King of the Mutants (17 page)

Me too, I thought, even though I was nervous as to what we would find.

Richie nodded and we followed him toward the elevator. We got off at the viewing station, walked down the hall, and through the lab—where we found Tony sitting in front of psycho-doc’s confinement. Greizenheimer scowled at us through the bars.

“I got the pin number for the ATM,” said Tony with a child-like laugh.

“Did you blast him?” Freddie and I asked in unison.

“Oh, you imbeciles, he wouldn’t dare. I gave the lug the number,” said Greizenheimer. “Doesn’t matter one way or another. Money matters are the least of my concerns. Now that you’ve compromised my work, we’re all dead.”

Freddie ignored the doctor and turned to Tony. “What’s the pin?”

Tony straightened up proudly. “0718.”

“Hey, that’s tomorrow,” said Freddie.

I was stunned. “It’s also my birthday…”

Greizenheimer’s eyes narrowed to a nasty glare that made me shiver. “Don’t think I was being sentimental, Maverick. It was just an easy date to remember. And do you really think anyone cares about a mutant’s birthday?”

“I do,” said Freddie.

“It won’t matter, Freddie. Don’t you see?” said Greizenheimer. “Once you cut off a monster’s head, another even more powerful one grows back. You have absolutely no comprehension as to who you are really messing with.”

Yeah, I do, a bunch of psychotic jerks, I thought.

Richie glared at Greizenheimer. “Ashby wanted us to deliver you a little message. He said he was so ticked off, he told his parent’s how you treated him today. He said that they were going to call a board meeting when they get back in town in a month.”

“Just as I told you. The board’s power is far-reaching and they control everything. Every oil field. Every major corporation. Everything. The Vanderholt family and I are just pawns in their wickedly fun games of war.”

“Whose power? What war? Who in the world are you talking about?” I screamed.

“Let me out of this confinement and we’ll have a heart-to-heart discussion. I’ll tell you everything you want to know, Son.”

“Never,” I spat, “and don’t you ever call me son again.”

“Have it your way, Maverick.”

Picking up on my anger, Snaggletooth growled at the lunatic. Then, like usual, he cowered in between my legs.

“You’re just toying with our heads.” Freddie kicked Greizenheimer’s cage, almost colliding his big foot into the doctor’s face. “Your sick and twisted mind games will not work on us!”

“Am I? Take a look around you, Freddie.”

Greizenheimer cackled in such a sinister manner, he turned my blood to ice. And his bad attitude really pushed Freddie’s buttons the wrong way. My half-brother’s entire body trembled and his face turned bright crimson. There was no holding him back. Freddie went insane on the cage, pulling it and kicking it like a spastic mixed martial arts fighter. Chimchee backed into a corner, but the doctor just sat on the floor and smoothed out his hair, snickering. Tony, Richie, and I had to drag Freddie away, kicking and screaming.

Greizenheimer’s wicked laughter taunted us with every step.

“Freddie, you’ve got to keep a cool head,” I said.

“I hate that man,” he huffed. “I think we should fry his brain like he tried to do to me.”

“That’s not a bad idea, but we’ve got enough messed up forces working against us. Including that little matter of leaving a dead lady rotting in a room with a bunch of kids, messed up and dangerous as they are.”

“I guess I have some anger management issues, huh?” Freddie calmed down immediately. “I’m going to have to try and work on that. Anger? It’s new for me.”

“Not me,” I said. “Boy, what I wouldn’t do to have a go at Ashby.”

“Ashby isn’t that bad,” said Freddie. “He’s just a little misguided—”

“What are you talking about? Have you not been with us this whole time?”

“I just don’t think Ashby is as horrible as you think he is,” said Freddie with a gulp.

“Freddie, you were with him the night Greizenheimer killed your mother. He had something to do with her death.” I glared at my brother. “Have you been taking crazy pills?”

Richie and Tony stood dumbfounded. I could tell they wanted to say something, but didn’t.

“No, I’m just sure we don’t have the whole story,” Freddie huffed.

“Whatever, and enough about Ashby. He’s, like, the least of our worries now,” I said, trying to snuff out what could have become a full-on—maybe even a pull punches—argument. “Right now, we’ve got to deal with that Octopus Lady.”

