Novus homo

by BRK   

An FBI agent interrogates an uncommonly attractive young man caught hiding during a trafficking raid. Is he a victim, a coconspirator, or something else entirely?

Danvers stepped into the interrogation room, letting the heavy door swing shut behind him. His interviewee sat glumly in the corner chair, shirtless and shivering slightly in the chill air of the room, barely looking up as the agent entered the tiny space. Maybe a single glance was all you needed. Suit and tie, clean-cut, short and tidy brown hair, medium height, medium build. Handsome in a rubber-stamped, “the government has a million more like him” sort of way. Give him sunglasses, an earpiece, and black SUV, and he’d be right out of central casting, the cookie-cutter prototype of the FBI drone. 

His subject was a lot harder to pin down, Danvers thought as he lingered by the door, assessing. He looked like an innocent college kid, maybe 20 tops—nearly half his age. Tall, tousled dark hair, hard to miss even in a crowd. Blue-eyed, wide-mouthed, sharp-jawed, and basically as good looking as they came, though the boyish charm he should have been able to wield with looks like that seemed to be offline for the moment. Probably had an amazing smile, Danvers thought, not that he was likely to see it today. 

His current state of attire, or lack thereof—he’d been brought in decked out in red nylon mesh basketball shorts and literally nothing else—revealed a lithe, elegantly-proportioned, generously-muscled body that Danvers guessed wasn’t just for show. He could picture the kid using that sculpted brawn and limber reach for something involving both strength and skill, like gymnastics or judo; though he probably let his body help him garner his share of fuck-buddies, too. Or maybe not; Danvers wasn’t sure if the kid was more likely to play off his effortless charisma to score all the tail he liked, or if his demeanor matched his good-boy looks and he was courting his girl until marriage. Hard to believe someone wasn’t at least feeling up those rippling abs and those square, slab-like pecs every so often, if nothing else.

He glanced down at the kid’s bare feet—even those seemed strong and graceful. Long toes, like his fingers. Danvers frowned. A diligent, athletic, straight-arrow specimen like this one didn’t normally get mixed up in the kinds of things that crossed his desk.

He tried meeting his subject’s eyes, but the kid wasn’t looking at him. Danvers sighed and dropped into one of the remaining two standard office chairs in the little room, barely larger than a closet. Maybe it had been one, once, back when the field office was the failed office rental place it had started out as. There was nothing else in there with them but the small table against the wall next to the kid, and the camera equipment in the corners. On it sat a small bottle of water, so far ignored and unopened. 

Danvers leaned forward. He felt the unblinking stare of the video camera mounted to the ceiling in the corner behind him and tried to ignore it. It was slightly concerning that no one was directly observing this interview, the rest of his team being occupied with the juicier fruits of today’s raid than the young unidentified possible co-conspirator they’d found hiding in the warehouse boiler room. Danvers himself was in here because he was currently reaping the rewards of being on the wrong side of Special Agent in Charge Willa Jones this week, thanks to some late-filed paperwork that had snowballed into a missed arraignment date and a botched plea deal. From now on, he was making damn sure he checked that every email he’d clicked “Send” on had actually been sent and wasn’t loitering forgotten in his outbox like the secret Osmond brother in the attic.

So, it was just him. Him and the kid. At least the video would be available after for anyone who cared to look at it. Or it might gather metaphorical dust in the bottom of the archives, a footnote to what was likely to go down as one of the biggest kidnapping and human trafficking busts of the twenty-first century. 

“So, I’m Special Agent David Danvers,” he said, slipping automatically into his gentle, uninflected cop voice that somehow seemed to get most of his subjects talking. “What’s your name, kid?”

The subject snorted. “Kid,” he repeated derisively, still not looking at Danvers. His gaze seemed fixed on a random spot on the carpeted floor. Danvers glanced that way, just to confirm that the subject was looking at nothing in particular, then resumed his questioning.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’d like to call you by your name, if you’ll give it to me.”

“I gave you my name,” the kid grumbled, eyes still down. 

Danvers hummed. “You gave us a name,” he agreed. “We ran the name, address, and social you gave the uniformed officers who took your statement after you were extracted from the warehouse following the raid, and you know what they found?”

The kid finally looked up, his blue eyes skewering Danvers in a way he should have been more prepared for. He ignored the little trip his heart gave him and kept his focus on connecting through proximity and eye contact.

“What?” the subject asked. There was a note of anxiety in his voice, like he wasn’t sure what Danvers would say.

“Nothing,” Danvers told him flatly. “No one with that name and address. The social came up as unassigned. There was nothing in the trafficking ring records we seized, either. Nothing in any LEO database, not even facial recognition. No taxes, driver’s license, dog license, nothing. Not. A damn. Thing.”

The kid blinked at him for a second and looked down again, keeping his face a mask though, if Danvers was any good at reading people, he was clearly devastated. He clicked his tongue but said nothing.

“You want to try again?” Danvers pressed. “Fingerprints are next, but I wanted to do this first. I figured you might tell me what we’ll find if we run them.”

