by Edward Lee
Winster snidely stroked his chin. “To be honest, we’re not quite sure. As you’re aware, last night, we had some visitors break through the floor. I didn’t really care that they broke into the pharmacy vault, but then they were rude enough to do the same thing back here in B-Wing. After you went on your rounds, Dellin crawled under the building himself and came up through the break in the floor. He discovered everything, of course, so we had to…subdue his distemper.”
“Where is he!”
Winster cast a glace to his son, who for the entire time had his eyes on Clare. “Stuart, bring our good friend Dellin out here for all to see.”
Stuart loped to the back of the room, to a door which read STORAGE. But while he was out of earshot, Adam spoke up: “Harry, Jesus Christ, you gotta do something about that kid of yours; I told you a million times, he’s a loose cannon, he’s got no sense. You should’ve seen the shit he pulled tonight.”
“And what might that have been, Adam?”
Adam’s whisper was fierce. “He went berserk! He killed your sister and her husband, trashed the house—” Adam raised his wounded arm— “and then the retarded little fuck damn near killed me!”
“You know how volatile he can be, Adam. Are you sure you didn’t do something to incense him?”
“No!”
“Are you sure? Are you sure that he didn’t come into the basement to find you raping my sister, Adam?”
“Is that what he told you? You’re gonna believe him over me? He’s fucked up in the head!”
“By now, Adam, I’m sure you know that I’m a very focused man,” Winster went on. “I don’t care about incidental mishaps or incidental people for that matter. My sister’s use to me, as a sexual pacifier for Stuart, was slowly fading. The project is more important than any of that, and whatever mess you caused at the cottage, you’ll simply have to clean up. Or I’ll find someone else who will.”
Caught in his own lie, Adam just gulped and nodded.
Stuart unlocked the storage closet and dragged Dellin out. There was blood all down one side of his head. He wasn’t moving, didn’t seem to be breathing, either.
“You killed him!” Clare shrieked.
“The butt of my good son’s shotgun put a quick end to Dellin’s snooping around back here.” Winster walked over, leaned down. “But how do you like that? He’s still alive,” he announced after feeling for a pulse. He stroked his chin again, more contemplative now, and looked at the desiccator. “I’m not sure what I want to do with him just yet. Ordinarily, the desiccator would do but…” He shook his head. “Lock him back up in the closet, Stuart. We may need his knowledge for the next stage.” Then he smiled at Clare. “I’m sure that Dellin will continue to work for us—under the proper amount of duress.”
Stuart dragged Dellin’s unconscious body back into the closet and re-locked it. Winster walked toward the tables. “And I hate to be the spoiler, but you can forget about Rick barging in here at the last minute and saving you all—”
With all that had gone on, it hadn’t even occurred to her. Rick. Where is he? She’d found the bloody key in the punch-station at the lake but never found a body.
“It’s a wonderful surveillance system we have here—the government spares no expense.” Winster turned on a large security monitor. “You’ll find this tape even more interesting than the one Adam planted in Dellin’s cottage,” Winster promised.
The lake, Clare thought when the picture formed. It was a long shot from a high camera mounted up in one of the palm trees. There was no sound but she could see all she needed.
Rick was frantically turning his key in the punch-station but a figure dragged him off. When he stood up straight, reaching for his sidearm—
No! Clare thought, gritting her teeth.
—Rick was literally picked up off the ground and blown backward as the other figure emptied both barrels of a twelve-gauge into Rick’s belly.
The figure, of course, was Stuart, who then calmly flung Rick over his shoulder and carried him toward the shore. He didn’t walk in very deep, not even to the knees, and then he let Rick’s body splash into the water. Stuart trotted back to shore quickly, as if fearful of something in the water.
Then that something arrived.
Even on the monitor, Clare could see the swerving ripples approach. Long and serpent-like, the thing broke surface and quickly wrapped its body around Rick, then pulled him under the water. Even though she’d only caught a glimpse, Clare knew what it was.
