Evenfall (25 page)

Boyd paused, his eyebrows drawing down in thought. "But that seems incongruous with a person who would care about strangers being hurt. I haven't heard of him helping anyone at the Agency and I can't imagine there are never any wrongs committed here. So what causes him to help one person and not another? Is it based on the type of crime committed or the age of the victim? Has he ever helped other people aside from that girl or did something about her specifically speak to him?"

Ryan shrugged and held up a finger. His mouth was completely full and an attempt to talk around the food failed. He picked up his glass of milk and swallowed with a lip smacking sound.

"Well, I dunno. No one knows what makes him tick-- all I did was compile data and do a bunch of guesswork after he was assigned to the unit. But I do know that he considers just about everyone at the Agency his enemy so that doesn't help any would-be victims 'round these parts, know what I mean?"

He wiped his mouth and opened the pill bottles. "Like, except me and Zachary I don't really know anyone who doesn't consider him to be not... some kind of freak. And it's always been that way, even from the start. It's been years of people hating him and him hating epically in return. So yeah, I dunno. There's been conjecture by his doctors over that incident-- that he helped that girl because she was just a kid and was helpless and it brought up stuff from his own childhood. In the end, though, they think he went berserk because he was so outnumbered and felt super threatened."

"His own childhood?"

"Yep. All sorts of issues there."

Ryan hopped off his chair and began cleaning up the crumbs that had accumulated on the counter. He then stopped in mid-swipe, shook his head and instead began opening the pill bottles.

"What happened?" Boyd pressed when it became clear Ryan wasn't going to elaborate.

Having an extended discussion with Ryan apparently involved many interruptions and long pauses. He looked constantly distracted, as if he was supposed to be doing several different things at once and was having a hard time keeping them in order and getting them all done at the same time as talking.

Ryan paused yet again and began doling out pills for himself, taking them with large gulps of milk. When he was done with his routine, only then did he respond.

"There's a lot of conjecture 'bout it," he said around a half-gagged swallow of a large pill. "His earlier doctors thought he'd been badly abused as a young child whenever he lived with his mother. Then his father, Emilio, took him on and trained him to be a killer from like age eight, so I'm sure whatever method he used wasn't exactly... child protective services friendly."

Boyd was silent a moment. In that context, Sin's actions made sense to an extent. If he'd been abused since childhood he would likely have great distrust for anyone else, especially in the Agency where he'd been repeatedly treated poorly. He thought it could also make sense if Sin had identified with the defenseless young girl.

Still, although it had been referenced during training that Sin occasionally had psychotic episodes, Boyd didn't understand much about them.

"You said he went berserk and that he was in automatic defense mode. What does that mean exactly?" "Didn't they tell you anything?"

"No," Boyd said, shaking his head. "They told us that he occasionally has psychotic breakdowns and the triggers are unknown. We were given the remote for his collar and were informed that it was because of his unpredictability that the Agency required that he have a partner."

Ryan made a thoughtful sound and studied Boyd for a moment, scratching his fingers through his unruly mass of black hair. "I guess it makes sense a tiny bit... they didn't want to make it all about what bad stuff has happened."

"Most likely," Boyd agreed. "But I want to understand what I'm dealing with. I don't want to only be given the convenient information."

The R&D agent made a noncommittal sound and moved around the counter to stand on the opposite side. He leaned against it, crossing his skinny arms over his thin chest as he watched Boyd thoughtfully. It was obvious that he still wasn't entirely trustful of Boyd which wasn't too surprising considering the previous additions to the unit. But at least Ryan seemed willing cooperate.

"So--"

He stopped, seemed to rethink whatever he was going to say and shifted slightly. "I'm going through everything in my head... And, as far as I know there are five documented occurrences of him having those episodes. Like, not him having them in general but it being documented because something bad happened as a result. I'm sure it's happened other times but nothing dramatic came of it. Anyways, two were before the Vickland thing and two were after. I mean there's a difference between him getting sick of someone and beating their ass and going into automatic kill mode, like I was saying."

"What's the difference?"

Ryan shrugged and walked over to finally sit next to Boyd. He crossed one knee over the other and swung his foot idly against the sofa. "One is the normal reaction of someone who has been trained to be a lethal weapon since like, before puberty but the other... the other is like, Hsin becoming someone else. It looks a lot like he completely shuts down mentally and only sees everyone around him as a threat and he starts just-- well, killing. Or torturing. Just going mental with violence until everything around him stops moving. Usually it takes someone sedating him to get him to stop and when he comes to, he's fine."

Boyd's eyebrows twitched up faintly. The Agency truly must not care about Sin's partners to not specify that such unbridled violence was a possibility. Especially if the triggers were unknown. "You mentioned he targets those he sees as a threat. Does that mean he only attacks aggressors or does he attack everyone in the vicinity?"

This time Ryan stopped and rolled his eyes upward as though he were reading an imaginary panel screen as he searched for an accurate answer. After a moment he nodded decisively. "I'm not sure really. I'd think you'd be okay if you just stayed away, but there's no way to be sure."

"Interesting," Boyd said mostly to himself, and relaxed back into the chair. "And the other times? What happened?"

This time the hesitation was longer and Ryan fiddled with his pants, looking around the room as if for guidance. While he clearly didn't seem to think the Agency's tactic for leaving Boyd in the dark was the wisest, he didn't seem overly sure of himself about overriding their decision.

