Reunion

by J. S. Frankel

  His cellphone rang, though, and he took it out, flicking open the top. He listened for a moment, focus on the road and gritting his teeth, his jaw muscles bunched up like walnuts. “Yes, we have made contact, Senator Ulbricht. Your men are dead,” he replied. He listened again and an expression of disgust flashed across his face. “I don’t believe I’m going to tell you, sir.”

  Uttering a grunt, he shut it off. “That,” he said with an immense amount of distaste, “well, you know who it was. He wanted to know what happened to his men. I told him, but outside of making contact, he’s not going to get any other information.”

  “How about Holliman, are you going to talk to him?” Harry enquired.

  “No.”

  After delivering his one-word answer, Overton clammed up and drove steadily along the highway. An hour passed, and then, two, and after that, Harry fell asleep. Once he woke up, he noticed a sign at the side of the road. It indicated they were entering Chemung County. “We’re still in New York?”

  Overton glanced over. “Oh, you’re awake. Good, yeah, we’re in Elmira now,” he announced, jerking his thumb out the window as if to signify their position, “about four hours outside of New York City. Population is small, only about seventy-five hundred people.”

  He didn’t offer any additional information and continued to drive. They passed by stately Georgian-style houses, other buildings, then turned down a narrow dirt road that led to a forest, and stopped by the side of the road.

  “Is this the place?” Harry asked, peering out the window.

  Overton nodded. “Yep, it is, but it’s not a house. It’s something we use for witnesses in protective custody. We’re not using it now, so it should be safe for us, at least until the police or the other FBI members figure it out. Let’s go.”

  Getting out of the car, he led them through the forest until they came to a small log cabin. It reminded Harry of his own cabin up in the Catskill Mountains, and he wondered if he’d ever see it again.

  A barebones setup with a few couches, a fireplace, and a small kitchen, it gave the impression of rustic simplicity. Never mind that it had Internet access, and fortunately, a laptop sat on a wooden table in the middle of the main room. Chairs surrounded the table. It probably doubled as the dinner table, as there were old stains dotting its surface. Stairs led up to another floor.

  “This is nice place,” Pavel said and pointed to the second floor. “What is upstairs?”

  “Guest rooms,” Overton supplied. “Relax. We’ve got a little time.” To the deer-girl, Linda, he said “Tell us what you know.”

  She took a seat on the couch, hands in her lap. Pavel sat on another couch, head down and silent. Maybe he wanted to nap out, but a second later he reached into his pocket and took out his medicine bottle. Popping a couple of pills, he dry-swallowed them and put the bottle away.

  “I ran away from home,” she began after looking at everyone in turn. “My last name is Milton. I used to live in Seattle, but I hitchhiked down to LA to see if I could find something to do.”

  The rest of her story sounded distressingly familiar. At sixteen, she had no education, but with alcoholic parents who didn’t care what she did, she didn’t see any future living with them. “So I cut out. I was in LA for a couple of weeks, living on the street, and one night when I was sleeping in an alley, they came for me.”

  “The hybrids,” Overton put in.

  She nodded. “Uh-huh. They caught me, drugged me up, and the next thing I knew I woke up looking like this.” She swept her hands down her body. “That thing, Allenby,” her voice turned positively venomous, “He told me who he was and he laughed. He turned me into this!”

  Tears started from her eyes, and her voice shook, but she continued to relate her story. “There were ten of us he caught. They changed us, said we’d be special. Yeah,” she snorted with rage and shame, “look how special we are.”

  More tears rolled down her cheeks, but her expression changed from distraught to stony and she wiped them away. “Screw it, I’ll deal,” she muttered.

  “So where is this laboratory?” Overton wanted to know.

  “It’s here, in this state. I remember when I escaped with six others, we got outside and found a newspaper.” Blinking her eyes, she suddenly snapped her fingers. “Elmira Register—yeah, that was the name. We heard about you,” she looked at Harry, “and we figured maybe you could help us.”

