Basilisk (3 page)

Older brothers, especially ex-mobsters, weren't supposed to be more naïve than their younger ones, but Stefan . . . sometimes I thought he was. We had both been trained to be killers, but I thought I'd learned far more than Stefan. He would deny it, but he was wrong.

If he hadn't spent almost half of his life looking for me and doing what was necessary to finance that search, I wasn't sure what my brother would've been. Not what he was, I did know that. When I had been taken—such a simple word—it had ruined lives, and when it came to Stefan, when I had been abducted, it had done more than ruin. It had done things I wasn't sure there were words for. And when it had happened, it had changed my brother as much as it had me—which wasn't either right or fair. But true as that was, we were both alive and free now, and that was a thousand times more than I'd ever expected or dreamed. Where I had spent most of my life, freedom wasn't a concept, only a meaningless word to be looked up in a dictionary.

My brother had made it mean something. Cascade Falls was part of that, which only made me wish again I had made that tourist pay for his contempt. And that was a slippery slope. I focused on my book and the words swam into focus. I was close, very close to what I was trying to accomplish—it was only a matter of weeks or maybe days, I hoped. I'd had seven years of a normal life before I'd been kidnapped, Stefan said, although I couldn't remember a single second of them; ten years of captivity, which I remembered with stark, vivid clarity; and nearly three years of freedom, freedom to do research; and now the time was almost right. I was almost there. All the more reason to learn more and do it faster.

A finger poked at my book on neurosurgery. “Parker, you're always studying. If you're not going to college, why bother?”

Parker wasn't my real name, but Sarafynna didn't know that. Then again, Sarafynna didn't know how to spell her own name and that made me doubt she cared that my name was actually Michael. Or Mykyl. When it came to Sarafynna, I wasn't too sure that wasn't how the letters popped up in her brain. Truthfully, I wasn't sure Sarafynna had a brain at all without an MRI to back that up. All that Sara—the nickname was much simpler and it didn't make my mind twitch—knew was how to put whipped cream on top of the lattes and how to flirt. To “mack” or “hit on” guys. Since I didn't know who Mack was, I went with the other one—“hit on.” That was more modern than “flirt” . . . to “hit on” guys. Whatever. I had more significant things to concentrate on.

Saving brain cells for important information outweighed saving them for teenage slang—which was mostly uninteresting anyway. Besides, in another month I wouldn't be a teenager anymore.

In almost three years I'd learned about flirting and sex, but now, at nineteen closing in on twenty, I liked intelligence in girls or women. Sara was entertaining and she let me know my hormones were working at top capacity—she was gorgeous. . . . Hot, I mean—“hot” was what someone my age should say. But she didn't have it all. I'd come to find out that I needed resourceful and smart too; Sara had everything except that. She had sunshine-bright blond hair—fake; big, turquoise eyes—fake; and she bounced wherever she went. That meant certain things on her, those things also fake, bounced with her as she went and rarely stopped bouncing. The first time Stefan had met her, he waited until I got off work that night and took me to the drugstore for a box of condoms.

I told him I didn't need them, and he told me I was an idiot if I didn't want to play in that sandbox. I was nineteen, he said with a grin, and that was what nineteen was all about. Nineteen and friction—knock yourself out.

But I didn't. I saw her fake-colored contacts and thought about the one I wore that turned my one blue eye mossy green to match the other one—two fakes don't make a reality; I thought about her lack upstairs of anything but whipped cream, and it seemed like a waste. Stefan and I had lived in Bolivia for two years before we came to Cascade Falls. I'd played in sandboxes there, whatever Stefan had said. It wasn't as if I were a virgin. I'd had the experience . . . experiences. I'd been seventeen before I'd gotten to make my own choices, even a single one. Now that I had almost three years of making decisions for myself, I wanted to be sure that each one I made now was the best I could make.

Sara did bounce in a very intriguing way, though. It might be worth thinking about. Hmm.

“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 could hack into the computer system of any university in the world. Computer hacking had actually been the easiest thing to learn compared to many other things. In fact, it was pretty boring.

Yes, I'm smart. I know.

The question was whether I was born that way or made that way.

“College sounds like a lot of work.” Sara'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 entertaining—when I saw past her to the television in the break room. What I saw on it made Sara's whipped cream skills and bouncing vanish. The sound was turned low, but I could still hear it. I could still see him on the small screen. I saw a man I'd never expected to see again. His face had that enigmatic smile that could save your life or far more likely put you in your grave; he was Stefan's father.

