Subject Seven (25 page)

“I don't know, Kyrie. I don't. But maybe we can find a way to fix everything.”

“I just wanna go home . . . . I want to go back to my stupid life and my stupid family, you know?”

He nodded and held her tighter as the sting came back to his eyes. “Yeah. I do. I want my dumb life back too.” Uncle Robbie's drunken rants, his mom's distant way of dealing with everything. His dad's stupid jokes at dinner. Trish's bratty ways and Kevin's endless whining. He missed them all, more than he would have ever thought possible.

“I just want to go home.” She sighed the words into his shoulder, and while he should have been either dying of embarrassment or worrying about how his body was reacting to the half-naked cheerleader hugging on him, Gene just hugged her back, taking comfort from a girl who was almost a stranger and who had more in common with him than most of the people in the world.

GENE AND KYRIE SCROUNGED their money together and snuck out of the hotel room. They came back twenty minutes later with donuts and a six-pack of toothbrushes.

By the time they got back, the others had awakened and managed to survive the embarrassment of waking up mostly naked around a group of strangers. The one who seemed to take it the best was Tina, but if any of them had actually known her, they would have understood how good she was at hiding her feelings.

They read the complimentary newspaper and then watched the TV together as they ate. Not surprisingly, the destruction of part of the warehouse district was big news. They didn't know the details, but none of them doubted that their other parts were responsible not only for them still being alive, but for wrecking half a city block in the process. There were just enough little flashes of memory to confirm that. Cody seemed to remember more of what had happened than any of the others, but all of them had seen the others around them changing. All of them had been awake and alert this time when they became something else. There was no denying that much of what Joe Bronx had told them was true.

“What do we do from here?” Cody lay on the bed, his narrow rib cage and bony knees pointed at the ceiling and his head hanging over the edge.

Hunter was the one who answered him. “We need to watch the rest of the tape Joe Bronx gave us.” He pointed at the TV. “There's a built-in player.”

The tape had survived everything, which, all things considered, seemed almost like a miracle. They'd found it waiting on the dresser next to the TV.

They popped the tape in the player and watched, and if Hunter stared with more intensity than the others, they all pretended not to notice.

A flicker of static and then the image resolved into the shadowed face of Joe Bronx. “So the thing is, we have two choices. Well, you have two choices. I only have one. Either we go together to find out who did this to us, or I go alone. I don't know about you, but I don't much like the idea of being hunted down or killed for being a mistake. I for one want to take control of my life.”

He stood again and paced for a moment around a room that no longer existed. They waited. What else could they do? Finally he sat again. “I want this done. I want this over with. I know that Hunter would like to go back to his family. I know that Kyrie wants to get back to Seattle. I get that. I do. I want to get on with my life too. Of course, that's part of the problem, isn't it? My life and Hunter's…they're locked together. I can't be myself when Hunter is doing his thing. He can't be himself when I'm doing anything at all.” His frustration was evident.

He leaned in closer to the camera again, staring hard at the lens. “Someone did this to us, all of us, all of you and all of your counterparts. We're not the enemy here. We're all victims. We all want to have our lives back, don't we?” He chuckled. It wasn't a comforting sound at all. “That's the thing. We all want our lives back and the only way any of us are going to get them is if we work together. I can't do it all myself. I've been trying now for a long time.” He spread his hands. “I can admit it. I need help. Mostly, I need the Others that each of you carries, but I can't expect them to help me without it affecting your lives. You, all of you, are in control of your lives. Except when you aren't. Except when they come out to play.”

He sighed and shook his head. “Gets damned confusing, doesn't it? It only gets worse. So far each of you has a few questions. You want to know what you did to deserve this, I'm sure. The answer, near as I've figured out, is nothing. You were born. That was all you did wrong. Now, because your counterparts are awake and you are here, there's a good chance that you can't even go home without this being resolved. Well, you can.” Joe leaned in closer to the camera again and his smile was not a pleasant one. “But it's gonna suck to be you when your other halves get out and decide to hit the town. You already know something about that, don't you, Cody? Woke up in a jail cell as I recall. He got busted breaking into a closed store. He was hungry. Never had to eat before he was born, did he?”

He held up a hand to stop anyone who might want to start talking. The gesture wasn't necessary.

“Gene, your other self has a few issues with authority. It won't get better. I guess you know who put your dad's good friend Rob in the hospital, don't you? What you don't like, he doesn't like. The difference is, he'll do something about it.” He sat silently for a moment, composing what he wanted to say next, perhaps. “Tina. I'm sorry about everything that's happened to you. I'm sorry about your mom, especially.” Tina shook her head and her lips pressed together into a tight line of rage or something else. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears, but aside from that, no one would have known anything serious was wrong. “You're alone in the world now. No dad. No family, no mom. There's not as much in this for you. You don't need to worry about what your other half will do to loved ones. Just the occasional would-be rapist.” He looked at the screen closely again, as if he might somehow be able to see into her eyes. “Your other half killed, what was it, five people? All of them mobsters. All of them connected to your boyfriend. She had to. They had something we needed.” He squinted for a moment and looked at the ceiling, then back at the camera. “Tony, isn't it? Not a great guy, true, but he has friends. They're looking for you. They'll keep looking. Not just because you killed some of them, but because you took one hell of a lot of their money. You want to get out of this alive, you better figure out how to talk to your other half.”