The subject shrugged his impressive shoulders. “Who knows.” His voice was a pleasant tenor, and Danvers was annoyed with himself for enjoying the sound of it. Focus, Dave, he told himself.

Danvers decided to wait. After a few beats, the subject let out a breath and said dejectedly, “I guess I don’t have a name.”

Danvers wasn’t sure what to make if this. Did he mean he’d been disavowed by somebody—CIA, Homeland, some foreign power? It didn’t seem likely, but then the kid had exactly the right looks to get people to trust him—admittedly a useful trait for an undercover spy. “Everyone has a name,” he said flatly.

The kid glanced up at him from under his lashes. “Not when you’re first… made.” There was discomfort there, Danvers thought. He hadn’t wanted to say that, hadn’t wanted to put it that way, which had to mean there was some significance.

Danvers narrowed his eyes at his half-naked person of interest. “Made.” The usual implication was Mafioso of one flavor or another, and organized crime was likely in a human trafficking case like this; but it didn’t match at all with the kid’s tone or situation. Being “made” mafia-style meant claiming an identity, not losing one. And the kid wasn’t sounding like he used to be someone and wasn’t anymore, either. He was sounding like there was no “him” at all.

Memory loss? Brainwashing? Whatever the kid was implying, he didn’t like it. 

He decided to be facetiously literal, to see if he could force a clarification. “What,” he scoffed, “so, you’re fresh out of the vat, is that what you’re saying?”

The kid lifted his chin and looked him straight in the eyes. “Yes, Agent Danvers. That’s what I’m saying.”

They stared at each other for a long moment. Danvers was suddenly very glad after all this interview was not being observed. Finally, he said, “I’m going to need—” He foundered for a second, not sure how to end his sentence in a way that wouldn’t shut down his subject. “—more than that,” he decided finally.

The kid sighed and fell back against his chair, wincing at the press of chilly metal on his bare back. “Can I get a tee shirt or something?” he asked crossly. “It’s sixty degrees in here. My nipples are like diamonds.”

Danvers made a point of not checking the subject’s nipples. Wordlessly he got up and left the room, returning a few minutes later with an XL navy Bureau tee nicked from Kopecki’s bottom drawer—Danvers’s own spare workout tees being likely too small. He tossed the shirt over and the subject thanked him, pulling it on gratefully. It fit well enough, Danvers decided as sat down again, watching his subject. Maybe it was just a tad short on the kid’s long, lanky frame, especially with the way those red shorts seemed to hang low on him. If he were to stand up straight and tall there’d be a thin strip of flat belly between tee shirt and shorts. 

In terms of hiding how sexily proportioned his subject was, the shirt was, if anything, counterproductive. Bare-chested the emphasis was all on his vertical lines, but with Kopecki’s Bureau tee taut across his delts and pecs there was an added awareness of the breadth of his upper torso compared to his narrow waist and firm legs. 

Stop thinking about his body, Danvers admonished himself. 

“You ready to tell me what you meant by… what you said?” he said.

The kid grimaced. “You’re not going to believe me.”

“Probably not.”

The kid was back to staring at that spot on the floor. Clearly he wasn’t volunteering anything just yet. Danvers decided to take a side route and come back around. “You want to know what my colleagues think?” he asked, not waiting for an answer. “See, you’re not like the eleven abduction victims we rescued, chained up in their little cells for a week and barely lucid from fear. They’re all pretty ordinary. Clean-cut college freshmen types. All on the missing persons lists, with family and friends begging God and the cops to get them back. 

“Then there’s the suspects we took in, every one of them on one wanted list or another. Cold-hearted psychos. Thugs.” He shifted minutely in his chair, keeping his subject’s attention on him.

“You, we found hiding in an equipment room right off the main office. No chains. No sneers. Not on any lists, naughty or nice. Gave a fake name and IDs, though, which is reasonably suspicious.”

Nothing from the kid. Danvers pressed on. “My colleagues think you’re one of the perps’ kid brothers. Maybe a boy toy. Stopped by, got caught in the raid. Could be you’re good for a few dribs of extra second-hand info, which is why I’m in here with you.” At this the kid reacted, a slight huff without looking up, like the idea of him having any info was funny. Danvers noted the reaction and went on. “But we have what we need without that, and plenty of it. Kopecki, he thinks you’re complicit—you lured the victims in, all charm and innocence.”

The kid looked up finally, glaring daggers at Danvers through his lashes but still saying nothing. Offended by the idea, Danvers thought. “Me,” he continued steadily, holding the fiery blue-eyed gaze, “I have a different theory.”

He waited a beat. The kid watched him, almost like he was hoping Danvers would explain to him what part he played in all this. “The assholes we arrested, I think they’re just enforcers and overseers. Not the actual masterminds of this scheme. There’s a bigger picture, and my gut is telling me you’re the key.” 

He paused, considering all the hints and tells he’d been getting so far. He was getting that prickle on the nape of his neck that told him he was on the right track, even if he didn’t quite know where it was headed. At least, he hoped it was his subconscious reasoning driving this train, and not his easily-distracted libido. 

