The Unborn

by Brian Herbert

  “Of the victims we know about, many were stabbed with a variety of objects—knives, scissors, screwdrivers, shards of glass, and one with an ice pick. Your lab-child is quite elusive, and devious. I suspect we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg.”

  “I’d hoped this wouldn’t happen. You’re sure about him?”

  “We’re sure. We have a DNA and fingerprint trail going all the way back to your original laboratory samples.”

  Dr. Yordanius shook his head in apparent dismay, looked away sadly. “I’m terribly sorry. Like all of my other children, I fitted Riggio with a control unit that was supposed to either shut him down or send him to a place to be picked up.”

  “Riggio?”

  “Riggio Demónt.”

  “And he’s the only one out there? You’re sure?”

  “As I told you, there are no more. Read my lab journals.” The doctor slid his chair away from the table. He was trembling uncontrollably, looking down at the floor. His voice was quavering.

  “Our agents are studying the books right now,” Jantz said, “and I’ll read their report.” She hoped to find clues there, to reveal what he was not telling her. Hopefully, there were no more killers on the loose.

  “What about all of my failed experiments? Other than Riggio, I mean. My lab-children that I put in cryo-storage, the ones who were problems. What are you going to do with them?”

  “That’s not up to me.”

  “It’s important to preserve them for further research. It’s critically important not to destroy them.”

  “No one can legally resume your experiments. My assumption is that your... lab-children... are going to be destroyed.”

  “But they’re human beings, and are still alive in storage! It’s my understanding that it is not moral to kill innocent human beings, and my lab-children are innocent! They have done nothing wrong!”

  “Innocent? Those creatures are abominations.”

  “They are human,” Yordanius insisted. “Bred and born under laboratory conditions, but they are human nonetheless.”

  Agent Jantz glowered across the table.

  “I’d like to help bring Riggio to justice,” Dr. Yordanius said, surprising her. “Maybe there’s something I can do.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. But this time she noted sincerity. Switching on her electronic data-finder, she brought up the composite drawing of the murderer, based upon eyewitnesses in Denver who saw him in the sorority house with the woman he later killed.

  “All right,” she said, putting the color drawing in front of him. “Does this look like him?”

  Dr. Yordanius stared long and hard, then shook his head. “I haven’t seen Riggio for fifteen years, but this isn’t even close. His hair is black like that, and the eyes seem to be the right color, but the shape of the face is wrong; it’s more squared-off than oval, and the mouth, chin, and nose are wrong.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Jantz said. She assumed he was telling the truth. He did seem to be genuinely remorseful.

  The doctor pushed the data-finder back, said, “Put me with an artist, and I’ll come up with a better picture.”

  “All right, I’ll do that.”

  “And if I help, will you put in a good word for me? I mean, will you let someone know, someone important, that my people in cryogenic storage should not be destroyed? Will you do that for me? Will you do that for humanity? Aside from the moral issue I mentioned, that they are human, they are also an important record of my work—and for the sake of humankind, that work should not be destroyed.”

  “I’ll mention it to someone,” she said. “But no promises, and don’t hassle me about it after this.”

  Dr. Yordanius did not look entirely pleased, yet he nodded and murmured, “All right.”

  Jantz would mention it to Director Gilmore, but she would just lay out the basic facts, telling him what Yordanius had said, but without advocating for him. She had no idea how those frozen creatures could still be alive, but their fate was not her business, not her area of responsibility.

  The dedicated agent had captured the notorious perp who’d been eluding her... and justice... for so long, and she felt mentally exhausted.

  ~~~

  Dr. Yordanius would do whatever he could to help the FBI stop Demónt. The description of the killer he would provide would be extremely accurate, at least showing the errant lab-child as he was years ago... and then it could be age-enhanced.

  There would be no problems involving slips of memory, because Yordanius could secretly access images from all of his experiments, using the memory chip implanted in his brain. Accessing that chip internally, he could bring crystal-clear images of Riggio to mind, or any of the other lab-children. Yordanius had access to a great deal of valuable information on the chip, all from his mind and work.

  ~~~

  Riggio had gone to work today, but it had been a strange experience, as Mr. Johansen and his employees, even Meredith, seemed to avoid him. No one said so, but it was as if they blamed him for what happened to Meredith on the inspection trip.

  She had seemed distant to him, had not said much to him all day, except to let him know she’d rescheduled her appointment to visit Sam Howe’s Sun Under project in three days, and she would be going without him this time. “I can handle this one on my own,” she’d said, without explanation.

  The other agents had left Riggio alone for the most part as well, so he’d been left to shuffle through paperwork and computer files, working on a couple of written reports for inspections the agents had made.

  In his rented room now, Riggio had been feeling peculiar in the past several hours. The trouble lay in his abdomen, intermittent sharp pains there. He sat alone at the small table in his kitchenette, staring at a plate of pasta that he had prepared from a package. Something didn’t feel right in his midsection, seemed to be pressing against his stomach and groin area. It was painful and sickening, made him not want to eat.

  Riggio slid his chair away from the table and rose to his feet. He removed his shoes, then pulled off his trousers and unbuttoned his shirt so that he could look at his abdomen.