He shrugged. “Maybe you can't do it all, but I bet we could work out an arrangement to make sure the losers looking for you either stop looking or just plain vanish. Yes, I mean we work as a team, and when the time is right, we take care of your problems. Any way we need to.”

He stood again and paced, and all Kyrie could think of as she watched him was a caged lion at the zoo. Too much energy bundled into too small an area.

“You don't have to join up with me. You can try to figure all of this out on your own. Hunter's been my unwilling assistant for a while; he knows some of the details. He might even be able to figure everything out. But I have more information. I have most of the knowledge in my own noggin.” He tapped his temple. “I'll share when I'm ready. I'm the one in charge if you come along for the ride. Think about it.”

He looked at the camera in silence for long enough that Hunter was just reaching to turn off the VCR before he spoke again. “Look in the closet on the top shelf. You'll find a box. There's a few surprises in there for you. They're my sign of good faith. I'll find out soon enough if you decide to stay.”

After that Joe reached for the camera and the picture dissolved into snow.

It was a lot to absorb. While most of them sat in the same places and thought about that, Tina stood up and rooted around in the closet until she pulled out a shoe box that had seen better days. She sat on the bed and opened it while the others watched.

From inside the box she pulled two stacks of hundred-dollar bills, one box of .38-caliber bullets and a handful of Polaroid pictures, the sort made with an old-fashioned instant camera.

She read the notes attached to each piece aloud. “Tina, you've been busy. Thanks for getting us funds.” She looked at the money for a long moment without saying anything and then set it down. “Kyrie, you're a good little spy. Thanks for the weapons.” She looked at the pictures for a moment and then showed them around. “Not-Hunter.” The picture was of Joe Bronx. “Not-Tina.” Tina stared long and hard at that one. The girl who looked back at her was completely unfamiliar. Each of them looked at the pictures of their alter egos with a sick fascination and not a little dread.

There was one more surprise in the box, one that was almost overlooked while all of the kids looked at their other halves.

There was an envelope, and inside it was a single sheet of paper. On the paper was a short note written to the woman Joe claimed was responsible for a lot of their woes. There was also a final note from Joe Bronx.

The address under Warburton's name had been scratched out.

The note included another address in Boston. Hunter shoved both papers into his pocket.

Hunter tore the address off of the letter and held it in his hand. The rest of the letter got shoved into a pocket.

“So.” He looked around the room. “Much as I hate it, Joe is right. I don't have any choice in this. I have to go after this lady and get answers. The rest of you, you at least know where you're supposed to be, who you're supposed to be. So I can't decide for you.”

He sat down for a moment and waited.

Cody said, “Yeah, well, I go home right now and the only thing I have to look forward to is about twenty years of being grounded and a lot of time talking to shrinks.”

Gene snorted. “Think you might be exaggerating there?”

Cody shook his head. “No. You don't know my parents. Seriously, I've already been to two shrinks because of the whole jail incident.”

Kyrie spoke up. “I want to go home. I do. But I can't go there if somebody might hurt my family. Especially if she's that somebody.” She held up the photo of her other self, a tall, muscular girl who was more handsome than pretty and looked like the sort who would break the bones of anyone who got stupid with her. “We need to find out if there's a cure for this, and if this Hope woman has the answers, that's who we have to talk to.”

Gene looked from one person to the next. “Look, all I know is somebody blew up the last building we were at. I think maybe the same people who work for Evelyn Hope. I don't really want to get blown up.”

Tina snorted out a harsh laugh. “Where you gonna go, bright boy?” Her eyes glittered darkly as she stared at him. Every gesture she made bordered on being a challenge and the sneer she threw at him was pure contempt. “You want to run home to mommy and daddy and ask them to make it all better? Whoever is after us blew up a building! You think they'll be nicer if your folks are in the way?”

Gene stared hard at her. “For all we know, those things we become are what blew up the building—what then, Tina?”

She pointed a finger at him like it was a knife and she was in the mood for murder. “Then like Kyrie said, we better find a cure first. Because I don't think that thing you became gives a rat's ass about your family.” She looked down and then toward the far wall. Her voice was strained when she spoke again. “I don't think we can trust them. They're dangerous. You want to let a killer in with your family?”

Gene thought about his uncle Robbie and once again felt that brief satisfaction in knowing what had happened to the man. Guilt and dread crushed that feeling quickly.

“Okay, so we check this out first. One more lead.” He licked his lips. He wanted this done. What if his other half decided the family needed to get slapped around the same way it had beat the hell out of Robbie? How could he live with himself if he hurt his sister, Trish?

“So let's do this.” Hunter stood up, not letting himself think about what might be waiting on the other end of the road they were about to travel.

“How are we gonna get there?” Cody's voice held the same wavering uncertainty it always held. Hunter thought about the boy's Hyde, the giant that had come out of the scrawny kid, and wondered if they all changed that much, got that big. He didn't think so. He hoped not.

Tina pointed to the money with her chin. “Guess we take a cab.”

They were on their way five minutes later.

When they pulled up in front of the small office building, Tina reached into her jeans and pulled out sixty dollars to pay the man. The bill was only forty-seven dollars, but she told the man to keep the difference.

The offices they were looking for were on the third floor. Or at least they were supposed to be on the third floor. What they found when they stepped off the elevator instead of a lot of activity was another empty office. This time the people leaving had been hasty. There were still desks and chairs and filing cabinets, but the drawers all looked to be emptied. Every knickknack and personal item had been yanked, but the walls had notices and calendars, the occasional cartoon strip taped in place.