Murder Genes (30 page)

"Wait."
 
Kyle heard Del's footsteps heading toward the door.
 
Kyle skittered to his bed and laid in it.
 
The cracked open door let light in and Del's voice whisper-sang.
 
"G'night honey."

"G'night," Kyle said back.
 
She shut the door.

He'd have to find another way to listen.
 
Kyle opened the window and slipped out through it.
 
His bare feet touched the cold walkway that rimmed most the house.
 
Then he ran around to the front until he was right under the open kitchen window.

"...ourse I know," Del was saying.

"Pretty horrible, isn't it?
 
Absolute chaos," Tim said.

"I couldn't believe it.
 
I can't."

"Do you think Kyle..." Tim's voice trailed off.

"He caught me today.
 
He walked right in while they were doing it," Del said.

Kyle's ears perked up.
 
He couldn't know if they planned for him to overhear them, but if they didn't know--just maybe he'd learn something they didn't want him to hear.

"You should just talk to him.
 
Tell him the truth.
 
We can't expect him to be honest with us if we aren't honest with him," Tim said.

"But he's too young."
 
Del began crying and again, Kyle couldn't tell if they were acting or not.
 
Adults were difficult.
 
Kids were easy.

"What is it, dear?" Tim asked.
 
Kyle had never heard Tim refer to Del that way.
 
Maybe their relationship was real even if everything else wasn't.

"I think he did it," Del said.

There was a long silence.
 
"Are you sure?"

"No.
 
Of course not.
 
I want anything but that to be true.
 
But Tim.
 
He was the only other student out of his room at the same time."

"It didn't have to be another student.
 
It probably wasn't.
 
They say that someone crushed El's windpipe with their bare hands.
 
No kid Kyle's age could do that."

"I'm afraid, Tim."

"Well, we'll know soon enough.
 
They'll be able to do DNA testing on the skin samples found under El's fingernails."

"They keep that stuff around?"

"In most countries, actually.
 
Before The Code was proven, they kept it around just in case.
 
It'll take a few weeks, but I'm sure we'll get the results loud and clear.
 
I mean, it doesn't get much more obvious than this, does it?
 
It was a murder.
 
El was
murdered
.
 
The first murder in a Clean Area, ever."

"I don't know how, but I'm...I'm almost sure this was Kyle's fault."

"What happened, Del?
 
You had so much faith in Kyle before.
 
And we did the test for The Code on him."

"That was before he changed.
 
And I lied," Del began sobbing again.

"What did you lie about?"

"I..."
 
Another long pause.
 
"I lied about the test.
 
I never tested Kyle for The Code."

What?
 
Kyle's heart thumped in his chest harder and faster than it had in a long time.

"But I saw you do the test--the whole test."

"No, you didn't.
 
You saw me drip a diluted version of the solvent onto the slide."

"Del!"

Then Kyle...Kyle still might have The Code.
 
It made a lot of sense.
 
A lot.
 
It would explain how he was killing so easily, and how he'd been one of the only easy survivors in that place they'd taken him.
 
It would explain...
everything
.
 
The knowledge gave him a weird sort of peace, like he suddenly understood himself.

"I don't believe in The Code," Del said.
 
"But just because I don't believe in The Code doesn't mean that I don't believe that murders exist."
 
There was more crying from Del and soothing noises from Tim.

"Why don't we just test him again?
 
I can find a good excuse to get some more of his blood."

Del nearly yelled.
 
"Didn't you hear anything I just said?
 
I told you, I don't believe in the damn Code."

"OK, OK.
 
I'm sorry.
 
I won't bring it up again."

"Promise me you won't test him."

"I swear."
 
A second later.
 
"You really don't believe in The Code?"

"Tiimmm."
 
Her voice rose in warning.

"What about the Homosexuality Gene?
 
2018, science begins taking behavioral genetics seriously when they identified which gene predisposes homosexuality."
 
Tim's sounded slightly incredulous.

"No, I don't believe in the Homosexuality Gene."

"REAL-ly?"

"Don't look at me like that."

"You're a doctor, not some Middle Ages priest who believes homosexuals should be hanged, right?"

"No Tim, don't be silly.
 
Of course not.
 
Don't act like I'm some archaic, superstitious homophobe.
 
I'm not.
 
All I'm saying is that I just can't accept that people don't have a choice about their sexual preferences any more than I can believe that people are born with a code that predestines murder.
 
And quit staring because I'm NOT saying homosexuality is a 'sin' and 'evil' and the same as murder.
 
All I'm saying is that it would be wrong for me to believe one behavioral trait and not the other!"

Tim made sounds like he was about to start a sentence several times.
 
"R..H..Not even a bit?
 
You don't even believe in Behavioral Genetics?
 
At all?
 
Entrepreneurship, Passivity and Sociability?"

"I believe in Behavioral Genetics plenty.
 
It's just that--tendency is not the same as fate.
 
You HAVE a choice in your life and your actions.
 
That ability to choose is what makes humans human.
 
We chose to ignore instinct every day, or else society would crumble into survival and reproduction."

"...Like Murderer City?"

"...Yes.
 
