“Okay, then. Fine,” Max said. “If you must know, Pharma’s handling the investigation, not me. What they told me is that it was suicide.”
For a brief second, Jer considered letting it go. He had a brief, fleeting thought that he’d ruffled enough feathers; that he was only going to draw those friends he had left into a conspiracy. Yet, Jasper never struck him as the type to take his own life. Another thought gnawed at him: maybe Jasper had stumbled onto something that had cost him his life. Potentially, it could lead to more harm if he didn’t figure the mystery out first.
“That seems an unusual thing to do for someone who just cracked the fissure in Transhumana Monstrare,” Jer guessed.
“What did you just say?” Max asked. “That’s not possible.”
Jer shrugged. “He dropped me a note about it, in a way that only the two of us know. He wouldn’t take the extra steps to ensure secrecy unless he’d cracked it.”
“Did he, or didn’t he?” Max asked. A tiny drop of sweat ran down the alderman’s forehead.
“Oh, so now it is possible? Just a second ago, you didn’t believe it could be done. Now you need confirmation?”
“Alright, Jer, now you’re fucking with me. Watch yourself.”
“I’m not fucking with you,” Jer said, and stood up., “I am going to find out what happened to him.”
Max snatched Jer’s shirt and pulled him close.
“Be careful, doc,” the alderman said. “Start digging, and you might not like what you find.”
Jer shrugged Max off and stepped back. “I think we’re done here.” He quickly left the room.
Max’s swearing could be heard all the way to the elevator.
Jakoff stood behind an analyst at a computer bank, watching a live surveillance feed. The walls surrounding him were covered with plasma screens displaying hundreds of surveillance images from all over North and South Brother Islands.
He watched as Jer left the hotel room.
“I didn’t know the good doctor was a switch hitter,” Jakoff said. “Will he be able to break contact? I can’t afford to lose track of him.”
“We’re like God, Mr. Jakoff. Our eyes and ears are everywhere,” the analyst said.
Jakoff pursed his lips. His eyes glanced around at the other surveillance feeds. He leaned into the one Jer was currently occupying and grinned. “Go ahead, doc. Dig deeper. Lead us right to it.”
6
A Secret and Forbidden Love
Jer’s hydra-car passed the glittering low-rise condos and office buildings that lined the futuristic mini-Tokyo of South Brother Island. As he pulled into an apartment parking garage, he spotted two men in his side mirror. They were watching him from the other side of the street.
Jer exited the parking garage and walked toward the building when a holographic salesman materialized out of thin air. The ‘Holos,’ as they were called, gave new meaning to the term ‘pop-up ad.’ They had been in use since Jer was a kid, but he had never gotten used to them.
“What if I told you in only ten seconds, you can have the closest shave of your life?” the Holo asked in a honeyed voice.
“Fuck off,” Jer muttered.
“’Fuck off’ does not register, sir,” the Holo said. He whipped out a slick, shiny razor and followed Jer. “Would you believe that we had to rename this from the ‘Mach-21 Razor’ to the ‘FTL Razor?’ This shave is faster than the speed of light!”
Jer chuckled. “Kiss my ass.”
“That’s physically impossible, sir,” the Holo replied.
Jer picked up his pace and the Holo watched him disappear into the building. The Holo frowned for a moment but then spotted a new potential customer on the other side of the street and immediately appeared by his side. “This razor, good sir…”
The doctor strode through the interior of his apartment building, slicing across the foyer. He took an elevator to the tenth floor and entered his apartment. It was a space that possessed a monastic feel, albeit one cluttered with a few pieces of state-of-the-art electronica, a leather couch, and a kitchen filled with stainless-steel appliances.
Jer ripped open a vacuum-sealed bag labeled ‘Flank Steak’ It was full of tiny granules. He poured them into a machine that resembled the bastard spawn of an espresso maker and a 3D printer. He pressed a button, and the machine whirred to life. A timer began counting down.
