by James Moore
What bothered him even more was that he could feel Joe Bronx in his head, like a pressure that was slowly building. He closed his eyes for a moment and pushed back: he was the strong one. He had to be if there was any chance that he could have a life. A moment later the pressure faded down again.
The door opened and a young teenager came into the room, moving with military precision. The kid’s back was ramrod straight and his shoulders were squared, his hair cut military short. There was something familiar about him, though, something that sent gooseflesh across Hunter’s skin and made his eyes water a second time. He heard his heartbeat increase.
The word snuck out of his mouth as he saw the other boy’s lower lip tremble and his eyes water. “G-Gabby?” The name felt right. “Gabe, is that you?”
“Bobby? You remember me?” His voice shook.
Bobby? Who the hell was Bobby? Was that his real name? He’d never been sure about Hunter.
“I sort of do . . .” His voice trailed off. Small flashes of the boy in front of him, but he was too old, had grown so much. “I can’t remember everything.”
Before the boy could answer, the door opened a second time and the woman came into the room. He recognized her instantly, of course. One look at her face and the memories hit him like a tidal wave, slamming into him and washing over him. Her touch, her smile, her fingers moving through his hair. The press of her lips against his forehead as she tucked him into bed at night, a hundred different bedtime stories, the hot cocoa she would make when it was cold outside and he was coming home from school. There were memories, oh yes, so many more than he had ever expected. Seeing her broke down the doors that had hidden them away. Not all of the doors, but enough to leave him speechless for almost a minute as he looked at her and tried to reconcile the hard lines on her face with the woman he had last seen five years earlier. Her hair was too short, her stance too stiff. She wasn’t smiling, and her eyes seemed so worried as they looked him over.
“Mom?” How could one word hold so much weight?
“Bobby. It’s good to see you.” Her voice was tight in her throat, barely released. She moved toward him and he shivered as with a fever. This was too much. This was his world, or at least the parts that mattered. The rest of it wasn’t important. But this? This was . . . well, this was everything.
Except.
“Where’s Dad? Is he here too?” He could feel his father’s strong arms scooping him up when he was younger, swinging him in a half circle before he set him down. Such a big man, like a giant in his memories.
He tried to sit up and finally managed, despite the thick cuffs on his wrists. The cuffs the cops had used were substantially thinner.
His mom looked at him looking at his wrists. “We had to, Bobby.” Her voice broke a bit, apologetic, sad, but still with a stern edge that he remembered, oh, how well he remembered it and all out of nowhere.
“I know.” He looked away. “He’s still inside me.” His stomach clenched at that thought. He didn’t know much about Joe Bronx, but he knew that his Other hated him. If he ever got a chance to get his hands on Gabby or his mom . . . “Can you get rid of him? Can you make me just me, Mom?”
Even as he spoke, he felt Joe inside him, stirring, trying to wake up like a bear coming out of a deep, hibernating slumber.
“I don’t know.” She looked at him for a long moment and then she looked away. “But I’m going to try.”
Hunter—Bobby still felt wrong—clenched his teeth and fought back the wall of gray that was trying to overwhelm him. He was tired, and it was hard to fight against Joe when he was tired.
Her words struggled past the strain of fighting Joe off, but he succeeded for the moment. Joe faded away like a bad memory.
Hunter thought about his mother’s words and felt a coldness in the pit of his stomach. He wanted to believe her. He did. But her words felt like a lie.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Kyrie Merriwether
KYRIE WOKE UP IN restraints, strapped to a metal table, with thickly padded handcuffs on her wrists and similar cuffs around her ankles. One look told her Gene and Cody were in the same boat on either side of her.
Kyrie looked to her left and saw Gene looking at her. His face was almost expressionless, but his eyes were deeply troubled.
To her right, Cody lay on his examination table and shivered, his teeth chattering even though he was asleep or at least unconscious. His skin was pale and sweaty and his hair was soaked through to the point that he could have just climbed out of a swimming pool.
“So. I could be wrong, but I think we screwed up.” Gene’s voice made her look back toward him. Unlike Cody, he seemed uninjured.
Kyrie shifted her arms and legs, unconsciously testing the amount of give in the restraints. She had about six inches of play on each limb. Not much, but better than nothing.
The room was large enough to accommodate all three tables and little else. There were heart monitors and several other sensors attached to each of them. She was wearing a jumpsuit that was loose but comfortable, same as the others. They all came in the same nondescript shade of gray. Her personal clothes and her shoes were gone. She had no idea where.
While she contemplated the mystery of her new fashions, the door to the room opened and in came five people that made her feel a bit uneasy. She didn’t remember meeting them, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t. She was only around part of the time.
The five seemed around the same age as her, but it was hard to say for certain. The way they walked, the way they looked—she had to guess that they were Others. Their grace was disturbing, not quite human.
One of them, a male, moved closer to her and looked her up and down without saying a word. His gaze made her uncomfortable.
“What the hell are you staring at?” She had just been seriously thinking about asking that very question, but it was Cody that voiced the concern. She looked his way. He was awake, sort of. His lips were almost blue, and if she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought for certain that he’d almost drowned.
