Chimera

Chapter 11

Michael woke without help from me. Rolling over, he tossed around for a few minutes before murmuring something. It sounded like a name . . . Peter. The sound of his own voice must have stirred him from sleep, because his eyes opened and the firm grip he had on a wad of sheets loosened. Blank and confused, his face smoothed out when he saw me. I didn’t fool myself into thinking the sight of me was reassuring in any way. My image simply triggered his brain into catching up with the events of last night and letting him know how he’d ended up in a strange hotel room.

“Hungry?” I stretched my legs as the twinge in the small of my back reminded me of a night spent in a chair designed by the most sadistic carpenter alive. “We can get some drive-through later, but I have jerky or peanut butter to tide you over until then.” Running a hand over fly-away hair, he sat up and slanted me a less-than-thrilled look. I supposed even institutional food was better than what I was serving. Giving a tired but heartfelt grin, I added, “Or there are still some Oreos.” Our mom had to be spinning in her grave over my idea of nutrition for the teenager on the run.

The mention of the cookies went over much better than my other offerings. Blankets pooled on the floor as he climbed out of bed to give me a demandingly expectant look. “Good morning to you too, sunshine,” I said, snorting. Within minutes Michael was munching his way to hopefully a more communicative mood. At seven he’d been a morning person, but then again, who wasn’t at that age? There were lands to explore, dragons to slay, worlds to conquer.

“I’m going to grab a shower.” I hesitated. “You’re not going to take off, are you?” He wouldn’t have gotten more than three steps outside the door if he had, but I wanted him to feel as if he had choices. He’d been a prisoner so long that I didn’t want him feeling the same way with me.

“Is that even an option?” he asked with a marked lack of faith. My question was as glass to him. My intentions didn’t matter, and he saw all too clearly what my actions would be.

I might as well be honest. Whether it was whatever psychology course he’d been fed or merely natural talent, he would be a hard kid to fool. It could be both. Lukas at seven had been both innocent and wise . . . and an impressive judge of character for such a young child. “Not really, Michael.” I rubbed a hand over a bristly jaw and said regretfully, “Sorry.”

He shrugged. “This is no worse than the Institute.” Finishing his last cookie, he went over and began to make his bed, hospital corners and all.

I’d heard the capital I in institute. That must be what they called the compound. Filing it away for a later subject of questioning along with his odd use of the word “what,” I took a change of clothes into the bathroom and showered. I left the door open to hear if Michael changed his mind and decided to make a break for it after all. The trickle of lukewarm water did little to drive the fatigue from my body or mind and I hurriedly soaped up. Climbing out ten minutes later, I dried off and wrapped a towel around my hips. The open door had kept the mirror from fogging and I shaved with a few quick strokes. Slipping on jeans and a sweatshirt, I pulled my wet hair back tightly. Before we left I would stuff it up in a baseball hat. I hadn’t been seen, yeah, but it didn’t hurt to change the look. If we were somehow traced to this motel, they could easily get a description of me from the desk clerk.

“Michael, you’re up.” I walked back into the room and gathered some of my clothes for him. “Here’re some sweats and more ointment for your feet. And I think I packed some sneakers that’ll do. They might be a little big, but I don’t think we’ll be doing much hiking.”

He accepted the bundle wordlessly, went into the bathroom, and closed the door behind him. I guess he had no fear that I might make a run for it. By the time he returned with damp hair and sweat clothes that bagged on him, I was nearly ready to go. Handing him the tennis shoes, I took the white pajamas from him. Taking out my penknife, I began to methodically shred the cloth to small, easily flushable pieces. “How are the feet?”

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he put on the shoes and tied the laces neatly. “Fine,” he said. He still didn’t know how to react to the concern, and it showed in the faintly mystified glance that he shot my way. It made me sincerely wish that Saul had used a real gun instead of the stun variety on that son of a bitch in the back of the van. That something so simple and basic as concern had been lacking from Michael’s life, it didn’t do much for the inner fire that had been smoldering since I’d seen that first room in the compound basement. “Let’s go, Misha,” I said gently. “There’s greasy food out there with our name all over it.”

“Misha?” He stood in shoes that surprisingly seemed to fit. Big feet had always run in our family.

