Systematic (The System Series Book 2) Read online

  “Hey!” I say.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Dad barks.

  “Having a beer. I don’t have to get drunk. I’ll just metabolize the alcohol.”

  “You’re sixteen and you’re gonna act like it,” Dad says, dumping the beer down the sink. He throws the can in and turns to me. “This has got to stop.”

  “What?”

  “You. Acting like you know everything. Acting like the rules don’t apply to you.”

  I cross my arms in front of my chest. “I don’t act like that.”

  Dad sighs. “Look, it takes one to know one. From one arrogant shit to another, you need to get your head on straight.”

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “I’m bored.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “I’m impatient. I know how to do all these things, and you won’t let me.”

  “For good reason,” he says. “Thomas, learn from my mistakes. You still have a lot of growing up to do. You might know the mechanics of healing, but there’s more to it—the ethics, the emotions.” I stare out the window and Dad puts a hand on my shoulder. “I know you’re impatient. You’re exactly like me. I’ve been thinking…maybe it is time for the next step.”

  I whip my body around to face him, and Dad chuckles. “You mean it? I really get to go?”

  “Yep. Get to bed early tonight. We’ll drive down to the Attic tomorrow.”

  Chapter Three

  I won’t bore you with the details of our arrival. You’ve seen the movies, I’m sure, the high-security military compounds, where the lead character pulls up to a guard booth outside of an electrified, barbed wire-topped fence, his security clearance is checked, radioed in, the guards usher him inside, and he drives along a tree-lined road to the buildings, only to be greeted by more armed guards, a toady assistant to some senator on some top-secret committee who’s holding a clipboard and practically bowing and scraping to see that your needs are met, and all the while it’s a cover for whatever secret program really runs behind the scenes.

  That’s where we are.

  Except that we are a part of that super-secret program, so no one tries to distract us from the hidden door with coffee and reception areas that look like parlors.

  This is the real deal.

  The Attic.

  And since Dad’s the director, we pretty much have the run of the place. We stride into Building A, our identity is checked again, and we pass through a metal detector. I’m embarrassed at being caught with my knife—Dad just shakes his head—but the guard lets me keep it after examining it for five minutes.

  We head left to a bank of mirror-fronted elevators and step on. Dad presses the button for Floor 10, and I am shocked as the elevator shudders and proceeds to drop.

  “I thought we were going to the Attic,” I say. “You know, attic. Up.”

  Dad smiles. “It’s ten stories below ground.”

  “Why not call it the basement?” I ask.

  “There are twenty-two stories below ground, for one. And second, all of us like to think we’re close to God.”

  “You don’t even like God,” I remind him.

  He shrugs. “Most of us do.”

  “Us who?”

  Dad hesitates. “This…some of the things in the Attic will be hard for you to see.”

  “I can handle it,” I say.

  And the elevator doors slide open to reveal a sterile white hallway, stretching to forever.

  I step out, and the odor assaults me: nose-wrinkling alcohol, musty algae like in the tunnels of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, and, under those, a rot, like human flesh left to molder in a dark corner. I take a breath to steady myself and the odor clings to my nostrils and the back of my throat. I retch, fighting it.

  Dad puts a hand on my back. “You’ll get used to it.”

  “Not bloody likely,” I say.

  Dad laughs and pushes me forward with his hand. “Fifth door on the left.”

  I count the doors as we pass them. They’re all the same, white acrylic over stainless steel, no labels or plaques, no hint of what’s beyond. I strain to hear some sound as we pass, some indication of life in this sterile hole, but all I can hear is the rushing air from the vents overhead. I try to breathe through my mouth, but that only brings the taste of the stench to my tongue.

  Door number five. We pause. Dad swipes his security card, leans in for a retinal scan. The scanner beeps.

  “Your turn,” he says, handing me a card. I swipe the card quickly and lean into the scanner, fighting to keep my eyes open against the bright light. The scanner beeps.

  And the door slides open.

  

  “Deep breaths,” Dad whispers, patting my back.

