Kymiera

by Steve Turnbull

  ‘You want me to stop here, sir?’

  ‘This will do fine.’

  The air was freezing and the dew on the grass was turning to ice with the cold. George got out of the car, helped Mr Mendelssohn on with his big coat and handed him his hat. Dog didn’t have any additional clothing available but he didn’t feel the cold that much. At least not if he kept moving.

  Mr Mendelssohn headed further up the slope with Dog in tow.

  ‘Are you aware,’ said Mr Mendelssohn, ‘there was trouble at the fights here last night?’

  This was the first Dog had heard of it, but then he didn’t have the information sources his boss had. ‘I didn’t know. What happened?’

  ‘While reports are not entirely clear, it seems that there was a thief running around.’

  ‘A thief?’ Dog was a little bit worried.

  ‘Yes, apparently it was a freak itself in the early stages.’

  Oh shit. ‘Oh, really?’

  They were approaching the entrance. Mr Mendelssohn knocked on the door. ‘Yes, Dog. And if it’s the one you were going to show me we’ll get to see him in a fight.’

  ‘Couldn’t possibly be the same one.’

  Dog followed his master inside.

  Mr Mendelssohn did own some fighting freaks, but as they sat there, on a slightly raised platform away from the unkempt masses, his boss chose not bet on any of the fights.

  Perhaps it was a professional courtesy. Or perhaps the promoter of these fights might not appreciate if someone else was muscling in on his position with privileged information.

  Whatever the reason, they simply sat there at the table. They were served drinks—Mr Mendelssohn refused any of the food—and watched the crowds.

  It was about 9 o’clock in the evening, after a monster with what looked like insect parts had been crushed and pummelled by a freak that was so far gone it took trank guns to slow him down in order to get him back in his cage.

  Dog had been scanning the area, and the scents in the air, for his little thief, though he still had hopes that maybe it was somebody different. This could end up being very awkward. He still owed Mr Mendelssohn the money for the incident with the Armourer, and if this replacement didn’t work out, he had no idea how he would be able to get the money.

  The remains of the insect freak had been cleaned out of the fight cage and washed down the drain, when the ringmaster entered, and announced the next fight. He introduced it as being a special something. Dog groaned as he caught a whiff of his little thief, plus the scent of fear. The guy was so small there was no way he could stand up to one of those big maulers.

  The gate at the back was opened and the thief was pushed inside. Dog found it curious the way the crowd reacted. The thief was covered in black fur—very short but thick—and he was wearing shorts of some sort but nothing much else. He looked perfectly normal, not counting the fur, as long as you didn’t look at his face and the four tentacle-like protrusions where his nose ought to be, but with a perfect mouth and perfect eyes and normal black hair.

  Yes, it was the crowd that was weird. They reacted in a shocked way, horrified, and yet these were people that watched monsters with outrageous and grotesque body parts, things that were insane, trying to tear each other to pieces and yet they were disgusted by this simple creature.

  ‘So, this is your thief, is it?’ said Mr Mendelssohn.

  ‘Yeah, that looks like him.’

  ‘It’s because he looks so normal.’

  For a second Dog wondered whether Mr Mendelssohn could actually read his mind. Silly idea. ‘Yeah, funny that.’

  A roar went up from the crowd.

  Dog saw what was coming and groaned; it was the Friesian. He didn’t like to frequent the fights too much; it reminded him of how precarious his own position was. But he’d seen the Friesian. She’d been caught early before she came to the attention of the Purity and before she’d gone completely off her head.

  So he’d seen her degenerate over the past few months. Her skin had become mottled black and white and her left arm had become a strange combination of a bovine leg and hoof that bent like an arm. It gave her one hell of a punch. The rest of her face had become distorted as well; she’d lost all her teeth and her hair was gone. And now, he guessed, she was in constant agony. She was barely controllable. The keepers were using cattle-prods to manoeuvre her along the tunnel into the holding bay. Rather than run before them, she lashed out instead. This was why he hated the fights so much.

