Deadly Design (9780698173613) (8 page)

“There's at least one more,” I say. “Triagon had a blog and this guy James M. posted a response to it. I'm pretty sure he's a Genesis baby, but I don't know his full name. I put my information on the blog, hoping he'll contact me, but he hasn't yet.”

“We can put it on Facebook,” Cami says. “Have all of our friends put it on too. It's a long shot, but you know how crazy the connections are. We get enough people posting that we're looking for him, he might see it.”

“What about Emma?” I say, and mentally, I'm not in Dr. Hodges's living room. I'm on the playground outside the church where Connor's funeral took place. Emma is looking at me with those tear-filled eyes. Deep endless tears, like she'll never stop crying. Ten years from now, twenty, when someone tells her a joke and she laughs, those tears will still be in her eyes because she'll never stop missing him, just like I'll never stop wishing we'd had more time together, time to be what we should have been. “I don't want her to know about any of this. She'll see it on our posts, and she'll ask questions.”

Cami nods. “We'll come up with something.”

“We need to find whoever is left,” Dr. Hodges says. “We need to get the genetic screens, then get all of you to Dallas. If you find out who this James is, let me know. I'll make the arrangements for everything else.”

I couldn't save Triagon or Alexis or, now, Hannah Welch. I couldn't save Connor. But I want to save James, almost as much as I want to save myself. “I wish we could use Facebook to find Dr. Mueller,” I say. “We still don't know
why
he disappeared.”

“Maybe he knew something was wrong,” Cami says.

“Or maybe,” Dr. Hodges says, “he was done with that stage of his experiment. Maybe he just wanted to see if he could do it, if he could manipulate genes.”

“But he wouldn't know if he was successful, not back then. Not when he disappeared.” An icy feeling inches up my spine. “He wouldn't know if we were athletic or smart or good-looking back when we were babies. He'd have to watch us grow up to know if it worked.”

Dr. Hodges nods. “And if he's alive and watching, he knows what's happening.”

“Then why doesn't he
do
something?” I nearly shout, because he
should
do something. Like it or not, I wouldn't be alive if Dr. Mueller hadn't made me. Mom and Dad might have conceived me and Connor naturally, and we probably would have died like our brother, our lungs ever so slowly refusing to take in air, our hearts becoming as immobile as stone. Dr. Mueller, or whoever he is, created us. All of us. But he must not be alive, because if he was, he'd be watching, and if he was watching, he'd care.

C
ami came up with a brilliant idea. She'd seen a post on Facebook about a stray dog someone found. That person posted a picture of the dog and the information from its collar. So we posted that I'd found a dog with a tag that said its name was Triagon, and the owner's name was James M. “The dog is old, maybe even close to eighteen, so we really need to find his owner. If you are James M. and care about Triagon, contact Kyle McAdams.” I also posted Dr. Hodges's information on Triagon's blog site, just in case James M. checked it again.

It's been two says since I posted about the dog on Facebook. To be honest, I don't have that many friends. But Cami does, and so do her friends and their friends and their friends. It's crazy how the fingers of Facebook reach out through the borders of counties and cities and even states and countries. But nothing yet. If we've ignited any type of a fire, James M. isn't seeing the smoke.

I got up this morning, checked Facebook, and when there were no friend requests, I put on my tennis shoes and headed out the door. I never understood why Connor liked to run. I've always hated PE, especially the part where we'd have to either run laps around the gym or go outside and run around the track. But I'm not sure why I hated it. It's not like I got out of breath or got that killer pain in my side people complain about. I think it was because I felt like people were watching me, wanting to see if I'd sprint my way to the front of the pack. They wanted to see if I was another Connor. So I didn't sprint. I stopped to tie my shoes a lot. Occasionally, I stopped to look at a cute ass. I didn't want anyone to think I couldn't run. I just wanted them to think that I didn't want to.

But now I'm curious. I want to run. I want to run fast. I want to see what I can do.

In the middle of town, there's a road that goes over a highway. The road slants gradually at first, then keeps climbing until it finally levels out for several yards, then slants down again. There's a sidewalk alongside the road. I jogged the three blocks to the center of town, and now I wait for the imaginary gun to sound in my head. Then I run.

I want to run fast. I want to feel my heart pounding. I want to feel it screaming in my chest. I want to feel blood pushing through my veins, forcing its way through the narrow channels like bulls forcing their way down the streets of Pamplona. I want to feel hot and sweaty, and if I'm going to die, I want to be the one to make it happen.

I push myself as hard as I can, willing my legs to go as fast as they can. My thighs start to burn as I near the top of the overpass. I fly across the sidewalk, oblivious to the cars moving beneath me, and when the road starts to slant, it's all I can do to put the brakes on before I sail past the stop sign and into traffic.

