pissed?”
Kev shook his head. “I’m not pissed,” he said wearily. “Sure, I owed him. I owed him big. But I think I’ve worked out my indentured servitude by now, in sweat and blood.”
“He never thought of you that way,” Bruno said. “And fucked if you’re not pissed. You’re mortally pissed.”
Kev didn’t have the energy to deny it again. He thought of those miserable, stifled years. Lying on a cot in the narrow, smelly room behind the restaurant where Tony had parked him during off hours. Freezing in the winter, roasting in the summer. Steeping in smells of stale boiled vegetables, and the reeking Dumpster in the alley behind. Washing with a plastic bucket and rag because the squalid bathroom back there had no shower. Splitting headaches, night after night, so bad they made him vomit. Nights filled with horrific dreams.
Crying into the dingy, flat pillow every night. So fucking alone. Unable to speak, but wanting to so badly, it made him want to explode. A big rock was sitting on top of his mind, squashing him flat. He knew he did not belong there, but he couldn’t get any grip on where he did belong. He couldn’t think a straight thought through from start to finish. Couldn’t focus, or orient himself. He was locked in a purgatory of tedium and fear. Tony had shoved a dishrag in his hand, pushed him in the direction of a pile of greasy plates, and there he stayed. For years.
Until Bruno came to stay with Tony and Rosa. He was their grandnephew. Tony and Rosa’s niece, Bruno’s mother, had begged Tony and Rosa to take her son for a while, to get him away from his abusive stepfather. Just until she sorted things out and got free of him.
As it turned out, she’d sent Bruno away just in time. She hadn’t sorted things out, or gotten free. She’d died right after. Badly.
As soon as he arrived, Bruno started following Kev around, talking incessantly. The fact that Kev was incapable of replying hadn’t mattered to Bruno. He’d had enough talk for two. Twelve years old, traumatized by his mother’s murder, jerked around by his hormones, bouncing off the ceiling. He’d desperately needed someone to listen, and Kev was the perfect listener. The quintessential captive audience.
Bruno’s nonstop chatter and intense emotional need had been the first chink in the wall that closed Kev inside himself. Bruno had started the long, slow process of Kev’s healing. It was no thanks to Tony.
He wasn’t complaining. He had Tony to thank for his life, his skin, and a place to start healing. It was a lot. He had no reason to expect more. He couldn’t blame Tony for not doing more, or caring more. There was no point. People were what they were. They cared, or they didn’t. He was just damn lucky to have had Bruno.
This line of thought was making his gut cramp up. Who the fuck needed it? He turned his attention back to the computer.
After a while, Bruno got up and sprawled onto one of the couches, flipping channels until he found some sports event he liked. The squawk of the TV audio soon faded from Kev’s consciousness as he systematically searched the vast pseudo-space of the Internet.
His current mode was to find data on all male Ostermans between the ages of fifty and seventy. He’d ruled out most of the ones in the Northwest. One still interested him; Christopher Osterman, research scientist, recently deceased. There were thousands of references to his cognitive research, but he hadn’t found a photo yet. Many references were to “the Haven,” a mysterious research facility dedicated to optimizing brain function. Reading between the lines of the promo material, he concluded that the Haven was a think tank for rich kids whose parents wanted high-achieving offspring to feed their egos. The project had been dismantled after Osterman’s death, three years before.
Many of the young people who had participated in the Haven had since gone on on to brilliant careers in medicine, science, or business, or so the promo material said. Further research appeared to back this claim up, but that could be more a function of wealth and connections than it was a result of Osterman’s brain massages. Who knew?
Kev was currently browsing some Haven alumni he’d found on Facebook. They archly referred to themselves as “Club O,” and liked to reminisce online, exchanging pictures, memories, bragging and self-congratulation. In fact, he found them oddly repellent, as a group.
He was startled when Bruno spoke up from behind him. “It’s been hours,” his brother said, belligerently. “Hungry yet?”
He’d forgotten that his body existed. He located his stomach in time and space, assessed its condition. Not optimal. “Not yet,” he said.
Bruno harrumped, and peered over Kev’s shoulder. “Facebook? What, cruising for chicks now? Is it the lust thing, kicking your ass?”
Kev snorted. “I’m looking at online photo albums. Alumni of this place called the Haven. Dr. Christopher Osterman ran the place. He did cognitive research. Brain enhancement. Big network of alums.”
“How did you get into these peoples’ Facebook pages?”
Kev gave him a look, and Bruno rolled his eyes. “OK. Stupid question. Never mind. Cognitive research? Brain experiments? So you’ve been altered. Ah! Yes. That would explain what a whack job you are.”
“It would,” Kev agreed, unoffended. “This guy died a few years ago, though. A fire in his lab, they say. I want to see a photo of him.”
“Excuse me? You want to look at a picture of this freak? The last time you saw someone you thought looked like this Osterman, you went into a fugue state and practically killed an innocent neurosurgeon!”
“Shut up, Bruno,” Kev said absently, still clicking. “I’m busy.”
Bruno subsided, grumbling. “If you freak out and attack me, I’ll kick your sorry ass to hell and back,” he warned. “I won’t hold back just because you’re a pathetic bag of bones. Be warned.”
Kev clicked on yet another photo. His eyes flashed over faces, his hand already clicking to magnify them as a name in the caption registered.
The illustrious, late, great Doctor O explains it all for us.
His hand froze on the mouse. It was set to increase magnification by ten percent at each click, but with no new activity, it defaulted to one magnification per second, the center being at the cursor. The picture zoomed in on the guy in a white lab coat. Close-set dark eyes. His arms flung over the shoulders of two teenagers. Mouth open, in a big laugh.
Kev couldn’t move. His muscles were frozen. He couldn’t even blink. Switches were flicking on and off inside his brain, he could not control them. He observed, as the power grids in his brain started to go dark, that the guy really did look like Patil. Patil was darker, being Indian. Dr. O looked like the Greek or Italian version of the same man.
The pressure built in his brain. He struggled to breathe, to move.
Kev? What the fuck? Kev, what’s the matter? Hey! Kev!
It was Bruno’s voice, faraway. He couldn’t answer. Couldn’t look at the other man. Muscles frozen. Falling back, into the dark oubliette.
Oh fucking shit, man, no! Don’t do this to me again…
Bruno’s frantic voice faded into the distance. The photo got bigger. The face filled the screen. The mouth. Bigger and bigger.
Pop, pop. Something gave way in his eye. A hot rush of liquid down
