Greatest

3: the Fates bound fast in iron chains

"How about I kill Senator Kyd's daughter like you've always wanted me to?"
"Do you mean it?" My father asks, not looking up from his papers on his desk. He has two laptops open, but waves a hand for his secret service agents to leave.
"She's on Rose and Swan's swim team this year. I've qualified for their fencing. Let me go and kill her. It's election year, dad, he's never going to challenge you mourning the mysterious death of his only child," I say, leaning on the desk.
"Alone?" He looks at me.
"They'd never know it was me," I say, smiling my charming smile. See? Charm.
"How would you do it?" He cocks his head.
"However you want?" I say, spreading my arms out like this is a good deal for him (it really is).
"You know I hate that fucking school—," narrowing his eyes at me.
"Yeah, well you hate Kyd more right? I'll kill the girl, he'll withdraw from the race while they look for her body, you become a three term president, thing of fucking beauty," I say.
"How long is it going to take him to find the body?" He asks.
"How long do you want?" I ask, nicely.
"Two weeks, don't want too much press he could use it to his advantage."
"Would you do that? If one of us died use the press to your advantage?" I ask, folding my arms.
"Of course? What does it matter? You're already dead."
The answer reader, is everything matters. I'm already dead, I'm already dead if you're reading this but this is my story. Not his. I don't want my death plagiarized into something he can use for his benefit. It's mine. He can't take this from me. That's the reason for this little volume. I am not some footnote in his life. And I don't have a lot of time to make the world notice me. But perhaps, with this. Perhaps I can have meant something. Maybe it isn't too late. I mean it's too late for me, but you know, maybe the time I have left can mean something, if not for me for someone else.
"Yeah, doesn't matter."
"Why? You plan on getting yourself killed?"
"No, sir," I smile.
"Fine, do it, I assume your mother can sign the necessary paperwork?"
"Yeah, tell me just when you want the girl dead?"
"Oh, you know I'll be in touch, Cyrus. And if you think about taking that tracker off you can bet I'll have you back at Wilton's in a heartbeat," he says, as I turn to go.
I give him a thumbs up.
Interesting thing, the thumbs up symbol originated in ancient Rome. And it symbolized a sword going up, ergo, execution. The thumbs down, meant spare the gladiator.
Oh.
Don't look at me in that tone of voice.
Yes, me, these words are all that are left of me now, so, me. So. Don't look at me like that.
Nobody's actually going to die in this story. Well. Other than me. Calm down, Do. I'm not going to kill anyone, least of all Tessa Kyd for her father's meager crime of opposing my horrible father. No. You see the beauty of this expiration date I've got, I don't have to do anything. I can delay things I don't like right up till my death. And I plan on it. No, the only person with a bloody end here is me. Never fear. We got that out into the open.
So now I just have to actually get into Rose and Swan.
"Coach, you still want me on your team?" I ask, cradling my cell phone against my ear. He tried to recruit me at summer nationals, but my father objected for previous stated reasons. Well, now I've got an in.
"Do you have—any idea what time it is?" Very muffled, and someone else is mumbling in the background.
"Yeah, earlier there on the West Coast, so is that a yes or no? Come on you know that's a yes."
"Want is a very strong word."
"Coach."
"Fine, you'd better be less trouble than you're worth—shut up I know what I mean—,"
"Was that to me?"
"Nope, the application is still good, get it signed and back to me. You're an Admiral now."
"Thanks," I realize I'm just standing in the hall smiling at my now silent phone. He hung up. I'm in. I'm going to Rose and Swan. I'm doing this. I'm really doing this.
I head back to my room, stopping by Michael's first.
"Fucking A," Michael says, as he lies on his bed staring at his laptop, no doubt he's got the security feeds on it. By 'the' I mean 'his'.
"Dad still hasn't found your mics?" I ask.
"Nah," he says, crossing his legs as he lies on the bed. He's wearing rumpled track pants and he's still got gravy smeared on his face from dinner. Our father didn't attend so a minor food fight started. Our mother loves having all three of us home too much to get cross. His hair is short still, a crew cut basically. He shaved it when I shaved mine for the MRI and CAT scans. I mean, I didn't tell them that was why. It was. I said it was so no one could grab it in a fight. Our father was good with that. So Michael shaved his too. He lies on his made bed, bandaids are already stained with blood, and there's a cut on his right ear I don't know how he got. "What?"
