The Animal Under The Fur

by E. J. Mellow

  Mendoza takes me in with a look that sends a weird flutter through my chest. Its pride mixed with a million other things, and as I sit there, under his scrutiny, I feel something that terrifies me down to the edge of my blackened soul.

  I feel guilty.

  And sad.

  And angry.

  For life is a terribly unfair thing to force me here, to do what I must.

  “Oh, mi rosa,” he says, “that’s—”

  Something happening on Mendoza’s computer draws his attention away, and I watch as his features fall into a scowl before they drop into a neutral mask.

  His eyes collide back with mine, my heart pumping a quick beat as I take in the energy shifting around him. Something’s happened. And I silently curse, knowing what it is.

  Shit. Shit. Shit. I should have been done by now.

  A long moment stretches before us, one where I run through all my options, trying to measure the quickness of the guards drawing their weapons behind me with me lifting my wrist. I could do it. I could do it quicker than any of them and be on the floor in half a second.

  Yet I don’t. I sit there, frozen. Denying what must be done—again—what I said I alone had to do. All because of what? My deluded selfishness to finish something I thought I was responsible for? To prove to myself that I could still do what needed to be done, no matter who was on the other side of my gun?

  “Those were beautiful words,” Mendoza says, his voice shifting to something distant, no longer warm as he opens a drawer by his side. “But there is one thing I have never tolerated, by anyone, in all the years I have led the Oculto. Being lied to.” And then with a simple lift of his hand, he goes from my father back to a drug lord as he points a shiny Glock 22 straight at me.

  59

  Nashville

  Mendoza holds the gun steady as the syringe screams against my wrist to be set free, but my heart combusting in my chest continues to keep me paralyzed to my spot.

  The world around me rocks with uncertainty.

  In all the circumstances I ran through, this wasn’t even on the list of possibilities. Mendoza gave off nothing but desperate hope to be reconnected with his resurrected daughter. He had created this whole godforsaken facility because of the very heartache of me and my mother’s deaths. It was unthinkable that he could be sitting here now, ready to pull the trigger on one of them.

  How arrogant could I be?

  How stupid to doubt this man’s capability to do the very thing I was planning.

  We share the same toxic blood, after all, the long lineage of sinners.

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  I open my mouth to respond, to say something, but everything stays locked in, stuck in my throat. My two selves fight for dominance, one ready to act while the other mourns this moment, the loss of the father a part of me was desperate to believe was real, possible.

  “You have disappointed me more than you know,” Mendoza says, standing with ice in his eyes, the same hard eyes that were captured in his profile picture. The father he let me see is no longer here. Like a coin flip, he all too easily became another man. Two people in one body.

  Just like me.

  A shudder runs down my spine as I feel the guards at my back tensing, these next seconds everything, and I block out all but what’s in this room. “When I found you, you have no idea the joy I felt in that moment.” He rounds his desk. “I could have given you the world,” he hisses. “We could have been a family again.”

  “We still can be,” I force out, trying to buy myself more time from what I have already wasted.

  “Don’t insult me more than you already have,” he sneers. Twirling his laptop around, he shows me an image of what I feared as well as hoped—security footage of collapsed guards in a hall.

  Carter.

  “You have been disloyal since the moment we met, haven’t you?” He holds his gun firmer, a dash of rage mixed with hurt in his eyes. “Even when I’ve shown you nothing but truth and compassion. I’ve never lied about who I was. Never spoke false words about what you’d be here. Gave you time to process just as I had. I could easily have stopped your little mission, ended your friends’ lives with a snap of my fingers. I still can,” he rumbles. “Do you understand the restraint I have granted you? The trust you have just thrown—”

  “I was left to fend for myself.” The words barrel out with a growl, my chest filling with a familiar fire. “I have been forced to survive over and over. Forced to end a life at too young an age all because of your sins. You might not have lied to me, but what about my mother?”

  Mendoza’s head juts back as if I’ve slapped him.

  “Did you not wrap her in a false sense of safety? Paint her an innocent past to keep her heart? And then when I was born, when you knew what I was, why did you not run right away? Hide us before your family had a chance to find us?” Tears burn a path down my cheeks, and I curse their existence. I am not a creature prone to crying. “You damned us all with your lies. So you don’t get to stand here offended by what I am, what I turned out to be, when I’m more your daughter now than either of us are proud to admit.”

  We hold each other’s gaze, two opposing mountains as my words hang in the air, my chest pumping with my rapid breaths.

  “You’re right,” Mendoza says after a moment. “You’re very much my daughter, and it saddens me that I’m not proud of that.”

  My skin erupts with a chill of pain, of loss, at the same second my senses clear. Whatever delusion I was sitting in lifts, allowing me to barrel back to my surroundings, do the math of my chances to move versus getting hit by his bullet, of getting my shot off before he gets his.

  All this runs through my mind just as every action I’ve ever taken in my life leads me to this very second, sitting here looking down the barrel of a gun that my father holds. Like an anvil, it all bores down on my shoulders, and I grow weary.

