I’d seen the pictures. I looked like Stefan’s brother, Lukas. I had the eyes—the universe being ironic again as all Jericho’s chimeras had those eyes—I was about the same age and I’d been within a hundred miles of where he’d been kidnapped. Another irony or my salvation. Stefan’s too.
He knew I wasn’t Lukas now. He hadn’t always. When he’d rescued me, he didn’t second-guess it once. I was his brother. He believed it so deeply that I believed it too. In the face of his pure faith, I’d finally had faith myself. I’d accepted my lack of memories being some form of traumatic amnesia or caused by the fall on the rocks during the original kidnapping on the beach.
Some time after that, though, he’d found out Lukas was dead. It had to be from Anatoly. Looking back, I’d first noticed the difference at the beach house with his father. The difference wasn’t that he’d treated me as less than a brother, but that he’d insisted on it even more fiercely. That and he would do anything, once he’d been able to get out of bed after being shot by Jericho, to keep me from being alone with Anatoly. I’d thought the change had been because we’d both almost died. He’d nearly lost me again. And keeping me away from Anatoly . . . once I knew what Anatoly was, made sense. Another monster, another killer in our lives, but a useful one. But Anatoly hadn’t told me anything . . . other than to be kind to Stefan, that he deserved it.
And Stefan did, because for all his searching. . . .
Lukas was dead.
If he wasn’t, Stefan and I would be scouring the earth for his other brother. Not his real brother. I was as real as Lukas had been. I knew that. Almost three years with Stefan—there wasn’t a doubt in me about that. But if Lukas were still alive, we’d have searched until we found him and Stefan would’ve had two brothers. I thought I would’ve liked another brother. From all the stories Stefan had once told me before he knew the truth, trying to prod my memories—memories that weren’t mine—Lukas sounded as if he’d have made a great brother. Stefan didn’t tell those stories much anymore, now that he knew Lukas was gone. I’d start asking again once in a while. I wasn’t Lukas, but telling the stories would bring a part of him back to Stefan, if only for minutes or an hour.
I’d finally found that different kind of truth—a lie that wasn’t a lie at all. Stefan knew I wasn’t Lukas, but he knew I was his brother, the same as I knew that he was mine, that being brothers had nothing to do with sharing the same blood. He wouldn’t ever tell me about Lukas and he would hope I’d never find out. He wouldn’t risk that I’d again feel those doubts that I had following my rescue or that I would think he considered me any less of the brother he’d been born with.
That was Stefan.
And that was fine. That was better than fine. Some things didn’t have to be said aloud.
I also knew that while Lukas was gone, he’d given me a gift, although he’d never known me . . . or rather had never met me. He’d given me the memories of sun, wind, and horses to warm me in a place as cold as death itself. It was his best memory. Galloping up and down the beach, the ocean’s roar loud in his ears, the wind in his face—it was his best memory and mine too, although I hadn’t actually experienced it. Yet Lukas made me feel as if I had. Tangible and real as any other memory I had had in the Institute, that memory had kept me sane.
More than that, Lukas had given me a brother to pull me from that frozen sterile prison and set me free. Lukas had died, but he’d given me life. And as logical and scientifically minded as I was, I didn’t question the mysterious nature of that. It was as true and real as the sun and the sky above.
“How does it feel?” I asked, taking from his plate a jam-loaded biscuit to replace the bacon I’d given him.
“How does what feel?” he asked with a trace of caution hidden behind the words—hidden to anyone but a genius like me.
I grinned. “To be a free, off-the-shelf baby when they spent big bucks making me? I was the Cadillac of infants. You were barely a Volkswagen.”
He let me have another one of his biscuits, this time fired directly at my head. I caught it. I wasn’t going to duck and waste a perfectly good biscuit. “You’re an ass.”
“Thanks for the lessons in that. They’ve been invaluable.” I continued to grin as I took a bite of the biscuit.
The moment that had descended on my yesterday hadn’t been the best of my life—not the worst, thanks to the Institute—but not the best either. This one was—this was the best moment I’d had. At peace with my family . . . where I belonged.
And then Peter called and turned the moment into a memory. Memories are good too, but they’re only shadows of moments—a sepia photograph of what you saw, heard, felt. Once a moment is gone, you don’t get it back.
Peter’s cell phone rang again.
I was really beginning to hate that son of a bitch.
Chapter 13