Silver Part 3

2002

The next afternoon Erin left her son with me while she went to do a task. Normally I didn't mind this, but Jimmy was being a little shit that day. Mike had already taken off—he didn't know how to handle kids anyway—leaving me to deal with the 6-year-old monster on my own.

I had finally gotten done telling a group of kids what to look for while out scavenging that evening and was telling Jimmy off (trying not to yell at him) for making a pest of himself and making everything take twice as long as it should when Jake came by with a box under his arm.

"Erin's out, isn't she?" Jake said with a smirk. (He never got stuck with Jimmy, or any of the little kids. He didn't like them and they didn't like him.)

"Yeah."

"What's that?" Jimmy made a grab at the box. "Let me see it!"

Jake jerked the box out of reach and shoved the boy away with his leg. "None of your business, pest."

I grabbed Jimmy's arm and pulled him back (which earned me a punch in the leg) and Jake tucked the box back under his arm. "Brat," he muttered. "I don't envy you, Eddie."

Once Jake left Jimmy twisted out of my grip and punched me again. I ignored him. When Jake had moved the box I'd caught sight of a logo, one I didn't recognize. It looked like an atom on a gear, over a leaf, and under that was the word Bio-something. I told myself it was probably nothing, that it probably had to do with genetically engineered plants, or even just ordinary biology, but I didn't believe myself.

"Ed-dieeee!" Jimmy brought me back to the present by yanking on my braid. Hard.

"Shit! You little brat!" I grabbed his arm again and dragged him over to the small storage room that was nearby. "What is up with you today?" I lifted him and set him on top of a crate. "Do you want me to lock you in a room until your mother comes back? Because I'm about this close to doing that."

He folded his little arms and glared at me. I rubbed the back of my head and glared back. We kept that up until Jimmy looked away and started pouting.

"So what do I do with you, huh, Jim?" I asked him, trying—trying—not to bite his head off. "Do you want to help with the food? Sort the clothes?" The fact that I suggested sorting clothes should show you how desperate I was.

Jimmy kept on pouting. "No."

"Then what? Do you want to find some of the other kids and play a game? Catch?"

"No."

"Then sit there and do nothing because otherwise somebody's going to end up strangling you!" I snapped.

He glared off to the side and kicked his heel against the crate. I sighed and leaned against the crate, resting my head in my hands. This kid was giving me a headache.

Jimmy kicked the crate again then said, "What do you want?"

I looked up but he was looking past me. I turned and saw Silver sitting on a crate in a corner behind us, hidden from the door by the odd shape of the room. "How long have you been there?" I asked in surprise.

He shrugged. He might have been irritated, or he might have been amused. It was hard to tell. "About an hour."

"Go away," Jimmy suggested. I turned and glared at him. He refolded his arms and glowered. "Momma doesn't like him," he told me, as if this explained everything, "she says he's weird."

"Jimmy," I warned, "you are very, very close to getting locked in a room."

"I'm aware of what your mother thinks of me, Jimmy," Silver said neutrally. He stared back and Jimmy looked away rather quickly. "She probably doesn't want you around me, does she?"

"No," the boy admitted.

"Well, that's fine," Silver said as he slid off the crate, "because I don't particularly want to be around you, either."

"Silver—!" I called after him, but he was already out the door. I turned back to Jimmy and snapped at him, "What did you do that for?"

"Who cares?" he retorted. "He's a freak! Everybody thinks so."

"He's not a—oh, never mind, it's useless talking to you right now."

"What? He's not a freak?"

"No, he's not, he's a kid, and he's a hell of a lot nicer to be around than you are right now!"

Jimmy had, unfortunately, driven the logo completely out of my mind, or I would have asked Silver about it right then and there. As it was I didn't see Silver again until that night.

Tori came by about an hour or two later and offered to take Jimmy off my hands. I warned her that she didn't know what she was getting into but she only shrugged.

"It started raining on me outside, and it's pretty boring in here," she said. "Most everybody is out somewhere, Jake is high off something and I don't really like him anyway, Red and Helen are in the pantry sorting food or something—that leaves you and Jimmy. Hey, I heard you ran into trouble a couple nights ago—and you look like hell."

"Yeah, I got some bad information from the bosses, and things got messy. You haven't had any trouble lately, have you?"

"No-oo. . . ." I raised an eyebrow at her and she sighed. "Okay, no, no trouble like you've had, but the bosses have been acting kinda weird, y'know? I can't really describe it, but they're suddenly . . . more interested in how I'm doing, I guess. I would've thought I was making it up, being paranoid or something, but Surge says he's noticed it, too. So we can't both be imagining it, right? Even if Red and Helen and Jay think we're crazy."

