Джеймс Паттерсон: Hawk

Until he had to turn and go through the tall iron gates, the murderer seemed to keep his black eyes on me intently. Was he looking at my black mohawk, the ring in my nose, the feathers tattooed above my eyebrows? I didn’t look that unusual—lots of kids looked like me. Without the actual wings, I mean. Which were hidden.

And me—I couldn’t look away from his angular, strikingly handsome face. He was the furthest thing from a troll, despite his evilness. My feathers were bristling, my wings itching to expand, and my breath was coming faster, almost like my body was responding to him.

What was the deal between this horrible killer—and me?

CHAPTER 9

My gang was talking about the murderer like it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened. Maybe it was. But I felt uneasy, maybe a little afraid, and I didn’t want to show it.

“It’s time, Hawk,” Clete said in my general direction. He tapped the watch on his wrist, the watch I’d stolen for him. He was intense about time and schedules.

“Right, right,” I said, and took off my poncho. Everyone here was a freak—my wings didn’t make anyone blink.

“Will you be gone long, Hawk?” Calypso asked.

I pushed my fingers through her short red curls. “Depends on how much laundry there is, kid,” I said.

“K,” she said.

The manager of the Children’s Home—a woman named Stella Bundy—had put us to work a couple years ago, once she realized there were some freakish misfit kids still living in the McCallum Children’s Home. She couldn’t turn us out into the street ’cause then McCallum couldn’t claim a charity Children’s Home as one of his good deeds, but I bet she thought about it. Instead, they came up with the next best thing—free child labor. During the day, Clete fixed the office computers and phones and stuff. Moke did like plumbing and electricity. I could never be found, for some reason . During the night Moke sometimes helped out in the gym when the prisoners were allowed to use the equipment. I wondered if the prison manager would let the new murderer use the gym.

Anyway, at night Clete and I did laundry in the huge industrial machines.

When we were all together, Clete faded into the background, but when it was just me and him, he never shut up.

“I’m really close, Hawk,” he said happily, enjoying our time together, as usual.

“Oh yeah?” I said automatically, dumping bins of laundry into a wheeled cart. Most of the laundry was from the prison, and most nights we saw bloody sheets, jumpsuits, towels. Everything in this city has blood on it, from the sidewalks to the washrags.

“Yeah,” Clete said. “I had to install some updates at the offices and it was takin’ forever so I was workin’ on my own stuff an’ I mean, Hawk, I swear I’m close.”

“Close to what?” I could work without thinking. I could usually talk to Clete without thinking, because he didn’t require a lot of interaction. I’d heard it all a million times before: He was close to a breakthrough. He was about to change the world, and no matter how many times he failed, he kept trying. I kept listening because I thought he really might change the world. Someday.

“It’ll be an app,” Clete said, lowering his voice. “If I install it on the office computers, it’ll start replicating and infiltrating other computers. Hawk—it’ll change everything.”

I gave him an absent smile. “Yeah?”

“Yeah! It’ll totally change the balance of power, for one thing,” he said. “Everyone could have power, not just McCallum. I hate McCallum and his Voxvoce. It’s awful. It hurts my ears.”

“I know, bud,” I said, adding extra bleach to this load. This was his biggest idea yet, and while I loved hearing about it, it felt like a daydream. Kind of like mine, about my parents coming back to my corner to get me. It’s hard to get excited about something you know is never gonna happen.

“Yeah. I’m close.”

The other workers, mostly Opes hired by the day, shuffled in and started mechanically picking up mops and brooms, then shuffled out again as if they hadn’t seen us. That made sense, since we weren’t two giant bags of dope.

“Another thing,” Clete said later. We stood opposite each other at one of the large folding tables, each with baskets full of towels. Usually we raced to see who could get them all folded fastest, just about the only entertainment around here that didn’t involve something illegal or somebody getting hurt.

“Okay, go!” I said, and we started folding.

“I heard about these really cool experiments, over in the Labs,” Clete said, expertly folding towels in seconds like a machine.

“Really?” I said, looking at him. This was different. Anytime I heard the word experiment, my ears perked right up.

“They’re messing with memories,” he said. “Like, memories are stored in your DNA, right? It depends on how the chemicals are laid down, first you got the glutamate activating the neurotransmitters—”

“Cut to the chase,” I said gently.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said. “Anyway, so they’re taking murderers and trying to erase the memories of the bad things they’ve done, to help them rehabilitate. If they wipe out just those memories—”

“Is it working?” I asked, eyeing his pile of towels. Clete was getting involved in his story, and if I could keep him talking, I might win our little competition.

He shrugged. “It might, someday. Right now it’s hard for them to just choose a few memories to erase. A couple lifers got wiped completely.”

I slammed my hand down on the empty table. “Done!”

Clete’s face fell a little bit, but he perked right back up. “Count!” He demanded. “I know I did more than you.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine,” I said, as I touch-counted my towels. “What do you mean, wiped completely?”

“Like they don’t know their own names, completely,” Clete said, his own fingers flying through his pile. “Seventy-eight!”

I was still counting. “Oh, my god—seventy-seven!” I hated to admit it, but Clete beamed. He didn’t win often. Suddenly his smile disappeared and he clapped his hands over his ears, sinking to the ground. The Voxvoce had started, was filling this room, this building, this city with unbearable, painful, eardrum-breaking noise. I went away inside myself till it was over, a pleasant daydream like Clete’s, where he saves the world with his app. I guess I’m selfish, but I don’t want to save the world. All I want is my parents back.

If they could erase memories, could they also uncover memories? It killed me that out of all the stupid info my brain had chosen to squirrel carefully away, it had somehow let all the memories of my parents slip through its coils. When my parents had left me I’d been old enough to understand instructions. Understand promises. Old enough to understand that Ridley was a friend, not a pet. But I couldn’t remember anything before the day they’d stood me on that street corner. Couldn’t remember their faces. Their names. What they’d smelled like.

Clete stood, shaking his head, which told me the Voxvoce was over. “God!” he said, massaging his ears. “It’s so horrible! McCallum is such an asshole! My program is gonna change all that.”

“Change McCallum?” I asked. “No one’s ever seen him. For all we know he’s a hand puppet. There’s no way to get close to him.”

We pushed through the doors and started heading back to the Children’s Home. This was the creepiest part—this long, poorly lit hallway back home. It was late now—I was beat and it was hard to stay alert. This hallway ran along the back of prisoner cells, and every once in a while, one of them would tap on the high, narrow windows and startle the crap out of me. Usually this was followed by a laugh, or suggestions that made my ears burn.