by Giger, S. L.
Luke wiped his hand over his mouth. “Cathy...” He sighed, at a loss for words.
“Cathy, don’t.” I looked at her. The Orbiters sent me here to stop her – I knew that now.
“I don’t need your permission for this. I could have done it a long time ago without anybody knowing, but now there is a use for my death. Maybe even a reason why I became a Siren in the first place. What I need from you is that you don’t miss out on the opportunity.”
A tear rolled down on Melissa’s cheek. “All right. I’ll do it.” She pulled the needle from her purse. “How much will we need?”
“This is insane,” I said again. “Don’t you at least want to wait until Roisin is back? She might have news that could help us.”
“For all we know, she might be amusing herself with Minotaurs. One ampulla will be enough,” Cathy said. “Alex knows how to multiply combinations.”
He laughed hollowly. “Yes, because you’ve been teaching me how for months.”
“Always be prepared.” She gave a false, cheeky smile.
“Cathy,” I pressed through my teeth, “your theory must be wrong. The reason I showed up in the lab so suddenly is because the Orbiters beamed me here. There has to be a reason for that.”
Everybody turned to me and something flickered in Cathy’s eyes, but then she looked at me calmly again.
“They gave me this job because I can figure it out, and to use actual Siren adrenaline as a catalyst is the only thing that makes sense. There has to be a different reason for your presence.” Her jaw tensed.
I lowered my gaze again. Nothing we could say would change her mind.
“Any last words?” Luke said helplessly.
Cathy took the knife out of Alex’s hand and took a step away. He sank against the counter.
“Do your job.” Cathy looked at Melissa and, in the next moment, slid the blade once across her throat. She collapsed as the knife clattered out of her hand. I screamed although I should have seen it coming.
Melissa rushed to the body. Cathy’s skin had started to shrink like an old, deflating balloon, and her body looked like a surrealistic Dali painting.
Melissa pressed the needle against Cathy’s chest, which looked soft and fragile. When Melissa got up, half of the cannula was filled with a dark red liquid.
“I guess that will do,” Alex said with a raspy voice. We stared at the needle, and then back at the body that was more a layer of fabric around a construct of bones.
“So, she’s dead?” I had to ask. It all happened so quickly – my mind hadn’t caught up yet. “Just like that?”
Melissa released a breath. “Just like that.”
“She always had a strong mind of her own,” Luke said and gulped, lines of concern etched across his forehead.
We all still stood glued to our spots, but I couldn’t watch her skin dissolving anymore, so I stared at my shoes. I heard Melissa sob and, out of the corner of my eye, saw Luke wrap an arm around her. How should we pay respect to somebody who had purposefully killed herself?
Alex was the first to move. He grabbed a white lab coat and spread it on top of what used to be Cathy so that we wouldn’t see the mess she had become any longer.
“What will we do with her?” I asked.
“We need to have a funeral,” Melissa said. “We could have it behind the dunes of our house.”
“How long can we wait to have the funeral?” I asked. “Roisin might want to say goodbye, too, even though they weren’t best friends.”
“She definitely would,” Melissa said. Her voice rose as she asked, “Where the heck is she? She has been gone for almost a month without dropping a line. I hope nothing happened to her.”
I nodded, pursing my lips.
“We could put her into the freezer?” Melissa gestured to the body. Her voice was high and tentative as if she’d rather not suggest that.
“Let’s give Roisin three days,” Luke said. “That also gives us some time to put together a little ceremony. Do we have to inform her workplace?”
“I could drop a note,” Melissa said. “I’m sure there will be a bombing soon that I can blame for her death.”
Alex approached Melissa and carefully took the needle from her hand. “I’ll start with this. It would only be in her interest that we don’t lose time.”
“Can I help you with that?” I asked.
“I have to be precise so that I don’t damage the cells.” He shook his head. “But you can keep me company anyway.”
Luke left and came back with a big Macy’s bag.
“That was the best one I could find.” He shrugged apologetically. I had to turn away when they shoved Cathy’s remains into the bag with the broom that was in the lab. “This is only her shell,” I heard Luke say to Melissa. “The real Cathy is not in here anymore.”
“We will see you later.” They turned to me before they left, and I nodded at them.
When they were gone, I leaned against the counter and pushed out a long breath. “Oh, boy, as a Siren you really have to be prepared to expect the unexpected.”
“I’m not even a Siren and I have to endure all this,” Alex said. He put the needle into a mounting. “I think I need whiskey.”
“I think you need all your brain cells,” I responded.
“Yes.” He sighed. “Then, I at least need a hug.”
“Me, too.” I stepped into his embrace and breathed in the familiar smell. Right there, in his arms, with the warm and fuzzy feeling that rose inside me even in that moment, I felt truly home – a home for which we needed a future. So before long, I squeezed his shoulders and took a step back to let him get to work.
Chapter 26
Three days later, there still was neither a word nor a sign from Roisin.
“I guess we have to do this without her,” Melissa said when I visited her and Luke. “Did she tell you any kind of time limit for when she’d come back?”
“No, nothing. And with how spontaneously she left, I thought she’d come back in a week or two, at the latest.” My insides tensed. “Could she have gotten caught and killed by the flu?”
