The Fallout

  Eddy sat there, shaking his head, as Dad put some ice in a towel and handed it to Tony. “Probably should head over to the infirmary and get that X-rayed.” He helped Tony get to his feet. Tony glared at me as he left.

  I said, “I want to see the rest of this place. Now.”

  Dad smiled. “Of course. You each have your own room and—”

  “No!” I was so frustrated I couldn’t help yelling. But I knew it wouldn’t help, so I tried to sound calmer as I added, “I meant the rest of the island.”

  Dad said, “How about a nice meal first? Then we can—”

  “I don’t want to eat.” I paused, giving myself another moment to chill out. “I couldn’t eat right now if I tried. I want to see where we are. What this place is.”

  Eddy said, “I do, too.”

  “Not me,” Lexie called from across the room. “I’m staying here.”

  Dad sighed. “Fine. I’ll give you the tour. But then we’re sitting down to a nice meal.”

  He led us past the fireplace and out a different door from the one we’d snuck in. Right outside the house was a circular veranda of brick, accented with tropical flowers and plants, and a large fountain in the middle. A bronze sculpture of a man kneeling, resembling the one on the wall, sat next to it, creating the illusion that the man was actually reaching into the fountain.

  A few drops from the spray landed on my arm as we passed. I asked, “Is that Ponce de León?”

  “Yes,” said Dad. “He’s sort of our mascot around here.”

  “The fountain of youth,” mused Eddy. “So you really created it?” He sounded impressed rather than disgusted, which was how I was feeling about it.

  “Yes, we did,” Dad answered.

  I asked, “Who’s we?”

  Dad headed past the fountain and onto a path made of shells that led into an area of thick bamboo. “I always thought money could get people to do anything. But to some, there is something even more valuable than wealth.”

  Eddy asked, “Happiness?”

  Dad kind of laughed. “Actually, no. The people I needed for this project, the brains I needed for this project, weren’t about to be swayed by money. They were too busy, too focused on research to even entertain a proposal based solely on wealth. Their goals were not based on what they could obtain in their lifetime. Their goals were based on what they could discover.”

  “Time,” I said. “You offered them time.”

  Dad smiled and clapped me on the back. “You got it. They laughed when the offer was for millions. But when I assured them they could get back their youth, get another lifetime—and unlimited funding with which to work on their discoveries—well … let’s say I didn’t have many say no. Can you imagine if Einstein could have been young again, lived fifty more years? What he might have discovered?”

  I let that sink in a moment, then asked, “But what about their families?”

  “The offer was only extended to scientists who had devoted their lives to their research, never had time for families, or had gotten so old that they had no family left to speak of, only themselves to think about. Most of them were living in homes for the aged, just waiting until their time ran out. My people went all over the world to find them: Prague, Berlin, London … I’m still recruiting.”

  That jogged something in my brain—old-age homes, London, BBC News. That day in Reese’s room. The missing scientists … they had come to Dad’s island.

  Eddy asked, “What did they have to do in return?”

  The shell path ended at a tall fence formed of thick logs covered with dark green vines. Dad stopped there and turned to face us. “In return?” He shrugged. “They would have to leave everything and devote half their time to my aging research.”

  I said, “I don’t see how anybody would do that. Give everything up.”

  Dad smiled. “You’d be surprised.” He reached over and opened a door in the fence. “See for yourself.”

  I stepped through the door and uttered a shaky “Holy crap.”

  I stepped onto a vast, seemingly endless cobblestone plaza that webbed out into narrow paths that ended in large, windowless metal buildings. I counted six of them, each the size of a football field. A few palm trees and wooden benches dotted the area, but they didn’t make the place look anything other than scientific and industrial. They gave me the feeling that, in order to grow a society, the jungle needed to be razed. Those lonely trees were all that remained.

  Several men and women of varying ethnicities, all in white lab coats, walked quickly between the buildings, or were paired off, standing side by side with heads down in what looked like serious discussions.

  Eddy joined me and whistled. “Whoa.”

  Dad came up behind us and set a hand on my shoulder. I turned and saw he had done the same to Eddy. “Boys, this is your legacy, too. I did this for all of us.”

  “The largest software company in the world wasn’t enough?” I asked. Eddy glared at me, but I ignored him.

  “Seriously. I think the world’s reaction to watching their grandpa turn into a teenager is going to be slightly different from finding out they can get faster Internet.” I paused. “Don’t you think?”

  Dad said, “Exactly why we’re working so hard. Can you imagine if man had gone from chisel and stone directly to a wireless tablet? They couldn’t have handled it. They wouldn’t have believed. They would have thought it was sorcery or something else … something inherently evil.”

  He took a breath. “It’s the curse of the discoverers through history, the nonbelief that surrounds them. Look at Galileo. He believed the earth revolved around the sun.”

  Eddy said, “The earth does revolve around the sun.”

  Dad held up a hand. “Of course it does. But the Inquisition could not accept an alternative to the pervasive belief that the sun rotated around the earth. They forced Galileo to recant and he spent the rest of his life under house arrest.”

  “But he was right,” I said.

