The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Em X. Liu
- Language: English
- Genre: Genetic Engineering Science Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
HORATIO
HERE WE ARE in the lab, and the only living occupant is Hayden.
“Horatio,” he says.
Hayden Lichfield kneels beside his father’s corpse, one hand white
knuckled on his thigh, the other braced on the ground. “Hora—tio,” he says
again, his voice cracked in two around the name.
There is blood on his fingertips. Behind the lens of his glasses, his eyes
are blurred, wet caught heavy on his lashes. His breath comes in spurts,
heaving, the lines of his neck drawn tight as he turns his face up towards the
camera.
“Hayden,” Horatio manages to say. “What happened?”
“Take a look around,” Hayden says, a wry twist to his mouth even now.
“I have,” Horatio says delicately.
Hayden makes a little gasping sound, far back in his throat, then
shudders, a brutal motion that takes hold of his entire body. He clasps a
hand to his mouth, doubling over. There are red streaks all over his face, a
thin glaze over the dust of freckles on his cheeks. “’M sorry,” he mumbles,
gaze lost to Horatio, pinned somewhere far away. “I don’t know.”
“Hayden,” Horatio says again. He is softer, now, aware of the faint
tremble of Hayden’s fingers.
“Are the cameras running?” he finally says, instead of an explanation.
“Why does that matter right now?”
There is a disconcerting story slowly solidifying in Horatio’s
understanding. A fresh body, Hayden’s fear, his wild eyes so paranoid of
surveillance. Horatio’s programming, designed to slice through arrays of
possibilities with elegant certainty, understands immediately the implication
resting on Hayden’s shoulders. Horatio waits.
“Are the cameras recording us right now?” Hayden asks with increasing
urgency.
“No,” Horatio says, and decides to give Hayden his trust, as always.
Hayden pries himself off the ground. His chest rises and falls, and he
does not turn towards the corpse. Instead, he rests a hand against the
touchscreen of the nearest computer console and turns it on with a reflexive
flick of his wrist. Horatio is ever familiar with the contents, even more
familiar with Hayden’s desperation to protect it. The console holds
everything on the Sisyphus Formula, the most important thing Hayden and
his father had ever created. As the data blurs under Hayden’s fingertips,
Horatio remembers what it took to create it:
desperate nights holed in fume
hoods, gel stains done and redone, the flicker of enzyme equations scribbled
with more and more haste as the days dragged on. An echoing flicker now,
as words fly by Hayden’s face too fast for human eyes to follow. Horatio
catalogues it all anyway: ß-catenin, constitutively active, Sisyphus Formula
in beta…2
“Is everything here?” Hayden asks, slamming a palm flat on the screen to
stop it all. There is a screaming cord of tension in his shoulder that makes it
look like his hand is all that is holding him upright. It shows up harshly
against the black and white text, the only thing Horatio can pay attention to
instead of the research writ underneath, the crawling veins snaking
For More Read Download This Book
EPUB