  I’ve done extremely heinous things in my short time on this planet, but am I really ready to add on patricide?

  It’s too much, my shriveled soul yells. Too much.

  I thought I could come here, prove to myself, and even Carter, that I could kill this man with one flick of my wrist. That his existence didn’t change the woman I had always believed myself to be, was proud to have created. But as I look into the hard eyes of one of the people responsible for bringing me into this world, I realize I can’t.

  Even though I barely know him, have been made to survive at all costs, this is one sin I cannot bear.

  And one I see Mendoza, my father, can all too easily.

  This, I decide, is all the difference. What, in the end, will separate me from the monster.

  My wickedness has a limit.

  So with vision blurring, more tears trying to fall free, I ignore the prick of death hidden up my sleeve and say, “Do it.”

  Mendoza blinks, a snap of surprise behind his stone features, and for a tiny sliver of a moment I see the lucidness of my father again. With a frown, his gaze goes from me to the gun in his hand, and my heart pumps wildly in my chest, seeing it lower a fraction.

  His mouth opens, words about to be spoken, but they never make it out, for muffled shots fill the air, and Mendoza’s head snaps back. A perfect bloody hole straight between his eyes as he collapses against his desk.

  It’s only an instant, but just like that, he goes from alive to dead.

  A gasp has me lurching forward as I’m doused in frostbite.

  No!

  My hands flutter over his slack body, watching crimson pool beneath his head, soaking his desk.

  Dead. He’s Dead.

  As he was supposed to be, a voice whispers in my mind.

  As I was meant to make happen.

  Spinning around, I take in the man who fills the doorway.

  Carter stands, the two other guards unmoving at his feet, with his gun still aimed at the spot Mendoza once stood.

  Before he killed him.

  60

  Carter
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br />   THE OCULTO COMPOUND

  MEXICO: 1128 HOURS

  She silently watches as I take a quick video and picture of the lifeless body of Manuel Mendoza, his eyes staring unseeing as I zero in on the hole in his skull, the blood dripping an artful path across his forehead to paint the oak desk ruby.

  “Nashville.” I try getting her attention again as I dip my head from the office, checking that no other guards are making their way over. “We have fifteen minutes to get out of here.”

  I look back to find her still regarding Mendoza. His arm is thrown at an odd angle under his neck, his legs half draped over the ledge of the desk to the floor. I have no idea what she’s thinking, no clue the emotions filling her to see her father in such a state, that I was the man who put him there, but this is not the time to process it. We can do that and more when we’re out, when she’s safe.

  I didn’t hesitate when I saw Mendoza pointing his gun at her. It merely cemented my resolve further. Even with her current bleached complexion and silent vigil, I would pull the trigger again if given a second chance.

  I was hiding behind a corner down the hall, and with the two guards’ attention pinned to what was taking place in the office, I ran.

  The soldiers went down a millisecond before I took out Mendoza.

  What would have cost Nashville a lot more than she cares to admit, took me no pain to complete.

  Her not being able to kill her father doesn’t make her weak. It makes her human. It makes her have a chance in this fucked-up world we live in.

  “Nashville.” I try again, this time getting a response as she turns, wiping at the tracks of tears running down her cheeks. My rage floods higher seeing her like this, and I want to wrap her in my arms, but we both know this is not the time. “We have to go,” I say more gently. “Guards will be here soon.”

  She merely nods as I hand her my extra gun, remains silent as she follows me out, and doesn’t so much as glance back to the room that is now her father’s tomb.

  The scientists scurry away as they see us running through the lab, one brave enough to pick up a discarded gun, but Nashville has woken up 3, for she doesn’t even blink as she puts down the woman with a clear shot to her temple.

  “We need to grab someone to control the elevator,” she says just as I finished telling Jules and Akoni that I’ve regrouped with Nashville and we’ve taken out the target.

  “Get samples of the serum!” Ploom’s voice comes through my ear, a silent ghost on the line until now. “You can’t leave until you’ve acquired that.”

  “They’ve set a self-destruct mechanism,” I say to him as Nashville spins to scoop up a cowering man in a lab coat, hiding behind a desk. “We need to get out before this place blows.”

  “Get the serum!” Ploom repeats. “Any amount will do.” But I ignore his order as we run up the metal stairs to the wraparound balcony leading to the elevator.

  Nashville has no issue taking the doctor with her, a child dragging a stuffed animal.

  “Carter?” Ploom’s annoying voice echoes in my head again. “Did you hear—” I tear off the earpiece and throw it behind me as we skid to a stop, calling the elevator.

  A group of guards enter the downstairs lab, and seeing us, start shooting. We dip behind a column as cement debris explodes near our heads. I swivel around and put down two soldiers just as the elevator opens, revealing four more.

  Shit.

  The alarm must have sounded, for not only are they in full gear, but they are not surprised to see us as they charge our way.

  Nashville throws the scientist into my arms as she pounces forward.

