Brothers By Design
Chapter Fourteen

Kane spent the next hour and a half thinking. School was going to be very difficult for Devin – all those people, the loud noises, the questions and pressures. Multiple choice tests, favored by most students and teachers, would be impossible. He would be labeled as retarded, unteachable, and that wasn’t true.

But what could he do? He couldn’t leave Devin at home while he went to school. That would be begging for trouble. But unless they were in a very small school with very small classes, which he doubted, school was going to be torture for Devin. Maybe they offered online classes? Then they wouldn’t have to deal with the crowds.

But he wanted to have others to talk to, do things with, at least play sports with. He’d be too scared of hurting Devin to ever play soccer or football, or even a real game of basketball. And god help anybody else who might hurt his boy. He wanted to try out his new enhancements, to see what they did for him. Maybe remember why he’d asked for some of them in the first place.

All right, so they’d…Wait. Maybe he could talk the principal into letting Devin take the classes by doing it online for the tests, but sitting in the actual classes. Or reading the books and writing about each chapter. If he could get one of the doctors to back him up on it being the only way…

Why not email the Agency and let them work it out? They were the ones in charge after taking over for the Governments, from what Albert said. Seems like Shyla wasn’t the only mental the Governments used for their experiment. Not if the Agency had taken over. If she’d been the only one, they’d have been released or terminated.

The more he thought about it, the more leaving it up to the Agency sounded like the way to go. Let the ones who’d come up with the whole experiment work out the twists. Well, the ones in charge of the experiment, anyway.

“Hey, Devi?”

“…Mmmm…”

Devin sounded content, a bit sleepy, not in pain. Kane grinned to himself, pleased. That was the way Devin should sound. Content and not in pain.

“I need to go into the study and send an email.”

“…Can I come? I won’t look.”

“I was gonna ask if you want to come with me or stay here. How’s your head?”

“I wanna come. It’s almost all gone.”

“All gone,” Kane teased. “What’re you gonna do without a head? You’d look weird.”

“Kaaane,” Devin giggled. “It doesn’t hurt but a tiny bit, like a open-hand smack.”

Kane made a face at the description. What a way to rate pain! They got up, not bothering with their shoes, and went into the study. Devin crawled onto the couch and closed his eyes. He wasn’t tired, he told Kane, but his eyes were sore and wanted to stay closed. Kane patted his head and told him it was fine.

“You’ll hear the computer, but that should be it,” he went on, patting one final time before going to his desk. He booted up the computer, went straight to e-mail, and started typing.

He was almost positive they knew everything that had happened, but he gave a report anyway, to be sure. He explained about the problems Devin had, how school was going to be torture for the other pre-teen, how he would not and could not leave Devin at home and go to school on his own.

He went on to say that he wanted to make sure Shyla (once she got out of long-ville, if they’d sent her there,) never touched Devin again, and that he wanted to teach her a lesson himself. How people and noises terrified Devin, and thinking made his head hurt, as well as what the doctors had said and done, and that they were going to have to go back to see them again. It turned into quite the email. When he was finished he copied it into a report, spell-checked, and sent it.

More than likely he wouldn’t get a reply for a while. It was Sunday, for one, and he’d gone into a lot of detail. Devin was peaceful on the sofa. He started a new report, one that encompassed everything since his father had gone missing. He didn’t keep a journal. For the most part he couldn’t be bothered, but now and then he found it was cathartic to write everything down. Helped to sort it all out in his head or something.

“Kane? I gotta pee.”

“Go ’head.”

He answered absently, caught up in the recollection and retelling. Peripherally he was aware of Devin leaving and returning to sit at the other desk. The sound of typing filled the otherwise quiet room for some time. He jumped when a message saying he had new mail popped up on screen.

It was a reply from the Agency, someone called High One. Kane thought it was a ridiculous name. This High One person was thanking him for the thorough update. It went on to say that appropriate arrangements would be made for Devin and himself in regards to schooling, and even explained that as long as he didn’t endanger anybody he could use schooling and after-school activities to test his enhancements.

