Chameleon (The Ripple Series)

by Cidney Swanson

  Images from his mind flooded into my own. Fearful this could be a two–way occurrence, I focused on preventing him from gaining anything from my mind. I dwelt upon one single image: the WANTED poster of me with the sticky note reading Do Not Harm. I repeated this single image again and again in hopes the message might influence my captor.

  Overlaying this image of mine, I saw visions from Ivanovich’s mind: Helga in a raging passion, a wall made of stacked skulls, a row of red–filled vials, a birds–eye view while skimming over the surface of an immense lake or perhaps ocean; on and on the images came in relentless waves—more images than I figured I probably had in my head over the course of several weeks. This guy’s brain was way too busy.

  And then all at once we stopped. I felt my flesh returning as my captor threw me from himself. I hit the ground hard and tumbled over, hurtling into a desk.

  My weight and speed pushed the desk into something more solid. A wall? I heard the sound of things falling to the floor, dislodged by the collision. From where I lay, I saw what looked like a dog bone rolling towards me and coming to rest.

  I tried to rise, but the room spun wrong–ways–up, and I shut my eyes tight. As I fell back to the rough flooring, I hit my head. Stupefied, I lay still. I thought maybe my head hurt, but then I wasn’t so sure. Maybe it just felt heavy.

  “Deuxième’s got her, that’s right, she’s ours now,” said the man. His voice sounded wrong. I struggled to work out why.

  “Such a deal of blood. So very, very red. But dirty. Not good clean blood,” he continued.

  I realized he was muttering in French. And he wasn’t directing his speech at me. I lifted my head a centimeter to see who else was in this place. My brain tried to make sense of what I could see in the dimly–lit space. Rows of sticks decorating a wall. I squinted, examining the patterns, far more complex than any brick–laying I’d ever seen. And then it dawned on me that I was looking at a wall made not of sticks, but of bones.

  He’d brought me into Paris’ underground bone–charnel. And there was no one else here.

  As he continued speaking, I realized something else was wrong with his voice: it didn’t sound like Ivanovich at all, in fact. He spoke in a high pitch with a frantic, breathy quality. He sounded nothing like the man I’d fled in Helga’s laboratory, but he looked identical, right down to a dark mole below his left eye.

  “It’s necessary to be sure; It’s necessary to be correct. We can’t call die Mutter unless we’re sure. Check her blood. Check her blood.”

  He was talking to himself, I realized. As he continued muttering, I kept my eyes pinched almost closed. It felt like it gave me an advantage, although I had no plan at the moment, except to calm my pulse and try rippling.

  ‘Cause that’s always worked so well for you when you’re scared. I had to face the possibility that I wouldn’t be able to find my rippling “zone” here any more than I had in Helga’s lab. I wasn’t Will; this didn’t come to me second–nature.

  Deep breath in, slow breath out, I told myself.

  “She might wake up. She might not. Let’s tie her hands together,” continued the voice. “That’s a good plan Deuxième, a good plan.”

  And with that, he seized both my hands and duct–taped them together.

  Crap! My heart started pounding again, and my head with it.

  “Lots of blood, lots of blood, but it is not clean. Deuxième can’t use dirty blood.”

  I felt a tickle beside my ear as I identified the smell of my own blood. I’d cut something by my ear.

  “Can’t get a clear look at her now she’s got her eyes closed. She needs to wake up. Deuxième has things to make her wake up.”

  Through squinted eyes, I saw him open a cupboard that appeared to be full of medical or scientific supplies. He located a small vial and then rummaged until he found a needle.

  Oh, God! What’s he going to pump inside of me?

  “She must wake up. This will wake her up.” Here, he laughed. It was a childish laugh, and it sent a chill down my spine.

  “I’m awake!” I cried out in French.

  “American,” he said. “She sounds like an American.”

  I didn’t say anything in response. I’d seen a mouse once on television, frozen before a rattlesnake. I knew how it felt to be the mouse now.

