Eve and Adam (23 page)

– 41 –

SOLO

“Terra!” Tommy says.

“You think…” Dr. Chen says with a gasp. “You think she knows?”

“Who else would decant Adam?” Tommy rages.

“But why would she do such a thing?” Dr. Gold asks. “She doesn’t even know he exists.”

“Clearly she knows he exists, Doctor,” Martinez says with a slight sneer on the word “doctor.” “How else could she decant him?”

Dr. Anapura sees the anger in Tommy’s face—mostly beneath the tattoo that says “Pixies”—and says defensively, “I checked! She hasn’t been down here since the Plisskens died! And there are no cameras except the one we used to show the supposed simulation!”

“Wait a minute,” I say. No one pays attention.

“Oh my God, she knows,” Dr. Chen cries. He’s dancing from foot to foot like a child scared of visiting the dentist.

“We’ll deal with her,” Tommy snarls.

“Deal with her? Deal with
her
?” Dr. Chen is nearly weeping. And I can see the fear beginning to infect the others.

Sullivan from accounting has gone pale. “I’m the one who’s on the hook for moving funds around. I’m the one who has been moving money out of Level One budgets into the Adam Project.” He’s panting like a hunted animal. “I’m going to go to jail. I’m going to prison! What am I supposed to tell my wife?”

“I can’t handle prison!” Dr. Chen wails. “I’m an intellectual!”

“Shut up, all of you,” Tommy snaps. “You’re scared of one middle-aged woman?”

The consensus seems to be that yes, yes they are very scared of Terra Spiker.

“Hey!” I yell. “Hey! What is this, some puppet show you’re putting on for my benefit? Like Terra Spiker isn’t the one behind all of this?”

Tommy turns on me, his eyes blazing. “You know, you’re really not as smart as your parents, are you? Your parents? They were geniuses! Maybe when we put you in the tank we can raise your IQ a few points so you can keep up.”

In the tank? I’m not sure what that means, but I can guess. Even with my limited IQ. But that’s not the point. That’s not why I meet Tommy’s gaze and say, “Listen, Dr. Holyfield. You have to tell me.”

“Yeah, so you got into my computer, good for you, kid. But you didn’t learn much, did you?”

“We have to run!” Dr. Chen cries. “I have family in Guangdong Province!”

Tommy leans close, his expression cruel. “You stupid little nobody. Your parents were gods to me. Terra Spiker threatened to have them arrested. Terra Spiker forced them out of the company. You’d be worth billions, kid. Billions!”

“Why did she threaten them?” I ask, but I’ve already guessed.

“You think Adam was the first human we made? Before there can be perfection there has to be experimentation. The Plisskens made a baby boy. We named him Golem. He died. Because of a slight flaw in his genetic makeup.”

“His sphincter was on his forehead,” Dr. Anapura says.

“He didn’t suffer,” Dr. Gold reassures me. “He was basically stillborn.”

“No,” I whisper.

“It’s not so easy being God,” Tommy says, and a shadow passes over his face. A memory, perhaps. Or a regret. “You can’t always get it right. But the Plisskens had already developed the Logan Serum. The thing that allows you to recover so quickly when I do this—”

Tommy smashes his fist into my face.

His audience gasps.

“Little Evening had a heart deformity,” Tommy says. “Surgery would have been very dangerous. And the Plisskens had the cure, a side benefit of the research they were doing. Terra traded them her silence for the cure. But she tried to get them to quit. She ordered them to stop.”

“You’re telling me my parents were monsters?” I say. I won’t show any emotion.

I can’t, won’t, refuse to.

But it’s coming clear to me now. I don’t like the picture.

It could be Tommy’s lying just to mess with me. But no. The others are nodding along. They all know the story. Only I am in the dark.

I’m the fool.

“Everything you see down here, it’s all their work, theirs … and mine. Oh, I know how your little mind works, Solo the bagel boy. I know how conventional you are. Inadequate. Thank God your parents are dead or they’d die of shame!”

