Kymiera

by Steve Turnbull

  And would that have been such a bad thing? Her parents would not be in Purity quarantine now, and she would not be on the brink of death. She shook her head, no point thinking that way. They had done it and she was here. Beyond the examination room was an office with shelving.

  Everything had been stripped. No boxes, no files, no papers. There was a desk, though, and she detected cavities inside it. She went to the drawers and pulled them open one by one. The final one was either locked or jammed. She tapped it once or twice, trying to get a picture of the lock inside the wood. No lock. It was just jammed.

  The door in the foyer opened. The clipped footsteps of a woman echoed through and showed her figure to Chloe. Did the woman know she was here? Was she clever enough to have looked at the snow?

  Never mind. Chloe yanked hard at the drawer. It still didn’t open. She didn’t have much weight to put behind the effort, so she braced her foot against the leg and gave it another tug. The drawer flew out almost all the way on metal runners and jammed again with a crash. The sudden movement made the desk scrape on the floor and the two noises echoed through the place.

  The woman stopped moving.

  There was nothing in the drawer, but a piece of paper fluttered down from where it had been stuck behind the drawer. Chloe grabbed it and forced it into her pocket. The woman was coming her way, already in the middle of the examination room. The window here was barred like the others. Chloe sprang into a position above the door and held herself between ceiling and door frame.

  The door below her swung open and the woman came in in a swirl of perfume. Very expensive perfume, though not applied to excess. Her hair was immaculate and her big heavy coat was perfectly tailored and shaped around her frame.

  The woman paused directly below Chloe and surveyed what little there was of the room. She moved to the desk and rubbed her perfect shoe along the scratch mark where the desk had just moved. She tried to close the drawer but it wouldn’t move.

  Chloe caught her profile and gasped.

  The woman heard her intake of breath and jerked her head up. Chloe allowed herself to drop.

  ‘Hello, Chloe.’

  ‘Mercedes Smith.’

  Chapter 19

  Dog

  ‘Why is nobody listening to me?’ said Dog as he and Jason trudged through the snow. ‘I mean, apart from you because you’ve got no choice.’

  Or did he? How could anyone know if he was actually listening? Maybe Dog was wasting his breath.

  ‘Nice of Mr Mendelssohn to give us a lift as far as he did.’

  Jason said nothing.

  ‘I know, it would have been better if he’d brought us all the way, but,’ Dog said, ‘it would have looked weird if a big expensive car stopped at your mum’s place.’

  They had been let out of the car a mile from the house. Jason had been reluctant to wander around in daylight but Dog had pointed out that as long as he kept his hood up they’d be fine. Two people walking together was a good disguise. Freaks never went around in groups.

  ‘Why doesn’t anyone agree we should be going after Chloe Dark?’ Dog said. ‘I mean, I know we have absolutely no idea where she is, but she’s a really mean fighter. And she can almost fly even without those wings. I’d like to have seen her take off from that tram in Chorlton; why is the media never around when you want them?’

  Jason didn’t laugh at his joke. Dog wondered if he even could laugh. Maybe his lack of a voice extended to his laugh. Experimentally, Dog tried laughing without using his vocal chords—nope, it didn’t really work. Jason stared at him. Dog desisted.

  ‘Still, it was good of the boss to let you go and see your mum.’

  They walked on in silence.

  Dog sniffed the air. ‘Not many people round here.’ Then he sniffed again. ‘Yates.’

  Jason looked at him.

  ‘Can you smell it?’

  Jason nodded.

  ‘That’s DI Yates, sidekick to Mitchell. You know who Mitchell is?’

  Jason nodded again. His nose tentacles were moving as if tasting the air. He took hold of Dog’s wrist and pulled him towards a side alley. They crossed the end of the road on which Jason’s mother’s house stood. There was a police car parked at the front. They were out of sight in a moment.

  The freak-boy guided Dog to the rear of the house, then went one house further over and slipped through a gate that looked broken but opened easily.

