Skinner by Charlie Huston Read Free Book Online Page B

The experiment might never have been completed, but he was fascinated by the idea that a child raised in such circumstances could grow into anything resembling the functioning and socialized human being that Haven claimed to have seen. If he had that capacity in him, what else might he be capable of? The vast territory of human potential, and the talents it harbored on its furthest shores, had forever been one of Terrence’s obsessions.
    The obsession predated the awful night when his only child had been stillborn, but Terrence would never have denied that there was a connection between that personal tragedy and his increasing preoccupation with the eccentrically gifted individuals he recruited so avidly.
    His initial approach had been quite open; he had introduced himself, not inaccurately, as a CIA recruiter at a jobs fair on the MIT campus where Skinner was preparing to graduate after four years of middling academic success (by MIT standards) in the linguistics department, and tremendous athletic achievements (by MIT standards) rowing heavyweight crew and running cross-country. There had been nothing unusual in the initiation. What linguistics major at MIT did not expect to attract some interest from at least one organ of national intelligence? Indeed, following Skinner’s acquiescence to several followup interviews, events had proceeded with such irritating predictability that Terrence had pigeonholed him. Analyst , Terrence had thought. Without bothering to Myers-Briggs the kid, he could see the results of the personality test: ISTJ. Introverted with sensing, thinking, and judging. Not the unusual talent he’d been looking for, but a potential resource nonetheless. So the recruitment followed its course, Terrence preparing to pass Skinner off to someone, anyone, please, a bit further down the food chain, when they were mugged.
    He’d have liked to take responsibility for the mugging, claim that it was a skill assessment that he’d engineered, but it was simply improbable fate manifesting in the shape of a hoodie-wearing roughneck up from Mattapan to do a loop of the darker side streets around Mass. Ave. and Western. Terrence’s own reaction to having someone demand money from him on an empty block of Pearl Street under the looming bulk of the Cambridge Public Library was to reach for his wallet. His hand went into his pocket, his fingers closing on the worn leather of the billfold that he’d acquired at Yale, but before he could begin to pull it out, Skinner had stepped forward and kicked the hoodie in his left shin. The black kid’s foot jumped off the ground, the hands in his pockets started to come out. Skinner pushed him, both hands, a shove with too much weight behind it. Hoodie went down on his back, Skinner stumbling forward, unbalanced. On the ground, winded, acting on instinct, the hoodie kicked Skinner’s legs. The heel of one of his Nikes hammered the inside of Skinner’s right knee, and down he came, on top of the hoodie. There was a flurry of limbs, unpracticed grappling, blows delivered in close quarters, lacking force. Skinner stayed on top, refused to be jarred loose, hugging the robber as much as trying to restrain him. There was very little noise; grunts, two fully clothed bodies on the pavement. Their shapes separated a bit, Skinner lifted his upper body, sat on the other man’s chest, weight forward, knees planted in the inner hollows of elbows, pinning the hoodie’s arms to the ground.
    Hoodie talking.
    “Uncle, motherfucker. You got me. Be cool. Just let me go. No one hurt. Just let me go.”
    Skinner grabbed the edges of the robber’s sweatshirt hood, pulled it closed over the robber’s face, lifted the robber’s head from the ground, and slammed it down against the sidewalk. A slightly muffled scream, pain and outrage.
    “Uncle, motherfucker!”
    Skinner raised the head and slammed again.
    Another scream, a moan, no words.
    Skinner raised the head, resettled his weight, and slammed