"Nothing," being your brother is all. Something I always thought I'd have. Well, that's dramatic. I mean, statistically it was likely one of us was going to die. I just didn't think it would be me. "Get some sleep, the dawn run comes early."
"Do not remind me," he mutters, tugging a pillow over to lean on.
I glance in Peter's room. Our mother is in there with him, helping him bandage a cut on his leg. That's good I guess. I recall many a night when she would come and check my wounds. No longer necessary of course. I'm quite grown up. Well, mostly anyway. I suppose this is as grown up as I'm going to get.
I go to my room, and lay down on the cool sheets. Smooth, soft, clean, smelling faintly of the organic detergent they use. Crisp, fresh sheets. We're supposed to make our own beds and things usually but this week our mother convinced our father to let us have the maid duty, as next week we go back to school and are responsible for our own stuff again.
I roll over, looking up at the fan overhead, letting the cool air land on my face again, and again, again.
I'm dying.
I'm dying.
The words pound in my brain it didn't feel real till now. I don't want to believe it and I hardly want to weep for myself why should I? I'm not losing myself, the rest of the world is.
And all these moments I have left seem so, so few. I just want them to stop like this. Lying here on the bed, breathing, the room drunk on neon light from the TV screen. Music playing on the radio, and the dream continues, on and on in perfect, quiet free from pain or fear. I want to experience every single moment drenched in moonlight and intoxicated with normalcy.
That's why I can't tell anyone.
Before I die. I need to know what life really is, I want to experience it, as it happens. Not with some convoluted plan or anything like that. I want to just get to be me. I feel like I haven't done that enough yet.
That's why I'm writing this all down, I suppose. Because I feel like right now if I vanished off the face of the earth nothing would really matter. And it's very egotistical of me I know but I really, really want to matter. I want to be remembered. Not to slip away in time as a tragedy, no I don't want that. I want to be somebody or have been somebody. If only for a minute.
"Cyrus? You feeling better?" My mother knocks on my door, gently.
I sit up, bracing my hands on the bed behind me, "Yeah, I'm—I don't know if I've ever been better."
"Your father said you had a headache, during knife practice," she says, "I can send for a doctor if—,"
"No, no it's fine, it's really fine, honestly, just a headache—which I've got more pills for now, so good, all good," I say, nodding for her to come in, "Did dad tell you? I'm changing schools for the fall? In fact there are some forms I need you to sign probably—,"
"No, he didn't tell me, that's good, I mean, if you want to switch, I thought you were enjoying day school?" She frowns.
"No," that's not what enjoyment looks like. At all. Not really at all. "I thought for senior year I'd go to Rose and Swan, you know, their fencing team is one of the best—,"
"Yeah, I remember you talking about going there—yeah that's good. So long as you're happy. I'll miss you coming home on the weekend though," she says, petting my hair.
"Yeah," I won't miss coming home on the weekends.
"And your headaches, what about that?" She cocks her head, studying my face.
"They're fine," everything is fine, everything has to be fine because if it's not—then life doesn't mean anything at all and I do not accept that, "The doctor said that they'd get worse before they'd get better and after that I'm home free."
"All right, well, if you're feeling okay. If you want I can ask your dad to excuse you from the morning run tomorrow."
Morning run.
Morning run.
I wasn't thinking. I don't have time for thinking about dying or anything because tomorrow is morning run.
Whatever expectations you have when you read the words 'morning run', I'm going to need you to take them, drench them in vodka and cooking grease, set them on fire, and throw them into a wasp of angry hornets because that will get you closer to what morning run is like than whatever expectation you had.
Every Thursday, without fail, every Thursday that I am not away at school, my father, our father, has myself and my brothers transported to some remote part of whatever city we are currently living or staying in.
And we must run.
We must run home, or to wherever we're staying or the location is typically that's just home. And we are to out run and outsmart literally anyone who he has set to chase us. As of late, that is typically just secret service people who are world class athletes trained in the art of I don't know, following people, though it is not beyond him to occasionally (read that as often) hire his own men to try to follow us.