  Dog examined the hinges on the inside. They were clean and oiled.

  ‘You did this?’ Jason was moving along the fence towards the building. ‘Nice work.’

  Dog moved after him and then watched as Jason went up the wall and crossed to a window. Jason looked back and down. Dog stared at the wall. He could see the mortar between the bricks. What he couldn’t see was any sort of hand- or foothold. He shook his head.

  ‘That’s probably not a good idea. Can we get in there instead?’ He pointed to the empty house.

  Jason returned to ground level and fiddled with a window. It opened smoothly. Jason ducked inside and Dog followed.

  It wasn’t any warmer, but being inside felt better. He almost wished he had the layer of fur that covered Jason’s body. Standing motionless he could hear the murmur of conversation in Jason’s house. Dog moved to the wall and put his ear against it.

  ‘—anything you can tell us.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Dog could tell Yates was frustrated. As annoyed as he got when Dog slipped through their traps and ambushes.

  ‘Who’s been living in the room upstairs?’

  ‘Uh-oh,’ said Dog quietly. ‘They’re on to you.’

  Jason moved to the wall and copied Dog—though he had no idea whether Jason had particularly good hearing or not.

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Mrs Lomax—’ Dog heard sofa springs creak as they compressed ‘—you have to stop lying to me. We know someone, male, aged around seventeen, has been living in your second bedroom. We also know that person is a freak of some sort, although not an S.I.D infectee.’

  Jason’s mother groaned as if in pain and then there was sobbing. Dog glanced up at Jason. It was so hard to make out any facial expressions behind the tentacles. Would he just stand there if he could really hear?

  ‘You want to arrest me?’

  ‘No, Mrs Lomax, I don’t.’

  ‘Purity then.’

  ‘Not if I can help it.’

  Pause.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘We’re police, Mrs Lomax. If someone is not breaking the law then we’re not interested.’

  Dog looked at the freak-boy and considered their heist. Yes, he had broken the law—probably before that as well.

  ‘Right now we’re just interested in finding the kidnappers of those girls.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  Yates sighed. ‘We’re looking for background information. Who is the boy upstairs?’

  Pause.

  ‘He’s my son.’

  ‘Your son was reported as dying in a fire.’

  ‘I lied.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘Because people were killing freaks, mobs on the rampage, the fire that killed my husband had been set deliberately.’

  ‘There was a freak where you lived.’

  ‘My son had a—’ she stopped as if searching for the right word ‘—deformity. He was a freak.’

  ‘From birth?’ Yates seemed genuinely surprised.

  ‘You think they would have tried to kill my son if he had looked normal? I thought he really had been infected by S.I.D but he didn’t get worse and he didn’t die.’

  ‘We know he’s different, Mrs Lomax. So this is your son Jason?’

  Perhaps she nodded. The tentacles on Jason’s face were quite still. Even if he couldn’t hear as much as Dog he seemed to be getting the gist of it.

  ‘Excuse me for clutching at straws here, Mrs Lomax, but was there anything unusual about his birth?�
�

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘But—’ once more she hesitated ‘—I had difficulty conceiving. We went through IVF treatment.’

  Dog looked at Jason, he was listening intently, did that mean this was news to him too? And who the hell knew what IVF treatment was?

  Apparently Yates did. He didn’t ask her to explain. Instead:

  ‘And where did you go for that?’

  But Dog stopped listening. If Jason was the way he was because of this treatment—something to do with having kids—that must mean that he was that way for the same reason.

  And if so, that meant they might have records of who his parents were.

  Dog leaned away from the wall and stared into the whiteness of the frozen world outside. He might find out who his parents were.

  Shit.

  Chapter 20

  Chloe

  It was weird, facing in real life the woman whose face she had seen every day on posters and the screen. The person who represented life.

  ‘How did you know I was here?’ said Chloe. She reached up and touched her hat as if it might have fallen off somewhere and she hadn’t noticed. It was still there.

