Project Cain (9 page)

I just stared at Castillo.

You mind? he said. I kinda got a lot of work to do.

And that was it for the next three hours. He went back to his laptops. Every once in a while he put a new dot on the map. I watched TV with the sound down. Tried not to think about words like “SKINNED” or “RAPED” or “GUTTED.” Wished there was something to read.

Wished I was somewhere else.

Wished mostly I was
someone
else.

•  •  •

So then, out of basically nowhere, Castillo told me to grab us some food.

I looked over dreamily, shaken from my dim and unhappy musings.

He reached into his pocket to get some cash and said neither one of us had eaten since never and there was a Subway right next door and an Arby’s a little down and that I should pick one and get us something.

I stood confused.
Why would he do this? Why . . .
He’d earlier gotten so worried about my taking off. Getting seen. Now I was being sent into public on an errand.

He handed me the money. A hundred-dollar bill!

And he’d totally passed up several twenties and tens to give me it.

Then I knew.

He wasn’t giving me money for dinner. He was giving me money to get out of his life.

It was my father all over again. It was I-never-want-to-see-you-again money.

A hundred whole dollars’ worth.

At least my dad had the decency to give me a thousand.

I couldn’t decide if I should be insulted or applaud Castillo for at least trying to be a little subtle about the whole thing. That same morning he’d said he’d give me some money and a week’s head start if it looked like DSTI ever got around to admitting I existed and wanted him to find me.

He clearly didn’t want/need my help and also didn’t want/need me as a prisoner anymore.

Looked like my week had officially started.

I
shut the door behind me and just stood outside our room awhile. It was close to midnight. The motel parking lot was empty, quiet.

I tried to tell myself this was all just some kind of a test for Castillo to see what I would do if given a chance to escape. But it wasn’t. Just like my father’s desertion hadn’t been a test. Maybe all that time spent around counselors and therapists and scientists and stuff, I’d started seeing
everything
in my life as some kind of big test. And maybe it was. I mean, I
had
been little more than a lab rat to these people. To DSTI, to my father. I
had
been secretly tested on a regular basis. I’d even seen the folder to prove it.

But not anymore. I wasn’t being observed or recorded or analyzed. Quite the opposite.

Not one person on Earth gave a damn where I was or what I was doing.

If you’ve ever known this feeling, I’m very sorry.

•  •  •

So, NOT a test. Castillo’d given me a hundred-dollar pass and an opened cage door. He wasn’t gonna send me back to DSTI or call the
cops or anything. He was just gonna let me, by my own doing, vanish. Because he knew I couldn’t help him at all. Because he knew I was completely POINTLESS. And, so, now I was also completely free.

•  •  •

I got completely free all the way to Subway. (Really, what else was I gonna do?)

I looked around the motel first and tried to get my bearings. I’d been more out of it when we’d first arrived, kind of emotionally/physically/mentally wiped out, stumbling behind Castillo like some kind of half-wit zombie. Now I gave the place a better look. Didn’t see anywhere with a pay phone. I wanted to call my dad. Maybe he’d pick up this time. Tell me what was
really
going on. Tell me what to do. Tell me it was all a stupid joke. A misunderstanding.
Come and get me.

So I wandered toward the main office to see if they had a phone I could use. The guy at the desk was some skinny old guy, and when I told him I was looking for the phone, his face scrunched up like he’d eaten something bad and he told me there was a phone in my room.

So I just kept going to Subway. They didn’t have a phone either.

I ended up ordering two sandwiches. I don’t know why. At this point I had no intention of ever going back to that room, of ever seeing Castillo again. I guess I was just on autopilot. Practically sleepwalking. Nightmarewalking. I pointed at food and picked bread and grunted out answers about whether or not I wanted stuff toasted or not. I wasn’t even sure what I had just ordered.

The guy making the sandwiches kept looking at me all weird. He probably knew my hair was dyed. He probably thought I was the spitting image of that “one-guy-you-know-the-one-sure-you-do-that-serial-killer-guy.”

I wondered how many people even knew what Jeffrey Dahmer looks—looked—like. I mean, was it just a name that people knew and used? Or did everyone in the country know what this freak looked like? And, if so, how much did I
really
look like him?

•  •  •

I’ve since read that only 22% of American adults identified “Gerald Ford” as the name of a recent US President, but 98% could, on the very first try, identify the name “Jeffrey Dahmer” as a serial killer.

•  •  •

I handed the Subway guy the money, and he looked at me all weird again. Maybe because it was a hundred. Probably because I looked exactly like someone who’d murdered seventeen people.

He asked if I needed anything to drink. I’m not sure if I answered him. I took the two subs to the far end of the empty store and sat at a table with my back to the guy. I ate in the same haze with which I’d ordered. Trying to decide what to do next. I had ninety dollars now.