He pushed the thought aside. “If you’re the key,” he repeated more slowly, almost thinking out loud, “what we have to do is… find the lock.”

Those dark eyebrows lifted a fraction. He’s curious now, Danvers thought. That makes two of us. 

Danvers made a snap decision and stood abruptly. “On your feet,” he said, already headed for the door. “Let’s take a field trip.”

“Why am I not in a cell?” the kid asked. He lifted his bare wrists, showing Danvers the fine veins there. His forearms weren’t abnormally thick with muscle, but they looked strong anyway. “Or cuffed?”

Danvers kept his eyes on the road. The yellow cabs heading north with them on Broadway were edging out of his lane, as if a second sense was telling the hacks that this particular black SUV was the kind with an armory in the back and steel rings built in for securing prisoners. He wondered what they’d think if they knew the interior still smelled stubbornly of mocha and peppermint, thanks to a Christmas Eve Starbucks disaster in the back seat no one on the team would fess up to.

He wondered what the kid would smell like, up close. 

“Let’s just say I think I’ll learn more if you’re there with me,” he said, forcing down his thoughts.

The kid was eyeing him appraisingly. “I could overpower you,” he suggested. His tone was almost academic, as if Danvers had invited him to poke holes in their current scenario.

Danvers had to concede it was a possibility. He was very highly trained, not only in the standard field agent hand-to-hand defensive tactics but a few others, like the krav maga his older sister had drilled into him when they were orphaned teens. He had a weapon, if he could get to it in time. The kid had a few inches and at least twenty pounds on him, though, and with those long limbs he had a real advantage in reach. His cock plumped a little, urging him to find out more about that reach and the kid’s possibly inborn wrestling skills. 

No, no, focus. Get him to come clean.

Fuck, now I’m thinking about him in the shower, Danvers grumbled to himself in his head. The other “come clean,” you horny fuckhead.

“You won’t, though,” Danvers said aloud. He stole a quick glance at his passenger. “Why do I believe that, do you think?” 

The kid’s expression was sour, but his shoulders were resolute. He sighed. “Because I need answers too. And you know it.”

They slowed to a stop for a red light, and Danvers gave him a proper look. His long, gymnast-muscled frame looked folded into the seat. He didn’t look uncomfortable, though. If anything Danvers would have said he was being stowed for future use, coiled and ready. Was he a tool? A weapon? 

There was a line between those dark brows that framed his youthful fashion-model beauty so well. His eyes stayed on the road ahead. Danvers thought he could count on one hand the number of times the kid had deliberately looked at him so far. 

“I’m guessing… amnesia,” Danvers mused after a moment. “Am I right?”

“Green,” the kid said.

It took Danvers a second to realize they weren’t playing some color-coded version of warmer… colder and the kid actually meant the light had turned. He redirected his attention back to the road and they resumed their course toward the arcaner reaches of upper Manhattan.

Once Danvers’s eyes were off him, the kid finally said, “I don’t remember anything before yesterday when I was brought to the warehouse.”

“Brought to? From where?”

“Don’t know. I saw the people you arrested. The thugs. Not the other boys. Then… there was another man, all intense and anxious, with a stained white shirt and a messy gray beard. Sanderson, I think he was called.” He bit his lip, thinking. 

“A sad, balding man in a very expensive-looking sweater came later. We met with him alone. He… he hated the sight of me. I don’t know why. It was all… bewildering as fuck, honestly.”

A block and a half passed before he spoke again. “The rich bald man stormed off, shouting something about it being all wrong and a mistake. The bearded man, Sanderson, he chased after him. Neither came back. The thugs were just, I dunno, confused. They didn’t know what to do with me.”

Danvers said nothing, just drove. The kid continued, “I had the information I gave you in my head. Name, address, social. It felt wrong, though. I don’t know why it felt that way, but it did.”

“It’s because that’s not who you are.”

An ambulance sped up behind them, sirens blaring. Danvers moved over a lane, and it passed like a bullet train, dopplering up the road and turning left at the next intersection.

“It’s because I’m not anybody.”

“Your name isn’t who you are. Your social security number isn’t who you are.”

The kid chewed on this for a moment. “Where are we going, anyway?” he asked eventually, looking over at Danvers as if the question had been niggling at him the whole trip and he’d finally steeled himself to ask.

Danvers looked over at him with a grin, glad the kid was finally joining him in the here and now. “Your fake address, of course,” he said. 

His passenger looked surprised. “Why?”

Danvers turned back to the road in time to swerve slightly around a suicidally aggressive bike courier veering suddenly into his lane. “Because,” he said, “My hunch was you were given that phony address for a reason, and you saying it was planted in your memories cinches it. If things went wrong you were meant to find your way there. I want to see why.” 

They drove in silence for a while. “What if I was meant to find my way there to be disposed of?” the kid asked eventually. His eyes were back on the road, not looking at him, but Danvers could feel his worry.

“Ah,” said Danvers, “but presumably you weren’t supposed to have a big, bad federal agent with you. That makes all the difference.”