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  Chloe clicked her fingers. It was like a nervous tic with her now. Their voices provided some of the image around her, but the high-pitched click with its sharp attack of sound was more penetrating and provided sharper images. There was no one close.

  Her wings twitched beneath the coat and Mercedes’ gaze was drawn to the movement.

  ‘What did he do to you?’ said Mercedes quietly, almost as if she were talking to herself, as she stared at Chloe’s shoulders.

  Chloe frowned. ‘Who? Your thugs who tried to grab me on the tram? The army you sent after me at the restaurant? How many innocent people have to die for you to get me?’

  ‘Innocent people die all the time.’

  Chloe clicked again. There was still no sign of anyone coming in, no sound from outside, but the snow made it hard to see anything out there.

  ‘Who did what to me?’

  ‘Dr Newman.’

  The name sparked nothing in Chloe’s memories. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Mercedes Smith—the great woman—moved across to the window and stared out. ‘Of course you don’t. I doubt your parents even told you how you were made.’

  ‘I found out.’

  Mercedes turned. Silhouetted against the window she seemed mysterious. ‘Your parents may have provided the raw materials, but it was Dr Newman who made you what you are.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Mercedes made a derisive sound. ‘No. People watch you on the TV and they think how amazing Chloe Dark is. Your act of bravery in the fish and chip shop can’t be suppressed. Your magical leap up the side of the building and then off it. They think you’re some kind of hero—those that haven’t already decided you’re a freak.

  ‘But then I come here and talk to you, and I just find an ignorant child.’ She walked closer. ‘You might be able to fight, Chloe Dark, but you’re no match for me.’

  Chloe backed into the examination room. ‘If I’m ignorant it’s only because that’s the way you wanted it. I don’t know who you are. You’re just a name on a poster. A face on a billboard. You know something about this and you lord it over me because I don’t? You’re just a bully.’

  Mercedes Smith followed her, passing through the doorway.

  Chloe clicked her fingers. Nothing had changed in here and there was no movement in the next room.

  ‘You’re right, Chloe,’ said Mercedes. ‘That’s unfair of me. You want to know what happened. I’ll tell you.’

  Click. This time Mercedes looked down at her hand and frowned.

  ‘Who’s Dr Newman?’ said Chloe to stop her asking about the finger clicks.

  ‘Dr Ernest Newman was a geneticist. He was the one that made you the way you are.’

  ‘He made S.I.D?’

  ‘No, you stupid girl, this has nothing to do with being a freak. You’re not one.’

  Chloe’s memories flashed to the conversation with Dog when he’d been trying to tell her she wasn’t a freak. Was he telling the truth?

  ‘How do you explain these then?’ she said, playing the part of the argumentative know-it-all teenager to the best of her ability. She had had practice.

  ‘This building,’ Mercedes gestured around, ‘was the front for Dr Newman’s experimentation on the human genome. He had a theory and he was testing it. When your mother and father supplied the ova and sperm to create a viable fetus, he made changes. He added DNA from other creatures.’

  Chloe could barely believe it, and yet it fitted with everything that had been happening, and what Dog had said—what he’d been trying to tell her.

  ‘But it’s only just developed.’

  ‘I told you he was a genius.’

  ‘So, he gave me wings?’

  ‘He didn’t just give you wings! He changed your entire physiology to support that change.’

  ‘You’re saying I could fly? There aren’t any feathers.’

  Mercedes shrugged. ‘I have no idea whether you will be able to fly and I really do not care. That’s hardly the point.’

  ‘Then what is the point?’

  ‘That it can be done, and if we can analyse enough of you we’ll be able to reproduce it.’

  Chloe stared at her for a moment and then laughed. She tried to speak but doubled over clutching her stomach. She was laughing too much to get any words out.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ growled Mercedes.

  Chloe looked up and pointed at Mercedes. ‘You,’ she gasped. ‘You are funny.’

