Vengeful

“My name,” said the man, “is Dr. Haverty.”

He selected a scalpel as he spoke.

“Welcome to my lab.”

Leaned in close.

“We are going to understand each other.”

And then he began to cut. Dissect—that was the word for it when the subject was dead. Vivisect—that was the word when they were still alive. But when they couldn’t die?

What was the word for that?

Eli’s faith had faltered in that room.

He had found Hell in that room.

And the only sign of God was that, no matter what Haverty did, Eli continued to survive.

Whether he wanted to or not.

* * *

TIME unraveled in Haverty’s lab.

Eli thought he knew pain, but pain for him had become a bright and fleeting thing, an instant’s discomfort. In the doctor’s hands, it became a solid state.

“Your regeneration truly is remarkable,” said the doctor, retrieving the scalpel with bloodstained gloves. “Shall we find its limit?”

You’re not blessed, Victor had said. You’re a science experiment.

Those words came back to Eli now.

And so did Victor.

Eli saw him in the lab, watched him circle the table at Haverty’s back, slip in and out of Eli’s line of sight as he studied the doctor’s incisions.

“Maybe you’re in Hell.”

You don’t believe in Hell, thought Eli.

The corner of Victor’s mouth twitched. “But you do.”

Every night, Eli would collapse onto his cot, shivering and sick from the hours pinned to the steel table.

And every morning, it would start again.

Eli’s power had a single flaw—and ten years after Victor first discovered it, so did Haverty. Eli’s body, for all its regeneration, couldn’t reject foreign objects; if they were small enough, he healed around them. If they were large enough—a knife, a saw, a clamp, his body wouldn’t heal at all.

The first time Dr. Haverty cut out Eli’s heart, he thought he might finally die. The doctor held it up for him to see before cutting it free, and for a fraction of a second Eli’s pulse faltered, failed, the equipment screamed. But by the time Haverty set the heart in its sterile tray, there was a new one already beating in Eli’s open chest.

The doctor breathed a single word.

“Extraordinary.”

* * *

THE worst part, thought Eli, was that Dr. Haverty liked to talk.

He kept up a casual stream of conversation as he sawed and sliced, drilled and broke. In particular, he was fascinated by Eli’s scars, the brutal crosshatching on Eli’s back. The only marks that would never fade.

“Tell me about them,” he’d say, plunging a needle into Eli’s spine.

“There are thirty-two,” he’d say, drilling into Eli’s bones.

“I counted,” he’d say, cracking open Eli’s chest.

“You can talk to me, Eli. I’m happy to listen.”

But Eli couldn’t talk, even if he wanted to.

It took all his effort not to scream.

X

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

THE FIRST HOME

ONCE upon a time, when the marks on his back were still fresh, Eli told himself that he was growing wings.

After all, his mother thought Eli was an angel, even if his father said he had the devil in him. Eli had never done anything to make the pastor think that, but the man claimed he could see the shadow in the boy’s eyes. And whenever he caught a glimpse of it, he’d take Eli by the arm and lead him out to the private chapel that sat beside their clapboard house.

Eli used to love the little chapel—it had the prettiest picture window, all red and blue and green stained glass, facing east so it caught the morning light. The floor was made of stone—it was cold beneath Eli’s bare feet, even in summer—and there in the center of the room was a metal cross, driven straight down into the foundation. Eli remembered thinking it seemed violent, the way the cross broke and split the floor, as if thrown from a horrible height.

The first time his father saw the shadow, he kept one hand on Eli’s shoulder as they walked, the other clutching a coiled leather strap. Eli’s mother watched them go, twisting a towel in her hands.

“John,” she said, just once, but Eli’s father didn’t look back, didn’t stop until they’d crossed the narrow lawn and the chapel door had fallen shut behind them.

Pastor Cardale told Eli to go to the cross and hold on to the horizontal bar, and at first Eli refused, sobbing, pleading, trying to apologize for whatever he’d done. But it didn’t help. His father tied Eli’s hands in place, and beat him worse for his defiance.

Eli had been nine years old.