The kid snorted a laugh, and Danvers smiled as he flicked his right turn signal and rounded the corner onto what had to most nondescript side street in all of Inwood.

The address was another two blocks east. When they got to it, the kid groaned. “So much for that idea,” he said dejectedly.

Danvers considered the rubbish-strewn empty lot for a moment. “Hmph. I guess this is what we were meant to find when we followed up on you.” 

He looked around. It was the only such gap on the street, which to Danvers suggested it had probably been built on at one point, before whatever house had been erected there had burned down or was demolished. “Let’s check it out anyway,” he said, grabbing his jacket from the back seat and tossing a spare to his temporary partner. “You never know.”

“I guess.” 

A minute later Danvers was beeping the locks on the SUV as they headed across the car-lined road. He made a point of not looking up and down the long array of drab, close-set two-story frame houses erupting along this forgotten side-street for eyes watching him from stoops or bay windows. If any of the neighbors was a lookout, he didn’t want them thinking they’d been marked and stepping up the alert. 

As he’d guessed, the unkempt narrow lot bore the relics of a cement foundation, partially crumbled and visibly scorched in places. They stood on the sidewalk looking it over, the January chill and oppressive iron sky seeming to seep under their coats and prickle their skin. The kid stood close, directly behind Danvers over his right shoulder, and the warmth of his proximity, though more psychological than physical, was welcome—if distracting. 

“Check it out,” the younger man said, grabbing traps with a strong, long-fingered hand and pointing with the other.

Danvers looked where he was pointing and saw a set of rust-red cellar doors, angled against the remains of the foundation halfway down the eastward side of the site. He glanced over his shoulder and up at the kid. The winter breeze was messing with his dark, invitingly tousled hair exactly the way he wanted to. “Significant?” he guessed. 

The kid nodded. Whatever was in his head, those doors were part of what he was supposed to remember.

They made their way through the overgrown brush and abandoned garbage to crouch in front of the doors. They were old and scarred, but solid, and the hasp was secured with a shiny new combination lock. The kid picked up the lock and held it in his palm, considering it silently.

“I don’t suppose you know the combi—” Danvers started to ask.

All at once the kid closed his fist around the lock and squeezed it hard. There was a quick succession of cracks, and when he opened his fist the crumpled pieces of the lock dropped out of his hand and thunked loudly on the steel surface of the door. Only the U of the steel shackle remained securing the hasp.

Danvers jumped to a full standing position like his whole body was insta-boning from what he’d just witnessed, and not just his actual cock. “Jeee-e-esus,” he muttered, equally shocked and aroused.

The kid looked up at him warily. “I didn’t know I could do that,” he said, rising slowly to face the older man. “Not quite.”

Danvers shivered, and not from the cold. His impulse, as always, was to joke. “Good thing you found out before we, uh, shook hands or something,” he said.

The kid was giving him a knowing look. “Or something,” he repeated, those crystal blue eyes of his glittering enticingly. Before I grabbed your big, hard dick, they said.

“Uhhhh…” Danvers said. Shit shit shit. He wanted to exit this moment, take a step backward. Except he didn’t, because the raw truth of it was every part of him wanted him to move forward… closer. Into this young god’s arms. 

“Come on, don’t deny it,” the kid said, his smile just as potent as Danvers had known it would be. The younger man shifted closer, removing most of the space between them, and Danvers was very careful not to move, his eyes angled up on a face he wanted to keep looking at and never stop. His felt his pulse thumping, palpable, like a warning, or an omen. Odd details registered with him. The kid’s teeth were perfect, straight and white, though not distractingly bright—the 99th percentile of nice, ordinary teeth. “You’ve been looking at me,” the younger man said confidently. “Thinking about how attractive I am. Wanting me. I can… feel it. Really feel it.” His expression clouded for a microsecond, then those mobile lips were curving upward again. “And you’re not so bad, for a fed.”

“No kidding,” Danvers said dryly. He was trying not to be enveloped by that full, enrapturing presence, even here on a patch of waste in the closest Manhattan got to the middle of nowhere. His tall athleticism and the sleek dark blue FBI jacket made the fantasy of him being a for-real partner, bright-eyed and yet utterly reliable, unnervingly easy to accept. Then again, there were the red basketball shorts and bare calves underneath, which made it look like he’d been pantsed… or interrupted in the act of being a very different kind of partner. 

Were his legs cold? Could he warm them? Please? 

Hard-on, hard-on go away, come again some other day, he chanted inwardly. “Okay, uh, before we start asking each other to prom or anything,” he suggested with mock professionalism, “maybe we should try checking out this basement you just provided us with access to? Before people with guns show up to kill us?”

The half-smile actually widened a notch. The kid was starting to enjoy the banter. “I guess,” he said. Somehow he made it sound like an invitation.

Be still my heart. Pulling out his flashlight Danvers, gestured toward the steel door with the handle, and the kid dutifully bent to remove the remains of the padlock and lift the left door open for them. The hinges creaked some, but the rising gusts mostly whipped it away. Without further delay they descended the cement stairs into the darkness below.

