by Josiah Upton
“So they didn’t know you were buying ‘tine from me?”
I shake my head frantically.
“You’ve already lied to me once today, Ugger. How do I know you’re not lying to me now? How do I know you didn’t tell them everything?” He leans closer over the railing. “What if Gordon knew what you were the whole time?”
Caesar is almost near enough for me to grab and toss into the hole below. His weight combined with mine might tear my calf completely, and bring us both down. But at least he wouldn’t be alive to hurt Gordon. He’s still out of reach, though, and as I reach for him I feel something move inside my shirt.
Genny’s letter. Caesar sees it. I reach up to grab the letter, to throw it down into the Juicer and shred the last human words of the girl I love into tiny, unretrievable pieces. But Caesar pulls the knife from his belt again and slashes, quickly cutting a deep gash into my forearm. I jerk and scream. The letter slips out of my shirt, and he catches it before it falls to destruction.
“No!” I bark. “Give it back! Give it back!” I spit. I bare my teeth, I snap them. My body rocks back and forth, pulling down on the hook and cable in my calf, tearing the hole larger. I don’t care. “Give it!”
He ignores me and backs away from the railing, unfolding the paper. He takes his time, reading the letter with a blank expression on his face, until reaching a part that makes his eyes widen. Now he knows. He turns to me. “Holy shit… Gordo’s little girl is turning Ugger? Did you know about this?”
“I will kill you,” I say. My head pulses with blood and pain, but my entire body is ablaze with Rage. “I will tear you to bloody pieces. And then I’ll eat you.”
Caesar laughs. “You did know! Of course you knew…” He paces around on the platform next to the Juicer controls, his hand on his forehead. Putting all the pieces together in his mind. “And he knew about you, too. You had him turn you in, so he’d have the money for her Guardianship. You sacrificed yourself for her, like some sort of sick love story.” He brings his gaze back to me. His mouth curves into a sickening smile. “You think you love her.”
“I do love her,” I say.
“Yeah!” he says with a cackle. “Yeah, right. You love her, just like you’d love to sink your teeth into my brain. I call bullshit. Love isn’t something you things do. Hell, I’m human, and I’m not sure if I’ve ever loved a woman, except maybe when she’s got her legs wrapped around me.” He leans over the rail. “Is that how she got infected? Did she strap you down to keep you from Raging out, and take you for a ride?”
My body shakes. “You’re sick. She’s not even a woman yet!”
“Well, she looks like one. And she’s almost old enough…” he says, then pauses. “How is she not an Ugger yet?” His eyes narrow. “Gordon. I’ve seen that bastard’s basement. I thought he was just taking his work home to distract himself, trying to forget that his wife’s dead. But it’s more than that. He’s been using some sort of biomedical voodoo to stop Genny’s transformation, huh?” He smiles, and lightly slaps my cheeks with the flat side of the blade. “You’ve got one screwed up girlfriend, and you’re caught right in the middle of all her problems. Poor confused Ugger, did she say she loved you, just so you’d turn yourself in?”
“No,” I say, my focus fading in and out. “Getting turned in was my idea, she didn’t want me to do it. And she does love me. She said so herself.”
It’s getting harder to read Caesar’s inverted face, but he appears to smirk. “That’s not what this letter says.”
My focus snaps back. I don’t feel the pain in my leg, or the swelling of Hybrid blood in my head. All I feel is the hollow beating of my heart. “I don’t believe you. You’ll just do or say anything to hurt me. You’re lying.”
“Am I? I’ll let her speak for herself. Let’s just skip down to the juicy part,” Caesar says. He clears his throat, and holds the paper up to read. “…I’ll never forget what you did for me as long as I live. But I won’t be alive for much longer, and I can’t die without telling you the truth. You need to know that I don’t love you, Zaul. I thought I meant it when I said it, but I was confused. I now realize that I can’t look past what you are. I’m sorry I lied. Take care of yourself in there. Genny.”
Caesar’s hand drops to his side. Though upside-down, his mouth is clearly grinning from ear to ear. He sees what this has done to me, and he’s eating up every second of it. He’s getting pure sadistic pleasure out of it. So, what he said had to be made up, constructed for maximum damage. It can’t be true. It can’t.
