Rob Thurman: Chimera

Nothing more than a snatching gone wrong. It was a common way to negotiate between rival factions. Lukas had died on that beach. I should’ve known it from the sound his skull made when it hit the rock. I should’ve known. His kidnapper had probably dumped his body not far from the beach when he realized Lukas was dead—when he realized my brother was dead. My brother . . .

Michael’s breath hitched and slowed even further. Lost to the world, he felt light in my arms . . . insubstantial as a ghost. Lukas’s ghost, long gone. “Misha, I’m here,” I whispered, but his eyes remained closed.

The eyes . . . and then came another memory, this one not as old. It was a sickening flight back to a dark hallway and a little girl named Wendy. There had been something about her eyes, barely seen in the dim light of the hall. When I’d told Michael that he had Lukas’s eyes, he’d gone still—distant and still. And when he’d talked about his friend John’s resemblance to their captor, he had said that of course his eyes were different from Jericho’s. Of course . Why hadn’t I picked up on that? All the children had bicolored eyes. It had to be an unforeseen result of the genetic manipulation. I couldn’t believe Jericho would’ve wanted such a visible marker on his product if he could avoid it. Assassins should be anonymous.

I’d pointed out to Michael that he had my brother’s eyes, and he had known it wasn’t the proof I thought it to be. He’d kept trying to tell me and I’d kept cutting him off. Or he’d cut himself off . . . because wouldn’t it be nice to believe it was true, for a little while, before ruthlessly dragging himself back to reality? But in the end it hadn’t mattered. When it came down to the wire, he hadn’t been able to deny me.

I’d told him over and over. I’d inundated him with stories and so-called evidence he didn’t want to hear. I’d given him a life and a family he had never asked for. I’d given him a hope he didn’t even know he wanted, a hope he didn’t know he desperately needed. It was up to me to decide if what I had done would save him or destroy him.

Michael believed now. And, by God, so would everyone else.

“He’s my brother,” I said with finality. Where the hell was that doctor?

“Stefan, what is this dream world you’ve concocted? This fantasy? What are you thinking?”

“He’s my brother,” I repeated flatly. “He’s my brother and your son. And if you ever say he isn’t or do anything to cause him doubt, I’ll walk away and you will never see me again.”

“Stoipah, what . . .”

“Never.”

Michael lived.

It surprised all of us, including me, and I’d seen him do some damn remarkable things in the healing department, although none were as miraculous as this. I survived too, more or less. The bullet that had passed through him and into my shoulder was nothing. As for my leg, a little fancy orthopedic surgery put it back together. I’d limp in cold weather for the rest of my life; it really wasn’t that high a price to pay, considering the work was performed on the second floor of the beach house by an alcoholic surgeon with shaky hands. I felt lucky to have a leg left at all. Beggars can’t be choosers, and neither could those of us on the run.

The recuperation, Michael’s and mine, gave me time to think. Jericho had never conquered genetic replacement at all, on himself or anyone else. All his successful work must have gone on in the same way it had begun . . . with embryos. Perhaps he did it with surrogate mothers. Or, hell, for all I knew, he could’ve learned to grow the kids in jars in a lab. Regardless, as he’d said on the beach, he’d made them from scratch. I’d wondered if John had been a relative of Jericho’s, his son maybe. Now my best guess was that Jericho, the ultimate egotist, had cloned himself. If he couldn’t have that fucking festive power of killing with a touch, he’d make another Jericho that did. Only it hadn’t turned out that way. John had had a mind and a will of his own. He’d had a soul; made in a lab, of man and not nature, and he’d had the soul Jericho had lacked. Funny how things worked out—funny enough to break your goddamn heart.

Naturally, toward the end, Michael was up and around before I was, but in the beginning . . . heavy doses of painkillers and an unswerving belief in him were all that kept me sane, although that sanity was something my father would have debated.

Anatoly did as I asked; it wasn’t as if he had much choice. I was deadly serious in my threat to him. If he made one misstep, said one wrong word, I would’ve been nothing more than a memory to him. I can’t say he came across as World’s Best Dad, with a mug and shirt on order, once Michael woke up. That had never been him to begin with, but he tried, in a cautious way, to include Michael. If not as a son, he treated him as a rarely seen nephew, with courteous and cautious charm. My father was nothing if not charming . . . when he wanted to be.

As for Michael, he kept his distance. He’d just embraced a brother; he wasn’t quite ready to welcome a father with open arms. It was for the best, all the way around.

But when it came to me, it was different. In his eyes, I was his family. And he committed himself to that in the same way he committed to any project or endeavor, be it research or finding the best fast-food burger ever made. He did it with a wholehearted and stubborn ferocity. It was a humbling thing to see. It made it difficult for me to mourn Lukas. I should have, but in the bright light of day I couldn’t. To my conscious mind, Michael was my brother, recovered memories and unfeeling reality be damned. It was only when I slept and the nightmares came that I was able to give Lukas his due, and I gave it to him over and over again.

Those nightmares in turn brought to mind Michael’s dreams, the ones of sun and horses that he’d mentioned. They hadn’t been his dreams at all; they’d been mine. Or, a more comforting thought, they’d been Lukas’s. He’d had a heart, Lukas . . . far bigger and better than mine was. If he could’ve sent a message of hope to another lost boy, he would have. And if anyone could have received that gift, it would’ve been Michael. Jericho had tried to accelerate psychic growth in his subjects, and he’d succeeded in the darker areas. It could be he had as well in ways not measured in dying cells or exploding organs, but in light and luminous promise.

What had happened might never be explained, and that was all right. Faith in the unknown can be a tenuous thing for people like me. It was best to let it be what it was—a warm glow close enough to be seen and just far enough away not to be marred by a skeptical touch.

But faith went only so far. With the Institute still out there, even without Jericho at the helm, I thought it prudent to continue to play rabbit for a while, hiding from any unseen hawks. When the national news carried a piece on a noted St. Louis scientist disappearing, it only cemented my determination.

In a time of hypersecurity, there were still certain borders that were crossed easily and anonymously enough if one had the cash. With what Anatoly gave us when we left, that wasn’t going to be a problem for a long while. He made me swear to stay alive long enough for him to find us once he wrapped up business for good. I said I’d do my best, but I had my doubts that my father’s elusive day would ever come. I hoped it would. Michael would want a father someday, and a retired crime boss might be better than nothing at all—at least theoretically, as Michael would say.

Weeks passed, then months, until one day I was sitting at a small table in the hot sun when a suitcase was deposited unceremoniously beside my feet. The dust cloud from it hung in the unmoving air as Saul dropped wearily in the chair across from me. Dressed in an impeccable if impractical white silk shirt and pair of eggplant purple linen pants, he lifted a straw hat from his head to wave before his sweat-beaded face. “This place is like the Everglades on steroids,” he said with wheezing outrage as he ducked a large mosquito. “Jesus, even the bugs are pumping iron. The women though . . . Nice. Very nice.”