The reality of my statement seemed to snap everybody back into shape. Freddie and I stopped glaring at one another, and in a daze, we followed Richie and Tony down a long flight of stairs to the basement.

Thousands of files, arranged alphabetically, filled the stainless steel filing cabinets on the walls. I tackled the G-R’s, Freddie scoured the A-F’s, and Richie and Tony combed through the rest. We were holed up in the records room for hours.

Richie was the one who finally located the true identity of the Octopus Lady. He handed me the file, a tear cascading down his tattooed cheek.

“She was a nice woman,” he said.

Her name was Elana and she was twenty-seven years old when she died. According to her file, she was from Hoboken, New Jersey. A picture of her in a fancy ball gown—dated from six years ago with Dr. Greizenheimer by her side—fell from her folder. I picked it up. Just as I’d presumed, she had once been very pretty. Frozen in time, she looked up toward the psycho’s face with love and admiration.

If only she knew then what we knew now.

Richie and Tony said that they knew a friend-of a friend-of-a-friend who would take care of getting her body back to her family, no questions asked. Rather than arguing with their methods or tactics, I sent them on their way. See, I had my own case study in my hands. And I had a feeling it would hold the answers to the other questions I’d had.

I took a deep breath, my hands shaky, and I flipped the folder open. In tears, my whole body shook when I first saw her picture, Celeste Mercury. She was beautiful, as glamorous as a movie star. She had jet-black hair, bright green eyes, and a warm smile. My head spun with a flurry of emotions.

I had proof.

I had a mom.

I was human.

I cried hard, something I hadn’t done since the age of four. I cried because I’d never met her. I cried because my life shouldn’t have turned out the way it did. I cried because I really needed a good cry, to let all those emotions out I’d kept bottled up. But mostly, I cried and prayed for her. Just like Dr. Greizenheimer said, she’d died from complications from childbirth, delivering me at the very young age of twenty-one. My heart stuttered when I gazed at her photograph. I wonder what she saw in Doctor Greizenheimer? Why she chose to have a child with him?

If I’d never been born, she’d still be here.

Freddie walked up behind me and read over my shoulder. “Things like that happen all the time, Maverick. People die every day from complications and it just makes it more complicated,” said Freddie with his new state of calm. “At least our freak dad didn’t try turning your mom into the original Octo-Mom.”

“He did that…that…to your mom?” I answered. Never one to wallow in self-pity, I wiped the tears off my face with the sleeve of my shirt.

“Yeah, dude, he tried to do that the night I was at Ashby’s,” said Freddie, his face filled with sadness. “What happened to our mothers? What happened to you? It’s not our fault. That freak would have found a way to ruin all of our lives for his personal gain.”

The way Freddie explained it made all the sense in the world, but I still didn’t feel any better. It was bad enough feeling guilty about my mother, but even worse, the discovery of hundreds of children’s files with the word DECEASED on them really stabbed at my heart. Me, I had it good compared to them.

In my head, I came up with ways to try and get Greizenheimer back, some kind of plan to exact my revenge—mostly maiming him. In that moment, I vowed to myself I was going to fight against the injustices of the world one bad man and one issue at a time. After all, it doesn’t take super-mutant powers to become a superhero.

“Let’s fry the wacko Doc’s brain!” I yelled.

Freddie stared me down, shaking his head and puffing out his bottom lip. “If we turn him into a human vegetable, don’t you think that would make you and I as bad as him? Do you really want to deal with that guilt?”

I went silent for a moment, my emotions on total overload.

“No, I guess not. And I think living in a cage is punishment enough. Trust me. It sucks.” I paused, my mouth twisting in thought. “Treating Greizenheimer like a caged beast, like the ones he experimented on, would probably be the biggest blow we could inflict on him. Obviously, the man’s an egomaniac. Let him see what it feels like for once.”

“Yeah, I agree. Cages totally suck. Been there, done that.”

Did I hear Freddie right?

“What? Your foster family kept you in a cage?”

“Yep, another reason of many of why I had to run away—”

“To Grumbling’s of all places.”

Freddie’s eyes lowered with sadness. “Yeah. To Grumbling’s.”

I tucked the photo of my mother into my pocket and threw the rest of my file into the air. Pages scattered on the ground. “I don’t think I can take too much more today. I’m kind of having trouble thinking straight. Now that Richie and Tony have taken the Octo-Mom away, what the heck are we going to feed those kids? They were feeding off her. They’re going to have, like, major withdrawals or something.”

