The Seven (3 page)

Kenny was a shy boy, always had been. He also was very serious. He had short hair, dark, sullen eyes, fair skin, and he wore thin, circular wire-rimmed glasses that gave him an almost sinister look. John often compared his look to Arnold Toht, the sadistic Nazi from
Raiders of the Lost Ark
. Kenny was sitting at a table with a plate of grayish gruel in front of him. His nose was buried in a thick book about physics.

"Aw, man. Mushroom gravy over noodles again!" sighed Andy. "Isn't this like the fourth time in the last ten days we've had to eat this slop? What happened to decent food? Remember when they used to give us steak? Or remember the filet mignon at Christmas?"

"It's not so bad," said Holly. "We've had worse."

"I think maybe the grant money is running thin this month," said Posey. "We had good food at the beginning of the month. Towards the end of the month they always try to stretch the budget a little to cover the tests and whatnot."

Vera Miller came out of the kitchen with a pitcher of milk in one hand and a tray of Rice Krispie treats in the other. Vera was the cook and the housekeeper of the Home. She'd been there the whole time that the Seven had been there. She was matronly and polite, but never really much of a mother-figure. She wore her silver hair in a tight chignon and her countenance was stern and severe. She glared, never looked.

"I 'eard you complainin' Andy! You'll eat what you're given and you'll like it or there won't be anything!" she said with her thick British accent. "I don't cook to get insulted by the likes of you. If you want to eat better, then you join me in the kitchen and you give me a bit of 'elp, you ingrate!"

"Sorry, Vera," said Andy, blushing. He sat down next to Kenny and ladled a heap of noodles onto his plate.

"Where's the skinny girl?" barked Vera. Even after ten years, Vera still pretended she only had a passing, casual knowledge of them. "She'll not be raidin' me kitchen after I'm done wit' the evening meal. She'll eat wit' the rest of us."

"I only want coffee," Indigo announced from the top of the stairs.

"There'll be no coffee, either," Vera said. "You know the doctors don't want you all screwing up your systems wit' caffeine and sugar."

"Too late for that," said Indigo. "Hell, look at Andy. He wolfs down the gross national product worth of chocolate each week."

"Oh, shut up," said Andy.

"And don't you be cursing in front o' me," growled Vera, smacking her wooden spoon against the side of the pot on the table. "I can't keep you from sayin' it, but I can keep you from sayin' it in front of me. I hear language like that, you'll be tastin' the business end of me bottle of dish soap!"

"No coffee or sugar, but the heap of chemicals in detergent is okay? This place is stupid," said Indigo. She flopped into a chair next to Posey and idly played with her napkin.

"Posey, darling, spoon some noodles onto Indigo's plate," said Vera. "And Indigo---you will eat. You're getting far too thin. I've 'alf a mind to have the doctors strap you down while I shove a few platefuls of fish and chips down your gullet."

"I'll volunteer for that," smiled John. "I can never seem to eat enough."

"That's because you're a growing boy," said Vera.

"It is because your body consumes fuel at three times the rate of a normal boy your age." The kids turned their heads and saw the thin form of Doctor Cormair entering the hall. His measured steps were deliberate and slow and his shoulders were slightly hunched from years of pouring over data sheets and computer keyboards. His hair, now a silvery-gray, was slicked back without a strand out of place. His eyes surveyed the table through thick, round glasses. "It is perfectly normal. You need the food to be better to compensate for your advanced energy consumption rates. I apologize for not having the resources to properly feed you every night. I hope to atone for that some day." Cormair's voice was thin and wheezy, as if he was constantly struggling for breath.

"No worries, Doc," said John with a good-natured smile. John, more so than any of the others, had always tried to be friendly with the doctors.

"Indigo," said Cormair, "you will eat what you are given. And you must eat. Not having the proper resources in your body can corrupt test results."

Scowling, Indigo picked up a fork and took a small bite of pasta. "Can't have your precious tests corrupted now, can we?"

