Chimera

you?”

He didn’t. It was plainly seen in his puzzled and wary expression. “Know what?”

Jesus. Where to start? And how could he not be aware of a difference between us that was so fundamental? “Your back. It’s healed already, right? I saw it.”

He nodded, still perplexed. “Of course it’s healed. It’s been almost twelve hours, and it was a small incision to begin with.”

Releasing his wrist, I stalled a little as I squirted out a generous wad of antibiotic cream onto a square of gauze. I wanted to phrase this in a way that he wouldn’t feel any more to the left of normal than he already did. “It’s like this, kiddo.” I applied the cream and hissed at the raw bite of it. “Your average Joe takes a while to heal. Something like those won’t completely scab over for days; it’s too big. And it won’t fully heal for weeks.” If I were lucky. “It seems, along with the extra dose of smarts you seem so sure you received, you and the other kids have some kind of accelerated healing. Jericho too.” Holding the gauze in place, I nodded at him to rip me off a few pieces of tape. “See? You can do something good. Pretty damn miraculous in fact.”

Independently of the rest of him, his fingers mechanically tore off sections of tape and handed them to me. “I don’t under . . . I didn’t know. We heal more quickly?” His gaze moved to the bruise that he’d given me. There, on my wrist, which wasn’t covered by a shirtsleeve now, was more evidence of what I was telling him.

“And then some.” I taped the gauze into place and began to clean up the supplies. “About ten times faster at least.”

“We didn’t seem any different from the people in the movies.” The statement was both stubborn and wistful. It reminded me of when at the ripe age of six I’d found out there was no Easter Bunny. I’d denied the truth and yet mourned it all the same. Miraculous or not, this was simply one more thing that set Michael apart from the rest of the human race. In his eyes, that wasn’t anything to celebrate.

“The movies?” I gave a nostalgic smile of my own. “No, I guess not.” When he watched the hero get shot in one scene and scale fences in the next with only a tiny bandage as a memento, why wouldn’t he think that was just the way things were? After all, that was the way he was. As for his education, I’d already reasoned it was aimed at making the perfect assassin. The body’s mechanisms of overcoming trauma, not to mention the timetable involved, had probably been low on the list of classroom topics. At best, it was irrelevant; at worst, it might cause sympathy for the prey. Maybe it was something they told them before “graduation.” Maybe they never told them at all. I couldn’t begin to second-guess the twisting paths of Jericho’s reasoning. The sick son of a bitch . . . making children over in his own image, but not for a longing for his own kind. No, he’d made them to be killers; made them to sell. Bastard.

“It’s a good thing, Misha,” I reiterated. “I swear.” Picking up the shirt I’d laid out, I put it on and winced as the action pulled at my side. “Trust me. Right now I’d love a little bit of that myself.”

He didn’t look as though he believed me, but, more than that, he was regarding me with something very close to betrayal. “You—all of you.” He wrapped his arms around himself and said grimly, “You’re all so fragile. So breakable. No wonder it’s so easy to hurt you.”

“We’re tougher than you think,” I countered immediately. What I meant, of course, was that I was. Michael had lived years without anyone to rely on, his whole life from his incomplete memory. Now he was asking himself how he could possibly depend on me. Hell, I could trip over a curb and die when I hit the pavement, right? Fragile . . . never in my life had someone entertained that notion about me. “I’ve stayed alive these past few years in a business that doesn’t exactly pull its punches, kid. I might heal a little slower than you, but I do heal.”

He didn’t look convinced, and I didn’t think words would change that. Only time would prove to him I was here to stay, healing impaired or not. I couldn’t completely reassure him, but maybe I could cheer him up. The batteries went back in the remote and I handed it over with a sigh. “Go on. Just take it in small doses, would you?”

