The first thing to get out of the way is that he did it. There was no way around that. Plenty of evidence: chip scans, nanobot cloud pressure variances, even the more old-school stuff like fingerprints and video. All of it pointing in only one direction: Aaron Leschen, the man who would become Tithonus Zero.
It would probably be a better story if he were innocent, if he spent all those years (a lifetime, really) wasting away inside his little cell, knowing the truth but powerless in the face of the system’s dogmatism, growing more and more bitter, until eventually becoming a monster of the department’s own making. That would have the type of moral that would make you think. But Xan had stopped looking for morals years ago. The world had outgrown them. Look for a moral, you get caught up in the weeds of your own head. Cause and effect; that one thing succeeded another, no matter the motivation behind it, was the only logical way to view a world seemingly devoid of logic.
Leschen had confessed, too. Almost without any provocation at all. It was a tremendous series of crimes, one that in the distant past would wave dominated the news all summer, among the likes of the Manson Family or the Son of Sam. And he just came out and admitted it. It had been Xan’s grandfather’s first major bust, the one that made his career, and he had hardly had to work for it.
He wasn’t what you would call a serial killer, as they tended to have types, methods, and pathologies that you could diagnose and monitor. Leschen had none of that; he simply liked people better when they were dead.
So, that’s settled. Old Aaron got what he deserved.
Xan didn’t understand the process involved. Something to do with reversing telomere attrition, slowing or ceasing cell death, or some other equally impossible and confusing feat. But he knew what it basically was: programmable immortality. For the regular people, it was illegal, one of the holdouts from the time even before Xan’s grandfather’s day, when fucking around with the human body was seen as somehow grotesque. Sinful, they said, as if that was the kind of thing any real God would worry his little head over. If we weren’t meant to improve our bodies, why did God leave in all these tasty exploits?
But while most bio-hacking was now perfectly legal, the Big Two, cloning and immortality, were not. People still did both, of course, but black market clones usually degenerated, after a few years, and the shady doctors willing to jimmy your genes so you didn’t die weren’t necessarily the most qualified or capable. Most unofficial attempts at the Big Two ended in failure. They just weren’t worth the money or risk.
But the government pretty much had an endless supply of money, and they viewed risk as something that happened to other people. The trial of Aaron Leschen had evoked incredibly strong emotions, for the short time it had captured everyone’s attention, and it was clear that his punishment needed to be clever and severe. Normally, hitting someone with ten consecutive life sentences was just a way of saying, “You’ll never walk free again,” in legalese. But not anymore. Now they could tweak your mitochondria, or whatever, and you’d have to serve the whole thing. Sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done, indefinitely. It was both cruel and unusual, but not in any way that Thomas Jefferson would’ve thought up in a million years.
They called it the “Tithonus Program,” after some guy in Greek mythology who was granted eternal life, but not eternal youth. Leschen was the first, but it had been a forgone conclusion that there would be more. By the time he escaped, they were on number Forty-seven. Forty-seven elderly badasses, all over one hundred years old, and all of them, down to a one, provably guilty and unrepentant. The worst of the worst, gifted with what was traditionally the most sought-after prize in the universe. Xan had always thought it was too cheeky for its own good.
It wasn’t public knowledge how the Tithonus subjects were treated. Most people assumed they were holed up in solitary confinement, but that wasn’t true. Even psychopaths cracked after too much time alone, and having an entire cell block purposefully broken down mentally over generations wasn’t a good look, even if those who suffered would very much like to flay the skin from your back, if given the opportunity. No, they were forcibly socialized, same schedule as everyone else. Common sense would suggest that introducing a bunch of unkillable savages into the yard during recess was a bad idea, but the doctors’ control over the Tithonuses was so complete that they were made physically incapable of causing any real harm to their fellow inmates. On the flip side, a layperson’s understanding of prison culture implied that the mortal prisoners, knowing of the physical limitations of the forty-seven, would treat them with an increased ferocity, as a way to improve their own perceived power. This was equally false. The forty-seven had this aura about them that kept the other inmates away. It was strictly psychological, but totally impenetrable. Tithonuses were like living gods to these people, either seen as the epitome of cool, or sordid, undying reflections of one’s own irreparable flaws.
In fact, the federal prison just outside of Dallas, where the forty-seven resided, had developed a sort of cult fascination with the old men. They had worshipers. Gangs were formed as sort of makeshift militias who would fight each other in the name of their favorite Tithonus. This, of course, all happened without the participation of the immortals themselves, who couldn’t have cared less about that kind of thing. They lived in their own minds, and in fact the idea that no one ever knew what they were thinking was a big part of their allure. You cannot hope to unravel God’s thoughts.
Number Zero had escaped in the middle of the day. There had been no alarm, no fight, no sign of a struggle of any sort. The running theory (which Xan agreed with) was that one of the guards had been converted to the Church of Leschen, and had facilitated Aaron’s escape. The only knuckle in that story was that there was no proof. Nowadays, there was always proof of everything, even when there weren’t cameras looking, and ideally, there should always be cameras looking in a federal prison.
Honestly, Xan felt no personal attachment to the case. That it had been his grandfather who caught the bastard the first time was not lost on him, but it didn’t translate into him having to protect his family name, or anything like that. That was a moral, and this was just a case. Word around the station said otherwise, and even some of the newsdrips went along with that story, but it just wasn’t how it was. His grandfather died knowing that Leschen would rot in prison for hundreds of years, and that was good enough for Xan. He intended to help in any way he could, but he was not about to barge into his Lieutenant’s office and demand he be made lead.
But of course he was made lead. Whether that was because of his years of excellent service or his personal link to the killer, no one would tell him. Everybody just assumed he was the obvious choice. It wasn’t Xan’s turn on the rotation, but then again this wasn’t the kind of case you would just let someone catch. It didn’t matter, anyway. Bitching about the assignment wouldn’t get him anywhere, and he didn’t even want to fight it. He was a cop, through and through, and this was a case most cops go their entire careers only hearing legends about. There was a madman out there, right now, and as far as Xan was concerned, he was a stranger in every significant way.
You find a stranger by intruding upon their life. Dig though their trash, read their diary, disregard any semblance of respect you might have had for them as a person. They aren’t a person; they’re a target, a buried treasure, and your only map is hidden in their deepest, darkest, most embarrassing secrets. This philosophy won’t win you any friends, but that’s not what the job is for. The job is a numbers game, and nine times out of ten, the so-called victim has something they’d rather not share with the world.
