"There's no rush. I'm kind of, well, you know. I've got lists of things she left me." Ian tried to put it off, but it had to be done. "Drop by whenever."
"Hell, no. Today. Give me an hour. Anything you need right away? Got enough food?"
"I'm okay. Thanks. See you later."
Ian realised he'd made his first phone call without Gran around for backup. It was a watershed. He went outside to feed the other greyhounds, prompted by Oatie's mournful gaze, and checked on the chickens. They were all ex-battery hens rescued by animal welfare folks. It felt kind of fitting to be marooned here with them. They tended to stick together and not roam as far as they could.
But he had to finish reading the contents of the folder before Joe arrived. One part of the hand-written note worried him: 'Personal instructions that'll be tough going.' He was almost too scared to open the envelope. He'd pieced together enough of Gran's comments over the years to know that his mom had a drug problem and that his dad had never been around, but that was all she'd said. Whatever she regretted not telling him would all come out now. It would probably be about his folks.
Maybe he had more family out there after all. Maybe it would all work out and he wouldn't need to be alone. Was it normal to think this way? Why wasn't he crying yet? He forced himself to concentrate.
'Envelope 5: a letter to you. I need forgiveness. I did it for your safety and I hope you understand why. Read before opening 6 and 7. Envelope 6: the people you need to contact - trust nobody else. Envelope 7: information you need for insurance, and photos. Bless you, Ian. None of this was intended. I loved you and I was proud to call you my grandson.'
Ian had been mercifully detached by the shock of the day until he read that. His stomach knotted. Forgiveness? The last line crushed him. Tears pricked at his eyes for the first time. No, don't start. Keep it together. Whatever Gran wanted to be forgiven for, it couldn't possibly be that bad.
He scanned the first lines of the letter. It was baffling: 'I'm sorry, Ian, so very sorry.' Then it plunged into details about genetic engineering which made absolutely no sense at all.
There were names: Project Ringer, and a company called KWA, Kinnery Weaver Associates. What did this have to do with him?
Ian started over, one slow word at a time, unable to relate it to Gran or to himself until he saw the words dynamic mimicry, chameleons, and cephalopods. No, that was crazy. He'd misunderstood. He was sure of it. He doubled back and re-read a few lines about enabling undercover agents to disguise themselves at will by changing their appearance. He still couldn't take it in, and stumbled on.
'You were the unplanned outcome of that program. I know it sounds like a movie, but it happened. Charles Kinnery ran the research. I don't know if it was specifically illegal then, but it will be now. It makes you worth a lot to governments and biotech companies, so you have to stay off the radar. He thought you'd be safer with me. I was a stranger who couldn't be tracked down, so I raised you and he sent us money. I'm not your real grandmother. I don't even know who your biological parents were or who the surrogate mother was. Think of yourself as being adopted. Because that was what you were. I could never bring myself to tell you any of this. I let you think you were mentally ill, which was a terrible thing to do. You're not. You're not imagining any of it. You really do change how you look. Every time I wanted to tell you the truth, I'd come back to thinking Charles was right and that it was the lesser of two evils to let you carry on as you were. I didn't want you to be turned into a freak show or a laboratory animal. But it was also cowardice. I couldn't face telling you that I'd let you suffer.'
Ian couldn't see the words on the page now. He was suddenly aware of his breathing, little ragged gasps struggling not to turn into animal sobs of panic. He rubbed his eyes and read the letter again and again, maybe six or seven times, but not a word of it changed. He hadn't misread it.
But it was still garbage; it couldn't possibly be true. That kind of thing didn't happen. He knew what reality was and where the line lay between truth and fiction. He read Scientific American and watched PBS. Gran had to be the crazy one, not him.
He hated himself for thinking that. She wasn't even laid to rest yet.
Not my grandmother? How can she not be my grandmother? She raised me. How could she lie like that?
Ian made himself read it all again, more slowly, heart pounding. Then the rising panic turned into a familiar crawling sensation that crept across his skin and tightened his scalp.
I change.