“Let me read it,” I say. “I won’t believe it until I read it with my own eyes.”
“Zaul,” he says, shaking his head. His voice is calmer than I’ve ever heard it, as if trying to comfort me in some twisted way. “You need to let it go. Don’t you see? No one is ever going to love you, in here or out there. You don’t belong anywhere. You and the rest of the Sludge weren’t meant to exist. So nothing is ever going to work out for you. You’re not like the others, you’re smart enough to understand this. And the sooner you do, the easier this miserable thing you call a life will be.”
He holds the paper over the railing, and drops it into the Juicer. Here one second, gone the next. Whether or not those were actually Genny’s words, I’ll never be certain. All I know is I don’t really care if I fall in after them.
But that won’t happen today. Caesar turns off the Juicer and waves to Krecker as he descends the stairs. The crane arm raises and turns, then lowers me to the ground, until my head hits the cold concrete of the kitchen floor. With all my weight no longer suspended by my calf, I begin to drag myself across the floor with my arms and one good leg. I only have one thought in mind: ending Caesar. But whenever I get too close, Krecker retracts the cable, keeping me just out of reach.
“Obviously Gordon gave you that letter. And since it’s clear he committed treason against both the APA and nature by aiding an Ugger, and he ratted on me – and his daughter is on the brink of turning Ugger – there’s some things I’m obligated to do now.” He kneels down, cocking his head sideways. “But I’ll tell you what. For helping me out today, I’ll leave the options up to you.”
“Options?” I ask, straining to look up at him.
“Option A,” he says, coming around behind me. He unhooks the cable, and begins feeding it back through my wound. The pain starts all over again. “I kill Gordon, Genny loses her guardian, and she spends the rest of her Hybrid days on the female side of the facility. One less Ugger out in the world.” He pulls the last of the cable and hook out of my flesh. Now free, I flip my body over to look at him. He’s swinging the wet cable in front of him, his eyes focused on the motion. I could attempt an assault, but it wouldn’t be very swift. And Krecker is still here, his hand on the remote.
“Or,” Caesar says, letting the cable drop into a small pool of my dark blood with a wet thud. “Option B: I punish Gordon by killing his daughter before her transformation. Again, one less Ugger. And as an added bonus, you get revenge for her breaking…” He pauses. “…whatever the closest thing is you have to a heart.”
I don’t want revenge. I still don’t even believe she said those things in her letter. I don’t want her or Gordon murdered by this insane man. What I really want is to dig my fingers into Caesar’s chest, snap off his ribs one by one, then rip out the closest thing he has to a heart. I want to consume him entirely, and throw his stripped bones into the Juicer.
My Prisoner is no longer cowering in the corner. He is wild and ferocious, and doubled in size. Ready to destroy. Krecker must see this, because he presses the button to subdue me. Caesar kneels down, and through the electrical shock buzzing my brain, I hear him speak. “I’ll give you a night in the Lock to decide. If you can’t do that, I’ll just kill both of them.”
Chapter 28
Genny
I awake again, this time all alone. Thankfully there isn’t any crust sealing my eyes, because they open silently and with ease, as they’ve done ever
y day for the last seventeen years. All those years when I wasn’t dying. How close am I to the end? And how long have I been asleep this time? I glance at the glowing red digital clock above the door, it’s 4:41. That doesn’t help. There’s no windows down here, so I’m not sure if that’s am or pm. And I can’t recall what the clock said the last time I was conscious, anyway.
The last thing I remember before passing out is handing Dad my letter to Zaul. Once he left I heard a series of locks click on the other side of the door. Is that to keep others out, or to keep me in? If I’m unfortunate enough to come back after I’m dead, I’ll be confused, violent and vicious. Hungry.
A painful panic strikes my heart, thinking of what I’m liable to do as a Hybrid. What if my dad walks in, and I attack him? The man that loves me no matter what, and would sacrifice anything for me? The man that tucked this blanket around me before he left? It’s a good thing he did, because I’m freezing in here.