As to Shyla, if he chose to seek retribution for what she had done on top of the punishment she was receiving, that would be up to him. However, the Agency would in no way condone excessive violence. He would have to seek retribution in a manner that did not cause physical harm or death.

Kane considered this before shrugging. He wasn’t going to do anything permanent to her – not like she’d done to Devin. He would just make sure she understood that she was to never even think of going near Devin again. Not that he didn’t want to. She more than deserved to be crippled at the very least. But he’d promised himself, and his father (even if his father didn’t know it), that he was going to be a better man than that. Besides, it’d be a lot more fun to mess around with her records and stuff. Get her placed in a psych unit somewhere. One of the experimental ones. It was fitting – she’d messed with Devin’s brain. The psych unit would mess with her brain. Perfect.

Devin had shut off his computer again and was writing something on a notepad. Kane returned to his journal entry to the Agency, even though he hated to call it something that sounded so girly, deciding to let Devin have time to work on whatever he was working on. It was good they could be in the same room without doing things together.

He went back to his long, rambling explanation of his life. It was weird to read it over and see how strange it had been. Not really all that bad, but strange right after his dad had gone missing and nobody had been sure what to do with him. It sounded more like something you’d read about than what would happen in real life. He’dheard his dad say that stories were never as weird as real life. Looked like his dad was right. He usually had been.

Each housing block where they lived had at least one gang. Their’s had been different than the others, though. Kane’s dad had taught them the usual stuff about fighting and breaking into places and stealing and stuff, but had made sure they never stole from somebody as bad off as they were. And never to take too much. Half the time the robberies didn’t even get reported because the stuff wasn’t missed.

They’d been a smart group, for a gang. Kane’s dad had insisted on it. Made them learn strategy and teamwork, and when it was smarter to let something go rather than get revenge. They learned ways to get revenge that weren’t obvious. Like hacking files on people. Never with money accounts, which was obvious and tracked. That would be an easy way to end up in either Short-ville or Long-ville depending on your age and how much you had tried to scam.

“Your best weapon is your brain.” That had been his dad’s favorite saying. He’d insisted that they think about and plan what they were doing. He’d rewarded them for thinking, doing things the smart way. Doing it stupid got you into trouble. Mostly he let you do time in Short-ville. Sometimes he’d suspend you from the gang. That was rough; without a gang you were nobody, and nobodies didn’t make it long. Not around their blocks, anyway.

“…Kane?”

Kane looked up at the hesitant voice, memories flashing and fading. Devin was at his desk, lower lip between his teeth, fiddling with the paper he’d been writing on. When he saw he had Kane’s attention he held out the paper.

“I…I made you this.”

“For me?” Devin nodded. “Really? Cool!” Kane took the offered paper – a hand-made card, he saw – and hugged Devin in thanks..

On the front “Thank You” was written in elaborate script across the wings of a very well-drawn butterfly floating under a rainbow and above a field. He took a moment to stare at an image that belonged on a greeting card. He’d never met someone who could draw so well. He’d thought the cards were made by machine.

There was no drawing inside, but a message in very neat script.

Dear Kane—

I’m not good at saying things. I always made people mad when I talked, so I didn’t talk and never figured out how to say things. I feel like this is all a great dream, you liking and wanting me and being nice to me, protecting me. I used to dream stuff like that would happen. I wanted to thank you for making my dream come true and making the real thing even better. But it would come out wrong, so I’m writing it instead.

Love,

Devin

Kane read the message twice, willing away the tears that tried to form, then pulled Devin into a tight hug. “Devi, this is the best thank you I’ve ever gotten. It’s an awesome present.” Devin didn’t answer, but returned the embrace with one almost as tight.

“Let’s grab something to eat and go back out,” Kane suggested after a minute. “We’ll work on basketball for awhile. Teach you to shoot using both hands.”

“Kay.”