My parents were monsters.

Terra Spiker is … I don’t know quite what she is.

“Look! He’s going to cry,” Tommy mocks. “Dr. Anapura, Martinez, Sullivan: Get him into the tank. We’ll see if we can’t make him a bit more malleable.”

“What about Spiker?” Dr. Gold asks.

“We’re going to deal with her right now,” Tommy says.

I struggle. But I’m tied up. And worse yet, I’m beaten.

I’ve never been beaten. Even when I box and get my ass kicked, I never lay down, I never admit defeat. But now I feel like I’ve been gutted. Like I’ve been turned inside out.

I struggle. But at some level I almost think I deserve to be shoved into the tank. I’ve been an idiot. I’ve screwed up everything.

I’m the son of monsters, and I almost destroyed Terra Spiker who … even now, even as they drag me away, I can’t quite wrap my head around it … Terra Spiker, who wasn’t the worst person in the world.

– 42 –

The rest of the trip is, shall we say, awkward.

I, the creator, sit by myself while my creation talks shyly with Aislin, and Aislin talks shyly with him.

I, the smart one, am feeling pretty stupid.

I’m thinking about my mother—soon to be in a federal prison. I’m thinking about the vengeful guy who dictated that fate. I’m thinking that Adam is superior to Solo in every possible way.

And I’m wishing Solo was with me.

The bus lets us out a mile from the Spiker campus. We trudge along together for a while down the steep, curving two-lane road, dodging aside to avoid being run over by the occasional BMW.

Aislin and Adam walk together. It just seems natural for me to get out in front a little.

A Porsche comes tearing around a blind corner and nearly hits Adam.

I see the driver’s face. His mouth is a big O. His eyes are wide.

The brakes screech. The car stops a couple hundred yards away. The backup lights glow and the car swerves back toward us.

It stops. The window rolls down. There’s a bland, vaguely familiar, middle-aged man behind the wheel. Complete mismatch between the driver and the car.

“It’s him!” the man cries.

He’s looking at Adam.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“Sullivan. From accounting. I—” He’s confused, clutching the wheel like Wile E. Coyote holding on to his latest rocket sled. “You better look out,” he says at last. “They’re crazy. They’re really crazy.”

“Who’s crazy?”

“All of them.” He spits the words out. “All those scientists. They’re all nuts!”

“What’s happening?” I demand. I put my hands on the door, trying to convince him not to bolt. But he rears back, scared.

“I have no part in this!” he cries. “I just moved the money around. I’m not putting people in vats or, or, whatever they’re planning to do.”

He puts the car into gear and, with a final terrified look, goes tearing off down the road.

“We need to hurry,” I say. “You two go as fast as you can. I’ll run the rest of the way.”

“I can run,” Adam says. Of course he can run. He has amazing legs, incredible stamina, maximized lungs, all the things I gave him.

“Yeah, but Aislin doesn’t so much run as trip and stagger,” I point out.

Aislin makes a face that says
Yep, true.

“Adam, take care of Aislin.” I head off.

It’s the first time I’ve run since the accident. I wasn’t sure I’d ever do it again. My muscles are out of practice, but to my surprise, my breathing is smooth and easy. I wish I were in shorts, not jeans, but it still feels good. More than good.

I reach Paradise Drive and leave the cross streets and houses behind me. There’s a bend in the road, with trees on one side and open hillside on the other.

Right, left, right, left. I’m in high gear now. The familiar rhythm lulls me.

Up ahead on my right is the shattered stump of a big pine tree. The small hairs on the back of my neck rise.

The stump is weathered and gray, mangled. The damage happened long ago.

Six years ago, in fact.

I know this place. I forced myself to come here once, when I was about thirteen. I touched the sharp edges of the wood. It was still clinging to life, but I knew it was dying.

Once was enough.

Now, on foot, it’s unavoidable. My throat closes up and my easy breathing is a memory.

