She cast a brief, fond glance in the direction of the rhino thing. “The second thing concerns who I am and what I have become. We had heard rumors of secret experiments being done to improve human life, extend it or change it, and I asked my superior officer to recommend me for clinical trials.”
A dainty shrug accompanied her last statement. “I did not know what it involved at first, and Piotr didn’t, either. He lived only to do his job, but he could not do it well enough.”
“Too stupid, I take it,” Harry commented and immediately thought don’t piss off the woman with the claws. You need your face.
If his female captor was angry, she didn’t show it, merely shook her head as if the world was too ignorant to understand. “Piotr is not a bad person. Really, he is not. It is true that he is not very intelligent, but he is strong, a marvelous fighter and killer, and totally loyal to me. That is all that I desire, and it is also what our creator desires. When I was accepted into the program, he stressed loyalty and honor. It is a fine code, yes?”
That last bit sparked Harry’s interest and he sat up straighter, ignoring the pain his body. “You volunteered for this? Who’s your, uh, who created you?”
Lyudmila favored him with an indulgent smirk and leaned closer. Her smell, unwashed fur combined with sweat, blood, and other unmentionables, made his stomach churn. Didn’t villains ever think of taking showers?
Obviously, they didn’t, but she didn’t seem to acknowledge her body odor. The tip of her tail came around to caress his shoulder. A gleam shone in her eyes and...was she hitting on him? If so, it left a bad taste in his mouth.
Had Anastasia done that, he would have felt turned on. Coming from this woman, the very touch of her flesh on his skin made him want to hurl. Perhaps Lyudmila sensed his reticence, for she withdrew her tail and curled it around her body.
“If you are fishing for clues, then I will tell you, never fear,” she said in a light and absurdly playful tone. “As I was saying, yes, I volunteered. At first, I didn’t know what would happen, and the pain was terrible. It took around two months for the first changes to manifest themselves, and after that, everything happened very quickly.”
Harry was grossed out by the idea of experimenting on a human the way her creator had done, but then remembered that he’d done the same with Anastasia and wondered if he was any better. “You were conscious all that time?”
“But of course,” she shrugged. “It was necessary to get my reactions.”
Features composed, she spoke calmly of the searing pain that accompanied the treatments. “It was like my nerve endings were constantly on fire. My bones felt as though they would break, my insides felt as if they were liquefying, and my muscles felt constantly swollen.
“However, when I began to see the changes,” her eyes lit up and a look of near-rapture spread across her feline features, “The pain vanished, and I knew that I had chosen wisely. Do you understand that this can be the next step in evolution? Imagine being able to run fast, jump higher, and outfight almost any creature around. I have heightened powers of eyesight, smell...everything a girl could want,” she preened. “Piotr said the same thing...just not in so many words.”
Harry didn’t have to imagine anything. The results were right in front on him, and if she considered herself to be the next step in human evolution, she was in for a very rude awakening. “You realize you’ll devolve, don’t you? I mean, if you know about Anastasia, then you also know she devolved, and I had to work to bring her back. I also couldn’t get rid of the animal genes inside her.”
“Our creator is aware of that,” Lyudmila responded, brushing some dirt from her hands. She then set about grooming her hair, using short and quick strokes with her fingers to remove the largest particles of waste. “I was apprised of the shortcomings of the program from the start.”
For a second, her eyes flickered, seemingly with genuine regret, and her voice grew sorrowful. “Alas, Piotr, poor thing, does not know. In my case, I will have a normal life span. In his, he will not live very long, due to the splicing together of two species. He has not the intelligence to comprehend his demise. He only knows that his body doesn’t regenerate as fast as it used to and that he needs to sleep more.”
Listening to all this, Harry didn’t know whether to feel sorry for her or despise her. While she had chosen this route, she clearly understood what would happen. She would devolve, the same as Anastasia, and her boyfriend would die.
On the other hand, they were both murderers many times over. Sympathy was for the truly pitiful, he decided. These monsters deserved only contempt. However, his feelings were tempered by the fact that he was a prisoner and could not fight them on his terms, and knew that he wouldn’t live long no matter what he said or did. Once again, he hoped that his girlfriend was safe, wherever she’d gone.
“Are there others like you?”
Lyudmila blinked. “Why do you wish to know?”
“Just curious, is all.”
Her harsh laugh rang out, filling the abandoned room. “You do know the story of curiosity, do you not?”
The irony of her statement got to him, and in spite of his predicament, he appreciated the joke and nodded in understanding. “Yeah, I do.”
Her eyes flickered with indecision, and then she leaned closer. “There are a number of us. Our creator had many ideas, many of them clever...and many not. He created me from a cat, my boyfriend from a splice of two animals, a rhinoceros and a wild boar native to our country, and others.”
What the others were, Harry had no clue, but he took a wild guess. “I’m thinking he spliced together some dangerous combinations,” he said. “Boars and lions, tigers and attack dogs...things like that, am I right?”
