Brian made it into Scott about an hour and a half late. He stopped by the showers, and then sat through a class before lunch was called. He didn’t get anything, couldn’t bring himself to stomach any food, or deal with the innocuous teasing that was an integral part to life on Scott. Instead, he went over to Gustav, who was sitting with other Archetypes.
“Can I speak to you?”
Gustav quickly got out of his chair, and Brian led him to a corner of the cafeteria.
“I need someone killed.”
Gustav nodded, with a smile creeping over his face. “How badly?”
“Very badly. I need him killed, and his home destroyed.”
Gustav nodded again, with an even wider smile. “When?”
“Tomorrow morning. He is hiding citizens in the basement of his house. I need them brought out, executed, and I need him to load the bodies, like you did with those who attacked me before. Then, he is to be executed.”
Gustav laughed out loud. “Nothing would make me happier!” Suddenly, his expression turned serious and grim. “You know, you have a warning against you from the Homestead.”
Brian sighed. “Yeah.”
“You need to take care of that—tonight. I don’t need a doc’s note for proof—I’ll trust in your word. But you need to do it tonight.”
Brian nodded. He turned to leave, when Gustav stopped him.
“I’d also like a favor from you.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re scheduled to go up on Eve, to the watchers?”
“Yeah.”
Gustav’s eyes bored into Brian with an intensity he found unnerving. “I’d like you to stay.”
The strength almost all faded from his limbs. “Why?”
“We are . . . conditioned, to take orders from you prototypes. But some of you are better at it than others. I can tell you have more compassion than others. I know you’re trained to command, but while others would use us as expendable bodies, you would think twice before making us senselessly risk our lives.”
Brian thought for a moment, on giving up his dream. But the faces and laughter of the old men were all he could see and hear.
“Yes.”
Gustav grabbed his arm, as he tried to leave again. “I need you to promise this. On your honor, you will stay.”
Brian nodded. “I promise, on my honor, I will stay.”
Gustav saluted him. “We are at your command.”
Rape is not a crime . . . rape is not a crime . . . rape is not a crime . . .
Brian got in a car, and drove up a road he had driven hundreds of times before. Through fiercest duststorm, through thickest snow and rain, through the dead of night he had driven that path, always with a joy in his heart and lightness of spirit.
The car was one he kept about a mile from his house, in a garage to which only he had the key. More than that, he always kept the starter in a secret spot, so no one would ever move it. He loved this car—it was red, thick, and had an engine that made him feel like a man every time he started it up.
Tonight, the car raced at full bore, the engine growling in the moonlight, dust billowing in its wake.
Rape is not a crime . . . rape is not a crime . . . rape is not a crime . . .
Around one bend, then another, he pushed the machine relentlessly, trying to channel his anger and fear, frustration and humiliation into the leather-clad wheel, through the metal pedal under his feet. But it was just a car, a machine made of steel, aluminum, leather and rubber, and was unable to siphon off any of those emotions.
The car screeched to a halt, one block from the place it had always gone to. It was used only for this trip—to her home, back from her home. Tonight it sat, the engine rumbling, the steering wheel gripped tightly as its lone occupant sat and stared at the home up ahead.
Rape is not a crime . . . rape is not a crime . . . rape is not a crime . . .
The pedal was pressed, the Machine moved on.
Brian got home late again, and he stood outside the door of his home, thinking.
Why do I even go back in there? Without Iris, it feels . . . it’s just awful. He sat on the steps out front, pulling up his mask, putting on his goggles as another dust storm was whipping up. It clouded the sky, obscuring any and all light from falling. Why did this happen to me? Why didn’t those old men do that to someone else? God, I feel so dirty, so dirty I’ll never be able to wash it all offa me, ever. He avoided the eyes of his friends all through the rest of the day, knowing they would be able to see right through him, know what was done to him. It hurt when he sat, and every time he felt the pain, he wanted to cower into a ball and cry. But something in him was broken, and had grown cold and hard, and a part of him knew he would never cry again.
He opened the door, and found his father was waiting in the darkness.
“I told you about getting home late, boy!”
His father wound up his hand to strike him, but Brian stood in the doorframe, unmoving, his eyes gleaming like black pearls.
“What? You think you’re better than me?!”
“I know I’m better than you.”
In an instant, Brian let loose all the anger, all the frustration stored in him over the years. He punched his father in his gut, and then brought his fist down across his face. His father tried to stand and strike out, but Brian brought up his right arm and punched him repeatedly in his mid-section. While he may not have liked to use physical force, all prototypes were trained in the methods of physical combat, so they would know what they would order the archetypes to do. His father groaned and spat blood, but Brian could see nothing but fury. He threw his father down onto the floor, and kicked him once in his head with his boots. He groaned, moaned with pain, but Brian got on his knees and let loose his fists, breaking ribs.
Then his father made a sickly, gurgling sound. It took Brian completely by surprise, this sound of impending death, and it scared him like nothing else in his life. He let go of his father and scurried away, letting loose tears that he never thought he would feel again. His father coughed a few times, after finally sitting up.
“I’m sorry.”
“What?!” cried Brian, never, ever hearing those words out of his father’s mouth.
“I’m sorry, son. I’ve been an awful father to you.” Brian rushed over, and gripped his father’s wide frame with his arms, pressing the life back into him. Joe let out a long sigh, then coughed some more, spitting blood. Brian wiped it off with his sleeve. “I’m supposed to be old, son, supposed to be losing my spirit and strength, but I can’t! I see on the damned TV all those other old men going soft, going sentimental, as whatever’s inside them goes quiet, but in me it still roars! Oh, how it roars . . . I want to fight, I want to kill! I want to fuck so many women I could cry. I have this seventeen-year-old mind in a sixty-seven-year-old body. I wanna drive off, run away, be free, and I can’t, because this old body won’t let me.”
Joe took a deep breath, his face contorting in a grimace of pain and regret.
“I shouldn’t hate you, son, but I do. I hate all of you! I hate how you will all sweep us aside, push us down, and take it all over. I see the same look on every single damned kid I work with. They all look like they want to jump me and rip me apart and the man in me wants to fight! The man in me wants to tear them apart—teach them a lesson, but my bones ache and my eyes are foggy and I wheeze when I run.”
“Oh, Dad.”
Joe started to cry. “You know, I could’ve saved Iris! I was so damned stupid. That fucking prick of a doctor and his smug little smile, soaking everything out of all of us. As if it isn’t bad enough all you kids wanna kill us, we hafta have our own kind doin’ it too? So I said no, and next thing, Iris was bein’ dragged out the back by those crater-faced punks.” He grabbed onto Brian’s shirt, gazing into Brian’s eyes, with a mournful, pleading look. “I begged him, son, I begged him! Me, down on my knees, sobbing, begging him to let her go, shouting at him that I’d pay any price, but he just laughed. H
e laughed, and they shot her, and she fell, so softly, without even crying, without even begging.” He sagged in Brian’s arms like a sack of flour. “It was my pride that killed her, son. I’ve lost her, just as I’ve lost you.”
He wiped the tears from his father’s eyes. “You haven’t lost me, dad! I’m here, and I won’t go away.”
“You’ve got that space thing, and—”
“I’ve made a promise, father, one I intend to keep. I will be staying here, and making some people pay.”
Joe glanced up into his son’s eyes, and saw the death staring back. And the man within himself howled with glee, that somehow, someway, the vengeance he wished to exact would be paid. He reached up, and drew Brian’s face close, and said, with a wildness in his eyes and a maniacal smile;
“Make ‘em suffer, son—make ‘em all suffer!”
Chapter 16