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He knew I wasn't Lukas now. He hadn't always. When he'd rescued me, he didn't second-guess it once. I was his brother. He believed it so deeply that I believed it too. In the face of his pure faith, I'd finally had faith myself. I'd accepted my lack of memories being some form of traumatic amnesia or caused by the fall on the rocks during the original kidnapping on the beach.

Some time after that, though, he'd found out Lukas was dead. It had to be from Anatoly. Looking back, I'd first noticed the difference at the beach house with his father. The difference wasn't that he'd treated me as less than a brother, but that he'd insisted on it even more fiercely. That and he would do anything, once he'd been able to get out of bed after being shot by Jericho, to keep me from being alone with Anatoly. I'd thought the change had been because we'd both almost died. He'd nearly lost me again. And keeping me away from Anatoly . . . once I knew what Anatoly was, made sense. Another monster, another killer in our lives, but a useful one. But Anatoly hadn't told me anything . . . other than to be kind to Stefan, that he deserved it.

And Stefan did, because for all his searching. . . .

Lukas was dead.

If he wasn't, Stefan and I would be scouring the earth for his other brother. Not his real brother. I was as real as Lukas had been. I knew that. Almost three years with Stefan—there wasn't a doubt in me about that. But if Lukas were still alive, we'd have searched until we found him and Stefan would've had two brothers. I thought I would've liked another brother. From all the stories Stefan had once told me before he knew the truth, trying to prod my memories—memories that weren't mine—Lukas sounded as if he'd have made a great brother. Stefan didn't tell those stories much anymore, now that he knew Lukas was gone. I'd start asking again once in a while. I wasn't Lukas, but telling the stories would bring a part of him back to Stefan, if only for minutes or an hour.

I'd finally found that different kind of truth—a lie that wasn't a lie at all. Stefan knew I wasn't Lukas, but he knew I was his brother, the same as I knew that he was mine, that being brothers had nothing to do with sharing the same blood. He wouldn't ever tell me about Lukas and he would hope I'd never find out. He wouldn't risk that I'd again feel those doubts that I had following my rescue or that I would think he considered me any less of the brother he'd been born with.

That was Stefan.

And that was fine. That was better than fine. Some things didn't have to be said aloud.

I also knew that while Lukas was gone, he'd given me a gift, although he'd never known me . . . or rather had never met me. He'd given me the memories of sun, wind, and horses to warm me in a place as cold as death itself. It was his best memory. Galloping up and down the beach, the ocean's roar loud in his ears, the wind in his face—it was his best memory and mine too, although I hadn't actually experienced it. Yet Lukas made me feel as if I had. Tangible and real as any other memory I had had in the Institute, that memory had kept me sane.

More than that, Lukas had given me a brother to pull me from that frozen sterile prison and set me free. Lukas had died, but he'd given me life. And as logical and scientifically minded as I was, I didn't question the mysterious nature of that. It was as true and real as the sun and the sky above.

“How does it feel?” I asked, taking from his plate a jam-loaded biscuit to replace the bacon I'd given him.

“How does what feel?” he asked with a trace of caution hidden behind the words—hidden to anyone but a genius like me.

I grinned. “To be a free, off-the-shelf baby when they spent big bucks making me? I was the Cadillac of infants. You were barely a Volkswagen.”

He let me have another one of his biscuits, this time fired directly at my head. I caught it. I wasn't going to duck and waste a perfectly good biscuit. “You're an ass.”

“Thanks for the lessons in that. They've been invaluable.” I continued to grin as I took a bite of the biscuit.

The moment that had descended on my yesterday hadn't been the best of my life—not the worst, thanks to the Institute—but not the best either. This one was—this was the best moment I'd had. At peace with my family . . . where I belonged.

And then Peter called and turned the moment into a memory. Memories are good too, but they're only shadows of moments—a sepia photograph of what you saw, heard, felt. Once a moment is gone, you don't get it back.

Peter's cell phone rang again.

I was really beginning to hate that son of a bitch.

