Murder Genes (33 page)

"Oh, Kyle," Del sighed, gathering him up.
 
She made soothing sounds and whispered words of comfort.
 
Support.
 
Love.

Kyle let the tears roll, they almost flew down his cheeks, soaking into her blouse.
 
In her arms, he felt the sort of feeling he'd never felt even within his father's embrace.
 
It felt like everything would be OK and nothing in the world could touch him or hurt him.

Kyle pulled away and wiped at his eyes with a sleeve.
 
In the background, Kyle saw a lone figure wearing dark shades and holding a tablet poised like he was looking right at Kyle.
 
A hand came up and the shades came off.
 
The man's gray eyes met Kyle's and a small smile lilted the edge of his lips.
 
Then he turned and walked away, his dark coat riding the back of his knees.

Del's face took over his vision's field.
 
"Tell me what you saw," she said gently.

She'd seen the man?
 
No, she was asking about El's murderer.
 
Kyle refocused on Del, his mind stumbling.
 
"I..."
 
He trusted her and believed in her.
 
And he loved her back.

He'd hurt her if he told her the truth.
 
"I didn't see anything."

"Kyle!" she exclaimed.

"Nothing happened to me when I was kidnapped, either."
 
His eyes dried and his heart closed.
 
"I don't know anything," he said.
 
He stood up, his legs shook as he walked toward the 3D obstacle course.
 
"Can I go play now?"

She nodded dumbly at him and he left her.
 
It was better this way, he was protecting her.
 
I love you...Mom.

The muttering boy was quiet.
 
He didn't yell or scream or cry as most boys would've.
 
He just hung there upside-down in the trap Kyle set for him.
 
Kyle had followed him to his house and found a way in.
 
When the boy had left again, Kyle set a trap in the boy's own room.
 
The muttering high school bully lived alone in a run-down apartment and it hadn't been hard to set the trap with the exposed pipes and beams in the ceiling.

The boy smirked at Kyle.
 
"Pretty good, kid, but now what?"

Kyle didn't answer.

This time the other kid laughed.
 
"You never think that far, do you?
 
Same as last time."

"What's your name?" Kyle asked.

The other kid grinned.
 
"It's Ryant.
 
Kyle's your name if I remember correctly.
 
That's what the file said at least."

Ryant.
 
He remembered now.
 
He'd overheard the name when Del had been talking to Jess.
 
Kyle walked to one of the wooden beams in the wall.
 
He kicked it and it broke enough so that he could tear the nailed end from the ceiling.

Ryant lifted--or dropped depending on your point of view--his eyebrows.
 
"Damn, that drug really works.
 
No wonder the other kids never had a chance."

"No wonder," Kyle repeated.
 
He spun the tip of the board with the slightly bent nails sticking from its end.
 
Then he swung it face forward into the kid's back.
 
Pulled out, and swung again.
 
There it is
.
 
The screaming.

"You bastard!
 
You fucking bastard!
 
Let me down right now!
 
You have no idea how much trouble I can get you in, you have no idea what I'll do to you!
 
Let me down!"
 
The kid screamed and swung and screamed.
 
No more muttering, no more cool, no more smirks.

Kyle smiled.
 
He looked at the kid's shirt which had begun to grow little red circles.
 
"Looks like I got you good."

"LET ME DOWN!"

"It doesn't work that way.
 
You have to tell me stuff, first.
 
If you don't, I swing.
 
If you do, I don't swing."
 
Kyle swung again, the nails bit into the boy's stomach.
 
"See?
 
You haven't told me anything so I swung.
 
Does that make sense?"

The boy let out a half snarl half sob.
 
"What you do want to know?"

"Anything.
 
Just talk.
 
I'll
decide if it's something to swing for or not."

It felt good knowing that Kyle wasn't crazy.
 
The boy clearly knew something, and he wasn't bothering to hide it.

"I'm not allowed to say an..."

Swing.
 
Scream.

"You don't understand, if I do..."

Swing.
 
Scream.

"You fucking bastard!
 
You fuck..."

Swing.
 
Scream.

Sobs.
 
Begging.
 
Crying.

Swing.
 
Scream.

"Be careful," Kyle said.
 
"If you keep leaking like that, you'll die."

"Fine," Ryant gasped.
 
"I'll talk."

Swing.
 
Scream.
 
"Hurry," Kyle said.

"Fuck!" Ryant gasped.
 
And as Kyle raised the board, "all right!
 
My fiancée's dad is doing an experiment.
 
He doesn't tell me much, but it has something to do with epigenes."

"What's an epigene?" Kyle asked, walking around the boy.

"It's a part of your genetic makeup that can change DNA expression depending on stimulation."

Kyle hesitated.
 
"You almost made me swing again.
 
Tell me what that means."

"It means that your DNA, you know DNA right?
 
It can change, or look different if we do certain things to it."

"OK."
 
That might explain the skin sample and why he was so strong now.
 