  “From California. That is where she lives.” He stared at me, tilting his head sideways to get a better look at my face along the ground.

  “Maybe she will tell us her name.”

  His icy blue eyes drew closer to mine and I flinched.

  “What is your name, girl?”

  I said nothing, still thinking about that stupid rodent. I didn’t want to be the mouse.

  “Deuxième forgets that she is American. Lazy Americans speak only English.” These things, he murmured to himself in French. Then, switching to English, he addressed me once more. “What are you called?”

  “I’m Jane Smith,” I lied, figuring it was safer to stick to that identity than reveal my actual name. “What are you called?”

  Here he flashed a grin of polished teeth. “Now I am Deuxième. Later Ivanovich will be here and Deuxième will get to rest.”

  “You have … two names?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he said, wrinkling his brow. “When Deuxième sleeps, Ivanovich is our name. When Ivanovich sleeps, we are Deuxième.”

  I nodded as though what he said made sense. It didn’t, exactly, but I didn’t want to antagonize him. Helga’s thug was more than just an über–man. He had some form of über–multiple personality disorder that she’d employed to her advantage.

  “Deuxième needs clean blood,” he said, turning back to the cupboard.

  As soon as he turned his back to me, I began scooting backwards and away from him towards a low opening in the wall behind me.

  He spun back around. “No!” He grabbed me roughly and shoved me down onto a small wooden bench. Grabbing the duct tape once more, he ran it over my lap, securing me to the bench. “Jane must stay here.”

  His simple speech reminded me of a child.

  “I don’t want to stay here,” I said, adjusting my tone to match his. My voice came out surprisingly calm.

  “Sometimes Deuxième is unhappy to be here, Jane. But Deuxième does what he is told. Ivanovich got us in trouble. Die Mutter said Ivanovich deserved to be banished. Poor Deuxième had to come here as well.”

  “Come here from where?” I asked.

  He stood, confident that I could not longer escape. He ignored my question as he returned to searching his cupboard.

  “From California?” I asked.

  “Mmmm–hmm,” he said, inflecting the sound just enough that it meant “yes.”

  “Samples must always be clean. Clean samples yield clear results,” he said as he spun back around. In his hands he held two empty vials and a different kind of needle along with a length of rubber tubing.

  No, I thought. Please, no! He wanted to draw blood. With a needle.

  Panic or fainting would take me farther from being able to ripple. Could I distract Deuxième and prevent him from drawing my blood?

  “Deuxième means ‘Second,’ right?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said as he began tying the tubing above my elbow.

  I tried not to stare at the wickedly sharp needle he’d placed on the bench beside me.

  “Was there ever a … First?” I asked.

  He grabbed the needle. His face looked troubled. “He is gone,” he said simply. “She destroyed him with too many experiments.”

  “She did?” I asked.

  His hands had stopped their activity and he looked down and to one side.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “Were there more than the three of you at any time?”

  “Just three. Until she destroyed Bruno.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Die Mutter needed to experiment,” he said, frowning at me. “Why else?”

  “So he had
to die?” I asked. “That must have been terrible for you.”

  Deuxième looked unhappily at the vials in his hand. “Yes, very terrible. Without Bruno, Ivanovich and I must work longer hours.”

  “Wait, what? What do you mean work longer?” I asked. I was tied to a wooden bench by a man holding a freaking needle; I couldn’t run out of questions.

  “While Bruno lived, Ivanovich and Deuxième could rest for sixteen hours and work for eight. Now Ivanovich works twelve hours while Deuxième rests and Deuxième works twelve hours while Ivanovich rests.” He looked very despondent as he reported this to me, eyelids drooping.

  “So one of you is always … awake?” I asked.

  “The body we share does not require sleep. We are the über–kinder, fore–runner of the new man.” He didn’t sound very excited about this.

  “That sounds like a painful life,” I said. My heart rate is slowing, I thought silently. I just needed to keep him talking.

  “Painful,” he said. “Yes, pain is necessary. Pain is the great motivator.” His eyes fluttered and he seemed to shift into a higher state of alertness with each repetition of the word “pain.” He stared at the objects still in his hands and began testing my arm for a vein.

