“Misha. . . .”
The sympathy in his voice was strong. He knew. I knew. It didn’t have to be said aloud. I’d pledged day in and day out that I wasn’t a killer, but I was a thief of souls. The twelve that remained here, they might as well have been the Four Horsemen, bringing death and despair to the world. They had to be stopped. But which is worse? To take who a person is, for good or bad, and erase his free will, or to kill him? If I’d asked them, every one of them would’ve chosen the same fate Ariel had. I didn’t give them that choice. I did what I thought was best. I played God . . . just as Jericho had.
But with him dead, someone had to.
“They can’t murder without aggression,” I said, “and they can’t have aggression if I destroy the part of the brain that births it.” It was the best I could do—a very poor best.
I rested my hand on the forehead of the last one—Peter. He’d played genius and villain well, while all the time Wendy had been pulling his strings and feeding him his lines. He was a killer too, same as the others, but he wasn’t what I thought he’d been. He was both predator and prey, because there was nothing in his mind now except silence. Wendy’s last act before falling away, besides killing the sniper who had shot her and his companions, had been to turn Peter off as if he were a toy she was done playing with. Only his brain stem worked now, keeping his lungs inflating and deflating, his heart beating, but the rest was dark and dead. He was brain dead. She’d made a true puppet of him, empty and hollow. It would’ve made her laugh, the irony, even with a bullet in her small chest. Peter was gone and I couldn’t fix that. The other chimeras wouldn’t be able to undo what I’d done and I couldn’t undo what Wendy had done. She and I were a new breed of chimera—with a new balance of power.
Ariel had been a chimera, able to survive a good deal, but the unquenchable hunger of water at the bottom of the dam? No. I had no hope there. Wendy, though . . . the Grim Reaper himself would be afraid to touch her long enough to take her life. Fine. If I saw her again, I’d do it for him.
Somehow.
Chapter 15
For the second time in his life Raynor was going to do some good. The first had been having one of his men shoot Wendy, because Raynor knew as well as anyone that Wendy wasn’t viable for sale, profit, or life in general. He’d saved Stefan or Saul from having to do it—if they could’ve lifted a hand to do it. It didn’t matter how evil a ten-year-old little girl was; putting a bullet in one would haunt your nights for years to come—unless you were Raynor. The only regret he would have was a lack of a commemorative photograph to hang on his wall.
“Well, chaps, it looks like you’ve done my work for me.” He had walked around the sheriff’s car and was heading toward us, his gun up and aimed at the cluster of the three of us. “One, two, four . . . twelve unconscious chimeras wrapped up in a bow and ready to go to rehab. Learn to mind their masters.” He didn’t know what I’d done to them and I wasn’t inclined to tell him. I didn’t know what kind of life they would have now. The ability to kill remained within them, but they wouldn’t use it. They couldn’t. With a complete lack of aggression, they wouldn’t be able to kill, even in defense. As I’d told Ariel, they’d be smart as they’d been before, but they’d be blander, milder, less interested in life in general. When they woke up from the tranquilizer, my best guess was they’d keep the Institute story to themselves—they’d know by now that would only end them in a psych ward. They’d wander off and do as Ariel had done; as I’d done. They would make fake IDs, get jobs, live their lives—but without flavor or zest. They would be gray people in a gray world, but without leaving a trail of torture and murder in their wake.
Raynor would say you have to break some eggs to make an omelet. Raynor was a dick.
“Stefan,” I said.