“Michael is a mouthful,” I lied. If I couldn’t use the name I’d known him by since the day that he’d been born, then I wanted a name we could share . . . a name that wasn’t one those bastards had given him. The diminutive for Michael would do. “Misha is a nickname for Michael.” I cocked my head, deciding to go into our Russian heritage later. “That okay?”

He thought about it, then nodded. As always, he wasn’t exactly swimming in enthusiasm, but I counted it a win regardless. He did as well, I imagined, getting to keep at least a portion of the name he was attached to.

After disposing of the pajama remains down the toilet, one less thing to use to trace us, I hefted my bag and we headed out into the pastel dawn light.

Even the soft yellow and pink illumination stabbed at my eyes and I put on a pair of sunglasses the minute I entered the car. The brim of the baseball cap helped as well. After the nearly constant adrenaline rush of last night followed by no sleep, I had what was as bad as any hangover.

“Sleep deprivation can cause a significant decrease in performance and concentration,” Michael said absently as he watched a portly family of five through the passenger side window. Early risers as well, they were unremarkable in all but size, shockingly loud tourist wear, and a large chocolate cruller wrapped in each pudgy hand. And I knew for a fact which of those three had caught Michael’s attention. The kid had a jones for sugar like I’d never seen, and I had no one to blame for that but myself. With an almost wistful sigh, he turned back to me. “You didn’t sleep last night, did you?”

“No, I didn’t.” I liked that he was beginning to ask questions . . . waking up to the new world around him. I also hoped it meant he might be willing to listen to a few questions of my own. “I wanted to keep watch. But I’ll sleep tonight.” I wouldn’t have much of a choice. By tonight I would be too exhausted to fight it. Puzzled, I added an observation. “You’re full of fun little facts, aren’t you? Like the sleep thing. What kind of freaky classes did you have in that place?”

We were on the road again and had gone several miles before Michael finally spoke. “I’ve never talked with anyone outside of the Institute. I don’t know what to say.” It was hard for him to admit, as evident in the strained patches of white beside his mouth. “If this is a test, I’m doing badly. So badly.” He shook his head.

“And if this isn’t a test?” We had to get this misconception out of the way before we could make any progress, but Michael was hanging on to it hard.

“What else could it be?” There was a defeated note to his voice.

I tried for a reassuring smile. I doubt I succeeded. My job hadn’t required that look very often. “Like you said, maybe I’m just some crazy guy who thinks he’s found his brother. Sometimes, kiddo, you just have to go with the flow. So, tell me what they taught you. I think I’m sensing a theme.”

Tracing a finger along the dashboard, he considered as more miles passed and then he began to talk. I listened to every word, hoping to hear the key that I could use to unlock the mystery of my brother. He talked about multiple classes. There were the usual basics such as history, math, chemistry, and others, but they were supplemented with psychology, law—both domestic and international—languages, and acting. There was a theme all right; a very definite one.

“And how are you in acting?” I flashed him a more natural smile as I reached up to adjust the rearview mirror. If he could pull a De Niro, I hadn’t seen any signs of it yet.

“According to the Instructor, the worst he’s ever seen,” he replied without concern. Impressing the Instructor with his Oscar-winning ways apparently didn’t interest Michael whatsoever. Once again I heard a capital letter where normally none would be. If Michael had any idea what the acting instructor’s name actually was, I would be astonished.

“No big deal. There’s more to life than Hollywood.” Not that Hollywood had anything to do with the acting classes he had been taking. Spotting a sign indicating heart-stopping cholesterol at the next exit, I decided to make a stop. “They were training you to be a spy, weren’t they? Espionage.” Maybe Saul had been wrong about this not being a government project. It sounded more like a project better suited to the old Soviet regime of the Cold War, but all ruling parties had their secrets, even here.

“Spy?” He laughed too, but without humor. “No, not a spy.” And with that the subject was closed. Crossing his arms, he closed his eyes to indicate this particular conversation had soured for him.

Having received more from him than I expected, I gave him a break. As I took the exit and hit the first generic fast-food place I saw, I decided against asking him what he wanted. I would hate to get my brother back, only to lose him to terminal dental caries in the first month. A breakfast sandwich, biscuits and gravy, and orange juice should be enough, I thought, before weakening to add pancakes to the order. I personally hated drive-through breakfast crap and ordered nothing but a large coffee for myself. I’d make up for it at lunch.