  He felt sharp pains there, and was startled to see something push outward on the abdominal skin for a moment, simultaneous with another sharp pain. It was as if he was a pregnant mother, and the baby had just kicked her. He’d felt this before, this impossible thought.

  Leaving his food behind, he went in the living area and laid down on the couch, trying to find a comfortable position. It took half an hour of lying this way and that, in fetal and non-fetal positions, before the strange abdominal pain finally went away.

  He rose and stood unsteadily on his feet. Moments passed, and the pain and internal movement did not return. But the experience troubled him deeply, and he had a strong feeling it would happen again.

  CHAPTER 31

  Tatsy was afraid that her brother might take his own life, and hers with it, if she didn’t take control of him quickly. She was tired of being at risk from every decision he made, especially in his unstable state of mind, and she was feeling increasingly desperate. The ordeal on the moon of Saturn had not helped, when his identity documents had been questioned and that crazed General had threatened to execute him.

  A day passed, and it was morning. In Riggio’s rented room, Tatsy had managed to prevent him from unbuttoning or removing his pajamas, and had forced him to throw his straight razor out the window. His movements had been shaky, not at all smooth, and he’d made an attempt to resist her. Afterward, when he tried to prepare a bowl of cereal in the tiny eating area of his room, she’d caused his body to tremble, and his fingers to fumble and drop the bowl on the floor, where it crashed and broke. He’d attempted to call out for Mrs. Monroe, but Tatsy had quickly suppressed his voice, muffling it at first, and then silencing it altogether.

  When he’d then attempted to leave the room, she prevented him from walking, and forced him to the floor. She’d allowed him to crawl to the couch, and later to hi
s bed, and then had prevented him from doing anything more on his own—for the time being at least.

  This heartened her. Finally she was making progress. At last, Riggio could only do what she allowed him to do, or what she instructed him to do—and she didn’t need to wait until he was asleep to do it. She wondered how long she could keep her hold on him, hoped she didn’t tire and let him move on his own.

  If she had her way he would never go to the office again or even make it to a doctor, where he was thinking he wanted to go. She would see to that as a priority, preventing any medical practitioner from poking around in the body, where she and her three sisters had been hiding for all of these years, undernourished fetuses that even Riggio didn’t know were there.

  It was almost noon now, and as he lay on top of the covers Tatsy knew he was wondering why his body would no longer do anything he wanted it to do. His thoughts were going at hyper speed, and he was frantic to figure out what was happening to him. He was panting and perspiring and trying to rise and climb out of bed. But each time he made a little movement, the fetus Tatsy, from her hiding place deep in his abdomen, shut him down. With access to his thoughts she knew he was upset, and wondering what could possibly be wrong. Unaware of her presence, he was afraid these might be early signs of Parkinson’s disease, muscular dystrophy or some other serious ailment that was adversely affecting his motor skills.

  Using her power of suggestion, she persuaded him to drift off, and finally go into a deep sleep. In her own way she was anesthetizing him without drugs.

  While he slept, he was not resistant to her at all. Tatsy thought about the sudden success she’d had, and realized she was now in possession of new knowledge about how to control his impulses and muscles, and how to use her mental strength to overcome him. Riggio’s thoughts of suicide had triggered a survival mode in her, a superhuman burst of effort.

  Ever since he began thinking of harming himself, Tatsy had tried to remove all such thoughts from his mind, including his urges to kill Meredith that he constantly fought off—since that was the source of his own depression. But the bad thoughts were so ingrained in his consciousness that he kept thinking about them, constantly fighting them off and feeling like he might have to kill himself, to save Meredith.

  Tatsy had to remain vigilant, but the survival effort had seriously drained her of energy, and she found herself dozing off, telling herself it was safe to do this while he slept....

  ~~~

  Riggio felt as if he’d been hit with a heavy object, knocking him out. Unconscious, he swam as if he were submersed in a deep sea, trying to swim upward, out of the darkness and danger of the depths. Ahead, he could barely make out a wide swath of illumination, like sunlight on the surface of the sea. He swam toward it, struggling to make headway upward. His arms grew tired.

  After what seemed like hours, but might have been less, Riggio awoke and saw his left arm moving toward the nightstand beside his bed, his fingers extending, questing, trying to reach the V-phone, but not quite getting there because he was so tired.

  He tried to voice-activate the phone from where he was, but at first the sounds from his throat were low and gravelly, and the effort failed. Finally he managed a voice that activated the phone, and he spoke the emergency numbers, 9-1-1. He had not specified VR mode, so he was not transmitting images of himself, and could not see images of the person who answered.

  On the tele-speaker, an emergency dispatcher asked him what he was calling about, but all Riggio could get out was (and only barely), “Riggio Demónt.” When he tried to provide his address he began coughing. Something was wrong with his voice. His throat seemed raw, and was extremely painful when he tried to use it. He tried to ignore the pain, struggled to say something more....

  ~~~

  Lizbeth, the strongest of Tatsy’s unborn twins, had remained vigilant, as she always did when her dominant sister slept. Moments ago, when Riggio began to move, she had tried to awaken Tatsy, transmitting a psychic alarm across the paranormal linkage they shared.