Why you ask? Same as the reason for knife practice.
We must be the greatest.
We must be the greatest of all time the fastest the strongest the smartest. We must be better, than everybody, ever, at everything but mostly staying alive.
And so we run.
Every Thursday without fail we run and we are not caught no, because we are the Laine boys and we are better than them, we'll grind ourselves to dust before we let them break us.
Our secret service agents, are, absolutely, enamored of this little tradition, by the way. They simply adore the part of the week when they are to follow us to this random location and then we absolutely book it across DC, actively loosing them, and completing the occasional side quest along the way.
So no, I don't have time to think about boarding school, or fencing, or dying, or how I'm going to engineer falling in love and having a romance in this very short time frame I now have, or thinking of a way to make sure my mother and brothers don't miss me when I'm gone, or anything at all I should be doing.
Because it's time to run.
Wake up call is at three am. I'm in street clothes and well planned running shoes in the back of a limo. The fact that they know we're going to do this makes it all the harder. And Michael and Peter and I always coordinate because we are in the end a team, we are the only people who will look out for each other.
And we do know it.
I don't know how familiar you are, dear reader, with the DC area but it's really not going to matter because my descriptions, are what we're going to fondly refer to as 'DC as described by a seventeen year old sociopath infected with unholy alien brain goop, explained in a deeply sarcastic manner based solely off observations made while running for his life metaphorically and physically'.
And running for my life is not an exaggeration. I was caught twice by secret service. The first time my father had me beaten so badly I couldn't go to school for two weeks, for fear of bruises, and I had to log fifteen miles of running a day on my tracker during those two weeks.
The second time was because I was helping Peter get away it was his first run. My father tied me up and took the knives to me himself. I got free to defend myself before I'd lost too much blood, but I was near passing out when we finally stopped. I needed forty eight stitches.
So yes.
We run.
In DC there's a place called the National Academy of the Sciences, it's near a pleasant little park, called Mitchell Park. We're not going there, but we're driving by it. They are supposed to be taking us to Kalamora Park, which is farther east but that's trivia. Because right before we pass Mitchell Park, I put in my headphones, stretching an arm. It's time to run. I merely blink at my brothers, they know.
I fling open the car door and roll out, they slow the car to catch me, which affords my brothers an escape, I see Peter have to lose his jacket and we are on our way.
We bolt in opposite directions, Peter into the park, and Michael and I towards the embassies.
The moment I duck into the crowd I shed my hoodie and pull on a hat, tapping my headphones to start playing my favorite running playlist. It's mostly rap. I don't know why I said that I'm trying to be cool I guess.
It's not rap.
It's Bruce Springsteen. Born to Run, on repeat specifically. Why? Because it makes me happy. And my spectacular life deserves an amazing sound track.
I dart through the crowd. Typical, busy morning in DC. The embassies are bustling, tourists were everywhere.
And I'm just a snot nosed, acne covered kid darting through the crowd on a cloudy Thursday morning, wearing a tourist DC t-shirt, and jeans, running like he's out for a happy morning jog like this doesn't happen every week and he's long since learned not to be afraid.
I need to cut by the Dominican Republic Embassy to make it to Decauter, to the Annabelle restaurant. I can attract a couple of tails there and then hopefully lead them off my brother's trail by doubling back towards Rock Creek.
I hit Annebelle's and shift in past early morning customers, I snag a cup of water off a passing tray, downing it one gulp, while two secret service agents push in the back door. They catch sight of me and I'm back out the front door and down the street.
Rock Creek.
Rock Creek.
They know me. Oh they know me by now. They know I'll fly to the water.
But knowing me doesn't do any good when they can't out swim me.
I cross the street in the middle, hopping over the front of a moving yellow cab, flipping off the driver and exchanging friendly obscenities in his native tongue before I'm breaking into the boundaries of Rock Creek Park.
I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, this is pointless, Cyrus. You're dying. These agents don't deserve to spend their day chasing your dying alien goop infected ass through a park and getting in trouble for loosing you for the thousandth time.
And I know.
