Chimera (8 page)

Shaking my hand hard, I put the glove back on and gritted my teeth as the blood began to tingle fiercely back into my fingers. I had no idea what had happened and less time to think about it. Resolutely, I moved on to the next door.

I don’t remember opening it.

I don’t remember walking into the room. I only remember facing the boy sitting on the edge of his bed. Boy, young man, whatever you wanted to call him, he sat there wearing the same style unisex white pajamas and a face that bore only the faintest traces of curiosity. Without instruction from my conscious brain, my hand switched on a tiny penlight to see him more clearly. I stood, paralyzed, and looked—just looked. The line of the jaw and the slope of the nose were blurred by time. Ten years would change the map of anyone’s face. But the eyes—they were the same. The colors, yes, but more than that; it was what lay behind the blue and green. It was Lukas, completely and utterly; the amazing directness, the clarity of spirit, the look of which I’d never forgotten.

They were my brother’s eyes.

He had brown hair, I noticed dazedly. I hadn’t expected that. I thought it would stay blond like our mother’s. Medium length, it was a light chestnut with the occasional pale streak. He looked a little younger than the seventeen Saul had described and with a face as pale and tranquil as a snow-covered pond. He looked—my God—he looked like salvation.

“Lukas?” Raw and shaking, his name came out more a fractured sound than an actual word. It was less recognizable as letters strung together and more like a visceral grunt of pain. I tried again. “Lukas?”

His head tilted slightly and he corrected politely, “Michael.” He didn’t raise his hand to shield against my light but instead stared into it without hesitation as he repeated, “My name is Michael.” Like the little girl, he didn’t show any sign that he found any of this out of the ordinary. There was a man dressed all in black, armed and masked, and no one found that worth comment.

His voice was as his face, changed. The light tenor of childhood was gone, replaced by an adult’s deeper tone. “Is this a test?”

I was still struggling to process the different name. It made comprehending his question difficult, perhaps impossible. I didn’t even try. “Test? Lukas, it’s me, Stefan. Your brother.” It had been ten years, more than half of his life. In the back of my mind the realization that he might not know me had been present, but present and acceptable were two entirely different beasts. Emotional trauma or the physical trauma of his head injury when he had been kidnapped, the reasons for his memory loss were something I didn’t have the time for now. “I’m your brother,” I repeated.

I saw his confusion. It was suppressed and muted, but it was there. He opened his mouth, then closed it again without speaking. I used the opportunity to push on and say to crushingly familiar eyes, “I’m here to take you home.”

As I talked, I shook like Vasily had when he had begged for his life. It was appropriate, because now I was begging for mine. It was easy to forgive myself the adrenaline and long-buried emotions wreaking havoc within, and when the moment of truth came, the shaking stopped. That moment happened when the alarm went off.

“Shit.”

It was a silent alarm, at least in this section of the building. The only evidence that our break-in had been noticed was the sudden blinking of the security lights. It was enough to chill my blood; I didn’t need a wailing siren or rotating red beacon. The simple strobing of the strips of fluorescence near the floor brought the catastrophe home clearly enough. Swearing again, I lunged over to the bed and circled my fingers around Lukas’s wrist.

“Lukas, we have to go.” I yanked at his arm, pulling him to his feet.

“Go?” he echoed with eerie calm. “Go where?”

“Right now out of here is good enough for me.” Towing him along unresisting behind me, I ran into the hall and scanned it hurriedly for Saul. Even in the midst of it, the running and the alarms, I marveled at the solid feel of his flesh within my grip. For so long he had been a ghost that I could barely believe he was real and true to the touch.

“Smirnoff, haul ass!”

I whipped my head around to see Saul waving frantically by the same door through which we’d made our entrance, not using my real name, which I appreciated. Seeing that I’d spotted him, he wasted no time in beginning his escape. Obviously devil take the hindmost wasn’t a phrase he took lightly. Following his lead, I ran toward the door. Lukas had been keeping up without difficulty until he saw our destination. He didn’t stop or try to pull away, but he definitely slowed. Considering what lay below, I didn’t blame him. “It’s all right,” I reassured him quickly as I fumbled at my belt. “We’re just passing through that medical torture chamber downstairs. We’re not sticking around.”