If Behavioral Genetics was as concrete as modern day scientists make it out to be, we'd have never evolved past monkeys."

"Wait, you still believe in traditional evolution?" Tim's voice asked.

Their conversation shifted away from Kyle and El and the Murder Gene so Kyle crept back to his room.
 
The truth was, he wanted Tim to test him.
 
He wanted to know if he had The Code.
 
Because he thought it might be true even if Del didn't believe in it.
 
The Code meant
something
.

It had to.
 
He'd get Tim to test him, somehow.

Chapter 21

Early detection is important.
 
Too bad that nearly everyone has at least a recessive form of The Code MSN18A.
 
The ability of epigenetic changes to pass from mother to child has shown us that it will be extremely difficult to breed out The Code from ever appearing again in our Genetic Makeup.
 
Yet the government and the world is trying.
 
Sterilization is the new order for anyone with a dominant and expressed form of The Code.
 
As for the recessive form?
 
Only time will tell and scientists will continue to scurry for a cure.

-Falen, Ellent G.
 
"The End of The Code Draws Near."
 
Denver News Institute
.
 
Apr 2, 2021.

Jay stumbled through the ruins of Esperanza.
 
If hell existed on earth, this was it.
 
Blood washed Crystal Onyx, tinting red prismatic images of dead and mutilated.
 
From here, from anywhere, Jay could see how his friends had died.
 
The people who'd put their trust in him with the kind of trust that left them chopped up, brutalized, dismembered and murdered.

Because of him.

He saw Emmy and her teddy bear curled in a ball in the corner of her room, back bent backwards completely around like someone had taken her spine and broken it segment by segment.
 
Andrew and Conn--a close couple finally broken apart, splattered on opposite walls.
 
Brian, big Brian with the missing leg, it looked like he'd died defending Joanna and Sully.
 
Issak, all that was left of him and his lab was a giant crater in the earth.

It was them and the others, their images, their tortured faces that left Jay on his knees.
 
Vomiting and gasping and shaking.

Evo and Ti left Jay crying.

Both, like twin puppets, had their mouths open.
 
A rod jabbed straight through their mouths out the back of their heads into the next twin.
 
Back to back, they were hanging over the arch of the community center's entrance.
 
A rope wrapped their bodies together like a gift--knotted and bowed.
 
Beneath the twins were blood writ letters.
 
"For Paul and Mike."
 

Xiaos had fought hard.

Esperanza's defenders littered the earth only half or a third as much as other bodies.
 
Go Xiaos.
 
The other bodies were the dead from the Teams, united Teams that had come in and massacred Esperanza side by side.
 
But of the Enforcers, there were no dead.
 
The note was Jay's only clue that they'd led the fight.
 
Hunter had led the fight.

Of Bitch and Xiaos, Jay didn't see.
 
He hoped that somehow, they'd escaped and survived.

Adrianna though, Jay found in the hidden watch-house that Xiaos had built high above Esperanza.
 
Adrianna had used the place to watch for Jay's returns.
 
You could see all of Esperanza from it without anyone knowing.

He found her because he'd followed the blood.

When Jay opened the door, he saw Adrianna sitting in the middle of the floor, slumped over like a doll, a makeshift sword impaled through her middle.
 
Blood had pooled, slipping between the floorboards around her.
 
She was breathing.

Jay wiped the perspiration from his forehead and took a few steps forward.
 
"Adri?" he called softly.

Her chest rose and fell.

He fell to his knees and crawled to her.
 
Dipping his head to peer at her.
 
Afraid to hope.
 
"Adri?" he said again.

Her head rolled to the side, tilted, and he saw her pupils gradually converged on him.
 
"Jay?"
 
It was a whisper.
 
A tiny, tiny, whisper.

He came to her, afraid.
 
"I'm here," he said.
 
He touched her shoulder.

She smiled.
 
"I'm glad."

Then her eyes went blank again, and her lips let go until she wasn't smiling anymore.
 
Her head rolled back to center.
 
And her chest stopped moving.

"Adri." Jay said again.
 
He took a his hand on her shoulder away and fell to a seat, staring at Adri.
 
She was the first one he'd ever saved.

She never took another breath.

It took a moment, a long moment.
 
But he did it, he stopped hoping.

Jay spent the next few weeks sleeping.
 
Eating.
 
Recovering.
 
And sleeping more.
 
He stayed in the watch-house, where there were supplies stocked to last months.
 
He found drugs for pain, and antibiotics, and tools that worked to cut off the rest of his arm and sew on the loose flag-like skin around its end.
 
It hurt even with the drugs, but he reveled in the pain.
 
He enjoyed it, even though he fainted twice to get the job done.

After he was done, he stopped taking the drugs and lived in the moment, wave after wave of beautiful agony.
 
Agony that kept him from hoping for anything else but the pain.

Once, he went back into Esperanza.
 
He went to bury the bodies that had begun to rot and smell like they were pieces of aging meat and not his friends.
 
But it was near impossible to dig with one arm and he stopped after only having buried the twins.
 
The rest he dragged and threw into the crater of Issak's lab.
 
He set their bodies on fire.