The cellar was chilly and abandoned. Nothing special. The open cellar doors let in just enough daylight to see, but there was almost nothing to look at anyway; most of the gloomy rectangular space was empty. 

Two sets of cheap steel shelves stood against the far wall, packed with random household detritus and knickknacks—short piles of dusty linens, an old mixer from the 1950s, some neatly stacked aluminum lunch boxes. The rest of the expanse was empty save for the dark disc of a three-foot-wide manhole in the corner that Danvers guessed had once been part of a sump pump, and a few large beat-up and cobwebbed cardboard boxes by the south wall. He was considering the boxes, wishing he’d remembered to bring gloves from the SUV and trying to ignore the throbbing hard-on only mostly concealed by his jacket, when the kid called over to him from the shelves. “Danvers,” he said, “c’mere and look at this.”

Danvers went over and stood beside the kid. He was staring at a cake lid positioned waist-level more or less exactly in the center of the unit. Danvers aimed his flashlight at it. It was like the kind you saw in diners and coffee shops, maybe a foot in diameter and a good ten inches tall, only this one was done in opaque milky ceramic instead of clear glass. 

He noted right away that while it was grimy and old—like everything here, it seemed to be straight out of a thrift shop—it wasn’t caked with dust like everything else on the two sets of shelves. There were clear signs that the knob had been handled recently. The more he looked at it, the more it stood out from the rest of the small, carefully curated hoard.

“It feels weird,” the kid said cryptically.

“You… remember something about it? Like the cellar doors?”

The kid shook his head. “It’s more of a sense. Like the way I can feel your—” He glanced over at Danvers with the tiniest of smirks. “—interest in me. Like a gut feeling, only stronger. A lot stronger.”

Danvers let the comment about his sustained and indeed mounting arousal pass. He wondered what was clueing the kid into an awareness things beyond what most people could see or hear. “Extrasensory?” he guessed after a beat. The kid grunted noncommittally but said nothing. 

Danvers reached out with his left hand and lifted the ceramic dome away, revealing a wide, matte-black pad set into a thin, dark-gray device. There were no lights or wires, but Danvers was certain it was live.

“Looks like someone left their Kindle here,” the younger man said facetiously, examining it curiously.

“My guess is biometrics.”

They exchanged a look. With only a hint of trepidation, the kid placed his hand in the surface of the pad, splaying his fingers. It fit perfectly.

A second later there was a loud crack from the nearest corner, and they both jumped. Danvers realized he’d nearly dropped the cake lid and carefully set it down, quickly drawing his weapon and laying his flashlight across his fist to illuminate the threat. 

The wide manhole cover Danvers had assumed was part of a derelict sump system was opening up on concealed hinges, revealing a round man-sized shaft faintly glowing with a pale green ambient light from the space below. It was bright after the basement gloom. A built-in set of iron rungs seemed to invite them down to whatever awaited them on the lower level.

Danvers stowed his flashlight. “From cellars to sewers,” he said, firming his grip on his Glock 19M service weapon. “Things are looking up.”

He looked at the kid. They were standing close, and it seemed oddly natural. He forced himself to say, “Wait here. I’ll—”

The kid grinned, which sent all-new tingles straight through the FBI agent’s cock to nestle in his balls. “Fuck that,” he said, swatting Danvers’s gym-rounded glutes. “Go on, D. I’ll be right behind you.”

Electrified as much by the sudden affectionate nickname as by the brazen groping of his ass, Danvers couldn’t help but reciprocate. He gripped the kid’s firm triceps through his jacket, returning the smile, then headed for the glowing shaft, his gun at the ready. He’d resolve this, for the kid’s sake if not his own. 

Not having a gun of his own, his companion grabbed a small crystal paperweight from the shelf and pocketed it, then gestured toward the shaft. “Agents first,” he said smugly.

As he lowered himself down the long vertical shift, the kid easily following a good ten feet above him, Danvers took himself to task for repeatedly losing his objectivity. Mentally he mimicked the stern voice of his combat drill instructor back in Quantico, a steely ex-Marine named Wade who was still twice as fit at 60 as Danvers would ever be. Danvers, you fuckwit! You better not be falling for a possibly complicit unknown you just pulled out of a raid not twelve hours ago, reverberated the old man’s growl in his head. My box turtle is smarter than that, and he’s got the hots for the neighbor’s Jack Russell terrier!

Danvers huffed at the memory in amusement. The probies had eventually staged a wedding for the two animals, at which they both looked distinctly uncomfortable. Afterwards they’d completely ignored each other. There we go, Danvers snarked at himself. I just have to fake-marry the kid. Problem solved. 

Fuckwit, Wade sneered again. Danvers chuckled.