Leschen, of course, was a different animal altogether, as his life had been an open book for the past seventy years. His daily routine hadn’t changed since they built the new wing of the prison, back when Xan was in high school. He wasn’t allowed books, or art supplies, or even utensils for his meals. Along with his state-issued brain chip, they had provided him with a medical scanner, so they could always be sure he was just on this side of alive. Their control over him was absolute. He harbored no secrets.
Or so anyone thought. Xan knew better. You don’t break out of maximum security prison on a whim, and you definitely don’t do it by yourself.
There was static on the screen, which was probably less technical difficulty and more technical affectation. The signal more than likely wasn’t too weak to come through, but they wanted to make it look like their government-issued resources were spread thin. Whereas one warden beaming in to several prisons while sitting comfortably in his home in D.C. was unforgivable if efficient, it was almost noble if it barely worked. Just a sign of the times; we’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got. Xan wasn’t fooled.
“I’m sorry, Warden Laffler, I didn’t catch that last part.”
“Yeah, sorry. The connection’s real shoddy today.”
“Uh huh,” Xan said. “You said something about the camera feeds? Why they had been shut off during Leschen’s escape?”
“Yes, sir. Routine maintenance. Quick debug of the systems. Requires a hard reboot, once every month. Only takes about ten minutes, each time.”
“And where are the inmates at this time, during the reboot?”
“In their cells, usually. We try to schedule the maintenance times during lockdown. Gets rid of a lot of the variables, that way.”
“Right. And do the inmates know when this reboot takes place?”
The warden shook his head in disbelief. “Well, we don’t slip flyers through their bars, if that’s what you’re askin’.”
“I’m not trying to talk shit or anything,” Xan said, slightly amused at the absent warden’s tone, “but I have to ask. I mean, I wouldn’t even be here asking these questions if the most notorious criminal of the last century hadn’t escaped one of your prisons at the exact moment the security cameras were off.”
The warden huffed. “You think I’m not flipping out over this, son? I’ve been running prisons since before you dripped outta your daddy’s pecker. I know precisely how this looks.”
“Bad. It looks really bad. For you. And it’s ‘detective,’ or ‘sergeant.’ I’m not your son. And I’m not some franchise lackey you can talk down to. I’m a cop, trying my best to handle your fuck-up, before it results in a killing spree to rival the Crusades. So, I’m gonna ask you again, and this time, I would appreciate it if you kept your fucking attitude in check. Do the inmates know when the camera system reboots, yes or no?”
The man on the screen was clearly furious, but he maintained his composure enough to emit a clipped, “No.”
“Who is made aware of the reboot schedule?”
“Me. The guards. The folks down at the data center. That’s it.”
“This data center. Where’s it at?”
“It’s a server farm, down in Kentucky. They’ve been handling the camera feeds for all the nation’s prisons for a while now.”
“What’s the security like there?” Xan asked.
“Top-notch. I don’t know whether Leschen knew about the camera reset or not, but if he did, I can assure you he didn’t learn about it from the Kentucky office.”
Xan almost didn’t say what popped in his head, but he wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t at least mention it. “So, you’re saying the breach was inside your prison.”
Warden Laffler looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel. “Yes. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Okay,” Xan said. “Good to know.”
“Is this almost finished, detective? I do have other prisons to run.”
“Almost. And thank you. You’ve been most helpful. One more question: why aren’t we able to track Leschen’s brain chip or medical monitor? I mean, they both have GPS, so what gives?”
“That, detective, I cannot answer.”
“Oh, come on…”
“No, no. I’m not being difficult. I just don’t know. It was the first thing we tried, obviously.”
“Of course.”
“But, the second he stepped outside the prison grounds, he went dark. Completely off the grid. No one knows how he managed it, without ripping the damn things outta his neck.”
“Well, that’s reassuring. Okay, Warden. I release you. You may go tend to your other gardens.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh,” Xan said, as if it was only just occurring to him, “Mr. Laffler. One more thing.”
Laffler sighed. “What is it?”
Xan, through the screen, looked the old man directly in the eyes. “If I find out you played any part at all in this, other than your already very apparent incompetence, I’ll forget I’m a cop and take my own little trip up to our nation’s capital. Cool?”
The warden, to his credit, kept his considerable fear well-hidden behind his face, but couldn’t quite manage to respond to Xan’s threat. He broke the connection.
“Cool,” Xan said, to the empty room.
Warden Laffler was clearly enraged, which accomplished a few things. First of all, it was funny. Xan didn’t get out much, so big-dogging bureaucratic scumbags was practically a night at the opera to him. Second, it laid down the ground rules. Xan was leading the investigation, so he had to make it known that he was in charge. All information would go through him, and he wouldn’t take any bullshit excuses. And, most important, it set the stage for any mistakes the man might make. Angry people act without thinking. They reveal secrets and do ill-advised things just because they’re pissed. If the warden had anything to hide, Xan was planning on shaking it loose from the tree.
But the truth was that Laffler probably didn’t help Leschen escape. More than likely, the warden was just bad at his job. Hanlon’s Razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. The slimy businessman barking orders at people via satellite didn’t seem to have the mental capacity to pull off a prison break, even from a prison under his control. The timing of the escape to match the security system reboot was so brilliantly stupid, it took a genius to think it up. Laffler probably would’ve over-thought the entire thing; fake a medical emergency, sneak Leschen out in the dirty laundry, orchestrate a riot as a diversion, something like that. Only a true professional would simply walk out the door when no one was looking.
But that didn’t mean that Leschen didn’t have an accomplice. There was apparently no way he could’ve learned about the system reboot on his own, and he certainly wouldn’t have been able to switch off his two implants without help.
Xan shut down the terminal on his desk and closed his eyes. He would have to actually go to the prison and question the guards, but before that, he had to be sure his head was in the right place. Being a pushy asshole was an effective tactic against people like Warden Laffler, but he would need to utilize a gentler approach for the working-class stiffs who actually had to clock in every day. They wouldn’t take kindly to some cop barging in and throwing around accusations; they’d clam up and call for a union rep before Xan even crossed the threshold. Fucking with Laffler had gotten Xan’s blood pumping. He needed a quick meditation session to bring him back down to Earth.
He began his normal routine of deep breathing, bodily relaxation, and sub-visualization to bring his heart rate down to a manageable level. He imagined there was a large orb, floating between his eyes and roughly twenty feet in front of him. As a child, trying to look at something with his eyes closed always gave him a headache, but he had long-since learned how to do it the right way. Don’t actually look for it; just know that it’s there, always, and allow yourself to see it. You know it’s working when time stops hitting you at a consistent tempo.