Cormair tactfully ignored Indigo's jab. "I trust the rest of you are well. Andrew, I am glad to see you back. I assume you got your tantrum out of your system?"

"Yes, Doctor," said Andy. He blushed brightly, his face filling with a fiery red that almost matched his hair.

"Sarah, I thank you for going to find young Andrew," said Cormair. He sat at the far end of the table, opposite of Vera Miller, and accepted the bowls of pasta and gravy as Holly brought them to him.

Dr. Sebbins walked into the dining hall and sat next to Cormair, as was her custom. "Any plans for tonight?" she asked brightly. "I was thinking maybe of watching a movie in the TV lounge. Say, nine o'clock?"

"I could be up for a movie," said Posey, smiling, "as long as the boys don't choose it. I don't think I could handle another violent bloodbath movie."

"Hey,
Full Metal Jacket
is not a violent bloodbath," said Andy, heaping his plate with noodles for the second time.

"That means you'll want to watch some sort of girly flick," said John.

"Romances aren't just for girls," said Posey, sticking out her tongue at him.

"Sure. They're for girls...and guys who want to be girls."

"Enough, you two," said Sebbins. "Kenny? What about you? You up for a movie tonight?"

Kenny raised his head from his book and blinked twice. He swiveled his head slowly, looked at Sebbins, gave a brief shake of his head, and returned to his physics book.

Sebbins stared hard at Kenny with concern for a long moment before giving her plate her attentions.

"Has anyone experienced anything out-of-the-ordinary today?" Cormair asked. He asked the same question at every evening meal. He had been asking it every night since they arrived.

Indigo bit her lip. The stereo was definitely out-of-the-ordinary, but it wasn't something she felt like she wanted to bring up. She knew that mentioning it would bring an all-night battery of tests and experiments. It had happened to John once. He had let it slip that his eyes had felt like they were bulging out of his skull for a while and that bright lights were hurting his head. Sebbins and Cormair had exchanged strange looks and had scuttled John from the table. They had him sequestered in the labs for most of a day and a half while subjecting him to an inhuman amount of testing. When he came back to the other six, he swore he wouldn't mention anything ever again, even if he was shooting fire through the top of his skull at the dinner table.

"Anyone?" asked Cormair again. Indigo felt like his eyes were staring a hole through her. She forced her gaze to remain down on her plate while she shook her head a few times. Cormair didn't ask again, but Indigo didn't look up from her plate again.

"I have finished," Kenny said. "Thank you, Ms. Miller." He nodded at Vera and stood. Before the doctors could ask any question, he turned and left, headed up the spiral stairs to his room. He was always the first to leave the table. He also was the only one who remembered to thank Vera each night, no matter how weak the meal.

"I'm going to go, too," said Andy. He'd wolfed four times as much as anyone else. He dropped his fork on the empty plate and was gone before Cormair could say anything.

"Me too," said Holly. She gave Cormair a withering smile and left the table, her plate still half-full. The other four quickly found reasons to excuse themselves and disappeared, leaving the three adults alone at the table. None of them wanted to be around Cormair when they didn't have to be.

The atmosphere in the dining room became heavy and sullen. Cormair was silent, but his face showed frustration and hidden rage. He drummed his long, thin fingers against the table top. "They are lying."

Sebbins frowned. "Is that hypothesis, Doctor?"

"That is fact, Doctor Sebbins. Look at the scans, the blood work, the X-rays! Those children have changed dramatically in the last few years according to their internal workings, and I refuse to believe that none of them have experienced manifestations of their abilities. According to my data, they should be going through dramatic shifts of power by now."

"Perhaps they are, and they are unaware of it. It is happening at a genetic level, correct? If you take a child who was meant to be brunette and alter their DNA so they are blonde, will that child even know unless she looks in a mirror? These kids don't have a mirror to look into for what they're becoming."

