As I finished the sandwich and eased back on the production of the endorphins, I began to notice things. The pain that stabbed my ribs was gone. A point against lucidity. Stefan was the other thing I noticed. When I’d woken up, I’d seen him covered in dirt, dust, and blood. He hadn’t been hit or clipped by a semi, but a building had fallen on him as it had on me. “Are you. . . . ?” I grimaced and braced my ribs with my hand. “Are you all right?” My body wasn’t close to full capacity yet. I couldn’t feel if he was hurt or not. My lingering damage took precedence and I couldn’t change that. The body’s self-preservation overrode what my mind ordered it to do. I raised my other hand and swiped at the blood-dust paste on his face to see the damage. There were several cuts and scrapes, but they weren’t bad. The blood was from them and his nose. It didn’t look broken, though. It was all superficial, but that was nothing compared to what could be going on inside him.
“I’m all right,” he assured me. “Sore and getting less and less male-model material all the time, but I’ll live.”
I wouldn’t be satisfied until I knew for myself. Lucid and determined, both made me inescapable. “More food,” I demanded grimly, opening my eyes. I went through three more sandwiches and two Gatorades in five minutes. It helped. My ribs were healing, but not instantly. Bone was slower to repair than anything else. After eating, I lay quietly, Stefan’s legs remaining my pillow. With my eyes shut, I concentrated on stretching my limits further. Damn stubborn bone. “Does your back or neck hurt? Your abdomen, chest, head?”
Stefan had explained while I was eating how part of the ceiling had dropped, one end resting on top of the semi and the other landing on top of him where he’d been flung to the floor. It had been what had shielded us from chunks of the second floor and saved our lives. There’d been barely enough room for him to grab and drag me with him as he tunneled through tangled cots and debris to crawl under the semi and out the hole it had knocked in the front wall. He also was filling Saul in on what had happened with Peter when I’d interrupted with my woefully inadequate attempt at a diagnostic.
“I’m fine, Misha,” he reiterated. “I’m a muscle-bound human. You’re a skinny chimera who lies like a dog.” He gave me a napkin to wipe his blood from my hand. Some of it, along with dirt and dust, had ended up on the sandwiches, but I was too ravenous and too set on feeding the healing process to care. “Of the two of us, who do you think is going to walk away?”
I wanted to snort, but I knew what my ribs would think of that. “I’m athletic, like a runner.”
I had the self-esteem to know that was true. The six and a half times I’d had sex, no one had any complaints about my body. In fact, they’d enjoyed the look of it and definitely enjoyed what I could do with it. I had read up on the subject beforehand. I wanted to do it right and from the reactions, I thought I had . . . excepting the half time, which had been my first. The books said that was normal too. “So what if I’m not a walking triangle of steroids,” I added. That, however, was completely untrue, but if I couldn’t have endorphins, I could sting my brother . . . and distract him. He was joking with me, but there was no humor in it. In less than twenty-four hours I’d been kidnapped, in a car wreck, hit by a truck, and had a building fall on me. As brothers went, I was high maintenance.
As an apology, when I asked for a candy bar, I broke off half and gave it to him. With my obsession with food, there was no higher gesture. He accepted it with all the gravity it deserved. Or he was mocking me. Either way, the graveyard shadows in his eyes receded and that was enough for me.
Godzilla, curled on my stomach, had been chirping nervously. As I was giving the ferret a peanut from the PayDay bar, Saul put down the visor against the searing Tucson light that sunglasses couldn’t handle and said, “I don’t get it. You said they killed all those gangbangers in there. That punk-ass teenage Jim Jones said this wasn’t about Michael’s being good enough to join up with their Sesame Street serial killer family after all. Why weren’t the rest of them there? Besides the one driving the truck?” Who had gotten away so quickly Saul hadn’t seen whether it was a girl or a boy. He hadn’t seen anyone period. “Why didn’t they stay put and try to kill us or, for God’s sake, give us a chance to do the same to them?”
“Because they’re not done playing yet.” My muscles tightened. The moment was coming. I’d put it off as long as I could—too long. This came from a combination of Institute-ingrained secrecy and something else. Once I was free, I’d picked up quickly the practice of denial. Inside Institute walls, it was impossible. Outside them, it was a drug—mental heroin. The more you did, the more you’d do. I was headed straight into cold turkey rehab now.
“Peter didn’t say play. He said punish,” Stefan said quietly, but without yielding. He’d been patient with my evasions these past few days, giving me the chance to prove I was the man I said I was. That patience was over. “Why do they want to punish you? What did all Peter’s bullshit mean?”
The moment was closer, its consequence-laden breath on the back of my neck.
I sat up slowly, Stefan’s hand bracing me. Godzilla slithered to the floorboards in search of more peanuts. I settled against the seat, giving my ribs a chance to get used to the change of position and increased pain. It was all done slowly, but not as slowly as I answered Stefan. “It means Peter knows more than he’s saying.”
“He’s not the only one, is he?”
The moment was here.