  I have the sudden urge to hold his hand, but Jesus, I’m not six anymore.

  It’s a roomy space, sterile white like the hallway, occupied by only a full-sized bed and a stainless steel bistro table and four matching chairs. A two-headed man sits facing us at the table playing chess by himself. Both heads look up at us as we enter.

  “Maybe we should have knocked,” I whisper to Dad, though if this guy (these guys?) is like us, he can hear me regardless.

  One of the heads looks normal—he’s a white guy, forty-ish, with a mop of unbrushed brown hair, nondescript brown eyes, a hawkish nose. The other head looks…wrong. It’s too large, for one. Faint gray hairs grow in wispy tufts about a skull mottled with pulsing blue veins. Its eyes are off-center, one half an inch higher than the other, but both are the same brown of its companion. The nose is a blob, squished and malformed.

  The smiles of both—thin lips and perfectly straight white teeth—are identical. I shiver.

  Dad pushes on my back, signaling that I should move forward, but I don’t. He smiles down at me reassuringly and leads me over to the table.

  “I want you to meet my son, Thomas,” Dad says to them. “Thomas, this is Dacey.”

  The normal head smiles and nods at me, holding out his hand for me to shake.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Dacey,” I say, struggling to keep my eyes on his. It’s like some sick compulsion, the need to gape at the other head.

  “Likewise,” he says. “And this is my companion, Tyrion.”

  I bark a laugh automatically, my nerves fraying my control and decorum. “Tyrion,” I say. “Great name. Like the dwarf in George Martin’s books?”

  The misshapen head laughs heartily, a booming sound.

  Dad frowns. “You repaired the vocal chords?”

  “Too well,” Dacey says. “This is the quietest he’s been in three days.”

  “I’m only startled to see the smart young man,” the grotesque head says in a smooth, cultured baritone, winkling his eyes at me. “You are the first to get my Tyrion reference.”

  I incline my head to him. “An apt name. He’s a clever character.”

  Tyrion laughs again. “Ah, and not only smart, but tactful as well. Perhaps you could give a few lessons to some of our companions in the Attic.”

  Dad pulls out a chair for me and I sit. After hearing Tyrion’s voice, he doesn’t seem so scary. Dad takes a seat as well.

  “We discussed the implications,” Dad begins, but Dacey cuts him off.

  “Mike, I had to do it. He needed to speak. All day long he was scrawling out entire conversations until my hand cramped into a claw. I had to.”

  “You did not have to,” Tyrion booms, “and I did not need you to. You Dwellers have too much power, unchecked and untried. He says I have been blathering non-stop for three days, and this is true. We have been in isolation for what? A month now? It is too much for you, my friend. Too much. I am not worth it.”

  “Shut your hole, Tyrion, before I shut it for you,” Dacey says. “This is it. You’re here. End of story.”

  “I could strangle myself,” Tyrion says.

  Dacey grits his teeth. “Only if you gain control over my arms long enough to do the deed. Shut up. Now.”


  “What do you mean, Tyrion?” I ask him. “Why do you want to die?”

  Before Tyrion can reply, Dacey slaps his hand over Tyrion’s mouth. “I created him, just to see if I could do it. An entire brain from scratch. A skull to encase it. A second juncture from my spinal cord, the nerves, the…everything. Just to see if I could do it. And I did.” Dacey stands, and he and Tyrion pace the room. “The idea was to see if it could be done, and then to cut off its blood supply, repair the juncture and do away with it. But two weeks into the experiment, he began to communicate. Just small things at first. He had an itch that needed to be scratched, and it required me to relinquish control of my hand. His eyes were tearing and he needed me to blot them. He just…blossomed. And now I can’t imagine him withering away.”

  Tyrion turns his head to Dacey and smiles ruefully. “I always knew the day would come, my friend. Without you, I would never have tasted life. But your life is your own. You deserve it back.”

  Dacey stares at the wall, away from his friend, and Tyrion takes the opportunity to look at me. “What do you think, Thomas? Can Dacey have a life like this, with me by his side? He has not been home in over a year. It is probably rotting to the ground. What solution is there but to get rid of me and move on?”