"You're not crazy. I've noticed something odd, too, and I'm not the only one." Just then Jimmy knocked over a stack of boxes.

"Oops," he said. "Sorry."

Tori rolled her eyes. "I better go get him busy with something."

"Good luck. Hey, wait," I grabbed her arm as she started to leave. "Have you seen Silver around?"

"Nah, but he always makes himself scarce. He's so weird. Why?"

"Jimmy ran him off earlier—I just wanted to talk with him."

"O-kay . . . well, I haven't seen him." She gave me a look like she was questioning my sanity and then left with Jimmy.

I didn't think Tori would be very comforted to know that Silver was the one who was noticing the strange stuff going on. He hadn't been kidding when he'd said he wasn't well liked or well trusted. Tori didn't exactly dislike him, I don't think, but he made her nervous and she avoided him as much as possible.

I became busy for the rest of the day and got distracted. It wasn't until that night that I thought again about what was going on. Everyone else in the room had gone to sleep and I was sitting up on my pad, thinking, when someone small picked his way across the floor.

"Eddie . . .?" Jimmy said tentatively when he came near.

"What is it, Jim?"

He sat down next to me and leaned against my arm. "When's my momma coming back?"

I looked down at him in surprise. "She's not back yet?" He shook his head and looked up at me, the blue safety lights making him look very pale. I sighed and put my arm around him. "I dunno, Jimmy. I wish I could tell you. But she'll come back to you as soon as she can, you know that."

"Yeah. . . ." He twisted my blanket around his fingers. "Jake said . . . Jake said she's not coming back. He—he said she left 'cause I'm such a brat."

"What? When did you talk to Jake?"

"Me and Tori ran into him. Tori said he was high, and he was sure acting funny like he does sometimes. He said, 'Don't bother waiting up for your mom 'cause she ain't coming back,' and I said 'Yes she is,' and he said, 'No she ain't,' and I said, 'Uh-huh!' and he said, 'No, she ain't, she left 'cause you're such a little brat and she doesn't want you anymore,' and then he started laughing, and Tori told him to leave us alone, and we went somewhere else."

"You know you can't listen to anything Jake says, especially when he's high." I hugged him, and added, "He's just trying to get you upset. Your momma loves you as much as any mother can love a child."

"Then . . . why isn't she back yet?"

I shook my head. "I dunno. But I know it isn't because she doesn't want you."

I could tell he wasn't convinced—not completely—but he curled up against me anyway and was asleep before long. Sometimes, I think kids like Jimmy know better than anyone how unforgiving the streets are. They've never known the security that most kids grow up with, the unconscious knowledge that the adults in their lives will always be there. It was a certainty that was shattered for me when I was thirteen.

I carefully shifted Jimmy to my pillow and wrapped my blanket around him, then pulled on my shoes and jacket and headed for one of the other bedrooms. I found Tori and shook her awake. "Jimmy's in the next room over, on my pad," I told her. "Keep an eye on him, will ya?"

"Wha? Why?" She sat up and looked at me blearily.

"Erin's not back. I'm going to try and find her."

"What?" Tori said again, now fully awake. "What do you think happened to her?"

"I think whatever's been going on has caught up with her. I need to find out, either way—do you know where Silver is?"

She pointed to the back corner of the room and gave me a very puzzled, and somewhat worried look.

I sighed. "He's the one who's been putting all this together."

"Silver has—?"

"Listen," I interrupted her, "if it weren't for Silver the other night I'd be the one missing."

"No shit?" She looked over to where Silver was sleeping, completely covered by his blanket. "I didn't think he'd care."

"Neither did I," I admitted.

I went over and squatted down next to Silver and put a hand on his shoulder, intending to shake him awake the way I did Tori. I didn't get that far; almost as soon as I touched him he jumped up, throwing off his blanket and startling me so badly I nearly fell onto the kid sleeping behind me.

He blinked at me and relaxed a bit in the crouched position he'd jumped into. "Wha'd'youwan'?" he said, sounding confused and more than half asleep.

"What?"

He sat down on his pad and pushed his hair back from his face, eyeing me now with more suspicion than confusion. "What do you want, Eddie?"