  “Where are the others?” asked Overton.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. We got out at night. Allenby sent his guys to catch us. We kept running, three guys, me and two other girls. Maybe they’re still alive... they were all teenagers, like me, and they seemed pretty cool...”

  Her voice trailed off and her hands shook. When she spoke again, it sounded like an angry whisper. “If I could find that crazy scientist again, I’d make him hurt all over.”

  Looking up at Pavel, she asked, “Were you created by him, too?”

  “No,” he answered in a voice filled with pain. “Someone else create me. This man create many others. But I have other things to fight for, not Allenby so much. I find him, I kill him, maybe, but I still have no home except Russia.”

  Overton’s cellphone rang and he excused himself to take the call. Walking over to a far corner, he spoke in a hushed tone, but it soon grew more excited. Finally, he said, “Fine, you can have my badge!” He then clicked his phone shut.

  “Well, that’s that,” he said with an air of resignation as he returned to the couch. “Washington called my office in New York, told them what happened, and Holliman just ordered me to take you in. I told him no.”

  “You lose job?” Pavel asked.

  “You could say that.” He shrugged as if to say all of this had been what he’d been expecting. “Ulbricht’s men have taken custody of the bodies. They’ll probably study them to see what genetic secrets they hold. Nothing we can do about that. We still have to find Allenby. So if you know, Linda, show us where his lab is and we’ll take him down.”

  Linda gave them directions, and they set off. Driving steadily along the highway, Overton didn’t speak much, but did tell Harry where his wife was. “She’s with Maze?”

  “Yes.”

  Time for a moment of disbelief and Harry put his hands up to the side of his head, trying to keep his thoughts of the sane in and the insane out. “Let me see if I have this right. You’ve got an open area, it’s relatively unguarded, and there are clones that can pass as people... what could go wrong?” It was hard to stop the snark, but he managed to... mostly.

  “It seemed like the best option,” Overton replied, getting defensive and he puffed out his chest as if to say he’d been right all along. “I doubt Allenby knows where she lives, and the FBI has got guards around her place twenty-four-seven. She’ll be safe.”

  Harry doubted that most sincerely. Considering Overton had just effectively handed in his resignation, the FBI might just withdraw their support. Wanting nothing more than to get out and run back to her, he realized that he couldn’t go home. Not yet, not when there was a madman out there who needed to be stopped.

  Pavel dozed off during the forty-minute ride, and when they neared their destination, a small farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, Linda’s voice shook. “That’s it.”

  Overton braked and she got out and pointed to the structure. “There, that’s where he is. Everything is underground.”

  They advanced cautiously on the house, and Harry tested the air. No scents he could find. The air smelled faintly of summer flowers and nothing more. Entering the farmhouse, a carpet covered the floor.

  A memory flashed through Harry’s mind, the memory of Nurmelev’s lair in the Catskills. It had a similar setup. Kicking the carpet away, sure enough, he found a trapdoor leading down. Pavel reached down, opened it, and a series of well-carved stairs lay in front of them. “Enter the dragon,” Overton muttered, drawing his gun.

  At the bottom, they found nothing but a room the size of an air
plane hangar that had been hewn out of the earth along with some smashed machines and chambers.

  “He’s gone, that slimeball,” Linda declared in a voice filled with anger and disappointment. “He left us nothing!”

  “Not nothing,” a voice said.

  Glancing over at where the voice had come from, Harry saw it belonged to a centipede-like creature with the body of an insect and the face and arms of a man. “He left us—and now we have you.”

  As if by magic, ten other transgenic creations emerged from under the earth and stood alongside him. It was a clever ruse... and altogether sick. Allenby had used time-seeding... this couldn’t be explained any other way. As interesting as all this was, the science behind it would have to be worked out later. “We don’t have to do this,” he said, knowing a confrontation was inevitable.

  One of the insect-men spoke up. “Yes, we do.”

  Both sides attacked simultaneously, and Harry ripped through three of the horde with as many quick swipes of his claws. Pavel took on two others, and Overton used his pistol and took down two more until it clicked empty. One of the mutants then bashed him over the head and he fell to the ground and lay still. However, their attention quickly turned to Linda and the last three advanced on her.

