Chosen Different_Book 1

by Nat Kozinn

  I begin stumbling out of the park and down towards the twenty-three blocks I have to walk to the hospital. I focus on picking my feet up and putting them down, left, right, left, right—that and keeping my heart beating. I need to keep going for Becky.

  I'm so focused that I don't even hear the police officer coming. He's shouting at me, but I can't understand him. I have to stop thinking about my injuries to focus on his words.

  "Gavin, Gavin are you okay?" he shouts.

  I know the fact that the policeman knows my name is weird, but I can't be bothered to consider it. I have to focus on the important things.

  "There's a woman on the roof of the observatory. She needs help," I say, and a blood vessel in my brain hemorrhages.

  26

  The Forgotten Sons take my gifts for granted. They reap the rewards of my bounty but give their thanks to science. My Chosen Sons will never question if they live in my grace. The gifts I will give them are so great divinity will be the only possible explanation. They will cherish these alms; they will build great cities and fill the earth with their progeny. They will do all this while giving praise to me.

  Chosen Sons: 23

  The gun explodes in The Beast’s face. The shrapnel shreds his flesh, the sound makes his ears ring, and the flash blinds him. He is afraid. He has to get away. He has to hide. He leaps off the roof of the observatory but trips as he jumps. The fall is a long one, and he lands on his shoulder. He howls in pain, but he still has to get away. He charges forward, but does not see the tree in his way. He smashes through it and massive splinters lodge in his side, more pain.

  The Beast ignores the pain and keeps running. Finally, after running two miles deep into the park, the ringing dies down to a faint buzz and his vision clears. As his faculties return, The Beast's fear turns to anger.

  Gavin is probably dead by now. If not, he will die soon, and there’s nothing the Beast can do about it. The Beast has killed another of his own kind. His damnation is assured. There will be no atoning for this. He killed the other Chosen Sons in self-defense. Those government agents gave him no choice.

  Gavin was not a threat to The Beast. The Beast could have avoided the boy's pathetic attempts to find him for years. Gavin was not fast enough or strong enough to hurt him. The Beast had been impatient. The Lord had promised him a path to atonement, but he could not wait. He thought converting Gavin would be a faster way back into God's good graces. He has failed miserably. His punishment will be an eternity of torture.

  The Beast howls in anger. If he is going to Hell, he is damn well going to take as many Forgotten Sons with him as he can manage. He follows his nose to the closest path out of the park, the closest path that leads to Forgotten Sons. A path that leads right to the Metro Center.

  By the time he makes it out of the park, the sun has come up, and the streets begin to fill up with pathetic humans on their way to whatever pointless jobs they have. The Beast does not want to live for much longer. What time he does have he is going to spend sending Forgotten Sons to the Hell they deserve.

  The Beast walks into the middle of the street, throws off his tattered overcoat, and lets out a deafening howl. A young woman on her way to work at Oasis Burger turns and sees him. She lets out a blood-curdling scream that The Beast cuts short with a slash of his claw. The Beast's next victim is a middle-aged man on his way home from a graveyard shift driving a Slug.

  Soon, Forgotten Sons are screaming and running in all directions. They desperately try to get away, but their pathetic human bodies are too weak to escape The Beast. He bashes skulls in with his hands, tears out throats with his claws, and crushes spines with his weight. The Beast spares no one from his wrath. He kills men and women walking to work, children and their parents on their way to school, and old ladies on their way to the market.

  The Beast is careful not to drink any of their blood or eat any of their flesh. It is not an easy thing to do. The Beast is starving. His body needs energy to heal from the fight with Gavin. Even still, he has already sent enough undeserving souls up to heaven. The people he kills now have done nothing of service to the Chosen Sons; they will join The Beast in Hell.

  After a few minutes of his rampage, The Beast finds himself standing on a deserted block. Everyone is dead or has run away. The Beast decides this would be a good place to wait to die. No doubt someone has called the police by now.

