Ash Ketchum: The Prisoner Of Cell 25

Ch. 40 A Talk

"Of course I know who I am."

"Yes, I know you think you do. But you don't really know." His gaze softened. "Who are you? You're a victim, Ash. A victim of your environment. You have been brainwashed, your thoughts contaminated by the human Petri dish your mind has been cultured in.

"For instance, you're been told that all men are created equal, but anyone who isn't stupid or ignorant can see that that just isn't true. Some are rich, some are poor. Some are smart and some are fools. No, no one is born equal. Especially you.

"You're not even equal to the other electric children. You handle electricity in a different way. And you seem to be getting more powerful. I compared your el-waves from now to when I first met you in Idaho. They've risen. It's very impressive." He leaned forward. "Do you know what we do here, Ash?"

"Kill babies with your machine?"

Cyrus chuckled. "What an interesting take you have on this. That's the one thing I've learned about working with youth—if you think you know what they're thinking, you're mistaken." He straightened his tie. "You're right, you know. At least partially. It is about the machine. The MEI we call it. The MEI may have been a failure as an imaging device, but it led to the discovery of something more important. Much more important.

"If you think about it, Ash, there's a marvelous fate to all this. Many of the world's greatest discoveries are results of accidents. The MEI was one of those happy accidents. We set out to take pictures of the human body and instead we improved the human body. We invented superhumans. We invented the electric children.

"We've spent the last dozen years tracking them down. There were seventeen of you who survived. Seventeen very special children. Sadly, there are only thirteen of you left—four of you died before the age of seven."

"Died of what?"

"Cancer. No doubt attributable to the excessive electricity coursing through your cells. We can't be certain, of course, but there's a chance that unless we find a cure for your condition, that may be all of your fates."

I sat back in my chair. I had never considered that what I had was a disease.

"But I digress. I was saying that we had found all the survivors except two: you and Miss Yvonne. Miss Yvonne was adopted out-of-state and you know how inefficient government bureaucracy is. Her records got lost in the process. And you, well, we tracked you for a while, all throughout California.

"You don't know it, but we've been more a part of your life than you realize. If you look through your family picture album, say on that trip you took to Disneyland when you were seven, you're likely to find a picture of one of our agents in the background. Then, right after your father's death, your mother pulled a fast one and disappeared. We lost you.

"Actually, it's quite impressive how she eluded us, seeing that you didn't even know you were being followed. So we set some traps and hoped that you would someday come looking for us. And you did. Actually, it was Miss Yvonne who did. But we never dreamed that we'd be so fortunate that she'd lead us to you. In this matter, fate was truly generous."

Fate sucks, I thought. "What do you want from us?"

Cyrus stood and walked around to the front of his desk, leaning back against it. "We're scientists, Ash. We want what all scientists want. Truth. The truth about you. The truth about how you do what you do. We want to know why you lived when so many others died."

"No matter what you call yourself, you're just a bunch of murderers," I said.

"So much anger in you, Ash," Cyrus said coolly. "But boys in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, should they?"