He eased into the living room, hefted a remote control, and stabbed buttons. Holographic images appeared suspended in the middle of the room.
Jer flipped between ads.
A smarmy lawyer appeared in a faux-expensive suit and jabbed the air with his finger.
“Have you or someone you loved been the victim of a monster attack?” the smarmy lawyer asked. “If so, you need a lawyer! Call the Hurt Line to learn how to monetize your tragedy!”
Jer continued flipping through the ads and landed on an image of an older, Wilford Brimley-esque spokesman. He stood in front of an American Human flag as he made his pitch.
“Thanks to Freedom Life Insurance, your family is guaranteed a survivor benefit in the event of death of disability due to a monster attack,” the spokesman announced. “And the best part? Your premiums will never go up!”
The channel changed to a reality show in which humans competed against monsters. The humans were winning. This show was known to be rigged.
The channel changed again to a dating show. A buff contestant yammered with a fawning host.
“So, the lights go out, and get this…I find out she’s a friggin’ copy!” the contestant said.
Bursts of laughter followed from a laugh track.
“You think that was why she was a little frigid, Bobby?” the host coyly asked.
More fake laughter followed.
“That’s right,” the contestant continued. “And I knew it when I tried to kiss her. I mean, I looked in her eye and I could see that she wasn’t real!”
He shuffled into the kitchen and opened the incubator machine. A sizzling flank steak was ready, steam rising off the top. Jer licked his lips.
Fifteen minutes later, Jer headed into his bedroom and opened a small closet. Automatic lights clicked on and revealed a small space decorated with pictures of Jer with his father, the stethoscope around William’s neck instead of Jer’s.
Jer pocketed one of the photos, turned off the light, and began laying out black clothes on his bed. He slipped into the clothes and caught a glimpse of himself in a hallway mirror. He looked like a ninja. Perfect. He checked his watch. It was time to go.
Jer dropped to the floor. He removed an oddly shaped device the size of a water bottle from the nightstand. The device powered up with a single press of a button, and the screen began to glow. Jer lifted the device and aimed at the living room window. The device beamed infrared images of the street outside. Jer could see two figures seated inside a hydra-SUV, peering at his apartment with surveillance equipment. The voyeurs were most likely a GenAdvance surveillance team.
They would eventually realize that he’d had sheets of anti-espionage material inserted in the walls. Jer chuckled to himself. The only way the snoopers would be able to follow him was by actually seeing him leave. That’s where his proxy came in handy. Jer pushed himself up, remaining just below the window line while he peered into the living room. His doppelganger, holographic proxy, sat with his back to the windows.
The proxy appeared to watch a soccer game suspended in the middle of the room. For all the surveillance team knew, that was Jer caught up in the excitement.
He stole one last peek through his remote viewer and saw that the watchers remained shrouded in darkness across the street. They kept an eye on Jer’s apartment. One of them was poking at some buttons on an infrared sensor of the interior, but Jer’s holographic proxy didn’t register on their monitoring devices as anything out of the ordinary.
Jer smiled and turned, crawling across the apartment floor and then rolling to a rear entrance out of his apartment. Like a contortion
ist, he maneuvered through the door and gently closed it, then rushed down a staircase, taking the steps three at a time.
At the rear of the apartment building, he slipped out through a small metal door, looking very much like a shadow in his black clothing.
He hugged the darkness while sneaking through an alleyway. After a few blocks of avoiding the streetlight, he reached a maze of tightly-packed, low-slung buildings. These were hidden in the shadows of a long line of decaying low-rise buildings left behind by previous inhabitants of the isle.
It was a place Jer knew well: the outskirts of the city’s red-light district was a place difficult to find if you didn’t know where it was.
Jer slipped through a passageway that curved between a pair of tenements, then trotted up a staircase and down a ramp that twisted through a row of warehouses hidden from sight by the larger structures looming in every direction. He rounded a corner to find an alleyway blocked by giant doors made of pinioned tree trunks. The tree trunks creaked open in response to reveal the Beta Noire.