One of those mutated eels, like in the tank in the other room…
Only this one was much bigger, and so were the crocodilian teeth sprouting from its jaw. Clare just closed her eyes. Rick wasn’t able to even put up a fight as the creature carried him deep under the water.
“So much for him,” Winster said.
“People like you shouldn’t be allowed to exist,” Clare muttered.
“Ah, but we are, Clare, and do you know why? The world doesn’t evolve on its own, it evolves by the efforts of a rare few who dare to break the rules and challenge convention.”
“You’re just screwing around with genetics, Winster. You’re not doing anything here that’s going to change the world.”
“Oh, but I will, Clare, and those certain, more obscure compartments of our federal government are all too confident of this. Rest assured, you will be helping in your own little way—” Another smile. “—while providing my good son with some healthy diversion in between gestations.”
Stuart loped back over to her, ran his deformed hand along her face. “I mmmmmmm-issed you, Clare.”
Winster looked on proudly. “I’m afraid Stuart has always been quite fond of you, and like many fathers, I can’t help but get him whatever he wants. Of course, once we’ve fully entered Stage Two of the project, we won’t use Stuart’s sperm. Trust me, Clare, your ovums will be fertilized quite carefully, with the best-screened genetic material that science can produce. I’ll be using you for your womb, Clare, and Stuart will be using you for his personal plaything. But it’s not as grim as it sounds.” Winster shrugged. “You’ll be lobotomized, you’ll never feel a thing—er, at least you probably won’t.”
Clare struggled just to maintain ordered thought. These sick bastards are serious. I’ve got to take a chance…
But what?
Stuart’s plier-like hand slid down to her chest, blundering over her breasts, then slid down even lower.
“Get away from me, you freak,” she hissed.
“Aw, he’s just coppin’ a feel,” Adam said. “Better get used to it—he’ll be doin’ a lot more than that soon enough.”
“You’re so pruh-pruh-pretty, Clare. I’m gonna bite you a lot, and then fuh-fuh-fuh—”
“Son, enough,” Winster called him back. “We haven’t the time for that now. Be patient. But let’s show Clare what’s more presently in store for her.” He stood at the side of Joyce’s table. Joyce still lay unconscious, and Winster reached up and pulled one of the IRMT nozzles down. “Thread-thin beams of short-wave, high-amp radiation are manipulated through the necessary nerve centers of the brain.” He flicked on a panel switch, adjusted some knobs. One button glowed red, and Clare could read the word DISCHARGE above it. “We’re going to dumb her down a little, that’s all. It’s best that she go through her gestations without the ability to think. The resultant stress could make her less receptive to ovum replantation, even in spite of the fertility therapy.”
“Fertility therapy?” Clare asked. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, but you’ve been undergoing the same therapies yourself, Clare. That delicious iced-coffee in the break room? It’s loaded with Bromacripine, oxytocal stimulants, citrate-based nutrients—which all enhance uterine health and optimum ovulation. There are also some hormonal adjutants mixed in too, to make the twenty-three chromosomes in your ovums more susceptible to the new transfection factors from the master sample.”
“You’ve been pumping that stuff into us
, and we never even knew!” Clare yelled.
“Exactly, and it’s a very successful regimen. The side-effects can’t be helped, and they’re hardly debilitating anyway.”
“What…side-effects?” Clare asked.
Winster spread out his hands. “Hyper-active sexual response. Surely you’ve noticed it yourself. No?”
Then she knew. The flux of erotic thoughts and fantasies over the past few days? The lusty dreams and the sudden increase in her sex-drive? And all the while, the secret additives to the drinks in the break room were tuning up her reproductive potential—for this.
It just made her sicker and sicker.
But, still, she knew she had to buy time, she had to think of something to do, a ploy, some move to pull… But she just kept drawing blanks.
Winster had the nozzle to Joyce’s forehead; his hand reached out to press the DISCHARGE button on the machine.
“Wait!” Clare said.
Winster paused, looked up at her.
“You knew your son raped me on the base that night, didn’t you?”