  Dad nodded. “But his theory wasn’t accepted until about a hundred years later. This is exactly why discovery happens in stages. It must. Man needs time to adjust and accept. Which is why I intend for the world to get this discovery in stages.”

  Eddy asked, “What stages?” He pointed across the plaza at one of the men who looked all of about twenty-five. “How old is he?”

  Dad said, “Actual age? About seventy-five.”

  A chill ran up my spine. “That doesn’t sound like stages to me.”

  “Exactly,” said Dad. “The public could never adjust if we went directly to the reversal of age. So first we’re going to arrest age. Show people we can stop the symptoms of age that debilitate them. Cure the diseases of age. Progeria, for one. Alzheimer’s, for another. And then, slowly, we’ll introduce them to the concept of curing age. That everyone can be young again. That they never have to grow old. And by then, once they’ve accepted that, they’ll be ready to hear more. In fact, they won’t be satisfied until they hear more. They will expect to hear more.” He smiled. “And I won’t be the one to disappoint them.”

  “Is it about the money?” I asked. “Is that all this is for?”

  Dad laughed. “I have more money than I could ever spend.” He waved a hand at us. “I have more money than you could ever spend.” When he spoke, his voice was much quieter. “No, it’s not about the money.”

  “It’s proving you can do it. Just like the Compound.” Goose bumps covered my arms.

  Eddy looked confused. As he should.

  He had no idea what Dad had said to me in the Compound, that it had all been a challenge, to see what he could do. His testing us to see how far we would go to survive. And that feeling of powerlessness that overcame me when I found out.

  Eddy said, “I don’t get what’s so bad. I mean, think of all the people who won’t have to go through old age.” He looked at me. “Maybe we won’t have to.”

  Dad put an arm around Eddy. “Exactly, son. It’s a good thing we’r
e doing here.”

  Was it a good thing? To want to control something as natural as aging?

  I understood wanting to cure diseases; those kids with progeria deserved a cure. I even understood, maybe, putting a stop to age-related ailments or discovering how to smooth wrinkles without plastic surgery.

  But to actually conquer aging itself?

  Wasn’t that … playing God?

  My hands started to tremble and my heart beat faster.

  Nothing had changed.

  My father hadn’t changed.

  If anything, he was worse. Because, except for the people on this island, no one knew he was alive. No one knew what he had done. What he was doing.

  And no one knew he had us.

  Once again, I was powerless.

  And, once again, I had to stop him.

  So, once again, I was going to try.

  “I want to see the labs,” I said. “I want to see how it works.” Because finding out how it worked would be the only way to figure out a way to put a stop to it. To put a stop to him.

  Dad held his hand out to the left. “This way. Follow me.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Under the hot sun, Dad led us to a building directly across from where we came through the fence. Double glass doors, so large you could drive a truck through them, opened automatically and we walked in. They closed behind us with a long, quiet shh, and I felt a chill on my sweaty skin from the temperature, easily twenty degrees cooler than outside.

  Eddy rubbed his arms, which were covered with goose bumps, just like mine. “I wondered how everyone could wear those lab coats and not be dying from the heat.”

  Dad said, “We keep it a pretty steady sixty-five in here.” He walked straight ahead down a long hallway of industrial-tiled floors. We passed several closed doors and my breaths became short and shallow.

  We reached a silver door at the end of the hallway and I shivered, less from the cold than from the memory of another silver door. Dad punched a code into a keypad and the door swung open. Dad looked at me and frowned. “You all right?”

  I couldn’t speak.

  He glanced at the door and then back at me. He grasped my arm and his lips turned up in the kindest expression I’d seen on him in years. “It’s okay, son. This one is only locked from out here. You can get out anytime you want.” He motioned to Eddy, who walked through the doorway. Dad held out his arm and I shook my head. “You first,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Okay.” He walked through.

  I followed, ever so slowly.

  We walked down another hallway and into a white room. Clear plastic curtains hung down across the entire space and Dad pushed them aside and stepped through. Eddy was next, and I brought up the rear.

  The first thing I noticed was something that looked like a large rolling oven with a black half on the left and a white half on the right. The left side bore a large dial in the middle and two small yellow handles beneath it. The right side had a dial on top with a metal tube the size of my arm snaking out of it. The bottom half of the white side contained a glass door, making that side of the contraption resemble a mini-fridge.

  “What is that thing?” asked Eddy.

  “A particle delivery system.” Dad walked over to it and picked something off the top. He turned around and held it up.

  The device looked something like a gun. No, not a gun. It looked like a ray gun, like a phaser from the original Star Trek series.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  Dad smiled. “A gene gun. It’s loaded with genetic information. And this is how we inject the cells and cause the differentiation. How we change from one type of cell to another, reverting the cells to a younger stage in development.

  “Like the jellyfish,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “You mean that’s how you did it?” I asked. “How you … de-aged Phil?”

  “De-aged?” Dad laughed. “I like that. That’s exactly what we did.”

  I looked at the ovenlike thing. “You invented that?”

