Dull Boy (29 page)

“So if Cherchette created us, who created her? Where does this—”

“My grandfather. He . . . it’s a long story . . .”

A
very, dear.” Cherchette’s cool hand touches my face, relieving some of the heat, the delirium. “You are doing very well. Do you want to try to sit up?”

We’re alone. I’m on a real bed now, still in a sterile white room, surrounded by office furniture and medical equipment, and it’s mostly dark. Easy on my eyes. The walls and the door are plated with glass so that I can see the rest of the complex. Blue light from the pool room slithers across the ceiling.

With Cherchette’s help, I manage to pull myself into a sitting position. The room sways at first but eventually the vertigo passes and I can hold a cup of water without dropping it.

“The pain is only temporary. It will be much better soon.” She strokes my hair, like a mother tending to a sick child, and I wonder if she did this for Jacques. If she reassured him the same way. How can she be sure?

“I’m not afraid of pain,” I say.

Pain, at least, I can withstand, battle through it to emerge on the other side. But weakness . . . I’m so used to being strong; I’m terrified that this formula flipped a switch in me and I’ll never be the same. All my power-related problems will be gone, but the person I’ve become will cease to exist.

Normal
—I’ve never been more afraid of that word.

Cherchette tells me to take a deep breath, presses her stethoscope to my back as I slowly exhale. She checks all my vital signs, records the results on her clipboard. She even measures my arms, my chest, my waist, as if my body’s going to spontaneously change shape or something.

Hell, I don’t know; maybe it will.

“Can you stand, Avery? Stage Two may affect your mass, so I would like to get a starting weight for you.” She gestures to the medical scale next to the bed, takes my arm, and lets me lean on her as I step onto the scale—a strangely familiar feeling, since I’ve been weighed probably hundreds of times for wrestling. She steps behind me, picks up her clipboard, and stops. “What is—”

I turn, and see her squint before she quickly plucks something off the back of my pants. I’m about to tell her—politely—
not
to touch my butt when I see it: pinched between her nails is a small lavender sliver of plastic, the size of a girl’s fingernail. With spiky metal teeth on the back.

Holy—

Darla didn’t tag me. Sophie did.

“What’s this?” Cherchette turns it over, pokes the metal teeth that have held on to my pants all this time.

“Um.” Before I can think of a good answer, Cherchette lifts the sliver to her lips and blows, coating it with frost until it looks like it’s been dipped in liquid nitrogen. Then she flicks it with her fingertip and it disintegrates. “Clever. Does this mean I should be expecting company?”

“N-no, I don’t think so.”

“You know, I was perfectly content to leave your little friends alone.” Cherchette slams her tools into a drawer and locks it. “I can’t help them; they’ll never be more than they are. But I don’t take this sort of interference lightly. It’s bad enough that Jacques’s ambition has suffered and his defiance has virtually exploded since he began spending time with that girl. I could let that go; the children don’t know what they’re getting themselves into. But this is too much.”

“They’re not—” I’m fumbling; damn it, why can’t I get out a coherent thought? “It’s an earring or something. Probably my mom’s; she leaves her crap all over the house.”

“Avery. Look around you at the resources I possess. Do you think that I was born yesterday?”

“Listen: no one’s coming here! Jacques told Sophie to stay out of it and she listens to him! And Darla’s totally distanced herself; she doesn’t care what happens to us! I swear to you. And if I’m lying you can . . .” And I
am
lying; it’s never been more clear how
obvious
it is that Darla and Sophie would never leave their friends hanging out to dry. Darla’s loyal to a fault, and Sophie sticks to her friends like glue—even Jacques, when no one else trusted him. We’re in this together. All or nothing. “If I’m lying you can . . .”

My words fade away. I’m staring at the frosty dust that used to be solid plastic and metal. I’m remembering—even as my own body is failing me—that Cherchette came through Stage Two more powerful than ever. She could snuff me out in a second. She could end any one of us with a simple flick of her fingers.

“Avery—do not make deals with me. I am building a family here. And when I allow newcomers into my family, when I trust them and show them I care for them, I expect their loyalty.”

I bow my head, wondering where the others are, whether Catherine and Nicholas are okay. Heads or tails. My mind flips, the coin landing on
you’re screwed
. If we end up in trouble, I won’t be able to save them. I’m not the alpha-perfect-golden-boy anymore.

I’m a liability. Weaker than I’ve ever been.

“I have dedicated my life to this,” Cherchette says quietly. “I have been mistreated so many times by people who could not understand me—who would
never
accept me. And it has taken me years, to . . . to find others who would understand. I won’t be betrayed by my own kind. It’s unacceptable. I have worked too hard to bring us together.”

“What happened to you?” I say. “Why are you doing this?” My voice breaks. I don’t understand. Why does she throw around words like
family
with kids like Leilani and me, but then discard Charlie and Sophie like trash?

“Ah, Avery.” Cherchette sighs. “You are opening Pandora’s box, asking me that. I don’t wish to burden you with the darkness and despair that has come before. We can move on from this.”

“Obviously you can’t,” I say, almost wincing as the words leave my lips, expecting her to lash out in retaliation. Cherchette blinks at me, dumbfounded, her eyes suddenly wide, like a child’s. Stage Two is breaking down my self-censor—either that or my will to live. Because I can’t stop myself. I let everything out. “You can’t move on or you wouldn’t be doing this, playing with us. How am I supposed to feel safe here—how are any of us?—if you’re so willing to lay down the law as soon as one of us fails to play by your rules? We didn’t come looking for you. We haven’t agreed to anything.”

The innocence in Cherchette’s face closes up. She seems angry again, and fully aware of the power discrepancy between us. “You said you
wanted
to be here. That you knew that you belonged here. You came to be better than you are, more special. Stage Two is not something to toy with. And if you can’t appreciate that, or the other things I’ve done for you . . .”