All that's true. I never claimed to be a good person. I am the man my father made, for better or for worse. And we don't get much better than this. This is just who we are if we weren't racing through the city confounding secret service and knocking over tourists, then we'd probably be blowing something up someplace because we Laine boys are demons straight from hell. We are live wires, firecrackers, bombs ticking waiting to explode. Someone is going to be hurt. You just have to hope it's not you.
And I am running, on P street bridge, a nice little bottleneck and there's two behind me and three in front of me.
They shout at me to stop but my music drowns it out. I leap over the side of the bride without a second though, flipping, cutting smoothly into some of the most disgusting water you will EVER have the misfortune of reading about. No goggles, no fins, just me in street clothes, out swimming two men who I know for a fact were SEALS.
Well, not outswimming. I'm not going to be faster than them.
But I am going to be smarter.
They're slowed because I kick beneath the surface as long as I can before dipping up for air, very very briefly. The current is strong and the water is, oh, so foul. But I'm swimming. Smooth, through the cold cold water. My jeans are heavy and every muscle screams in pain by the time I reach the Thompson boat launch.
I haul myself from the water, fairly free of a tail now. Next stop is to find a ride—and look at that car just leaving.
I hop into the bed of a pick up truck, counting the turns. Yes, Virginia Avenue, east bound which is back towards the white house.
I count the stops till Triangle park. There's no light where I want to get off so I balance on the edge of the truck, hopping onto a chevy and nearly sliding off in my damp state. I do then have to hop off as the drivers slows due to my interference.
Now I have three blocks to sprint back to the white house grounds. Somedays we have to get in. Today's mission assignment was just to make it to the grounds, specifically to rendezvous at the zero milestone.
At the tail end of my sprint I spot two agents on my tail, but they are several hundred yards back after leaping out of a vehicle, and I easily out pace them to the mile stone.
My brothers are already waiting, dripping with sweat, and looking mildly road-burned. Peter has a skinned cheek and split lip, Michael looks like he leapt in the Potomac and that's probably because he did.
I slap my hand on the milestone, leaning on it as my agents catch up. Peter and Michael's tales are standing there talking into radios and saying 'secured' a lot.
"Good run," I nod to my brothers, panting, as I take out my headphones.
"Good run," Michael says, leaning a hand on my back. Impulsively, I wrap my arms around his waist and push my head into his, giving him a tight hug for the briefest of moments.
"We're reporting to your father you got lost," Jonesy, one of my agents, sighs, "You kids really think nearly dying is funny, huh?"
"Oh, I find dying hilarious," I say, tugging Peter for inspection. His hurt but not badly, and compliant as a show dog he lets me check him over for injury.
"Course you fucking do. You going to be this much trouble at school?" Jonesy asks me. He's going to be one of the ones coming with me. They cycle off, but two are on me at all times (theoretically) with six total doing rotations so everyone has a chance to go home and such.
"I plan on being more," I grin.
"Okay, I'm done, I think we get three hours on the x-box for that," Michael pants, turning to go.
"Oh yes I haven't beaten you at Mario Kart, lately," I say, "Come on Jonesy, want to watch us being normal kids?"
"No, have to get my ass chewed out for losing you idiots, again," he says, though it's with some affection.
"Peter—what's up?" I ask, realizing he's leaning against the zero mile marker and not following us in.
"My feet hurt is all," he says, really quietly.
I sigh, kneeling down, "Show me."
He lifts up one foot and lets me peel off the shoe. The inside is well bloodied, and he's wearing no socks so his foot is rubbed raw.
I pick him up, tugging off the other shoe, "Peter, what happened to your socks?"
"I didn't put them in the wash last week," he says.
"So borrow mine, dummy," Michael says.
"Come on, lets go inside," I say, swinging him to my back.
"Aren't you tired?" He mumbles, clearly spent. That's a long run, probably seven miles if he took the shortcuts I showed him.
"I've got pretty good stamina," I say, though my entire body is raw with pain. That was a rough one. Possibly swimming that far wasn't the best idea I've had but it works, so I count it as good.
The agents let us back into the secured lawn and Micheal and I trudge inside to go change. I deposit Peter in our mother's office and then take my river smelling self to my room to shower and get cleaned up.
Then I have a seizure and I die.