I made calls while he surfed. He gave equal time to naked women and a documentary on ancient Egypt, but from the stiff punching of the remote buttons, he still had enough attention set aside for less pleasant considerations. Keeping a concerned eye on him, I dialed my cell phone. I knew tracking down our father wasn’t going to be anything but difficult, but it didn’t make the futile call after call any easier to endure. Most of the numbers I’d memorized two years ago at Anatoly’s order either rang endlessly or were disconnected. I was hoping he would show up at one of the numbers still working. On the run himself, he nevertheless had the resources and the manpower that would make our chances at survival a little less grim.

“The landlines are too easy to trace, aren’t they? That’s why you use your cell phone.”

Twenty useless minutes had passed when Michael’s quiet question came from the other bed. Calling it quits for the moment, I switched the phone off and rubbed a hand across a grumbling stomach. “Yeah. Cells can too, but it’s more difficult, especially when you’re on the move and they’re disposable. That’s why I picked up a few when we stopped for the dye.” I bent down with care and felt for my sneakers under the bed. “You want something to eat?” There was an unnecessary question if ever I’d asked one, but Michael didn’t need someone else taking complete control of his life . . . telling him where to go and when. He needed to be included in decision making, at least as much as was possible in our situation. Independence was important to any seventeen-year-old; it would be doubly important to him.

We missed breakfast but caught lunch in a small café. Close to Gainesville, we drove on in to find a strip mall with restaurants, stores, and a putt-putt course. Volcanoes belched smoke and water dyed turquoise tumbled over rocks as wildly colored plaster jungle animals crouched frozen to swallow golf balls whole. Gracious enough to let me drive this time, Michael ogled it the second he climbed out of the car. “That’s . . .” Craning his neck for a better look, he tried again. “It’s . . .”

“Tacky? Hideous? A crime against God and nature? What?”

“Amazing,” he breathed.

We ended up playing for more than an hour, and he beat me every time. I consoled myself with the fact I was a wounded man, but the reality was that he would’ve beaten me anyway. By the time I dragged him to the café, I was disgruntled, my stomach was devouring itself, and I had a fast-growing phobia of artificial grass. After dual orders of bacon cheeseburgers, old-fashioned malts, and steak cut fries, we hit the bookstore.

“What are we looking for?” Michael asked curiously. “I haven’t had a chance to finish the ones we bought at the drugstore.”

“This is for work, not fun.” I dug out a sheaf of bills and passed it over to him. “I want you to pick up something on genetics. Anything that might help us understand more about Jericho and what he’s done to you and the other kids.”

He didn’t exactly brighten—that wasn’t the right term—but his focus definitely sharpened. “You want me to do research?”

“Who better than a smart-ass . . . I mean, a smart guy like you?” I grinned. “I’m going to grab a chair and take a break. Come and get me when you’re done. Then we need to haul some ass.” I’d wanted to buy him some more clothes, but with the miniature golf excursion setting us back, we really didn’t have the time. And leaving Michael alone in the store while I shopped elsewhere wasn’t something I was willing to do. The chip was gone and Jericho was hopefully down for a few days at least, but it didn’t matter. Life had taught me all about careless moments. I wasn’t going to have another.

The road to Hell . . . shit.

I fell asleep. It wasn’t hard to understand how it could happen. Hard to forgive, but not hard to understand. The physical trauma of being shot the day before combined with a full stomach and an hour of swinging at golf balls took me down like a Mack truck. When I woke up ensconced in an overstuffed armchair close to the front windows, I felt a momentary ripple of confusion. It was one of those where-am-I flashes that bounce through your brain like a manic Ping-Pong ball. It was similar to the mornings when the alarm clock rang shrilly and you couldn’t begin to comprehend what was screaming at you.

But there was no alarm this time—only low voices, glossy covers, and a chair beneath me that was patterned with roses and hummingbirds. The smell of cinnamon and coffee hung in the air and a sports magazine was lying across my knees. That same magazine slid to the floor in a heap when the world abruptly slid into place and the confusion disappeared in the face of stomach-plummeting fear. I’d fallen asleep and left Michael unguarded. I’d . . . Jesus Christ.

Before I headed into complete panic, the gleam of a familiar head of blond hair had my head whipping toward