“Of course. Stuart gets a little out of control sometimes, like any growing boy.”
“So it really was you who rigged the trial. The phony polygraphs, the bought-off witnesses—you did it all.”
“Yes, I did. I couldn’t just sit back and let my only son be prosecuted, could I? Even considering his deficiencies, I couldn’t let him be institutionalized. Stuart is my son, Clare. And you? You’re just a little orphan girl, a little cog in my great wheel. You should feel privileged that I’m going to let you live.”
“You call that living? A brain-dead piece of meat on a table? A womb to make fetuses for you?”
Winster pouted. “I’m hardly as evil as that, Clare. What do you take me as?” Then another of his wry smiles. “You won’t be brain-dead, you’ll be cerebrally modified.”
Adam gave her buttocks a squeeze. “You and that other bitch’ll be real lonely in here,” he whispered. “But don’t worry. I’ll be sneaking back here every so often when they ain’t around.” He rubbed his groin against her hip. “I’ll keep ya company.”
Clare put her revulsion aside and shouted “Wait!” again, just as Winster would hit the button.
Winster raised his brows.
“There’s a witness!” Clare blurted out. “She’ll have the police investigating in no time.”
“She’s a lyin’ bitch, Harry” Adam said. “There ain’t no witness.”
“That girl from the other night, the one we found in the woods.” Clare’s mind struggled to recall the name. “Kari Ann Wells! She didn’t die, Winster. She’s getting better, and it won’t be long before the police’ll be interviewing her.”
Winster stood up straight, his brow runneled in concern. Then he exclaimed, “Oh, that witness,” after which he and Adam burst into laughter.
Now Adam’s hand reached around and tweaked her breast. Clare flinched.
“Where do you think I was earlier today?” another wet whisper gusted into her ear. “Had to stop by and visit the poor little gal, ya know? And I gave her a little present, from Harry.”
“Digitalis in an i.v.-line?” Winster remarked. “Stops the heart every time. Adam comes in very handy around here.”
Clare’s spirits couldn’t have descended any lower.
“I was actually beginning to believe it,” she said, more to herself.
“What’s that, Clare darling?”
“The rumor,” she said, “that there were monsters out here. Even Kari Ann Wells said that it was a monster that attacked her. But there was no monster. It was just your kid, Winster, who might as well be a monster anyway.”
Now Winster offered a pinched look, as if he’d just remembered an oversight. He took his hand yet again away from the discharge button. “I do apologize, Clare. You don’t know, do you? It’s only fitting that I explain the rest—before we divorce you from your capacity to think.”
He extracted something from his pocket, brought it to his lips and seemed to blow.
A dog whistle? was all Clare could think.
Then Winster put his arm around Stuart’s shoulder. “This is my son, Clare.”
A large shadow fell on the floor.
“That’s the monster,” Winster finished
He pointed across the room.
Clare nearly passed out when she saw what stood in the doorway.
“You see,” Winster gloated on, “Dellin’s expertise in various genetic mitoectonologies, cellular particle-targeting, and overall transfection protocols proved to be the most valuable contributions to the project, yet all the while he never knew what we were really using his skills for. His techniques not only successfully integrate DNA segments—they also vastly accelerate what we in the field call carbon and oxygen saturation points. To a layman? It means that his techniques vastly amplify organic growth rates, and all this together—combined with what you’re looking at now—will one day allow us to clone some very special kind of people.”
It was at least seven-feet tall, with a shoulder-span of close to a yard. Bizarre webworks of muscles and veins moved beneath skin that seemed covered in mucous. The color of the skin was the same purple-tinged white that she’d noticed on the huge hairless rat they’d killed in the pipeway. Two holes for a nose, two little fleshy nubs for ears. The eyes were slits filled with gleaming black, and the mouth—
It opened its mouth to take a breath.
The mouth was an intricate chasm filled with teeth far more wolf-like than human.
It stood unclothed, and it stank. Its genitals hung hugely at its groin, all that grotesque flesh flinching slightly as the black-gash eyes stared more intently at Clare.