  The smell from the little freak was getting worse. Dog knew he didn’t have the killer instinct. This really wasn’t going to last very long.

  ‘So this was what you wanted to trade?’ said Mr Mendelssohn.

  ‘That was the idea, sir,’ said Dog.

  ‘She’s going to make mincemeat out of him.’

  Dog could only agree.

  The final announcements in the betting were made, the odds were announced and only an idiot would have bet on this fight at all. The Friesian was going to win; the odds on the little guy were a hundred to one. Dog jumped up and waved to one of the betting runners.

  ‘Put this on the little hairy freak,’ he said and flicked one of his few coins at the runner. The runner caught it dexterously and nodded, and then disappeared into the back.

  ‘Got to show willing and support,’ said Dog in response to the strange look that Mr Mendelssohn was giving him.

  ‘That’s my money you’re spending.’

  Dog shrank back into his chair to watch.

  The Friesian had stopped smashing at the walls of the isolation cage; she just stood there looking down at her next victim. At this point, as far as Dog could remember, she had about five kills to her name and that was impressive. The cage door went up. The Friesian stepped out. What Dog had taken to be boots turned out to be another set of hooves on her feet, the change had been pretty smooth. She was lucky.

  The thief backed his way up to the cage bars behind him as the Friesian clopped steadily forwards. She loomed over him. With a cry that was somewhere between a scream and mooing, she lashed out with her left. Dog could see it was on target.

  The hoof crashed resoundingly into the bars of the wall cage. The thief wasn’t there anymore. Dog could barely believe it—though, when he thought back, he did remember seeing a blur. God but that kid could move.

  The outcome was obvious. The Friesian, confused by her first miss, focused once more. She pounded towards the thief and slammed her hoof again into thin air; this time she struck nothing and fell forward onto her knees when her momentum met no resistance. The crowd laughed, but as it happened again and again, with the Friesian attempting to pummel the thief into the ground and the thief never being there when the blow arrived, the crowd started to boo.

  ‘This kid is trouble,’ said Mr Mendelssohn. ‘He needs to do something.’

  ‘Only for fighting, sir,’ said Dog, ‘just look at his speed, just think how useful he’d be to you.’

  Mr Mendelssohn sat there and watched the travesty of a fight go on for another minute, with the crowds becoming more and more restive. It could turn nasty.

  ‘Right, I have seen enough,’ said Mr Mendelssohn with a certain amount of finality. Dog was concerned about what exactly that meant.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  Mr Mendelssohn stood up, put a couple of fingers in his mouth and whistled so loud the entire room came to a halt. Even the Friesian stopped moving. Dog slammed his hands over his ears, obviously Mr Mendelssohn was not aware of the ultrasonic components in his whistle; it was very piercing.

  Having got their attention, Mr Mendelssohn called out across the room. ‘Separate them, I’ll take him.’ And then sat down again.

  Dog looked at his master. ‘You already knew this was going to happen and you already fixed it.’

  Mr Mendelssohn didn’t reply; he just took a drink from his cup and smiled. ‘Don’t think for a second, Dog, that this lets you off the hook. I’ve had to pay good money for t
his piece of flesh; he better be worth it.’

  ‘He will be. Just look at him; he’s the perfect thief.’

  ‘We’ll see, but right now my main concern is thinking of some way of persuading him to stay. Because I don’t think there’s any way we would be able to hold him if he chose to escape.’

  Which added to Dog’s worries. If this new guy ran away the price that had been paid for him as well as the money owed from the Armourer would all be on Dog’s head. And that wasn’t a price he was willing to pay. He’d better get thinking.

  Then he brightened up. On the other hand, it’s someone else to play with...

  Chapter 22

  Chloe

  Mum had ordered an auto-taxi to take her to school. There were still a few reporters and their vans on the doorstep though their numbers were dwindling as nothing continued to happen.

