GeneSix Read Free

Not really. But now, I seem to have a sort of freedom like I have never known.”
    “You had a life with me,” she said quietly.
    “And that will never change. Maybe it has on the surface, but that’s all. It’s not like I’m going anywhere. You’re still my mother. I’m still your son.”
    She nodded. “That will never change. You can count on that.”

CHAPTER THREE
     
    One year blended into another, and the boy learned how to control the darkness. He learned his limits, which were few. As long as it was night and there were shadows for him to zip through, he could travel from the city he and his mother called home, which was Boston, all the way to New York with the speed of thought. He came to call it the Speed of Darkness.
    He knew his mother was sad for him. After all, he would never have anything even resembling a normal life. He would never marry, never have children. Never have a house or a mortgage. He would never mow the lawn on a Sunday afternoon. Maybe his mother blamed herself, because she also had an extraordinary ability and apparently passed the gene down to him. But he doubted he would ever have had a normal life, anyway. Not a kid who was such a dork, who was always on the outside looking in. A kid girls like Sondra Schwartz looked past, not at.
    He had to decide what his place in the world would be, and he decided it would be protector . He had a lot of time on his hands, because he would never have a career or a family, and he found he didn’t need to eat or even sleep. So he decided to protect people from the Dirks of the world.
    He eventually learned he could move objects about by focusing his energy. As such, he could throw a violent attacker around like he was a leaf in the wind. A mugger hauled a woman into an alley one night and pulled a knife on her. The Darkness, as he was coming to think of himself, simply threw the man against the wall, knocking him unconscious. The woman was scared witless, but she escaped the mugging unharmed.
    He also learned if he could dim the lights in a room enough, he could then take a sort of partially corporeal human shape for a short time. And he could touch things. Like, he could sometimes give his mother a brief hug. This was as close to being human as he figured he would ever be.
    He found streetlights caused him discomfort, and the light of the sun caused him out outright shearing pain. He was strong enough to block out the streetlights, effectively dropping a street corner into a pocket of darkness, but he couldn’t hold back the sun. During daylight, he often hid in the shadows – there were always shadows. Inside a basement or a darkened room. Though he had no need to sleep, he would sometimes fall into a sort of semi-conscious trance while he waited out the day. And then at night he would roam freely. Through the night skies, through darkened alleys.
    Through all of this, Sondra was never far from his thoughts. After a few years, he decided to visit her one night. A visit she would never be aware of.
    She was now maybe twenty. Her front teeth had been fixed, and her hair had been colored to a lighter shade of brown and was streaked with blonde highlights. It was summer, and she was in a tank top and a floral-printed skirt. A guy was with her, maybe a little older, but not much. He was taller than she was, and had a square jaw and hair combed into a wave that fell across his forehead.
    She was holding her left hand out, and on one finger was a diamond.
    “Oh, Dean, it’s so beautiful,” she said, in the cooing way a woman has when she’s admiring a diamond on her finger.
    The man was smiling. “I’m glad you like it. And I’m even more glad you said yes.”
    “Come on in.” She snatched his hand. “We have to show Mom.”
    He held back. “But she hates me.”
    “No she doesn’t.”
    He nodded with a smile. “Yes, she does.”
    “She doesn’t know you, that’s all. Come on in. Let’s tell her together.”
    She was happy, the