“I don’t even want to think about that.” Melissa rested her forehead in her hands.
“Soon we’ll have clarity about whether we can transform male Sirens,” Luke said, “and after that, we could start searching for Roisin.”
“The whole planet is a big place to look for someone,” I said, and dropped onto the couch. I was not motivated for anything anymore since the Orbiters had physically forced me to return.
“But, so, you tell Alex to get here tomorrow, and we will have a proper funeral for Cathy.” Melissa sighed. “I feel a bit uneasy about that bag in our freezer.”
“Could you think of anybody else to invite?” Luke asked.
“A co-worker at the hospital organized a ceremony for her. Concerning the Siren funeral, I can’t think of anyone else she spent time with.” Melissa looked at me as if to ask whether I knew anyone, but that wasn’t likely since I hardly knew Cathy.
I sighed and took my phone out to text Alex about the plan for tomorrow.
“Let’s go find some driftwood for the fire at the funeral,” Luke suggested.
Melissa nodded and stood.
I remained seated and stared at a thin rupture in the wallpaper.
“Nathalie, Roisin will be all right,” Luke said.
I lifted my eyes to him, my mouth in a thin line.
“And for Cathy, it was the right decision.” Melissa’s voice was soft. “We should accept it.”
I swallowed a lump from my throat before I could speak. “It’s something else, as well. I’m done being controlled so much.” I frowned. “As a human, I could at least make my own decisions in all aspects.”
“It’s okay, you don’t have to help collect wood,” Luke replied, his brows furrowed.
“I’m not talking about the wood,” I laughed, tears welling in my eyes as my voice rose. “I’m talking about the fact that I was about to visit my family so t
hat I could give the whistles to them and so they would finally know that I’m alive and well.”
“You went to Switzerland?” Melissa searched my eyes.
“Yes.” My shoulders sank. “And then, poof – the Orbiters snatched me off the world again, and boom, I’m back in your lab.” I glared at my knees.
“I completely forgot that you’d mentioned the Orbiters,” Melissa said.
“If anything happens to my family that I could have prevented, I swear I’ll never do anything for these Orbiters again.” I chewed hard on my cheek.
“They have a way of getting what they want.” Melissa pressed her lips together. “Did they say anything?”
“That my family is in no immediate danger. I have to calm down the situation on earth first, and after that, they won’t stand in the way of me reaching out to my family.” I took a breath. “At least, that’s how I understood it.”
Melissa raised her eyebrows and threw a glance at Luke. “That’s quite something, then. In the past, they’ve never allowed such contact at all.”
“But they demand of us to risk our lives again and again.” I swallowed, my anger rising anew.
“Because they believe we can contribute something.” Melissa looked at me with a warm smile and a sudden kindness that calmed me. “And the better we work together, the sooner you can see your family.”
“Thanks.” I inhaled deeply. “You’re right. We need to stick together. If at some point we have to revolt against the Orbiters, we could only stand a chance if we work in union.” I got up from the couch.
“You know, I would have gone back to my family as well if I could have,” Melissa said on the way out to the dunes. “But the rules to our world make sense. Claire had a guideline for everything. Even though it was hard, it made sense. And now my parents are dead and my late husband is in his sixties.”
I frowned. “I also see sense in the rules, especially if you had a big social circle. But I only wanted to visit my core family. With all the chaos now, it would have been possible to hide it from the neighbors and the other relatives, had I contacted them.”
Reluctantly, I got up to collect some branches. We sped up and stopped whenever we spotted a good branch, then collected each and piled them up behind our house.
“At least you reached some kind of agreement,” Luke said at some point. “That, on its own, is a major step into a different future.”
“You mean a less oppressed future?” I raised an eyebrow.
“A better future. Instead of it being the end of the world,” Melissa said solemnly. “We have paid enough dues already.”
We all looked at the pile of wood and I puffed my cheeks.
“We should all say something we remember about Cathy tomorrow,” Melissa suggested.
“Yes,” Luke said. “And Roisin has one more day to get here.”
It was already dark when Alex arrived at the Cape.
“How is it going with the cells?” I asked after a much-needed embrace.
“Good.” He smiled, kneading his hands. “I have test tubes with my and her cells, and tubes with Luke’s and her cells. But I can’t make any predictions yet because all the previous tests worked in the beginning.” He let out a long breath. “It will become interesting after a week.”
“And how do you feel about what she did?” I asked.
“You know, despite her harsh manner, she was a good medical teacher. It’s a loss.” He sighed. “I honestly didn’t expect her to kill herself.”
“Me, neither. But I could never figure out what Cathy was thinking, so it’s kind of fitting that she surprised us with her exit.”
We entered the house and Alex shook Luke’s hand. “Is Melissa here, too?”
“No, she’s at work,” Luke answered. “The hospital is full of worried parents. They bring in their children with the slightest cold because it might be the first sign of the night flu. Hospitals and big supermarkets seem to be the only institutions that are still open.”
We watched a movie together but couldn’t concentrate on the content. My mind was too preoccupied with the image of Cathy slicing her own head off. Alex excused himself to go to bed before the movie ended. Luke and I remained seated, lost in our own thoughts. Again, and again, they were interrupted by an image of Cathy’s lifeless skin.