Every damn word suddenly made sense now. It answered all the questions, gaps, and other inexplicable things that had plagued him all his life and made him think that he was crazy. He'd been created in a lab with weird animal genes that changed his appearance.
Oh God. It's true.
It really is true.
He knew he should have been screaming his head off at the thought that he was an impossible genetic experiment. I'm a monster. I'm not human. But the pain that shocked and overwhelmed him most was Gran.
She lied to me.
She lied to me. She was a stranger, not my gran at all.
And now she's gone.
Something within him shut down. He actually felt it, a little splash of spreading darkness in his brain like a drop of ink falling into clear water. The light and heat went out of his pain. His grandmother was both dead and a complete stranger, he was a freak, and everyone had lied to him. Those were just facts, and he could come back to sob and rage about them when everything else was under control.
He read on. His hands had stopped shaking.
'I'm sorry I've left you to struggle alone. Call Charles Kinnery on his private landline — see envelope 7. But if he lets you down, or if he's dead as well by the time you read this, then the only person you can trust is Zoe Murray. She's an investigative journalist based in Seattle. She'll never reveal your identity. But she's insurance to use only if you have to. If she exposes Project Ringer, at least you won't be a secret that anyone can kidnap and hide. Don't bother with other media. They don't have the guts to expose classified material any more. Arrange to meet Zoe and give her the envelope marked MURRAY. It's not the full details of the research but enough for her to understand what you are and who's responsible. (Copy for you in envelope 7.) It's sealed in plastic. Don't touch it without gloves. DNA, okay? I don't think they can use the DNA to clone you, but it can definitely identify you.'
They? Everyone was they. Which "they" did she mean? The government?
Ian found himself arranging the envelopes and papers in neat rows on the green leather writing surface, overlapping them like cards in a game of patience. His hands were on autopilot and his mind was completely empty, not a relaxed kind of empty but a void desperate for a rational thought to fill it.
Keep going. Look at everything. Don't panic now.
Envelope 7 contained phone numbers for Kinnery and Zoe on index cards that were clipped to two envelopes marked MURRAY and COPY OF MURRAY FOR IAN. There was also a folded piece of blue card about the size of a wallet, marked PHOTOGRAPHS. Ian almost expected to see the faces of his parents when he unfolded it.
But Gran had told him his life had begun in a lab. He knew he'd be wrong. He was.
Ten photos, all passport-style and printed on computer photo paper, stared back at him one by one. Some were faded and discoloured with age. The pictures were boys of different ages, and then the penny dropped: this was him.
These were all the photos that Gran had taken over the years. He didn't recall any of the faces. There had never been a family album apart from the single photo of David Dunlop, but Gran took pictures occasionally, saying she might need them for permits. He'd never looked at them. He'd certainly never seen them all together.
Not my gran. No, someone else entirely.
She lied. All those years.
What's worse? Not being mad, or not being her real grandson?
Ian searched for some resemblance between the pictures. This was him, his changes, the thi
ng he thought he'd imagined. This wasn't the hallucination of the moment. It was something permanent, and preserved, and real.
Unless I'm imagining all this as well.
Ian realised he was looking for refuge in an illness. If he was crazy, then he wasn't a freak. For a moment he wondered if he'd lock the desk, go to bed, and wake up to find Gran alive again because this had all been part of his delusion. Being crazy was the easy option.
What am I? Who am I?
Ian really didn't know now. Everything in his world had fallen apart in a single day. He'd never been so scared in his life. Gran had drummed into him that he needed to be wary of the outside world, and now he knew exactly why.
But Joe was on his way here. Would he notice that Ian was this thing, this hybrid, this experiment? He waited for the knock at the door, almost unable to breathe.
Joe showed up clutching a cardboard box of groceries. "In case you run out of anything," he said. A half-gallon jug of milk inside it made a buckling, slopping sound. "Damn, I'm so sorry about Maggie. We're going to miss her. Let's sit down and work out what you need to do, son. Once all that officialdom's out of the way, it'll be a lot easier."