  They will arrive shortly with their little guns and useless body armor. They are weak and puny but enough of them will be able to stop The Beast. He will kill as many as he can before they put him out of his misery.

  The Beast takes a moment to reflect on his life. If he is about to die, he would like to die remembering a happy thought. There was a time when he was happy. It was when he was still Tom Calhoun. It was before he knew he was a Different, before he knew the truth of Cabot even. It was after that first football game, when he filled in for an injured teammate and led the team to victory. Everyone was so proud of him. His father was so proud of him. They smoked cigars and Tom felt like he was on top of the world. If only it could have stayed that way.

  >>>Thomas, do not do what you are going to do. Do not let the Forgotten Sons kill you. The Lord says in The Beast's mind.

  "Now you want to talk? After I killed another of my brothers? Where have you been? Why didn't you stop me before I did it? I asked you for help but you wouldn’t give me none. Then you told me I could still save Gavin, but instead he shot me in the face. Now he’s dead, and I sinned again. Why do you keep testing me, Lord?”

  >>>I have always been with you. I know your path has been a difficult one. I know you feel lost and alone. You need to trust that your trials and tribulations were necessary. I needed you to realize the true purpose for which I created you.

  >>>I have filled the world with Chosen Sons, each possessing a different gift. All of my children have their own part to play in my plan. I did not create you to convert your brothers with the truth of Cabot. If I had wanted a missionary, I would have bestowed Telepathy upon you to warp minds or intelligence to power a silver tongue. Those are not your gifts. Your gifts are muscles, claws, and teeth. I made you for just one purpose: death.

  >>>My Forgotten Sons have proven too resilient. Instead of seeing the truth of Cabot, the truth of their Lord's power, they have decided instead to flaunt my will. Instead of paying homage to my Chosen Sons, they have enslaved them. You have another chance at redemption. You can strike fear into the hearts of my disappointing children. You can remind them of their true place in my new world.

  >>>Go now and head into the heart of this abominable city. Go to the most prominent example of mankind's hubris, the Shimmering Tower. Make an example to all of the Forgotten Sons who have grown rich off defying me. Make an example of them and make sure the entire world sees you do it. Do this, and you shall earn your salvation.

  27

  Different individuals are restricted from joining the military or maintaining employment in law enforcement or security roles. Different individuals associated with the Office of Exceptional Cases are exempt from these restrictions.

  Article 4: Different Acts of 1996

  “In, out, in, out, in, out,” I chant aloud.

  I can remember saying this for the last few minutes. My memory is functioning again. I'm functioning again. Nerves are firing off all over my body indicating injuries, inflammation, and infection. I can feel a large cut down my midsection that’s surrounded by dozens of small gashes. I think the gashes are stitches.

  Those stitches are keeping my intestines, liver, and kidneys inside of me. Except it's not my liver, it's not my intestines, they are not my kidneys. They are in the places my organs belong, but they are different. I can tell the organs aren't made of my cells. My immune system wants to attack them. How did I get someone else's organs inside of me?

  I think back to what happened. I remember climbing to the roof, arguing with The Beast, the bullets that missed their target, The Beast's hands around my throat,
and his claws tearing apart my insides. After that it, gets fuzzy. Keeping my broken body alive took all of my focus, so I couldn't form good memories. There was more ranting by The Beast… Becky, he wanted me to kill her. He wanted me to take her organs. No, I didn't. I couldn't have. I have to find Becky.

  I snap out of my internal world and take in my surroundings. I'm in a bed, strapped to a bed actually, in a white room. I have an IV going into my left arm. There is a tray with instruments in the corner. It looks like a hospital room, but something isn't right. The exposed rafters are too crummy looking, even for a hospital in the slums. I can't hear any of the hustle and bustle a hospital would have either.

  It doesn't matter where I am. I need to get out and I need to find Becky. That means I need to get out of these straps. There are two of them, one across my shoulders, and the other across my thighs. I’m pinned to the bed. I try to wiggle free, but I don’t have enough room to operate. I need to give myself some space. I remember reading about the escape artist Harry Houdini. He would dislocate his shoulder to get out of strait jackets. I think I can do the same thing.