Back on the interstate, Michael took no prisoners on that bag of grease. The sandwich he tolerated, the gravy he loved, and the pancakes lifted him unto Heaven. They’d been labeled a new addition on the order menu: chocolate chip with a gallon of pseudo maple syrup. As I watched, he devoured every bite and then licked the fork. This kid, grave and educated in damn peculiar ways, was going after every molecule of sugary goodness like a five-year-old with a bowl of icing.

“What the hell did they feed you in that place anyway? Bread and water? Gruel?” I asked.

“Nutritious meals to keep our bodies at the peak of health,” he replied. It sounded like a quote. I could picture it now . . . straight-edged grim words emblazoned on a wall above a pear-shaped cafeteria lady doling out boiled chicken, boiled potatoes, and boiled cabbage.

“All right,” I said with determination. “For supper we have pizza, a liter of Coke, and a shitload of ice cream. Rocky road. So what if our teeth rot out? It’ll be worth it.”

“I know those are all very popular. Do they taste as good as chocolate chip pancakes?” There was definite interest in the question.

“Better,” I promised. I wondered how it worked in that concrete prison. I imagined heads bowed over test papers. Circle A if pizza tastes good. Circle B if it does not taste good. Speaking of not good, that entire picture left a foul taste in my mouth—all those children leading the lives of small prisoners of war. I’d listened to the radio for any news on a police raid on the compound. Nothing. Big surprise. Either the entire police department was in their back pocket, not a very realistic proposition, or the Institute had been evacuated. Either way, the kids were gone.

Since the full stomach seemed to have relaxed Michael some, I decided to try more questions. “Misha, you said you were taught languages. Do you know Russian?”

“ Da, ya govaru pa russki,” he responded absently as he involved himself in returning all trash to the large white bag and carefully folding the top down, once then twice. “Vy gavarite?” So he must have known Misha was short for Michael, not that he’d shared the information.

“A little.” I took the last sip of nearly cold coffee as I steered with one hand. “Probably less than you since you’ve studied it. What I picked up isn’t exactly for use in polite company.” It was a fairly good bet that he knew more proper Russian than I did. I could get my point across, but it would be a hard, ungrammatical road. My fluency was in the language of the job and those were not pretty words. “Our father’s from Russia. Our mom was too.”

“Was?” he repeated neutrally.

“She died.” I crumpled the cup and let it drop from my hand. “A long time ago.”

He considered that with eyes on a distant point; then he shook his head. “Your mother, not mine. I never had a mother or a father.” His gaze moved to fix on me as he went on implacably. “Or a brother.”

Hey, square one . . . How you doing?

It shouldn’t have hit me as hard as it did. Since we’d pulled him out of that place, I’d known it was going to be an uphill battle. I’d known and I still knew, but . . . ah, fuck. “Eyes like yours aren’t a dime a dozen, Misha,” I said quietly. I didn’t know if he was listening to me or not as he sat beside me as still as a stone, but I pushed on as best I could. I was working without a script, flailing in unknown territory. My line of work hadn’t done much to train me in the ways of gentle persuasion. Now I had to learn the hard way, and at a time it had never been more important that I not fail. “They took you when you were seven. We were on a beach riding horses, and this man”—I swallowed against a nightmare that was as fresh now as it had been then—“this goddamn son of a bitch with a gun took you.”

“Horses.” It wasn’t said in a questioning tone, but more in one of contemplation.

I didn’t care how it was said. He was listening. He was hearing me. I grabbed on to the sliver of optimism and refused to give it up. “Yeah, we had horses. They were Christmas presents.” I didn’t think it was necessary to tell him they’d both died the same day he was taken. It was a detail that wouldn’t help him to hear. It wouldn’t do much for me either.

“What kind of horses?” He was curious despite himself, poor damn kid—my poor goddamn brother.

It’d been so long that I couldn’t recall if they’d been Morgans or Quarterhorses. “Harry and Annie. Annie was yours. She was a sorrel mare, a tiny and frisky thing. Harry was a bay gelding, a big lovable guy.” It might’ve been that Harry loved apples like all other horses, but Annie liked only carrots. Could be Annie wanted the soft, sweet velvet between her nostrils rubbed while Harry liked his ears scratched. I never had the opportunity to find out the small details of affection before they lay dying on the sand. “We rode them to the beach. We talked about . . . oh, hell . . . kids’ things. Who was the hero and who was the sidekick.” I flashed him a look of mock annoyance. “Somehow you were always the hero. Go figure.”

