Deadly Design (9780698173613) (21 page)

She hesitates, like she'd like to lie to me but has too much integrity to do so. “The entire cooling process takes a few weeks, but when it's complete, you'll be cooled to negative one hundred ninety-six degrees Celsius.”

I was never good at converting Fahrenheit into Celsius, but if 32 degrees Fahrenheit is freezing, negative 196 degrees Celsius is . . .

“Why so cold?”

“It's the temperature of liquid nitrogen. They're experimenting with alternatives to liquid nitrogen as the primary cooling agent, but for now . . .”

I remember a movie I saw once about a caveman found frozen in the ice somewhere near the North Pole. He was really confused once he thawed out. He'd never seen an airplane, or for that matter, a person with straight teeth. He couldn't take it, and he ended up killing himself. What if it's not just a couple of years? What if they fix me, and my parents are dead and people are flying hovercrafts instead of driving cars, or what if there's a nuclear war and the scientists aren't around to thaw me out? What if there's nobody around to put the blood back into my veins?

“How soon do I need to decide?” I ask.

“Anytime before you die,” she says, “but I highly recommend we proceed as soon as possible.” She opens her purse and sets a thick envelope on the coffee table. “This should answer most of your questions. A story will have to be devised to explain Kyle's absence from school. My apologies for being deceptive, but I pretended to be a social worker and called the school to speak with your counselor. It was brought to my attention that your principal knows some things about your condition. I suggest that we simply say that you've gone somewhere for treatment. But we must be careful.”

She gives me a supportive look.

“It's imperative that no one comes looking for you. Just as the procedures to create you were illegal, so is this course of action. It's only because I have certain connections that this is an option at all, but confidentiality must be kept. Once you are cured and revived, you need to be able to step back into your life with as little turmoil as possible. You'll tell people you were simply away for a time due to ambiguous health issues. They resolved and now you're back. I'll be able to secure transcripts showing you were able to continue your education, perhaps through an online school. If needed, I can even include a few semesters of college. But no one, absolutely no one outside of this room, can know where you really are. I have a letter, drafted by a friend of mine at Johns Hopkins, stating that Kyle is being transferred to his care and that his team will be trying to find a solution to his condition. If you agree to this plan, the letter will be sent to the cardiac hospital in Dallas. All the loose ends will be tied up.” She looks at each of us in turn. “But this can only work if I have your complete trust and silence.”

“Cami,” I say. “I won't do it if she can't know.”

“A girlfriend?” Bartholomew asks.

I nod.

Bartholomew takes a deep breath and dampens her thin lips with her tongue. “No doubt, it's a serious relationship. Can you make her understand the consequences if she tells anyone the truth about where you are?”

I nod, and she frowns.

“Very well,” she says. “But she must know what's at stake. All of you must. Your life, for one, Kyle. And not just my reputation, but my freedom and my work. If anyone discovers what we're doing, I could go to prison, and countless people who could have been saved by my work will perish, including you.”

“She won't tell anyone,” I say, it's the only thing in the world I know for sure.

Dr. Bartholomew doesn't like it. She may not be a parent, but she has the disapproving look pegged perfectly. “Fine,” she says. “But I want to meet her. You can bring her with you to the institute. She must understand the gravity of the situation. If she tells anyone, if you're discovered, you could be left frozen indefinitely, or worse.”

What could be worse than being frozen . . . indefinitely? Being thawed like a turkey on the kitchen counter. Having someone pull the plug, because someone broke the law and froze me before I died, before the doctors could cut me open and weigh my organs.

“It's a lot to take in, I know, but I want you to read through all of the information. I've included a card with my phone number. Please, call me as soon as you decide.” Dr. Bartholomew stands and straightens her skirt. “Don't hesitate to contact me if you have questions or concerns.” She comes toward me and takes hold of my hand. “I made you a promise. But I can only keep it if you let me. I hope you will.” She squeezes my hand.

I don't remember watching her leave. I don't remember eating dinner or sitting on the sofa with my parents and none of us saying anything and none of us touching the envelope that contains information about freezing a human being. I don't remember anything except wishing things were different and wishing the chill in my gut would go away.

We didn't discuss it. We didn't need to. The decision was made, because the only other choice is not an option, not to my parents anyway. Now I have to figure out how to tell Cami.

I
turn on the heater in Cami's truck. She's already complained about being hot. It's mid-September, and while the evening air may be considered refreshing to many, to me it's cold. I can't stop feeling cold.

Cami takes the piece of paper she's just finished reading and starts to refold it, but stops. She looks over at me. “I'll wait for you,” she says. “No matter how long it takes.” She grabs my hand and tries to smile. “This is good.”

She sounds like she's trying to convince herself as much as me.

“This is good,” she says again. “We can have a future.”

“What if it's ten years from now?”

“I'll be twenty-eight,” Cami gasps.