The one who’d been eyeing her looked toward Cody and sneered. “Not much, loser. Just a bunch of wannabes.”
One of the girls looked toward each of them with wide eyes. “You shouldn’t even exist. I mean, seriously, you aren’t even possible.”
Gene answered. “We must be possible. We’re right here. Way I heard it, someone was supposed to dispose of us and sent us out for adoption instead.”
The girl moved closer to him, staring with the sort of scrutiny that made Gene uncomfortable. He looked away from her eyes, blushing. “But how did you change?” she asked. “There are command words.”
“What are those?” Kyrie frowned at the other girl.
“Command words, phrases . . .” The girl looked shocked that she wouldn’t know. “The words that can make you change.”
“We don’t have those.” Kyrie spoke softly and frowned a bit. There was a distant memory, like something she was trying to remember from a dream, of Joe falling down after the one who wasn’t with this group said something to him. Was that what they meant by command words? She didn’t know. She couldn’t know. She hadn’t been there. That had been Not-Kyrie. Just thinking about it made her head hurt.
Cody let out a deep moan and looked away from them. His voice was deeper when he spoke. “I remember you butt faces. Get out of here. I don’t want to see you.”
“Watch your mouth, loser.” The first one that had spoken to them took a step closer. “I still owe you. Don’t give me a reason.”
The girl put her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t. We aren’t even supposed to be here.”
Kyrie understood. They were curious. They wanted to see the freaks. “Get a good look and get out.” She looked away from them too, oddly humiliated. She never thought of herself as a freak, and certainly not a freak among a small army of other genetic anomalies.
“And if we don’t? What will you do about it if we stay right here?” That was the boy again. He liked to lea
d with his chin when he was trying to be tough.
“Tell the people who come in next that you were here.” Gene’s voice was calm and logical as he spoke. “I bet they don’t like it when you disobey. I bet they punish you. Want that? Want to get punished?”
Half of them looked shocked, like the idea never really crossed their minds. The mouthy one looked like he was ready to say something again, but the girl stopped him. Finally he sneered and nodded. “We won. That’s all that matters.”
The voice that came from Cody sounded more like his Other than him. “Keep telling yourself that, loser. I remember knocking you halfway through a van.”
The girl held her friend back when he started to lunge at Cody. Only he wasn’t Cody anymore, not really. He was changing, his body growing, swelling with muscle and larger bones. The transformation wasn’t complete and it looked uncomfortable.
A moment later they all left the room and Kyrie stared at the mirrored wall, wondering if they were still out there, still watching from a safe distance. She looked toward Cody and saw his body was still changing, and he was grunting in discomfort. It had to hurt, didn’t it? The way his bones were growing and shrinking, pulling and twisting the muscles with them.
“Cody?” He didn’t answer. “Hank? What’s happening to you?”
“I think I’m dying. I can’t control it anymore.” He mumbled the words, and in the reflection she saw that his eyes were closed again. He settled back on the examination table, and it groaned in protest at his changing weight.
After that he was silent, and neither she nor Gene had any words of comfort to offer.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Evelyn Hope
EVELYN SENT GABRIEL AWAY before the change took place. She had to send him away, because she didn’t want him to see her cry.
She could sense it. Subject Seven was waking up, whether she wanted him to or not.
George and Josh were the ones that spoke to her in the observation room, explained in soft, caring voices that the MRI and ultrasounds had revealed substantial trauma to Bobby’s skull. The damage was old, and the scans showed significant areas of scar tissue. That would explain his amnesia. But the pictures also revealed the impossible: regrowth. His brain was healing itself. It was a slow process, but it was happening.
The only problem? Gray matter wasn’t supposed to come back from trauma. Once brain cells were dead, they didn’t recover. Not in humans, anyway.
They’d set out to design better soldiers, better spies, dual forms in one body. They’d succeeded and that made her happy. But looking at the severe damage and the new growth made her wonder if they hadn’t gone too far. What was that old adage from all the black-and-white science-fiction movies? Oh yes, they warned against playing God.
What did I create? The thought crept through her and her skin crawled. She loved Bobby and was grateful that he was recovering, but what did that say about Subject Seven, who was always the physically stronger of the two?
So yes, Gabriel left. Evelyn made sure he was far away from his brother before Subject Seven came back into existence. And because she was a cautious sort, she studied him from behind the two-way mirror for a while before she considered entering the room.
George and Josh stood next to her, both of them looking at her as much as they looked at her pet monster. And there was no mistaking it: he was a monster.
As Seven woke up, he looked around the small room and then to the glass barrier that separated them. Two-way mirrors are simple enough. On one side is a mirror. On the other side the glass is transparent so that an observer can watch the reactions of whoever is looking into the mirror without being seen.
Subject Seven must have understood the concept, because he looked at the glass that showed him nothing but his own reflection and he grinned.
“I can smell you over there, ‘Mother.’ ” He tried his restraints, tested them, but casually. He didn’t thrash around as she’d half expected him to. She wasn’t worried. The bonds had been designed with him in mind. They’d been tested many times before. “Did you have a chance to see your precious Bobby? Did you have a nice little reunion?”
