Gensomaden Saiyuki Fan Fiction ❯ Suite on Rte. 86 ❯ The Integral Components ( Chapter 4 )

The Integral Components

The landscape changes as we drive over the crest= of the mountains. When the peaks and canyons rear back enough to give us a vie= w it is dense with green. We keep the windows rolled down to let the cool breeze= in and the smoke out. The wind carries the scent of resin.

Jordan drives while I continue trying to decipher the notes. Dr. Urzica apparently got his start in genetics then turned to alchemy out of a strange combination of boredom and ambition. The technology's all new, its foundati= on in familiar principles is sound but barely recognizable. The man must be so= me kind of genius. But there's something that just doesn't add up; I have the feeling that I've missed something vitally important, somewhere.

The shadows lengthen into evening behind us. Jordan squints against the gl= are even behind sunglasses and the flip-down shade. Ahead of us, the camper soldiers on ponderously into the darkness. I turn on the dome light.

I ignore the flashing lights behind us, the car slowing. I don't bother to = look up until I hear Jord= an purr, "What seems to be the trouble, officer."

"License and registration, ma'am?" he blushes. A weak one. I plaster a mild look across my face and dig through the g= love box for the papers. = Jordan wiggles just so, extracting her wallet from her back pocket. The cop's breath speeds minutely. His flashlight is pointing dir= ectly at her cleavage.

He is back and saying "Step out of the car please, ma'am," in far= too little time to have run the numbers. Jordan winks at me and flows gracefully through the door. Shane will take the next exit and wait for us = to catch up. I return to the notes.

"Someone reported your car stolen." He tells me later, slipping b= ack into the driver's seat and starting the engine. "He won't be doing anything about it for a while, though."

"Well done." My fingers absently trace a stain on the seat near his hip. "But it's kind of a shame. I think I'll miss this car.&q= uot;

"God you're kinky." He breathes and his teeth scrape my Adam's ap= ple.


We ditch the Oldsmobile behind an abandoned warehouse. Jordan, Shane and I drive continuously for two whole days, stopping only at gas stations. Kiran is more subdued that usual, picking up on our u= rgency and staying well out of the way.

Living in each other's pockets proves less difficult that I'd expected. Sha= ne seems to have accepted that Jordan isn't going anywhere and has settled into the habit of ignoring her except = for the occasional acidic barb. I just knew he'd warm up to her. She's good at keeping the kids occupied, playing with them or having loud arguments with = Kiran. This leaves me to the notes and yelling at them helps Shane's temper immensely. She seems to get a kick out of acting mater= nal and somehow always gets Kiran to help clean up = the messes they make.

The mobile home is too small for five people, really. Jordan and I share th= e bunk, Shane sleeps in the front seat as usual, probabl= y with one hand on his gun. The boys sit up at the table, heads bent together, som= ehow drawing in the near-darkness, or curl together on the floor. Some nights, w= hen I lay awake listening, it sounds like there are two whispers, answering each other.

Brother is like a photocopy of Kiran with the contrast up too high, his features too sharp and all in shades of grey. The= ir eyes gleam like highly polished brass when the light hits them right. Lately Brother is present in a way he wasn't before he was named. His blank= ness slips a little more each day.

Kiran's voice has started breaking, though he's= still not growing as fast as Brother is. Brother grows over three inches in a wee= k, and we have to buy them new clothes again. The woman at the checkout counter mistakes Jordan and I for their parents. Fortunately Jordan refrains from laughing= until we're outside. She calls me Dear and Dad for the rest of the day. Kiran thinks it's funny and joins in. Even Shane is a= mused, though he hides it by growling that I should cut their hair again from behi= nd his paper. Kiran likes his hair short now and w= e have to cut it every few days. He insists Brother likes his long, so I humor him= and leave it. He and Jordan braid it elaborately, giggling together.

Urzica's notes frustrate me to no end. If only I had had time to bring more of my books.

"I just don't understand. Where are they getting the energy to grow th= is fast?" I complain, my voice deliberately li= ght.

Kiran gives me an exasperated look. "Why w= ould I need more energy? There's always so much of it around."

"Divine intervention?" Jordan jokes.

Shane rolls his eyes. We've been over this several times, over the ingredie= nts list and the diagrams and the statistics. Most of the components are exotic, all of them arcane, some highly illegal. Apparently, even Urzica wasn't sure exactly what his new technology would produce. We can guess wha= t Dibrova wanted it to produce.

People died to create them, were killed for their knowledge, their property= or their bodies. Some of them were my friends.

