Toys

I’d ever seen, actually. She could have easily been a movie star.

The boy was moving along awkwardly, making happy infantile sounds as only a human baby would. Elite children of that age-raised in vitro for a full twenty-four months-were as physically coordinated as human ten-year- olds and already talking coherently. Elite children also didn’t have belly buttons, and this one had an outie as big as a grown man’s knuckle.

I kept watching with shocked fascination as the “home movie” images changed and continued to flicker gently before my eyes.

The same little boy lay peacefully asleep in bed, with his tiny hands curled beside his face. Very cute. Very tender as well.

Except, I realized suddenly, it wasn’t a bed. It was the table in an operating room.

The beautiful woman stood nearby, but this time she wasn’t smiling. She had her hands to her face, with tears flowing through her fingers. The clean-shaven father, looking serious and concerned, embraced her, patted her back repeatedly.

After a moment, she nodded against his shoulder. Then they both donned pale blue surgical gowns and masks.

The images on the screen shifted again to another scene. There was the boy, maybe a year older, running across the lawn-only now he was as swift and agile as a deer. The camera followed him as he raced through a forest obstacle course, making long swings from overhead handholds and leaping over walls.

It was the very same kind of athletic training I’d received-and excelled at-when I’d first entered Elite schools.

The next images were of the boy and his father sitting in the living room of the house, in front of a comfortable fire, playing four-dimensional chess. The boy was winning the game, and winning easily.

And then there was the same boy, age five now, swimming the butterfly stroke in the lake, really motoring. And now he was hauling himself out of the water onto the wooden planks of the dock as his father ran to him, holding a timepiece in his hand. The boy looked at the watch and began pumping his arm in the air as the father hugged him.

The camera zoomed in and the boy beamed-a smile I recognized only too well.

And now the camera panned back out, and the father reached down to pick up a towel so the boy could dry his preternaturally strong body-including his now navel-less torso.

The television screen went blank after that.

The tape was over.

I just kept sitting there, too stunned to move or even talk.

Those had been my parents. And I’d seen that boy before-in kindergarten pictures, in holiday and birthday stills… it was me, of course.

Portrait of a skunk as a young man.

Chapter 41

During the next hour or so, my mother and father tried to rationally, but gently, explain the incredible story behind the home movie I’d just watched.

I’ll spare you, and myself, all of the painful details.

In a nutshell, they hadn’t ever been biotech investors at all. They were famous scientists.

Human scientists.

They had been part of the core group of medical and genetic specialists who had pioneered the technology necessary to advance humans into superior Elites, thus hastening their progress with saving the world.

But after 7–4 Day-after whatever happened during those mysterious twenty-four hours-my parents dropped out of the increasingly Elite-dominated society and went into hiding in the north country. Things were still chaotic in those first days, and their connections enabled them to retire to this faraway place, where their neighbors scarcely paid attention to them. They told the Elites they were retiring, but they’d begun to work in secret. And this time, they worked against the Elite nation and all that it stood for.

A centerpiece of the work was to turn me into a superenhanced human who could pass for an Elite-and who was, in many ways, more advanced than any Elite. They had essentially risked my life, and sanity, by sending me to live with the Elites as an undercover spy-without me having a clue about who or what I was.

“I’m sure you could use some time alone to think about all this,” Mom said, tears leaking from her eyes. “Please don’t think we came to the decision lightly, Hays. But we knew you’d make it. And we’re so proud of you.”

She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, and she and Dad-also teary, but trying his best to hide it-left me alone.

But first, my father handed me another disc in a box that was labeled “7–4 Day.”

I figured that something called “7–4 Day” couldn’t be good news.

And it wasn’t.

Wham! — no slow reveal, no fade-in. There were bodies everywhere. Human bodies. That was the film that completely blew whatever was left of my mind, and changed me forever.

I watched the terrifying pictures of the first attempt at eliminating all humans. As I did, tears flowed freely from my eyes, and they just wouldn’t stop.

Chapter 42

After I had viewed the 7–4 Day disc-three times-I just sat there for a couple of hours, numb all over, and changed. But then I didn’t want to think about my past, my future, or anything else for a while. I walked back outside and started toward my car.

I was a human. The Elites were mass murderers-and now they wanted to finish the job once and for all.

They wanted humans to be extinct on the earth.

The back door of the house was open; Mom was in the kitchen, washing the dishes by hand. “I’m sorry,” she said in a whisper as she saw me there.

“It’s all right. I think I understand. I’m fine.” I lied.

“By the way,” she called to me as I passed, “Lucy’s sort of your sister, but not genetically. And, obviously, you weren’t raised together. So it’s OK if you feel attracted to her. She’s a beautiful girl, inside and out.”

“What are you saying?” I raised my voice at my mother. Then I exploded. “I can’t believe you said that! Even if you didn’t care about your own family, don’t you realize I have one of my own! I have Lizbeth. I have Chloe and April.”

“Oh Hays, Hays, poor Hays. Don’t pay any attention to her,” said a second Mom, walking into the kitchen. This one was crying. “She’s a mechanical clone-I had to make one. I just have too much to do around here. She’s a great help, but she does say the most stupid things sometimes.”

As if to drive home the point: “And I hate to break it to you,” said the clone, “but it’s true what they told you in the Elite hospital. Lizbeth isn’t real eager to see you again. Of course, that tramp had already been sleeping with that bastard Moore-”

Mom put her hand over the clone’s mouth and pushed her to the back of the kitchen, where she switched the chatty machine off.

“What was that all about?” I demanded to know. “Is it true?”