“Y
ou're alive, Michael. Good. It's difficult to keep punishing you if you let a simple building falling on your traitorous head take you out of the game.”

I sat on the edge of the bed and wished Peter were there so I could shove the cheap phone down his throat. As for his calling me traitorous, I didn't ask him what he meant. I knew—as did Stefan and Saul now that I'd come clean. Peter wanted to punish me because he'd learned of the cure. “It's even harder to punish me, Peter, when you keep running away. You wouldn't be afraid of me, would you?”

“In the outside world for three years and you haven't learned how to play a game yet. It's rather sad how you've wasted your freedom. I feel sad for you, Michael. I honestly do.”

Peter hadn't felt sad in his life and while he knew the meaning of honesty, he was incapable of it. “What do you want, Peter? I'm done with following you around. I don't have to. There are other people out there who want to catch up with you more than I do. I'll let Raynor do what he does best and maybe I'll go on vacation. Hawaii. I've always wanted to see a volcano.”

He laughed. “Raynor. The Institute's invisible pet pit bull. None of us knew he existed until you escaped, and suddenly he was at the new one we were moved to all the time. Checking up on Bellucci, who, as it turned out, did rather need some checking up on, didn't he? Too bad, so sad, but Bellucci didn't learn what Raynor constantly told him about lax security.” His voice hardened. “But that's all over now. Turn on your TV or your laptop. Find a cable news channel. You might see my bright smiling face. Do it now, Michael. The games are over. Next time I see you, it'll be in Heaven.”

The phone clicked and went silent in my ear. I tossed it onto the bed and took the remote from the bedside table that not only turned on the TV but also slid back the entertainment center doors. I was not going back to a thirty-eight-dollar-a-night motel as long as I lived.

“What'd the bastard want now?” Stefan growled, joining me in front of the TV.

“I think to tell me it's time to meet at the OK Corral. He's ready for the showdown.” I cycled through several news stations until I found what Peter had wanted me to see. In Eugene, Oregon, more than a thousand blackbirds had fallen from the sky, stone dead. The screen showed people milling about and looking in confusion at the carpet of iridescent black that covered their streets and yards. Only one person didn't seem puzzled. There was only a short glimpse of him before the camera panned elsewhere, but it was Peter. He was waving before pointing at the sky with his finger and pulling an imaginary trigger. It was Wendy's work. Fly away, birds. Fly away no more.

“Eugene.” Stefan started to rub his hand over his jaw and stopped, remembering in time the lacework of cuts and scrapes that crossed his face.

“Wait.” I studied him, concentrated, and then said, “Okay, you're good now. You can even shave if you want.”

He ran his hand lightly across his face, then harder before moving into the bathroom to check the mirror. “They're gone. I can't tell they were there at all. That's . . . Damn, Misha. Unbelievable.”

I had done it. I'd healed without touching . . . as Wendy killed without touching. That made our chances of survival better, and made me feel more like her, a hundred times the freak I had been seconds ago. But I could deal with being a freak if it meant I was able to live through this.

“If I can heal a blind, evil-tempered hundred-year-old turtle, a few scrapes are no problem. How'd it feel?” I asked. I was curious. I knew what it felt like when I healed myself with my new accelerated ability, but I didn't know what it was like for someone else.

“It tingled some, and weirdly enough, I knew it was you. I could feel the, I don't know, the Misha of you. It was better than a tetanus shot in the ass, that's for sure.” He turned away from the mirror.

“I can fix your leg too. Bone takes forever to work with, but give me a few days and you won't limp in the winter anymore.”

“Hell, kid, I never cared about that.” And because he was who he was and it had been for me, he hadn't, but I did. It would be a Jericho memory I could bury forever: the one of him shooting my brother to take me back to Hell.

“We'll see. And don't call me kid.” I turned off the TV. “They're in Eugene, or they were.”

“They're going to Cascade Falls. They'd know that was where you were living. Raynor would've told Bellucci and God knows Bellucci would've told them anything they wanted before he died. And if Peter wants to punish you. . . .”

