COSMOS magazine

Thursday, July 3

Paul's answering machine had collected three messages, increasingly frantic.

"Hello, this is Keith Hindle. Please give me a call as soon as you can. 472-3754 or cell phone 861-5728."

"Paul, this is Keith again. If Alex turns up at your place, please contact us."

"Paul. Keith again. Jill was in a car accident. She's been taken to Seton Hospital. Alex has disappeared, and the police are looking for him. Please call immediately if he shows up at your apartment."

Paul's hand shook as he picked up the phone. Before he could instruct it to call Seton Hospital, it beeped to announce an incoming call.

"Paul Gibson."

A kid's voice. "Hi Paul, it's me."

"Alex?" His heart lurched with a palpable thud. "Where are you?"

"I'm safe, but Mom was in a car wreck."

"Are you at the hospital with your mom?"

"No. I'm with that Payback guy. He says his real name is Wayne."

Paul's pulse accelerated even faster; a chill passed through him. Alex sounded okay, but how long could that last? He remembered the gunman's face, contorted with rage as he pointed the gun at Paul and pulled the trigger.

"Is Wayne going to bring you home?"

"No, I don't want to go home. The police will make me live with April. I hate April. Wayne's gonna help me run away."

Oh Christ, oh Christ. He's only ten years old, you can't expect sense from a child. "Alex, if you run away, how are you going to see your mother?"

"Because I'll be dressed up like a girl so no one will know it's me, and I can meet her someplace."

Payback's gruff voice—Wayne's—spoke up in the background, "Get to the point, Alex. Don't stand there talking until midnight."

"Okay, Wayne, just hang on." Alex didn't sound very frightened. "Paul?"

"Yes, I'm still here, Alex."

"Wayne needs to get his regulator shot. He's sick. We've got a deal, Wayne and me. If you'll give him his shot, he'll help me run away and hide."

"Give me the phone, Alex," the deep voice broke in. "Hey, Dr. Gibson. I don't wanna say things that might upset the kid. Know what I mean? But between you and me, man to man, I think you can guess what might happen if I don't get that injection. I'm going to leave Alex with a friend of mine, okay? Then I'll meet you at the Theater Arts Building. Know it?"

"I can find it on a map."

"Can you get there in an hour with my dose?"

"Yeah. And you'll have Alex with you, or no deal."

"Hell, no, be reasonable. I'm leaving him with friends. I don't get safely back, they have their instructions. But don't you worry. If I get my shot, Alex will be fine, and I'll help him get to wherever he wants to go. He mentioned some ranch out in the country somewhere."

It was worth considering. His mind raced wildly. Should he insist that Alex be handed over to the police? No. If Alex were taken back to April and Keith, he'd forego the final auxosome regulation treatment, with God knows what consequences. Probably he'd die within months or even weeks, his poor brain bursting like a garden choked with weeds. If cell growth did slow and Alex survived, the tumour would likely grow back. Maybe Wayne's deal was not such a bad one. Roberta's ranch, he thought. Wouldn't hurt to ask. After all, she took in stray puppies and mice.

"We'll talk about it when we meet. I'll see you at the Theater Arts Building in an hour."

Thursday, July 3

Wearing a paper hospital gown, Jill lay woozy and unhappy on a bed in the emergency room trying not to touch the dressing that covered half her forehead. A nurse pushed back the screen. "You have a phone call. You can take it over here." The woman helped Jill into a wheelchair, pushed her to a small enclosed office.

"Jill! I'm so sorry. I should've been there with you." Paul's voice was shaky. "They told me you've had sutures in your forehead but you're going to be okay."

"I'm feeling worse from the sedative than from this little bump on the head." Her mouth was gummy; she felt dazed. "I wanted to go straight back out and look for Alex, but they insist on keeping me here. Shit, Paul, you don't know, do you? Payback's got Alex."

"I know."

"You do?" Her heart leaped. "Did the police catch him?"

"No, he phoned me. I talked to Alex. He's okay, Jill."

Relief flooded through her. For the first time since she'd seen April's empty car, she dared to feel optimistic.

"Have you called the police? What are you going to do?"

"The nurse said I could come and pick you up tomorrow or the next day. They want to keep you for observation."

"Not a chance. Come get me right now."

"I'll be there in two hours. We can talk then, in person."

There was something he didn't want to discuss over the phone. "Okay, love. Maybe by then the sedative will be worn off enough that I can walk in a straight line and talk without chewing a hole in my tongue."

Thursday, July 3

Dirty, bruised, sticky with dried Coke, Alex sat on top of a bookcase in the office of Yvonne Reyes, PhD (it said on the door), and looked down at Wayne with a disapproving frown. "Why'd you tell Paul that stuff about leaving me with friends?"

"Sometimes you have to stretch the truth a little, to get people to see things your way."

"That wasn't stretching the truth. That was an outright fabrication."

"Ha! That's a big word for a kid your size. Well, anyway, it worked, didn't it? He's bringing the shot. C'mon down now. We need to get you cleaned up and find ourselves some better clothes."

Alex began to climb down, using the shelves as if they were the rungs of a ladder. "My mom would have a cow if she saw me doing this."

"Yeah, well, it does look a little dangerous. What if the bookcase fell over on top of you?"

"Then I'd do this!" Alex dropped the last three feet, pushing himself away from the bookcase.

"Huh. Think you're pretty smart, don't you?" Wayne led the way out of the office into the hallway. "Did it make you smart? The shot, I mean."

