Ryan Reeves was too young to drive, but he wasn’t the type to believe in limitations like that.
“ What can I get you? ” asked the voice through the tinny drive-through speaker.
He grabbed the lever and cranked the window off the car down the rest of the way before leaning out towards the speaker. “I’d like two Big Macs, two boxes of twenty-piece Chicken McNuggets, two large fries, and two large cokes.”
“ Alright, will that be cash, debit, or credit? ”
“Cash.”
“ Super, please pay at the next window. ”
“Sure thing.” He put his foot onto the gas and rolled forward in line. He was lucky that he was tall for his age, and he prayed that nobody would question why somebody so young was behind the wheel with no adult present. He even deliberately forgot to shave for a few days so he’d have a few hairs on his zitty chin.
He pulled up to the next window.
“That’ll be twenty-five dollars and fourteen cents,” said the bored-looking drive thru attendant.
“Sure, one sec.” Ryan opened his wallet and pulled out his last forty dollars. He passed over the money and held his hand out for change.
“Fourteen dollars and sixteen cents is your change,” said the attendant, handing him the bills and coins.
“Sweet, thanks.” Ryan pulled up to the next window.
“Here you go, kid.” The guy behind the window handed him the bags of food and the drinks.
“Thanks, man.” Ryan dropped the food into the seat next to him.
The guy gave him a once-over, taking in the bags under his eyes, his messy black hair, his too-big raincoat, and the acne on his chin. “Ain’t ya a little young to drive?”
Ryan paused. He looked the drive thru guy up and down. He had greasy hair and didn’t seem to be too much older than Ryan.
“No.”
He hit the gas and drove away.
Smooth.
The traffic was heavy, as it usually was in Brooklyn. Ryan waited patiently at a stoplight, drumming his fingers on the outside door of the car. It was plain and a little beat-up, but it managed in a pinch. He had been tempted to try and get his hands on something big and impressive, maybe a red hot-rod, but he’d begrudgingly decided that a small, inconspicuous car would probably be better for a getaway.
It was late at night. He turned on the radio.
His palms were sweaty and slick against the steering wheel, his heart was pounding, and he felt slightly nauseated. The fast food smelled good, but he knew that he didn’t have the stomach to eat it. His intestines twisted into knots at the thought of eating, right now.
It would probably be cold by the time this operation was done, but it’s not like they could stop for food after they made the getaway. The two of them would probably want to eat after a busy night of getaways.
Ryan pulled up onto the curb in front of the building. He hopped out of the car, put a few quarters into the parking machine, and climbed into the flattened-out back seat.
He had two laptops, a radio, headphones, and a pair of crossed fingers to get him through this mission. The wires on the laptops were exposed, the fans hummed loudly, and the screen on one of them was cracked along one side. These laptops had been built by hand, Macgyvered together out of two old TVs, a 1990s PC, a microwave, five iphones, and an MP3 player, all scrounged from a San Francisco e-waste dump.
The radio was a normal radio, but it was an old model. It had only taken a little bit of modification to make it into a handy-dandy police scanner.
Ryan turned on the radio. He twisted the knob until the static faded into voices discussing a convenience store break-in. That sounded like a good time, to him, but he was a little bit busy at the moment.
He set up one laptop to hack into the surveillance cameras, he set up the other one to attack the security system. It took a few short minutes to break into the systems. He had the entire building at his fingertips.
Ryan was good at what he did. He’d always had a knack for electronics. Levitan used to tousle his hair and asked him where he got all his smarts, because he sure didn’t get it from them.
Ryan looked out the car window. The bright white letters of Monsoon glowed in front of him. The sight of it made him sick. He’d memorized the blueprints of that building, inside and out. Aside from eating food and not dying, this plan had been his only goal for the last five years. Five years without Levitan, five years he was determined to make up for.
He popped his knuckles and put his hands on the keyboard.
The car radio was still on. “London Calling” played in the background.
Ryan grinned and started to pick apart the digital security system, one byte of information at a time.
That kid seemed to walk by Levitan’s cell a lot. He always had this stupid guilty look on his face, and he’d always drop by after the hallways emptied out for the day.
Levitan didn’t do much with their time aside from lay on their bed, hallucinate vividly, do pushups, and stare out their little porthole. It wasn’t much but hey, it was a living.
“Hello?”
Levitan raised their head. They stood slowly and walked over to the door.
Yep, right on schedule. The clueless kid was standing outside the cell, fidgeting and checking over his shoulder as if someone was going to sneak up on him.
“Go away,” they said.
“I have a question,” he said.
They glanced down. He had a fucking notepad in his hand.
“Can’t you read my file or somethin’?” they asked. “They’ve got everythin’ written out from the sequence of my DNA to the diameter of my nostrils. Beat it. ”
“Well, uh,” he said, tapping his pencil to his notepad. “I don’t have access to it. I’m just curious about why you’re here.”
“Huh.”
He waited expectantly. In other circumstances, his naivety and curiosity would be possibly endearing. As it was, Levitan found it extremely irritating.
“Well?” he said.
“Well, what?”
“Why are you here? I thought we were doing genetic experimentation...” Akio cringed when Levitan scowled deeply. “... and I thought, um… well, you look… normal?”
Levitan raised an eyebrow. “So… you’re tellin’ me that I shouldn’t rightly be here ‘cause I don’t got no scales or feathers or tentacles or nothin’?”
“Um… well, not in those words, but-”
“Listen, pipsqueak,” said Levitan, pressing their hand to the glass. “Not all strangeness is on the outside, y’hear? If I were you, I wouldn’t come anywhere near someone like me.”
“Why?” he asked, scribbling in his notepad.
“I’ve killed twenty of the scientists who’ve come to work on me,” they said, glowering down at him. “I strangled two with my own bedsheets, I beat the shit out of one who was dumb enough to check on me mano-a-mano , I actually ripped the throat out of another, and just last week I butchered one with part of my mirror. I think I bashed out a few brains and choked a few mother fuckers out an’ shit over the years, too. I dunno, I’ve lost count.”
Akio looked pale. He swallowed. The bowtie bobbed. “W-why? Why did you kill them?”
“Hey, I’m just defendin’ myself,” they said. They grinned nastily. “Plus, I ain’t exactly averse to takin’ a life. You’re lookin’ at the most amoral, ruthless, backstabbin’, ass-kickin’, murderin’ asshole to ever enter this piece of shit facility.” They jabbed a finger at the glass, towards Akio as he cowered below them. “If you ever find me on the same side of this door as you, you’d best start prayin’ for your salvation ‘cause prayin’ for your life ain’t gonna do you no good. Got it? ”
Akio looked a little shaken by this. He put his notebook in his pocket. “Right. Okay.”
Levitan’s hand was still on the door. They leaned forwards just a tiny bit.
Slowly, with a loud, groaning creak… the door swung open.