The lower level was not the nexus of a vast labyrinth of secret tunnels hidden away under the very cock-tip of northern Manhattan, as Danvers half-expected. It was a dank brickwork space barely as large in area as the cellar above it, though with a higher ceiling, oddly enough. All kinds of pipes and cables lined the walls, and back third of the space was packed with machinery barely separated enough to slide between them. Half of it looked cutting-edge medical, with gleaming surfaces and smart display screens; half looked like decades-old industrial mechanics with valves and dials. All of it was dead or dormant, at least at first glance. Somewhere a circulation unit thrummed, probably the only machine still running, supplying fresh, clean air though hidden vents. A strong yellow-green light came from fluorescent tubes humming overhead.

The remaining third of the space, the section closest to them, was an empty cement floor with a single bare operating table that looked pilfered from some nearby hospital with lax security. Danvers felt his stomach sink at the sight of it. 

There were no doors or archways that he could see leading into inner anterooms or secret lairs, and no sign of anyone down there with them. Danvers lowered his weapon to ready but did not holster it. He was moving toward what looked like a medical-grade deep chest freezer, not sure he wanted to know what he’d find inside, when his companion once again called out for him.

“D, look,” he said. Danvers turned and saw that there was a large cork bulletin board mounted to the brick wall a few feet down from where the rungs were mounted leading up to the cellar. A number of small Polaroids were tacked up on the left side of the expanse: head shots of three young men he didn’t recognize, then the eleven they’d rescued in the raid. All of these were numbered sequentially, starting with “Subject 1,” and all had index cards pinned under them with vital statistics marked in a reasonably neat handwriting in fine black felt tip—name, height, weight, birthplace, notes on character and so on. The last eleven had green checks and the words “reproduced successfully,” with more jotted observations on new cards underneath, presumably from after the “success.” The first three had red X-marks and, just as ominously, no further notes. Danvers got out his phone and started taking photos one-handed of the victims and their associated notes.

The younger man’s attention, however, was fully absorbed by the fifteenth subject, who was clearly much more important than the others, taking up almost half the corkboard. There were a dozen photos of the same young man against a soft gray background: full-length, close-ups, profiles, all high-resolution prints, not Polaroids. The space around them was festooned with index cards covered in densely written, excited commentary, what he could make out looked like a mix of data, notes, observations, and ideas. 

The implication was clear enough. The others were just practice, proof on concept, maybe; this one was the main event, the reason for all of this, Danvers was certain, and it was not even the slightest bit surprising that the tousle-haired, handsome face peering out at them from these photos with bright blue eyes was one that Danvers already knew he’d be dreaming about that night, and for all his years to come. 

He caught the designation heading the centermost index card, written a bit bolder than the others: “Subject 15: David Keith Coleman.” At last, he thought: a name. Weird that it was his name, too, but it was a pretty common first name after all.

The kid was frowning, though, not in existential horror but in uneasy uncertainty, like he had seen something that Danvers hadn’t. “What is it?” he asked.

“It’s me,” the kid—David—said. “But… not me.”

Frowning, Danvers returned his attention to the board and looked closer, instinctively taking a more pictures as he peered at the evidence. David was right. The man in the pictures was him, but a bit plainer, a touch less striking. There was more of an asymmetry to his face that was kind of obvious once you noticed it. His jawline was just slightly softer, too, the eyes weren’t quite as bright, the teeth a touch more uneven. Even the loose, dark hair wasn’t quite as inviting, calling your fingers to plow through it admiringly.

More obvious still was the difference in the full-length shots. The David in the pictures was pleasingly built, but not heroically (and sensually) muscled like the one Danvers had met in real life. The proportions in the torso and legs were altered, too, and not subtly. Danvers had eyeballed a lot of witnesses and suspects over the years, in person and otherwise, and had become a good judge of height. Even without any background references he reckoned the buff, well-built but comparably ordinary man in the photos at 6 feet, 6-foot-1 tops, not the 6-foot-6 lanky gymnast god of the David standing next to him. 

“It’s like you were… reengineered,” Danvers whispered. He’d been about to say “upgraded,” but that felt uncomfortably like disrespecting the David in the pictures—even if it was accurate.

“Of course,” said a loud, raspy voice behind them. “That was the whole point.”

They whipped around to find a disheveled-looking man with a graying, untended beard, a white button-down with coffee stains down the front, and dark trousers had evidently just stood up from behind a medical assay device the size of a high-end photocopier and was staring balefully at the two of them. Danvers had his phone stowed and his gun automatically trained on the popup threat before he’d finished turning, but the man was ready for them. He was already holding up a smart phone with a large, circular red button on the screen, his thumb poised mere millimeters above it, ready to press. 

Danvers remembered David’s description of the intense man from the warehouse. Sanderson, he’d called him. “FBI,” he announced. “Lower the device and step out from the equipment.”

“Why would I do that?” Sanderson said, his voice gravelly and tired. He looked and sounded beyond exhausted and utterly defeated, like a man whose dreams had all crumbled into dust. At a rational level Danvers was having trouble coming to grips with this—if he understood things correctly, proof of his success was standing right there before him in a borrowed jacket and red basketball shorts—but he was too tuned into the immediate situation to worry about it. 

“I came here to end the project, utterly and completely,” the old man explained. He was looking at David. “I just had to wait for you to come home.”