"What else?"

"That's all I know.
 
Really!" the boy gasped.

Swing.
 
Scream.

Kyle prepped to swing again.
 
"Who's your fiancée's father?" he asked.

"Andre," muttering boy sobbed.

"Last name?"

A voice came from the doorway.
 
"Mollinda," it said.
 
It was Jess in the doorway.
 
"That's all Ryant knows, Kyle."

"Jess!" Ryant gasped in relief.

"You're part of this too?" Kyle said.
 
Mollinda.
 
"And you're Callie's sister?"

"Half-sister," Jess answered, looking at her fiancé.
 
“Hi Ryant.”

“Help me down,” Ryant begged.

Jess worked her way behind her swinging fiancé to where Kyle was standing.
 
“You know the whole world is up in arms about El.”

“You don’t say,” Kyle answered.

“It’s big news.
 
The first murder in a Clean Area.
 
This’ll be the second,” Jess said.
 
She walked up to Ryant and put her arm around his neck and began squeezing.
 
Ryant started kicking wildly, but she held him tight, ignoring his flailing arms and hands.
 
A minute later and Ryant had stopped moving.
 
She hadn't even let him say a single word.
 
Jess let go and shoved his body lightly so that Ryant swung with an almost calming, pendulous rocking.

It was shocking to see someone else doing the killing.
 
A bit surreal and disturbing deep inside, worse that it felt when he did the killing himself.
 
“So you
are
part of this too,” Kyle said again.

“Not willingly.
 
Not because I want to be.
 
Not because I chose to be.
 
I’m just like you.”

“You’re an experiment?”

“
A
experiment.
 
Not
the
experiment.
 
Father left that honor to you.”

“Why me?”

She shook her head.
 
“I don’t know.
 
I wish I did.”

“So Ryant...”

“He chose his role.”

“Why didn’t you kill him before then?
 
Why now?
 
And why are you telling me this stuff?”

“Because I had to wait until you did something so unexpected that Father wouldn’t have cameras set up to catch what happened.”

“Cameras.”
 
Callie.
 
She must've done everything she could by telling me about the experiment.
 
That was probably why Kyle never saw her again.

She suddenly held a hand to her jaw.
 
“I’m on it,” she said to someone.
 
“No.
 
I haven’t heard from Ryant.
 
Yes.
 
Yes, Father, I’ll check.”
 
She took her hand away.
 
“We don’t have much time,” she said to him.

“Why are you helping me?”

She gave Kyle the sad-sweet smile that he wished would still make his heart-break.
 
“Because we hate what Father’s doing to you.
 
Callie and I.
 
We hate all of it.
 
Father trusts us but we see how evil he’s becoming, my experiments were bad, but nothing like yours.
 
He’s so obsessed with your experiment that he’s gone too far this time.”

“What’s the experiment?”

Jess shrugged.
 
“We don’t know that.
 
Dad’s a purist.
 
He believes in Natural Science and won’t accept anything but Natural Science.”

“What’s Natural Science?”

Jess shook her head.
 
“Look it up at school--no, don’t.
 
He’ll see that.”
 
She sighed, speaking fast.
 
“Let me try, but I’ll have to be brief.
 
Natural Science is a movement replacing the Scientific Method.
 
Psychology and Science merged when the Scientific Method wasn’t sufficient to properly study behavior with how long it took to study one variable and how impossible it was to control
all
the excess variables.
 
That’s when they developed the Natural Science Method."
 
She looked at Ryant, grabbed him by his limp shoulders, spun him in a circle as he swung.
 
His dead eyes wobbled in their sockets.
 
"It is the newest, highest level of scientific study, using psychology to control experimental variables to see in exquisite detail a single case study in its natural environment.
 
Or at least an environment
believed
to be natural.
 
This way you can test a subject and gather a huge amount of information on the subject’s response to any and several stim...”
 
Her hand came up to her jaw again.
 
“I’m almost there,” she reported.
 
Jess shook her head at him.
 
“You have to go.”

“Del and Tim.”
 
Kyle said.
 
“Are they...?”

She gave him a sympathetic look.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
Everything that seems real probably isn’t and is just part of the experiment.”

Del, Mom, wasn’t real then?
 
The highest form of science...
 
He’d killed people, there was no way of faking that.
 
There was no way of pretending people died.
 
This was science?

She pulled fire tags--rectangular pieces of paper--from her pockets and put them on the walls, slapping them to light them one by one.
 
They burned in tiny squares until they caught, licking at the wooden boards.
 
“You should go,” she said.
 
“We’ll help you however we can, Callie and I.”

He wanted to ask her more, but he knew he should leave.
 
“Callie,” he yelled as the flames blossomed around them.
 
“Is she OK?”

She nodded.
 
“She misses you.”

Kyle managed a small smile.
 
Then he ran from the burning apartment, back to “home.”
 
And “Mom.”

Chapter 23

This is who I am.