Prodigal Son

them."
        When he tried to pay for his cotton candy, she didn't want to take his money. He insisted.
        He walked away, nibbling at the confection, feeling her gaze on him. Once out of sight, he threw the cotton candy in a trash can.
        Sitting on a bench in the sun, he consulted the notepad. On the last page at the back of it, he kept his checklist. After so much effort here in New Orleans and, previously, elsewhere, he had just yesterday checked off the next-to-last item: hands.
        Now he put a question mark next to the final item on the list, hoping that he could cross it off soon.
        EYES?

CHAPTER 6
        
        HE IS A CHILD of Mercy, Mercy-born and Mercy-raised.
        In his windowless room he sits at a table, working with a thick book of crossword puzzles. He never hesitates to consider an answer. Answers come to him instantly, and he rapidly inks letters in the squares, never making an error.
        His name is Randal Six because five males have been named Randal and have gone into the world before him. If ever he, too, went into the world, he would be given a last name.
        In the tank, before consciousness, he'd been educated by direct-to-brain data downloading. Once brought to life, he had continued to learn during sessions of drug-induced sleep.
        He knows nature and civilization in their intricacies, knows the look and smell and sound of places he has never been. Yet his world is largely limited to a single room.
        The agents of Mercy call this space his billet, which is a term to describe lodging for a soldier.
        In the war against humanity-a secret war now but not destined to remain secret forever-he is an eighteen-year-old who came to life four months ago.
        To all outward appearances, he is eighteen, but his knowledge is greater than that of most elderly scholars.
        Physically, he is sound. Intellectually, he is advanced.
        Emotionally, something is wrong with him.
        He does not think of his room as his billet. He thinks of it as his cell.
        He himself, however, is his own prison. He lives mostly within himself. He speaks little. He yearns for the world beyond his cell, beyond himself, and yet it frightens him.
        Most of the day he spends with crossword puzzles, immersed in the vertical and horizontal patterns of words. The world beyond his quarters is alluring but it is also… disorderly, chaotic. He can feel it pressing against the walls, pressing, pressing, and only by focusing on crosswords, only by bringing order to the empty boxes by filling them with the absolutely right letters can he keep the outer disorder from invading his space.
        Recently, he has begun to think that the world frightens him because Father has programmed him to be afraid of it. From Father, he has received his education, after all, and his life.
        This possibility confuses him. He cannot understand why Father would create him to be… dysfunctional. Father seeks perfection in all things.
        One thing gives him hope. Out in the world, and not far away, right here in New Orleans, is another like him. Not one of Father's creations, but likewise afflicted.
        Randal Six is not alone. If only he could meet his equal, he would better understand himself… and be free.

CHAPTER 7
        
        AN OSCILLATING fan riffled the documents and case notes-held down by makeshift paperweights-on Carson's desk. Beyond the windows, an orange sunset had deepened to crimson, to purple.
        Michael was at his desk in the Homicide Division, adjacent to Carson's, occupied by much of the same paperwork. She knew that he was ready to go home, but he usually let her define the workday.
        "You checked our doc box lately?" she asked.
        "Ten minutes ago," Michael reminded her. "You send me out there one more time, I'm going to eat a get-small mushroom and just stay in the doc box until the report shows up."
        "We should've had the prelim autopsy on that floater hours ago," she complained.
        “And I shoulda been born rich. Go figure."
        She consulted photos of cadavers in situ while Michael watched.
        The first victim, a young nurse named Shelley Justine, had been murdered elsewhere and dumped beside the London Street Canal. Tests revealed the chemical signature of chloroform in her blood.
        After the killer rendered her unconscious, he killed her with a knife to