Just as he was entering the sweet spot between waking and dozing, he felt a gentle massage on the back of his neck, where his brain stem met his spine, which told him he was being clicked. Someone was contacting him through his brain chip. Not for the first time, Xan wanted to rip the fucking thing out and throw it in the river.
He still had his eyes closed, so he couldn’t see the little notice in his field of vision telling him who was calling. He answered anyway. “Sergeant Xander Capulet,” he said, one of the few times this week he would use his full name and title. “How can I help you?”
“What, are you asleep, or something?” the voice in his head said. Still without opening his eyes, Xan knew it was Bilko, the station’s medical examiner.
“No, Bilko,” Xan said. “I was meditating.”
“Good for you. I told myself I would start doing that more. Even made it my New Year’s resolution, but, shit, I just never get around to it.”
“Well, you’re busy. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
Bilko laughed. “You must’ve really been getting into it. What a zen response.”
“Yeah, well, something tells me I won’t be so zen when you tell me why you clicked me.”
“Best detective alive. Nothing gets past you. I read the report on Leschen’s escape. I noticed how we’ve been unable to track his implants to see where he is.”
“Yep. Spit it out, Bilko. What do you know?”
“I know where Aaron was, oh, about four hours ago.”
That snapped Xan out of his remaining fog. “Where? And how do you know that?”
“I know it because I’m standing over the remains of a man who was tortured to death. It was Leschen, no doubt. I’m at a fancy little gene lab, downtown. I’ll send you the address. And bring some anti-nausea meds.”
“That,” Xan said, looking down at what Bilko had assured him was a dead body, “is…um…uh.”
“Yeah, it’s a whole new level of nasty, ain’t it?” Bilko said, chuckling at Xan’s queasiness.
“Bilko, what am I even looking at? I mean, I know it’s a dead guy, but, well, map it out for me. It looks like a dog got inside a giant bowl of spaghetti.”
“Jesus!” Bilko said, bursting out in laughter. “It does, doesn’t it? Well, for reference, that right there? That’s an eyeball. Knowing that, you can kinda figure out the dude’s basic profile. See, that’s an elbow, that’s a shoulder, that’s--”
“Oh, God, I see it,” Xan said, fighting the urge to vomit despite all the meds he had taken. Being able to identify body parts made the mass of flesh somehow more disgusting than before. “I wish I didn’t, but I see it now.”
“Yeah, it took me a minute, too.”
After composing himself, Xan looked at the body as if for the first time, trying to determine the actual cause of death. Bilko had told him the stiff had been tortured, but nobody could withstand this much damage. “How much of this was done after he was dead?”
“Only about a third, I would say. Leschen stomped the face in after he was done, probably some sort of self-hate manifestation. He didn’t want the guy to be able to look at him anymore.”
“Sounds like he felt guilty,” Xan said.
“Yeah, what it looks like to me.”
“That doesn’t mesh with his psych file.”
“Maybe not, but it’s what the evidence suggests.”
“You scanned his chip, right?”
“Oh, yeah. Hit the mother lode, too. Didn’t even have to reverse-engineer an image from his brain waves. He supplied us with legit video.”
“He was recording?”
“Yep. Got the whole thing, from beginning to end, right up ‘til he died.”
“How did he know to do that? Are you saying he knew Leschen was coming for him?”
“Oh, no. The first image of the video is him staring directly into Leschen’s eyes. Leschen tied him down and told him to record his own death.”
“Holy shit, that’s intense.”
“Yeah, but it’s helpful as all hell.”
“Too helpful, Bilko. Leschen’s been in the can for seventy years, but he knows how chips work. He’s mocking us.”
“Well, yeah, but isn’t that what serial killers do?”
“It is, but Leschen’s not a serial killer. He’s more of a spree-killer.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Serial killers make it all about themselves. ‘I’m doing this because I’m smart,’ or ‘I’m doing this because I’m God,’ or ‘I’m doing this because I’m a piece of shit.’ Leschen never seemed to have an opinion of himself, either way. He just killed people.”
“Maybe he’s changed. I mean, seventy years is a long time.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Xan said. He was unconvinced. If Leschen was trying to send him a message, it was either uniquely personal, or somebody else was telling him what to do, and Xan wasn’t sure which of those was scarier. “So, who was this guy?”
“Dr. Cory Malkas. Geneticist. Pioneer in the field, apparently.”
“Government funded?”
“Oh, yeah. Big time. And yes, I know what you’re thinking. He did in fact work on the Tithonus Program, though obviously decades after Leschen’s trial.”
“Yeah, I figured. But pretty much all geneticists are part of the program, these days. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s related.”
“Man, you’re really sticking to this ‘no patterns’ thing, huh?” Bilko said.
“Just stating facts. No reason yet to assume anything.”
“Okay, well, tell me that again after I show you the video.”
It was one of the most horrid things Xan had ever seen. Over an hour of torture and mutilation, as seen through the eyes of the victim. Xan found himself quietly relieved that his chip had the ability to keep his brain from dreaming. If anything was likely to follow him past sleep, it was this video.
But the only really relevant part was the very end, right before Dr. Malkas finally died. Leschen, himself covered in blood and sweat, had looked directly into the camera--not into but through his victim’s eyes--and said, “Are you watching, Raphael?” before dealing the final blow.
Xan’s entire body froze in fear. “Did he just say ‘Raphael?’”
“Yeah,” Bilko said. “But I’m fucked if I know who that is.”
“I do,” Xan said.
“Who?”
“You’ve heard of him. He never went by his first name. You’d know him as Johnson.”
“You mean--”
“Yeah. Johnson Capulet. My grandfather.”
Raphael Johnson Capulet, “Cap” to his friends, had been dead for nearly twenty years. Xan had been there when they cremated him. He had the old man in a clay urn, tucked away in the back of his closet. The bastard wasn’t seeing anything.
The first thing Xan asked, when he called up Warden Laffler again, was if Leschen had been notified of Cap’s death.
“Not that I know of,” Laffler said. He had none of his earlier swagger. Probably, he could tell from Xan’s tone that it would not be tolerated. “But word does get around the yard. Your granddaddy put away a lotta people, even some of my current inmates’ fathers, uncles, and big brothers. I’m sure back when he passed it was cause for celebration. Oh, um…I’m sorry. That sounded cold.”
Xan sighed. “But it’s not wrong. There’s no way he didn’t hear about it.”
“I’m sure he did,” Laffler said.
“Okay, thanks, Warden. One more thing: had Leschen’s mind been slipping? I mean, more than usual? Do you think he has dementia, or Alzheimer’s, or something?”