  Like a possessed demon, she kicks up onto the wall to run and drop behind the group. With a burst of her gun, two are shot in the back of the head, falling with a thunk, before she kicks the remaining guards in the back of the knees, messing up each man’s aim, which was pointed my way. Their rounds of bullets puncture the piped ceiling, setting off wheezes of steam. With barely trackable reflexes, she pulls a knife sheathed at one of their thighs, and with a whoosh, whoosh cuts each of their throats before they realize what’s happening. Blood covers the metal-meshed floor, dripping to the ground below as they gurgle their last breaths.

  The man in my hands sobs at the sight while I shove our way into the awaiting car. Pressing the scientist’s head to the voice command screen, I swipe his key card, demanding. “Say level one.”

  He squeaks and shivers under my grasp.

  “Level one!” I order again in Spanish as the second group of guards below make their way up the metal stairs. Nashville hits everyone she aims at, but she only has so many bullets left.

  “Carter!” she yells.

  “If you cooperate,” I whisper to the man, “I’ll tell her to let you live.”

  “Nivel uno!” he says in the next instant, and I let out a relieving sigh as the car doors close and we make our way up, a spray of bullets thunking against the outside of our metal cage.

  “Please, please,” pleads the lab rat under my grip. “I have a family. I’ll do whatever you say. Just don’t kill me.”

  Nashville and I glance to one another.

  “They always have families.”

  “Death seems to bring that out in people,” she mumbles as she checks the remaining rounds in her gun.

  I watch her for a moment, her braided red hair sitting calmly over one shoulder as her features are cut into their usual stone mask of 3. I know she’s back to being that woman right now, needs to be to get through this last leg of our journey. So even though I want to say a thousand things, I bite the inside of my cheek and remain quiet.

  Later. We’ll say it all later.

  Soon the elevator shudders to a stop as the doors open on level one. Cautiously stepping out, we take in the quiet tunnel before us. The guards usually stationed here must have been ordered belowground when the alarm was sounded, leaving our exit unmanned.

  Five black SUVs sit idle to one side of the tar road, boxes and crates, waiting to be packed, against a wall. The rest of the space pinches away in the distance as the roof remains closed at the far end.

  “How do we open the tunnel?” I ask the man.

  “I…I don’t know.” He glances around. “That’s never been shared with us.”

  I’m about to trade him some pain for a better answer, when Nashville stops me.

  “He’s telling the truth,” she says, running to a side panel set in the wall.

  I check my watch. “Well, what do you suggest we do? We have eight minutes.”

  “Hotwire one of the cars. I’ll work on this.”

  Pulling the man with me to the vehicles, I check the driver’s-side door, smiling when it opens easily. As I glance inside, my grin grows wider. “No need,” I call back to her. “The keys are in the ignition.”

  The last of my words are drowned out by the cover above us lifting, the hidden top of the bunker opening to streak in beams of daylight as Nashville runs toward me.

  “And I found out how to open it.”

  Relief barrels into my chest as I open the backseat passenger side and shove the scientist in. “This facility is about to be wiped out.” I continue to talk in Spanish. “Burned to a crisp, devoured into hell, understand? So if you truly want to live to see your family, I suggest you sit here and don’t move a goddamn muscle.”

  Slamming the door on his panicked squeak, I sprint to the trunk, and with Nashville’s help, dump out crates that were loaded in. If we’re going to disobey orders, we’re going to disobey orders properly. None of this will make its way out.

  With the last box hitting the ground, I shut the back and slip into the driver’s seat just as Nashville hops in beside me.

  “We can’t bring him.” She points to the mouse of man in the back.

  “We’ll drop him when we’re out.”

  Revving the engine, I’m ready to haul ass when Nashville’s door suddenly swings open and she gets pulled out by her hair.

  “Nashville!”
I twist in my seat, pumping the brakes with a screech.

  Ramie stands like a resurrected zombie, holding Nashville in a vice grip, her head squeezed between the crook of his arm and his chest.

  What the—

  He’s supposed to be reenacting sleeping beauty two levels down.

  Stupid A+ and their advanced healing.

  With a two-fisted punch to each of his eye sockets, Nashville is able to twist out of his grip, only to find herself defending again. Ramie’s a looming force of destruction as he holds her back, his hair a tattered mess, his black clothes marked with grime, as if he’s been crawling through—

  I glance beyond the two of them to the wall near the elevator bay, seeing a kicked-out ventilation grate in the corner.

  “Son of a bitch.” Whipping up Minnie, I aim for Ramie’s head, but they are tossing around like two superhumans out for blood, leaving me without a clear shot. “Fuck.”

  “Go!” Nashville yells to me just as I glance at my watch.

  Two minutes.

  “Yes, go!” the scientist says behind me.

  “Shut up,” I growl just as Ramie bellows, “You killed him!”

  He swings a fist like a possessed Frankenstein’s monster, and I’m not even sure how she does it, but with blurred speed, she’s up and around his shoulders, a spider monkey holding tight.

  “I’m sorry,” I hear her say before she flicks her wrist, and a tiny dart lodges into his neck.