Wiping out a place I'd considered home would be one of the harsher punishments I could think of. “He said he'd meet me in Heaven.”

“The Bridge of the Heavens. On top of the dam. That scenario has nothing but nasty and suicidal written all over it. Too bad we can't really let Raynor handle it. I know you have the cure, but even cured, give these kids guns and knives and they'll do it the old-fashioned way.”

“Raynor's smart and he did manage to capture me, but I'm only one. He doesn't know it, but he's out of his league. They'll roll over him like a tank.” I planned on being there to see it too. No one deserved it more.

“Yeah, I know, but it's nice to dream once in a while. Pack and get us tickets to Portland. I'll go wake up Saul and make sure he has one of his guys meet us with some weapons and a car at the airport. Damn, what about your tranq guns? There's not much sense in going if we can't take the cure with us.”

“They're plastic and disassemble in three minutes. Then I reassemble them into a larger gun that is nothing more than a toy. I also have stickers that say TOY, MADE IN CHINA, and SUPER-DUPER MEGA-MACHINE that go on the side. The tranq cartridges we can drop in a bottle of shampoo. We'll have to check one bag, but no problem. Don't tell Saul that, though. Tell him we have to smuggle them the only way God and the TSA have left to us.” I grinned. “Tell him it'll expand his sexual horizons and he should try not to walk funny through the scanner.”

He snorted. “You are pure evil.”

I shrugged. I had no problem telling the truth when I couldn't get around it and that meant I didn't have a right to be offended when I heard it. “Somebody has to be.”

Jokes aside, by the end of it all, that could be more true than Stefan imagined. Someone had to do the only thing left to do. I hoped he could live with that.

I hoped I could too.

 

The flight was long. I'd commented that if they let me do the flying, it would be much shorter. Stefan accepted the statement with all the forgiveness and love one brother had for another. He popped me one in the shoulder, hard. Considering I'd learned to fly using the Internet and a few DVDs and the crash was minor, in my opinion, I'd think that he'd let it go, but no. I had a feeling I was grounded, quite literally, for a very long time.

When he was handing me his peanuts, crackers, chips, and soda, he said, “You're planning on Raynor's being there to help out, aren't you? Not intentionally, but you think he can provide some sort of distraction.”

My lips curved as I took his food. I used to try to make sure we both had equal shares on the run or at home, but we'd both come to realize that despite his doing it out of big-brother instinct, I actually needed more food than did either he or your average four-hundred-pound sumo wrestler. I'd stopped protesting then. In this particular case, anyone sane would have considered it a favor that someone else had taken the inedible airplane snacks off their hands.

“He does have an Institute tracker, the same as we do,” I said. “And I don't think Peter likes him any more than he likes me.” I opened the bag of peanuts and sighed as they spilled out stale and rock hard into my hand. Saul had the aisle seat and I leaned over Stefan to say in a low tone, “Is the you-know-what still with you?”

“You son of a bitch. I didn't buy that for a second. I know more about the
S
word than you ever will.” He couldn't say smuggling. There are no secrets on airplanes. Sound travels and passengers these days were more than willing to take off their belts and try to strangle an orange-haired would-be terrorist/smuggler or a man who simply liked to walk around with a tranquilizer cartridge concealed in his rectum for no special reason.

“Sure you do, Saul. And you weren't disappointed that you didn't have to bend over and take it like a man.” I'd learned that phrase on TV when I was fresh out of the Institute and Stefan had choked on his dinner when I'd asked him to explain it to me. “I believe you.” I went back to my peanuts and the SkyMall catalog. Godzilla, in his carrier under the seat in front of me, had his pointed muzzle through the crosshatch of metal bars and was vengefully biting the toe of my shoe. Flying didn't seem to be anyone's favorite activity today.

“How many plans do you have for how this can go down?” Stefan asked. “It's not as though there are too many hiding places on a bridge. I've been able to come up with one plan on this. Two if Raynor shows up.”