Barren Cove Read Online Free PDF

arrived, and so he had tried to have nothing to do with the human, because the human wasn’t going to be there long. But when a week passed and they didn’t come, Kent began to worry. His father and sister seemed to have reverted to slave robots, doting on the human’s every need. Kent hated him. He hated him for taking away his family. He hated him for being special. But perhaps he was approaching it the wrong way. Perhaps he needed to invite the boy as an ally. He went to the cabinet where he kept his dissecting gear and pulled out the case along with a bird that he had cut open and tacked to a board.
    Beachstone came out of the bathroom. Kent turned with the dead bird in hand, and the boy stopped and grimaced.
    â€œI wanted to show you this. I found him on the beach. He was dead already, and something had picked at him; that’s why there’s blood on his feathers here.” Kent set the board down on the table with the dissecting case next to it. Beachstone approached despite himself. “You see, that’s his heart, and those are his lungs.” Kent looked at Beachstone. “You’ve got those; that’s what makes you breathe.”
    â€œI know that,” Beachstone said.
    â€œOkay, I’m sorry.” At least he was talking, though. “You want to touch it?”
    Beachstone reached out a hand and went right for the heart. He pulled back at the first touch and then dove in with both hands. “It smells like shit.”
    Kent opened his dissecting case. “Mary did that one with me. Because I found it already dead.”
    â€œShe’s got pretty hair,” Beachstone said.
    The comment renewed Kent’s anger. He didn’t have to make friends with this boy. He could kill him now. “Get up on the table,” he said.
    â€œWhy?” Beachstone looked up at Kent, suspicious.
    â€œI want to do an experiment. Come on—it’ll be fun.”
    Beachstone put one foot on a chair, about to climb, when Kent reached below Beachstone’s armpits and began to raise him. “Let go of me!” Beachstone started to wiggle. “Let go!”
    â€œOkay, okay,” Kent said, letting go. Beachstone was sitting on the table. “Lie down.”
    â€œWhat are you going to do?” Beachstone said.
    â€œJust an experiment.” Kent reached over and secured Beach­stone’s leg just below his shorts. Then he selected his sharpest scalpel from his dissecting kit. He moved fast, cutting into Beachstone’s leg just above the knee, too fast for Beachstone to even move. Blood welled up around the cut immediately, and Kent could feel all the muscles in Beachstone’s leg grow hard as the boy began to jerk away. Kent held him firmly though.
    â€œKent!” Mary yelled from the cabana doorway.
    Beachstone knocked the dissecting box off the table, came up with another scalpel, and slashed across Kent’s arm, cutting the simul-skin to the endoskeleton, and then Mary was on Kent. Her momentum knocked Kent to the ground, and she was able to secure him there, having caught him unawares. “What are you doing?”
    â€œJust an experiment,” Kent said, looking up at his sister. Her hair cascaded down either side of her face, making a tunnel that joined their two faces together in privacy.
    â€œYou were hurting him.”
    â€œJust an experiment.”
    â€œYou can’t hurt him.”
    â€œYou helped before.”
    â€œThose were birds; this is different.”
    â€œWhy?”
    Mary’s eyes looked like Beachstone’s had on the beach: seething.
    â€œLet me up.”
    â€œYou can’t hurt him. Father will deactivate you.”
    â€œLet me up, or I’ll get up.”
    Mary let go.
    Beachstone was still on the table, gripping his wound. Blood ran down the side of his leg and seeped out from between his fingers. He had remained silent through it all. He looked at Kent in defiance, refusing to give him