When Melissa came home, she told us how she got to know Cathy and how it was living with her in the beginning. In the end, the conversation shifted back to the drastic scene in the lab.
“I never saw this coming.” Melissa’s eyes widened. “Cathy had survived a very strong heartbreak for over a decade. I didn’t think she was still so ready to end her life.” She swallowed and Luke took her hand.
“Even if we have an unknown number of days, I still appreciate every single one of them,” Luke said and tenderly looked at Melissa. “It’s not getting boring.”
“Yes, same for me,” Melissa said. “We get to witness so many changes and live through several generations. It’s like using a time machine but experiencing it more thoroughly.”
“I’m still only a baby, anyway.” I shrugged. “I have much more learning to do.”
At sunrise the next morning, we went outside. Luke placed Cathy’s bag in the center of the woodpile, after moving some branches around. We lit it with petrol and it quickly became a significant heat source, sending smoke curling to the sky.
“I hope nobody will come and check what this is,” Melissa said as we backed away from the heat in a semi-circle. We watched the flames in silence for a while until Alex spoke.
“I know my time with Cathy was the shortest of all of us, but I am very grateful to have met her. She was the teacher I always wished I had. She talked about medicine and hearts as if they were the core elements to save the world, and when I listened to her, I believed her. I wish this could have gone down differently and she could still be around to teach me more.” He swallowed. There was a shimmer of sadness in his eyes that reflected the flames of the fire as he stared gravely ahead.
Melissa took a deep breath. “Cathy was my sister. In age, she was the oldest, but it also felt like she was the older sister. She always knew better and didn’t give a dime for what we thought if it wasn’t the same opinion as hers. But I could always count on her. Anytime I needed her, she was there. I’m sorry I haven’t shown enough appreciation for her loyalty.” Her voice cracked a little. “I wish we had more time.”
I waited a moment to see whether Luke wanted to go next, but since he didn’t, I swallowed and spoke. “I’m thankful to Cathy for her honesty. Without her, there would be so much I probably still wouldn’t know. It was hard to make sense of her, and I understood too late what a precious person she was.”
I almost urged myself to say ‘friend,’ but I just couldn’t imagine us drinking a socializing cup of coffee together, even if we’d still been able to drink. Nevertheless, talking to her always had interesting results.
Finally, Luke was ready to say his part. “Cathy had her differences with me, and I never held it against her because I knew she wasn’t actually mad at me. So, I’m all the happier that it changed during the recent months, and that we could work together as equal partners. I’ll miss her insights.” He closed his mouth in a thin line.
We stood in silence again. Melissa was biting her lip, struggling not to cry. It was contagious, but to mask it, I took a strand of my hair and concentrated hard on turning it into a nice braid. We stayed there for the longest time until the flames had died down significantly.
Alex broke the silence. “I kind of expected a phoenix to rise from the ashes.”
“Right?” Luke said. “But this is the definite end.”
I frowned.
“I can stay here until the fire has died down,” Luke said. “You don’t have to wait the whole time.”
Alex nodded, his wet eyes not leaving the orange gleam.
I took his hand. “Let’s go back to the house.”
“I’ll stay here with you.” Me
lissa swallowed and stepped closer to Luke. From behind, they looked like two people studying a picture.
“I hate funerals,” Alex said when we reached the house. “This was the first one I went to since my mom’s...” He stopped. “You know.”
“Yeah.” A spasm went through my body. “I don’t think anybody likes them. It’s just not fair that Cathy had to sacrifice herself. If she hadn’t played along in transforming me in Malaysia, she might still be alive now.” I studied the tips of my socks.
Alex lifted my chin. “This has nothing to do with you.” He sighed. “I only hope her death hasn’t been for nothing. This has to be the correct genetic solution.”
“Whatever happens, I’ll stick with you.” I squeezed his hands.
“You have to. I know your secret.” He raised one corner of his mouth.
“That’s blackmail,” I warned him.
He flashed a smile at me. “Or knowing how to spend my resources.”
Chapter 27
Alex was spending most of his time at the lab. Not because he necessarily had a lot to do but because he didn’t want to miss anything. There was still no word from Roisin. Melissa had contacted Claire and our Russian cousin Valentina again to ask whether they had heard anything from Roisin. They both denied it, and so we heard nothing to soothe our nerves.
Themba, however, had found a job in Dr. Palmer’s entourage. Although he wasn’t working directly with Dr. Palmer yet, it was a start. Nevertheless, I felt dread when I read that there had been three cases of the flu in Austria, near the Swiss border. We weren’t working fast enough. Alex took my hands and massaged them when he saw how I sank into a chair with a sad expression. “It’s okay,” he said. “We can assume that the virus isn’t dangerous to your family.”
“But if Switzerland already felt like a war zone five days ago, it will be even worse now.” I squinted to the side and tried to compose myself. “What if they have to relocate and I can’t find them afterward?”
Alex sighed. “We do our best to work as quickly as possible. Once we’ve successfully created a male Siren, the task is fulfilled.”