“No way. Part of the program. They keep ‘em sane and stable. Nowhere to hide, not even in their own minds.”
“You know this whole thing’s like, crazy fucked-up, right, Mr. Laffler?”
To Xan’s surprise, Laffler’s eyes softened. He almost looked human. “Yes. It is. But what are you gonna do?”
“Yeah,” Xan said, breaking the connection. He had to get up and do something. He couldn’t focus on Leschen’s bizarre message. It didn’t tell them anything about where the maniac was going, anyway. It was probably just a tactic to mess with the investigators’ heads, and Xan sure as hell wasn’t going to let it work.
Instead, he took the short walk over to the office next door to check the camera feeds from the street outside Dr. Malkas’s lab. They had already uploaded Leschen’s face into the recognition program, of course, but he was surprisingly good at keeping his head out of the lines of sight. He had covered his blood-splattered clothes with a large trench coat and pulled the collar up to his ears. Xan had to track the killer from the back, which proved useless once Leschen integrated himself into a large crowd, in a park off of Elm. It was as if he knew exactly where to go to disappear. Xan watched footage of the park for hours, but was never able to pick Leschen back up. The man was in the wind again.
Years ago, not long after Xan had come out of the academy, he had had a conversation with his grandfather about Leschen, particularly how Cap had tracked him down.
“Well,” the retired cop had said, “it ain’t the prettiest answer, but we basically just had to wait until he killed someone else before we got any fresh leads. He would take someone out, and we had a period of only a few hours to work with, before he vanished again. Finally, we got a video feed with him on it, and we found where he was sleeping. But that was after we tried and failed about fifteen times.”
At the time, Xan considered that to be how it went. You work with what you’re given. But that was the perspective of a rookie, talking about a criminal who was safely locked away. Now that he was the one to have to find the guy, allowing another dozen or so murders was out of the question. Xan refused to sit on his hands and let Leschen have free run of the city. His city. He groaned, knowing what he had to do now.
“Okay, Bilko,” he said once the medical examiner had picked up his click, “we’ll do it your way.”
“So you’re saying there is a logic behind his craziness?” Bilko asked. They had relocated to an all-night pancake house in the heart of Deep Ellum.
“Not yet, I’m not,” Xan replied. “I’m saying I have shit else to work with, so I’ll let you try to convince me, because that’s better than doing nothing.”
Bilko sipped his coffee. “Fair enough. I’ll give it my best shot.”
Xan took a bite of his chocolate-chip pancakes. “I’m all ears,” he said with his mouth full.
“Okay. First of all, I’ve read his medical records.”
“How’d you get those? His med chip’s gone blank. Nothing since his escape.”
“No, I read his records from when he was still inside.”
“Why? We pretty much know what his condition was. He was fully controlled by the doctors. Kept alive, but just barely.”
“That’s putting it lightly, yeah. The man’s a walking medical dictionary. Most of it is your basic old age shit, but held back so it doesn’t kill him. But some of it is unexpected. He has COPD, even though he never smoked. They’re not even sure how he got that.”
“Don’t gotta smoke to get that,” Xan said.
“Not necessarily, no, but it sure helps. But that’s not what’s got them stumped. Leschen has cancer. A super-aggressive variety. They’d been able to keep it in check, until about six months ago, when it seemed to grow legs and start walking up and down his body. He’s got tumors all over the place. None on his face, obviously, but he’s got a huge one on the back of his neck.”
“That’s why he pulled the collar of his coat so high when he left the lab. He didn’t want us spotting him by his tumor.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
“What’s the cause?”
“They don’t say. I don’t think they even know. They brought in all these specialists. Cancer docs, hollistic gurus, Tithonus scientists.”
“Anyone we know?”
Bilko raised his eyebrows like someone trying very hard to remain silent during a game of charades. After a few seconds, Xan laughed out loud.
“They brought in Dr. Malkas, didn’t they?”
“Congratulations.”
“Okay, okay, no need to say it.”
“Say what? That I told you--”
“Fuck you, Bilko. You’re too good at this to be an ME, you know that?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“So, let me have it.”
“Have what?”
“The list of the other doctors they contracted to cure Leschen’s cancer.”
“What makes you think I have that?”
“Fuck you, Bilko.” His heart was racing. He was back in the chase.
So, they had a list of potential targets. Cancer docs and gene specialists who had been part of the team assigned to curing Leschen of his malignant tumors. Xan went over the list a hundred times, trying to find a reason why the convict had gone after Malkas first. He could find none. More than likely, Leschen was choosing his victims the way he always had: at random. The only difference was that now he was working from a much smaller starting pool. Bilko, being somewhat of a control-freak, really wanted Xan to work the list in alphabetical order, but Xan didn’t think that was the way to play it. After all, Leschen had started at the middle of the alphabet; there was no reason to think he would go in order from here on out.
No, if there was any logic to Aaron’s thinking, it would be based upon the next target’s accessibility. Who could he grab next, before the cops got on his trail?
Malkas’s lab had been downtown. It stood to reason that the next victim would be whoever worked or lived the closest to the initial attack. A quick database search led Xan to the apartment of a Dr. Victoria Madrano, of State Thomas.
He used his police code to bypass the privacy filter on Madrano’s chip, allowing him to click her directly. It was past midnight, and the surgeon did not appreciate being woken up.
“What? Who the hell is clicking me, right now?”
“Dr. Madrano,” Xan said, “I’m very sorry to bother you, but I’m afraid it’s necessary. I’m detective Xander Capulet of the Dallas Police Department. I’m the one leading the hunt for Aaron Leschen.”
Madrano’s tone shifted immediately from angry to anxious. “Yes? Do you have any news?”
“Yes, I do, but I would rather discuss it face to face, if at all possible.”
“Uh, sure, yeah. I assume you have my address?”
“Already on my way.”
Xan felt a slight tingle on the back of his neck.
“Okay, fine,” Madrano said. “I’ve just granted you access to the building. Come on up, I’ll be waiting.”
Ten minutes later, Xan was sitting on Dr. Madrano’s sofa, drinking a cup of coffee and explaining to her why she should not have let him in her apartment.
“Why not?” she asked. “You’re a cop, right?”
Xan laughed and produced his badge. “Yeah, I am, but you didn’t know that. I only told you, but I could have been lying.”
“You still could be. This badge could be a fake.”
“Good. That’s the level of paranoid you need to be, until we catch this guy.”
“Do you think he’s gonna come after me? I mean, I haven’t done anything to him.”