“I know, I know,” I say. “I wouldn’t be what I am without you. You made us like this—that’s what Jacques said. And it’s true, isn’t it? You gave us these powers, you threw us into a world that didn’t know what to do with us, and now you pick and choose who you want to help. Why would you play with our lives like that if you don’t even—if some of us don’t even warrant your time?”
Like Charlie. Like Sophie. Like your own son, Jacques.
I manage to bite back that much.

Arguing is wearing me down, sending me spiraling into the draining depths of Stage Two-based exhaustion. There’s no adrenaline here to save me. No super energy. Just my own body fighting not to kill itself.

Cherchette touches my hand gently. “You don’t understand, Avery. Let’s not be enemies,” she murmurs. “I didn’t know what would happen, when I . . . when Stage One began. I had to take chances, because I couldn’t be alone. I couldn’t. I’ve opened up your world, Avery—I’ve given you a gift other boys your age would die to have. And some of them did die. Some of the children didn’t make it—I admit that, and it’s very unfortunate. But it’s a natural test, you see—like natural selection. It makes what
you’ve
become all the more special.”

She smiles and strokes my hand, almost happy. I shiver each time her fingers make contact with my skin.

“Nature doesn’t make mistakes. Nature weeds out the weak, the unfit. We have to accept that we are different. I . . . have been different. Since I was a young girl. My father . . .”

She pauses, her face contorting with bitterness, maybe sadness, like she’s struggling to contain something. “My father was far more ambitious than I could ever be. He was driven by the thrill of discovery, the power that comes with shaping the future, adapting humanity. A forced evolution of sorts. What might mankind require to survive in the future? What skills or specialties might be buried within us, waiting for the right mutation to act as a catalyst and change our race forever?

“He used me as his test subject. I was an only child and he wasn’t fond of children, but he found a use for me—his perfect little experiment. A subject who would always keep her mouth shut, who would dutifully suffer the injections and the analysis.

“The pain that I endured as the experiments wrought changes upon my body was so intense that I cannot describe it. And yet my father, the scientist, continued to administer his revised formulas as if I were a tower he was building, and all he cared about was how tall it could become, with no thought as to what might make it collapse. I think he imagined that he would one day create a race of supermen, once he had perfected his formula. But he failed to account for what I might do once I was truly strong, truly my own person, unwilling to endure any more. And that . . . that is all I wish to say about my father. You want to know why I created you, why I would inflict that transformation on others, when I had suffered so terribly?”

I do want to know. “Please.”

“I inherited my father’s formula—I inherited everything. I told myself I would live a simple, normal life—dull, even.”

She smiles at me, like this is our private joke.

“But as I made my way in the world, I realized that a normal life was out of my grasp. I would forever be hiding my true self. I wished for siblings and peers who did not exist. I had been the first, but now I possessed my father’s formula. Perhaps I could create others, and we could be our own family, our own society. The strongest, the fittest and most special, as chosen by nature. You understand me now, don’t you?”

She flashes a bright, fervent smile, and I give a tight, upturned grimace in return, too sick and conflicted to really know how to feel about this.

On the one hand, I love my powers. I claim them, I own them (or at least what’s left of them); they make me who I am. But kids died because of Stage One. And others have had their lives ruined—like Charlie. That’s not nature; it’s not “meant to be.” That’s what Cherchette doesn’t understand. With her it’s black or white; we’re either fit or unfit for survival. Like she said about Jacques, when Stage Two brought him down: it was his own fault. No apologies.

I open my mouth to say something neutral, searching for a way to soothe her, to make her forget about Darla and Sophie. But something within me is still shocked, speechless. Too sick, too weak, too scared to know how to tell her that it doesn’t have to be this way. Precious seconds go by in silence, and Cherchette’s introspective air slips away, replaced by something stiff and wounded. Slowly, her eyes drift back to the pulverized remains of Darla’s tracking device, and as her features grow hard and begin to freeze over, I know that any chance I may have had to stop this is gone.

“Enough. I have a mess to clean up.” Cherchette’s voice is cold, sharp. “It is hard on you now, but one day you will understand that I act only out of necessity—to protect our family from those who wish to hurt us.”

“Cherchette, wait,” I say.

“It is time for you to rest.” She shuts the door solidly behind her and locks it. I thump my fists against the observation window, try to get her attention as she’s walking away—“Wait! Let’s talk about this!”—but she ignores me. I
know
what she’s doing—and I can’t just sit here while she masterminds my friends’ deaths.

Using the walls for balance, I shove my way over to the desk where she keeps her medical equipment, searching for a misplaced key or a phone that makes outgoing calls. If I can at least
contact
Darla and Sophie, I can tell them Cherchette’s expecting them: ABORT! ABORT!

I’m busy trying to break into the desk—an act that would’ve taken me two seconds back before Cherchette pumped my veins full of phosphorescent poison—when an explosion rocks the whole headquarters. I whip around, the sudden spin making me dizzy, and see a cloud of brick dust and debris fill the pool room as the outer wall crumbles. A huge, boxy, shadowed figure appears in the opening—like in those old Kool-Aid commercials where Kool-Aid man busts through a wall to save kids from their own thirstiness, yelling:
Ohhhh yeah!

Only it’s not Kool-Aid man. It’s a giant purple robot with Sophie stuck to its shoulder. She’s in skimpy, bright blue neoprene, armed with the massive pink gun from Darla’s workshop.

Darla’s voice explodes from the robot’s loudspeaker, all garbled and metallic but still Darla enough to be recognizable: “It’s ON like Donkey Kong, Ice Queen! You’re going DOWN!”