  “Linda!” Harry yelled, running over to her.

  “I’ve got this,” she cried. Waiting until the unholy trio was almost upon her, she sprang into the air. At the height of her jump, she sprouted wings. The very act of transforming caused Harry to stop in his tracks. The girl had wings. The other hybrids in the mineshaft had also possessed wings, but Linda’s were a sight to behold.

  White and full, along with a pair of talons, they resembled an angel’s appendages, only she seemed more of an avenging angel than anything else. In a flash, she swooped down and annihilated the enemy in short order. Even Pavel seemed impressed.

  Fight over, she landed, and the wings disappeared into her body. Harry ran to Overton’s side. The agent was just waking up and groggily asked, “What happened?”

  “Is another prototype,” said Pavel, gesturing at Linda with a bloody hand and nodding with a thoughtful expression on his face. “I thought I was only one.”

  All eyes focused on her. “Hey, don’t ask me,” she said as she wiped the blood and sweat from her face. “I didn’t know this would happen, either. They came out, like... like instinct or something. I had a feeling I could fly, and I did.” She gave a rather self-conscious laugh. “Flying isn’t so bad.”

  “No,” Harry said thoughtfully, “it isn’t.”

  One of the horde members was still alive and weakly stirred in the corner. They went over to it, and Overton stooped over its torn-up body. Its face had also been half ripped off, and blood was running from every orifice, staining the earth. “I’ve got news for you,” he said. “You’re not going to live very long. So help us out and tell us where Allenby is. That’s all we want.”

  The creature tried to talk, but the blood in its throat made it impossible. It choked, spit out some of its own life fluids, and then whispered something before giving the familiar death rattle. Straightening up, Overton’s expression was grim. “It said Allenby isn’t here, anymore. To me, that means he’s already left the country or is trying to.”

  “How he do that?” Pavel wanted to know. “You need visa, you need plane, and you need—”

  “He’s rich, connected, and he’s been planning this for a long time,” Overton interrupted. “Good enough answer?”

  Without waiting for a response, he turned and mounted the stairs, and everyone else followed behind. Once on the surface, Pavel put out the obvious question as Overton walked off to place a phone call. “So what we do?”

  Overton turned back long enough to say, “We go after him,” and then started talking on his cellphone.

  Linda eyed the ground and then the air, seeming anxious. Pavel took out his meds, popped two pills, and then shook the bottle. The sound of a few pills rattling around signified he needed a refill, but where could they go to get them? Fugitives didn’t get prescriptions filled.

  Harry felt torn between wanting to go after Allenby and seeing his wife and daughter again. It seemed no one wanted to be the first to say anything and perhaps jinx the whole thing. It came as a relief when Overton came back to inform them he’d contacted the necessary FBI personnel in New York as well as in Washington.

  “They didn’t believe me at first about the clones, but they do now. Other agents told them about the fake Ulbricht. The police have also begun to warn the people. More and more officers are on patrol.”

  “Do you still have a job?” Harry asked.

  He shook his head. “No, as of right now, technically I’m on the run, same as you are,” he answered, a trace of bitterness in his voice. “Holliman gave me an option. Come in and bring you with me, or face charges for aiding and abetting a fugitive.”

  A grunt came from Overton and it was the sound of a person who’d made a momentous decision and was probably regretting it. “Worked my butt off to become an agent, was one of the highest ranking grads at Quantico...” He broke off his speech to stare aimlessly at the ground.

  Pavel spoke up. Face taut, voice strained and body shaking, he seemed on the verge of erupting into a wild, yet legitimate, burst of rage. Still, his voice came out quietly. “You are in same position as me. I am also fugitive. I have no one in life no more. I have only life here, until I go back to Russia. So I say, if this man is no longer in this country, let me go back to my home.”

  “I need to see my wife first,” said Harry, mentally calculating how long it would take to get back to New York by car and then find Maze’s place without being seen. Pretty bad odds, but he’d faced worse before. He could do this... he had to. “Just once, so I can hold my daughter again.”