  Dad had been muttering about his position in the FreakWatch. After what had happened to Chloe, chances were Dad would get voted off the committee at the next AGM. Maybe even kicked out completely. Chloe was glad about that; she knew exactly what some of those do-gooders would be thinking.

  Was that why he wasn’t talking to her? He’d barely said a word since she had arrived back home. Whatever room she went in, if he was there he’d find a reason to leave. It hurt.

  The taxi pulled up outside the front of the school at a little before half-past eight, just as the main body of students were heading inside. A few of them glanced in the direction of the taxi as it arrived, then went back to whatever they had been doing. It wasn’t unusual.

  When she climbed out, things changed.

  There were two reactions. The majority took one look at her and hurried into school. The others stared. She looked back towards the entrance. The reporters were there, filming from the edge of the school grounds. Two buzzing drones floated high up, they did not trespass either, but their lenses were almost as long as the ones on the ground.

  The shots of her bounding across the gardens and running like a wild thing to her aunt’s house had been plastered across the newsfeeds. There were mutterings about the Purity letting a freak walk free. On the official news there were experts who pointed out it took months for S.I.D to take hold and, even if Chloe had been exposed, she wouldn’t have been showing any signs yet.

  Then there were the ones who said that the reason she escaped being kidnapped was because she was already one of them. Part of some secret cabal of freak-lovers. Chloe had managed to put up with half an hour of that before she turned it off and cried into her pillow for a long time.

  Chloe lifted her bag on to her shoulder—carefully because her back was feeling particularly tender—and walked up the broad steps.

  ‘Freak!’

  She kept her eyes fixed on the door.

  ‘Freak!’

  She knew the voice. Hancock. And now there was nothing she could do. It was okay to defend the weak from persecution but she could not save herself from the same thing, especially not with the cameras on her. Anything she did would just reinforce the problem.

  She wished she had stayed at home.

  The day went slowly. She tried to concentrate on the subjects and the work she had missed. But what had happened to her, and what people wanted to believe, got in the way of everything.

  It wasn’t just the other students; it was the teachers. Not all but most.

  Ashley and Kavi were fine, of course, but that just meant they got caught up in the abuse hurled at her. After all, both of them had also had family members who had freaked out. They had both been quarantined, so they were the ‘other’ as well.

  The Purity class was the final lesson of the day. Chloe hung back with Ashley and Kavi, wanting to be sure that Miss Kepple was already in the room before she entered. She was.

  The teacher smiled as Chloe came in. Chloe found it almost as unnerving as the animosity of the others. The smile faded as Ashley followed her with Kavi behind. Their usual seats were not occupied. The posters on the wall seemed to be screaming at her. The ache between her shoulder blades was intensifying. Chloe wondered whether the doctors had missed a spinal injury. It didn’t seem likely. She rotated her shoulders a couple of times and the pain lessened a little.

  Miss Kepple rose from her chair behind the desk. The murmuring among the students dropped away.

  ‘I think,’ she began, ‘that today we should take a break from the curriculum.’

  Some of the students took this to mean she was cancelling the lesson and started to pack their books back into their bags.

  ‘By which I mean,’ said Miss Kepple looking directly at Chloe, ‘we have something of a unique situation.’

  The eyes of the students followed her gaze and also stared. Chloe might have had good hearing but, looking back at the faces around her, she was glad she was not a mind-reader. What was Miss Kepple playing at?

  ‘Chloe Dark was attacked by an S.I.D infectee.’ There were murmurs. Chloe felt as if she was a rodent on a dissecting board. ‘I’m sure some of you must have questions. Now is the time to ask them.’

  The silence was suddenly intense. No one seemed willing to be the first. Or was too embarrassed to put any question they had out into the world.

  Miss Kepple walked the length of the room between the desks until she was standing at the back. No one dared turn their head. ‘Nobody has any questions? Perhaps I should be flattered that my lessons have clearly been so complete that you all understand everything.’

  There was a long pause. ‘O’Donnell!’