“Yeah, I won’t even try to guess at his motives at this time, but yes, I think he at least is planning on coming after you. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but he’s already paid a visit to Dr. Malkas.”
“My God. Malkas is dead?”
“Very much so, I’m afraid. In fact, we should see about getting you some protection.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Dr. Madrano said.
“Oh, no?”
“No. The building has a private security firm on retainer. Any of the tenants can hire them , free of charge.”
“That’s good, but not good enough. Leschen might have someone helping him. Someone official. His escape was less than chaotic, and he’s somehow bricked both his chips. It’s not unreasonable to think that he would be able to infiltrate the building’s firm.”
“So, what am I supposed to do, walk around with you all day?”
“No, I don’t have time to babysit anybody. I’ll assign some officers to you. They can be here five minutes after I click them.”
“Okay, if you say so.”
“Yeah, I do. In the mean time, tell me what you can about Leschen.”
“What about him? I only treated his cancer. Did a couple biopsies, early on. He was always sedated when I saw him. We’ve never spoken.”
“Tell me about his cancer.”
“Pardon me, but it’s the most fucked-up thing I’ve ever seen. It took the entire team to simply keep it in the wildly aggressive state it’s in now. Without treatment, It would have taken over his entire body in about a month.”
“What sort of treatment did you give him?”
“He’s on a cocktail of drugs, both traditional and nano-robotic. Those little guys work overtime, just to burn out without actually doing anything. If our treatment regimen didn’t work, nothing will.”
“Why do you think he escaped, then? I mean, he’ll die without your help, right?”
“Oh, most definitely. But I’ve been thinking, and a couple of the other docs agree. We think he’s committing suicide.”
Xan wanted to punch himself in the face. Of course that was why Leschen escaped. He had served his sentence; now it was time to go. And, as a final hurrah, he was knocking off anybody who could heal him, on the off chance that he was re-captured. Xan changed the subject, if only to distance himself from his glaring omission. “I don’t want to alarm you, but he made Dr. Malkas use his chip to record his own death.”
“Jesus,” Madrano said. She looked as if she might pass out.
“Yeah. I won’t get into the details, but I do have one question. Right before he, um, finished, Leschen seemed to send a message to a man named Raphael. Does that make any sense to you?”
“Oh, yes.”
“It does?”
“Yeah. He was kinda obsessed with this ‘Raphael’ person apparently. Like I said, he was always out when I worked on him, but the other doctors told me he talked about him all the time. About how he hated him, how he wanted to kill him, stuff like that. I never found out who Raphael was, though.”
“Raphael Capulet,” Xan said. “The officer who caught him, seventy years ago.”
“Capulet?” Madrano asked.
“Yes. My grandfather.”
“Holy shit.”
“Holy shit, indeed. I get holding a grudge. There are plenty of people on the inside who would probably like a shot at me. Only problem is, Raphael’s dead. For a couple of decades, now. And I can’t believe Leschen doesn’t know it.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, on that one. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Worth a shot. Do you have any theories about how he escaped?”
“You guys don’t even know that?”
“No. We’re on a manhunt. That takes precedence.”
“But you said he might have some help. Why do you say that?”
“His escape was perfectly timed to coincide with a hard reboot of the security camera system. It appears he simply walked out the front door. That indicates an accomplice. Someone high up.”
“Well, none of the guards liked him, I can tell you that. In fact, they didn’t even like us coming in to treat him. They thought he should be allowed to suffer. I tried to explain to them that keeping him alive was actually the worse punishment. I know if I had what he has, I would want to die, too.”
“As a doctor, how does it feel, treating a man like Leschen? I mean--”
“You mean how do I feel, knowing that my work can be seen as more cruel than not trying to cure him?”
“Yeah.”
“Confused, to tell you the truth. I swore an oath to protect life, to the best of my abilities. But that’s been twisted, by the Tithonus Program. I honestly don’t know what to think. But, we’ve learned a lot about disease from these people. Not just Leschen, but all forty-seven of them. Thanks to the program, we’ve been able to help countless innocent people. But that help has come by way of what amounts to human experimentation. So, to answer your question, I don’t know how I feel, really.”
“Do you think the program should be abolished?” Xan asked.
“Do you?” Madrano countered.
“Maybe.”
“Well, I don’t know if I do. Sometimes I think it’s a necessary cruelty, and sometimes I find myself agreeing with Pritchard.”
“With who?”
“Congressman Pritchard. You know, he’s the one who’s always going on the newsdrips, promising to shut the program down.”
“Oh, yeah,” Xan said. “Congressman Pritchard.”
The Congressman’s office was located inside city hall, in some back-end corridor hidden from the rest of the building. Xan got lost twice trying to find the right door. Finally, when he was pretty sure he was at least in the general vicinity, he simply called, “Congressman Pritchard?” and waited for any response.
“Yeah, you’re almost there,” echoed a voice down the hall. Xan followed it and found the door to Pritchard’s office open. He knocked anyway.
“Congressman?” he asked again.
The door opened up to a reception area, with a couple sofas and a screen playing a newsdrip on mute. Pritchard was standing off to the side, fixing himself a drink in a highball glass. Xan thought he looked like a cliche politician out of an old book from the 1950’s.
“Come on in,” the Congressman said, motioning for Xan to sit on one of the sofas. Xan closed the door behind him before he made himself comfortable. He didn’t know where this conversation might take him, and he didn’t need anything escaping into the hallway. He sat down. Pritchard sat on the sofa opposite, facing him over an old-school wooden coffee table. “How can I help you, detective?” Pritchard said.
“Well, Congressman--”
“Please, call me Landon.”
“Okay, Landon. I know you’ve seen the news about Aaron Leschen’s escape.”
“I sure have. Terrible business”
“Yeah, it is. Well, I’m leading the search, at least from a street-level perspective.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that I’m working his escape like any other missing persons case. I’m tracking down clues and following leads. The smaller, more personal ones that may lead us to him. There is, of course, a much larger-scale manhunt on for him, covering not just the Metroplex but the entire country, but I’m not necessarily part of that. Sometimes you solve a case in a big way, sometimes in a small way. I’m handling the latter.”
“I see. Your name. Capulet. You wouldn’t happen to be related to--”
“Grandson.”
“Wow. How appropriate.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, what brings you to my little office?”
Xan didn’t want to tell the Congressman he reasoning for being here, as he himself wasn’t totally sure. It was really more of a hunch than anything else, having to do with the prison break itself, as opposed to anything pertaining to Leschen’s current whereabouts. So, he did what he always did: talked out of his ass, in hopes that a more cogent strategy would be birthed from the aether. “I’ll be honest, Landon. I’m kinda at a loss, here. I’m trying to get a feel for Leschen’s state of mind. It’s hard to pin down. I’ve talked to a bunch of people involved with the Tithonus Program, but they’ve pretty much been dicking me around.”
