Authors: Rob Thurman

Blackout (42 page)

BOOK: Blackout

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Sera did bounce in a very intriguing way though.

“I might go to college someday,” I said, turning another page. What I didn’t tell her was that I was going to the equivalent of college and then some. I had the knowledge base for a medical degree with a specialty in biogenetics with an emphasis on polymorphism and pseudogenes, and a PhD in biochemistry and neurology.

Theoretically.

Nineteen and a doctor three times over, but it was amazing what you could learn when you can hack into the computer system of any university in the world. Computer hacking had actually been the easiest thing to learn. It was pretty boring.

I’m smart, I know.

The question was: Was I born that way or
made
that way?

“College sounds like a lot of work.” Sera’s voice brightened. “Except for the parties. I’ll bet frat parties are fun. Maybe I should go. My parents keep bitching at me to since I graduated.” She pushed up to sit on the counter, against the rules, but I was reading. Technically I shouldn’t notice.

And technically my eyes didn’t wander to technically not watch her bouncing … lying to yourself can be fun … when I saw past her to the television in the break room. What I saw on it made Sera’s whipped cream skills and bouncing vanish. The sound was turned down, but I saw him on the small screen. I saw a man I’d never expected to see again. His face with that enigmatic smile that could save your life or far more likely put you in your grave: Stefan’s father.

My father.

Anatoly Korsak.

Dead.

I told Sera that I felt sick, and then I went to the bathroom and threw up, nice and loud—no finger needed. Genetic skills, I had them in spades. And you don’t tell stories you can’t back up. You always do what needs to be done to provide evidence to support your deception. I hadn’t learned that from Stefan. I’d learned it at the Institute—the place where Stefan had rescued me. The Institute had thousands of lessons and some still hung around. Lingered—when I was awake, when I was asleep, they most likely would my whole life. When it came to making people think what you wanted, a small amount of those lessons were harmless, the rest considerably less so, but all were efficient.

My trip to the bathroom got me a “Shit, Parker, sweetie. Are you okay?” from Sera and a call to someone else to replace me. Ben Jansen. Ben liked the bouncing even more than I did. Or that Stefan said I should.

Stefan … he should know better. He shouldn’t have done this. There was protective and overprotective then what Stefan practiced. Now this. Anatoly. It had to stop. Three years free and twice I’d saved his life; it was a twoway street now. He had to trust me with the bad as well as the good. I wasn’t a child anymore. I could carry my own weight.

The coffee shop door shut behind me and I started down the sidewalk with my hands in my pockets, heading to my car. It was seven years old, gray and a Toyota. They were virtually invisible. That was Mob and Institute knowledge, oddly coinciding. Low tech meets high tech with the same purpose: clean getaways. Although the Institute expected if you did your job adequately no getaway would be necessary. I guessed we’d fooled them, because Cascade Falls was a clean getaway so far.

In the distance I could see through the trees the silver glint of the Bridge of the Heavens crossing the Columbia River. When we’d picked this place to live, Stefan had quirked his lips. “Bridge of the Heavens,” he’d said. “How about that, Misha? That must mean this is Paradise.” Sometimes he could be a little thick, my brother. He didn’t always get that everywhere I went outside of the Institute was paradise. If there was actually a hell, the Institute would make it seem like paradise too. But while I thought certain people deserved hell, I doubted it was that easy. Life isn’t. I didn’t think death would be either. But I didn’t tell Stefan any of that, because he was right. No matter how many paradises you went to, they weren’t the Institute. They were all, in the end, paradise. Maybe Stefan wasn’t so thick after all.

“Hey, kid. Smart-ass. You get tired of ripping people off with your high-priced shit?” The words, tainted with bile, came from out of nowhere or nowhere if your attention was off and mine was.

It was the tourist. He was sitting on the wrought-iron bench, always freshly painted sky blue, outside Printz’s Bakery. He had a cheese Danish the size of a four-year-old’s head in one hand and a smear of buttery cheese on his chin. Nope, no doubt—his body had its work cut out for it taking care of him.

But it wasn’t my job to take care of him, unlike his unlucky heart, and I ignored him and kept walking. That was normal too. I was a teenager, and teenagers usually aren’t polite to annoying people. Or assholes. Stefan would definitely say he was an asshole. He wouldn’t be wrong.

“Smart-ass, I’m
talking
to you.” I’d only just passed him when there was a hand grabbing my arm to give me a shake and from the smell he’d put something in the coffee after he’d left the shop. Cheese, alcohol, coffee, and natural halitosis, I’d smelled better things and I’d smelled worse. People smell worse on the inside than the outside.

The Institute had had anatomy classes and enough cadavers to make Harvard Medical School jealous. The Institute taught its students to hurt people, taught them to use what had been stamped on their genes. But I’d never wanted to hurt anyone. I’d never wanted to kill anyone. The thought of killing even in self-defense had made me sick … once. That didn’t mean I wasn’t forced to learn.

The Institute also had biology classes. One thing they taught us in biology is that as adolescent males grow, the production of testosterone increases, and so do levels of aggression. The natural kind that gives you the instinct to protect yourself if attacked. Three years ago I wouldn’t have hurt this on-my-last-nerve irritating tourist. I wouldn’t hurt him now. He wasn’t a threat, despite being much bigger than me. But although I wouldn’t, it didn’t mean I wasn’t slightly more tempted now than I would’ve been when I was younger—that my temper wasn’t running hotter now than then.

Slippery slope, I repeated mentally to myself, same as in the coffee shop.

“Alcohol is bad for your liver and not too great for your stomach either,” I said as I pulled my arm free. His eyes widened, he dropped the Danish he was still holding in his other hand, and I backed away quickly. I made it in time as he bent over and threw up on the sidewalk. I’d done the same to myself earlier, but not quite so … explosively. I couldn’t say he didn’t deserve it. Out of range and unsplattered, I turned my back on him and kept walking towards my car. I heard him vomit one more time, curse, and then vomit again. He would chalk it up to strong coffee, whatever alcohol he’d put in it, and the Danish. After all, what other explanation could there be?

Well… .

Other than me?

He was fortunate I wasn’t more like my former classmates. If I had been, that one touch of his hand to my arm, that hard shake he’d given me—I could’ve ripped holes in his brain, torn his heart into pieces, liquefied his intestines. That’s what I was. A genetically created killer, lab altered, medically modified child of Frankenstein, trained to do one thing and one thing only.

All with that single touch.

Isn’t science fun?