It was hard to tell with only the fast glance I could allow him and his strangely unemotional façade, but I thought he seemed relieved. My attention was jerked away as I saw two men, the ever-present khaki brigade, enter the other end of the hall. Shoving Lukas before me when we reached the door to the basement, I whirled and tossed the grenade I’d taken from my belt. It was a standard smoke one. I had tear gas as well, but I was hesitant to use it so close to the other kids. As heavy white smoke billowed and blocked the men from view, there was the sharp bark of guns being fired. I didn’t wait to see how good their aim was in whiteout conditions. Diving through the door after Lukas, I slammed it behind me and rushed headlong down the stairs. I caught up with him halfway down and took a handful of his pajama top to hurry him along.

He didn’t complain or protest. He barely reacted at all, as obedient as a programmed robot. I didn’t like it. It was unnatural, wrong, but as with other things, I didn’t have the luxury of thinking about it right then. Staying alive and getting my brother out of this place made up my entire to-do list at the moment. Hitting the bottom, I saw Saul facing us several feet away. He had double handfuls of the more serious firepower: tear gas and stun grenades. “Move your shit,” he snapped.

My shit and I complied with alacrity and took Lukas past the medical equipment and computers and out into the night air. The sound of hissing gas and ear-ringing explosions followed us as Saul heaved his grenades up the stairwell. I knew he would be pushing us out of the way from behind like a fullback if we didn’t get going, and I charged up the concrete stairs with Lukas like a runaway train. I didn’t even break stride with the first man I shot. The second one, unfortunately, didn’t go down quite as easily.

Halfway across the pseudo-hospital room I’d once again drawn my gun. I’d known from the beginning that I would do what was necessary to free Lukas, no matter the cost. But I had thought I might hesitate when it came to pulling the trigger, if only for a second. I had thought I would pause before sending a bullet into a warm, living son of Man.

I didn’t.

The first one went down with lead in the stomach. That’s the way you were taught to shoot a person. Aim for the biggest target; aim for the torso. The police learned that, as did the rest of us who had less-admirable excuses for our violence. Whatever my justifications, I was already firing again as the first man hit the ground and his gun went flying. His partner, beefy and broad shouldered, was quicker on his feet. He twisted and dodged for cover toward the corner of the building. I was lucky to get one in his thigh and luckier that the bullet he squeezed off in our direction was only an evil buzz past my ear.

Giving Lukas a hard shove, I commanded, “Run!” As before, he did as he was told, without question. From behind us came another detonation, a much larger one than before. Saul had brought the genuine explosives into play. No one would be coming after us through the basement, because by now it was nothing more than a smoking ruin.

I kept just behind my brother as we ran. Saul, who passed us within seconds, kept ahead by a few feet. The son of a bitch could run like the wind, whatever his crappy taste in shirts. As for taste, no one could fault him his preference in weapons, an MP5 submachine gun. Granted, I was the one who had scored it among many others, but he’d had the good sense to choose it. And the good sense to use it.

Reading hard-core mysteries these days, I’d heard the clichéd description hail of bullets countless times. I’d scoffed at it then and I cursed it now. It wasn’t hail. It was a fatal swarm of enraged hornets, whose slightest touch would kill and whose speed couldn’t be captured by the eye. They flew both ways, those hornets, but it didn’t make me feel any better. As one of the two guards posted at the gate began firing in our direction, I tackled Lukas to the ground. The air burst from his lungs in an audible grunt as I landed on top of him, but he didn’t move beneath me as I returned the fire. Saul had thrown himself down to do the same with much more effect than I was having with my handgun. One guard fled for his life and one didn’t have a life left to worry about. As I was getting to my feet, I caught a whiff of shampoo and toothpaste from the still figure beneath me. It gave me such a staggering flood of homesickness for a time long gone that the free hand I used to urge Lukas up clenched on his shoulder a little harder than necessary. He didn’t react or wince. His focus was elsewhere, eyes fixed on the downed guard as he murmured, “Just a test.”