"It's all done." Ian was certain that Joe was studying his face, but it might just have been normal concern. He wanted to tell him his shocking, horrible, impossible news. I'm a monster, and she wasn't my gran. But he had no idea where to start, and Gran's instructions hadn't said to tell Joe about all that. She'd had her reasons. "Gran set it all up. Even the funeral. I'll show you."
Joe sat down on the sofa. "I'm real sorry we don't visit you more often, Ian. Proves how long it's been. You look different every time I see you."
"It's okay," Ian said. There. It's definitely true. It's not my imagination. Joe's seen it too. It was probably why the sheriff had looked baffled. Nobody would think they'd actually seen a guy change. They'd think they were imagining it, just like Ian had. "Look, I don't have a driving license. I'll need to visit people soon. Seattle, probably. Can you give me a ride sometime?"
"Whenever you want. No sweat. You want to come over and stay with us tonight?"
"No, thank you, I'm okay. I need some time to think."
"Okay, I'll check in on you later and help out with the animals. But call me if you need anything, day or night, yeah?"
"Sure. Thanks, Joe."
After Joe left, Ian sat at the kitchen table for hours, unable to face a meal. Another random thought added to the evidence that he really was some kind of monster. He knew he'd had his shots as a kid, but he hadn't seen a doctor or a dentist for as long as he could remember. There was only Kinnery. Ian had thought Gran was just afraid of being put on some official database to be cross-referenced and scrutinized, but now he knew it was more than mistrusting the authorities with personal information.
There was something real to fear if anyone found out what he was. The consequences didn't have a shape or form yet, but one thing he'd learned from Gran at an early age was that companies and governments were never on your side.
And Kinnery had deceived Ian just like Gran had, then.
Ian had to call him. He was the only other person who understood what Ian was, and he had responsibilities. This was all his doing.
A voice at the back of Ian's mind said that men didn't wait for someone else to solve their problems. They took the initiative. But he was trying to get used to too many new and terrible things to think straight yet.
One thing was clear, though. This was a crisis he couldn't escape by grabbing the emergency bag and running. It was part of him, locked into every cell of his body. He'd have to find a way of living with it.
THREE
I know it's none of my business now, but I don't want to switch on the news one day and see you being lynched by a bunch of screaming hysterical foreigners. They're not worth it. No country or company's worth it. It wasn't worth it when you were a Marine, either. I know you love your job, but just because you're willing to die doesn't make it right.
Beverley Harris, formerly Beverley Rennie, in a rare email to ex-husband Rob.
DUNLOP RANCH, ATHEL RIDGE
TWO WEEKS AFTER MAGGIE DUNLOP'S DEATH, EARLY JULY
"It's okay, Ian." Joe herded the last of the sheep up the ramp into the back of his truck. "If you ever change your mind, I'll bring them straight back."
The chickens and dogs – all except Oatie – had already left for their new home. Oatie refused to be parted from Ian. The dog pressed close to his legs as he stood on the porch.
Every landmark in Ian's life had disappeared; family, identity, and even the fragile future he'd thought he had. The only immediate truth was that he'd struggle to look after the animals on his own. Roger the ram looked back at him with an expression of baffled, slit-eyed betrayal before trudging up the ramp.
Ian held out an envelope of dollar bills. "That's towards their feed," he said. "Thanks, Joe."
"No need." Joe waved the money away. "We're going to be awash with eggs. Just call me when you need a ride. The bus takes forever."
Ian pressed the envelope into his hand anyway. He wanted Joe gone, not because he didn't like the guy but because the longer he hung around, the more likely Joe was to see him morph. There: he'd given it a name now. It seemed as good a word as any. How had he made it through the lonely funeral and scattering of the ashes without morphing? He was sure he hadn't changed again. He needed to understand what caused it.
I change. I really do change.
I'm a freak. And Kinnery designed me that way.
Joe bolted the tailgate and the truck rumbled away, leaking plaintive bleats. Ian watched it out of sight before he turned around and almost tripped over Oatie.
