Rob Thurman - Basilisk

“Fine. Jesus. You are such a brat,” he grumbled. I lowered my gaze and narrowed my eyes. “Okay, okay.” He threw up his hands. “You’ve got me. You’re not a brat; you’re not a kid; you’re an adult. And one who pushes me around as if I were a toy car and half the time I don’t realize it.” He snorted and started finishing off the breakfast.

“I am the puppet master,” I said with appropriate darkness and doom in my voice. It should’ve been a joke, but unfortunately it was appropriate in real life this morning as well.

“You’re Darth Vader without the asthma and black cape,” he countered, scraping up the last forkful of potatoes.

“That too.” I didn’t mind. I liked Darth before he became a whiny mama’s boy. The whole choking people without having to touch them hit a little close to home, but it was a big pop culture thing I’d missed at the Institute and it was entertaining. I had all the Star Wars movies—the good three and the blasphemy-against-nature three. I’d watched the first three at least twice each. At least I’d stopped before I bought a light-saber to hide in the closet, although I still firmly stood behind the view that Han had shot first. The man wasn’t an idiot. Of course he shot first. I’d been younger then, by two years, and I had missed the excitement of everything being new and engaging. Things had popped up now that were new, but not engaging.

Not in a good way at least.

Stefan got up, dumped his empty plate into the sink, and said, “Okay, you’ve made sure I’m fed and watered just like your little monsters, so tell already.”

Tell I did. As he braced his hands on the back of my chair and looked down over my shoulder, I brought out the pictures I’d had hidden under my plate and laid them out. “I went back to look at the news on Anatoly.” I didn’t wait for a reaction, rushing on. “I thought something had seemed peculiar.”

“Weird,” Stefan substituted absently. He tried to help me get the language right for someone my age and my pretense of a lifelong coffeehouse career ambition.

“Weird. Something seemed weird.” I pointed at each photo. “This man. He’s in every one of them. Where they found Anatoly, when they put him into the coroner’s van, at the autopsy.” Stefan knew better than to ask where I’d gotten the autopsy photos. I could tell you who killed JFK if you wanted to know, but you really didn’t.

“I was curious,” I said. “There’s nothing Anatoly can do for the FBI or IRS now, but he looks like government. Then I ran him through my facial recognition program.”

That one did get to him. “You have a facial recognition program? You’ve got to be shitting me. Like the government and the TSA?”

“No, nothing like theirs. Mine is ninety-nine point nine percent accurate. They wish they had my program.” I pointed at the last picture. “This is him coming through the Miami airport the day after you broke into the Institute, grabbed me, and they moved. I hacked into the rental car place he used—video cameras are everywhere in airports—it’s great—found the car he rented under his own name, which definitely makes him government. Overconfident. I downloaded that car’s GPS information and guess where he went.”

Stefan didn’t have to guess. There was only one place that would have me going to this much trouble. He had gone to the Institute. “Who is he? Who is the son of a bitch?”

“Hugo Raynor. He’s been with the CIA, NSA, and now Homeland Security. He’s forty-two, five foot ten, best marksman at the Farm.” This was where CIA applicants trained when they were young and relatively untarnished. Raynor was far beyond the Farm and as blackened with tarnish as fifty-year-old tin. I’d bet he was still a good marksman, though. You’re never that good at something unless you love it, and if you love it, you don’t give it up.

“He speaks five languages,” I continued, “amateur” running through my mind, “and repeated a course in advanced psychological and physical interrogation. He got the top score both times. I guess it was like a good book; once isn’t enough.” I leaned back in the chair and said what had to be said, although Stefan probably already knew it by now. “The mob would’ve been quicker with Anatoly. The autopsy report says what was done to him was slow. Someone wanted to know something. The mob wants to find you too. King Anatoly is dead. . . . Long live King Stefan.” The man who’d taken Anatoly’s place in the mob would want to make sure Stefan wasn’t coming back to stir up old loyalties. “But they’re not patient, not like this.”

“Raynor. Goddamn it.” He sat back down. “We knew the Institute had to have some sort of government contact to get away with what they did, but that he tracked down Anatoly when even I couldn’t have.” He shook his head. “That makes him one dangerous son of a bitch. Pack your shit. We’re going. If this bastard is involved with the Institute, and he obviously is, what he wanted from Anatoly is you. Anatoly didn’t know where we are, but it’s too close. This mother-fucker is too close.” He stood. “Go on. Get your stuff. You know the drill. Hell, you wrote the drill because mine wasn’t efficient enough. Fifteen minutes and we’re in the car. Go .”

I had mildly tweaked the drill, but that wasn’t the point. He was right, but . . . I didn’t want to leave. This was home. The first I’d had. “But—”

“Fifteen minutes,” he said, cutting me off, “and I toss you and your smelly, evil pets in the trunk of the car and drive until dark. If you don’t want to live in those clothes for the next week, I suggest you start packing. Don’t bother with the pictures of Raynor. Keep one; I’ll take care of the rest.” True to his word, fifteen minutes later, Stefan did take care of the rest.

He burned down the house.

Burning down the house had not been in my emergency drill. It should’ve been as it was the most efficient way of eliminating evidence and wayward genetic material such as hair or skin particles. I turned to watch out the back window as the Bumble—as my home—burned a cheerful red-orange against the green of the trees. Stefan had already called 911. They would get there in time for the house to burn to the ground but not for the fire to spread, which was good. I’d turned Mothra loose. He’d pecked me on the head and flown to freedom, wing as good as new. Gamera I’d put in the woods where he crawled off with a speed twice that of when I’d found him and eyes bright and open to the world. He was still old; he’d die sooner or later, but now it would be later.

You do what you can to make up for what you’ve done in the past.

We followed the bend in the road and there was only smoke to see then, a black fist hanging in the gray sky. No more rusty water out of creaking taps. No more raccoons squabbling in the attic every night. No more crickets or fireflies, the smell of free coffee from work soaking the air every day, no more wall of shelf after sagging shelf that held close to five hundred of my movies and old TV shows. Bottom line. . . .

No more home.

And no more “Harry,” the friendly but not overly friendly in a pedophile kind of way handyman. Harry was gone and while Stefan was always himself when Harry was officially out of sight of the townspeople and off duty, now Stefan was back all the way and then some, full-time. Almost three years had done a lot for me. I’d learned more things than I’d imagined existed; I’d developed social skills—of a sort; I became whole. Not normal, but as whole as I could hope to be, and that was good enough for right now.

That same amount of time had done something for Stefan too. I’d progressed and he’d regressed, but that wasn’t a bad thing for him. He’d lost some of the guilt he’d been drowning in. When I remembered Stefan first coming for me, it wasn’t a man in a black mask or a crazy guy shoving Three Musketeers bars at me as he tried to convince me that I was his brother. I remembered an ocean, dark as a universe without stars—black with guilt, despair, rage, violence, self-loathing. All I could see was his hand reaching out of the water; the rest of him was buried in a liquid Hell he couldn’t escape.