"Your dad's still paying me every month," Rob said. "For training services. He really doesn't have to."
"Does it bother you?"
"It wouldn't, if I was doing anything to earn it."
"But you are. You put your life on hold to sort out Ian."
"It's only been a few months." Rob balled up a piece of paper and lobbed it at him. "Anyway, why are you still fretting?"
"It would kind of help if you narrowed down the questions. Or did subtitles."
"Ian. Have you kept your dad up to date with what he can do now?"
"Not every detail, no."
"And you're feel like you're lying to him."
"I hate secrets. But the more I tell him, the more he's got to worry about."
"Mike, for all we know, Ian's strength isn't linked to Dr Frankentosser at all. But we'll never know because we can't get him tested." Rob sat up, allowing Oatie to tiptoe back and curl up next to him. "All your dad cares about is the security angle. Okay, a medical company would kill to have Ian, but he's not a military game-changer like a foolproof IED detector."
"How much would he have to develop before he was, though?"
"So what? Why did you give him a home in the first place?"
"Because his right to live his life trumps whatever use he is to someone else."
"Exactly. Your dad asked you to get involved because he trusted you to do what's
right
." Rob could always rinse everything in clarity. That wasn't easy where family was involved. "And you did."
"You wouldn't humour me, would you?"
"No, I always call a twat a twat. Even if he's my best mate."
"Okay."
"So if your dad asks, tell him exactly how well Ian's doing. If he doesn't ask, he's decided he doesn't need to know. Which means he's worked it out for himself."
Rob's tangled logic always made sense. "You're my permission to be a bad boy, aren't you?" Mike said. "A weaponized Jiminy Cricket."
"Yeah, like you need it. The first thing I saw you do was gut a bloke with his own knife, take his AK, and put a round through him. And I thought to myself, 'Y'know, I bet we have the same taste in opera as well.'"
Mike laughed, unburdened again. "Bromance at first sight."
"There you go."
"So what am I going to do about Ian? Carry on making a soldier out of him, or talk him into taking a nice law degree?"
"How much plain Rob-talk can you handle in a day?"
"Okay, get it over with."
"Whether you like it or not, you and Livvie are effectively his family now. You can't hand him back. And you can't run his life. The best you can do is whatever feels right on the day. That's all I could do with Tom."
Mike knew that he should have had these conversations with his father long before Ian showed up. But it had felt too much like planning for something that would never happen, and the more detailed a dream became, the harder it was to let go or divert it into something more attainable.
"That doesn't answer my question."
"What feels right?" Rob asked.
"Let him carry on. Let him excel. But that might not make him happy. It might be worse for him than never knowing."
"Well, let's see what he can do, let him do it, and see if he still wants to do it after he's tried it. It's not like we can't create a security job for him. Then he'll be in the same position that we are."
It made perfect sense. Rob always knew when to stop thinking and start doing.
"Come on," Mike said. "Let's check out the stable block and see if we can turn it into a kill house for urban ops."
Rob jumped up. "Hoofing. Even if Ian doesn't enjoy it, I will."
Close quarters battle training really got the adrenaline going. If it made Ian even more certain that he was meant to be a soldier, then Mike knew he had only himself to blame for fanning the flames.
But he had money and influence. One way or another, whatever Ian wanted, Ian would get.
CHALTON FARM, WESTERHAM FALLS
LATE OCTOBER.
Gran had told Ian never to trust any technology that could tell someone where he was. He took that to heart more than ever now.
She stuck to the oldest technology that still worked, and the Internet was a forbidden world. The computer kit that Mike kept buying for him was predictably the latest and the best, though. It scared the crap out of him. He didn't download software, he checked every link before he clicked on it, and he stuck to the vaguest search terms. E-mail – he didn't need it. Everyone he needed to speak to was here in person.
And he didn't even want to look at that social networking thing. He knew what it was from Gran's list of things to avoid, but were these guys insane? Why would anyone want to tell strangers that much about themselves? Ian just didn't get it. He imagined what his life would have been like if he'd done that, and it terrified him.
His computer was just a library and a typewriter. That was all he wanted from it, no matter how riveting the idea of porn seemed and how hard it was to keep his mind off girls. He was looking for information on cephalopods. It was a topic he'd been avoiding in case it freaked him out, but he could face it now, and there was no harm in searching online with keywords like
octopus
. It was high school biology, stuff that a million kids would access. Livvie assured him the VPN gateway would stop nosey assholes tracking it to his computer anyway.
It certainly beat books. Once Ian found the general sites about marine biology, he was drawn into the video clips. Reading what these creatures could do with lights, colour, and shape was one thing. Seeing it happen was something else entirely.
Part of him had wished Kinnery had based his experiments on more glamorous animals, but now he was mesmerized. A little mimic octopus not only changed colour and shape, but also
acted
like other things. One moment it disguised itself as drifting weed, then a sea snake, a sole, and even a scorpion fish. A regular octopus, the kind he'd seen in movies, settled on a rock and changed colour and texture to merge perfectly with the algae on it. It became
invisible
. Ian paused the video and just couldn't see where the octopus ended and the rock began.
It was the most astonishing thing he'd seen. He made a note of the URL so he could show Mike. Eventually he moved on to clips of squid, who were anything but invisible, communicating with each other in lights and colours like some incredibly complex, multi-level Morse code.
Now that's cool. Seriously cool.