Shit! And I can't help but smile. That felt incredible. No wonder Connor loved it. I turn around, and without giving myself any time to catch my breath, I take off again. I wish there was someone, some coach waiting with a stopwatch on the other side. I know I'm not breaking a record. No one's ever kept track of how long it takes to run the overpass. But it feels like I'm flying.

I'm not tired. I'm barely winded, but I collapse in the grass along the sidewalk and stare up at the cloudless sky. I remember a day like this once. It was last summer. I'd been mowing the lawn, and halfway through, I stopped and just lay down in the grass in our backyard. I was watching a plane flying so high it seemed motionless against the clear blue, and then Connor's face was looking down at me.

“Come run with me,” he said.

“I'm mowing,” I said back to him.

“Yeah, it looks like it.” Connor kicked my foot. “Come on. You'll like it. Hell, you'll love it. Just come with me.”

“I'm too out of shape.”

Connor scoffed. “If you get too tired to make it back, I'll carry you, okay? But you won't get tired. Come on.” He grabbed my hand and tried to pull me up.

“I hate running,” I said, and a little voice wanted me to add,
and I hate you.
God, I came so close to saying it. Really close. I mean, he wanted me to go running with him? Seriously? Yeah, right, take me out in public and show everyone how much better you are than me. Let them see me struggling to keep up with you.

“You've never tried,” he said. “I'm telling you, you'll love it.”

I jumped up then. I was hot from mowing, pissed that he seriously wanted to humiliate me in front of the whole town. Pissed that he was telling me what I'd love. Who was he to tell me anything? Mr. Perfect. Mr. Mascot for the whole fucking town. “You want to run, go run. Have a blast. But leave me the fuck alone.” I pushed him away, literally. I put my hands on him, and I pushed him.

Connor didn't push me back. He looked at me. His eyes, those fucking blue eyes, trying to say what words couldn't. But I didn't listen. Why didn't I listen?

I stare up at the sky, the same blue sky. Connor knew I'd love running. He knew because he saw something in me that I couldn't see in myself. He saw that I was like him. And I pushed him away.

I feel tears slipping from my eyes, sliding down my temples. Then I hear a voice.

“Need an ambulance?” someone hollers from the window of a car that's pulled up to the curb. Teddy Eskew, school bully and X-Man wannabe, is getting out. “You in training or something?” he asks as I get back onto my feet.

“Leave me alone, Teddy,” I warn.

“Leave you alone?” Teddy's wearing a T-shirt with the arms cut off to show off his steroid-enhanced muscles. He looks like he's been hitting the weights and the 'roids pretty hard. Large veins run along his inflated biceps. God, he's such an idiot. He's going to have big muscles, testicles like raisins, and a liver more effed up than an alcoholic's.

“Come on, Teddy,” a guy says. I recognize the voice. It's Byron Holt. He's a scrawny little math geek. He and Teddy had an arrangement. Byron would do Teddy's geometry homework, and Teddy would quit giving him bloody noses. Now it's summer, and they're hanging out? Maybe they bonded over isosceles triangles and bloody tissues.

“Teddy,” he hollers from the window, “you'll mess up your probation.”

“So what are you training for?” Teddy asks, ignoring him. “Are you trying out to be the next Connor McAdams?”

“I'm not telling you again, Teddy. Leave. Me. Alone.”

He smiles, like I knew he would. And I ram my head as hard as I can into his gut. Unlucky for me, there's a stop sign a few feet behind Teddy, and between my head ramming into his stomach and the metal post of the sign ramming against his back, the contents of his stomach are cannoned right out of him and onto my back. I strip my T-shirt off and, without giving him time to recover, punch Teddy as hard as I can in the face. He staggers, avoiding the stop sign this time. He raises his fists like he's going to punch me back, but I nail him again in the chin.

“Stop!” It's a girl's voice. I hear it gradually drawing closer, but I don't care. It feels so good to hit someone, to hit the prick who's slammed my locker door shut and nearly severed my fingers at least a dozen times since freshman year. Teddy bends forward, and I'm about to knee him right in his face when someone catches me by the arm. Instinctively, I push the person off. When I turn, I see Emma fall to the sidewalk.

“Shit! Are you all right?” I offer her my hand.

She's wearing short shorts and a T-shirt identifying her as a member of the high school yearbook staff. I don't see any blood on her knees or her elbows, but I know I pushed her hard.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she yells, slapping at my hand and getting to her feet. “Look at him!”

I do as instructed. Byron is helping Teddy toward the car. There's blood streaming down his face, hopefully not from a broken nose. The blow to his stomach has left him unable to straighten his spine. I think of all the times that he's shoved me against the wall or come up behind me and pushed my face into the water fountain when I was getting a drink. I've never gotten to defend myself against him, not without some teacher intervening first, and it feels good.

I watch Byron get behind the wheel and drive away, then look at Emma. The disgust in her beautiful eyes tells me that she sees what I feel: no remorse.