“This isn’t my home,” David said firmly.

Sanderson shook his head. “It is. You were born here. It’s only fitting that you—”

Danvers could see where this train was going. Right now it was his job to keep Sanderson from pressing that button and destroying the evidence, and them with it. “Why did the bald man reject David?” he broke in, hoping to give himself time to rapidly sort out his options. 

Sanderson sighed, but it was an angry sigh, his shoulders tensing at the thought. His attention was still on David, but he was clearly keeping track of Danvers as well in case he risked taking the shot. “He wanted his dead son back exactly as he was,” Sanderson groused, as if this were an unreasonable stipulation to make. “How could he not want a better version? An improved version?”

David flinched at the words dead son. “The first me is dead?”

“Of course. Car accident. That was the point, like I said. Give him his son back. Only… better! Why not better? Strength… beauty… senses… intelligence… nanogenes to preserve youth and health…” He rambled on, exposing the role that Sanderson’s ego had played in this disaster. The old man’s eyes raked over David with something between a father’s pride and the excitement of an architect who’d achieved the building of a cathedral more impressive than any designer in history.

Sanderson was close to hitting that destruct, Danvers knew, dithering only long enough to spend a few last moments with his creation. Keep him talking. “And the other fourteen?” he prodded. 

Sanderson was exasperated. This was another sore spot for him. “I had to prove myself over and over. Show I could replicate other parents’ dead sons exactly the same. Again and again, all so he’d be convinced he was getting his own lost child back just as he was. Finally after eleven consummate successes he gave me the green light—then pulled the plug when the results were demonstrably better than he asked for.” Sanderson rubbed his untamed beard with his free hand in what looked like a compulsive gesture. “Philistine! He was so angry when David wasn’t the exact, bland copy he’d bought and paid a half billion for. Threatened to sic the government on me, too.” He eyed Danvers with disdain. “I’m not impressed, by the way.”

Danvers felt his stomach go cold. Those eleven young men—they hadn’t been the people who’d gone lost. The originals were dead. The returnees were clones: perfect and exact—at least to outward appearances. And the FBI was sending them to their families right now, probably as they spoke. And how was it the originals were dead? Maybe they been dead to start with, but Danvers had a creeping suspicion that those test subjects had been killed because his deliverable requirement was a living clone of a dead son.

Would his team believe him, if he told them? Maybe if there was evidence, but that was looking less and less likely. The thugs weren’t going to talk. David’s dad would deny everything, had probably already spent another fortune burying all traces of him having even had a son. If this place was destroyed and there was no proof, who would buy that the Jimmy some family was welcoming home with huge celebrations, all the cousins and a big sheet cake, maybe even a parade, was not the Jimmy who’d been snatched on the way home to his NYU housing but a ringer, an artificial petri dish life form mapped by computer and built from the cells up in a dank subbasement under an derelict empty lot in Inwood? He was already on his boss’s shit list, and nothing said “you really can’t trust my judgment” quite like an FBI agent raving about clones and mad scientists.

David shifted in his peripheral vision, readying himself. For what, Danvers wasn’t sure, but he already knew that he trusted his ad hoc partner, and not just with his affections. They were down to the crux.

Just then, Sanderson’s phone screen fell asleep and went blank. Sanderson had a second to wake it before it locked. “Now!” Danvers hissed.

With lightning speed, David hurled the paperweight he’d pulled from the pocket of his borrowed jacket behind his back into the center of the room. It hit the empty operating table with a deafening clang.

Sanderson jolted and whirled toward the table, eyes wide. Then his face contorted in anger. Instantly, he was pressing the blank screen on his phone with his thumb, over and over, but it was too late—the screen was locked. “Drop the phone and come out from the equipment!” Danvers shouted. “I will shoot!”

The enraged villain dropped out of sight. “Fuck you!” he yelled. 

Danvers knew the villain was feverishly unlocking his phone. They had seconds. “Go!!” he shouted, pushing David toward the shaft leading back up to the cellar.

Time seemed to detach from ordinary chronological progression. The next thing Danvers knew they were climbing. Climbing. David was pulling him out, then using his inhuman strength to shove the manhole cover down against its hydraulics. Just as he got it down, a sicking boom thudded from the earth beneath them, shaking the whole cellar. David barely managed to hold the heavy iron cover closed and sealed until it was over. 

Then everything was still for what seemed like a long time. David was crouched over the cover, hands still pressing it down, but his eyes were round and raised to look at Danvers kneeling on the cement floor beside him. Danvers didn’t need extrasensory abilities to understand why. David had just lost everything.

Everything but me, Danvers thought. He poured all he had into telling David that with his eyes, with his being, everything, and after after several long heartbeats was rewarded with a soft, sweet spine-tingling smile full of all kinds of gratitude, plus a few IOUs Danvers would be sure to redeem the moment they were safe and alone together.