Yes, he was okay with having something in common with these creatures. They weren't gross. They were smart and oddly beautiful. Octopuses could even work out how to remove childproof caps on bottles. But the most important thing was that they could work out how to hide. They had to. They didn't have claws or armour to defend themselves.
Ian had never eaten one, and now he never would.
He took stock for a moment. He checked himself in the full length mirror, using his learner's driving permit and passport as a reference.
This
was definitely him. This was the self he'd always see in his mind's eye and that he had to be able to get back to without needing a mirror.
Maybe he should have told Mike that he now practised making himself morph just to make sure he could get back to this face if something went wrong. He just didn't want to worry him.
And the whole thing was kind of personal. Rob had pointed out that morphing while he was fooling around with a girl would be a catastrophe. The only way that Ian had found to test if he could keep from morphing in that kind of situation was way too embarrassing to discuss with anyone, even Rob. But now he could do it.
As long as Ian had an image in his mind, he could make himself change. And he was getting better at resembling whatever picture he chose. He still had no idea where the previous faces had come from, but he'd probably seen them and forgotten, like he hadn't realised how often he'd looked at that photo of David Dunlop. He could have chosen to look any way he wanted, but that was too much pointless choice. Something in him knew that he needed to resemble the man he'd cherished as the great-grandfather he'd never known.
Besides, Livvie had told him this was how he was meant to look.
What could he try next? If he could polish this and mimic a few more faces really well, he'd be ready to handle anything. He'd have complete control of it. It would never catch him out. He'd always be able to vanish, and he'd always be able to cope with a girl.
Sorted.
Ian studied the images on his tablet, mostly pictures that Rob had shared from his own album. He wasn't comfortable using those for practice. They were real people who Rob knew and cared about.
But whose face do I know?
He'd seen a lot of pictures of Tom, even live video. The guy was pretty much the same age as him, too. For a moment, Ian couldn't resist the challenge. He visualized Tom's face and felt the familiar windburn sweep across his skin. Then he looked in the mirror.
No. Stop it.
The resemblance was very, very close. For a couple of seconds, it disoriented him. A stranger's face was fine, but this felt creepy and disloyal.
Wrong, wrong, wrong
. He snapped himself back to normal, switched on the TV, and tried focusing on anonymous guys in adverts instead.
That
was better. It felt scientific and impersonal. He sat back in the armchair with a pocket mirror and checked how well he'd done each time he morphed. Yes, he was getting results; not right every time, but often enough, and not perfect, but good enough to pass for the original on a cursory glance. And he could snap back to being himself with minimal effort. The more he did it, the easier it got. He studied his own face in the mirror again.
And to think this used to terrify me.
The only thing that scared Ian now was being alone and not part of this group of family and friends. He was happy here. He belonged.
For a moment, he thought of the octopus blending seamlessly with the rock. Maybe it was time to try breaking down his changes into separate components, into pigment and texture and shape, to see what was possible. Why not? He needed to know as much as possible. He could always get back to being himself again now.
His old work jacket was an Army surplus parka in a camouflage pattern that he was sure they didn't use these days. He put his hand on it and tried to visualize the pattern continuing across the skin. For a few minutes, nothing happened. Then his skin began to look blotchy and uneven, like a few old bruises fading through to yellows and greens.
Ian concentrated as hard as he could. The colours moved slightly, then darkened. He shut his eyes to block out distractions for a moment, saw the DPM fabric in his mind, and opened his eyes again.
It wasn't even close to the perfect, seamless match that the octopus had managed, but the skin on the back of his hand was now patterned like the jacket, except the greens were more an olive-brown and the darkest brown was a little lighter. It was like finally forcing open one door and seeing the rest all burst open at the same time. Whatever he'd activated or learned to use in his nervous system was suddenly doing much more than he'd imagined it could.
Ian visualized a cloth wiping across the back of his hand. The skin snapped back to the light olive tan he now regarded as normal. Just to make sure that he hadn't triggered unexpected changes elsewhere, he opened the desk drawer and took out an ink pad to make another record of his fingerprints. From what he could see of his thumbprint with a magnifying glass, the pattern of swirls hadn't changed since he'd started taking prints. Everything was under control.
You were right not to tell me what I was, Gran.
If he'd known what he could do when he was a child, he'd have treated it as a game, someone would have caught him, and he would have been locked up in a lab for the rest of his life. It was far better to find out after he'd learned to take care of himself, and when he understood what the stakes were. Gran got it right. The lie had hurt, but the truth would have been disastrous.
When Ian headed downstairs, the only sign of life was Rob's cell phone on the kitchen table. Even Oatie was absent. A quick check on the garage and the security camera feeds showed that the Mercedes was gone, too. As Ian filled the coffee maker, he heard water running in the pipes and guessed Rob was in one of the downstairs bathrooms.
Then the phone rang. Ian glanced at the screen and saw the incoming call icon, Tom's picture. They'd spoken a few times, but never via a video call.
Ian wasn't afraid of morphing at the wrong moment any more. He picked up the phone.
"Hi Tom." There. It was that easy. "I think your dad's in the john. I'll go get him."
"Ian? Hi." Tom obviously knew the voice if not the face. "He's let you escape from the gym, then."
Ian heard the rush of water. "I think he's on his way. How's college?"
"I'm working up my special excuses to get time off during term. It's going to be great to see everyone."
Rob walked up behind Ian and peered over his shoulder to take over the conversation. "Sorry, kiddo, I was in the loo," he said to Tom. "So, you're definitely coming over next month, yeah?"