Jer entered the city within the city, a hot and funky netherworld populated by black market traders and hawkers selling contraband underground items too difficult to find otherwise in the open market. Traders, sophistos, and sordid types, human and monster, mingled in shops and parlors dedicated to chance and the sins of the flesh. The area thrummed with the lively pulse of an Asian street market while music throbbed from saloons and night owls roamed the sidewalks.
Jer entered the Fait Accompli Club. The inside was decorated with red tapestries and dark wood. In the center of the room was a marble fountain. Jets of water spurted from the ponderous breasts of the beautifully sculpted female monster that was its crowning jewel.
Jer walked past a cluster of female monsters with steely eyes and excellent curves veiled under rippling silk robes. Each was stunning in her own way: one was a red demoness, one had soft gray fur, another had tentacles. Still others were stranger yet. He continued down a corridor bathed in the light from dozens of candles that hung from a strand of wire.
From one side, a female voice called out in a seductive tone, “The doctor is in.”
Jer looked sideways to see a truly breathtaking female monster.
“Evangeline,” he breathed.
The creature, who was in her early-twenties, had the ears and sharp incisors of a lioness, the agile body of an acrobat, and a tail that hypnotically flicked back and forth. Her silk robe barely contained her ample bosom, curvy hips, and soft fur.
She approached Jer, and her features morphed in the flickers of light. For a moment, her visage took on the form of a beautiful young human woman with no sign of Transhumana Monstrare, and then…she reverted back to a lioness.
“You are unbelievably gorgeous tonight,” Jer said.
Evangeline smiled and purred. “And you look like hell.”
Jer hung his head. “I feel twice as bad.”
“If it’s comfort you need, darling, you’ve come to the right place.”
Jer didn’t object.
Evangeline took his hand and led him onto a dance floor that was full of monsters and humans and things of neither camp. Everyone kept to themselves, dancing, canoodling, sharing secrets and bodies. A group of monster musicians played a slow, sensual song and Jer and Evangeline began dancing slowly. A woman with the head of a swan played the saxophone with serenity; a man with spidery eight-fingered hands strummed the guitar and moved between chords faster than any human could; and an elegant half-woman, half-octopus glided the tips of her tentacles along the piano. They listened to one another like an old-school jazz band and played the melody by ear, making it up as they went along while keeping their eyes on the dance floor.
Evangeline spun Jer around, and just as he was about to wheel away from her, she snapped out her tail and pulled him back in. The two of them swayed their hips in a steady, gentle rhythm that matched the music. Evangeline leaned in and flicked her tongue along his left ear. Shivers ran down Jer’s spine. He reciprocated and reached around her neck, caressing her skin with his fingernails. She purred and pressed her breasts to his chest. Her eyelids fluttered. Her lips parted.
“Your fur is retracting into your skin,” Jer whispered.
Evangeline blushed and covered her face with her hands.
“Someone might see,” she whispered back. “Hide me.”
Jer held her tightly as she pressed her face into the crevice between his shoulder and neck.
They snuck off the dance floor and into a back hallway.
Once they were alone, Evangeline began pulling out of Jer’s embrace, but he reeled her back in.
“I thought you were doing that to seduce me,” he murmured.
She shot him a sly smile and ran a finger along the side of his face.
“That was all you,” she said. “I’m under your spell.”
“You wish.” Jer pulled her deeper into the secluded hallway.
“I do,” Evangeline breathed.
Jer chuckled.
The woman covered his laugh with a kiss, and wrapped her tail around his waist.
“Let’s call it even and say we’re both seducing one another,” he offered.
“I really wish you wouldn’t,” she lied. “Can’t risk exposure.”
“You should come back to my sessions,” Jer said. “Identity challenges aren’t easy to tackle alone, and you’ve got one hell of a dual identity.”
“Not a chance. Doctor/patient boundaries.”
