Reunion

by J. S. Frankel

  “What about children,” another reporter asked. “Are you worried it might be half-human?”

  Immediately, the mood grew quiet, but Harry had been expecting that. So, apparently, had Anastasia, as she responded with, “Our children will look however they’ll look. They’ll be Americans, and that’s what’s important. We’ll love them, no matter what.”

  Agent Farrell then took over, telling the reporters the Goldman’s deserved a little privacy, no more pictures, and he then ushered them inside. Now, they stood near the chamber doors of the judge on duty. Anastasia had worn a yellow dress while Harry had struggled into a suit. Farrell, as usual, wore his men-in-black garb and held a briefcase.

  “Are you nervous?” Harry asked.

  Anastasia bobbed her head. “A little,” she admitted. “I’ve never been married before.”

  “Me either, but it’ll be fun.”

  Farrell grunted and knocked on the door. “Just wait until you have kids. Then the real fun begins.”

  The sign on the door read Judge Stephanie Zervos. A voice said, “Come in.”

  Entering, Judge Zervos, a middle-aged woman with a pleasant round face and cool green eyes, sat behind a large wooden desk. A youngish man, perhaps a witness or maybe her secretary, tall, slender and very nondescript looking, stood at her side.

  Zervos favored them with a smile. “When I was told I’d be presiding over a wedding today, I didn’t figure it to be you two,” she said. “I’m glad they asked me.”

  For a change, unlike the malice Harry had heard from others, there was none in the woman’s voice. In fact, she sounded quite pleased. After asking them for the proper documents, Farrell produced them from his briefcase and handed them over. Zervos checked them while muttering here and there, and finally handed them to the man.

  “These look to be in order.” She then beckoned to the man who leaned over, and whispered something in his ear. A second later, he left the room.

  “That man was my assistant and a witness. He’ll be back soon,” Zervos said and asked Farrell, “Would you also like to act as a witness, Mr.—”

  “I’m Agent Miles Farrell with the FBI.”

  “Very well, Agent Farrell,” replied Zervos as her assistant reentered the room. “Let us begin.”

  The ceremony didn’t take more than a few minutes, but at the end, Harry felt sweat coating every inch of his body. Anastasia hadn’t seemed nervous at all and scribbled her name in the ledger.

  However, when it came his turn to sign, Harry waited perhaps a fraction too long and she smacked him on the shoulder. “Sign it,” she stated in a mock-angry tone.

  Farrell stifled a chuckle, muttering, “Too late,” as Harry penned his name. The judge took it all in stride, nodding her head and smiling a most pleasant smile.

  Once things had been handled in a legal and proper manner, she made a phone call and a young woman came in, wheeling a cart. “This is a little something I thought would fit the occasion,” Zervos had said.

  On it sat an enormous tray, and lifting the lid, it revealed a chocolate cake covered in white icing with the word “Congratulations!” written in an elegant yellow meringue font...

  Image shift time, and now the wedding night memory arose. Anastasia stood in the middle of the cabin, wearing a yellow nightgown. She offered a smile and motioned to the bedroom. “I don’t suppose you want to wait,” she said in the softest of all voices.

  She turned and moved her body in a come-hither motion. Harry followed her in willingly, and after she’d disrobed, they slowly moved onto the bed where their limbs entwined in the twisting throes of a love all newlyweds shared. It was a joyous, simple ritual, an affirmation of love and life and everything in between, and it signaled a new direction...

  A final shift came and it had to do with the funeral. Agent Farrell, Harry’s original mentor, had succumbed to cancer. At the age of fifty-four, that was definitely too early to go. Harry had offered him a chance at life.

  “I can use the Genesis Chamber,” he’d told the agent as he lay in a hospital bed. He’d tried not to sound desperate. Farrell had been his mentor, his friend, and almost like a second father. To see someone close die from a disease when the course of the disease could be arrested...

  “Save it,” said Farrell. “I had my chance. Now it’s time you make your chances. You have to do for yourself and your wife. So do what’s right and what’s necessary.”

