Strange Robby (40 page)

Finally the creep asked. "Would you like the helmet off?"

"No. Don't care," Spider said and rocked back and forth humming a tune.

"Wouldn't you like to see, too eat, to be a part of the world around you?"

She laughed then. "Ah! But I've never really been part of the world around me, have I? If you're asking me If I want to come out and play, the answer is no."

"Goddamn it!" he screamed. "Why are you making this so hard?"

"Why are you being such a weenie? The fucking Iraqis tortured me for five weeks and you're getting tired after a couple of days. At this rate it looks like you'll crack before I do."

She heard him walking away. The silent treatment again. She lay down and went to sleep.

When she woke up again someone was taking the helmet off her head. She tried to head butt the person taking the helmet off and got tazed for her troubles.

"Ouch! That smarted."

With the helmet off her head she looked around. Everyone was way out of reach. It took a second for her eyes to adjust, although it was hard to say if it was because of the sleep, the deprivation helmet, the tazing, or all the fucking drugs. Everyone was leaving the room. It made her wonder if she was free. She jumped up, started to run after them, came to the end of her tether, and fell with a clatter of chains to the floor. She rolled onto her back and looked at the ceiling.

"Now that was fucking stupid."

She heard someone crying. She turned and saw the back of what she assumed from the size and the haircut was a small boy.

"Ah, come on . . . What are you twisted fucks up to now!" Spider swore, getting to her feet.

"Turn around, Mark, she won't hurt you," the man said from the control booth.

"Don't turn around; it's a trick," Spider said. "They aren't your friends."

"I know that!" the boy screamed back. "Don't you think I know that?"

"Do what we tell you, boy," the man ordered.

"This shit isn't going to work," Spider started. "You twisted bastards aren't . . . " The boy turned around to face her, and she jumped back and screamed at the men behind the mirror. "That isn't Scott! Do you think I'm an idiot? My brother was a grown man when he died. You should know that—you killed him."

The man laughed. "You're right, this boy isn't your brother, Spider. The boy is your son."

Spider walked as close to the boy as the eight-foot chains on her ankles would let her. She looked at him, and as she did the dreams and the memories flooded back in on her.

The doctors and the lab coats, all that poking and prodding. It all made sense now. She fell to her knees and stared at the boy. She had no doubt that what they said was true; she could almost feel her blood coursing through him.

"All these years, the nightmares . . . You bastards were harvesting the eggs from my body," she hissed.

The head scientist walked in then. "So, you believe me, then."

"Whether what you are saying is true or not, I have no bond to this boy. I don't know him, and he doesn't know me. If you mean to torture him to death to get me to talk, then kill the boy and have it over with."

The boy cried loudly and made a run for the open door, where one of the SWTF guys grabbed him.

"The boy means nothing to me." Spider stared past the fat fuck into the hallway behind the door. She could feel the other guy standing in the doorway. He was scared, scared to be so close to the experiment, and he hated the fat guy. A gentle push—just add to the hatred that was already there. She'd never tried it without speaking except up close, but when the guy turned an expressionless face to her she knew she'd broken through. She wasn't going to try anything big just now, but maybe she could play this card later.

"That's why we're going to allow you some time alone together. To get to know each other," he said.

"It won't work," Spider said. "I'm not too overly sentimental when it comes to kids—mine or anyone else's. Besides, if you've made this one, you've made a dozen just like him."

"The children of the program are so funny." The scientist picked the boy's chin up and looked into his face as the security guard tried to hold the squirming boy still. The boy jerked his head away. "They are transplanted into a suitable candidate in the embryo state. No one—not the children—not the surrogate mother and father—nor anyone else should be able to figure out that they are not with their proper parents. Yet all of the children of the program know that they are not with their true parents. Isn't that right, Mark?"

"You go to hell!" the boy cursed.

"When you look at this woman, you can tell that she's your real mother, can't you?"

"Leave me alone!" Mark screamed.

"Why don't you leave the boy alone?" Spider said.

"Do you want to tell us who the Fry Guy is?"

"I've told you a million times. I don't know who the Fry Guy is."

"Why do you insult my intelligence!" he yelled.

Spider screamed back. "Because it would be wrong to insult your face!"

Mark started to laugh. So did Spider. The scientist's face got redder, and he stomped out of the room. The SWTF man threw the boy back in and stomped out after the scientist.

Spider jumped to her feet and managed to catch the boy with her body before he could make contact with the floor. Now Spider would have sworn she didn't have a maternal bone in her body, but as the boy's flesh met hers, there was a knowing and a one-ness that she had never felt with anyone before. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the boy was, in fact, her son.

She waited for him to steady himself, and then moved quickly away from him.

Mark turned around and looked at her.

She looked away. The last thing she wanted them to know was that she had any feelings at all for him.

"Are you . . . Are they telling the truth?" he asked.

"About me being your biological mother?" Spider asked sitting down. Her head was spinning, and she felt like she was going to vomit.

"Are you?" he asked.

"I think so. Yes," Spider said. "We're an experiment." She looked up at the window. "You, me, and a whole lot of other poor fucks out there. They believe they own us; that we belong to them, and that therefore they can do whatever they like to us."

Spider looked up at the window and then down at the floor. She concentrated, and then slowly and carefully she started to move her cuffed hands up her back.

