Mark shrugged. "I just don't see why you're so mad," he said.
Linda fell in beside him as he started toward the main doors. "I guess I'm not mad, really," she said. "I just…" She looked at him a moment, her brows knit into a frown, and decided not to utter the words hovering on the tip of her tongue. "Never mind," she said. "Where you going? Want to go get something to eat?"
Mark shook his head. "Can't. I have an appointment with Dr. Ames."
Suddenly the frown was back on Linda's brow. "How come?"
"He's just checking me over," Mark replied distractedly as his eyes scanned the crowd of students that filled the hallway. "Did you see Robb anywhere?"
Now Linda's expression grew bewildered. "Robb?" she asked. "I thought you and Robb had a fight yesterday!"
"We did." Mark grinned. "And I could have taken him, too, if your mom hadn't stopped us. Anyway, he's going out to the center, too. He said he'd meet me here."
Just then Robb came around the corner from the eastern wing and tossed his book bag to his sister. "Take it home for me?" he asked. Linda gave him a sour look.
"What if I don't?" she challenged.
"But you will," Robb teased. "You don't want to look like a brat in front of your boyfriend, do you?" He snickered as both Linda and Mark reddened, then delivered a light rabbit punch to Mark's upper arm. "Come on-Ames hates it if we're late."
Mark hesitated only a second, turning away before he saw the dark look that came into Linda's eyes. Following Robb, he trotted down the steps toward the rack where the other boy's bike was parked. As Robb got the bike moving, Mark jumped onto the rack on the back, feeling the metal tubing give slightly as it accepted his weight.
"Jesus Christ," Robb complained. "How much do you weigh?"
"Five pounds more than last week," Mark replied. "And it's all muscle, so you'd better watch out!"
Linda, standing at the top of the steps as she watched the two boys ride away from school, felt a strange mix of emotions. She supposed it was nice that Robb and Mark were becoming friends again, and she'd already decided that she couldn't expect Mark never to change, but still, there was a little voice inside her that kept telling her something was wrong, that Mark wasn't really changing at all.
Instead she had the weird feeling that hewasbeing changed, and that he didn't even know it. Disconsolately, she slung Robb's book bag over her arm and started home.
"There's my boy!" Marty Ames exclaimed as he strode into the examining room where Mark was stripped down to his underwear. A nurse had already checked his blood pressure and pulse, weighed him, measured him, and checked his lung capacity. "How're you feeling?"
"Great," Mark told him. "I'm up another couple of pounds, and I've grown almost half an inch."
Ames's brows arched appreciatively and he scanned the newest statistics the nurse had entered into Mark's computerized medical record. "Lungs up a few cc's, too," he commented. His eyes shifted to Mark. The bruises on his face had almost completely disappeared, and only a thin scar marked the spot where his forehead had been cut. "Any pain in your ribs?" Mark shook his head. "Well, in that case, I pronounce you healthy."
Mark's face registered his disappointment. "You mean that's it?" he asked uncertainly. "I'm done out here?"
"I didn't say that." Ames chuckled. "In fact, now's when the real work begins. The vitamins are all fine, but you still have to do most of the work. Pull on a pair of shorts and come with me."
Mark fished in his book bag for the gym shorts he'd started carrying with him the previous week, then put on his socks and tennis shoes. Leaving the rest of his clothes and the book bag where they were, he followed Ames out of the examining room and through the halls to the gym. He'd spent time here before, learning how each of the machines worked and how it acted on his muscles, but today Ames led him through a door into a smaller room where Robb Harris was already working out on a rowing machine, his eyes fixed on the screen that curved around in front of him.
Mark hesitated as he saw the needles in Robb's thighs and the I.V. tubes attached to them. "What's going on?" he asked.
As Mark settled himself onto a rowing machine that was an exact twin of the one Robb was using, and one of the aides began adjusting it to fit his body, Ames explained the monitoring system and its purpose.
"We need to know exactly what happens to your body when you work out. The easiest way to do that is to analyze the chemical changes in your blood. And for that," he added, grinning in a parody of sadistic pleasure, "we have to puncture your veins and stick needles in your flesh."
Mark chuckled at Ames's exaggerated villainy, but still winced as the needles were slipped into him then taped securely in place. A moment later, as he began rowing, the first of the images flashed on the screen, and soon he found himself involved in the illusion that he was actually competing in a race with other rowers.
He leaned into the machine, increasing his pace, and a sheen of sweat broke out on his brow.
Then, as one of his two-dimensional competitors slipped by him on the left, he felt a surge of anger. Swearing silently, he pulled yet harder on the oars and a moment later overtook the image on the screen.
He rowed steadily for a while, keeping pace with the other oarsmen, but then they began to creep up on him, and he felt his anger begin to grow once more.
Almost imperceptibly, the image on the screen flickered. It happened so quickly that Mark was barely aware that it had occurred at all. The other boats were gaining on him now, and the muscles in his arms and legs were beginning to ache. Sweat dripped from his forehead, stinging his eyes, and he could feel it running down his back and under his arms as well.
The image on the screen kept flickering, but he was oblivious to it, his anger growing steadily as the other boats inexorably overtook him. He was furious now, almost trembling with the rage he felt toward the other rowers.
Then, slowly, he began to think of his mother.
He didn't know why she came into his mind, for he was totally unaware of her image as it was flashed subliminally on the screen, far too quickly and too briefly for his conscious mind to register.
But deep inside himself he was becoming convinced that it was her fault he was losing the race against the other rowers.
Her fault-for babying him all his life, for making excuses for him, for insisting that he was different from the other kids.
But he wasn't different.
He was only smaller, and weaker.
He rowed harder, grunting with the strain, trying to catch up with the other rowers. He would catch up-he knew it.
He was growing now, and getting stronger, and maybe it wouldn't happen today, but in the end he would win.
And he wouldn't let his mother stop him.
An hour later, after Mark and Robb had left the sports center and were on their way home, Marty Ames called Jerry Harris. "I think it's going to be all right," he said. "I have a feeling our latest problem may just solve itself after all."
Ames smiled to himself as he hung up. The experiments with Mark had taken a new turn. He was already feeling the tingle of anticipation that always came to him when he was on the verge of discovering something absolutely new.
If it worked-if the aggression that he was able to induce in his subjects could truly be focused on a specific object…
He put the thought out of his mind, refusing to savor it fully until he knew whether or not the experiment had succeeded.