“And I'll still be almost seventeen.” I start to say more, because I want her to know everything, but I stop myself. If she's worried about being ten years older, how will she feel when she's forty or fifty, and people mistake me for her son because the longevity sequence has kicked in and I'm not aging? I shiver.

Cami's arms slip around my waist. “It's going to work,” she says. “And I don't mind if people think I'm a cougar, going after a younger man. They'll just be jealous because you're mine.”

“I'll always be yours,” I say, trying to blink away the stinging in my eyes. “Promise me you'll stay mine. Promise me you won't freak out when you get your first gray hair and I'm . . .”

She lifts her face and kisses me.

The warmth of her does ten times more good than the truck's heater. “I just want you to be happy,” I say. “And if something goes wrong . . .”

Cami presses a finger over my mouth.

I take her hand and hold it tightly. “If something goes wrong, I don't want you to waste time being sad. I mean, really— nanorobots smaller than the eyes can see are going to go around fixing my DNA? I know Dr. Bartholomew swears she can do this, but what if she can't?”

“She can,” Cami says. “You'll be cured, and we can be together. But you can't complain if I get a few gray hairs or a few wrinkles before you do.”

I study her face. I want to memorize it, and if my brain is frozen thinking about one thing, holding on to one memory, I want it to be this. I want to see Cami's eyes, her hair, and her smile. Freeze me with that stuck like a screen saver in my brain, and I won't care how long it takes. And when I wake up, let her be there. Please let her be there.

H
ow do you go to sleep when you know that tomorrow your heart is going to stop beating? That you are, for all intents and purposes, going to die? How do you close your eyes and let the thing you desire most in this world—time—tiptoe past you?

Have you ever been so scared, so overwhelmed with emotions that you could feel your heart, your soul, doubling over inside of you? You feel like . . . like you just want to escape, but you know you can't.

They said it wouldn't be like dying. My heart wasn't going to suddenly stop. It would slow down gradually while I slept, while my body was cooled. Eventually everything would start to solidify until my heart, my lungs, my brain, were rendered motionless. In the letter I wrote to Cami, the one she read in the truck because I was too chickenshit to say everything myself, I left out the part about the holes in my skull the doctors will drill so they can monitor my brain responses. A healthy brain supposedly contracts under the process, while a damaged brain expands. Negative 196 degrees Celsius is negative 320.8 degrees Fahrenheit: 353 degrees below freezing. I Googled it, but I wish I hadn't. I can't imagine anything being that cold.

It's as incomprehensible as the universe, and it's going to happen to me.

My stomach growls. I'm not really hungry. Mom made my favorite dinner. Actually it was more like my favorite
dinners
and to hell with eating healthy. We ordered in pizza—pepperoni with stuffed crust, plus Mom made fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy. We topped it off with cake and ice cream. No one said happy birthday, but with mine being three and a half months away, it kind of felt like we should have, especially since we know I won't be home for my birthday.

Hours ago, I felt sick from eating too much. Now my stomach calls out to me. It's not because it's empty; it's because it knows it will never be fed again—at least not for two to ten years. It's the old “no food after midnight” rule. They're using anesthesia to put me out, so there's a risk of choking if anything is in my stomach. If I choke while I'm unconscious, my airways will close up and my brain will be deprived of oxygen. If that happens, I'll be thawed out and given a pass to ride that special short bus. So, no food.

In a way, I guess that's good. I can't imagine a slice of stuffed crust pizza being frozen in my stomach for two or more years. Talk about freezer burn.

I roll onto my back, and the mattress shifts around my body. It doesn't feel right. It feels off somehow, foreign, like this isn't the bed I've slept in since I made my way out of the crib all those years ago. I roll back onto my side, but that doesn't feel right either. I kick off the covers and start pacing. I pace around my bed, pace back and forth along the wall where my dresser is. Finally, I pace right up the stairs and find myself standing outside my parents' bedroom. The door is shut, but I can see a light shining dimly from beneath the door. Of course they're not asleep. How could they be?

I want to knock. I want to fling open the door and fall into their arms. Tears burn my eyes while I imagine sobbing in their embrace. I want them to tell me that I don't have to do it because there's another way. They've just discovered it, just seconds ago they had some brilliant realization of how I can be saved another way.

I can see them; Mom and Dad are sitting on the bed. They're embracing each other, comforting each other. They're fighting the urge to slip down the stairs and stare at me in my sleep, except I'm not sleeping. They know that. And to enter my domain would be to open the floodgates to a sea of emotions none of us are strong enough to deal with. So they hold each other. They hold on to their hope.

I don't go in.

I won't leave them with the memory of me scared and sobbing. I'm going to be strong.

All I have to do is go to sleep, and the gas they give me will take care of that, so really, I don't have to do anything. Negative 320.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Don't think about that. Don't. Just go to sleep and wake up. And be strong.