"We'll be fine," he told the dog. "I've just got to get my head straight. Go through Gran's stuff. Okay?"
Oatie's expression said yeah, and then what? Ian read the leaflet on bereavement that the funeral home had given him and concentrated on the paragraph that said it was normal to feel confused, angry, and all kinds of strange, unconnected things when someone died. Everything the leaflet described had happened, even the weird bits about sex. In the last few days, Ian had veered from being unable to think about anything else except girls he'd never meet to not caring if he did and then not even eating for a day. He couldn't sleep, either.
He was a mess. Maybe the roller coaster of moods and hormones would start him morphing again, but when he made himself take a look in the bathroom mirror, he didn't seem to be much different to the last time he'd studied his reflection.
She wasn't my real gran.
But she's dead. And I miss her.
What am I going to do when the money runs out? Kinnery won't live forever either.
Ian re-read Gran's letter to convince himself that this wasn't some incredibly detailed hallucination. If it was, at least it was consistent. Not a word in the notes had changed. Oatie leaned against his legs.
"No good looking to me for guidance, buddy," Ian said, rubbing the dog's ears. "I haven't even worked out how to get the bus into town to buy groceries yet."
He left Oatie in the kitchen with a bowl of canned dog food and a packet of cookies to distract him while he carried on clearing the house. The compulsion gripped him. He needed to do something, anything, to stop the thoughts bouncing around in his head. Then it became a frenzy, dragging everything out of closets and cupboards, sorting through every piece of paper he could find, and stacking whatever he didn't need to burn later.
His gut kept telling him to run away and find somewhere where nobody knew him, but the voice of common sense reminded him that not only did nobody know him around here anyway, but he also had no plan yet for finding a job and somewhere else to live. He couldn't even risk driving anywhere without a licence. Eventually, traffic cameras would pick him up. Gran had warned him about that.
The voice was still in his head. Run, Ian. Run. You've got to be ready.
He was eighteen; he might as well have been eight. The scale of the outside world th
at he'd have to confront began to crush him. His scalp tightened. He was too scared to go check his reflection this time. He felt like an alien who'd landed on Earth with a knowledge of the language and culture but no idea how to apply it.
If he was going to have any kind of life — even something as simple as buying a pint of milk, let alone getting a girlfriend — then he had to find a way to deal with it. Suddenly he wanted to scream at Gran for keeping it from him all these years, but the anger was replaced instantly by guilt and then the worst sense of loneliness he'd ever experienced. A bottomless pit opened up in his chest and his entire life plunged down it.
He carried on mechanically, hauling garbage bags down the stairs to the back yard ready for burning, but when he went into Gran's room and opened her closet it almost took his legs from under him. He sat on the edge of her bed and tried to cry. All he could manage was dry sobs. Was this normal? Was this what you felt like when you lost someone, or was this peculiar to a monster like him?
If only he could go back to being crazy. Crazy didn't stop him having a photo ID for a driving licence. How could he explain it if he morphed in front of someone? No girl would understand that.
But I never thought I'd have a proper life like everyone else anyway, did I? What difference does it make?
He threw himself back into purging the house. Perhaps he'd find something hidden away, some letter or photo that would suddenly make things all right again. But he knew he wouldn't.
When he went to the bathroom, he checked the mirror. His eyes were slightly different, still a muddy hazel but not quite the same shape.
So what's me? I had to start from somewhere.
However hard he worked on clearing the house, he still wasn't exhausted enough to sleep. Oatie crept into his room and lay on the bed next to him, making little whining noises every time he tossed and turned. Eventually Ian gave up and went downstairs to watch a movie.
Films were still his main yardstick for assessing the world beyond the ranch. The plots might have been total fiction, but he knew the attitudes and concerns of the characters were straight out of real life, or else people wouldn't have found them so interesting. And Gran had always said they'd teach him a lot about society's expectations of men. It must have been hard for her to bring up a boy on her own. He was still feeling guilty for being angry with a dead woman who'd spent her life looking after him, liar or not.
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