“A spectacle of creation, isn’t it?” Winster said, looking at it in sheer awe.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Clare blurted.
“Imperfect, yes, but as we learn more and more, and as our techniques continue to improve, just think what we’ll be able to produce here. And you, Clare, will be part of it—in your own little way.”
Clare gulped. “So you—”
“Created it,” Winster snapped. “Right here. And it’s less than a year old. What I told you earlier wasn’t entirely accurate—there was one transfected fetus that we didn’t destroy, the first one.” Winster was ecstatic. “This one.”
Clare could scarcely look at it.
“We’ll perfect them, educate them, train them,” Winster went on. “It already obeys simple commands, it’s grasped a minor vocabulary, it’s learned to perform minor tasks…”
She remembered the rat, and some of the specimens in the tanks— Their heads, their skulls, she thought. The brows seemed to suggest points that had never fully developed, almost like horns. This thing standing before her displayed a similar cranial feature. Then her gaze flicked to its arms…
She was looking at the bulging muscles. There were muscles groups she didn’t even know existed. Her gaze followed the arm all the way down. Hook-like nails grew out of the ends of the stout fingers. Did the fingers have an extra knuckle? And then—
Wait a minute! she thought next.
She looked at the other hand.
The basic structure of the first hand seemed normal, but the other hand only possessed two fingers: a thumb and index finger.
Same as Stuart.
Winster seemed to see that she had just noticed this fact. “I cloned my son, after transfecting in certain other properties—to see what would happen. The transfection itself was one-hundred-perfect successful, and so was the gestation. Regrettably, there were a few of Stuart’s defective properties that filtered in as well.”
“You took your own kid’s chromosomes and made a mutant out of them,” Clare realized.
“Yes, but soon enough we’ll be making mutants out of your chromosomes.”
It stood there, a mute hulk—
A monster, she thought.
Clare knew that she was looking at her future.
“
So now you know,” Winster said. “Selecting hosts with no family base, no siblings, and no real domestic roots was simple, with the military personnel records at my disposal. And I particularly wanted you, Clare. Dellin never even knew our past relationship when I sent him out to find you. The others, too—they were perfect. Joyce seems especially fertile—” He re-aimed the nozzle at her head. “Yes, right there—I’m really starting to get the knack of this.” He seemed to be matching a matrix on one of the computer screens against an MRI scan of Joyce’s brain. “The motor sulcus and rear-right quadrant of the temporal lobe are what we want to burn up—here we go, that looks like it…”
He reached for the discharge button.
“Wait!” Clare exclaimed. “What’s that smell?”
Winster glanced back at her reprovingly. “Really, Clare. You’ve been biding extra time for your friend long enough. I’d expect something a bit more original than that—”
“Hey, Harry?” Adam sniffed the air. “I smell something too.”
It was no ploy. Some vague acrid odor filled the air. Clare’s eyes began to sting slightly.
“The closet,” Adam said. “Want me to check it out?”
“No.” Winster looked at the storage closet. Then he looked directly at the hulking clone. He spoke loudly to it, pointing to the door. “Dellin is in there. Get him. Kill him.” Then, to Stuart: “Unlock the door for your brother, son.”
Stuart approached the door with his key, his mutant brother right behind him. When the thing walked, its footsteps slapped against the tile floor. Stuart was reaching forward with his key when—
WHACK!
—the door flew open and cracked Stuart right in the face. He went down, wailing.
The room seemed to freeze. Everything happened in split-second flashes. Some deep phlegmatic sound rumbled up from the mutant’s throat as Dellin—bloody-faced—leapt from the closet and tossed a beaker full of some oily liquid in the thing’s primeval face. Then—
POOOF!
“Nooooooooo!” Winster shouted.
The hideous clone burst into flames, black oily smoke pouring off the aura of fire. The bellow of agony that erupted from its throat nearly deafened Clare. Even though it had all happened in a fraction of a second, she saw what happened.