I had wanted to trash the lab, destroy the research, ma= ybe kill Urzica if we came across him. Maybe kill <= span class=3DSpellE>Dibrova. But then Shane had reached into the artifici= al womb and pulled out a child.

"Get the other one," he had ordered, wrapping the baby in a disca= rded lab coat, "We're going."

So, I'd extracted Brother from the device, disconnecting him from wires and tubes, the thick solution stinging my hands with tiny, rhythmic jolts of electricity. It was immediately obvious he had been built, though the marks= of his assemblage had faded within days.

As for Kiran. Well. = From the notes no one had been expecting him.

Alchemical constructs shouldn't have souls, whatever that means. But how do= es one tell the difference between soul and consciousness or emotion or intelligence? Kiran started talking in full sen= tences on the fifth day after we took him. He had looked about nine months old, th= en. There's no way he could have picked up all that vocabulary from Shane and I= in such a short time.

"Kiran, what's the first thing you remember?" I ask him.

He frowns a little. His round face is losing its chubbiness.

"I remember being sad because I knew someone could hear me, but they wouldn't come. And before that I remember my stomach feeling weird and the smell of meat cooking and footsteps."

I mull this over, looking again at the list of ingredients. Shane's translations are scrawled messily in beside the items listed in Chinese characters. My eyes linger on the phrase 'monkey king heart.'


Two towns later I convince Shane to stop for more than just long enough for= Jordan to feed. The two of us check into a motel. It's not the worst I've ever sta= yed in but it's close. And overp= riced. Not that I care much. Jordan will go out and win the money back later.

Alone together, her eyes on me wake that strange pull and the disconnected floating sensation that I got when our gazes first locked. I let it wash through me; let her draw me towards one of the beds with the wet tangle of = her tongue. I resist the beginning of the trance and pull back, undress her slo= wly. She is vibrating like a violin string, lust and impatience pinging off every surface.

Time slips forward and I am on my back across the bed and she's above me, <= i>breathing on me, waiting for me. My hands run up the downy softness of her thighs, my tongue follows. She gasps against my groin, fastens her mouth at the lower = edge of my birthmark, which is thick and textured and the color of red wine.

"Like an old scab," she'd said when she first saw it.

I am surrounded in the scent of her, saline and musk on my pallet. She cries out and bites at my stomach, making my muscles jump, my cock twitching agai= nst her soft, cool cheek. I moan into her and then she is straddling me, sliding down around me and my mouth longs to be full with her again. She leans down= to fill it, my taste on her tongue, her hard nipples under my fingers. My hips snap up into her and she loses her rhythm, bounci= ng raggedly, gasping my name. She yowls like an animal as she comes, back arch= ed, head thrown back and the hot flow of energy leaving me makes me shudder over and over.

I fight the weight of my eyelids to watch her change, bones altering, jaw squaring, flesh flowing into differently familiar lines. His smile brushes = my lips with a slick hint of tongue but I am sliding into sleep and can't retu= rn it.


Skuratov is waiting for us in an all-night dine= r a few hundred miles later. I'm glad he had the sense to run. He might be able= to help me with the notes. He is subdued during dinner. His eyes keep wanderin= g to the darkness outside the picture windows. He pays for our meal despite our protests, asks to see them.

The parking lot is shadowy beyond the pooled light of the streetlamps. Jordan lounges on the camper's rusted step, smoking. She is wary of this stranger;= her relaxation becomes tightly controlled.

I touch her shoulder, give her a reassuring look, call<= /span> the boys out. Skuratov goes rigid at the sight = of them. Kiran is forward, friendly, shakes his ha= nd. Brother hangs back a bit, a hint of distrust under his usual blankness.

"Fascinating," Skuratov<= /span> murmurs. "It's only been what, three months?"

I nod. "Their development has been quite rapid."

"I need your help." He turns, looks up= at me from under a great weight of worry. "He's threatening to give her to D= r. Urzica."

"What are you talking about?" I am genuinely confused. "No o= ne could force her to do something she didn't want to do."

Shane snorts. "She wouldn't die if they killed her," he adds. "I'm sure she's fine."

"I- Please. Just give me the experiments."

Shane and Jordan draw back toward the boys, placing their bodies between th= em and potential danger. Shane's hand is probably slipping under the back of h= is shirt, reaching for the gun he may or may not have on him. I can feel the l= ines of my face hardening.

"I can't do that." I tell him softly.

