We do need more people helping us. We cannot succeed without others. If the Weirdos aren’t willing, we might have to run from Revenant, and that would be appalling and sad.
Or…would it?
Would Dad forgive me for abandoning the fight, if he knew? He had reasons—good reasons—for wanting to release the info about frankenstructs. Maybe I do need to dig, to discover all of what the institute is doing, for the sake of whatever that truth is. Something ugly must be happening.
If you’re making a man from parts, the obvious question is where those parts are coming from. I already asked Clay this and suggested it was illegal, which hit a nerve. Why? Because it must be true. Where does one obtain parts of a human to use for this research?
I reach the Chevy, push the button for the garage door, then have to go and open it manually, the shitty thing.
And what if Kail does have segregated bits of his brain not talking to his conscious half? Or not properly, like a Neanderthal trying to chisel out a message to modern man. It’s a thought, a horrid one.
Complicated, yeah. My head is hurting again. I planned for revenge, now I’m pining for a happy, average life with my weird-ass, badass frankenstruct, somewhere in a cabin on a lake, where no one will bother us.
The other side of the coin: I can do what my father would have done and fight for justice.
Justice and truth for the people who can’t do it themselves. Which might be the dead in this case. Grim.
Kail climbs in the passenger side, slams the door. “Go.” He’s dressed hooded and concealed like some assassin out for a stroll, or, as it were, an average citizen out to burglarize. He even wears gloves. He points straight-armed at the windscreen. “Onward Dancer. On Blitzen. On Prancer.”
I laugh. “Oh, fuck you. I’m not Santa Claus.”
Where did he remember that from?
“Filthy mouths get washed out.”
“Oh?” I side-eye him as I ease out onto the driveway. Is that a promise?
It’s then that I recall how I wanted to find out who he once was by sending away some DNA samples. They can trace anyone by their family tree. If he has the DNA of several men, he’d want to know who, wouldn’t he? I’ll do it then see what answers I get.
27
THE LARAMIE HOUSE
I toss the package to Kail, and he catches it in mid-air as I drop into the driver’s seat and close the door. I hand him the second bag, which holds three hamburgers and fries. The scrumptious smell floods the car, and my stomach grumbles.
“Done.”
“Did you get what I asked you to?”
I start the car. “A big, black knobbly one that buzzes? Yes.” He tears at the wrapping and pulls the box from the remains of the paper.
“Hmmm. Good. The way that top and those jeans cling to you. I’d get you out of them and put it in you now if I could.”
“It’s broad daylight.” I pull the car out of the parking space and head home. Getting him to stay incognito in the car while I shopped was hard enough. “No getting frisky in the car in broad daylight.”
“So, if we come back at night?—”
“No!”
He smiles. “When you say no to my ideas, I get the impressionyou don’t always mean no. You’ve never been fucked in the back of a car, parked behind a bar?”
Oh yeah. That one time, with a transient boyfriend. “Once, a long time ago. Are you saying you can remember doing it?”
His mouth opens and stays that way. “I think so? I don’t know who though. How. When. I wish I did.”
“What if there were a way to speed up the return of your memory?”
“If there were, I’d do it.”