"But I haven't altered a hair color. I've altered brain chemistry, physical structure, musculature--"

"Look at Posey though, Doctor Cormair," interjected Sebbins. "She has nearly unbreakable bones and those bones have less than a tenth of what a normal bone mass should be in a girl her age. Ten years' of change in those bones and all she's complained about is acne and her height. Those bone structure changes aren't changes that she's aware of, Doctor. She's oblivious to her physical alteration because her DNA has been altered and spliced so that she's growing without knowing that she's different. That's a success, Doctor."

"Doctor Sebbins, I am not one who celebrates the completion of the first mile of a marathon. If I do not finish it, it is not worth celebrating. My research, this program, was meant to create the next evolution of man. I am doing nothing short of playing God and if I am not successful, it is not worth celebrating because I will have committed far too many sins to repent."

"Then give them some more time. You know as well as I do that the teenage brain is not fully developed. Their higher thought processes are still arranging themselves, their frontal lobes are still adjusting to the treatments. I've been seeing a lot of positive steps lately. Indigo's hypothalamic activity is increasing every day, Kenny's brain patterns are unlike anything we've ever seen before. I'll bet we'll begin to see change any day now."

"Doctor Sebbins, you are young. You are in that rare age where you are too old to remember teenagers, but too young to be a true adult," Cormair's voice wasn't condescending, only cold and rational. "Teenagers have made a living throughout the centuries by knowing more than they let on and effectively evading the prying of adults. It's a contest to them. They are constantly hiding information from us. It's how they survive. They are lying. They have begun to notice the changes. They may not have fully completed their genetic shifts, but at the very least some of them have noticed. Mark my words, Doctor. Some of them already know."

Kenny's room was more spartan than those of the other six. His bed was plain, without extra pillows or thick comforters. He kept it adorned with the same simple, gray, military-issue blanket that was on the bed the day he arrived at the Home. His desk was bare except for the computer Dr. Cormair gave him to use for his studies. He had bookcases along one wall of his room and each bookcase was absurdly organized, each book rigid and in its place, alphabetized and organized according to a system of Kenny's own design. Each bookcase was full, but not crammed full. Kenny read everything he could get his hands on, but kept only books of information---computers, electronics, astronomy, physics, complex mathematics. Kenny's education far surpassed the education of the other six thanks to his reading and private study, but he never showed it in class or in Cormair's tests. He guarded his intelligence carefully. He had plans. They could only keep him at the Home until he was eighteen. The law books he read told him this. At eighteen, he would leave and never look back. It was almost time. He endured the arduous saga of testing and surgeries. He had survived ten years of torture and isolation. He was going to leave.

Kenny logged an entry sequence on his computer. Immediately it presented him a series of passwords. Everything he did on the computer was meticulously encrypted. He didn't want Cormair taking advantage of his intellect or discovering what he was doing online. It might compromise his plans.

Computers had always been Kenny's refuge from the Home. He was a self-taught hacker, utilizing the Home's computer systems to figure out how to effectively "leave" the Home via the cyber-realm in chat rooms, bulletin board systems, and instant messengers. He had conversations with men and women all over the world, even though it technically was outlawed because Cormair didn't want them or searching for their families or being directly influenced by individuals in the outside world. Kenny never bothered relocating his family. They'd never written to him, nor had he written to them. When he stepped onto the bus ten years ago, he had considered himself an orphan. The computers did allow him to discover things about himself, though. He found his actual date of birth. The first thing they did in the Home was told all seven of the kids that their birthdays were to be celebrated on December 31 each year. Kenny knew it was done to keep them at the Home as long as legally possible. He'd discovered his birthday, though: September 29. Only a few more weeks and he would leave the home under the cover of night, a legal adult, to find a new life, a real life.

The computer flashed an error message. Kenny frowned. He retyped his access code.

INVALID.

Kenny squinted and retyped his access code slowly, making certain the keystrokes were clean.

INVALID.

Kenny frowned. Cormair had blocked his encryptions. It happened occasionally. Cormair brought in top hackers every so often and attempted to get them to break through Kenny's defenses and restore Cormair's authoritarian control. It never worked. At the most, it only served to inconvenience Kenny for a while.