Pritchard chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what their kind do. Those clowns wouldn’t give you a straight answer if you asked them if they wanted to get ass-fucked by a crocodile.”
“Yeah, that’s kinda the impression I got as well,” Xan said. “So, I figured I should ask someone not affiliated with the program, someone who knows a lot about it, but isn’t worried about protecting its image.”
“Well, my boy, you have come to the right place. I’m not worried one bit about the program or the people working for it. Though, to be honest, my problems with the program have been blown a little out of proportion.”
“Is that so?” Xan asked, acting much more interested than he felt.
“Yeah. Political theater, all that. Really riles up the crowd to bash a government project. Almost doesn’t matter which one, as long as you look like you’re takin’ on the system. But the Tithonus Program makes for good ink. God’s honest truth is I don’t give a single, solitary shit what you do with those dirtbags on the inside. Keep ‘em alive for a thousand years, freeze ‘em, experiment on ‘em, hell, chop ‘em up into little pieces and feed ‘em to the hogs, I don’t care, as long as you keep ‘em outta my face. Feel me?”
“I understand. Campaign promises are never actual ideals.”
“No, they are not.”
“But, you’re so convincing. At your rallies, on the drips, you always seems so…into it. Like you always have something to say about the program.”
“Well, that’s mostly my chief adviser, Rick Miller. ‘Slick Rick,’ we call him. Writes a hell of a speech, even if he doesn’t care about the issue. But he cares about Tithonus. Oh, boy does he care. Almost everything I say at those rallies is him.”
“Really? Is he around? I’d like to talk to him.”
“Not today, no. Called in, sick.”
“Sick Rick.”
Pritchard chuckled again. “Nice.”
“What’s Rick’s problem with the program? I mean, strip away all the political bullshit, what’s his real beef?”
“Rick’s medieval. Younger than you, by about half a decade, but he’s an old fart at heart. Got a receding hairline, but I can’t tell if that’s his body catching up to his soul, or if he buzzes it back to better look the part. Hates change, poor people, and anyone with skin darker than the ground after a blizzard. He’s a…well, he’s a pearl-clutchin’ pussy, is what he is, but goddammit can he get votes.”
“So, he thinks we should just put the immortals on death row, like we used to?”
“Probably what he thinks is we should shoot them in the streets, but yeah. Death row would be a start. Says that keepin’ ‘em alive only increases risk to society. And on that, it looks like he’s got a point.”
“Yeah. Even if they hadn’t executed him, Leschen would’ve died around fifty years ago, if he wasn’t in the program.”
“Yeah. But I think what really gets to Rick is the irony.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Rick’s an egomaniac. I don’t think he likes the idea that these people get to rape, murder, and rage their way into everlasting life, while he has to die like some regular chump.”
“He could always just rape, murder, and rage his own way into the program.”
“Ha, yeah, but I guess we all could, huh? Another flaw in the the logic.”
“Have you ever visited the federal prison?” Xan asked.
“Oh, yeah. Even held a rally right outside the front gate, last time I was up for re-election.”
“Ever meet any Tithonus subjects?”
“No, never have. I know they keep ‘em in gen pop, but they don’t get visitation privileges. No exceptions, even for a big-shot like myself.”
“You know Warden Laffler?”
“Sure do. We play golf together, whenever I’m up in D.C.”
“Ever take Rick with you?”
“Of course. I take Rick everywhere. Why?”
“Well, it just seems he would jump at the chance to tell the Warden what he thought of the program.”
“True. And, lemme tell ya, he sure did. First time they met, I thought they were gonna start swingin’ right there. They’re more civil nowadays, which is good, considering how much of each other they’re gonna be seein’ from now on.”
“What do you mean?”
“Rick’s engaged to marry Laffler’s daughter.”
“Rick Miller,” Xan said, even before Bilko had a chance to fully answer his click.
“Huh? Who?” Bilko said.
“Rick Miller. ‘Slick Rick.’ Pritchard’s adviser. He’s the inside man in the prison.”
“Bold claim, amigo. Why do you say so?”
“Well, he’s wildly opinionated about the Tithonus Program. All that crazy shit Pritchard spews on the drips? That’s Miller. He wants them to shut the program down. Cutting Leschen loose to run amok again would be a good strategy for this. All of Leschen’s new victims would still be alive if they had just killed the fucker decades ago.”
“So far there’s only been one new victim.”
“Yeah, but that’s not MIller’s fault, though. He wasn’t expecting us to catch on so quickly. He’s hoping for a long, drawn-out manhunt, with a lot of dead bodies. The more people Leschen kills, the more reasonable Miller’s ideas seem.”
“I get that, but where’s your proof? There’s no evidence that this Miller dude had anything to do with Leschen’s escape.”
“And there won’t necessarily be any. Leschen walked out in broad daylight, remember? All Miller had to do was open the doors when the cameras were off. He could do that remotely. Maybe pay off a guard or two to look the other way, and he could bust Leschen out from his house.”
“He could only do that if he had admin capabilities in the prison’s security system, which I’m gonna assume he doesn’t have.”
“No, he probably doesn’t have that, true. But Warden Laffler does.”
“I thought you said that you thought Laffler was clean. You change your mind?” Bilko asked.
“No, Laffler’s good. He’s dumb as fuck and I don’t get the idea that he’s cool with mass murder, despite his other flaws. But get this: Miller’s engaged to Laffler’s daughter. She could probably get access for him. Admin status is usually controlled by your chip, but it’s not encrypted or personalized. If she could figure out her dad’s password, she could just log Miller in, and no one would know, except maybe for the data center in Kentucky.”
“Shit, yeah,” Bilko said, clearly coming around to this theory. “Laffler runs multiple prisons. Unless he’s better at his job than he seems, he probably uses similar if not identical chip codes for all of them, maybe even for the Kentucy server farm. They could go in and cover their tracks. I’m convinced, Xan.”
“Me too, buddy. I’m heading over to Miller’s place now. Keep my chip code handy, in case anything untoward goes down.”
