Prodigal Son

raincoat. He pulled up his T-shirt, exposing his torso.
        In his abdomen, the Other pressed against the caging flesh, as if testing the walls of its confinement. It writhed, it bulged.
        He had no concern that it would burst out of him and perhaps kill him in the process. That was not how the birth would occur. He had studied various methods of reproduction, and he had developed a theory that he found convincing.
        Seeing this movement within Jonathan, Jenna stopped crying in a blink-and started to scream into the rag, the duct tape.
        He attempted to explain to her that this was nothing to fear, that this was his ultimate act of rebellion against Father and the start of the New Race's emancipation.
        "He denies us the power to reproduce," Jonathan said, "but I am reproducing. It's going to be like parthenogenesis, I think. When the time comes, I'll divide, like an ameba. Then there will be two of me-I the father, and my son."
        When Jenna thrashed, desperately but stupidly trying to wrench loose of her restraints, Jonathan worried that she would tear out the IV drip. Eager to proceed with her dissection, he didn't want to have to waste time reinserting the cannula.
        He carefully pressed the plunger of the syringe in the drug port and delivered a couple ccs of the sedative.
        Her thrashing quickly quieted to a trembling. She grew still. She slept.
        Inside Jonathan, the Other grew still, as well. His stretched torso regained its natural shape.
        Smiling, he slid one hand down his chest and abdomen. "Our time is coming."

CHAPTER 69
        
        TURNING AWAY FROM the front door of Fullbright's Funeral Home, Michael wanted to sprint to the car and climb in behind the wheel. He would have done it, too, would have seized control-if he'd had a key.
        Mere possession of the driver's seat would mean nothing to Carson. She wouldn't give him her key. Unless she chose to ride shotgun, she'd walk before she'd give up the wheel.
        The plainwrap came with two sets of keys. Carson had both.
        Michael had frequently considered requisitioning another set from the motor pool. He knew she'd consider that betrayal.
        So she drove again. Clearly, there were no safety engineers in her family.
        At least he was distracted from consideration of their speed by the need to get his mind around the cockamamie story she wanted him to believe. "Man-made men? Science just isn't that far along yet."
        "Maybe most scientists aren't, but Victor is."
        "Mary Shelley was a novelist."
        "She must've based the book on a true story she heard that summer. Michael, you heard what Jack Rogers told us. Not a freak. Bobby Allwine was designed."
        "Why would he be creating monsters to be security guards like Bobby Allwine? Doesn't that seem goofy?"
        "Maybe he creates them to be all kinds of things-cops, like Harker. Mechanics. Pilots. Bureaucrats. Maybe they're all around us."
        "Why?"
        "Deucalion says-to take our place, to destroy God's work and replace it with his own."
        "I'm not Austin Powers, and neither are you, and it's hard to swallow that Helios is Dr. Evil."
        Impatiently, she said, "What happened to your imagination? Have you watched so many movies, you can't imagine for yourself anymore, you have to have Hollywood do it for you?"
        "Harker, huh? From homicide cop to homicidal robot?"
        "Not robot. Engineered or cloned or grown in a vat-I don't know how. It's no longer parts of corpses animated by lightning."
        "One man, even a genius, couldn't-"
        She interrupted him: "Helios is an obsessed, demented visionary at work for two centuries, with a huge family fortune."
        Preoccupied with a new thought, she let their speed fall.
        After a silence, Michael said, "What?"
        "We're dead."
        "I don't feel dead."
        "I mean, if Helios is who Deucalion says, if he has achieved all of this, if his creations are seeded through the city, we don't have much of a chance against him. He's a genius, a billionaire, a man of enormous power-and we're squat."
        She was scared. He could hear fear in her voice. He had never known her to be afraid. Not like this. Not without a gun in her face and some dirtbag's finger on the trigger.
        "I just don't buy this," he said, though he half did. "I don't understand why you buy