Be strong. Be strong.

Quietly, I knock my forehead over and over again against the frame around my parents' door. Be strong, I repeat. Be strong.

• • •

My dad's hand is on my shoulder. “It's morning, buddy,” he says. “About time to go.”

“Go where?” I mumble and try to get the kink out of my back. I'm in the hallway. I must have fallen asleep . . . I'm awake.

One hundred and a thousand percent awake. Time to go, he'd said.

Dad smiles down at me and offers me his hand. I take it, gripping it tightly. He pulls me to my feet, but he doesn't let go of my hand. Instead his other hand goes around my shoulder, and he pulls me to him. Mom's there too, her arms going around me, but we can't stay like this for long. We know it. We're on a tightrope of sorts. We can't make any wrong moves. There's a schedule, both physical and emotional. Right now, it's time to be strong. Time to move like robots or zombies, to move without thought, without emotion.

The emotional part will come later.

I go downstairs and get dressed, being careful not to look around my room. Either I'll see it again or I won't. If I get better and come home and get to sleep in my bed, great. If I don't, it's not like I'm going to miss it.

Cami and my mom are standing in the kitchen when I get upstairs.

“Here.” Cami comes to me and sticks something in my hand. It's an iPod. “I made a playlist of all your favorite songs. I thought that you could listen to it . . .”

“Thanks,” I say, wondering when exactly I'm supposed to listen to it. Before they put me to sleep, I'll be with my family. Once the sleeping gas hits my lungs, I'll be too out of it to hear anything. But still, I like the idea, even if I only get to hear a few notes of a favorite song.

There's a strange feeling when we step out of the house, like we're going on vacation and we're sure we're forgetting something. We aren't forgetting anything. And I know my parents are just trying to memorize the feel of me at home. They never got to do that with Connor: never got to stand there and look at their son with the backdrop of the front porch. But they can do it with me. They can try to remember what it was like to be standing here looking at their son.

“Let's go to Hawaii,” I blurt out. “We can be like homeless bums on the beach. It's nice all the time there, warm. We can lie in the sand and watch the waves, and when it happens, you can cremate me and sprinkle my ashes over the water.”

Actually, I don't blurt that out. At least, not anywhere but in my head. I want to. I want to go to Hawaii. I want to die where it's warm, with my toes buried in the sand. But I can't say it. I can't.

I follow them out into the gray morning, and there's Jimmy leaning up against Cami's truck. He looks thin. I know he lost weight during his week in the hospital, but even though he's been out for two weeks, it looks like he's still losing, like the medications that zapped his appetite are still on duty in his stomach, refusing to let invaders in.

“Didn't think I'd let you leave without seeing you off, did you?” Jimmy says. His eyes look glassy but better than they have been, like the ice that's been coating them is starting to thaw. It looks like he's attempted to comb his wild hair, and there's a razor nick on his chin from shaving with an unsteady hand. “This is gonna work,” he says. “And don't worry; I know this is top-secret shit. I really appreciate you trusting me enough to tell me. Your secret's safe. I promise.”

“I know,” I say, and I still can't believe what he did for me. What he's still doing for me, because his stay in the hospital isn't exactly over. It won't be until the meds have left his system and he's put back on the weight he lost. And even then, I can't ever repay him. “You're my best friend.”

He smiles, his eyes tearing. “Some crazy shit, though,” Jimmy says. “I mean—fuck! You're getting frozen. That's . . . that's some crazy shit. So crazy it has to work. That's how missions are. The ones you think will go smooth go to shit, but the ones you think are just too fucked up to work go off without a hitch. This will work, buddy.”

He extends his hand, and I take it, expecting one of his finger-crushing handshakes, but instead Jimmy pulls me toward him and hugs me.

“Come home,” he says, slapping my shoulder. “See you in two years.”

“You bet. Take care of Cami for me?”

He frowns like it's a stupid request, and I give him one last quick hug.

The institute is in Nebraska. It's a four-hour drive from home. It's a miserable drive, the last hour of it on a two-lane highway. Cami and I sit in the backseat, our hands clasped so tightly together our palms start to sweat, but we don't loosen our grip. Mom and Dad keep glancing back at me in the rearview mirror. They try some idle chitchat, but give up. It seems like there should be a lot to say, under the circumstances, but I doubt anyone is ever chatty on the way to the gallows or the gas chamber, and I think that's how we all feel—like we're all about to die in one sense or another. Dad turns on the radio. “If I Die Young” starts playing. He quickly turns it off again, but not before Mom starts crying.

We ride in silence until we see the place, rising from the earth like a giant tombstone standing in a field of prairie grass and wild cedars. It is a large, gray, windowless structure. And instead of the name of a departed loved one etched on the cement surface, there is a cold, sterile name:
THE INSTITUTE FOR CRYONIC SCIENCES.