He gave me a look of his own—utter and complete dismissal. The curiosity had vanished. “That’s a story you should tell your brother, not me. If he’s alive.” Resting his head back against the seat, he ended without emotion. “If there ever was a brother.”

I didn’t lose my temper, not at him. He was a victim in all of this. I saved my anger for those responsible. “Can you drive?” I asked abruptly.

He straightened, startled by the curt question, then said, “What did you—”

I cut him off. “Can you drive?”

Nodding slowly, he said with a trace of uncertainty, “Theoretically.”

Whatever that meant, it would have to be good enough. “Fine. Take the wheel.” As he hesitated, I took his hand and put it on the steering wheel before twisting around to reach the duffel bag behind my seat. Ignoring the sudden weaving of the car, I searched until I found what I was looking for. Sitting back up, I reclaimed the wheel just in time to keep us from riding up the ass of a semi. “Whoa.” I applied a light foot on the brake and peeled Michael’s hand free of the wheel. “Thanks. I’ve got it now.”

Blinking and a little pale, he said with faint dismay, “It’s harder than it looks.”

“Most things are, kiddo.” And that was perhaps the truest thing I’d ever said. Without any further comment, I dumped the picture frame in his lap. He stared at the back of it for a moment. The crisp black velvet had the sheen of a smugly healthy cat and he ran his fingers along it in a stroking motion. Thanks for the Christmas present, Dad, I thought with grim satisfaction. It’s going to help me after all.

It was the portrait of a knife-edged moment lost in the greedy maw of time; two children who could’ve grown up to become anything at all. Instead one was now a criminal and the other a teenager lost, in body and mind. And both of us might very well be damaged beyond repair. All that and more was waiting behind velvet.

“Turn it over,” I commanded softly, hoping what was at once painful and wonderful to me might trigger something similar in him.

With one last petting motion, he did. There we were . . . in all our glory. And it was a genuine glory, despite the ache that hit me every time I saw it. I didn’t know what I would see in his face as he took it in. An explosion of memory that opened a floodgate in his mind? No, I didn’t think it would be that easy; nothing in life ever was. The most I could realistically hope for was a small sliver of recognition or a flash of yearning for something just beyond his reach—the tip-of-the-tongue syndrome, that he knew something was there even if he didn’t know what that something was.

I didn’t get any of those. What happened was a shade to the left of that and one step lagging. It wasn’t what I’d hoped for, but in many ways it was close to what I’d expected. You know what they say: Expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised. Not so. Expect the worst and find out your imagination is sorely lacking; that was my philosophy.

Confusion was the primary emotion that washed across skin that saw far too little sun. He truly hadn’t believed there was a brother at all, much less one who could be him. “He doesn’t look that much like me,” he murmured with automatic denial. The same finger that traced the velvet now touched the glass gingerly. “Just the eyes, that’s all.”

“Isn’t that enough?” He didn’t want to look past age-regressed features or the light hair of childhood. He wanted to hold on to something familiar, no matter how horrible the familiar was. It was understandable, the fear, but I wasn’t going to allow him to overlook the more obvious similarities. “That and the age. How many seventeen-year-old kids in southern Florida are running around with those eyes and are lacking parents? Go on, Misha, take a guess. How many?” It was a coincidence even too great for him to deny . . . or so I thought.

He hesitated, then turned the frame over again, the picture safely hidden against his legs. Our history was dismissed just that quickly. “I don’t know that I’m seventeen.” Strangely, it seemed as if he’d been about to say something else at first. What did finally come out was meant to be logical, I could tell, but it had more of a stubborn ring to my ears. It made the corner of my mouth twitch upward until the meaning of those obstinate words hit me.

“What do you mean by that?” I demanded. The semi was still ahead of us, ambling along, slowly and placidly, like an elderly elephant on Prozac. “Are you saying you don’t know how old you are?” I didn’t know why that surprised me. The Institute undoubtedly didn’t spend much on birthday cakes or clowns with balloons . . . unless the clown was hiding a hypodermic in one Day-Glo orange glove.

