Korsak #02 - Basilisk by Rob Thurman

Author:Rob Thurman [Thurman, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General, Genetic engineering, Assassins, Brothers
ISBN: 9780451464149
Publisher: Roc
Published: 2011-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater . . . It was a nursery rhyme, we were told. Targets and those between you and your target told them to their children. It was a fact we needed to know to appear ordinary and we were given three examples to memorize, which we did in one reading as required, before moving on to the next subject—how to mimic the neurotoxic effects of blowfish poisoning if you happened to have a target in Japan.

I’d been around twelve then—two years older than Wendy was now. Peter had been close to the same. It was hard to tell in the Institute. There were no birthday parties. The Playground, yes, but no parties . . . not the kind of parties, at least, that anyone outside the Institute would recognize as a celebration. I hadn’t told Stefan that the Basement wasn’t the only place where we were “rewarded” for exceptional work. The Institute knew it was important in raising genetic assassins to equate death with reward. Death equaled reward equaled incentive equaled eager students—a simple psychological loop.

On the nursery rhyme day, Peter had asked the Instructor if it wouldn’t be better to kill several other people in the target’s entourage along with the target by using imitative blowfish poisoning to increase the authenticity of the diagnosis. I had thought the same myself. I couldn’t help it. It was a logical and effective way to throw off any signs of foul play. But I hadn’t said it; I’d only thought it. Peter wasn’t like me, however. Peter was a good, enthusiastic student, and he said it loud and proud. That brought him a reward and the rest of us a chance to watch and see what we were missing by not trying as hard as Peter.

In the exercise yard our class gathered to watch Peter enjoy his prize. It was a homeless girl, a runaway—a teenage prostitute I’d guessed, then. Targets were frequently with prostitutes. It was a fact we needed to know.

She was fifteen at most, this girl, but to a chimera, whether it was man, woman, or child made no difference. Age and sex didn’t matter when all you saw was an objective. That was all Peter saw. I knew, because I remembered his smile. He had perfect white teeth—we all did. The attractive were less suspicious than the unattractive. Jericho had made that clear. Targets were all prejudiced in one way or another whether they knew it or not, and a negative reaction to the unsightly was a universal one.

As ugly on the inside as he was attractive on the outside, Peter, with his perfect smile and bright, happy eyes, didn’t look like a threat, not to a runaway snatched off the streets by silent men, shoved in a van, and brought to a place that looked worse than any prison. None of us would look sinister to her as we stood in a wide, loose circle around her under a hot Florida sun. She’d cowered on the dirt, crying.

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