  “Good veins,” he said, removing a plastic wrap from the needle.

  I felt a sick rush of nausea. I’d run out of questions.

  “She has very good veins,” he repeated, prodding my arm with his fingers.

  The room tilted off–center and I watched in horrible, sickened fascination as the needle crept slowly toward my arm.

  Finding a vein, he inserted the sharp bright point.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE MOTHER

  You will not pass out! I ordered myself. You will get out of this place in one piece!

  Deuxième dragged the needle tip back and forth trying to insert it into my vein.

  I wanted to vomit; I wanted to pass out. But I forced myself to stay clear.

  “We can’t find it,” muttered Deuxième. “Such a good vein and we can’t find the entrance.” He yanked the needle out in a quick and frustrated motion. Throwing that needle aside, he grabbed another one and ripped off the packaging. “Another try.”

  My stomach lurched again.

  “Deuxième,” I said, trying desperately to keep it together as he brought another needle towards me. “Uh, why do you want my blood?”

  He drew his lips back from his teeth in a grim replication of a smile. “Deuxième is very good conversing with blood and learning all that it has to tell.”

  “Oh,” I said. “So, you’re like, a blood–expert.”

  “Deuxième is the über–expert of blood.” He laughed softly to himself.

  “So, uh, how did you become interested in blood?” I asked, trying to get the conversation flowing again.

  He looked down, a slight frown pulling at the side of his mouth. The hand holding the needle twitched once, twice. “She said we must learn everything that can be learned about a man from his blood or a woman from her blood.”

  Here he raised and lowered his shoulders in an awkward approximation of a shrug. Compared to confident, crazed Ivanovich, Deuxième was something of a geek.

  “So Deuxième studied and studied,” he said. “He studies still. He must never cease learning. Knowledge is power. Power is necessary.”

  I frowned. “She never gave you a chance, you mean. To choose something else to study. Something you might like even more. Deuxième, that is sad.”

  He’d tightened his grip upon the needle. It broke. He seemed not to notice.

  “What must be, is,” he said simply. “Deuxième was not created for a wasteful life; Deuxième was created to obey and to serve. Ivanovich serves by protecting die Mutter; Bruno served by …” Here he drew his brows together considering the answer. At last he spoke. “Bruno was created to discover how far a man can be hurt and still live and serve. Deuxième is fortunate to be, instead, a man of science and discovery.”

  I felt my skin turn to goose–flesh as the hairs along my arm rose.

  “I don’t know, Deuxième. It sounds to me like you have no freedom. I wouldn’t call that fortunate. You’re like, a modern–day slave.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “We serve.”

  I couldn’t think of how to get past his stubborn acceptance of his lot in life. How do you convince someone to think outside the little box they’ve always lived in?

  “Jane must not talk further,” he said, frowning. “Deuxième has a job to do, and Jane is causing him to become inefficient.”

  “I just want to help you.” I said. A note of fear clung to my voice. I wondered if he could hear it.

  “Jane is very … kind,” he said, feeling once more for a vein. “But die Mutter is more cruel that Jane is kind. Deuxième must not disappoint her. Deuxième must test Jane’s blood.”

  He looked at me sadly. “Die Mutter knows that Jane Smith is not who she claims to be. Die Mutter wishes to know who Jane is, truly. Ivanovich collected Jane’s blood once, but Deuxième could not use such a filthy, dried–up sample.”

  He looked now at the broken needle he held, noticing it for the first time.

  Ivanovich had collected my blood? I shivered, remembering how I’d been caught by Helga’s henchman on my birthday, the first time I’d snuck into her laboratory. Yeah, Ivanovich had collected “Jane’s” blood all over his ugly knuckles. Die Mutter had to be Helga. She still wanted to know my identity. And I couldn’t let her discover it.