Skuratov's hopeful expression crumbles. He was = always too gentle, a little too wet behind the ears to be involved with someone li= ke Oleg Dibrova. That's why I was surprised when he betrayed them, helped us break in and steal the research. That's why I'm surprised when he plunges a knife into my abdomen.

"Then," he whispers, "Please die."

With a rattling viper's hiss, Jordan leaps on him, twists his head around with a brutal, wet crunch. His eyes go wide with surprise, his limp weight slides down my body, dislodging the kni= fe in nauseating jerks. Suddenly there are dark-clothed men everywhere.

One of them comes at Jordan from behind but I am there, seeing his moves before he makes them, seeing h= ow to turn them against him. He sails neatly over my shoulder even as I turn to the next. Every movement I make drains the heat from my limbs.

Someone shouts, "Freeze."

One of them has Brother, black gun barrel against his tousled head. Shane g= rabs Kiran to hold him still.

"You." He motions to Kiran, "Come along quietly or I'll kill him."

Kiran cries out in wordless rage or distress, s= lips from Shane's grasp, starts forward. Faster than the eye can follow, Brother= has disarmed the man holding him, breaking his arm with a neat flick of his wri= st and leaving him in a pain-wracked heap. He paces slowly across the parking = lot towards Kiran, face taking on an actual express= ion. His brow creases and his lips quirk upwards; he looks as if he's trying to remember something wonderful or horrible. He strikes a man who doesn't get = out of his way fast enough, sends him flying to the ground, ribs staved in.

The children come together, stop just short of touching. We are transfixed, watching them.

Brother says, "Kiran," and smiles radiantly. His voice breaks on the second syllable.

Their heads bend together, his unnatural grayish hair falling around their faces in a concealing curtain.

I realize that I am still standing and a wave of pain drives me to my knees= . Jordan is there at once, but I can barely feel her hands on me.

Brother jerks, plucks something small and shining from his shoulder. As one, they turn toward something. Kiran's face is a m= ask of rage, Brother's is icy and implacable.

They disappear. Things begin happening.

It is a struggle to pay attention with Jordan trying to get me to do something or other. The familiar timbre of Shane's revolver crashes in my h= ead again and again. How strange. He seems to be shooting the men that are alre= ady down.

I've lost track of the boys.

It's cold.


For a long time I see shapes, but do not recognize them= .

I want my mother until someone touches me and I remember.

I am aware of being moved. It hurts.

Shane Shane Shane <= span class=3DSpellE>Shane. My best friend, only frien= d. We pinky-swore. Where?

I have to make breakfast. Someone is holding me down and I am fighting them= .

My dreams are stalked by a rattling hiss.

"I prefer my meals willing," it says, once.

"Do it before I change my mind."

No, call me big brother. Your hands are warm. They chase the pain away.


There is light wavering before my eyes. I watch it for some time before I realize it is water glimmering in the sun, out of focus because I'm not wea= ring my glasses. My hand becomes aware of the silken hair it is tangled in only = when I try to move it. I am lying in a snarl of cloth, damp from the ground belo= w. Jordan's weight is warm against my side.

"So, you're not dead." Shane is perched on a mossy rock with his crayoned paper, tiny reading glasses probably balanced at the tip of his no= se. I squint but can't make out his features.

"Apparently not." My voice is thick. T= alking hurts. My muscles seem to have been replaced with lead weights. "Where= are we?" I ask.

"In the woods. Near a lake."

"You don't know."

He frowns. Jordan stirs, his hand creeping across my chest and recoiling from the edge of my bandages. I manage to lift my hand to his. Our fingers curl together.

"The boys?" I ask.

"They weren't hurt. Brother's-" he hesitates, "There's someo= ne there now. He started eating. And talking."

My mind tries to dredge up the notes, to correlate this new information with the facts I've gleaned from them. Focus slips away like dry sand through a sieve. If breathing didn't ache I'd really want a cigarette. I look down at= Jordan, my head lolling to the side since it's too heavy to lift. He is sleeping, f= ace pale and drawn.

"How long has it been since he last-?"

Shane hunches a little lower behind his paper.

"Last night," he says. His tone denies its own defensiveness.

"Shane."

Is he blushing?

"Thank you," I tell him.

He relaxes minutely, folds his paper shut, sighs, runs a hand through his h= air.

"Do you ever get the feeling that someone somewhere is having a really good laugh at your expense?" he asks, face tipping toward the sun-dapp= led blur above.

Jordan's eyes flutter and he smiles up at me sleepily. Somewhere in the distance the boys are laughing and shouting.

"No," I answer.