Chimeras started out as twins in utero, but then something would go wrong and one embryo would absorb the other. If you were fraternal twins, you could end up with two sets of separate DNA. Human squared. It didn’t mean anything, normally; you just had two sets of DNA, not comic book superpowers. That was true until Jericho came along and made a difference that nature had never intended.
Stefan said he didn’t know how he found out about Lukas—through hospital records most likely; blood tests from his birth—but he had found out and he’d come for his chimera. The surprising part, unbelievable in a way, was he’d waited so long before adding a new one to his collection of other children, the majority of whom had been fetuses implanted in surrogate mothers for pay—drug-addicted and hopeless people no one would miss when they didn’t show up again. Marcus Bellucci, the man we’d thought was his academic rival, had told us that. He hadn’t been a rival, though, or the fountain of information we’d thought he’d been; he’d been a combination of silent partner and silent alarm. He’d warned Jericho when we’d tracked him down and shown up asking questions; then when Jericho died, he’d disappeared.
The Institute had to have a creator.
The Institute was still out there and we knew where. We hadn’t forgotten those left behind. Ten years or the seventeen it had felt like, I wouldn’t leave anyone there to be discarded if the twisting and brainwashing didn’t take hold. And the brainwashed needed to be saved as much as the potentially expendable who fought it off. Nearly three years later we hadn’t made a move to save anyone yet, because what do you do with the brainwashed?
Not all of the students were like me. I’d hated what I could do. Not all others had. What do you do with genetically manipulated killers who have been taught to enjoy killing? When they’d as soon kill you as take your hand to be rescued. . . .
What do you do?
Godzilla mrrrped again and then bit my thumb for attention. I sucked the blood away, then watched as the puncture clotted immediately. In less than a half hour it would be gone. We healed quickly, Jericho’s children—a much better talent than killing. I rubbed the ferret’s head with the fingers of my other hand. With just that touch and a thought, I could’ve shut down the vessels to his heart, his brain. Or I could’ve opened them so wide that there wouldn’t be enough blood pressure to keep his heart beating. I could’ve weakened the walls of his organs until they ripped open, or could have caused them to literally explode. Only a touch and a thought. That was what Jericho had made out of me . . . and every child in the Institute. I could kill but I couldn’t undo a lifetime of conditioning with that same touch.
So what did you do to save those who didn’t want to be saved?
It was a hard question and blind hope was not much of an answer. Neither was a leap of faith. Jericho’s children weren’t built for faith. Not that it mattered, because we were built for determination—success no matter the cost. “No weakness, no limitations, no mercy” was the credo we repeated aloud at the beginning of every single class.
No weakness. No limitations. No mercy.
That, not that it was meant to, was going to help me now, because despite those who might not want to be saved, there was a way, whether they knew it or not. Look at me.
I was saved.
I was smart.
And I was working on it.
Not a born killer, but an engineered one. Taken. Rebuilt. Changed. That was what Stefan knew had happened to me. I’d wondered what Stefan would be if his brother hadn’t been kidnapped. I didn’t wonder the same thing at all about me, because it was beyond imagination. I couldn’t picture it or fantasize about it. It was impossible, and it was for the best, I thought. If I could have dreamed up an alternative to the life that I had lived under Jericho, the memories of the Institute would’ve done what it couldn’t do now—crush me.
Godzilla wrapped around my arm and sniffled, puzzled, for the vanished blood from where he’d bitten me. Like me, he had a bit of a killer in him. When Stefan found that out, about the Michael Korsak compared to the Lukas Korsak—the killer part of me, when he’d found out what I was—he hadn’t been afraid of me or what I could do. Not for a moment. I would’ve known it if he had; I’d have seen it on his face . . . in his eyes, but I’d seen nothing but acceptance. To him I wasn’t an assassin-in-training or a human bullet all the way down to the genetic level. I was his brother, pure and simple, and nothing else made a difference.
He’d actually been a little exasperated that I wouldn’t use what I had in me to protect myself. The drunk outside the bakery was one thing. But when someone attacked me with every intent of murdering me or, worse, taking me back to the Institute, it wasn’t the same. With that kind of adrenaline running through me, starting something was easy. Stopping it wouldn’t be. Stopping it could be impossible.