  I constrict my Pectoral, Deltoid, and Bicep muscles as severely as I can while at the same time, I expand my Triceps, Trapezius, and Latissimus dorsi on the right side of my body. This tears my shoulder out of the socket, doing all sorts of damaged to my rotator cuff and ligaments. Just more injuries to heal.

  Now that I have some room, I wiggle down below the strap across my shoulders. I sit up and use my left arm to pop my right shoulder back into the socket. My right arm is in bad shape. Besides the shoulder damage, my hand is still injured from the gun exploding. I'm missing a decent chunk of my index finger, but I'll have to manage.

  My hand still works well enough to rip the IV out of my left arm. I constrict the blood vessels around the wound it leaves. I undo the strap across my bottom half and swing my legs over the edge of the bed. The motion sets off countless red flags in my body. Tiny wounds reopen all around my new organs. Still, I push myself to my feet and start to take some steps towards the door.

  I don't get further than three feet before Larry comes rushing in the door, all five feet, two inches of him. He stops me in my tracks.

  "Whoa there, cowboy. Where you headed in such a hurry? Back to bed: doctor's orders," Larry says with concern.

  "Larry, where am I? What are you doing here? What is going on? Where is Becky?"

  "Larry, you called me Larry. Does that mean you're back? You remember me?"

  "Yes, you're Larry Rosen, my old teacher. Now tell me what's going on."

  Larry grabs me around the shoulders and hugs me tight. It reopens more wounds.

  "Sorry! I'm an idiot. You just had total organ replacement surgery, and I'm hugging you. We weren't sure you would make it. Your body accepted the organs, but you were a vegetable, like when I first met you. You really need to lie down."

  "I managed to heal enough to spare the blood to activate my brain's memory center. Tell me where Becky is."

  "I'll tell you if you lie down," Larry orders

  I don't like where this is going. When people insist you get off your feet before they answer you, it is because they're about to tell you something that might make you panic. It doesn't look like Larry will tell me anything unless I agree to his terms. I stumble back to the bed and get in.

  "Okay, I'm lying down. Now, tell me!" I demand.

  "You want to know something messed up? I don't really know what I look like. I can make myself look like I did when I was fifteen and my Differentiation developed, but that was thirty-three years ago. I don't know what I would look like now if I was a normal human. Would I have gone bald? Would I have gotten fat? I'll never know. My natural state is just a big pile of bones and skin."

  I've noticed that when people need to talk about difficult things, they'll often start with something revealing about themselves. I think the idea is that if they make themselves vulnerable, I won't be able to get mad about what is being discussed.

  "I don't want to hear your musings. I can tell you're going to tell me something I don't want to hear. Just tell me. I don't have emotions, remember? You don't have to worry about me doing something crazy," I say coldly.

  "It's Becky... she's dead," he answers with obvious difficulty.

  When my brain processes what Larry said, my emotion centers go ballistic. My mind is sending me mixed signals, some tell me to curl up in a ball crying, others tell me to run out into the street, thirsty for The Beast's blood. I could also just deny it ever happened, erase the memory of what Larry said. I could create the memory that she's alive and well and waiting for me to heal. Becky deserves more than that, though. She deserves to be more than a figment of my imagination.

  "See, I told you. I didn't do anything crazy," I say to Larry.

  "I'm sorry, we sent medics to the observatory. They did all they could, but there was nothing anyone could do."

  Becky deserves my grief, but I need to know what happened. I push off the emotions that want to overcome me. I'll allow myself to feel them later.

  "What do you mean we?" I ask.

  "I was the cop who found you, Gavin. I was out looking for you, and it was easier to search as a cop, no one hassles me. Nita sent me after you. She knew what you were doing, and she was worried about you. Nita and I know each other from our government work. We've talked about you before."

  "What did you do after you found me? What is this place? It's not a normal hospital."