  Chloe leaned back and her laughter bounced off the ceiling. She shook her head trying to dispel the hilarity. Eventually she got it under control. ‘You! You are the head of this huge genetics company and you don’t know how to do this. You’re forced to scrabble around trying to figure it out. This Dr Newman, he was clever. Cleverer than you. Cleverer than all your scientists.’ She giggled. ‘And you call me stupid!’

  The exterior of building and the surfaces of the building around it flickered into sharp relief as a metallic click sounded outside. Then another.

  Chloe dropped to the ground, flipping face-down as she did so. The pop of a gun showed her half a dozen men outside with the long barrels of rifles pointing towards her. Then pain ripped through her back.

  A surge of energy pulsed through her as more bullets whipped through the space where she had been standing moments before. They ricocheted off metal and spat through the examination chair.

  Chloe’s acoustic sight was blinded by the noise of men shouting and unsilenced guns opening up.

  On all fours, Chloe bounded forwards to the other door and was through it in moments. The shooting followed her into this room. The window shattered and cold air flooded in. She couldn’t focus on anything. The cupboard-like room she had spotted behind reception was not in direct line with the windows. She dived for it and clambered through.

  There was a strange pain in her back—but not in her back. She allowed herself a wry grin: she’d been winged.

  The noise stopped. She did not know if they could detect her, but she could see them moving forward in ordered sequence. She had only seen these things in movies but they looked military.

  Thank god Mercedes was in the place otherwise they might just have blown the building sky-high.

  She focused. Assumed they had all the equipment she’d ever seen. They would have heat sensors which would work well in this cold. They had guns powerful enough to shoot through walls. They were trying to kill her, not capture her.

  They were at the door. She had seconds.

  She snapped her fingers. The only real way out was the door, but the ceiling was barely more than a layer of plaster and thin strips of wood. She jumped, braced herself against the walls and punched upward. In moments she had ripped a hole big enough and pushed t
hrough into a crawlspace between the ceiling and the flat roof of the building. The roof was thicker and made of some flexible material she couldn’t get through.

  Behind her, through the ceiling, she saw Mercedes Smith being escorted from the building. The bitch had kept her talking deliberately. Chloe wondered briefly whether she had been telling the truth about not knowing Chloe was there, or whether she usually went around with a squad of soldiers in tow.

  They were doing something. She couldn’t see what it was. Some sort of device. A bomb? With Mercedes out of the way they really could blow the place up.

  She moved forward. Ahead there was only the wall but she wanted to get as far away as possible from any explosion. Not that she expected to survive it.

  The men were pulling out, she could see them leaving. Mercedes was no longer in sight. Her wing hurt and she could feel it throbbing with her heartbeat.

  How could she escape? She reached the wall. Beyond she could see nothing but empty space. She clicked her fingers hopelessly. There was another room below her that had not been part of the clinic. The building had been split and this was separate. She doubted it would protect her from an explosion. The soldiers were efficient and probably had people watching the building in case she did manage to get out.

  She was sweating despite the cold.

  She pushed against the underside of the roof at the edge but she could see it was bonded to the wall. She would have to be a dozen times stronger to be able to make it through there.

  She made a hole and went down headfirst, turning as she fell and landing on her feet. Rats scurried away in surprise. The place was filled with rubbish: old plastic bags, papers, bits of metal and wood. There was a heater in the corner. A door led to the outside. She would have risked a bullet but she couldn’t get it open. Panic set in. She had no idea how much time she had.

  She snapped her fingers in irritation—and something echoed strangely. There was an open space here somewhere. And it was big enough for her, but all the rubbish diffused the location. She grabbed an old nail from the ground, tapped it against the metal of the small furnace. The metal clink penetrated everything and she saw it. In the far corner: a grid in the floor. She ran across to it, cleared the surface and tapped the metal. It went deep but it was narrow. Not intended for a person.