Though their ignorance of the overall plot and generally stunted imaginations made the thugs caught in the raid basically useless to mankind in general and the FBI in particular, they were good for one thing: cementing David as a victim and not a co-conspirator. Not only did they accurately describe David’s arrival the day before exactly the way David did—minus the ugly meeting with source-David’s dad, which they weren’t privy to—their description of the paymaster who’d hired them to serially abduct a bunch of roughly similar college-age guys, hand them over, then chain them up and sit on them when they got them back exactly matched the description David and Danvers gave of the unkempt, wild-eyed man who’d blown himself up under the house in Inwood without so much as a word of explanation. The word “clone” somehow never came up in anyone’s statements, let alone the implication that David and the eleven abductees weren’t exactly who they appeared to be. No one ever saw the photos Danvers took that afternoon in Sanderson’s subterranean lab; though he did pass on word that he’d seen the names and pics of the first three victims before the lair was destroyed, ensuring those cases were connected to the main abduction/trafficking case and properly closed. 

No family could be found for David, and he didn’t match any outstanding reports of any missing persons. His fingerprints weren’t on file, either. (Danvers checked a few things on the sly and, sure enough, the car crash that source-David had died in had been wiped from the internet, part of a comprehensive sweep of all public information about the dead son and a great deal of private data as well. Daddy’s pockets, it seemed, were certifiably deep.) David was cleared and released. As a legal adult he could do as he chose, and it so happened he chose to bunk at his FBI rescuer’s extremely narrow, rent-stabilized Tribeca brownstone. There was a small human interest story about it in the Daily News, but generally David’s unfêted exit from FBI custody was overlooked in the media circus conjured by eleven local abductees being safely redispersed to their jubilant kin.

Thanks to some friends in the Marshals service, Danvers was able to quietly pull some strings and legitimize David’s identity records. A fabricated set of transcripts and some strong recommendations later, including one from a highly respected ex-Marine instructor in Quantico, and David was even squeezed into John Jay’s criminal justice program as a junior, with an eye toward joining the FBI someday. As he watched David tear through the books and essays with the enthusiasm of a hungry wolverine, Danvers found himself wishing that Sanderson’s scattershot, half-illegible index cards on David had included somewhere a clear, comprehensive list of exactly what features had been upgraded in this revised version of the young man. Mainly all he had from Sanderson was the mid-rant hints he’d given them in the lead-up to his spectacular self-destruction. 

Not that it wouldn’t be interesting finding out the hard way, Danvers mused as they walked off their brunch hand in hand down a snow-dusted Grove Street three weeks after the chais had subsided. He had a few thoughts as to what else might have been improved, and more were becoming apparent as their intimacy slowly deepened.

His lover looked amazing, as always, and it felt amazing walking next to him and being near him. David was wearing the borrowed FBI jacket he’d gotten from Danvers that day, as he often did, though he’d wisely traded in the red basketball shorts for 501s, purchased online owing to his unusual waist-to-inseam ratio. Danvers approved, as they brilliantly showed off his thighs and butt (and other attributes). David seemed to like dressing to casually show off, playfully amping up Danvers’s already constantly simmering arousal whenever they were together. That was no surprise, but what did shock him was just how much David was into him and his generically fit body and routine FBI hottie appeal. Danvers had been pretty dubious about this; fortunately, David seemed to enjoy convincing him.

Danvers was mulling over Sanderson’s monologuing as they walked. “So,” he said, swinging their hands, “what do you think? Am I in danger from your nanogenes? Are they building an empire in my ass, waiting to take over?”

David laughed. “I’m sure they’re harmless. If you’re that worried I could change majors, go into biochem and genetic engineering. Research myself, rebuild all the lost knowledge. Give me five years and I’ll have Sanderson beat!”

“No way. One of you is enough! Maybe you should go into latex science and invent a stronger condom. I’m sure it’s your little nano guys that keep busting them open like a prison break.”

“Nah, that’s just me flexing my superdick at the critical moment.” 

“That’s plausible, I’ll admit.” They chuckled. 

“We’re together, right?” Danvers said after they’d walked some more. “Together together, I mean. And if the condoms aren’t working anyway…”

They stopped in front of a playground. Some ways away a few screaming kids in parkas and mittens were braving the frozen primary-colored equipment, their parents watching from nearby benches over steaming lattes. 

David took both his lover’s hands. Their eyes locked on each other’s, the rest of the world pretty much falling away. “If you’re asking for a commitment, D,” David said somberly, his smile gentle and full of love, “I have to tell you… I’ve never wanted anything more.”

Danvers swallowed. “That doesn’t prove anything,” he joked. “You’re only a month old.”

“And yet, I’m twice as self-aware as a certain FBI agent I could name.”

“Yeah? There’s at least one thing I’m very, very aware of.”

“Your big, hard sausage dick? Yeah, I’m aware of it too. It’s like, always there, throbbing in my brain like it can’t get enough of me…”

“Hey, yours is just as thirsty as mine!” Danvers objected, laughing, even as David shut him up the best way he knew how.

The kiss deepened, communicating their love and lust and growing passion for each other, as the winter-gray sky sent flurries down on them to decorate their accidental paradise.

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