Джеймс Паттерсон: Hawk

I looked at Moke, the only lab rat who was older than me. “He okay today?” I murmured, making sure Clete couldn’t hear.

Moke nodded and took the food I held out. Most people are shorter than me, but Moke and I saw eye to eye (and Clete was twelve centimeters taller). “Or as okay as that freak can be,” he said, not bothering to lower his voice. Clete looked up but kept eating, slurping a bit.

Moke was pretty normal; he’d never been an Ope, and he didn’t have wings or anything else. It’s just—he was bluish. His skin was sort of blue, his hair sort of a dark brown-blue, the whites of his eyes were the blues of his eyes—you get the picture. Something about them trying to meld his DNA with silver? The metal? Why? Who would think that was a good idea? A moron! Anyway, Moke was kind of blue. So him calling Clete a freak was lame, at best.

Rain smiled one of her fast, distant smiles, holding out her hands. “We already ate in the cafeteria,” she said, pulling back so my hand wouldn’t touch hers. “It was gross.”

“Duh,” I said, and deliberately took her arm, sliding my hand down until I clasped hers firmly. Rain cringed as if it caused her pain. “Rain,” I said, and waited until her brown eyes looked into my black ones. “You are beautiful,” I said, and she jerked her hand away.

“Stop it,” she muttered, and grabbed her portion of my take. Stalking to one corner of the room, she sat with her back to me and everyone else.

I did think Rain was beautiful. She just—looked like rain. Once Clete had mumbled something about her getting caught outside in acid rain, but I didn’t know the whole story. She had puffy hair almost as dark as mine and dark skin that looked like a watercolor picture that had gotten rained on—kind of melty. There were long drips in some places and spots and flecks. She’d broken the only mirror we’d had and usually wore a gray hoodie pulled low over her face.

“Hi, Hawk,” Calypso said cheerfully, sitting on the table next to me.

“Hey, sweetie,” I said, and split the last of the food with her.

She bit into a bruised apple and crunched. I followed suit, testing my newly loose tooth against the apple.

“What did you do while I was gone?” I asked.

“Hid,” she said matter-of-factly.

I nodded. That was what most of the lab rats did, most days.

Calypso was around eight, I thought, and had been dumped here in the Children’s Home when she was maybe three? She’d been wearing a diaper and a dirty T-shirt that had a picture of a sunset and the word Calypso on it. I’d been taking care of her ever since. I gave her another apple and she ate it, expertly avoiding the bruise.

Moke always said that Calypso looked like a match, right before you light it. She had curly, bright red hair, really white skin, freckles, and green eyes. I’d taught her to read and write her letters, and Clete was still teaching her numbers. Moke let her tag along when he snuck into the abandoned gym between here and McCallum Incarceration. He said she could climb anything and lift almost as much weight as he could, and he was almost twice as tall and three times as heavy, at least.

“Want me to check your back?” I asked, and she nodded. I got closer and pulled out the neck of her shirt. Peering down, I saw her small black antennas, four of them, arranged in two neat rows against her white, white skin. I reached a few fingers down and stroked them lightly.

“Can you feel that?” I asked.

“Yeah. I can feel more and more,” she said, rummaging in my backpack for something else to eat.

“Okay, they’re about maybe fifteen centimeters long now?” I said. “Should we cut little holes in the back of your shirts, or do you want them more protected? Gotta say, you’re lookin’ a little insecty.”

Calypso grinned, liking the idea. “I want them to be more protected,” she decided.

“Good enough,” I said, and jumped off the table to throw our trash away.

Take that, I thought, pretending I was throwing away my parents. These lab rats are my family now.

CHAPTER 8

“Victory! We have victory!” McCallum shouted at us from at least four screens.

“Yay,” Moke said sarcastically.

“Stay still,” I said, holding the clippers away until he quit moving.

It was family haircut night—we all kept it pretty short. Why? Because we were on the edge of fashion? No. Because of lice. We lived next door to a prison, and the less hair you had, the better.

“My citizens,” McCallum said, “today we have achieved a goal I’ve been working toward for two years! In a brilliant sting operation devised by myself, our own CD Police Officers have apprehended the worst of the worst.”

“Oh, he was squawking about this earlier,” Clete said. Sometimes he talked out loud, but not aimed at anyone, you know? Not looking at anyone. We didn’t know how to respond sometimes. “They caught some huge criminal.”

I looked up. “One of the Six?”

“No,” said Clete, facing the wall, rocking slightly on his feet. “Someone else. He killed a bunch of kids and some other stuff.”

“Whoa,” I said, pushing Moke out of the chair.

“They’re bringing him here,” Calypso said suddenly, her eyes bright. She looked off in the distance and held up one finger.

Twenty seconds later we heard the whining sirens of cop cars. A minute after that their flashing green and yellow lights flashed across our faces.

“How bad is this guy?” I wondered out loud.

“This is the worst, biggest criminal we’ve ever caught!” McCallum shouted, almost like he was answering me specifically. “He’s going into our maximum-security lockdown at McCallum Incarceration. We do prison right!”

“Huh,” I said, mystified. “And he’s not one of the Six. Amazing.”

“They’re in the courtyard,” Moke said, and we all ran to the big windows overlooking what passed as our play yard.

A green police van, siren and lights still going, stopped and two cops got out. They unlocked the van and yanked out their prisoner.

“He’s gonna be a troll,” Rain said, watching from under her hood. “Guy like that… he just sounds nasty.”

Suddenly I gasped. “Ridley!” My hawk had just come down and landed on the creep’s shoulder! She’d never done that to anyone but me. “Oh, my god, she’s gonna take his eyes out!” I predicted with excitement.

“Go, Ridley, go!” I shouted, urging my bird on. I knew I sounded just like the crowd the other night, excited at the idea of blood. But this guy had killed kids. He deserved whatever he got.

But Ridley didn’t attack. She pushed her beak through his black hair, then took off into the night. My mouth open, I watched as the worst of the worst turned around. Of course he could see us—we were standing in front of big, brilliantly lit windows. Quickly I pushed my lab rats aside and flicked our lights off.

“Why’d you do that?” Clete asked.

I shrugged. “Better for them not to see us, no?”

Since Ridley had left, the horrible murderer had been staring right at us, like he was memorizing our faces. Like we would be his next victims. A shiver ran down my backbone and I realized the covert feathers at the top of my shoulders were bristling. I stepped farther backward into the darkness.

Still the murderer seemed to see right through everything, right through me. The guards prodded him along, and the gate to the long walkway leading to the prison opened on the other side of our play yard. True, we had never used the play yard much—it was a quarter of an acre of depressed grass and eager weeds, but who had thought it would be good to put a prison right on the other side? A MORON.