This is the place where my father died. This tree is the one his car hit when he went off the road. That drop is the slope his car plunged down.

I want to keep running, but my legs aren’t having it. I slow to a walk. I stop altogether.

I bend over, hugging myself, and I sob.

No time. No time.

I gulp some air and start running again, faster than before, my legs pistoning.

*   *   *

From the road you can’t really see the main Spiker building, just the top floor. I can’t run down the steep driveway. I have to walk in giant going-downhill steps, fighting gravity.

I near the entrance to the underground garage. My mother’s gleaming white Mercedes convertible is in her designated space. She’s never put the top down.

I glance back, wondering how far behind me Adam and Aislin are. I’m scared. I’ve rushed in here like I have a plan.

For the first time in my life, I wish I had some kind of weapon.

I survey the garage for something weapony. My mind’s racing with made-up dialogue.

Hi, Mom, Solo and I sold you out and how are you? Nice blouse. By the way, I need some more cash.

So, Mom, while you’re in prison can I stay in the house alone? Please? I’m old enough!

Mom … what the hell?

There’s a fire extinguisher near the entrance. I take it from the hook. It’s surprisingly heavy. How do they expect people to use these things? But I find the size and weight and general metal-ness of the thing kind of reassuring.

Up the elevator. I have to punch in a code to get to my mother’s office. For some reason, my addled brain actually remembers it.

Even now, scared, tired, and a thousand times more confused than I’ve ever been before in my life, even now, with some disturbing montage of Solo and Adam and Aislin and the gangbanger and the scared Mr. Sullivan from accounting, even with the eerie images from the flash drive, even with all of it swirling like a tornado inside my brain, I have energy left over to feel nervous.

Why? Because I’m going to be interrupting my mother.

My mother does not like to be interrupted.

I approach her office on tiptoe. The door to her outer office, the one inhabited by her assistants, is wide open. The computer screens are blank. The lights are low.

The portal—it’s way too impressive and huge to call a door—leading to Mom’s office is closed. I press my ear against it. I hear the murmur of voices. Not happy voices. Angry voices. Of course, that’s normal enough in Terra Spiker’s office.

My fire extinguisher bangs against a planter and instinctively I say, “Shhh!” But I doubt anyone hears. Not over the sound of yelling.

“Hey!”

I spin on my heels. A man and a woman have come up behind me. The woman is small, dark-skinned, with penetrating eyes and an extremely long braid. The man is sweating. He is large in all dimensions and has on a name tag that reads
DR. MARTINEZ
.

I stare at them. They stare at me. No one knows what’s going on, it seems.

“Are you here to see my mother?” I ask.

“Are you?” the woman demands.

The man asks, “Is there a fire?”

“Oh, this?” I glance down at the extinguisher in my hand. “This is—”

He leaps for me. But he’s a large guy and definitely not a quick guy.

I back up, banging into the door as he slams into the wall to my right.

“Martinez!” the woman cries. “Get her!”

“Get me?” I repeat it in shock. Seriously?
Get her?
It sounds so comic book.

“She’s the boss’s daughter,” Martinez protests.

“We’re probably going to kill the boss,” the woman points out in a voice that’s all reasonableness, with just a tinge of hysteria.

This isn’t news to Martinez, but he seems embarrassed by it. It’s something they don’t want to say in front of me.

Martinez lunges. I push back against the door. It gives way and I stumble back. I drop the extinguisher. It rolls a bit, then comes to a stop. I catch myself before I can fall, then pivot to see the tableau before me.

My mother’s office is as extreme as ever. The waterfall still pours. My father’s extraordinary, oversized sculptures still hang on wires from the impossibly distant ceiling.

My mother stands behind her desk. She is casually dressed in a custom suit flown in from her London designer, a twenty-thousand-dollar watch, and a diamond necklace worth more than the lifetime wages of a hundred Guatemalan families combined. As always, she radiates the scent of Bulgari. I can’t see her shoes, but I am morally certain that they are
not
a beat-up pair of Nikes.