Rob Thurman: Basilisk

The Institute had had anatomy classes and enough cadavers to make Harvard Medical School jealous. The Institute taught its students to hurt people, taught them to use what had been stamped on their genes. But I hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. I hadn’t wanted to kill anyone. The thought of it, in self-defense or not, had made me sick. That didn’t mean I wasn’t forced to learn and it didn’t mean I hadn’t killed.

Once.

I didn’t plan on ever doing it again.

In addition, the Institute had biology classes. One thing they taught us there was that as adolescent males grow, the production of testosterone increases, and so do levels of aggression—the natural kind that gives you the instinct to protect yourself if attacked. Three years ago I wouldn’t have hurt this on-my-last-nerve irritating tourist. I wouldn’t hurt him now, although the jolting surprise of his voice and his shaking me made it a very close thing. But I caught myself. He wasn’t a threat, despite being bigger than I was. No, I wouldn’t hurt him, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t more tempted now than I would’ve been when I was younger. My temper ran hotter now than it had then. Nature—it can’t be stopped—usually.

Slippery slope, I was repeating to myself, same as I had in the coffee shop, when he shook my arm again, harder this time. Slippery, slippery slope.

But then again, what was one ski run, really? Just the one?

This once, I gave in to nature. I looked at the tourist and tried not to smile. I didn’t think I was successful and I doubted it was a friendly smile. Not that employee-of-the-month one. “Alcohol is harmful to your liver and not all that great for your stomach either,” I said, pulling my arm free. His eyes widened, he dropped the Danish he was holding in his other hand, and I backed away quickly. I made it in time as he bent over and threw up on the sidewalk. I’d done the same to myself earlier in the coffee house bathroom, but not quite so . . . explosively. I should’ve been sorry, but I wasn’t. He deserved it. Out of range and unsplattered, I turned my back on him and kept walking toward my car. I heard him vomit one more time, curse, groan, and then vomit again. He would keep it up for approximately the next fifteen minutes until he was empty of everything, including yesterday’s breakfast. He would chalk it up to strong coffee, whatever alcohol he’d put in it, and the Danish. After all, what other explanation could there be?

Well. . . .

Other than me?

He was fortunate I wasn’t more like my former classmates. If I had been, that one touch of his hand to my arm, that hard shake he’d given me—I could’ve ripped holes in his brain, torn his heart into pieces, liquefied his intestines. After all, that was what I was: a genetically created, lab-altered, medically modified child of Frankenstein, trained to do one thing and one thing only.

Kill.

All with a single touch.

Isn’t science fun?

Besides, vomiting didn’t hurt. It was only annoying, like the man who was doing it.

Mr. Fat-ass Danish would never know. I climbed into the car, pleased for a split second. Mr. Fat-ass Danish . . . the phrase had come out naturally, no work at all. Cursing was one thing that had proved difficult to learn. I was getting better at it. Then I remembered Anatoly, and the pleasure popped and disappeared like a soap bubble. Stefan and I needed to talk. I started the car. His babysitting days were over. That took me to the most simple of physics lessons: immovable object, unstoppable force. I sighed and pulled the car away from the curb.

All right, his babysitting days were mostly over.

Fifteen minutes later I was telling my brother the same thing that I’d told the tourist when he’d asked for his coffee.

“I am not a kid.”

And I wasn’t. My brother called me that daily at least, but since he had lost me when I was seven years old and only gotten me back when I was seventeen, I understood. Calling me a kid was his way of trying to ignore or reclaim those ten lost years. It was an emotional and appraisal-based mixed coping skill.

Again, still smart.

As I denied my inclusion in the kid category, Stefan wiped the back of his hand along his forehead, not that there was any sweat. Moisture, but no sweat. I’d spent most of my life in Florida and so had he. But when you were living in Oregon, when there was water dripping down your forehead, it wasn’t often sweat. It was the air. You drank your air in the Falls; it was that heavy on every molecule. It was July now and around fifty-five degrees today. I didn’t mind the drop in temperature compared to Florida and Bolivia. It was green here in Cascade Falls, everywhere green, and it was cool on the river. I was surprised to find I liked that. I was usually surprised when I liked anything. “Prepare for the worst and get the worst.” That had been an unspoken Institute motto among the students. I’d been raised there with suspicion as my very best friend since my first memories. That meant everything I saw, touched, tasted, heard—it was all evaluated through a filter of wariness. But in the time since the Institute I’d had more pleasant surprises than unpleasant ones.

That, ironically, surprised me too.

I liked Oregon and I was lucky to be able to have an opinion one way or the other, which made me like it more. I didn’t mind the lack of ocean. I’d seen it in South Carolina for a short time, and I’d have liked to have seen more, but if I needed water, there was also the river. But more than that, there was Stefan.

He was overprotective and he called me kid, but he was my brother—mine—and I sort of loved him. Not that I’d say that. You couldn’t just go and say things like that aloud. TV said so. Movies said so. General guy culture said so—I’d learned that from close observation. Everything said so.

Almost three years with him and the possibility of losing him said so.

Funny the things you don’t want to say and tempt fate, the things you don’t want to admit to yourself, no matter how often you think them. We were free and alive now, but that might not always be true.

“I’m not a kid and that ladder is too high. You could break a leg,” I said. Yet there I was, thinking it again. People were fragile. They were like ancient glass found in Roman ruins waiting to shatter into pieces at one simple touch, thousands of pieces that could never be glued back together. Easily . . . extraordinarily easily broken, those normal people.

I wasn’t normal. I tried to be, but I wasn’t. The Institute had made certain of that.

Stefan was painting Mrs. Adelaide Sloot’s house today. Every morning before he left, I made him leave a schedule pinned to the refrigerator with my Albert Einstein magnet. Fine. I was forced to admit it: the babysitting thing went both ways. Now with my showing up, he let the brush fall back in the can of mint green paint and looked the ladder’s entire ten feet plus half of his own size down at me and my scowl from where he perched on top. “Okay, that’s out of nowhere.” He meant the kid part, not the ladder complaint. He’d made it clear I was profoundly overprotective lots of times before. Profound was an exaggeration, as was pathological. I thought he’d been carrying around a dictionary that particular day—stuck on the letter P . I was cautious, that was all. Besides, considering what he’d done to protect me in the past, I wasn’t sure I came anywhere close to falling in the same category.

Anatoly’s death and Stefan’s not telling me about it proved that, didn’t they?

He ran a hand through his short, wavy black hair, leaving flecks of green. “I promise to be extremely careful with this Tower of Babel–tall ladder.” He said it solemnly enough, but I had my doubts. “Why aren’t you at work? You fought kicking and screaming to work in a public place, and now you’re skipping?”