  He’d died not long after and there they were at the cemetery with a hot and dry wind blowing. The minister had said the proper words, commended Farrell’s soul to the hereafter, and invoked the goodwill of the almighty to speed the late agent’s passage along.

  Staring at the tombstone, the tears welling from his eyes, Harry had mixed feelings. He was not now and never had been religious, but he did hope Farrell had gone to the better place people always talked about. His mentor hadn’t always been the warmest person around, but he’d been a friend and now he was gone and the wind rose, and he...

  “Uh...”

  Harry snapped awake. The cell was dark, so maybe it had been geared to a person’s bio-rhythms. He sat up, slowly and painfully feeling every inch of his skin ache. The thought of when the next bout of hurricane-force winds would happen rattled around his mind.

  Abruptly, the lights came on. Getting slowly to his feet, Harry walked over to the door, expecting it to open. When it didn’t, he put his hand on it. A scant millisecond later, he received a nasty electrical shock and jerked his hand away.

  “Harry, you must be more cautious,” the mocking voice of Allenby came. “This is basic aversion-training therapy.”

  “Screw you.”

  A laugh, high and full of malevolent glee, echoed throughout the room. “Harry, all you have to do is to help me out.”

  “How about I say no?”

  Silence... and then “Is that your final word?”

  Harry remained silent and lay down on the ground, his ears pricked up and waiting for the first whisper of wind. Sure enough, it came a second later, followed by Allenby’s voice. “Your therapy hasn’t finished yet, Goldman, not by half. We’ll keep at this until you get it right.”

  The voice cut out as the wind’s intensity built. Soon it built to its previous gale-force proportions, and then went beyond. Although Harry tried to dig his claws in and hold on, the power of the wind tore his grip away, and he hurtled toward a wall and then another and then another...

  Minutes or hours later, he awoke once more, this time staring up at the ceiling. A thin film of red covered his eyes and he wiped it away, staring at his life’s essence on his fingers.

  He turned over, a groan escaping his lips. The wind had been much stronger that time around, and he reckoned Allenby hadn’t yet used its full power. He would, though, of that, Harry was certain.

  Maybe that was part of the plan. Keep the prisoners guessing? Maybe he’d crack soon. There was only so much punishment—mental, physical or both—a person could take before they went mad or died, whichever came first.

  Going insane and dying—neither of those prospects thrilled Harry in the least, but realistically speaking, he had nowhere else to go. The torture would go on until he broke or until his body was broken. If this was the first of the days under lock-and-key, then it would only be a matter of time before something failed. No one was going to come for him, and...

  The wind started once more, but this time, instead of just the power of a vortex slamming him from side to side, snow came from all points, and once the snow stopped, sleet replaced it, stinging pellets of ice that opened up gashes and wounds in his skin. Allenby was most inventive. Harry stayed in his corner, hugging himself, and finally, having had enough of the torture, yelled, “I got it, already, I give up!”

  He was immediately ashamed he’d cracked so soon. A second later, the wind and sleet cut out and the door opened.

  Allenby stood in the aperture, pistol in hand and a wolfish grin on his face. “I see you’ve come around to my wa
y of thinking. Shall we get to work?” Allenby motioned with his pistol.

  Harry painfully got to his feet, took the lead, and walked back the way he’d come. During the trip back he staggered a few times, but righted his body and continued up to the laboratory. At least it was somewhat warmer there and he felt his muscles loosen. “I hope you liked my hotel accommodations,” Allenby said, the venom in his voice showing.

  “I can’t say I’d recommend it to anyone.”

  A harsh chuckle filled the air. Allenby waved his hand at the computer. “It’s all yours. Show me, smart kid.”

  Smart kid...

  It triggered an old memory in Harry, that of his university days when he was a gawky teen. Some fat college student had said that to him, daring him to solve the equation, and as Harry seated himself, he recalled the situation as he scanned the information in front of him. The numbers were there, the equations ready, and the matrix had been set up... but something was wrong. “Hmm...”