She starts back toward the clown car she abandoned by the curb, then stops and turns. “You have to grow up sometime, Kyle. I know you're dealing with a lot, but that's no excuse.”

I know it doesn't make any sense, but I start laughing. I've never been in a serious relationship, but it doesn't take a genius to know that laughing at a pissed-off girl just makes her more pissed off. Still I can't help it. “Me—dealing with a lot! You have no idea.”

She stops mid flip-flop stomp and stares at me. “Is something else going on?” she asks. “Something I don't know about?”

Her hair is divided into pigtails, and on her, it's actually a good look. But I hate the glistening of her blue eyes. I hate those ever-present tears.

“I'm fine,” I say. “Everything's fine.” I glance toward my barfed-on T-shirt and debate whether to pick it up or not.

“I'm glad,” Emma says. “I saw your Facebook post about the dog, the one with the strange name? You find his owner yet?”

“Not yet.” I don't have to fake a look of concern or disappointment at this. It's totally genuine.

“How is he? Such a weird name for a dog.”

“Yeah, I'm guessing James M. is a science fiction buff.”

She purses her lips in agreement. “What kind of dog is he?”

“Mutt,” I say without pausing to give it any thought, then thinking better of it, “Might be part beagle. That's what the vet said.”

“Eighteen, that's really old.”

I want to say, “That depends,” but I don't.

“There's something I need to tell you,” she says. She takes a step closer, then steps back again when she notices that I'm not wearing a shirt. I know my physique is nothing like Connor's. I don't have his rounded pectoral muscles, and I sure as hell don't have his six-pack abs. But she stares at my skin, stares at the flatness of my stomach, and I can almost feel the ache in her fingers because they want so much to reach out and touch me.

I bend down to pick up my shirt but decide that anything with Teddy's puke on it is not worth taking home.

“That's littering,” Emma says.

“So you want to lecture me about environmental issues?” I ask. “Don't worry; I'll eventually do my part to help the Earth.”

Let me count the ways. If we don't find Dr. Mueller and figure out how to keep me from dying on my eighteenth birthday, I won't eat any more food, consume any more water, breathe any more air, or leave any more puked-on T-shirts or fast food wrappers where they don't belong. Oh, and I can't forget the whole feeding-the-worms thing. That really helps out the good old Earth. I'll become human compost.

“I'm moving,” she blurts out. “I've got an aunt and uncle who live in Duluth, so . . . I'm moving up there.” Emma looks at me, her eyes piercing mine as she waits for my response.

“When?”

“Tomorrow morning,” she says.

My breath is gone, like an invisible Teddy just landed a lung-crushing blow. “Tomorrow? For how long?”

“I'm
moving,
” she says. “Taking all of my stuff and moving to Duluth.”

“No way. You can't move to Duluth. Nobody moves to Duluth. The people who
live
there never even moved there. They were born there and haven't realized they can leave. And tomorrow's the third. You're going to leave the day before July Fourth?”

“I can't be here anymore,” she says. “I need a new start. I need to go somewhere different. Everywhere I go, people look at me like they're surprised I haven't fallen completely apart. The truth is, I don't know how I'm holding together. It's just too hard here. There're too many memories. Too many reminders.”

I want to drop down on my knees and beg her not to go. I want to promise her that I'll take care of her. I can be Connor now. Really
be
him because we are the same. We're both “superior” beings. But I don't know where Dr. Mueller is. I could spend the next two years of my life running and studying and becoming Connor, and then once Emma loves me, loves me like she loved him, I could die too.

But I don't plan on dying. The arrangements are being made for our trip to the cardiac hospital in Dallas. The doctors
have
to come up with something. They have to. But if they don't, I don't want Emma to see Connor dead twice. I don't want her to go through it again.

I nod my head. “Okay,” I say. “I understand.”

She looks stunned and a little relieved. “I thought you would fight for me a little harder,” she says, her cheeks and her eyes reddening.

Fight for her? Is that what she wants? It's what I want, goddamn it! But I can't. Not now.

“I just want you to be happy, Emma. That's all I want. So you're leaving tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“What about your friends? How's Cami taking it? You guys have been best friends forever.”

“She doesn't want me to go, but people don't always get what they want,” she says in a hard voice I barely recognize.

“You're not taking the clown car, are you?”

Emma sighs. “Yes, Kyle. I'm going to drive all the way to Duluth on only one tank of gas, leaving little to no carbon footprint.”

I've been to Duluth. My mom's uncle lives up there, and we went for a visit one Thanksgiving. There was a blizzard, and we ended up stuck there for a whole week. And Emma's taking the Smart car?

“Can I come by in the morning and say good-bye?”

She hesitates. “Will you wear a shirt?” Emma's eyes try to stay focused on mine, but they fail, falling for a second to my bare torso.