Miller lived off of Preston road, just north of Mockingbird. Dallas had changed significantly in the past century or so, but Turtle Creek was still Turtle Creek. It fit the idea of Miller that Xan had in his head: a scared, weak white guy, worrying about crime and minorities, while cowering in his walled-off mansion backing up against the country club. The cruelest people are often the most sheltered, Xan thought, as they have no experience to counteract the lies they tell themselves. This had only intensified with the advent of the chip. Before, even with what Xan’s history teacher had called ‘the internet,’ you still had to venture out into the world every now and then. Now, with a chip in your brain, you simply thought about what you needed, and it would appear at your doorstep. And with driverless cabs, Miller could go to work and back, every day, without having to interact with anyone he didn’t want to. Sure, Xan thought, give a guy like that massive political influence. What could possibly go wrong?
He had expected to have to talk his way past the gate, but, as he pulled up, he saw that it was open. Not thinking too much of it, he drove inside. The plot of land upon which the house sat was deceptively large, the entry road winding down into an alcove on the shore of the creek. It was nice. There were a few small guest houses situated along the perimeter of the property, with the main house planted right in the middle. There was a pretty impressive yard, meticulously landscaped, that stretched out for about fifty meters in front of the house. And on that yard there was a woman, covered in blood, sitting in the grass, holding her knees and rocking back and forth.
Xan stopped the car and approached the woman. He flipped his chip to “scan mode,” so he could focus his attention on her. The chip would pick up any movement in the vicinity and warn him with plenty of time to react. He held up his hands to indicate that he wasn’t a threat and slowly walked up. She didn’t react. He got right up beside her and knelt down. His voice, when he spoke, was quiet and non-threatening. “Miss Laffler?” he asked.
The woman didn’t speak, but she looked at him, as if for the first time, and nodded.
“What happened to you?” he said.
She shook her head.
“Where’s Rick?”
She screamed.
“Stay here,” Xan said, though his words were lost in the racket. He got up.
While he made his approach to the mansion, he clicked Bilko, who answered immediately. “Bilko, I’m sending you my tracking data. Get some backup on my location, right now. Send a paramedic bot, too. We’ve got a traumatized woman in the front yard here. And, don’t quote me just yet, but I’m thinking your services are going to be needed, as well.”
“Got it,” Bilko said. “I see your feed. Backup’ll air-drop before you make it to the front door. Med bot is two minutes out. I’ll be there in five.”
Ten seconds after Bilko disconnected, Xan heard the distinctive whir of the department’s drones over his head. He heard the hiss of the bottom compartments opening up wide enough to allow the DPD officers within to shimmy out. Ropes fell from the sky on every side of him, and the officers repelled down to his location. They were all decked out in body armor. One of them, without even saying anything, walked over to Xan and traded Xan’s hand gun for his double-barrelled shotgun. It felt good and heavy in Xan’s arms. He could tell, from the color of the indicator light on the side of the barrel, that it was loaded with nano-bot shells. They would blast a hole in you, then inject hundreds of thousands of little robots into the wounds, where they could play around with your insides in whatever way they deemed necessary. Xan nodded his thanks and kept walking towards the main house.
The door was open. Xan let the armored officers go in first to clear the way. A trail of blood ran from the entryway to a hall originating in the back. His backup was already heading that way. In the hall, it ceased being a blood trail and turned into a paint job. Leschen had smeared blood on the walls, on the floor, and had even managed to get some on the ceiling. From the look of the spatter, Xan determined that the kill had taken place right here, in the hallway. But there was no body. Xan was scanning the hall with his chip when one of the officers motioned to him. There was a door, at the end of the corridor, that was closed but had a single red hand print on it. Xan nodded, and the officers surrounded the door, preparing to breach.
The officer who had exchanged guns with Xan squared his shoulders and kicked the door open. It flew off its hinges, as it hadn’t been locked. The officers ran inside, leaving Xan alone in the hallway. It was an incredibly tense few seconds before he heard the all clear.
The room was a home office. Very understated, compared to the rest of the house. What was odd was the figure sitting at the desk. At one point, the figure had been Rick Miller. Now it was barely recognizable as human. Leschen hadn’t taken his time, like he had with Dr. Malkas, but what he had sacrificed in thoroughness he made up for in efficiency. Miller’s eyes were missing. He seemed to have bitten his tongue in half. There was a gaping hole in chest, as if he had been shot with a Civil War cannon at close range. Xan had no idea what could have really caused the wounds.
Leschen had put Miller’s body in an office chair and rolled it up to the desk, as a set up to some sort of disgusting puppet show. He had even positioned the arms to look as if they were typing on the terminal’s mechanical keyboard. Xan, trying not to be sick, walked around behind the body. The terminal screen was on, and there was a blinking cursor. Xan leaned in to see what was on the screen.
It was the login page for the digital archives of the Kentucky data center. Miller (or Leschen) had already typed in the username and password, but hadn’t submitted it yet.
Xan pressed enter.
He would have to have the terminal brought back to the department, so they could look at everything. Somewhere on here were the camera feeds and entry logs of the prison from which Leschen had escaped. Thankfully, the archive saved the metadata from the system access, so they would be able to determine which terminal or chip had unlocked the door. They had everything they would need to prove Miller’s part in the escape.
But Xan hadn’t looked at that yet. Once he logged in to the archive, he noticed a little folder icon, situated directly in the middle of the desktop, labeled “Raphael.”
At first glance, it looked to contain nothing more than a record of Xan’s grandfather’s life; his time before joining the force, his career, and his retirement. But there was one file that stood out to Xan. Its title was a date, almost exactly nine month’s before his own birth.
Once inside, Xan saw that the file was a written transcript of some sort of medical procedure. Apparently, an un-named man had gone in to have some blood drawn and tested. Nothing odd about that, except that another person, an un-named woman, was also mentioned. They had taken some of her blood, as well.
What followed was a chart, listing off various numbers Xan didn’t understand, pertaining both to the man and the woman. At the bottom of the chart, the doctor had written, “100% Compatible.”
There was a little more medical mumbo-jumbo, and then a brief summary from the doctor.
“After extensive testing, we have determined that the subjects would be perfect candidates for the procedure. The genetic material will be entirely supplied by Individual 1, while Individual 2 will act as surrogate. Seeing as this procedure is considered ancillary to the Tithonus Program, these files, and any other files pertaining to this procedure, will be sealed inside a confidential government server, under multiple layers of encryption. Individual 1’s status as a police detective should provide adequate reason to supply him with the proper security clearance to access said server. I recommend proceeding with the cloning process immediately. Result will be monitored throughout the coming years, as part of a nationwide study.”
Xan had to read through the message a second time before he made the connection. The “Result” was him. He wasn’t Raphael Capulet’s grandson. He was his clone.
