Hellbender

by Dana Cameron

  Sean looked pleased with himself. “But they can be.”

  Holy shit. They could be anything I wanted. I was still figuring out how all this worked, but the bigger I could imagine, the better they’d be. “Right. You guys . . .” I pointed to the undergrads and interns and waved my hand. “You now have the skills those guys have. And you’re all on my side, no divided loyalties here.”

  Instantly, they wore gray fatigues and snapped to attention.

  “Okay, good enough.” I’d been hoping for white-armored storm troopers or giant battle bots, but this was all I was capable of mustering up at the moment, apparently. “Break off with the other teams, same drill. All of you, ask questions first, but return fire if the intruders get aggressive in any way. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go.”

  I was going to have to train them to say, “Yes, ma’am.” “Sean, let’s go find the biggest ones.”

  Sean kept an ear open and told me when the other teams found humanoid invaders in areas around the lab; my guys were doing a competent job of containing them. What the invaders seemed to be doing looked to me like sabotage, a rogue demolition team. They ignored my guys until their pry bars and toolboxes were taken away from them, and they attacked. This is exactly what Dmitri’s ex-mercenaries wanted, and the first three groups of invaders were crushed to dust. Too easily. They failed so quickly that I had to assume that was intended: There was nothing left for me to examine or interrogate.

  The invaders Sean and I found, on the other hand, looked like a couple of industrial-sized yeti and I suspected were much tougher than the ones Sean had reported elsewhere. They’d made straight for the boiler room, their intent clearly to shut us down.

  I hauled off and punched one in the head. He didn’t even look up. He wore green overalls with no markings; his “skin” was traffic-cone orange and his head was hairless as well as featureless; there was nothing but a kind of fuzzy flatness where his face should have been. I felt a little sick, like the time when I saw the little bumps all over my arm and realized I had caught chicken pox.

  “Zoe, our guys are back in the lab,” Sean reported, pointing out that the faceless goons we were confronting had materialized there as well. I noticed he now had a very flashy military-looking earpiece with which he was communicating with the other teams. “They couldn’t even make a dent in these guys. They sort of . . . bounced . . . right off them.”

  “Okay, Sean. You go help that team, pronto. Then I want you to divert all the power you’re not using to repel any other invaders to tracking and nailing that last team. Anything left over, you ship it straight to me!”

  Sean vanished.

  On my own, I took a deep breath and tackled the one nearest me. He was easily twice my size and removing the plates from what looked like old-fashioned fuse boxes and control panels. I bunched up both fists and slammed him in the back of the head. He backhanded me without even looking, and I sailed across the room. I picked myself up and put a hand out to steady myself. I felt teeth moving under my tongue.

  I Changed to my werewolf form and decided to use his own power against him. While he worked, I snuck up behind him and pulled a file from his kit. Using all my might, I rammed it through his neck at the base of the skull. I felt the blow reverberate through my whole body, and then I felt like I’d been hooked up to the electrical mains myself as a jolt of power about fried me to death. The file sizzled, and I let go. He collapsed in a pile of pixels and sparks and flaming circuitry, which flared up and then zapped out. Nothing but a pile of dust left.

  The last one was twice the size of his friend, and he was busily disconnecting ductwork. I knew enough not to go in barehanded, so I picked up the hammer that he wasn’t using—he had a fine, daunting collection of scary tools—hauled back, and swung.

  Not so much as a grunt, no break in his concentration. He was doing very bad things to the beating heart of the lab facility and I had to stop him . . .

  But the hammer I’d taken from him was suddenly much bigger, like Mjölnir’s cousin. It stood to reason if these guys were here to bust down the structures of the bracelet construct, then the tools they had were related, somehow. I had those powers, so I could use those tools against them, too.

  I swung, and it felt . . . like it was part of me.

  I squashed him like a bug. He dissolved into dust.

  No time to think about this new development. “Sean! Where is the last group? Have you got them contained?”

  No answer.