Later that night, his mother treated the angry lash-marks on his back, and told him that he had to be strong. That God tested them, and so did Eli’s father. Her sleeves inched up as she draped cool strips of cloth over her son’s wounded shoulders, and Eli could just see the edges of old scars on the backs of her arms as she told him it would be okay, told him it would get better.

And for a little while, it always did.

Eli would do everything he could to be good, to be worthy. To avoid his angry father’s gaze.

But the calm never lasted. Sooner or later, the pastor would glimpse the devil in his son again, and lead Eli back to the chapel. Sometimes the beatings were months apart. Sometimes days. Sometimes Eli thought he deserved it. Needed it, even. He would step up to the cross, and curl his fingers around the cold metal cross, and pray—not to God, not at first, but to his father. He prayed that the pastor would stop seeing whatever he saw, while he carved new feathers into the torn wings of Eli’s back.

Eli learned not to scream, but his eyes would still blur with tears, the colors in the stained glass running together until all he saw was light. He held on to that, as much as to the steel cross beneath his fingers.

Eli didn’t know how he was broken, but he wanted to be healed.

He wanted to be saved.

XI

FOUR YEARS AGO

EON—LABORATORY WING

STELL knocked his knuckles on the counter.

“I’m here to speak with one of your subjects,” he said. “Eli Cardale.”

“I’m sorry, sir, he’s in testing.”

Stell frowned. “Again?”

This was the third time he had come to see Eli, and the third time he’d been fed a line.

The first time, the excuse had been believable. The second, inconvenient. Now, it was obviously a lie. He hadn’t pulled rank up until this point, but only because he didn’t want the headache, or the reputation. EON was still a new venture, his venture—so new that the building around them wasn’t even finished—but it was also his responsibility, and Stell knew in his gut that something was wrong. The unease pinched, like an ulcer.

“That’s the same answer I was given last time.”

The woman—Stell didn’t know if she was a doctor, a scientist, or a secretary—pursed her lips. “This is a research lab, sir. Testing is a frequent component—”

“Then you won’t mind interrupting the current session.”

The woman’s frown deepened. “With a patient such as Mr. Ever—”

“Cardale,” corrected Stell. Ever had been a self-appointed moniker, aggrandizing and arrogant (if slightly prophetic). His real name was Eliot—Eli—Cardale.

“With a patient such as Mr. Cardale,” she amended, “testing requires immense preparation. Ending an exam early would be a waste of EON resources.”

“And this,” said Stell, “is a waste of my time.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ll observe the session until it’s finished.”

A shadow crossed her face. “Perhaps if you’d rather wait here—”

With that, Stell’s unease turned to dread.

“Take me to him. Now.”

XII

TWENTY-THREE YEARS AGO

THE FIRST HOME

ELI sat on the porch steps and looked up at the sky.

It was a beautiful night, the strobe of red and blue lights painting the house, the lawn, the chapel. The ambulance and the coroner’s van parked in the grass. One unnecessary, the other waiting.

He pressed a worn old Bible to his chest while the cops and medics moved around him as if in orbit, close but never touching.

“Kid’s in shock,” said an officer.

Eli didn’t think that was true. He didn’t feel shaken. Didn’t feel anything but calm. Maybe that was shock. He kept waiting for it to wear off, for the steady hum in his head to give way to terror, to sadness. But it didn’t.

“Can you blame him? Lost his mother a month ago. Now this.”

Lost. That was a strange word. Lost suggested something misplaced, something that might be recovered. He hadn’t lost his mother. After all, he’d been the one to find her. Lying in the tub. Floating in a white dress stained pink by the water, palms up as if in supplication, her forearms open from elbow to wrist. No, he hadn’t lost her.

She’d left him.

Left Eli alone, trapped in a house with Pastor John Cardale.

A female medic brought a hand to Eli’s shoulder, and he flinched, half from the surprise of contact, and half from the fact the latest welts were still fresh under his shirt. She said something. He wasn’t listening. A few moments later, they wheeled out the body. The medic tried to block Eli’s view, but there was nothing to see, only a black body bag. Death made clean. Neat. Sterile.