  Dad waves a hand in the air. “Dace, man, why didn’t you say you didn’t make any arrangements for your home? I’ll take care of that stuff.”

  “A stop-gap measure at best,” Tyrion says, “though appreciated. The time has come.”

  Dad weighs Tyrion with his eyes. “I agree with you, Tyrion. Dacey has let this get too far. This was never meant to be the outcome.”

  “What does it matter now?” Dacey says, still staring at the wall. “Intended or no, this is the outcome. Tyrion is alive and he’s my friend. I cannot be responsible for his death. He’s a man, Mike!” Dacey flings themselves backwards in the chair. “We’re going back, into General Population. No more isolation. I thought I was protecting everyone else from getting attached to you, but maybe that’s what I need to get you to see reason. We’ll put it to a vote.”

  “I have an idea,” I say, startling everyone. Three pairs of eyes fix on me. “You created an entire brain, a head, the most complex structure of the entire body. Why not create the rest, then surgically separate the two bodies?”

  “No,” Tyrion says.

  “Yes,” Dacey says, and his eyes shine with a strange fervor.

  “No! You almost killed yourself creating me. You’ve lost thirty pounds—”

  “A high-protein diet, carefully planned, it’s but a minor obstacle…”

  Dad stands quickly, the legs of his chair scraping across the floor like a microphone whining feedback in our ears. We all wince.

  “Think on it,” he says. “Nothing’s decided. I’ll send in Dr. Trent and we’ll see what he thinks.”

  Dad heads to the door, expecting me to follow, I suppose. I hold out my hand to Dacey/Tyrion. “It was amazing to meet you both,” I say sincerely. “Maybe we can play a game of chess the next time around.”

  The two heads exchange a look, and Dacey speaks. “We’d both like that.”

  

  Out in the hall, I lean back on the wall and take a shallow breath. The stench is strong out here.

  “Wow,” I say. We start down the hallway. “I thought you said I was the only one.” Dad stops and looks at me, guilt plastered across his face. He knows what I’m talking about. “Well? Why did you lie to me?”

  “I didn’t lie,” he says. “You are the only one we know of who’s ever been born with the ability to grow nerves in the central nervous system. You are the only one born able to manufacture Protein TVZ.”

  “That’s what you’re calling it? Protein TVZ?’

  Dad smiles. “Protein T for short. After you.”

  I like getting the nod, but it’s irrelevant to my point. “Then how do you explain Tyrion?”

  Dad blows out a breath. “Dacey was one of five people who volunteered to take the proteins we harvested from you.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “That was ten years ago! Why didn’t you tell me it worked?”

  “It didn’t,” he says. “Not at first. Dacey had to figure out how to manufacture the protein on his own. He only figured it out a few years ago. Then he had to create Tyrion. It’s been an arduous process, and Dacey considers it his life’s work.”

  I stalk off ahead of him. “You could have told me that.”

  Dad catches up to me and spins me around to face him. “Like it or not, I was not gonna drag you in further until I thought you were ready. Even now, I’m not certain this was a good idea.”

  I bristle at that. “Why not?”

  Dad grips my shoulders tight and shakes me gently. “You have to get it! You have to get that you are not infallible! This is a military facility, for one. Everyone follows orders. And no one, no one, does an experiment unless it’s authorized and documented. Do you understand?”

  I blink back tears and nod.

  “Do you?” Dad bellows in my face.

  “Yes. Yeah, Dad, I get it. Loud and clear.”

  “Good.” Then he pulls me into a hard hug. “I know…Thomas, you have the potential to do so much good here. Tell me you’re ready. Tell me you’ll do the right things, and I’ll never bring this up again.”

  I meet his eyes. “I promise, Dad. But, why didn’t you prepare me better? Like, for Dacey?”

  Dad looks at me with sympathy. “Would that have helped? I know the imagination you have. You wouldn’t have slept these past months, thinking about all the possibilities.”