  “Sean?” Panic welled up in me. Had I scrambled my own systems, using the bracelet inside the lab, using the invaders’ own power against them?

  Static in my head. “—facts—” was all I could make out.

  At least it was Sean’s voice. The last of the intruders were in the artifact storage area, which struck me as the true brain of the lab. I found myself there and got just a glimpse of the two invaders, easily as large as the ones I had fought just now, as they vanished.

  Sean and the rest of my makeshift security team were picking themselves up off the floor. They were covered in bruises, some bleeding, and had clearly been no match for the invaders.

  “Sean, where did they go?”

  He just shook his head, trying to catch his breath. Sean’s arm was shredded pretty badly, and I realized that he couldn’t talk because some vital part of my systems, my ’verse, had been compromised.

  Okay, think, think . . . “Hey, Doc?”

  Professor Osborne showed up. I figured as the newest addition, there was a possibility that the intruders weren’t aware of him. “What’s up?”

  “We’ve had visitors, and they’re not nice. I’ve apparently taken some damage . . .” It was at that point that I realized that my own nose was bleeding steadily. “Ah, shit, they managed to screw up my healing abilities. Okay, these guys are fast, and as soon as a real threat pops up, they vanish. What can I do?”

  “I’ll work on plugging up any holes,” Geoffrey said. There was something in his demeanor that said he liked the action, that he might have excelled in scenarios and simulations classes at the Fangborn Academy. And then there was that reaction to the explosion at the demonstration . . . Maybe all of his life hadn’t been spent in an ivory tower or another multiverse.

  “Could it be the Makers?”

  “I’m not one hundred percent sure, but yeah, could most certainly be,” he said as he examined the schematic of the lab. “But I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ve got that thing, there, and whatever it is, it’s doing a lot to keep them out.”

  “Wait, what thing? What do you mean?”

  He pulled up the image of several artifacts. “I noticed that gold signet ring. Very posh. And the scarab microchip. Those are Order creations; they’re not something the invaders understand, and those pieces were confusing them.”

  Porter’s ring, the last thing I took from him as his body disappeared under a flurry of violence from my lab assistants. He didn’t belong in the lab, I remembered, because he’d been jacked up on Order chemicals and enhancements. The scarab was the same, and it was keeping the Makers out.

  “What about the sword, from Kanazawa?” I asked. That was on the screen, too.

  “They were positively terrified of that.”

  Interesting. I recalled that Quarrel had referred to “that alien thing” in Kanazawa, and now I wondered if he was referring to the sword or the ring Porter made.

  “I’ve been studying that sword. Zoe, that’s crazy stuff. I have no idea what that is or does—but it’s major. Like I said, it’s not Order, it’s not Fangborn. Okay to keep working on that?”

  “Sure,” I said absently. Then the timing hit me, and my stomach clenched. “Geoffrey, you’re the translator the librarian told me about, right? You came with the papyrus. Were you sent by the Makers? Were you sent to fix me? To control me?”


  Dr. Osborne looked surprised I hadn’t asked this before. “Yeah, Zoe. Yeah, ’course I was.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I was about to dissolve into a panic when Geoffrey said, “But I can’t function the way the Makers want, because of those objects. So basically, I get to play, hang out, think really big thoughts. You’ve given me so much new material—this is much more fun.”

  “But they have access . . . to me.” I wasn’t ready to give up on that panic just yet: I’d given the Makers even more direct access to me than they already had.

  “I’m telling you they don’t,” he insisted. “If they had . . . those things would not have failed. There’s something about you—and you said your blood had been tampered with by those TRG scientists, too, correct?—and these artifacts that keep the Makers at bay. You’ve got a natural resistance and an acquired one. Otherwise, you’d be doing what they want.”

  “So . . . can you tell me what they’re thinking?” I asked, still worried, only a bit reassured. “Are you in contact with them?”

