“Language, young man. The screening bureau officer is downstairs eating my cookies. You need to come show him the gene hasn’t activated.”
“Sorry. Okay. On it. Give me two seconds.” He winced at the door closing, the noise pounding his skull like a jackhammer. He grabbed his shades and put them on. Gently. Shielding his eyes from the light helped a bit.Must have been more stressed out about today than I realized. This has to be a migraine.
Bryn counted it a win that he made it down the stairs without falling on his ass. Annie was waiting with the official in the TV room. They were both seated on the sectional, chattering away like old pals.
“Here he is, Charlie. The latest of a long line.”
“And no indications?”
“None. He’s his normal teenage self.”
“Oh dear. Congratulations on your birthday, Bryn. I’m Charles Donovan from the screening bureau and this visit is nothing to worry about.” He held out a hand and Bryn shook it.
“Hey.”
“I’m going to give you a finger prick for a blood sample. It’s a quick and easy test for gene activation which shows us sanguine or lupine indications. A visual assessment isn’t always accurate.”
Bryn slumped on the sectional, trying not to look as belligerent as he felt. “This is pointless.”
“Probably,” Charlie said. “But wouldn’t you rather have it noted on your record that you have no active gene so that you don’t have people hounding you in the future?”
“I suppose.”
“Be nice, Bryn.” Annie’s warning tone was enough to have him sitting a bit straighter.
Charlie got out his testing kit. “Don’t worry, you won’t miss the tiny bit I’m going to take.” He jabbed Bryn’s middle finger pad then collected a bead of blood on a dropper that went into a tiny test tube of clear liquid. “It’s red at least.”
“You say that to everyone, don’t you?” Bryn muttered.
“Sure do. Perk of the job. Right, I’m looking for what color the liquid changes to. Lupine goes green, sanguine is purple. No gene change is golden yellow.” He shook the tube.
“So what the fuck is sky blue?” Bryn felt sick. He stared at the little glass vial.
“I…need to make a call. Don’t move.” Charlie went into the hall.
Bryn watched him go. “Annie, what’s happening?”
“I don’t know.” She came to sit next to him on the couch and grabbed his hand.
A pulse of sharp pain shot through Bryn’s already throbbing head and his vision dimmed. In his head he had a picture of Annie standing in the dock of acourtroom facing a judge. She looked resigned. Bryn yanked his hand away in horror and the image faded.
“If you go now, you’ll have time to grab a few things and get out through the back yard,” Annie whispered. “I’ll tell Charlie you went to the bathroom.”
“What? Why would I do that?”
“Because if that test is showing that you have some rare variation of the gene, you’ll be taken by the security services and put through God knows what kind of experimentation while they work out what you can do.”
“And if I run, they’ll hunt me down. When you touched me Annie, I saw…well, let’s just say things wouldn’t work out well for you either.” It was tempting to try it. Bryn thought he could make a good go of disappearing, but he couldn’t do that to Annie. If she was blamed, what would happen to all the other kids in her care? He wasn’t that much of an asshole.
“You shouldn’t think about me. I’d happily go to court for you. Be selfish. Go.”
Bryn slumped on the couch. “No. Not an option.” Tentatively, he touched Annie’s hand. He flinched at the pain but now the image in his head was of a smiling Annie watching over kids playing in the yard. His vision cleared and he sighed. “I guess Harvard is off the cards. Fuck.”
When Charlie came back into the room, he seemed tense. “Your test result is…unusual, Bryn. You felt fine this morning?”
“Yeah, apart from a headache. I didn’t sleep well last night. It got worse, though.”
“Do you know what time you were born?”