“No, I don’t.” He pushed up a sleeve that had slid down over the heel of his hand. “Nearly old enough for graduation, that’s all I know.”

“Graduation? What . . .” I wasn’t able to finish. The widening of Michael’s forward-facing eyes had me jerking my attention back to the road in front of the car. The back of the truck had opened to reveal five men, four of whom were wearing disturbingly familiar tan pants. It was hard to believe that I’d come to a point in my life where the sight of a pair of khakis or passing the Gap gave me the same surge of adrenaline than a hit attempt on my former boss once had. Marginally worse than the pants were the guns pointed in our direction. HK assault rifles were serious weapons, and I wondered if the concern was to get Michael back alive or simply get him back period.

The fifth man answered my question by pointing at us and saying something I couldn’t hear through the glass. It was our pal from the van. He was dressed this time and not in goddamn khakis either. A dark gray suit and black shirt set him apart from the others almost as much as the ferocious intelligence in his dark eyes. Then I decided to stop with the fashion assessments and try avoiding a shitload of bullets instead.

Yanking the wheel to one side with one hand, I took the car into the emergency lane. With my free hand I grabbed Michael’s shoulder and shoved him down into the small space between the seat and the dashboard. “But they’ve already seen me,” he protested, wincing as I crammed him pretzel fashion onto the floorboards.

“It’s not about the seeing. It’s about the shooting.” I rapped as the driver’s side mirror was torn away by a bullet. “Keep your ass down.” I wasn’t about to let it get shot off, not on his first full day of freedom. Ducking low behind the dash, I felt frantically for the gun under my seat. “How the fuck did they find us?” I muttered to myself. It certainly hadn’t been by a trail of cookie crumbs. Sugar-shark Michael would’ve taken care of any one of those, no matter how small.

The windshield shattered into gummy green safety glass. It showered over my shoulders and rained down on the brim of my hat. Straightening, I rested my hand on molded black plastic that had long lost the new car smell and pulled the trigger of my 9mm. One of the men spun around, his white shirt blooming crimson on the right side of his chest—lipstick red, but it wasn’t the kind of kiss anyone would welcome. Jamming the gas pedal flat to the floor, I tried to take the car up past the truck. I saw the lips of the obvious leader, in all things including couture, move as he spoke into the mouthpiece of a slim headset similar to those worn by SWAT. The truck immediately swerved and cut me off.

Swearing, I tried the other side. Most of the cars around us had braked or halted altogether at the gunfire, but I still managed to send one oblivious driver yammering on his cell phone spinning out of control into the median. As the truck began a move to counter mine, I rethought my plan. “Hang on, Misha,” I gritted as I twisted the wheel and the car into a one-eighty.

“Not really necessary,” came the exasperated response. He was packed down there tightly enough that it was unlikely anything less than the Jaws of Life would pry him free. Beneath the irritation I heard the same dread that had first surfaced in the van. He might not be afraid of me, but Michael was afraid of someone. Sooner or later, I would find out why. When I killed that child-stealing, malevolent son of a bitch, I wanted to know each and every reason to equal each and every time I pulled the trigger.

Dodging haphazardly stopped cars with white-faced, gaping drivers, I stuck mainly to the emergency lane as I sent us speeding the wrong way up the interstate. Once or twice I had to detour into the main lanes if some shaking motorist was already hogging the side strip of gravel. Behind, the semi had stopped and the four men who were still mobile had jumped out onto the asphalt. Either they had a car that had been pacing them or they would commandeer the nearest one at gunpoint. I wanted to be at the last exit we’d passed before that mystery was solved. Barely two miles away, I began to run into moving traffic just as we reached it. If I had thought I could have made it across the median, I would’ve made the attempt, but the chances of getting bogged down in stagnant water and thick mud that grew reedy swamp grass was high. This was a low-slung machine we were traveling in, not an SUV. Political correctness—it’ll get you killed every time.

In a blare of horns and metal scraping metal I grazed a light green Volkswagen and sped onto the off ramp. Narrowly escaping being crushed by a gasoline tanker, we bounced off a guardrail, skidded, and managed to get on the right side of the road. A quick look in the mirror showed a white Ford following the same perilous path, but with less success. Colliding with the front cab of the tanker, the white hood crumpled and a tire smoked from the friction, but the car kept coming. The bastards had commandeered their own car and were determined. Let them be—their resolve wasn’t a drop in the deep blue compared to mine.