  Allenby had been standing opposite him. He instantly became interested, although he did not put the pistol away. “What is it?”

  With a shock, Harry suddenly knew what the answer was. University days and daze aside, the solution had been staring him in the face, and now he knew what to do.

  “It’s this part, right here,” he said as he pointed to the screen, his mind racing through the various combinations and permutations. “You’ve been going about it all wrong. I have, too. The problem isn’t the retrovirus. It’s the protein compound you’ve been using.”

  He hastily typed in what he thought to be the correct equation. The matrix shifted, wavered, and a second later, a message flashed on the screen—100% viable.

  That was it, the result of two years of hard work. It had come like a bolt out of the blue, an answer to the prayers of those who’d been altered and made freaks and monsters against their will. The protein sheath coupled with the retrovirus would not only separate the animal and human DNA, it would also reverse the process.

  Committing the equations to memory and then feeding in a few more equations just to be sure, Harry got the result, and another sledgehammer hit. Istvan’s blood hadn’t been needed after all. The only thing necessary was reconfiguring the protein sheath’s matrix. Istvan had died for nothing.

  Allenby moved over to stare at the screen. He sucked in a deep breath and a note of distinct respect sounded in his voice. “This is... amazing. I never thought of it. I must hand it to you, Goldman, this is prime research. Congratulations.”

  He snapped his fingers, and two snake-headed men appeared. The note of respect vanished, replaced by an imperious tone. Allenby apparently had a very short memory, and gratitude was one word that didn’t seem to figure into his vocabulary.

  “Hold him,” he ordered, and they immediately fastened their strong arms around Harry’s neck, yanking him out of the seat while Allenby seated himself at the computer and typed something in.

  Looking at the new equation, Harry got the shock of his life, although he shouldn’t have been surprised. Allenby had devised an entirely different and unholy matrix, based on this breakthrough. “I have to hand it to you, Allenby,” he said. “You’re the best at stealing ideas, better than anyone else.”

  The sound of one of the Genesis Chambers began, and a low humming filled the room. Allenby moved over to it after crushing the pistol and tossing it aside. “If I cannot do it on my own, then I take. That is what a conqueror does. He uses others to help propel him to the top.”

  He did incline his head, though. “Thanks to you, Goldman, you’ve solved my problem of mutation. See you on the other side of humanity.”

  Pausing to address his men, he added, “Oh wait, you won’t be here to see it. Kill him for me, my loyal subjects.”

  Order given, he entered the chamber and the door closed behind him. “Watch our master transform while you die,” hissed one of the snake-men and tightened his grip around Harry’s neck.

  Like hell he would! In a fit of desperation, Harry stomped on the foot of one of his captors. The snake-man let out a gasp of surprise and his grip loosened. Harry jerked his arm away and slugged the other guard. He fell to the floor, and after knocking the first slimebag out, there came the time for making a decision.

  It was a most terrible one, yet, it wasn’t difficult to make. Destroy the formula or let science continue. Harry did what he knew he shouldn’t. He changed the matrix once more. Then, curling both hands into fists, he hammered the computer into nothingness.

  With a grunt, he lugged a heavy table over and he positioned it against the door of the chamber. It wouldn’t hold the monster for long, but it would have to do. Allenby must have heard the commotion, but the process had already begun. A bright yellow glow came from the chamber and in a panic-filled voice he called out, “This shouldn’t be happening. What have you done?”

  “Take a good guess.”

  “No, I beg you, stop it now!”

  Too late, as what had been started could not be halted. Evolution had been changed and transformed once more, but what would the result be? A scream sounded from the chamber, and then a hand ribbed in bone, smashed through the chamber’s wall. “Goldmaaaaaaaaan...”

  A second later, the figure of Allenby emerged. This time, he’d been transformed into something akin to a giant, an unlikely and ungainly combination of giraffe and gorilla. The new monstrosity had a half-human, half-giraffe head, and the body and limbs of a primate laced with bony protrusions, sharp and deadly looking. “Goldman,” he hissed with an oversized tongue flopping from his mouth, “what have you done?”

