one can trace you.” Then his face brightened, and he reached into the drawer once more, this time bringing out the bottle of Cognac he’d bought on the day the God Project had begun. For ten long years he’d been the project’s watchdog. Today he was its savior. He broke the seal and poured them each a generous shot.
“Here’s to the future,” he said. “And all the wonderful creatures man is about to become.”
Epilogue
Three Years Later
SALLY MONTGOMERY FACED HER REFLECTION in the mirror with resignation. Her eyes seemed to have sunk deep within their sockets, and her hair, only three years ago a deep and luxuriant brown, had faded to a lifeless gray. Around her eyes, crow’s feet had taken hold and her forehead was creased with worry. And yet, even as she examined the deterioration, she felt no urge to fight it, but only a sense of relief that for her, the pain might soon be over.
It was The Boys who had done it to her.
She no longer thought of Jason as her son, nor of Randy Corliss as her foster son. To her, they had become The Boys. Strange, alien beings she neither knew nor trusted.
It had not been that way at first. At first they had been her children, both of them, with Randy Corliss filling the void in her life that had been left when Julie died. Even now she could remember the flood of emotion that had nearly overwhelmed her when she had gone to see Randy in his room at Eastbury Community Hospital.
He had lain still in bed, his eyes wide, his face expressionless. An image had flashed through her mind of pictures she had seen of children rescued from the concentration camps after World War II, their bodies emaciated, their hair fallen out from starvation, their eyes vacant, bodies and minds numbed by years of unspeakable abuse.
But Randy’s skin had been ruddy that day, and the lack of hair had given his head an oddly inhuman appearance. And in his eyes, instead of the look of pain and sorrow that Sally had expected, there had been curiosity, and a certain strange detachment.
“They’re dead, aren’t they?” he had asked. “Mom and Dad got killed in the fire, didn’t they?”
“Yes,” she had said, sitting by his bed and taking his hand in hers. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Randy.”
“What’s going to happen to me?”
At the time, Sally had attributed the question, and the lack of response to his parents’ deaths, to shock. She had explained to him that she and Steve were going to take care of him, and that he and Jason would be like brothers now.
Randy had smiled, then gone to sleep.
That had been the beginning.
The next day, she and Steve had taken Randy home and begun the wait. Every moment of every day and night they kept the vigil, waiting for the moment when Jason or Randy would suddenly, with no warning whatever, stop breathing and die.
But it hadn’t happened. First the days, then the weeks and months, had slipped by and the boys grew and appeared to thrive. Slowly, imperceptibly, Sally and Steve began to let their guard down. Instead of watching for the boys’ deaths, they began planning for their lives. After the end of the first year, when Randy turned eleven, and Jason was just past ten, they took them to Mark Malone for their monthly examination. When he was done with the boys, Dr. Malone spoke to Steve and Sally in his office.
“They’re remarkable in every way,” he said. “They’re both large for their age and unusually well developed. It seems almost as if the GT-active factor, as well as protecting them, allows them to mature more quickly than normal children.”
“What does that mean?” Sally asked. “I mean, for them?”
“I’m not sure,” Malone admitted. “It could mean nothing, but it could be a first sign of premature aging. It could be that while they’ll live very healthy lives, they’ll live short lives, even if the burn-out syndrome is never triggered. But that’s just speculation,” he assured them. “Frankly, with these boys, there’s no way of telling what might happen. All we can do is wait and see.”
The waiting had gone on for two more years. During those years the boys had grown closer and closer, their personalities taking on each other’s traits, until both Sally and Steve had unconsciously fallen into the habit of speaking to them as if they were a single unit. What was told to