  The boy directly in front of Chloe jumped. ‘Miss?’

  ‘Don’t you have a question for Chloe?’

  James O’Donnell was not one of the people who had shouted at her; he was always pretty quiet. He wasn’t very bright and wore cheap glasses with heavy lenses. Despite that he was seldom bullied because he had a strong right fist which he was happy to use as the need arose. Chloe quite liked him even though they moved in different circles.

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Stand up, O’Donnell, face the rest of the class and if you’re going to ask Chloe a question at least look her in the face when you do it.’

  His chair scraped as he stood. He had to turn to face her, and she had to lean back because he was standing.

  ‘You had a fight with a freak?’ There was a hint of admiration in his tone.

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘Go and stand at the front, Chloe, so everyone can hear your answer.’

  Chloe felt her face flush and in that moment she hated Miss Kepple. But she wouldn’t let anyone know how much she loathed being in front of the class. It was bad enough when just doing an ordinary presentation, but this?

  Maybe if she just pretended it was a demonstration in front of the Jujitsu class. She had done those so often it didn’t even cross her mind to feel awkward about it. Even though sensai might be about to throw her across the mat, or twist an arm or leg into a painful position.

  She lifted her head and strode to the front. She turned and saw Miss Kepple lounging against the wall at the back. Then Miss Kepple winked. Chloe stared, what was the teacher playing at?

  ‘Ask your question again, O’Donnell.’

  O’Donnell cleared his throat. ‘Did you really fight a freak?’

  ‘Yes, sort of.’ She undid the button of her cuff and pulled up the sleeve to reveal the bandage and the visible bruising, which by now had become a livid purple stretching to her elbow. There were appreciative noises, and some of disgust. ‘It had a claw like a crab. It grabbed my wrist so I was hanging.’

  ‘But it wasn’t just the freak, was it, Chloe?’ said Miss Kepple.

  ‘No, Miss, there were two others.’

  ‘And were they freaks?’

  ‘No, Miss, well, they looked normal.’

  Miss Kepple nodded at her arm and Chloe sorted out her sleeve. ‘You see, the criminal element are not averse to using freaks in their crimes. They don’t care about the importance of the Purity.

  ‘Sit do
wn, O’Donnell. Who else has a question?’

  And so it went for the rest of the lesson. Chloe relaxed a bit until Kavi stood up. Chloe stared at her, terrified of what she might ask.

  ‘Why aren’t you in quarantine?’ Kavi’s voice cracked as she asked the question, as if she were about to cry. And Chloe did not blame her. Why should she get away with being released, when Kavi and the rest of her family had been locked up for months? ‘How is that fair?’

  Chloe glanced at Ashley, and found accusation in her eyes too. ‘It’s not.’

  ‘The doctors declared that Chloe is not infected, therefore she has been released,’ said Miss Kepple. She strode to the front of the class and glanced at her watch. ‘Well, this has been a very enlightening lesson for us all, I think. It’s a bit early but I think we should finish there.’

  The words of release had the required effect and the room was filled with the sound of the students packing up and leaving. Chloe made to go back to her seat, although Ashley and Kavi had yet to move.

  ‘Stay here please, Chloe, I want to talk to you.’

  So she stayed at the front, feeling awkward as the other students left the room. None of them came near her, sliding between the desks in order to exit away from where she stood.

  Realising she wasn’t returning to her desk, Ashley and Kavi followed the others out. Not even looking behind.

  ‘Sadly, that is the kind of reaction you can expect even from people you think of as friends,’ said Miss Kepple. ‘Collect your books and come to my office.’

  Chapter 23

  Sapphire

  Sapphire was scared.

  She stood in the centre of her office in indecision.

  The knock came on the door again. Chris would be so angry if he knew she had invited Chloe back again.

  But it wasn’t for bad reasons. It was for good reasons.

  The Purity had always been good to her. She had qualified and received the training. She helped to keep the perfection of the human genome intact.