Anarchy Found (24 page)

“No squad cars following you in?” I ask Molly.

“Not yet,” she says, stepping into the house and kicking the door closed behind her. “But don’t think I won’t call them, Lincoln.”

I shrug with my hands and her eyes track to my palms. She stares hard at them for several seconds before breaking away and looking for my face. “Did you get a good look?” I ask. “It’s what you wanted, right?”

“Not really.” She draws in a deep breath, her eyes darting back to the light that is now yellow-orange. My heart is still beating fast, but not as fast as it was when she first appeared. “What are they?”

“You don’t know what happened to me,” I say, returning to our conversation from this morning. “And you can say things like I chose Case and Thomas over you, or that I walked out, or that I’m a sick monster who deserves to be put down like a dog. You can say all that. And even if it’s not all one hundred percent true, it’s all partially true. I did choose Case and Thomas, but not for the reasons you think.”

“Is that why you’re here? To make me feel special?” she asks, walking over to the table and pulling out a chair. She takes a seat and I can see the weariness in her face. She’s tired.

But I’m tired too. “I’m tired of pretending. If you love me, and that’s a big if, then you need to love
me
, Molly. Not Alpha. Not your idea of me as Alpha. Not the fantasy that we are soulmates or lovers interrupted.”

“What are you?” she asks. “What are
we
?” She’s been thinking since I saw her this morning. Reevaluating, maybe. Time has always been my friend. I am patient. It’s an innate quality inside me. A trait I was born with. It’s surprising considering how impatient I am with most people. But this… scheme we’ve been working towards—I have endless patience for the vengeance I’ve imagined over the years. I will only get one chance at revenge. One chance to retaliate. Once chance to make it right. And all of that has depended on more than a decade of planning and plotting with Case and Thomas to get to this precise point in time.

I hold up a palm and it flashes an orange light bright enough to cast a glow across her face. “It’s an electromagnetic field.”

She blinks.

“A magnet,” I explain.

“Why would they put magnets in your hands?”

“They didn’t,” I say calmly. I’ve never had to explain this to anyone. Case was there. Thomas wasn’t there when I did it, but he was there in the beginning. He knew it was going to happen and he knew why it was happening. And I’m sure his little visit to Mac’s last weekend was a not-so-gentle reminder that this job is about more than me. “I put the magnets in there. There’s a lot of reasons attached to that answer, Molly. But the important one is that they started something with me back when I was a kid. They changed me. And you helped them.”

She shakes her head. “I was forced.”

“I’m not trying to blame you, Molly. I’m just stating facts. No one is holding an eight-year-old responsible for this,” I say, holding up my glowing palms. “Least of all me. The Prodigy School used you to keep me in line. They made you send electrical current through my body—”

“Electrocute you?” She rubs her temples with her fingertips, trying to massage away the truth.

“Yes. Basically. It was part of their Genesis plan. To create superhumans. Larger-than-life people who could hold power and manipulate things that no one else could. People who looked normal, but weren’t. But the administrators who ran the school couldn’t become superhumans themselves. They needed children to do that.”

“Oh, God.”

“And what better children to use than their own? Who would miss a rich kid sent off to boarding school?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“You had parents. I had parents. Everyone has parents. They put us in that school, Molly.”

“I can’t believe it,” she says, shaking her head.

“My father too, so you’re not alone. Case is special, he was taken as a payment on a debt. His family never gave him up willingly and after we escaped, they cared for me and all my special considerations until I turned eighteen.”

She waits for it.

So do I. I have never told anyone this and I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life to be able to say the words out loud. “I am… was made… I was changed into—”

“Just say it, Lincoln,” Molly whispers. “Just tell me what the fuck is happening.”

“I’m not who or what you think, Molly. Sheila said she told you about my programming skills. How I write computer languages. How I use her as a vector to change code in computers. And if that was all I did, it might not be so bad. I don’t just reprogram machines, Molly. I reprogram people.”

“You did that to me, didn’t you? That drug you gave me after I ran away in the snow.”

I nod. “It rewrote your DNA, changed your memory. It acts like a flu virus. But in your case it was temporary. All DNA degrades over time. It was supposed to wear off gradually over many years. A bit here, a bit there until all the bad code was reprogrammed once again, using another dormant virus included in the drug cocktail. I didn’t take it away.” God, this is so hard to explain. Because I did take her memory away. “I wanted you to remember, Molly. I did. I made sure you’d recover those memories, I just thought it would take a little longer. I didn’t expect it to happen while you were still so young and so…” My words trail off, because what I want to say is ‘desirable.’ It would be so much easier if she wasn’t so perfect. So beautiful. If she didn’t have so many years ahead of her. How could I ever walk out now?

I can’t. I won’t.

“You rewrote those scientists,” she says, refocusing me back to our conversation.

“Yes. I rewrote them. Changed them. Made them want to commit suicide once I activated nerve centers in their brains using a special light pattern.”

She stares at me for a second, like she’s putting the pieces together. “You killed another one, didn’t you?”

I nod.

“I went to look at the scene today and the maintenance guy was changing out the fluorescent lights above his desk. You used them. Made them flicker. That was the trigger?”

I nod again. “Many organisms on earth are programmed to respond to changes in light. Migration of animals and birds. Reproductive cycles. Hibernation in bears. All these things are biologically programmed into their brains. And the Prodigy School figured out a way to make people violent using light to trigger it.”

She lets out a long breath and then she places her palms flat against the table and stares at them. “What do your hands do?”