Or our father, Stefan would say. . . . Anatoly Korsak.

And they were saying he was dead.

I told Sara 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 Stefan had rescued me from. The Institute had thousands of lessons and some 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 number of those lessons were harmless, the rest considerably less so, but all were efficient.

I was nothing if not extremely efficient.

My trip to the bathroom got me a “Shit, Parker, sweetie. Are you okay?” from Sara and a call to someone else to replace me. Ben Jansen. Ben liked the bouncing as much as I did—or as much as Stefan said I should.

Stefan . . . he should know better. He shouldn't have done this. There was protective and overprotective; then there was something so far beyond that—a word hadn't been invented for it yet—and that was what Stefan practiced. Anatoly was dead; it was all over the news, and Stefan hadn't told me. He hadn't called me to let me know. How could he think I wouldn't find out? I didn't know, but I did know it had to stop. Nearly three years free and twice I'd saved his life; it was a two-way street now. He had to trust me with the bad as well as the good. I wasn't a kid anymore, no matter what he called me. I could more than 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. Of course, the Institute expected no getaway would be necessary if you did your job adequately. 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. Hell would be a walk in the park. Hell would be nothing.

“Hey, 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 not in the here and now, and mine wasn't.

Stupid. How could I be so careless and stupid? Anatoly was no excuse. You were always ready.
Always.

It was the tourist. He was sitting on the wrought-iron bench, always freshly painted bright blue, outside Printz's Bakery. I noticed that every day. The swirls of iron reflected the exact same color of the sky overhead. It was one more detail about Cascade Falls that made me . . . happy, I guess, and made it my home. The tourist wasn't one of those warm, small-town features. There wasn't anything warm about him at all, except his sweat. 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 as he glared at me. As I'd thought earlier—his body had its work cut out in 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 and being normal was the best move I could make now. Do as a normal teenager would do. Only I was barely still a teenager and I was nothing close to normal. But I played the game as I'd been taught. Normal teenagers usually aren't polite to annoying people—or assholes—and that meant I walked on as if I hadn't heard him.

Stefan would definitely say this guy was an asshole. He wouldn't be wrong.

“Shithead, I'm
talking
to you.” I'd only just passed him when there was a hand grabbing my arm to give me a shake. 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 almost always smelled 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 hadn't wanted to hurt anyone. I hadn't wanted to kill anyone. The thought of it, in self-defense or not, had made me sick. That didn't mean I wasn't forced to learn and it didn't mean I hadn't killed.

Once.

I didn't plan on ever doing it again.

In addition, the Institute had biology classes. One thing they taught us there was 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, although the jolting surprise of his voice and his shaking me made it a very close thing. But I caught myself. He wasn't a threat, despite being bigger than I was. No, I wouldn't hurt him, but it didn't mean I wasn't more tempted now than I would've been when I was younger. My temper ran hotter now than it had then. Nature—it can't be stopped—usually.

Slippery slope, I was repeating to myself, same as I had in the coffee shop, when he shook my arm again, harder this time. Slippery, slippery slope.

But then again, what was one ski run, really? Just the one?

This once, I gave in to nature. I looked at the tourist and tried not to smile. I didn't think I was successful and I doubted it was a friendly smile. Not that employee-of-the-month one. “Alcohol is harmful to your liver and not all that great for your stomach either,” I said, pulling my arm free. His eyes widened, he dropped the Danish he was 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 in the coffee house bathroom, but not quite so . . . explosively. I should've been sorry, but I wasn't. He deserved it. Out of range and unsplattered, I turned my back on him and kept walking toward my car. I heard him vomit one more time, curse, groan, and then vomit again. He would keep it up for approximately the next fifteen minutes until he was empty of everything, including yesterday's breakfast. 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. After all, that was what I was: a genetically created, lab-altered, medically modified child of Frankenstein, trained to do one thing and one thing only.

Kill.

All with a single touch.

Isn't science fun?

Besides, vomiting didn't hurt. It was only annoying, like the man who was doing it.

Mr. Fat-ass Danish would never know. I climbed into the car, pleased for a split second. Mr. Fat-ass Danish . . . the phrase had come out naturally, no work at all. Cursing was one thing that had proved difficult to learn. I was getting better at it. Then I remembered Anatoly, and the pleasure popped and disappeared like a soap bubble. Stefan and I needed to talk. I started the car. His babysitting days were over. That took me to the most simple of physics lessons: immovable object, unstoppable force. I sighed and pulled the car away from the curb.