I ignored the incomprehensible words and, relaxing my grip as best I could, pushed him back into motion. Saul was already at the gate and opening it. Lukas and I rushed past to one of the vans Saul had described from the children’s “field trip.” Saul and I had thought about leaving a car down the road for our escape but dismissed the idea instantly. We’d never make it that far on foot without being caught. The best next thing we’d decided was to make use of the transportation available. Then we could drive to our getaway vehicles that would be less likely discovered farther from the compound.

Inside the van I went to work unscrewing the steering column. I’d not actually stolen too many cars. Considering how I’d grown up and my father’s position in the hierarchy, that wasn’t all that surprising. By the time I turned sixteen, I already had two cars waiting in the garage for me. The necessity had not been there, but you never knew when a little knowledge would get you out of a huge mess. So I kept my hand in because practice does make perfect. The proof of that came thirty seconds later when the van started. Over my shoulder Lukas was watching me work, still calm and still in a place I couldn’t understand or touch. “Did you lose your key?”

“Something like that,” I muttered. “Sit back, Lukas, and hang on.”

“Michael,” he said with the first hint of stubbornness I’d seen in him. He settled back into the seat behind mine. “My name is Michael.” As much as it hurt that he didn’t know himself, or me, I was paradoxically relieved to know he wasn’t an empty machine. He was human and he could be reached. Physically I had him; with time, I would get him back mentally as well—but first things first.

Peeling out, I sent gravel spraying as the van tore its way toward the gate. It was swinging slowly open as Saul pelted over to the passenger door and yanked it open. Half in and half out, he turned and emptied the rest of his clip into the three other vans and two cars still parked behind us. Tires burst like overripe melons as punctured gas tanks released streams of acrid gasoline onto the ground. “Flare,” he demanded.

With one hand on the wheel I used the other to pull a group of two flares from my belt and slapped them against his palm. The resulting inferno was more than big enough to roast a few marshmallows. The explosion and flesh-melting orange flames lit up the sky sunrise bright as we passed through the gate. “Boom.” Saul grinned at me as he slid into the seat and slammed the door. I couldn’t see his mouth through the mask, but I didn’t need to. It could be heard as easily as seen. I was on the verge of giving my own triumphant grin in return when there was another boom, this one from the back of the van. I turned to see that the doors had been yanked open. I also got a look at who’d opened them, whose feet had hit the van floor hard enough to imitate a silencer-muffled gunshot.

This man wasn’t wearing khakis. He wasn’t wearing anything but black, which blended so well into the darkness of his skin that he appeared nude. He hung in the open space, primeval and preternatural as a gargoyle rising from the sluggish waters of Genesis. Close-shaved hair was a pelt reflecting ambient light while the black eyes sucked it in. Tall and broad, he was a Greek statue carved in onyx . . . part myth, part monster. Muscles writhed as he stretched out a hand and spoke. And just like that he became a man. “Michael.” The baritone was deep enough to vibrate bone. “Take my hand, boy.”

The hand hung curved in a frozen position. Although it was the same color as the man’s skin, it looked somehow off nonetheless. But it was less important than what was in his other hand. It was a gun. At the moment he couldn’t use it because he was bracing himself with the fist curled around its grip. I didn’t plan on giving him time to steady himself enough to put that gun into play, not when I could beat him to it. “Lukas, stay put,” I rapped. It wasn’t necessary. As amiably cooperative as he was with my orders, he was less inclined to listen to this guy. He didn’t move as I stretched my arm back, steadying my elbow on his shoulder. It was a shoulder that had gone trembling and tense as iron. Before I could fire, the van chose that moment to remind me why “eyes on the road” had become the well-known adage it was.

Careening off the road, I cursed and turned my attention back to driving. The bullet that burned the skin of my jaw before shattering the windshield didn’t help matters. “Saul, get that son of a bitch!” In the rearview mirror I could see that he was all the way in the van now, half naked and as unconcerned as if he’d been wearing body armor. His gun was pointed at the back of my head as Lukas slid over to press up against the window. My brother didn’t seem to like this man any more than I did. “Saul . . .”