Max Collins - Skin Game

“Because it’s White,” she said, “I’ve got to find out what really happened... and the more I know about our brothers and sisters on the outside, the easier it will be to deal with whatever ‘evidence’ White supplies.”

Joshua considered this for a few moments, then said, “Father made many of us, but the others — the ones after Father — they didn’t care about us. They hated us, the ones in the basement.”

Nodding, Max asked, “What can you tell me about them, individually?”

The question seemed to perplex Joshua.

Taking a deep breath, Max asked, “You remember how you taught me about Isaac?”

“Isaac was easy to tell Max about — he was my brother, he was gentle. But they changed him.”

“The others down there, you told me some of their names before...”

“Dill.”

“Yes!”

Joshua looked surprised and a little scared.

“Sorry,” she said, “I don’t mean to startle you — it’s just that that was one of the names you mentioned before. I want to know about them. Start with Dill.”

Leaning back and closing his eyes, Joshua seemed to drift off for a moment. “He came after Isaac and me. Him and his brother, Oshi. After Father tried dogs, he moved to cats next.”

“Dill and Oshi have feline DNA?”

“Uh-huh.”

Of all the things in her genetic cocktail, the feline DNA had provided some of her most inconvenient if not biggest problems. She still battled going into heat twice a year — just one example of the kind of humiliating shit being a genetic test-tube baby could bring a girl.

“Any idea what kind of cats?” she asked him.

“Not sure for Dill. Oshi — a Siamese, I think. They hated being kept in cages, but because of the way they could run and jump, they were kept in the smallest cells. That was mean.”

“Very mean, Joshua. And when they got out?”

Joshua shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“Didn’t you mention a Gabriel?”

The snoutlike mouth smiled. “Joshua likes Gabriel. He comes from an ant.”

“An ant?” Max asked, stretching her legs out in front of her. “No kidding — insect DNA?”

“Oh yes. Gabriel looks like Max.”

That surprised her. “Like me?”

Joshua hesitated for a long moment. “Normal. Not like Normal at Jam Pony — normal like ordinaries. But Gabriel can lift six times his own body weight.”

“Anything else out of the ordinary?”

“No... Well, he has an extra pair of arms.”

“He has an extra pair of arms, but he looks normal.”

Nodding vigorously, Joshua said, “They come out of his ribs, so Gabriel just wraps them around himself. Gabriel looks chubby... but normal.”

She studied her shaggy friend. “You know where Gabriel is, don’t you?”

Joshua looked at the floor. “Not anymore. Not since I moved to Terminal City.”

“He’s in Seattle, though?”

“Gabriel was in Seattle.”

“And you two were friends?”

Joshua continued to look at the floor. “Yes.”

“You never mentioned him,” Max said. Her voice was matter-of-fact, not hurt, though oddly, she did feel that way, a little. She thought Joshua was her closest friend, among the transgenics; and yet he had kept things from her, clearly.

“Gabriel was passing for human. I only saw him when he came to visit me in Father’s house.”

“So... he could still be out there.”

“Yes. Still. Out there.”

“... Did they hurt him at Manticore?”

Finally looking up at her, he said, “They hurt us all, Max — you too.”

She could hardly argue with that.

“The guards, they were scared of Gabriel because of his strength. They hit him with the prods whenever they went near his cell.”

Max had tasted the electric prods of the guards herself, and knew firsthand how much it hurt.

“Guards try to keep Gabriel weak by always hitting him with them.”

In the darkness, she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Joshua. I’m sorry to... dredge this all up.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” he said. “ They did it, we didn’t.”

She knew that, but like all victims, she suffered strange pangs of guilt.

They had all suffered immeasurably, and it wasn’t a surprise that one of them might have gone rogue. To Max, the surprise was that the rest of them hadn’t.

After a while she said, “I think you mentioned another one.”

Joshua thought hard. “Oh! Almost forgot... Kelpy. ‘Chameleon Boy,’ the guards called him.”

Max needed no explanation about Kelpy’s DNA mix.

“Kelpy didn’t work right,” Joshua said.

“What do you mean, didn’t work right?”

Joshua shrugged. “I just remember, guards and others, talking about what a waste of time Kelpy turned out to be.”

“Was Kelpy beaten too?”

He shook his big head. “No, they said his power only worked when he was angry or scared or something...”

“Agitated,” Max supplied.

“That’s the word,” Joshua said. “Agitated. When he was agitated. So they didn’t agitate him. They ignored Kelpy. Left him to die.”

“No one to love him or help him,” Max said.

“No one. Sometimes, Kelpy would just disappear into his cage.”

Max knew that on some level all the transgenics felt that way. No one was going to help them, no one was going to love them. She’d learned different when she’d met Logan. Joshua had learned different when he’d met her.

“Was Kelpy still there when we came in?”

With a quick nod, Joshua said, “Yes — you even opened his cell yourself.”

She shook her head. “I have no memory of him.”

“I bet Kelpy has memory of Max. Later, Kelpy asked me your name and I told him, ‘Max.’ He said you were the only one who ever cared.”

Someone she had never noticed...

They got up and started walking back up the tunnel. She tried and tried, but she just couldn’t seem to remember Kelpy.

As they climbed the stairs back up to the first floor of Medtronics, her cell phone rang. “Go for Max,” she said.

“They’re listening,” a computer-altered voice said.

“Who’s listening?”

“The ones outside the gate,” the metallic voice said.

“Thanks, I already knew that,” Max said.

The voice said, “The last time we spoke we were interrupted.”

Clemente.

“Yes,” she said. “We were.”

Why was he calling now, and why all the secretiveness?

“Our mutual acquaintance supplied what looks like irrefutable information.”

White had given him evidence that a transgenic was the killer.

“You do understand?” the altered voice asked.

“Yes. But that information...”

“Initially, damned near absolute. I’ve seen it. We’ll talk later. Like I said we would.”

The phone went dead in her ear.

“What is it?” Joshua asked.

“I think it was very bad news,” Max said.

She thought about what Clemente had said last. Initially, damned near absolute . What the hell did that mean? Was that strange phrasing some kind of code? Initially...

But it wouldn’t come.

Max looked at Joshua. “We better get back.”

They stepped outside into the purplish light of breaking morning. The sun had barely dented the horizon, and she could already tell this was going to be another long day. They walked up the street in silence, Joshua lost in his thoughts, Max trying to figure out what Clemente had been talking about...

Initially, damned near absolute.

Finally, as if coming toward her out of a heavy fog, she put together the detective’s little code. Initially Damned Near Absolute. D-N-A. White had provided DNA evidence that the killer was a transgenic.

Now the next question was, why was Clemente telling her this?