Mark sat down, close to her. "Why?"

"Quiet, boy, you'll break my concentration," Spider said quietly.

"What the hell is she doing?" Don asked Fritz.

Fritz couldn't be bothered to answer; he was too busy watching.

Spider Webb walked her hands up her back and then over her head till her hands were in front of her. Then she slowly manipulated one hand out of the cuffs and started on the other.

"We have to stop her!" Don said. "She'll be loose!"

"I don't think she can get her feet loose," Fritz said. "She is amazing. Is she not amazing?"

Spider pulled the other hand free, then slung the cuffs into the window, and answered the boy's question by screaming at the two-way glass.

"Because they got nothing better to do with the taxpayers' money! Trying to make some kind of absolute soldier. Who knows how they did it or why? I only know that the stupid fucks seem to think it's perfectly OK to screw with people's bodies and their lives." She jumped to her feet and glared hard at the glass. "You kill people, and I'll kill you! Do you hear me? I'LL KILL YOU!"

"My God!" Don said, stunned. "Look at this reading!"

Fritz looked over his shoulder at the dials. The level of psychic activity that had just erupted in that room was . . . "None of our test subjects to date have been able to break a three. She just broke a six, and her nose isn't bleeding."

"I'm not sure the room can contain her, Fritz," Don said. "The room is only made to contain up to an eight. If she can do a six without trying, who's to say she couldn't do eight or more? The barrier won't hold."

"We can't afford to lose her as a breeder," Francis said. "The children of her first batch test higher than all the others from that same year."

"Mark is from her . . . ?"

"He's from the third batch, Fritz. His Father was William Brackstone. Mark has great potential; I would hate to lose him . . . "

"We won't lose him, Francis, and we won't lose her. If we get the Fry Guy . . . Imagine the boon to the project if we crossed him with her!" Fritz said.

"We'd be able to cut our projected outcome time in half. In one generation we could be looking at the future," Don said excitedly.

"I want us to start testing the boy tomorrow," Fritz said. "If he has no potential for the program, then he's expendable."

He watched through the window as the woman moved purposely away from the boy. When the boy tried to follow her she yelled at him to stay away from her. That she wanted nothing to do with him.

"Will she ever give us the Fry Guy?" Don asked Fritz.

"She'll crack. Sooner or later they all do."

A mother and father woke up in Shea City to every parent's worst nightmare. Their son was missing.

Cops and FBI swarmed their house and asked questions. The neighbors fanned out, putting up flyers. The police put up roadblocks. Rivers were checked and psychics by the dozens poured in to offer their services, He was . . . "by a river," "in a dark box," "afraid," "not afraid."

So many questions from so many people. Had they seen anyone hanging around? Had Mark been unhappy? Do they think he ran away from home? Then came the lie detector tests.

"What is your name, Sir?"

"Jared Parker."

"Mr. Parker, did you ever hit your son?"

"I spanked him a couple of times, but hit him?"

"Yes or no, Sir."

"No." He tried to fight his anger. All he cared about was finding his son, and if this was what he needed to do to get the cops up off their asses, this was what he was going to do. But it was hard.

"Did your wife ever hit your son?"

"No."

"Did you take your son anywhere and leave him?"

That question because of all the parents who had run scams over the years. Collecting huge amounts of money to look for children that they had hidden someplace.

"No."

"Did you kill your son, Mr. Parker?"

"Oh my God!" Jared cried out. "Is my son dead? Did you find his body? Is that what this is all about?"

"Yes or no, Sir."

"No! For God's sake, would someone tell me what's going on?"

A red-headed woman walked into the room. "What the hell's wrong with you?" she yelled at the woman who'd been running the test. She looked at the results of his test and then at Jared.

"Sir, no one has found a body. We have no reason to believe that your son isn't just fine. Get him off that thing! I want to talk to him in my office ASAP. And please don't do the same thing to the mother."

Carrie paced her office.

"Well?" Justin Denisten asked. He had been sitting in DA Long's office for almost ten minutes now watching her pace. While he didn't mind the view at all, he had things to do.

"He should be here shortly," Carrie said. "Please, I need you to be patient."

Jared Parker walked into the office.

"Good! You're here. Close the door and sit down please." She cleared her throat before she continued. She seemed to be looking for some sort of inspiration. When she finally spoke again, it was obvious that she hadn't found any. "Except for George, who I have asked to be here as a witness, we have all experienced the fall-out from a giant government conspiracy being fronted by a department called the Special Weapons Task Force, or the SWTF . . . "

"That's it! I'm out of here," Justin said, standing up.

"Agent Denisten, wouldn't you like to know why your partner Harry Sullivan was killed?"

"Harry got killed because he went snooping around those freaking So-what-if spooks. If we go snooping around we'll be just as dead."

"This room has been run over with every modern bug detection device known to mankind, on top of that I have had a sonic disruptor put in. So even if we happened to miss a bug—we found three and a phone tap—there is no way a clean signal can leave this room. All they'd get is static. So we can talk freely," Carrie assured him.

"You don't know these maggots, Sir. They have ways . . . they kill people."

"Excuse me," Jared was at the end of his tether. "I have a nine-year-old boy missing. I don't see what any of this could have to do with my problem."