"Yeah, I've been figuring stuff out. How about you? Did it make you smart?"

"At first, I guess." Wayne held open the door of the Men's room and motioned for Alex to go in. "Later on I started feeling weird. Getting headaches. They've eased off for now, but I still feel weird. Having spells, like, you know, feeling up one minute and suicidal the next."

"Paul took me and my mom to a neurologist for a check up. That's a brain specialist. Did you go to a doctor?"

"Nope. Hop up here, let me wash you off. Damn, boy! You got a couple of nasty bruises there. Hurts just to look at them." With Alex perched on the edge of the lavatory, Wayne wet a paper towel and roughly wiped the mess from Alex's face, head, and arms. "I'm sorry that happened. If I'd known we were gonna be chased, I'd have brought some pillows for padding."

"My mom's in the hospital."

"Yeah, they're taking good care of her. She'll be okay. She shouldn't have run that red light."

"You did. And she was trying to save me. You were pretty scary that day in the lab. You seem nicer now." Alex looked up at Wayne and smiled.

"Long as you do what I tell you." Wayne had to fight to keep his face serious. Despite his pale skin and patchy head, the kid was beginning to grow on him. "Did you have a booster shot already?"

"Sure. It's not exactly a booster, it's more like a slower-downer. Paul said we have to regulate the growth of our neurons. Otherwise, we might have problems."

Old pain surged up inside, made his chest ache. "Problems. My wife died 'cause of drugs that were supposed to make her well. But they caused problems. They shouldn't use drugs that are gonna cause problems, goddamned scientists." The anger was building up, as it always did.

"Well, Wayne, I dunno. Paul didn't want to use his auxosomes on people without any clinical trials. You made him do it."

"He gave you a second shot. I didn't make the son of a bitch do that." Sensing Alex's alarm, Wayne turned away, caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror: his face was ugly with rage.

"Just calm down, mister." The boy reached out and grasped Wayne's shoulder, as if to steady him. Wayne was torn between two impulses: give the kid a fist in the face, or hug him. Robbie again. "You'll be okay after you get your regulator shots. It'll be all right. You'll see." The kid's face looked so earnest it made Wayne want to laugh and cry at the same time.

"Why should you care?" Wayne pulled another paper towel from the dispenser and blotted the wetness from Alex's skin.

"Because I need your help."

"You want to hide from that blonde gal, right? You could get Paul or your mom to hide you."

"No, then they'd be charged with kidnapping."

"Don't give me that crap. Your own mother can't kidnap you."

"Yes she can. My dad said so, and he's a lawyer. If the judge signs an order to make me stay with my dad, then my mom would be kidnapping me if she took me away."

"And I'm not kidnapping you? Here. Jump down, let's go find something to wear." Wayne glanced at his watch. They still had forty minutes.

"You already did kidnap me. Taking me to the ranch won't make it any worse."

"Kind of hard to take you there if we don't know where it is."

"Paul will tell you."

It occurred to Wayne that just being here with this kid was one of his more serious crimes. "We're in this together, right?"

"Right."

"So if we do get caught, we should cover for each other. We should make up a story and stick to it. Something like, say, you wandered away from that April's car and got lost, and I found you and—"

"How about, you found me wandering around and picked me up to take me home, but before I could tell you my name or where I lived, you had to stop the car suddenly, and I hit my head and when I came to I couldn't remember who I was. Amnesia. Like in that movie."

"Hmm. Not bad. You even have a bump on your head to prove it. What about all those bruises, though? They'll think I beat you up. In here." Wayne held open a door for Alex.

"Where are we going?"

"There's this room back here where they keep all sorts of stuff they use when they put on plays. Wigs, dresses, glasses, fake beards, you name it."

"Cool!"

"So what are we gonna say about the bruises?"

"I borrowed some kid's skate board and fell off going down a hill. Wow! Look at this!" Alex held up a helmet that was part of a knight's armour.

"Yeah, yeah. Come on, we don't have time to play around. We need to find little girl's clothing and... what do you think? Shall I go for the bearded look or find a woman's wig?"

"Depends on whether my mom reported you to the cops."

"Yeah. Let's assume she did and go for the beard."

"And you could wear a pillow under your shirt and be a fat guy."

"Not a bad idea. The skate board might work as good as anything for a story. Maybe that's how you got the bump on your head too. No point making me out to be a careless driver. Here, let's see if this fits you." It was a pink dress with a white pinafore; the kid shuddered. You couldn't blame him.

"What happened to your fingers, Wayne?" Alex took the dress but made no move to put it on.

"I was careless with a saw... No, I wasn't, fuck it!" he cried angrily. "What it was, my goddamned father made me use a power saw without proper training."

"How come they look so weird on the ends? Your fingers, I mean."

"Must've hit them against something." Wayne held his right hand slightly behind him, getting angrier. He could feel Payback hovering over him, behind his shoulder, ready to swallow him up.

"Wayne?"

"Yeah." Little shit, if he mentions my damn hand again—

"There's a problem, saying you found me on the street. If my mom reported you, they'll know you were trying to get away from her."

"Maybe not. No way to prove that was us she followed. They probably won't find that car for weeks. Doesn't look like anyone ever goes over to that house. I wonder if Fern's reported me missing..."

"Who's Fern?"

"My wife."

"I thought you said your wife died from taking drugs."

"Hey! What do you say we shut up and look for clothes."