“I’ll risk it,” Jer replied. “I worry about you.”
Evangeline shook her head.
“It only happens when I’m aroused,” she shared. “Listening to you speak gets my blood flowing.”
Jer felt his own blood warm and his cheeks blush.
“I think you’re winning the seduction game,” he admitted.
“If it’s a competition, you don’t stand a chance,” she said.
Jer picked her up with one arm and carried her into a backroom.
He laid her down on a queen-sized bed and ran his hands down her face, across her breasts, down her sides, and behind her hips. He grabbed her tail and squeezed playfully, naked lust in his eyes.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Evangeline warned. “They’ll take away your license.”
“Let them,” Jer said, locking lips with her.
The music grew louder and livelier. The band had begun playing a spicy song. Someone in the crowd cheered and clapped.
Jer and Evangeline smiled at the same time and tore into each other. They caressed one another as if they hadn’t felt the touch of another person in years. Yearning overtook them, and they wrapped their limbs around each other. Their movements became more frantic, yet gentle and attentive as they kissed and explored one another’s bodies.
Jer rose and hung his legs off the side of the bed. Evangeline remained on her back next to him, sheets knotted all around her body.
“Can’t you stay?” she asked.
Jer shook his head. “Not this time. Something horrible has happened, and I need to know why.”
“Whatever it is, I’m sorry,” Evangeline offered. “If there’s anything I can do to help…”
Jer stood, bearing his naked, lithe, and muscular body with no inhibition. He stretched his arms out and cracked his back.
“It really only happens when you’re turned on?” Jer asked.
“So far, yes,” Evangeline answered.
“Huh. Guess you won’t be able to hide if you like someone else,” he said. “That’s reassuring.”
She play-slapped him.
“You’re a dick,” she laughed.
“That much is true,” Jer said. “I do need your help, if you really mean it. I need to ask you about something.”
“As long as this wasn’t all part of a long con to get info out of me,” Evangeline replied with a tight smile.
“It wasn’t. I promise.”
He met her eyes with sincerity in his own. She nodded. “Ask
away.”
“You tend to have access to information others don’t,” Jer said. “Any chance people have been talking about Jasper?”
Evangeline covered her mouth. “Why? What happened to him?”
Jer rubbed his temple. “He was murdered.” He looked down, trying to mask how upset he really was.
She gasped. “I’m so sorry.”
“So am I,” Jer replied. “It appears to have been by a monster, which makes no sense. It also doesn’t make sense that anyone at GenAdvance would go after him. He’s…he was their best geneticist. It doesn’t add up.”
“I heard something earlier, but I didn’t think anything of it,” Evangeline said. “Now, it makes sense.”
His eyes widened at her words.
“What was it, sweetie? What’d you hear?”
“I heard Jasper was working on something that could alter relations between monsters and humans.”
“Could you be any vaguer?”
She looked up. “I could, but I won’t. The way I shift back and forth between a human appearance and something other than human is because of his research.”
Jer’s eyebrows converged. “What?”
“I don’t know what he was up to,” she continued. “He made me swear not to tell anyone. I’m sorry I didn’t share it with you until now. Besides, I liked that you found it mysterious.”
“You should have told me, Evangeline,” Jer said, his face etched with worry. “I could have tried to look out for him.”
“I doubt it would have mattered. Besides, I’m not even sure he knew what he’d discovered. He seemed surprised at how his experiments worked on me.”
Jer looked at his watch, peeked out the window, and spotted a car approaching with the lights turned off. His ride had arrived.
“I have to go.” He slipped on his clothes and shoes. “But we do need to talk about this more. No more holding out.”
“I’ll let you know if I hear anything else,” she replied with a nod.
Jer smiled and kissed her on the forehead.
“Thank you,” he said. “And thank you for making time for me. I needed that.”
Monster M.D.: A Monster Girl Harem Mystery Thriller (Monster M.D. ) Page 7