  He began to advance, but Harry was already backing away in the direction of the rooms. Reaching one of the generators, he pushed it over in an attempt to stop or at least stall the progress of the monster in front of him. The generator exploded, the ruined metal and circuitry sending up a cloud of smoke.

  It didn’t hide movement, though, or sound, and the aberration went through each and every worktable, smashing them to bits. In spite of its ungainly appearance, it moved fast and with a certain amount of grace, and knew how to cut the room off.

  Just one chance, Harry thought, and sidling over to the entrance leading to the cell, he gestured for the monster to follow him. “Come and get me. It ends here for one of us.”

  “It won’t be me,” Allenby intoned and rushed him in a burst of speed. A horrid snorting sound erupted from his throat, a combination of an animal’s grunt and a bird’s scream.

  Their bodies collided in a tangle of thrashing limbs, with the monster on top of Harry, hammering away. Painful though it was, Harry weathered the first storm and punched Allenby in the throat, causing him to fall to the side. “That’s for Istvan,” he said. “My turn, now, and Anastasia’s is next.”

  Springing to his feet, he waited for the next rush. Time to let the cat take over, and predictably, Allenby charged. As he did so, Harry leaped into the air, flipping around and landing behind his opponent. Unexpectedly, Allenby swiveled around in a rather graceful move, and they traded slashes and blows in the corridor.

  “You’ll give me the answer,” Allenby cried. “I want the answer! I deserve the answer and the power!”

  “You tried beating it out of me,” said Harry as he blocked a shot from the monster’s arms and evaded another chop. “It didn’t work. This time you’re history.”

  A growl erupted from Allenby. “I’ll make history. I’ll do it with your death and then the death of your wife.”

  He launched a left hook that found its mark below Harry’s ribcage. Liver punch, he thought absently as a pain most exquisite stopped his movement and temporarily paralyzed him. Falling to one knee, he covered his head with his arms and tried to protect himself as much as possible.

  It didn’t work very well, as Allenby continued to assault him, using fists and knees to batter him around. “You are nothing, and that slut you married is less than nothing. I know about your offspring, and it is bound to be—”

  “
My child,” Harry snarled as he erupted and threw a right cross that connected to Allenby’s chin and knocked him back. “You can threaten me. You don’t threaten my wife and daughter.”

  No more, not now, and not ever! With renewed strength and purpose, he went on the offensive, pushing forward, heedless of the blows he received. The narrowness of the corridor worked against Allenby, as his size prevented him from using leverage to strike back with full force.

  By the same token, Harry’s relatively small body had more freedom, and he used it to its fullest advantage. Slashing, striking, clawing and spitting his defiance, acting like more cat than man, he slowly and inexorably forced his opponent back toward the cell.

  Allenby looked desperately around for any assistance, any means of stopping the attack, and snarled while smashing Harry about the head and shoulders. “You fight like the animal you are,” Allenby desperately threw out. He kept hammering away, though.

  Hit me harder. You won’t win. “Keep trying,” Harry grunted. Pain or not, he continued to fight with the desperation of someone who had to win, and the determination of someone with a score to settle. He might have been half animal, but now he fought as a human, lashing out and scoring deep slashes in the monster’s face and kicking it in the torso in a rapid, almost blinding flurry of movement. “Keep trying.”

  With a final effort, muscles filled with lactic acid and strength almost gone, Harry snapped out a high kick to the thing’s jaw and sent it back inside. Immediately the door slid shut and the lock automatically clicked shut. He then set the timer for the maximum—ninety-nine years.

  Adrenaline rush over, he slumped down beside the door, felt his muscles repair themselves and his bones knit, and after taking a deep breath, got to his feet. It was time to leave.

  Thuds resounded on the door as the monster inside attempted to smash its way out. “Save your strength,” Harry said and not without a certain amount of satisfaction. “You designed it to contain the strongest creature in the world. Who’s that guy?”