  He cocked his head, as if listening. “Not really; I was supposed to have a mission, and because it didn’t work out, they removed that capacity. I do get flashes, like they don’t understand if they’re trying to fix you with their repair teams, why you don’t let them. They see it as further proof of your . . . brokenness.”

  Just because I wouldn’t let them interfere with my lab, my construct, without my say so? I bit my lip; I had to trust what he was saying, for the moment. “I just hate being enmeshed in their plans, whatever they are. I hate being entangled with the Order—”

  As soon as I said “entangled,” an idea came to me so vast in scope and scale, it took my breath away. I sat down and put my head on the work surface, trying to keep my thoughts straight.

  “Zoe, you okay?” Sean asked.

  “Yeah . . . give me a minute, okay?”

  The Orleans prophecy had featured the word “unchaining,” but I’d never known if it meant that I would let someone off the chain, as in set them loose on someone? Get off my land, or I’ll set the dogs on you? Then I thought what Geoffrey and Lisa had said about flipping the switches on certain genes, and that made me think about the strands in DNA. Maybe I could do something with that?

  Meanwhile, Geoffrey wasn’t quite tapping his foot, but he was waiting for me to connect my dots. Sean hovered over me uncertainly.

  And once I figured out that yes, I was all about the metaphors, the idea came to me. Everyone stays the same, everything stays the same, except for one small thing.

  Easy peasy, in theory; terrifying, in reality. Any reality.

  I left the lab and found myself sitting up in my bed on the island. The cat, who had snuck up to the foot of the cot while I’d been asleep, stared at me suspiciously. I offered my hand for him to sniff and he stretched forward just out of reach. It was a start.

  “I need to find out what your name is,” I said softly. “You need a name. I could call you Demo, because I got you after I demolished something.”

  The cat turned his back on me and curled into a tight ball.

  Not Demo, then.

  I took a breath. The potential of the Makers to mess with my lab, to mess with me at this level, was scary and only made me more anxious to do what I understood had to happen next. I fell back to sleep still worrying.

  The next morning, light streamed into my rooms at the base of the lighthouse through every window. I ate breakfast and thought hard, paced a lot. When I finally figured things out from all the angles I could, I found the others who were staying on the island and invited them to my rooms. The island complex was starting to come together, but the odd assortments of temporary structures, military tents, and camping tents, as well as the reuse of existing structures still gave the place the feel of a refugee camp. No one looked particularly rested, but there were temporary plumbing and generators for electricity, and we were all able to sleep inside at night.

  I made a special effort and got one of the early-morning launches to bring doughnuts. I was learning what was important in a meeting.

  Max looked good, much more chipper than the last time I’d seen him, and his fatigues had done a lot to minimize his “permanent werewolf” look. The island was a good place for him, away from Normal eyes and some place he could be near people and be “useful,” as he put it. Gerry still looked raggedy and I worried that he wasn’t eating enough; Claudia and Toshi, on the other hand, were positively radiant. The bright sun on the island was a dream come true for the vampires among us.

  Danny and Vee had Wi-Fi and electricity, so they were able to keep up with their work, and I suspect, keep an eye on me. Will was working with those responsible for the planned rescue tonight and had kissed me rather determinedly when he arrived.

  Senator Knight, who was the government’s chosen liaison with me, was not staying on the island. He’d come over with the early launch, as had Adam, who was working with his mother’s temporary office in Boston, helping with the I-Day preparations. Theirs would have been a very interesting conversation to hear, former employer and former employee.

  I took the doughnuts from Adam, who brushed my hand superstitiously, a secret smile on his face. “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing, just that some misguided soul, not knowing who he was, asked the senator if he’d please bring the doughnuts to you.” Adam looked very pleased at Knight’s discomfiture.

  We pulled up mismatched chairs in the large room outside my “bedroom.” The cat wandered in and jumped into Gerry’s lap.

  “What’s his name?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what to call him, or her, yet,” I said.

  Gerry hauled up the hind end of the cat. “Yeah, it’s a him, if that helps.”

