“That’s wonderful,” says my mother, beaming approvingly. “Does he know the good news about Adamus?”
My father and I exchange a quick, uneasy glance.
The General wipes his mouth with a napkin. “No.”
“Why not?” she says, looking back and forth between the two of us. “I think he’d be happy to hear his brother is alive.”
“Adamus is
Technically that’s true—I’m their biological son and Ivanick was adopted, raised by my parents—but I catch the General’s subtext. Saying I am not Ivanick’s brother is my father’s way of saying that I am unworthy of being honored that way, that I am less their son than even Ivan. My father steps into the kitchen, leaving me and my mother alone in awkward silence.
The truth is, I’m too upset about One’s worsening fades to even care about the hateful soap opera of my family life.
“You’ve barely touched your plate, Adamus.” My mother looks at me with concern. “Is something upsetting you?”
The question is so ridiculous, given the circumstances, I almost laugh. I almost say, “Yes, Mother. Everything is upsetting me.” But I bite my tongue.
I hear One’s voice from last night. “
She’s right. She’s fading so fast I need to convince Dr. Zakos to try the procedure again if she’s going to have any hope of living. But how can I convince my father to let me go, to grant me leave of my temporary position in the surveillance facility?
“Adamus?”
“I’m just afraid,” I say. I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I see it, the dim outline of a new card to play.
“Afraid?” my mother asks. “Afraid of what?”
“Of Father. I’m afraid he’ll make me …” My voice trails off dramatically. I force myself to look as stricken, as ghostly with fear, as I can.
“What are you saying—”
And then I blurt it out. I explain to my mother that I ran into Dr. Anu’s replacement in the Northwest tunnel the other day and he said that he could do the mind-transfer procedure again.
“He says it’ll work this time. That they can’t do it to just anyone, it has to be me. And I’m afraid, I don’t want to go back into the labs and be hooked up to machines. I’m afraid I’ll go into another coma or—or … worse!” I will tears to my eyes. “He says he can dig up real information about the Garde if they do it, and I think the General will make me …”
“Oh Adamus, I doubt that—”
I interrupt her, louder than before. “But he will! If the General finds out, I’m sure he will!”
Then I hear his low deep voice, coming from behind me.
“If he finds out what, exactly?”
It’s the General. Taking my bait.
CHAPTER 9
“Have a seat, get comfortable.” Dr. Zakos has positioned a large curved chair in the center of the room and gestures for me to get in. Nervously I take a seat.
“I was delighted to hear from your father last night,” he says, flitting around the laboratory, putting monitors in place, booting up scary-looking medical equipment. “But with the short notice, it might take me a while to get this equipment up and running.”
I can tell he’s ecstatic to use the equipment on me. Adamus, the Mogadorian lab rat.
I sink into the chair, trying to get comfortable while Zakos sets up. I should be happy: my ruse worked. I deliberately let my father overhear that I didn’t want to be used in Zakos’s mind-transfer experiments, and he had Zakos on the phone within minutes, giving him the go ahead to plug my brain into One’s corpse.
The General still hates me, and seeing me weak and afraid, as I’d pretended to be at the dinner table, gave his meager conscience whatever license it needed to risk my life again in the lab.
The General is free to hate me. I hate him too. And now that I’ve succeeded in tricking him again, my hatred has a new depth, a new dimension: contempt. I fooled him.
The machines begin to whir.
I’m afraid of what will happen while I’m under, but push that aside. More than anything else, I’m relieved to know that One may have a chance of survival. If the technology has improved, maybe I can get through the procedure unharmed, rescuing One in the process.
