CHAPTER THIRTY
“Have I ever told anyone how much I hate this place?” asked Irish, looking around at the massive crowds, crazy rides, characters dressed in ridiculous costumes, and more smells than his nose could pick up on. “I mean, like, I seriously hate this place.”
“That’s because it’s humid as fuck. Their bugs could transport a grown man down the road, and everything bites, stings, or kills. It’s like living in Australia,” frowned Rush.
They’d brought a large team to ensure that Katelyn was safe and Bruloni was captured. With Irish and Rush were JB and Tobias. Standing behind the Frontier Trading Post were Abe, Dan, Rett, and East. Near the line of Alladin’s Magic Carpet Ride were Leif, Brax, Pax, and Fitch. And in the shade of the treehouse stood Katelyn with Mav, Sor, CJ, and Garr in the actual tree.
“Katelyn, if you can hear me, honey, just nod and smile,” said Mav. He watched her smiling, turning her head, and randomly nodding. “We’ve got you in our sights. You’re okay.”
She nodded again, smiling at the children who were racing from one ride or store to the next, begging for ice cream or a stuffed toy. Parents were exhausted, holding onto children for dear life, some in strollers, some on leashes. A father was seated on a bench with mouse ears cocked sideways on his head, an armful of jackets and toys, bags tied to his back. He looked like he’d just returned from war.
Then it hit her. They were surrounded by families with small children. If Bruloni decided to shoot, he’d kill dozens of innocent people. Her panicked expression was easily seen by the others.
“ Katelyn, it’s me, Irish, hun. Nothing will happen. We’ve got this, and he will never even get his weapon drawn if he was even able to get it into the park. Just stay with us. We see and hear it all. You got me?”
She nodded again, happy to hear a voice of reason. Mav looked at his friends. Garr reaching for his shoulder.
“We’ve got her, brother. She’s going to be okay. Brave as fuck is what she is, and she’s going to go home and have lots of babies with you. I can tell.”
“How the fuck can you tell?” chuckled CJ.
“I’m taking lessons from Claudette and Mama Irene.”
“Heads up,” said Rett. “We’ve got our mark coming toward her at three o’clock. And what the fuck is he wearing? Seriously? Bermuda shorts and a duck t-shirt?”
“No accounting for some people’s fashion tastes,” smirked Leif . “Let’s go, boys. We need to be ready.”
“Katelyn Smith. So lovely to finally meet you in person,” he said, standing next to her beneath the shade of the tree house.
“I assume you’re Enzo Bruloni.” She kept her sunglasses on, worried that her anxious eye movements might give something away.
“You assume correctly. I’m surprised you’re alone.”
“How do you know I’m alone or not?” she asked nervously.
“I’m with the CIA. We know these things.”
“You were with the CIA. You were fired, and if I’m not mistaken, there’s a warrant out for your arrest.”
“That no longer matters. Where is it? Where is the blueprint for this amazing, never before seen device that will change the world?” he smirked at her, waving his hands in the air.
“I want some questions answered first,” she said.
“Babe, what are you doing? Stick to the script.”
“You’re making demands of me? That’s interesting. I didn’t have you pegged for someone who would be so brave. Perhaps your training has worn off.” That pissed Katelyn off, and the men knew it.
“You’re right. I don’t follow orders well any longer. What were those schools for? Why were they built?” He smiled at her, pointing to the empty bench.
“This might take a minute. My father and grandfather knew that to have a superior race of people, a superior military, you had to create superiority. Geniuses are rarely born. Newton, Freud, Einstein, those were flukes. We see genius in their own arenas, Van Gogh, Beethoven, but they don’t venture out of their lanes. It’s a shame, really. You have to create genius. So, we asked for donations.”
“Donations? Human donations you mean. You bought children?”
“That sounds so crass,” he smirked. “I suppose we did buy some, but believe me, many of you were quite inexpensive. You, for instance.”
“What about me?” she asked, her tears hidden behind her sunglasses.
“Your mother was alone, fifteen, and terrified. She was more than willing to give her child to a group of people willing to give that child a better life. A fine private school, just for girls where her daughter would be given many opportunities for success. It was a young girl’s dream. Of course, she didn’t know that the man we sent to impregnate her was one of our own.” Katelyn started to open her mouth, and he held a hand up.
“They’re both dead, my dear. Your father died in the line of service to the cause. Your mother had an unfortunate accident after your birth. These things happen sometimes.”
“And the injections in our brains? What about those?”
“My, my, you’ve learned a great deal, haven’t you? The injections were mass amounts of certain proteins that were thought to increase brain function. We could never prove that it actually worked, but you were all quite capable and bright on your own. If you weren’t, well, we relocated those children.”