  Overton’s gaze flicked back and forth between the two other men. “So, what’s it to be, people? I’m in it to win it. Stay or go, it’s all the same to me.”

  A loud “ahem” from Linda broke the tie. All eyes turned on her. “Thanks for asking me,” she groused. “I know I’m the youngest here, but I took care of those skunks before and I can do it again. So you know what? I’m gonna find my own way.”

  “And that means... what?” asked Overton. “You need our help, and we need you.”

  Linda took a step back and put her hand up as if to warn him. “You don’t need me that much. I escaped with six others. I think I can find them, but I’ve gotta do it on my own.”

  Contracting her shoulders inward, she grunted as if summoning an inner being, and with a gasp came the reemergence of her wings. The talons, though, did not appear.

  “I’ll see you guys.” She turned to leave, but swiveled around long enough to nod politely at them. “I know I said it before, but thanks again for saving me, both of you.” Nervously chewing on her lower lip, she added, “If you guys make it back, and I need to stay somewhere—”

  “My place, Catskill Mountains,” Harry interrupted and he proceeded to tell her the address. “If we make it back, you’re welcome to stay with us.”

  A smile came from Linda, and with a slight hop she took to the air and soon soared away. Like a giant yet graceful bird, she swooped and soared among the clouds, and it seemed completely natural. She might have been one of the transformed, but it was beautiful to watch her fly.

  Once she was out of sight, Overton motioned to his car. “Let’s get going. I have an idea where Allenby will go, but I’ll need to talk to Jason or Maze first.”

  Trucking back to the car, Overton worked his cellphone, said, “Do it!” a few times, and then hung up. He refused to divulge what he’d just said. Instead, he ordered, “Get in” and they took off down the highway.

  Retracing their path, they reached the outskirts of New York a few hours later. There, on a lonely stretch of the highway, the sky growing dark, he motioned to the outer world. A few cars had been tailing them for the past twenty minutes, always keeping the same distance. Harry figured
it was the law.

  Just outside the city limits, Overton hauled the car over to the side of the road. “Both of you get going,” Overton said. “The authorities will want to talk to me. I’ll draw them off and give you a chance to link up with your wife, Harry. Pavel, you’re out of here, too.”

  “But, where are we going to meet...” Harry began.

  “Move it,” Overton commanded in an impatient voice. “I haven’t got all night. I’ll figure out something, but for now, get out.”

  Feeling a sense of regret, Harry nodded and said to Pavel, “C’mon.”

  They clambered up the side of the embankment and disappeared into a forested area. Once there, Harry nosed around, found no dangerous smells, and pointed due east. “Where we go now?” Pavel asked.

  “To see my wife and daughter,” Harry answered. “We’re still going to get you back home somehow and sort this out, but I have to see my wife first.”

  “I understand. We go.”

  As he trotted off, Harry’s stride soon turned into a run. Maze’s house was in the suburbs, and if the FBI still had agents around, it might be tough. Even worse, there was always the possibility that Allenby’s clones had infiltrated the FBI, but he had to take that chance. However, as long as Anastasia and little Sara Emily were safe, it would have to be enough.

  Chapter Eight: On Our Own

  They ran at a steady pace, never stopping once. His heart thumping away at a constant sixty beats, Harry’s breathing never faltered and he’d long forgotten about the lactic acid buildup. It was almost as if his body had been set to auto-pilot. The rest was simply following through.

  As he ran, he trained his ears to pick up any unusual sounds, mainly sirens or the thwup-thwupping of a helicopter’s rotors. Nothing came his way save the usual noises of car engines running, birds chirping, and people talking. Perhaps the FBI had called off its dogs... but he highly doubted it, and stayed on the alert.

  They ran. Pavel kept pace, and within an hour, they’d reached their target. Stopping at the edge of a small wooded area that served as the residential area’s park and playground, Harry took a scent check, but found nothing save the usual animal and pollution smells. “Hold up here,” he said and pointed straight ahead. “Maze’s house is about two hundred yards that way.”