  I think about that. He’s probably right.

  Dad ruffles my hair, something he hasn’t done in years. “Stop thinking. Don’t imagine. Just go into the next room with an open mind.”

  He dismisses my concerns by telling me I have an over-active imagination. Typical Dad, avoiding the real issues. But this isn’t the time to argue with him.

  We continue on until we arrive at door number twelve.

  Before I do my scan, Dad says, “This is General Population, where most of us stay most of the time. All our experiments are out in the open, where we can learn from each other.”

  “Dacey said he hasn’t been home. That means that most people don’t live here?”

  “Most of us have lives outside of the Attic. We may stay for the duration of an experiment, if it proves…if it changes our appearance.”

  “How do they all explain where they are, to their families and stuff?”

  “Everyone here travels for their jobs,” Dad says, meaning they all lie.

  I don’t like this explanation. But I can’t think of a better one, so I don’t comment.

  “Let’s do it,” I say.

  General Population is like a big dorm room, or a military barracks. Cots line both walls, with two table-and-chair sets occupying the space at the far end of the room. There’s a kitchen to my immediate left, a door to my right (the bathroom?). Nobody pays us any attention as we enter.

  Only about half of the twenty cots are occupied. Dad passes the first one on our left, occupied by someone asleep, and stops at the next, where a doctor is talking to a woman lying on her side away from us.

  “This is Cappy. She’s working on eyesight enhancements, but they often leave her dizzy, so she works while she’s lying down.”

  It seems awkward for Dad to speak about her as though she can’t hear us. I guess that’s what he meant when he said they were open here—they must talk about each other all the time.

  “You mean, like vision correction?” I ask.

  “More like turning our eyes into camera lenses. Automatic zoom in and zoom out. The problem seems to be that the eye is not designed to hold the type of lens needed for zoom capability. She continues to burst blood vessels and even rupture the optic nerve. She’s working to get to the point where a new lens will fit and look normal within the existing structure of her eye.”

  “Whoa,” I say.

&nb
sp; Dad winks at me.

  We move to the other side of the room, where a wiry man barely five feet tall is doing curls with a plastic bottle of water. With his tail.

  The tail’s about four feet long, hairless and tender-pink, and fully prehensile, like that of a Howler monkey.

  “Wicked,” I whisper under my breath.

  “Hey, Raj. This is my son, Thomas.”

  “Hello,” I say.

  Raj nods at us and continues his weightlifting. “Mike, Thomas.” He grunts out the words with effort.

  “You graduated from the tennis ball, eh?” Dad says.

  Raj cracks a smile. “It’s working. Slowly,” and he grunts, “but surely.”

  Dad smiles. “Find us when you’re done.”

  “You bet.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I say. Raj nods at me.

  “He grew a tail?” I ask.

  “This is his sixth one, actually,” Day says. “A prehensile tail that can grasp things is actually quite complex. It has to be streamlined for flexibility, yet strong enough to bear the owner’s weight and still bend but not break. Raj is trying to build the muscles up naturally to see if this one will hold.”

  I wince. “You mean, he broke the other five?”

  “Four. The fifth looked more like an alligator’s tail, since he was trying to make it stronger. Not flexible enough, though.”

  “So he could barely pick up a tennis ball?” I say.

  “He started with nothing. Couldn’t even lift the tail. Gravity and the weight of his own body were his first trials.”

  “How long has been doing this?”

  “About four months. Took him two just to be able to keep the tail from dragging on the ground.”

  We move past Raj. Lying on the cot next to him is a young woman with long golden hair and freckles. We watch her take a deep breath, close her eyes, and hold the air in.

  “Watch,” Dad says. He points to a clock on the wall above her head. It says 9:14 and thirty-three seconds.

  We watch her. The girl appears dead. At 9:24, I start to get nervous.

  “Is she okay?”

  “Watch.”

  I shift from foot to foot, trying to keep my circulation going. Dad stands perfectly still. I had no idea additional patience would be required when I finally arrived here.