And I’m hungry, too. Before I fell asleep, I was a vomit hurricane, but now my stomach has settled, and I feel like I could eat an entire horse. Maybe this is one of the phases of the transformation, feeling better before it gets way worse. The calm before the storm. All the years I’ve feared this day coming, I never stopped to ask my dad what the process would be, up until my last breath as a human. I just wish it was another Sunday morning, waking up to the smell of pancakes and bacon.
And sausage. Sometimes it was link sausage, sometimes patties. Occasionally he would fry up some canned ham. I used to wrinkle my nose at that, but now, I’d take it.
Part of Hybrid transformation must be olfactory hallucinations, because I almost swear I can smell the food right now. I lean forward in my bed, sniffing, but am startled by the knocking on the door, and the muffled voice of my father. “Genny, I’m back. Are you okay in there? I mean, are you…”
“Still alive and human in here, Dad,” I call out. “Thanks for asking.”
The locks begin to click, one after another. There’s five so far, and counting. Geez, how many did he install? I’m starting to get irritated. When all the castle defenses are finally down, the door opens, and light from the larger basement area floods my dark little hospital room. And the smell of food is back, stronger than before. Maybe he brought me home something tasty. “You bring me food?” I ask. “I’m starving.”
“Starving?” he asks over his shoulder, as he puts his briefcase down on a small table. My eyes squint when he flicks on the light, and through my blurry vision I see his silhouette turn around. “Didn’t figure you’d be able to eat. Last I saw you, you were…”
A small yelp escapes his mouth. He falls back against the door, his hand clutching the hem of his jacket.
“What?” I say with a chuckle. “Am I really that hideous?”
“Your hair,” he whispers, almost too low to hear. “Your hair is white, Genny.”
A gulp the size of a brick moves down my throat. “White?”
“And your skin,” he says, taking cautious steps toward me. As if I were a rabid dog, waiting to be provoked. “Your skin is blue.”
Blue... Blue?
I pull the blankets off, holding my arms up in the light. The skin covering them is an impossible pigment, a frosty, baby blue. Throwing my covers completely to the floor shows that my feet are light blue, too. I pull up the gown, and the hue continues up my legs. I grasp my hair, yanking it into my field of vision. The strands are white as snow. I scream. “What’s wrong with me? What’s happening?!”
“It’s okay, Baby,” he says, trying hard to mask his own panic.
He takes a step forward. His hands are empty, but the smell of food is clearer, almost strong enough that I could lick my tongue out and taste the air like a snake. It’s the smell of meat. My stomach starts burning. I hold my hands out toward him. “Stay back!” I scream. “Don’t come near me!”
“Why?” he asks. “What’s wrong, Geneva?”
That’s a good question. All I know is I don’t feel sick anymore, I’m hungry as hell, my own father smells like meat, my hair is white and my skin is blue. Blue like the veins of a Hybrid. A violent realization fills me, of something that’s happened to me that can’t un-happen. “Dad,” I say, feeling every tremble of my lips. Lips I imagine no longer look like a human’s. “I think I died while you were gone. I think I’m a Hybrid.”
He blinks. “That’s not possible. You look nothing like a Hybrid. You aren’t growling, or jumping up to attack. You’re talking, as if you never stopped talking since you were a toddler. For God’s sakes, you remember me!” He covers his mouth, shaking his head. “This can’t be right. Something unexpected happened. Some sort of… genetic abnormality, maybe, is interfering with the transformation process. I’ll have to run some more tests…”
He begins pacing around the room, and my eyes track his movement, like a lion would a lamb. Except this lamb is my own father. I instantly hate myself, though “myself” doesn’t seem to exist anymore. So I hate whatever it is that I’ve become. I avert my hungry eyes, and they fall upon a machine next to my bed. The one that’s going beep in time with my heart. I point my blue finger to it. “Is there a way to check that? Like, a record or log?”
“Yes,” he says, nearly tripping as he runs over to a computer screen in the corner. His fingers start clacking on keys. “I can check your pulse, temperature, blood pressure, breathing – if anything changed while I was gone, I’ll see it.” He continues typing only a moment longer, and then silence. A long silence. Whatever happened, he found it. “All vitals ceased at 3:44, and resumed at 4:02.” He turns to face me. “You were officially dead for 18 minutes.”
