Read Online Offspring by Steven Harper - Free Book Online Page B

“I can barely get the idea through my head, let alone figure out the implications.”
    “And how do you think Ben feels about it?”
    Kendi froze. The news had flabbergasted him so badly he had barely noticed Ben’s agitated exit. “I have to go,” he said, and broke the connection without waiting for a response.
    A moment later he stood outside the door to Ben’s study. A thin line of light limned the bottom. He tried the knob. It turned easily. Kendi took a deep breath and entered.
    Ben was sitting at his desk, turning an old hard drive over and over in his hands. Computer guts and arcane bits of machinery littered the room around him. Ben didn’t look up when Kendi entered. Kendi just looked at him for a moment. Now that Kendi was looking for it, he could see the resemblance to Daniel Vik. It was eerie and made Kendi’s skin crawl. He swallowed. Irfan Qasad and Daniel Vik had reached across a millennium to create a man named Benjamin Rymar, a man Kendi had loved for almost fifteen years.
    All life, had it been that long? It had. Kendi clearly remembered the first time he had laid eyes on Ben. Ara had thrown a party in honor of several students who had entered the Dream for the first time. Kendi was among them. Ben sat on the floor in one corner, looking shy, forlorn, and striking. Flame-red hair, sky-blue eyes, large hands, and a lost puppy expression. Even today Kendi couldn’t believe he had just walked up to Ben and started talking to him, and every moment from then on, he was glad he had done it. Their relationship had survived numerous breakups, several attempts at murder, the Despair, and Ara’s death.
    So why are you so upset now? he thought. He’s the same person he was before. You just know more about him.
    Kendi stood behind Ben’s chair and put his hands on Ben’s shoulders. The muscles were tense and hard. Ben himself didn’t respond. He had shut down again, and Kendi’s heart felt as if it had dropped into a bucket of ice. Kendi leaned down to embrace him more fully.
    “Ben,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t react well. It was the last thing I was expecting to hear. I didn’t mean to shout. The news must have been a shock to you, too, hey?”
    Ben thawed a bit. “Kind of.”
    “I’m glad you told me. It must have been hard.”
    Ben grabbed Kendi’s wrist without answering. After a moment, his head dropped back to rest against Kendi’s body. Kendi wrapped his arms around Ben for a long time, savoring the relief.
    “What’s it like?” he said after a while. “Knowing who your bio-parents are, I mean.”
    Ben thought. “I don’t feel any different. Sometimes it doesn’t seem real. Irfan and Vik died so long ago and they’re so...famous. When I was little, I used to pretend Benjamin Heller—Mom’s fiancé before he died—was my bio-father and that he’d come home one day and play with me.”
    “Wait a minute,” Kendi said. “Ara once said—didn’t the cryo-unit’s computer record them as frozen in the same year Benjamin Heller died? Ara said it was almost like a sign or something.”
    “That’s when the embryos were put into that particular cryo-unit, yeah. My guess is they were transferred from an older unit into that one for some reason. Maybe the old one was breaking down. Anyway, the unit’s computer would record them as being ‘frozen’ when they—we—were put into the cryo-chambers. It doesn’t mean we weren’t created earlier than that.”
    “So who else knows?” Kendi asked.
    “Just Harenn and Lucia,” Ben said. “And I want to keep it that way.”
    “Oh?” Kendi hooked another chair with his foot and dragged it over so he could sit. “What do you mean?”
    “I mean I don’t want anyone else to find out about this,” Ben said fiercely. “Not Grandma, not my cousins, and definitely not that publicity woman. If this got out, I’d be an instant celebrity—and a target. The idea scares the shit out of me, Kendi. God. I’ve had