“Training.” The smile faded to a much smaller but more genuine one. “The only training I actually liked. And no one in the movies used a tree either.”
“You just didn’t see the right movies.” I returned the smile and was surprised—and pleased—to see his deepen, but a sudden movement had the emotion melting away and my hand jerking toward the gun tucked between the seat and center console. The overhead V of geese honked and flew on. Relaxing, I pulled my hand away, but the shared moment was gone. “Tell me about Jericho, Misha,” I urged quietly. “Tell me about the training.”
The kid didn’t have a nervous bone in his body from what I’d seen. His nerves, if not absent altogether, were knit of steel and titanium wire. But now I saw from the taut line of his spine and the tense clamp of his jaw that he wasn’t happy with the subject at hand. They were subtle clues, barely visible unless you were looking and looking hard, but they were there. “I’ve been at the Institute all my life.” The fleeting frown that came and went like heat lightning indicated that perhaps he wasn’t as sure of that statement as he would’ve been two days ago. “I’ve been with you a little more than twenty-four hours. I’m not sure what I should do.”
It was a hard-won admission of uncertainty from a shockingly self-contained boy. I treated it with the respect it deserved. “Would you go back to the Institute if you could?” It didn’t seem conceivable, but I knew better than that. Some animals and most people get used to their cages, whether the bars were made of iron or something less tangible. Swing the door open and let them smell the freedom. A few would make a break for it, but the majority would turn their backs on it. Try to drag them free of their trap and they would kick and scream bloody murder. Freedom is hard, and dependence is so very easy. It’s simple human nature. No one knew that better than I did. For the past ten years I’d lived in a cage built of bone, blood, and guilt, and I would’ve very likely have killed anyone who tried to force me out of it.
“Would you?” I repeated.
“No!” The answer was carried on an explosive burst of breath and it proved one thing instantly. Michael at seventeen was a stronger man than I had ever been. “No,” he went on more calmly, “I won’t go back. Not ever.”
“Then trust me. Tell me what I need to know.”
“Trust you?” The blackly amused cynicism that glittered in his eyes made me abruptly feel as if he were the older one. I was one day out of the family business, a grimly dark and violent business, and this kid had me feeling wide-eyed with dewy innocence. “Trust you,” he echoed, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe I had the audacity to even say the words. Rolling down the window, he propped his elbow on the sill and his chin in his hand. “We had classes on that as well.”
Waiting him out, I started the car and jounced our way back to the road. He would tolerate only so much pushing; I would have to be patient. It was nearly fifteen minutes before he spoke again. Eyes still gazing out the window and hair whipping in the wind, he began to speak in a voice indifferent and detached. He may have been aloof to it all, but the more he talked, the sicker I felt.
The Institute was precisely that from his description—twisted and horrific, but with the goal of education all the same. It wasn’t what the students were being taught that triggered my gag reflex; it was the motivation behind it. Psychology and biology were part of a normal high school curriculum, but not the way they were presented there. They were teaching psychology to children to instruct them in manipulation and biology to illustrate the body’s vulnerability. On and on it went. Every class was presented in terms of attack or defense.
Except for the occasional field trip, the kids weren’t allowed any interaction with the outside world. Videos, prerecorded television programs, and computer programs were used to immerse them in real life. It was just another class. The field trips were to allow their instructors to observe the students, to see if they could blend in . . . be taken for normal children. All of this elaborate program, all this perverse training was for the purpose of . . . what? Michael had laughed when I’d guessed it was aimed at turning these kids into spies, even though programs like that had existed in my grandfather’s time back in Russia, not to mention in the cheap novels I’d read in junior high.
“Why?” I demanded when he wound down. The details he had given me had been sketchy at best, and I could tell there were huge chunks of information he’d skipped over without touching on at all. “What’s the point of all this sadistic bullshit? What’s supposed to be the end result?”
“I’m the end result,” he said without emotion.