Where and how far was I gonna get with ninety dollars?

I sat there for a long time. Started thinking about my dad again. If I could just get ahold of him, he’d . . .
He’d what?
Who knew anymore?

Castillo had told me a little about the experiments conducted on some of the boys who were missing. Maybe “experiments” isn’t the best word. “Prescriptions”? “Treatments”?

Maybe “TORTURE” was the best word.

Torture orchestrated by DSTI.

By my father.

•  •  •

Some of the clone boys had been beaten. Even molested. By their “adoptive parents.” Some of the boys had
just
been verbally abused.
Told they were worthless, stupid, gay, whatever. Some had been given drugs and alcohol. Or forced to kill animals. Or to watch porn. Or . . . All kinds of things just to replicate some of the bad life things that had happened to the original killers.

(THIS is the man I was supposed to call? The man who would save me?)

But some clones were completely, unreservedly, utterly left alone. I don’t mean
alone
alone. They had parents and all that, but there was none of that bad stuff going on. Nothing pervy or twisted. You know, raised like “normal” kids. Soccer teams and swim lessons and Subway sandwiches. And, quite honestly, that’s exactly how I’d been raised. Normal. My father had never laid a hand on me. Never called me names or gotten me high. Never put me in dangerous or confusing situations. The man took me to museums and parks and talked to me about science and history. Signed me up for soccer camps and piano lessons. Found me the best tutors and speech therapists money could buy.

But
WHY    
? Why did I get piano lessons and another guy, maybe even another Jeff, had gotten molested by guys HIS fake dad had met on Craigslist?

I knew enough basic science to understand test groups and controlled experiments. DSTI had created us all to harness the XP11 violence gene. Guess they wanted to determine precisely how much of the violence was directly related to the gene and how much was connected to environment.

If Ted #1 had
x
level of violence in his system, how much would Ted #2 have if we just added a little physical violence? Mild routine spankings, say. And how much would Ted #3 develop if the spankings were
actual beatings? And what if Ted #4’s beatings include molestation? And Ted #5 . . .

These are the games DSTI was playing. The tests they were running for almost twenty years. And my . . . my own father had been head of the entire operation.

WHY?
I screamed inside my head again.
Why would he do something like that?

A distant voice said something, saved me from my thoughts.

I turned to the Subway guy, who asked me again if I was OK, said I looked a little zoned out.

I told him I was just tired.

Then I asked if he had a pen and some paper I could use.

He eyed me curiously, then nodded.

I pushed my half-eaten sub aside and worked for the next twenty minutes.

I’d never worked so hard at anything in my whole life.

•  •  •

So there’s no confusion here, I 100% still knew Castillo wanted me to go away. I just didn’t care. I wanted to prove to him he was wrong. I
was
worth keeping around. I
could
help.

Find the other guys. Find my father.

And if I couldn’t, well, then I guess Castillo was just gonna have to shoot me and dump me in the woods.

Or give me more than a hundred dollars.

•  •  •

What’s this? Castillo asked when I returned to the motel room.

If he was upset about my return, I didn’t notice. I was too excited.

I presented Castillo with my list of everywhere my father had
ever taken me. Every city, store, restaurant, resort, museum, park . . . everywhere. Another list of every city I could remember he ever went to. Conferences and guest lectures and stuff. Places he said he was going. I’d even made little stars where he’d brought me back a souvenir or something.

Castillo read the whole list. Both sides of the paper were completely full.

I asked if it was good.

He nodded. It’s a start, he said.

And for the first time, I felt that too.

T
hat same night, Ted found me in a dream.

I don’t know how he did it. I don’t even know now if it
was
a dream, but I also wouldn’t know what else to call it. Any other possibility—whether more supernatural or even scientific—would be even more terrifying. In any case, I knew it was him right away.

Ted Thompson was the most awful boy I’d ever met.

But the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?

Ted Thompson had been made from the DNA of Ted Bundy.

One of the biggies. First-ballot Hall of Fame for Serial Killers.

In the 1970s, Bundy raped and murdered thirty women in just four years. He’s infamous now for being kinda good-looking and would just walk up to women and ask for help, pretend to be hurt, or lost, or . . . And they’d take one look at his big blue eyes and shaggy hair and crooked smile, and that was that. And then he’d rape and kill them.

Sometimes (a dozen times) he decapitated his victims and kept their heads as souvenirs. Sometimes he went back to where the dead bodies were hidden and did sex stuff. Sometimes he’d just randomly break into girls’ houses and beat them to death while he
masturbated. He escaped from prison twice, and the second time invaded a whole college sorority, successfully attacking four different women.