  My heart began pounding crazy–fast: partly because Deuxième was looking for a needle again, partly out of fear of Helga discovering who I really was. I should have tried rippling earlier while I’d had Deuxième distracted! I was going to pass out. I was going to lose my cover as “Jane Smith.” Helga would learn I was a rippler—the very rippler her father desired. And from me, it was only a short step to Mickie and to Will. Fear threatened to consume me.

  Deuxième raised the needle, ready to jab me again. But then something deep inside me bared its teeth. Fight, commanded a small but insistent voice. Take the fear and turn it into strength! A guttural cry broke from deep in my belly, and I lurched forward, the bench flying off the ground because it was attached to me. I swung it from side to side, catching the back of Deuxième’s knee. He grunted and fell forward against the cupboard. Turning, I took a run towards the doorway, shouting as I ran.

  “I’m sorry, Deuxième!”

  There’s not enough room, I said to myself. The bench won’t fit through the passage. I hurled myself at the passage, arms taped together, legs strapped to a bench. It was stupid of me. The wooden seat caught on one side of the bone–wall and I tripped forward onto the ground, the duct–tape ripping painfully free of my legs as I fell.

  From behind, I heard Deuxième stumbling towards me, his passage slowed by bones clattering from the damaged doorway. There was a moment’s silence, and then I heard the grinding noise of one of the bone–walls collapsing. I threw a glance over my shoulder and saw Deuxième knocked to the ground as the disintegrating wall led the ceiling to cave in. And then the air grew thick with dust and I couldn’t see anything more.

  Kicking the bench aside, I backed down the tunnel I’d just entered.

  “Deuxième?” I called. “Are you alright?”

  No response.

  “Oh, no,” I murmured. “I didn’t mean …” I broke off, uncertain what I’d meant to do.

  You don’t know that he’s … gone, I said to myself. But you can’t stick around to find out, either!

  Nor could I allow him to lie here unaided. I wasn’t Helga. I wasn’t Helmann. I wouldn’t leave a man to die here among the bones. I had a cell phone. I would call emergency services to this location in case he could be saved.

  As I walked I used my teeth to tear at the duct tape binding my hands. Holding my shirt to my mouth, I took slow breaths and retreated along a dark pathway, running a hand along one side of the strange wall until the air felt freshe
r. As I progressed, I saw light. A few steps further and I encountered a metal gate. I tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. For a moment, courage failed me. Then, blinking back tears, I laughed.

  No gate could hold me in.

  I imagined the most bliss–inducing thing I could remember: Will’s mouth upon mine, Will’s arms surrounding me, embracing me.

  I no longer noticed the dust and stale air.

  The pain where the needle had been inserted was gone as well.

  I’d vanished. I passed through the blood–like tang of the iron gate.

  As I began to climb stairs towards the surface streets of Paris, my mind brought to me a tidbit of German.

  Die Mutter.

  It was German for “the Mother.” Deuxième, Helga’s thug–scientist–human–experiment wrapped into one, was also her child.

  Chapter Fifteen

  GWYN

  I arrived at the hotel and trudged behind the front desk to the unreliable elevator, praying it would be in service this evening. My legs shook with exhaustion and my head had begun to pound where I’d struck it on the hard floor. If I wrinkled my forehead, I could feel a crusty line of blood now congealing into a scab. Brushing a hand across the wound, I realized that whole side of my face felt bruised; I probably looked awful.

  As I stood waiting for the elevator to decide whether it was in the mood to show up or not, I heard a familiar laugh.

  Gwyn.

  And me looking like I’d just gone a couple of rounds in a boxing ring.

  I was in the midst of deciding to take the stairs instead when Gwyn burst around the corner, her ear pressed to her phone. She stopped and noticed me. We stood silent for a moment.

  “I’ll call you back later,” she said, clicking off her call.

  I met her eyes, but then I gave up and looked away. She’d misinterpret this just like she had everything else. And I couldn’t say anything without putting Will and his sister at risk. Sighing, I attempted to move past her and take the stairs.

  “No!” Gwyn’s voice echoed up into the twelve–foot ceiling.