  The cat jumped down, flicked its tail in annoyance at this usage, and stalked off.

  I did my best to explain what I was planning.

  My friends looked at me like I suggested broiling up a few kittens, but they heard me out. I spelled out the reasons as best I could, and almost wished I’d made a PowerPoint presentation just to keep everything in order, but I didn’t want to risk having notes of any kind around. Telling folks, even my nearest and dearest, what I might do was dangerous enough.

  When I finished, there was nothing but silence. “So . . .” I said, to fill up the vacuum. “The Makers are intensifying their attempts to keep me on their plan. My goals are to make sure the Makers can’t use you directly against me or against Normal humans again, to make that possible with as little aggression as possible, and to keep everyone else on the planet out of this.”

  No one said anything. “There is no good way to predict what will happen in the long term, based on any decision I make,” I said. “What might work for a while might turn bad in a decade or a century or a millennium. But I can only make choices that are the best for the moment, taking the immediate future into consideration. I really don’t want to.”

  “But, Zoe,” Max said. He took a big slurp out of his Dunkin’ Donuts coffee mug. His knee jiggled nervously. I didn’t allow smoking in my rooms. “You have to change things.”

  “I’m going to, but I’m worried about unexpected consequences, and there are two things that come to mind. One is knowing that I don’t want to spend all my waking hours trying to undo what I might have screwed up in wishing for the world to change. And the other is the tale of the monkey’s paw. I just get a bad feeling about trying anything so drastic, because of what could bite us in the ass. I want to keep it simple.” I couldn’t come up with anything else but my plan that seemed to cover these bases. “What do you think?”

  “If the choices are for you to change us so the Makers can’t, or change us so we’re more powerful, I think you’re right,” Claudia said.

  “This is all very . . . iffy,” Gerry said.

  Will nodded. “You shouldn’t rush into this.
This is dangerous for you.”

  “It’s all gonna be dangerous,” I said, impatiently.

  “Right, but if you can act, you have to,” Adam added. Will glared at him.

  “Hold on,” said Toshi. He was wearing jeans that I guessed must have cost a fortune and an even more expensive leather jacket against the chilly fall air. “Why shouldn’t we ally ourselves with the Makers? How do we know it could be any worse than what’s going on now? It could be the answer to everything. Everything, Zoe. You seem to be skipping right over the fact that you could single-handedly make this world a better place.”

  “It’s the words ‘single-handedly’ that bothers me, Toshi,” I said. “And I don’t like sweeping, all-inclusive solutions. They all seem too dangerous to me.”

  “And we don’t know how the Makers will respond to your plan.” Senator Knight was pacing slowly, shaking his head. “That disobedience in itself might constitute rebellion, treason to the Makers—and bring worse upon us all.”

  Suddenly I was angry. “You know, I’m not here to make all your political dreams come true, Toshi. And, Senator, I know you don’t like me or anything I stand for. I’m the opposite of you, who are the . . . living old guard. You’re so old guard that you actually gave birth to those rules, codified them from your dreams of order. They’re not working anymore, so you can’t criticize me because I’m hanging on to the trapeze with no training and no safety net. You can’t criticize me for not falling. I’m here, I’m making it work, on my own, and you don’t get to piss on that and second-guess me because it’s not you.”

  I took a deep breath. “So here’s what’s going to happen. I’m not here to fix everything you think is broken, especially when I’m not sure that’s the case. And while I value your opinions, I do not care for this strong-arming, emotional blackmail shit.” I darted a look at Will.

  “I’m caught in the middle here, and it’s up to me to decide. You may forget that it’s only me between us and the Makers. That puts me in a tough spot, and I welcome your support and advice. But I don’t ever get to forget that it comes down to my decision, my skin in the game, and I have to live with the outcome, no matter what happens. So a little empathy for my situation rather than looking out for your own selves wouldn’t be amiss. There are enough folks ready to screw all of us.”