Looking left, then right, I made a split-second decision that had Hog Heaven barbecue patrons running for cover. Engine growling, the car jumped the parking lot curb and spun wildly in the crushed-clamshell stretch behind the seafood restaurant next door. Next to that was a gas station with a tiny alley framed by the back of the cinder- block building and undergrowth-choked trees. As we barreled through it, I caught a glimpse between buildings of the Ford rushing down the street toward the barbecue joint.

“Can I get up now?” Michael asked patiently with glass glittering in wind-tousled hair. Other than the look in his eyes when he’d first seen the man from the van minutes ago, he was as abnormally calm as if we were simply making a run to the grocery store. Maybe that class had followed the one on acting . . . calm in the face of certain death. Bring a number two pencil.

“No,” I answered instantly. “Keep the balls of steel out of sight.”

There was the quizzical quirk of light brown eyebrows before I put my attention back to driving for our lives. The car banged loudly into a green Dumpster at the back corner of the gas station and sent it chasing after a bald man with a beer belly who had just exited the bathroom. He fled promptly, his legs pumping and toilet paper fluttering from his shoe. I followed, bypassing him and the metal box on wheels before taking a sharp corner at the front of the building. After dodging a row of pumps, I took out a flock of plastic pelicans and then an equally gaudy fake purple pig.

That put me right behind the Ford as it smoked its way through the parking lot I’d just vacated fifteen seconds ago. Slamming into it, I propelled it several feet into a three-foot-high metal drainage pipe that marked the back boundary of the lot. The Ford flipped. There were sparks flying from the metal striking metal and a distinct crunching accompanied by the cacophony of smashing glass. The sound of a catastrophic wreck wasn’t one you could mistake, but it usually didn’t give you a warm glow.

Shifting into reverse, I could see a modest group of diners boiling out of the barbecue joint. It was a good thing I’d chosen an older model car or I wouldn’t have seen much at all. It was generically inconspicuous, so the eye slid away from it naturally and it had the added bonus of no airbags. Instead of breathing in powder and plastic, I could see the pig crowd. I could also see something else, something a whole lot less pleasant than slightly greasy pork lovers.

Colors of gray, black, and red coalesced into the driver crawling with painfully slow deliberation from the overturned car. The man was as indestructible as a New York cockroach. “Who the hell is this guy?”

“Jericho.”

With a pale face even paler, Michael had straightened enough to see out of what remained of the windshield. “Jericho,” he repeated before sliding back down to wrap arms around his legs. Eyes far away, he rested his chin on his knees, to all appearances completely disinterested, completely gone; the poor goddamned kid. If there had been fewer people in the parking lot, I would’ve stopped the car, walked over, and taken the shot from a distance where missing wasn’t possible. I didn’t care if I was seen, but as far as I’d fallen, taking a chance on hurting an innocent if deluded bystander still was beyond me—I hoped.

This Jericho might still be moving, but he wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. For this moment, that would have to be good enough. His name was ironic, considering that when I’d first seen the compound I’d thought of the biblical walls of the same name. It was ironic and not a little goddamn spooky, but now wasn’t the time to dwell on creepy coincidences.

Within minutes I had us back on the road. The interstate was a challenge with cars still snarled and sirens approaching, but it cleared out after the first few miles. And then we were just one more car in a flowing stream of them. Granted we were missing some glass and were pocked with bullet holes, but no one’s perfect. Jesus, as conquering heroes went, I left a lot to be desired.

“We’re going to need a new car,” I commented brusquely. Looking over, I added in what I hoped was a more encouraging tone, “You can get up now, Misha. We’ve lost them.”

Blue and green, a fog-bound and frozen lake, he wavered, then focused on me. “We have?” If it had sounded doubtful, I wouldn’t have blamed him, but it didn’t. It wasn’t even politely skeptical, merely mildly indifferent. Michael had gone back to the safest place he knew . . . inside himself.

Reaching out with slow and infinite care, I brushed granules of glass from his hair. I knew I was seeing a child that was no more, but knowing and feeling don’t always go hand in hand. “Yeah, kiddo, we have.”

The unspoken “for now” I kept to myself.