Freddie laughed. “Let’s just hope they like fast food and pizza.”

I nodded, but we still had another problem. “And what about Greizenheimer? Shouldn’t someone keep an eye on him?”

“Upstairs, all over his apartment, are huge flat screens that also act as security monitors,” explained Freddie. “We can tune every channel onto Freak TV. We can watch both Greizenheimer and the pod kids at the same time.”

“Then let’s get out of this nauseating room of tragedy,” I said.

Honestly, I was kind of excited to explore my new digs. Bad experience aside, I now had a place to call home. After a knuckle bump, Freddie and I stepped out of the records room and into the elevator.

Everything in Greizenheimer’s living quarters was white except for the floors, appliances, and fittings, which were stainless steel. The only color giving life to the place came from the modern art that adorned the walls or the food in the refrigerator. He had horrible taste in paintings. To me, it just looked someone threw up onto the canvases. He didn’t have any plants and it was basically a sterile extension of his laboratory. We all took turns exploring our massive accommodations, watching the monitors, and tried to make the best of our predicament.

When it was my turn to tune into Freak TV, I didn’t notice anything shady going on with Greizenheimer. He just sat in his cage singing his opera music to Chimchee. But on the other camera, ten or so of the mutant kids, including Wolfy and Octo, were having a little pow-wow in the corner. It all seemed innocent enough until Octo grinned toward the camera with his vicious, lopsided smile and spat a wad of black ink at it. Ooze dripped down the monitor like blood splatter in an old horror film. It felt like a death threat.

I turned my back from the screen just as Richie and Tony returned with Mickey D’s for everyone. Relieved I didn’t have to figure out a way to feed them chemicals from a human body, I watched the mutant kids devour every last bite. I didn’t eat a thing, not a morsel. Thoroughly exhausted and completely stressed out, I passed out on a sun lounger on the roof deck with Snaggletooth at my side. I didn’t wake up until the next day.

HOW TO STOP A MUTANT MUTINY

Garbage trucks rumbled, shaking the building ever so slightly, taxi cab drivers yelled, and car horns honked. There was nothing like the sounds of waking up to New York City coming to life. I rubbed my eyes—happy I made it to my thirteenth birthday alive—no evil clowns, no midgets in sight. Nothing but the promise of a new day. Still, I really wasn’t in the mood to celebrate. Who knew what else the future had in store for me?

Nobody else stirred. On the surveillance monitors, the mutant kids were all curled up in their pods and Greizenheimer and Chimchee were on the floor of their cage, snoring. Inside, Tony and Richie were crashed out in the living room, sleeping on the white leather and steel couches. And I assumed Freddie had found some privacy in one of the eight massive bedrooms.

It would be nice to have some time to myself.

I got off the lounger and dove into the lap pool. Just like the orange, pink, and yellow sunrise, my new life was just now beginning. As I floated on my back, I watched the clouds and thought of Serafine and her white outfit. I wished she had warned me about this King of the Mutants thing. It was a title I’d happily return. I closed my eyes and tried to think of pleasant things. For me, those were hard to come by.

And then my mother’s angelic face came to mind.

A warm breeze rushed across my body, like somebody was telling me it would all be okay, telling me that none of this was my fault. My mind found peace and it was nice, if only for a short time. Unfortunately, my dog ruined the serene moment.

Snaggletooth ran around the pool in panicked circles. I hopped out of the water before the fleabag woke everybody up. He snuggled up to my legs, but then barked sharply, pointing his snout toward the outside television screen. I glanced over at the monitor. Snaggletooth hadn’t been worried about me, he’d been alerting me to a problem.

All was not quiet on the mutant front.

The sneaky ones whose little conversation I’d busted on the previous day’s episode of Freak TV were ganging up on the other kids. And the odds weren’t stacked in their favor. It was survival of the fittest in its most whacked out form, and it was clear the stronger ones wanted to take the weaker ones down. Mortified, I watched as Hawk Boy swooped down on Glow Girl and grabbed a chunk of her hair.

I high-tailed it into the living room and did my best to wake up Tony and Richie. They just grunted, scratched their backsides, and fell right back to sleep. Richie mumbled, “Momma, Momma, I didn’t do it,” and rolled over.