  "You're right; it's some warehouse Nita has out by the train yards. We couldn't just take you to a hospital. There would have been too many questions. You would have ended up in Great Basin. I didn't do it alone, Gavin. Even without any insides, you were too heavy for me to drag to the Slug and then out here to the makeshift hospital. So Nita called your friend Gary. He picked you up like a rag doll and carried you out here."

  "Gary?

  "He's not the only one who helped. We needed to find you new organs, and we needed them fast. Your friend Sarah was willing to help. She gave up the donations, and Nita had some doctor she trusts come put you pack together, old Humpty Dumpty."

  "How does Nita know Sarah?" I ask.

  "Now, now, that's enough questions for now. It's distracting you. You should be focusing on your healing," Larry says in a calming voice.

  I open my mouth to challenge, but he shuts me down.

  "More questions later. Now, you rest," he says.

  Larry walks out the door, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  Now that he's gone, I can grieve for Becky. The problem is, I don't know how. I never got to grieve for my father. He died while I was in Section 26, when I was a vegetable. Once I became aware enough to understand he was dead, I had no idea how to deal with it. I had no idea how to experience any emotion at all. I pretty much just tried not to think about it.

  I remember when my mom left. I was sad, but mostly I was mad. Mad at her, mad at my dad for letting her go, mad at myself for driving her away. I can't be mad at Becky, but I can be mad at myself. If only I had listened to her and stopped patrolling the streets, if only I had listened to Nita and not gone after The Beast. If only I could have been a better shot. If any of those ifs happened, Becky would be alive.

  This isn't productive. I need to try to move on. I log on think.Net and look up dealing with grief. I'm shown an article on The Kubler-Ross model for coping with loss, The Five Stages of Grief. They are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

  This is stupid. I'm wasting my time. I don't feel anything for Becky. I can't feel anything, I don't have emotions. I should be focusing on what's important. I should be focusing on my healing. I have inflammation around my gallbladder that's going to be a problem if I don't address it. I also have to keep vascularizing my new organs. That’s what matters. Pretending I’m somehow capable of feeling grief and loss isn’t going to get me anywhere. I should fix my new organs—Sarah's organs, not Becky's. The Beast killed Becky for nothing.

&n
bsp; That monster, that abomination, he took Becky from me. If I could, I would tear his eyes out. I would rip out his throat with my teeth and dance on his corpse. He does not deserve to live. Why is he allowed to live? Why doesn't the government do something? Why doesn't Nita try to do something?

  Nita, that's it. If I could just talk to Nita, maybe there's something she could do. She must have some way to save Becky. Maybe they have a Different who can bring people back from the dead and they just keep him hidden. Or maybe they can make a clone of her and have a Telepath transfer her mind. I don't know what they can do, but there must be something. If I could talk to Nita, maybe if I agreed to never try to play hero again, she'd help me.

  Who am I kidding? Nita isn't going to give me any more help. I'm lucky she was willing to do anything for me. I'm worthless. I'm a kid who didn’t listen when he was told the stove was hot, and now I want to cry about my burns. Look at me. I was pretending I could be a hero. It was just a fantasy. I'm not strong enough to help anyone. I couldn't even save the woman I loved. If I was a real hero, I would have saved the girl. If I wasn't so arrogant, Becky wouldn't have been in danger in the first place. I was just deluding myself. The one thing I'm good for is tasting fast food. That's who I am.

  The reality is, Becky is gone. Worrying about how to handle it won't change that fact. Becky is gone forever. I tried to save her, but I failed and I just have to move on. I'm no hero. I was just a pretender.

  I need to focus on the realities. I need to focus on healing. I've done about as much repairing as my body has the calories for. If I want to do more, I need food. The doctor was probably trying to rest my new insides, but if I don't eat, I can't keep healing.

  "Larry!" I wait for him to come. I yell again after a minute. No one is coming.

  I pick myself up out of the hospital bed and stumble out of the room and into the hallway. I stretch my hearing as far as it goes. I can hear Gary talking not too far away. Gary will have food on him. He always does. He's metabolic.