It happened. That was it. “I’m a Hybrid,” I say softly.
Between realizing that I laid cold and dead for 18 minutes, to experiencing the bizarre state in which I find my mind and body, I have no idea how to feel. Perhaps shock is all I have the capacity for right now. That, and Hunger. I hope my dad has enough meat stocked up for my guardianship. Just thinking about it gets my insides roiling.
“I’ve never heard or seen anything like this,” he says. “I mean, Hybrids aren’t my field at work, but I’ve had access to the best research. And it’s always the same: no hair, gray skin with blue veins, decreased intelligence, nearly zero memory retention… What do you remember, Genny?”
My mind starts jogging through the memories. I see scenes of my childhood, images of early life. Toys, birthdays, family meals. I recall the last day with my mother, despite only being four at the time. Hugging her tightly as she slipped away in the hospital bed. I remember my father disappearing into the basement every night, working feverishly for a cure. I remember the isolation I felt at school. I remember kissing Zaul in the rain.
My heart leaps.
“Everything,” I say. “I’ve kept it all.”
My father’s eyes take up a moisture collection. For the past seventeen years he’s wrestled with the fact that one day his daughter would die. And if she broke the laws of nature and opened her eyes again, she will have forgotten him entirely. Today that nightmare has been destroyed. But a new nightmare begins, one that my old self is very conscious of. Because even if my Hybrid body is a complete anomaly, at least one expected trait remained: the desire for human flesh.
Right now, the only flesh available is my father’s, and that’s why he has to keep his distance. It’s heartbreaking, because part of me wants to hug my dad tightly, to let him know that I not only still recognize him, but love and need him. But the other part of me – a part that Zaul once called his Prisoner – wants to attack my dad, and chomp down on his skin.
“Do you have anything to eat?” I ask, looking down at the light blue fingers in my lap. “Like, an extra-rare hamburger, hold the bun and veggies?”
“Food?” he says, wiping the tears away. “Sure, Kiddo. I’ll get you something.” He’s still unsure how volatile this new version of his daughter is, because he engages all the locks again when he leaves, only to undo them a few mi
nutes from now. I guess I’m not too sure what my level of restraint is either, so better safe than sorry.
He returns with a metal bowl full of raw and bloody meat. Before I can get a closer look, my nose already tells me that it’s pork. It won’t hit the spot, but I’m only a few minutes into this second life and I’ve already resolved that I will never give my Hunger exactly what it wants. If Zaul can do it with his standard issue Hybrid body, then I can do it with this special one. My father cautiously leaves the bowl on the table next to me, and in an instant it’s in my lap, my hands greedily plucking the pork out. My first meal.
I pause for a moment, the meat just in front of my lips. I look to my dad, somehow feeling embarrassed, like he’s witnessing an intimate moment. He throws his hands up. “By all means. We all gotta eat somehow, huh?” I smile, and sink my teeth into the pork. I tear, I chew, I swallow. A smooth euphoria travels across my skin as I feast, a lovely surprise in an existence I thought would be devoid of good feelings.
“How is it?” he asks sheepishly. It’s not often parents feed their undead children raw meat, and are able to ask whether it’s pleasing to their palate.
“Perfect,” I say between chews. And it’s the truth. “Where did you get this, Freedom Mart?”
“There’s a wholesale market in Trinidad that sells in bulk to guardians. The couple that operate it are guardians themselves; their Hybrid son helps them out. I got to meet him, real nice fella.”
“Hybrid son, huh?” I murmur, picking up what looks like a kidney. My thoughts turn to Zaul, wondering what he would say if he saw the kind of Hybrid I turned out to be. But I also entertain the thought that maybe he’s already forgotten me in that facility. I hope he’s read my letter by now, but I guess I’ll never know what he thinks. I’ll never know if he feels the same way I do. I want to ask my dad about his visit with Zaul, but I’m sure he’s more preoccupied with me right now.
“There were a couple different options, but I went with the more expensive free-range pork.” He chuckles. “Your mother’s habits have stuck with me to this day. She was always so picky at the grocery store, insisting that nearly everything was stuffed with antibiotics and…”