“Nothing spectacular. The special food I consume feeds the virus inside me which powers my brain like electricity powers a computer hard drive. It generates a lot of heat that has to be dissipated. I do that through my hands.”

“They’re vents. Like the pads on a dog’s foot.”

“Simply put, yes. But they have a few practical applications. They are magnetic and the color of the light can be altered to act like a laser in a scanner.”

She stares at me with her mouth partly open. In awe? I almost chuckle. Hardly. More like in shock or disgust. “And me? What part do I play in all this?”

I shrug. “You’re the one running the show, Molly. They made you to stop me if I ever went too far.”

“Like how a superhero opposes a supervillain?”

“I guess. But more like a bomb and the wires that control the bomb. I’m the bomb.”

“And I’m the wires.”

“We’re an unfinished project. I got you out before the really bad stuff started. It’s part of the reason I agreed to Thomas’ plan. First they put us together as partners. Then they made us hurt each other. In my case, they made me take care of you afterward. They bonded me to you. Made me sick at the thought of hurting you. Behavioral conditioning, genetic manipulation. And other stuff. It’s too much to explain simply. But even now, after all these years, I would not be able to kill you.”

“Lucky me,” she whispers.

“But you could kill me quite easily.”

“What? How?”

“That was the purpose of the Omega. To kill us after we were no longer useful. If your training had completed then you’d be able to hold a gun to my head and I’d be powerless to stop you.”

“I don’t want to kill you, Lincoln.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing I got you out before that happened.”

“Yeah.” She looks down at her hands again. “So those people you’re killing. They’re bad, right?”

“Very bad.”

“And that sorta makes you good, right?”

“It’s debatable, but I’m doing my best.”

“So…” She pushes her palms against the table and stands up. “You really are Batman?”

“No,” I say, letting a small chuckle escape. “He’s not real, Molly. I am. And even though what I’m telling you seems pretty fantastic, it’s my life and it’s not romantic or inspiring or any of that fantasy bullshit they push with a character like that. It would take a lot of effort to rise to larger-than-life status and even more to be considered the good guy. Because that’s what you’re thinking, aren’t you? Good guys don’t kill people in the name of revenge.” I rise from my seat and walk around to meet her. “I’d really have to want it and—”

“But if you
did
want it…” She cuts me off, steps around the table, and walks towards me. She stops when we are only a foot apart and looks up at me with her wide hazel eyes. “Then you could use all that super stuff to do good things instead of bad. To help people.”

“Help which people?” I snarl. “Blue Corp? Those people? They hired scientists who did this, Molly. They made me hurt you. They changed us and we can’t ever get that back.”

“So you’re going to just kill them all? One by one?”

“Not all,” I say, turning away so she can’t see the evil smile. “Only the ones who deserve it.”

“But who are you to pass judgment on them? Who are you to say they can’t be saved?”

“You’re missing the point, Molly.” I’m really starting to lose patience. “These people don’t deserve to be helped. They ruined us. They stole our childhood and made us do unspeakable things to each other. So let me just say it straight out. I’m not interested in saving people. And if you know the history, neither was Batman. He was out for revenge, just like me. Saving people was a consequence of taking out those he hated.”

“I don’t think so, Lincoln,” she says, shaking her head. “People make choices and if you’re a superhuman, then couldn’t you just choose to be a superhero?”

“But who would play the villain?” I give her a sideways smile. “Not you.” I laugh. “You’re not wired to hurt. You’re wired to save. I made sure of it.”

“Except in your case. You said I’m able to hurt you. And I’m not saying I want to be your opposite, Lincoln. I’m just saying
you
could be your opposite.”

I run my hand through my hair and turn away before I tell her more. “We have a plan, Molly. And nothing you say will stop it from happening.”

I expect her to get angry. Maybe slap my face or order me to get out of her house and never come back. But she doesn’t do those things. She walks up to me, takes my hand and presses our palms together. “You’re so warm here.”

“And so cold everywhere else.”

“No,” she says, gripping my hand and placing it over her cheek. “You’re warm everywhere. And if you can reprogram people like you say, then you can do things like cure mental illness, Lincoln. You could heal people with this science. You could change terrible things and make things better. You could be a hero. The world needs a hero, Lincoln.”

I lean down and kiss her mouth, speaking into it softly. “No one needs a hero like me, Molly. The road to hell is always paved with good intentions.”

“Everyone needs a hero, Lincoln, and if you’re the only one we have, then you can’t say no.” Her words are so soft. She pours out her gentle nature into the grotesque malformation of my hand as she presses it against her cheek. “The world needs a champion to stand up for it.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I say, biting her lip and kissing her again. “I want to take you to bed and fuck you.”

“We need someone who will fight against injustice,” she says, placing her hand on my chest. Just this small bit of heat from her touch makes my cock grow.

“Fighting is something I do, gun girl. But only for the right reasons. I’ll fight you right now if you say no to this.” She laughs when I take her hand and push it down the front of my pants. She grabs at my bulge and I can’t help but grin. “Just don’t stop touching me.”

“We need someone who will stand tall in the face of adversity.”

“We can do it standing if you want.” I grab her ass, lift her up, and back her up to a wall. “I’m good with wall sex.”

“Someone who believes in the value of a good deed, Lincoln.”

“Are you listing me, gun girl?”

“No.” She laughs. “I’m just saying we can use what they did to you in the past and turn it into something good instead.”

“Well, let’s fuck first. We can talk about all this side bullshit later.” I kiss her hungrily. I grope her breasts, casting a yellow-orange haze across the t-shirt she stole from me this morning. “Take this off,” I say. “My hands are busy.”