She didn’t answer. Instead she kept looking at him as the emotions tried to break through. There was pride in her heart when she saw him: because he was hers, he was the key that allowed them to proceed with the amazing things they had accomplished even after he escaped. But far greater than that pride, there was anger and hurt. The thing in front of her took her Bobby and had killed her husband, Tom. They’d meant so much to her—Bobby for being the sweet and wonderful boy he was, and Tom because no matter what happened in her life, he had been there to comfort her and believe in her. And now they were both gone.
And beyond the anger, the pride, the pain, there was a deep and abiding fear. He was a monster. Subject Seven was savage and smarter than she’d expected. For five years, he’d hidden himself away so well that they couldn’t find him, and that was a daunting task: The Janus Corporation had connections all over the world, nearly perfect international radar.
Between the contacts they had in the military and the civilian areas, finding someone was the easiest thing in the world for her. Josh had already located twelve of the families that they were looking for, and that was a very impressive number when you considered that the trail was fifteen years old.
And Seven, oh, so much stronger than anyone had predicted. They’d examined the office building after Rafael’s crew had first confronted the orphaned Doppelgangers, and they’d found a stainless steel .38 Special handgun warped into a new shape, crushed by what had seemed to be a bare hand. She didn’t know the specifics, but it took a lot more than simple human strength to do that to a handgun—far greater strength than any of the Strike Team Doppelgangers had ever demonstrated. Imagining what that hand could do to soft flesh and human bone was enough to make her skin crawl.
“Oh, come on, Evelyn, I just wanted to talk.” And that. He knew she was here. He smelled her. Maybe he even heard how her heartbeat increased when he called her name. His senses were insanely good. She looked toward him, and he was staring in her general direction through the mirror. “I want this over with, Evelyn. I want to have a real life. In exchange for that, I’m willing to make certain allowances.”
“Can you believe this kid?” Josh’s voice was almost shocking after the silence of their room. “He’s strapped to an examination table and getting a feed of drugs that would tranquilize a bear, and he thinks he’s in a position to negotiate.”
Evelyn watched Seven’s reactions on the other side of the glass. She saw him accurately pinpoint exactly where Josh was standing. He stared hard at the spot where Josh’s face was, even as the grin spread a little wider on his face.
“You have friends with you, Evelyn. How nice for you. I had friends with me too. Where are they?”
Josh stopped talking. He was getting it. He was understanding at last. Subject Seven wasn’t bluffing. He really could smell her.
Seven’s eyes stayed on Josh. “Didn’t think I was telling the truth, did you? Thought I was lying about smelling Evelyn.” He inhaled deeply. “I couldn’t forget ‘Mother’ if I had to. I’m not like Bobby. I have all of my memories intact.” The smile he offered was pure poison.
Josh grew paler, his eyes growing wide in his round face. He didn’t speak, but he looked to Evelyn and his expression spoke volumes about his fear. The room wasn’t airtight, but the idea that one of the things they had created had hearing sensitive enough to detect their whispered discussions put a great deal of their previous communications into a new light. He was thinking exactly what Evelyn herself was thinking: We can never have another conversation about the Doppelgangers without being in a different building, just in case they might hear us.
Seven laughed in his cell, and even from a distance she could see his eyes looking from one of them to the next. “Want to come and talk to me now? Want to have a serious discussion about how this is going to play out?”
&
nbsp; Evelyn pressed her lips together. Before she could even consider stopping herself, she moved from the observation room and pressed her palm to the ID pad that read her hand and fingerprints and waited while the door slid open.
She stormed into the room with her emotions surging like the tide in a hurricane. Here, this thing, the monster she created, the beast that had killed Tom and taken Bobby away. Here, the demon that had haunted her nightmares ever since he threw her across the room and escaped. Here, in front of her, only now he was bigger than ever, a nightmare given flesh and bone and a sadistic smile. Did he hate her? Did he love her? Fear her? She had no way of knowing anything past the sneering smile he offered as he looked into her eyes, unflinching.
“Here’s how this plays out.” She hissed the words, her usual calm destroyed by the rage and fear that pushed through her. “You stay here, too drugged to communicate with your new friends. Too weak to escape. While you get to listen in, I’m going to study them. I’m going to see what each of them is capable of. And then when I’m done with them, I’m going to come in here and do the same thing to you.” Evelyn was trembling by the time she was done speaking, her muscles tightened to the snapping point, her teeth clenched in hatred. She hadn’t let herself think about him, not really, not for a long time. Subject Seven was everything she hated rolled into one bundle and here he was again, his smile unaltered by her rant.
“Well, look at that. A little honesty from you. How refreshing.” His voice was low and calm, but she wasn’t fooled. Evelyn knew Subject Seven very well indeed. She’d studied him for the first ten years of his life, every day for that time. He was hers, after all—her invention, her creation. If he was the monster, then she was the mad scientist that had to live with creating him. And she knew that Seven was just as angry as she was, but he was better at hiding it than she had ever expected him to be.
“You’re never leaving here, Seven. You’re here for the rest of your life.” She sneered now, and her eyes looked him over, studying the amazing shape of his form, the scars he’d accumulated while living on his own for five years.