He stood up again and began pacing the living room, picking up his little robot figure and playing with the wings. "Well the first two happened, like, when he first got here. The first one was because some of the older-- well, you have to understand, Boyd. Even here, some people have a real stupid ass bully mentality. Some of the guards and lower ranked field agents are especially bad. They didn't like that this kid was an automatic rank 9, right? So they decided to mess with him one day after he'd been in the training room; push him around, surround him, see what he's made of-- meanwhile it's all on camera. He had a bad episode and put three in the infirmary and cracked two of their necks. He was fourteen and like almost a hundred pounds skinnier than any of those dudes easily."

That was the first concrete example Boyd had been given for why someone within the Agency may fear Sin. No one had likely expected Sin to be capable of such a feat. "Was anyone punished for the incident?"

"The guards were. That was the first time something bad happened and since they provoked him outright, it wasn't really his fault. But then everyone knew something wasn't right with him so that's when a lot of rumors started."

Ryan frowned and sat down again, this time on a little ottoman near the couch. He placed his robot on it and stared. "I remember when I heard about that, I got really scared of him. Connors at first didn't know what to do with Hsin. He thought since he was so young, maybe he should be his ward and live with us but after that he moved him out and put him in this room on the Fourth. Not a real cell but... a crappy room that was monitored all the time."

Boyd noted that between the information he'd been given by his mother and Ryan, that meant that Sin had spent the majority of his life at the Agency locked up.

Something else caught Boyd's attention from Ryan's explanation; an oddity that stood out. "You lived with Connors?" he asked curiously.

"Oh. Right." Ryan rattled off the story without blinking, as if it didn't bother him to speak of it. "My parents were a part of the Agency. My dad was a lab tech and my mother was an analyst. They both died from the lung sickness when I was young and Connors took me in. I'd grown up on the compound so he basically knew I'd always be a part of it in some way. It helped that by that time, when I was six, I'd already tested beyond high school level. So I was useful to him and stuff." Boyd's eyebrow raised. "Impressive."

Ryan made a face. "Not really. It's not like I worked for it. I was basically born this way. I could read before most babies learned how to speak."

"The fact that it's a natural talent doesn't make it less impressive," Boyd replied with a shrug. "It just means that you'll be ahead of others and have the ability to go farther than anyone else."

There was no response to that. Ryan didn't seem to want to talk too much about the fact that he was a genius or anything to do with his IQ. In fact the topic seemed unpleasant to him as a whole. So he just shrugged his thin shoulders and picked up the robot again, tossing it up and down.

He looked much younger than his twenty-four years at that moment, far younger than Boyd who was still a teenager. There was something about Ryan's animated face and small stature that made him look like an adolescent instead of a grown man.

"The next incident," he said, switching back to the previous topic, "was during his rank 10 training. It isn't as well documented because the training is top secret. I couldn't find video or specifics anywhere. Just that one of the people involved with the training got mangled."

"You never found out what started it?"

"Nope. Not one trace. It's referenced as a date in one of his doctor's files and I traced it to the time he was in his rank 10 training towards the end, but that's it."

"Hmm." Boyd wondered about the secrecy of that but ultimately decided it wasn't terribly surprising. Still, it was unfortunate, because he'd been paying attention to what had preceded Sin's episodes.

"And the other two times you mentioned?"

This time Ryan visibly squirmed. "I dunno if I should talk about it... It's pretty bad. I dunno."

That was an interesting reaction. "What are you worried about?"

Ryan sighed explosively and jumped up again, going over to the kitchen area and grabbing the bag of pretzels. "Nothing, really. I dunno-- it's just a sore topic. Most people super hate him hardcore for it."

"Without knowing what it is I can't say for certain, but I doubt it will drastically change my opinion." Boyd paused, watching Ryan thoughtfully. He wondered what was so much worse than Sin mangling people or killing a number of civilians. "If you have the information in some form you can simply give to me rather than having to tell me, that would work too."

There was a pause and Ryan shook his head. "No, it's better if I tell you. There's backstory involved and stuff. A real drama fit for TV. But, now that you mention it, I did compile all my data on a flash drive. Whenever he was put in the Janus unit, I started studying him a lot."

He munched on a pretzel and studied Boyd with round indigo eyes. "Well, it starts with Lydia Connors, really. She and her twin sister Ann are the Marshal's daughters." Boyd silently noted that Connors' daughter apparently was his mother's secretary, which was interesting. "They grew up here like me and both studied to be shrinks. Ann abandoned it but Lydia didn't. After the Vickland thing, Hsin was put in isolation on the Fourth for two years. When talk started about evaluating him to be let out, she pushed to be his doctor. Problem was, she had been infatuated with his dad back in the day and she kind of got infatuated with Hsin because he looked just like him."

That last tidbit of information stood out to Boyd; he hadn't realized that Sin looked like his deceased father. Maybe that fit into why Carhart seemed interested in supporting Sin.

He nodded, silently encouraging Ryan to continue.

Ryan finished chewing and extracted another pretzel, studying it. "So, actually Lydia wasn't all there herself. She used her position to put the moves on Hsin after giving him drugs that made him loopy and he went berserk and, well, now she lives up in the Willowbrook home and is catatonic."

Boyd watched Ryan in contemplation as he took in that information. "Was she threatening or controlling just prior to his episode?"

"Nope. Just taking advantage of the situation. She was asking him questions about his childhood at the same time. There's a video and everything; I'm not sure what triggered it really."

Boyd considered that a moment and then asked the other question he'd been wanting to verify. "You said earlier that he was abused as a child. Was it sexual abuse?"

Ryan made a sour face. "Not sure, he never went into details but it was hinted at. His mom was a prostitute so anything is possible. Apparently when he first got here he implied enough to make it sound like most of the abuse had happened while he'd been with her."

He started to open his mouth to say more but before he could, his cell phone trilled. One slim hand disappeared into one of the many pockets on his green cargo pants and Ryan glanced at the screen of the phone.