I moved myself into a more stable position. "Shit, you sleep light. Listen, Erin's missing. She told me more or less where her task was so I'm going to see if something happened to her. Oh, and," I added, finally remembering, "this may be nothing, but Jake carried in this box this afternoon, with a logo I'd never seen before." When I described the logo to him, his eyes widened and for a brief moment he looked scared. No, more than scared. Almost panicked. But then his face closed off so quickly that I wasn't sure of what I'd seen. "Mean anything to you?"

"Yeah," he said without emotion. "It's not good." He didn't say any more about it.

"What's going on?" Tori asked. Demanded, actually.

"I can't explain now, I have to go after Erin," I said, standing. "I don't want to put it off any longer."

"Wait, Eddie," Silver said as I started to leave. He pulled on his shoes and then caught up with me as I reached the door.

Tori came after us. "What's going on?"

"I don't really know what's going on," I admitted. "Just keep an eye on Jimmy—and be careful."

Tori stayed back while Silver and I climbed the stairs that headed outside. It was still raining so I zipped my jacket and pulled up my hood. All Silver had on was a worn turtleneck and sweats but he didn't seem to care that he was getting soaked.

"What does that logo mean?" I asked him as we made for the edge of the industrial district. He didn't answer me so I finally stopped and grabbed his arm. "Silver—what does it mean? It's important, isn't it."

He'd stopped, but I got the feeling he could have easily pulled out of my grip. He pushed his dripping, strangely metallic hair out of his face and looked at me with his unsettlingly hard silver-grey eyes. "The company is called Biotechnology Enterprises," he said, his voice more expressionless than I'd ever heard it. "Their legitimate business is in food production, genetically engineered crops and livestock, but they also do work on the human genetic structure."

I had a chill run up my spine that wasn't from the cold rain. "So what does that have to do with me and Erin and the others?"

"Maybe they—or whoever is using their stuff—want test subjects."

And somebody could make a lot of money providing them with people nobody would miss, I realized. Somebody like the company who owned The Pit. I dropped my hand and just stood there for a moment, too stunned to do much else.

Silver studied me for a few seconds, his expression a bit softer than it had been, then he simply turned and continued walking. I snapped out of my daze and caught up with him. "Silver," I said carefully a few moments later, "how do you know all this?"

Nothing. He didn't answer me; he didn't even look at me. I hadn't really expected an answer so I didn't push it. It must have been a good five minutes later when he said, quietly, "I wasn't always a street kid." I didn't know how to take that so I didn't say anything.

I didn't remember exactly where Erin had said she was going, so when we got to the right area we had to slow down and start searching. Somehow we got separated. I think Silver was searching the other side of the building, which was large.

"'Bout time you got here, Ed," said a familiar voice behind me.

I spun and peered down the alley. "Jake? What are you doing here?" I demanded. Jake knew I didn't like being called "Ed" and he used it when he wanted to get on my nerves.

Jake came to the mouth of the alley and leaned against the corner of the building, smiling in this irritatingly smug way he had, with his arms folded casually, one over the other. "Waiting for you. I knew once you noticed Erin was gone you'd come after her."

"Where's Erin, Jake?"

"Gone," he repeated. He straightened and calmly kicked at a puddle, splashing me. He giggled, as if there was some joke I wasn't getting. He hadn't come down from his high yet, I realized.

"You know where she is, don't you," I said, taking a step back. Normally Jake didn't frighten me—we'd gotten in fights before and I knew I could beat him—but this was different somehow. He was acting too confident.

"Why would you think that, Ed?" he said, closing the gap between us. He was still smiling, looking more sinister now than smug. "She went out alone." I backed up again and again he followed me. "How could I know what happened to her?"

"What are you doing here, Jake?" I asked again. He was trying to back me up against the building, I realized.

"Waiting for you."

I took a step to my right, away from the building, but just then Jake unfolded his arms and swung at me, backhanded. I jumped back, just out of range for a punch, and realized a moment too late that I'd heard the click of a switchblade. He slashed my forehead, above my right eye. As I was reeling from that the blade caught my left arm at the elbow, deep enough that it caught and he had to yank it out.

I fell back against the building, blinking blood and rain out of my eyes. Jake advanced on me, still smiling and holding the blood smeared switchblade out in front of him. Some detached part of me realized that that was why he'd looked so confident—he'd had it hidden under his arm the whole time. "You want to know where Erin is, Ed?" he said smoothly. "Why don't I just show you."

I pushed away from the wall and turned to run. Jake grabbed my left wrist and jerked me back. I fell, landing on my side with Jake still hanging on to my arm. I didn't think that arm could hurt any worse, but then he twisted it behind my back, so violently it felt like he'd torn it off completely. It was more than I could take, and I blacked out.