  Tatsy had been in deep sleep, and when she came out of it she was outraged to find that her brother was trying to defy her. She intended to teach him who was in charge... he needed to be suppressed! And, though she had a powerful urge to kill him now, she could not do that. She could only attempt to kill his will power.

  In a female voice, she used Riggio’s vocal cords to shout at the phone, shutting it off before he could give the address to the dispatcher, or say what was wrong. His throat may have been sore to him, she realized from his thoughts, but it felt fine to her.

  Riggio groaned, and Tatsy felt a peculiar sensation. For the first time in her strange, unborn life she felt something on the surface of Riggio’s body, a tactile, tingling sensation on the skin. Up until now, she’d only had limited access to her brother’s senses, experiencing hearing and sight, but not taste, smell, or touch. And she realized something more was happening on the surface of his body, increasing moment by moment, a burning sensation, a pain so severe that she cried out. Riggio’s entire body seemed to be burning up.

  Tatsy sent mental commands to him, ordering him to remove his pajamas and take a shower in cold water. Somehow her awareness had been compromised, but she thought he was complying, although she could not see everything he was doing. The clothing was off, and she felt cold water on the body.

  She ordered him to remain in the shower for a long time. When the pain and hotness finally diminished, Tatsy felt much better. She wanted Riggio to step out of the shower and reach for a towel, but this time the command felt different. She felt as if she were stepping onto the slippery tile floor herself, taking care not to fall, and wrapping a towel around her own body.

  Something was different, very different.

  Tatsy stood in front of the mirror. The towel fell away, and she was amazed to gaze upon the form of a woman, and a pretty face that faintly resembled Riggio’s, but was different and smoother, with larger sea-blue eyes, a smaller mouth and no beard shadow. The scar on the left shoulder was gone, the place where Tatsy had caused Riggio, in sleeptrance, to cut out the electronic control unit that Dr. Yordanius implanted.

  Breathing hard, she made her way back to the bed and sat on the edge. With her fingers she explored her marvelous new body, feeling the softness of the skin, the full, firm breasts. The genitalia was female. Where once the body had been male and muscular, now it was as tall as her brother had been but entirely female, with classically beautiful features. The fingers were longer, like those of a piano player, and the arms were less muscular than before, but well-toned. Her legs were flawlessly proportioned. Everything was perfect.

  At long last, the terrible injustice that had been committed against her in the womb had been rectified. Riggio, the brother she’d despised during all her years of consciousness, had vanished. She didn’t sense him anywhere; he seemed to be completely gone.

  Finally, Tatsy had been born!

  She thought tenderly of her sisters, hoped their tiny fetuses were still in the abdominal cavity, and unharmed. She sent mental signals to them, as she’d always done before. To her dismay there was no response, and she detected nothing about them at all. This was not good, but she hoped they were all right.

  Tatsy vowed to find them if they were still alive, and give them a chance to be born, too—if it was possible. But first there were important things she needed to take care of, starting with the woman Riggio had been so attracted to. Her brother had liked her too much; he’d been enamored with her, unable to get his mind off her, unable to stop longing for her, no matter how much he tried. He’d idolized her, put her on a pedestal.

  For all that, Tatsy despised her. It was one more way to destroy everything about Riggio. She was going to enjoy killing the woman he probably loved, and this time she would kill with her own hands, not with Riggio’s.

  She saw a notepad and pen on the nightstand, and on impulse she began writing, “Kill the bitch, kill the bitch, kill the bitch, kill the bitch...
” until she had the entire page covered with these words.

  Tatsy wanted Meredith to die in spectacular fashion, crushing Riggio’s spirit forever and preventing him from ever coming back.

  She stabbed the notepad repeatedly, breaking the pen.

  CHAPTER 32

  Yesterday, after taking Riggio’s water bottle to the police to have it checked for DNA and other evidence, Zack had gone on a dinner date with Meredith. Over glasses of wine they had apologized for saying the terrible things that led to their divorce, for blaming each other for the tragic death of Travis.

  With misty eyes, holding hands across the bistro table, they’d agreed that the awful loss was not the fault of either of them. They’d both already come to this conclusion separately, after thinking about it at length. And in the restaurant they were able to remember how good it had always been between them before the killing of their child in a tough neighborhood by someone with a gun... an unknown killer who had never been found. It was probably an act of negligence, an accident by a gang member, according to the police.

  Now when Meredith and Zack found the old spark, and found positive things to discuss, it was as if they’d never been apart.

  They’d gone to Zack’s loft apartment afterward, where they made love and then held one another for hours.

  ~~~

  After midnight, Meredith lay awake in the shadows, trembling, thinking she was seeing things, dangerous night-creatures that formed frightening shapes and moved in ominous ways. A night light was on by the bathroom. Zack stirred. He had one arm draped over her.

  To Meredith’s shock something appeared directly over her, ready to leap onto her and rip her apart. The eyes were bright and feral, and she thought of Riggio. She closed her own eyes, shook Zack’s shoulder and whispered, “Darling, are you awake?” She raised her voice. “Zack?”