but I feel guilty, like a traitor. Maybe the guard saw how scared I was all of a sudden. Maybe that’s why the visit is over ahead of time.

  “Hey, come see me again soon.” Max smiles at me, one corner of his mouth higher than the other. It’s an old smile, familiar, and as the door opens to freedom, the chains around my chest loosen enough to allow me to smile back at him without having to force my mouth to move.

  This is my brother. This is Max.

  I must have imagined it.

  Brothers and sisters get half of their genetic material from each parent. And they each get half of the genes that each parent has. So brothers and sisters share on average 50 percent of their DNA. It can be more, it can be less, it all depends on which genes they get from their mother and father. Some siblings may share almost no genes, while others share almost all. Identical twins have identical genes, while fraternal twins are no more alike than any other siblings.

  I do look a lot like Max. I don’t know if the way I was selected as an embryo means that I’m more like Max than average. When they ran those genetic tests, they were looking for tissue types. Maybe matching tissue types also means that I’m like Max in other aspects, that we share more of our genes than average brothers do. Maybe we’re more than brothers in that way too.

  “Mom,” I say in the car on the way home. It’s a scary question, but it’s bouncing around in my head and needs to get out.

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Hypothetical question . . .”

  Mom turns around. “What?”

  “If Max were guilty . . . would you forgive him?”

  Mom’s eyes widen, then narrow. “Josh, don’t say that. Don’t even think it. Your brother is not guilty.”

  “I know! I’m just saying. Hypothetically. If Max did something like that . . . or if I did something like that . . . , is it possible to forgive . . . ?”

  Mom’s eyes are blazing. “He’s my son. That kind of a love is unconditional. It never dies, never fades. I will love him forever—I will love both of you forever—no matter what you do, no matter what happens.”

  I’m not sure about that. Everybody talks about unconditional love, but it’s not really like that at all. Love is always conditional. There is a reason for everything, and there must also be a reason why you love someone. You can’t get away with any horrible thing you can think of and still expect people to love you.

  Mom sees the doubt in my eyes. “I guess you won’t understand until you have children of your own,” she says.

  “So it’s biological,” I say. “People are wired to love their children no matter what. It’s the way the species evolved. To keep us from extinction. So we’d take care of our children no matter what.”

  Mom hesitates. But she’s a biologist. She can’t deny this. She’d like to tell me love is something else, something magical and fantastic—not simply the product of serotonin and oxytocin and billions of years of evolution—but she can’t. “Yes. Of course it’s biological. Everything we are can be traced to biology.”

  “So even if Max turned out to be a monster, or if I did, you’d still love us, because your brain chemistry tells you to.”

  Tears shimmer in Mom’s eyes. She turns around without answering, and the rest of the drive home is silent.

  When we get home, Mom says she has a headache and goes to lie down. I think the headache may be my fault. I sit with Dad in our kitchen for a while. He has a cup of coffee between his palms, and although I’d like to go upstairs and play Genesis Alpha, I stay, still thinking about my questions and Mom’s answers.

  Why do I love Max?

  Because he’s my brother. That’s th
e simple answer. Because he’s my big brother and I’m used to having him around and I like him and I love doing stuff with him. That can probably be linked to chemicals trekking around my brain. When we’re with people we like, the chemicals in our brain give us a nice feeling. Do I like my brother because of brain chemistry, or does the brain chemistry happen because I like him? Or do I like him most of all because I saved him, because without me there wouldn’t even be a Max, because without him there would be no me, because we’re more than brothers?

  “Things are looking better,” Dad says. “They’ve been digging around for evidence, but of course they haven’t found anything. Mr. Harris is optimistic. They probably won’t be able to hold him much longer. We’re hoping he’ll be home before the end of the month.”

  “Home?”

  “Yes. We’ll talk about it when the time comes, but he’ll probably stay here for the rest of the semester, start over next year. I think it would be best for him to find another college. Preferably out of state, so he’ll get less attention. We can’t allow the police’s mistake to ruin his life.”

  I picture Max back in his old room, and the image flashes in my head, the way his eyes looked for that split second when I imagined he hated me.

  After all, you were created just for me.

  I drag myself to the shed because the litter boxes have to be cleaned, but I’m really not in the mood to deal with Rachel. So I ignore her. She’s on the mattress, huddled under the blankets, Click sleeping in her arms, but I go straight to the litter boxes and get to work.

  “Where were you today?” she asks at last. I straighten and look at her.

  “What makes you think I was anywhere?”

  “You weren’t home.”

  “How do you know?”

  She looks at me. “I know.”

  “You have until tomorrow,” I tell her. “If you’re still here tomorrow, I will call the police, and you can have all the fun you want trying to frame me. I’m not playing this game anymore.”