Leschen had grown complacent in his old age, it seemed. For seven decades, he had fantasized about what he would do if he ever breathed free air again, and it almost always involved acts of transformative violence. But now, after having been granted what he thought he had wanted for so long, he just couldn’t muster the energy. He was tired, maybe more tired than anyone else in human history. The system had worked, though not in the way they had intended. The Tithonus Program was meant to be psychological punishment. He was supposed to be constantly deprived of his one true purpose, to have to sit and look out the window, pining away for eternity. But they went about it all wrong. They made the mistake of limiting his physical vitality, and with it went any real motivation to do what he did best. Now he was simply tired. He only wanted sleep.
The deal Miller gave him was a pretty good one: a chance for one final hurrah, one last foray into the public consciousness before finally being allowed to succumb to the the sickness eating away at his body. The doctors would never cure his cancer, but they probably could treat it indefinitely. He would never be more than he was now: a pathetic husk of a man, a watered-down copy of the entity he once was, degraded after too many generations. Miller was giving him the opportunity to cash out, on his terms. All he had to do was cause a big enough stink that the voting populace would freak out and demand an end to the program. And he couldn’t even do that. All he could manage was two measly kills.
The only real creative spark he had achieved in his time out was killing Miller. The irony involved was actually pretty delicious; Miller had obviously planned on using Leschen’s crimes for personal political gain, and now, even if the scheme worked, he wouldn’t be around to benefit from it.
But that wasn’t enough. It just didn’t have that nameless essence inherent in his previous crimes. He was grasping for something he had lost, trying to re-capture the magic of his youth, only forgetting how naturally that magic had come to him at the time. The damage he wanted to cause could no longer be achieved through violence. He needed to think outside the box, and sometimes fortune smiles down on those who shirk conventional methods.
He knew that Capulet’s grandson was a cop now, had met a few inmates who had been put away by him. Ruining the young detective’s life seemed like a valid use of his last few days on Earth, a way of reaching down from the past, to remind at least one person that time does not in fact heal all wounds. He had Miller research Xan’s career, looking for any exploitable flaw, and boy, was fortune smiling on them when they found out the truth of the cop’s parentage. Not only would the information shatter everything Xan knew, it would probably also cause the outrage Miller was going for. Keeping creeps alive for a hundred years was one thing, but a secret, generation-sweeping clone study was a beast of a different color. Once the people learned the truth about the program, its days would be numbered. And it would probably be Xan himself who would expose it. Not too bad.
It was time to go home.
Looking down at the hospital bed, Xan wasn’t exactly sure what he was supposed to feel. Technically, his investigation had been a success: Leschen was back behind bars, after only killing two people. Double homicides happen every day, and they are almost never considered overly tragic. But Xan couldn’t derive any satisfaction from this result. He hadn’t actually captured Leschen, after all. The killer had seemingly changed his mind and returned to the prison, walking up to the gates and kneeling down, hands behind his head, a subtle smirk on his face. Now, here he was, mere hours from dying of cancer, looking like the happiest boy alive.
Xan had lost his agency, that was the problem. He didn’t appreciate being sidelined. He had been a pawn in Leschen’s plan, nothing more. It hurt his pride more than he thought it should.
Leschen was asleep, which was probably for the best. Xan didn’t know what would come out of his mouth if he had to speak to the man. He turned to leave the prison infirmary.
“Raphael. Don’t go.” The voice was faintly above a whisper, and it clearly took a lot of effort to escape the deteriorating body on the bed.
Xan sighed and turned back around. “Don’t call me that,” he said. “My name is Xander. I’m not Raphael.”
Leschen nodded slightly. “Right. I’m sorry. I forgot.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I forget things sometimes.”
“No, you don’t.”
Leschen made a noise, somewhere between a chuckle and a cough, and continued. “Xander Capulet. Xan. Thirty-seven years old, on the job for nineteen years. You were practically a child when you joined the force.”
“And you were ninety-four. Fifty-one years older than you had any right to be.”
“What does that mean, ‘older than I had a right to be?’ What right does anyone have to life? Or to old age?”
“I’m not getting into this conversation with you,” Xan said. “You’re back where you belong, and about to die. That’s all that matters.”
Leschen coughed up some gray fluid onto his hospital gown. “Is it? What about this experience would lead you to believe that life is something you earn? After what you’ve learned, you still think people get to make that determination?”
“You make it. You kill people.”
“Yes, I do. Without judgement. Without provocation. And I’m still alive, for now. Doesn’t that prove my point?”
“I don’t know what your fucking psychotic point is, but I have a feeling nothing I say can disprove it. You act the way you want to, and then justify it after the fact. You pretend to be this transcendental force, but all you are is unnatural.”
“I exist, don’t I? How can I be unnatural? I don’t fit into the box you’d like to put people in, but neither do you, Raphael.”
“Stop fucking calling me that! I’m not him!”
“Oh, yes you are. You’re him as much as these tumors on my neck are me. You are that man’s cancer. The only difference is you can walk on your own. But you don’t have your own thoughts. Your entire life has been one long science experiment. Any notion of control you ever had was an illusion. How does it feel, to not be in control? To know that you’re not the one making the decisions?”
“I can still make decisions,” Xan said.
“Oh yeah, like what?”
“I could kill you. Right now. I could pull your plug and watch as the life drained from your eyes. And I would still be alive.”
“Exactly. You could kill me. But I want to die, so you’d be doing me a favor. That’s the dance. When you have no power, spite and violence make believable substitutes. But they can’t change the facts. You weren’t born, you were extracted. You didn’t decide to become a police officer, you were conditioned to become one. I bet you didn’t even ask to be the one to hunt me down. Am I right? That order came from above, like everything in your life. Not your idea.”
“What are you implying, that you were let out of your cell on purpose, to test me?”
“Maybe. Or maybe they just saw an opportunity to gather more data. That’s all you and I are to them: numbers on a chart.”
“Whatever.” Xan left. He was done being preached to by a maniac. He and Leschen weren’t the same, even if they were both test subjects for the Tithonus Program. Whether by luck, free will, or well-practiced skill, he had closed the case. He was still walking the streets, and Leschen was not. That was a win, in any book.
He knew who he was, and no chart or file could tell him otherwise. So he was a clone. So what? What did that have to do with anything? He had his own virtues and his own problems, wholly unique from the man who raised him. He had friends, he had lovers, and he had enemies. He had made mistakes, but he had learned from them. He lived his own life.
But what about the others? The other subjects of the program, currently walking around with no idea of who they were and what their lives had meant? How could he be expected to keep such a secret? Was that even the right thing to do?
It looked like he had a decision to make.