“Relocated. You mean you sold them.”
“Some,” he nodded. “Others were simply never going to be productive in society, and still others were released to find their own way.”
“You abused us. All of us. You played mind games and tortured us. Drugged us to the point of incomprehension. Then you decided to play God and determine our fate of life or death, all because we didn’t meet your expectations.”
“It’s the way it’s always been done, Katelyn.”
“How did you clone the girl?” she asked.
“My, my,” he said, leaning back and staring at her. “How did you know about her? Never mind. We knew that she wasn’t going to meet our needs. We tried to duplicate the process over and over again to dreadful results. Children born, shall we say, not quite whole. You know how it is when you make a copy of something on a bad copier. Everything is blurry. That’s how her duplicates came out.
“She was a feisty one. Always fighting us, so when she escaped during the clearing of the house, we just let her go. You see, we’d placed her on a medication that would eventually kill her. Slowly, over time, with massive seizures. By now, she’s most assuredly dead. No one could survive that. The cloning itself was actually quite simple. An egg, DNA, sperm, mix it all together, and voila! She was cloned after a former genius student who tragically leaped to her death.”
“It’s not that simple. Nothing is that simple. Where are the other children? Where are the children that were sold or moved?”
“Some died my dear, just a side effect of the work we do. Others were able to escape their captors. That’s what we get for using smart children. We found a few over the years and returned them, but most didn’t survive what they were asked to do.”
“And what were they asked to do?” she whispered.
“Why replicate their genius, of course,” he smiled.
“Where were the boys kept?”
“Not far from all of you,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow. “There were fewer boys. The problem with young men is that they grow to be strong, headstrong young men. Many were able to overpower the guards. We stopped having the boys much earlier than we closed the girls’ school.”
“And the chimps? The gorilla, the alligator, what about them?” He burst into laughter, shaking his head.
“I have completely underestimated you, Katelyn,” he chuckled. “You really are a genius. Or did your good friends at G.R.I.P. help you with all of that?”
“I do alright on my own,” she said with a straight face.
“The animals were necessary to find the right mix of proteins to be injected into the brains. They were just animals. Nothing special.”
“Nothing special? Is that what you said about the kids, too? We were all special. We are all special. We are unique, wonderful, and talented. And. Alive.” She emphasized, gritting her teeth.
“Get up, Kaitlyn.”
“No.” He turned and lifted the duck shirt, and she saw the weapon.
“Get up, or I start killing kids. That seems to be a soft spot for you, so I’m sure you don’t want to see that happen. Get up, and we’re going to take a drive. My plans for you have changed.”
Katelyn stood and heard the whispers in her ear. She knew that they would never allow him to harm innocent civilians, or her.
“Where are we going?” she asked calmly.
“I’ve suddenly found myself very attracted to you,” he said, gripping her arm. Several children ran toward them, running circles around them as they played a game of tag. “I hate children.”
“That seems obvious,” she mumbled.
When they found their way behind the general store, two characters from the park shuffled toward them, running into them. They were acting out an image of taking a photo, and he pushed them aside.
“Get out of our way.”
Two more characters came toward them as the other two just stood there. They danced a circle around them, one of them grabbing Katelyn’s hand and pushing her toward the other.
“What the hell is wrong with you ridiculous cartoons? Isn’t it bad enough you have to spend your life inside a sweat-box costume, entertaining the tourists? Don’t bother me and my girl.”
“She’s my fucking girl,” growled Mav, ripping off the dog head he was wearing.
Bruloni tried to reach for his weapon but felt a piece of timber reach beneath his armpit and wrench his arm backwards. Turning, he was shocked to see it wasn’t a piece of timber.
Leif snapped the arm so hard the sounds of tendons, muscles, and bones cracking even made his teammates wince.
“You whore! You fucking whore!” he yelled at Katelyn.
“Call me what you like, but you will face a judge for your crimes, and you will have to answer for what you did to all of us.”
“Are you fucking with me right now? These men don’t allow people to get to trial. They’ll kill me before that happens,” he sneered.
“Not this time,” said Mav. “This time, you’re going to face the public, your peers, and those children that you abused, used, and manipulated. Then we’ll let the boys on cell block D take it from there.”
“It won’t happen,” he smiled. “There are too many people who don’t want their names mentioned in the news.”
Katelyn looked at Mav then the other men.
“Talk,” said Brax.
“Make me,” laughed Bruloni. JB and Tobias smiled at one another.
“Challenge accepted.”