  Dad shook his head. “Oh, heavens, no. They’ve been using gene guns for years on plants. But I found that for our purposes, it didn’t quite work the way we wanted.” He shook the gun a bit. “So I came up with this prototype.”

  “How does it work?” I asked.

  Dad said, “Just like you’d expect.” He held the gun to his bicep. “Pow.”

  Eddy asked, “Does it hurt? I mean, did the scientists … did Phil…”

  “Feel pain?” asked Dad.

  Eddy nodded as I cringed.

  “Some discomfort at first.” Dad shrugged a bit. “But he was sedated, of course, so when the process was complete, he barely remembered any of it.”

  I asked, “He just woke up and was younger?”

  Dad nodded. “He was the same person, just physically de-aged, as you put it so eloquently.”

  “Wow,” said Eddy. “That’s cool.”

  I glared at him. Cool? Seriously? And then I reminded myself that Eddy hadn’t been in the Compound. He hadn’t experienced what Dad was capable of. To him, all of the stuff in that room probably was … cool.

  Unable to watch Eddy fawn over our father, I turned around.

  At the far end of the room stood a large metal door with a latch that seemed to lock from the other side. I didn’t want to know what lay inside. My gaze went to a bank of shelves along the wall. On one of them sat a small black box, almost like a remote. It looked so familiar. Where had I seen something like that before?

  “Eli?”

  I jumped at Dad’s voice and quickly turned around. “What?”

  “You look pale,” he said. “When did you last eat?”

  “Breakfast. Right before I was kidnapped.”

  Dad rolled his eyes slightly. “Well, let’s go eat. There’s plenty of time to see more.”

  I couldn’t wait to leave. I’d seen what I needed to see.

  I was first out of the plastic curtain, then the silver door, and first to get back outside, happy to be back in the sun and heat, even if I was sweating to death. I quietly followed Dad and Eddy back to the house, as they chattered the entire way. Eddy asked, “Did you consider taking a few years off yourself?”

  Dad hesitated a moment. Was he searching for an answer? But then he sounded very sure of himself when he said, “No. I have a family. It wouldn’t do to be younger than my kids.”

  Strange, but that seemed like the most rational thing to come out of his mouth in the past hour. Which made me question whether it was actually the truth.

  Back at the house, Lexie was at the dining-room table, eating slices of fresh mango. My stomach growled. I sat in the chair next to her and put several slices of mango on a plate. Then I picked up a fork, stuck it in a slice of mango, and popped it in my mouth. I closed my eyes and groaned. “That is great mango.”

  Dad sat back down. “We grow our own here.”

  My eyes snapped open and I finished chewing and swallowed. I realized I needed to know more than just what lay on the island. I needed to know about the island itself. “Where is here, exactly?”

  He rattled off a latitude and longitude that lay somewhere south and west of the Hawaiian chain.

  He had poured himself a drink and seemed really relaxed, so I decided to keep him talking, spilling information that might help me later.

  “Why bring us here?” I asked.

  Dad smiled. “That was always my plan. Bring my family here. Start over.”

  My face grew hot and I couldn’t help saying, “We have started over.” I pointed my fork at him. “Without you.”

  “Eli,” said Eddy. “Our family has a chance to be together again.”

  I threw my fork down on the plate and stood up. “Are you serious? You think we can just pretend none of this happened? Pretend that none of the last six years have happened?”

  Eddy frowned. “We’re family. Family sticks together. Being together should be all that matters.”

  Dad shook hi
s head at Eddy. “It’s okay. He needs time.”

  “Time for what?” I asked.

  “To adjust,” he said. “To the island. To me, perhaps.” Dad stood up. “The lab I showed you was just part of the island. It’s a beautiful place. You don’t ever have to see the labs again if you don’t want to.”

  “I don’t want to,” I said. “I want to go home.”

  Dad said, “It’s nearly evening. That can’t happen before tomorrow.”

  “Fine.” I finished eating my mango and pulled my shirt collar away from my neck. I reeked. “Any chance I can get a shower? Change maybe?”

  Dad nodded and stood. “Follow me.” He called over to Lexie. “Want to see your room?”

  The three of us followed him down a wide hallway, lit by wall sconces. Halfway down lay an open stairway, and we climbed up to the second floor and entered a hallway identical to the one on the first floor. Dad stopped at the second door on the right. “Eli, this is your room.” He paused. “Unless the two of you want to share a room?”

  Eddy shot me a look. Obviously he didn’t want to share.

  He smiled. “It is good to see you both together again.”

  My stomach churned. He could have had us together anytime in the past six years. If he had wanted. Instead …

  He had kept us apart. Let each of us think the other was dead. Let me live with the guilt for all those years, the guilt of me thinking I had been responsible for Eddy’s death.

  I went into the room, locking the door behind me. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the door.

  I shut them out.

  My father, my brother, my sister.

  I needed to be alone.

  I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to relax, trying to adjust to the past few hours and all the truths, however horrible, that had come to light.

  Dad was alive. Phil was alive. Only he was Tony, because my father had figured out how to reverse aging.

  And I was on an island. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

  But the worst truth of all?