Lyudmila shook her head, her long hair cascading over her shoulders. “You may think what you like. I will not attempt to dispel your notions.”
Her answer was no answer at all. Still, his curiosity compelled him to ask one more question. “So...what happens now?”
She eyed him closely as a scientist would eye a microbe. “What happens is that we shall have to wait. Piotr and I were sent here for one reason and one only. You are to be taken back to our country to help our creator perfect the process of alteration. Once the process has been perfected, I will have this body,” she smoothed her hands from her shoulders over her breasts and down to her hips, “for the rest of my days. While the process will be painful, I will have what I wish.”
“What’s your creator’s name?”
One word came from her mouth—”Grushenko.”
G—it must have been what Maze had seen on her computer during her search. It couldn’t stand for anything else. Turning the name over in his mind, he struggled to remember if his father had ever mentioned it. He recalled a meeting he’d been to with his parents when he was very young, something about transgenics research that his father was doing.
Scientists from all over the world had come to Portland for a conference. His father had been one of the keynote speakers. He’d listened to a veritable Babel of languages, but didn’t remember meeting or hearing about anyone by that name.
Only the late Russian scientist’s name, Nurmelev, came to the forefront of his memory. Grushenko’s...no. “I never heard that guy’s name before,” he responded, trying to figure a way out of here. He quickly shifted his gaze past her shoulder, but there was only one way in, and she stood in the way of getting out. “I only know about Nurmelev. He wanted to build an army of spies, once they devolved, and you’ll also change. Doesn’t that bother you?”
A scornful laugh greeted his question. “No, it does not. I am not familiar with the name you have just mentioned, but that is of no importance. As to the spy program, I will perform my duties honorably. I do not mind being what I am, for I am enhanced. That is enough for me.”
“Doesn’t this Grushenko want to build an army?” Harry probed, wanting to know more and wondering if the police were searching this section of the city. If they ever
found him, would they shoot him as well?
Once again, a laugh, harsh and deep, greeted his query. “From what I know, the answer is no. I have already told you that there are others like us. That is all the information you will get from me. Clever as you think you are, aware though you may be, you are really in the dark and have always been there. You may think that you know everything, Harry Goldman, but you do not.”
She sat back then, a satisfied smile playing around her lips. She looked very much like Anastasia, he thought. With the same height and build, and the same whiskers and ears, she could have been his girlfriend’s clone, but for two key differences. Lyudmila’s eyes were the color of death, and she enjoyed killing. He’d heard the terrible glee in her voice when she ordered her boyfriend to savage the prisoners, and she’d probably felt the same emotion when she was doing the savaging.
Maneuvering his body to a more comfortable position, he found her staring at him. “What is it?”
“Do you find me attractive?” she suddenly asked and gave him a confident, knowing smile. “I have heard that you have feelings for Anastasia. We are aware of your relationship with her.”
“You know?”
A slight shrug greeted his question. “There is little that we do not. Back in Russia we were provided with extensive information on this city, its people, and you.”
Her eyes glittered. “Even if we hadn’t been told, when I waited in the forest with my Piotr, I saw how you looked at Anastasia, how you talked with her, the pitch of your voice and hers...it was easy to understand.” She then repeated her question of him finding her attractive.
No, he didn’t, not really, but curiosity got the better of him. “What did you look like before?”
Wordlessly, she reached into the pocket of her shorts and pulled out a folded picture. Carefully unfolding it and smoothing it out, she handed it over. It showed a young woman, perhaps only a year or so older than Anastasia, medium height, a svelte figure, and plain, nondescript features. The eyes, however, hadn’t changed during her transformation. They remained cold, empty, and devoid of any human emotion.
Handing it back, he said, “Maybe you look better as a cat—maybe.” It was the most honest answer he could give.
Lyudmila carefully tucked the photo away and asked, “Did she tell you of her previous life?”
Aware that this woman knew all about him yet not wanting to say too much, Harry offered a shrug. “She had amnesia when I first met her. All she knew was her name and that she was born somewhere in Russia.”
His captor considered the answer, lips pursed as if in thought, and then with a vindictive smile, asked, “Do you find me as attractive as you find the whore?”
The remark stung, and instinctively he lashed out and punched her as hard as possible right in the jaw. Her head rocked back an inch or maybe two, but another tiny smile emerged, this one colder than ice and very calculating. She raised her arm, claws extended, for a moment. He thought she’d rip his throat out, but right then he didn’t care. Fear didn’t rule—anger did.
“Is that all you are capable of doing?” she sneered and retracted her claws. “I know that Anastasia was a prostitute in her previous life. I know that she sold her body many times over for mere rubles. She is not worthy for any man.” The sneer got deeper. “And you are no man.”
Venom over, he decided to give some venom back. “My girlfriend is special,” Harry responded hotly. “You talk about being worthy. What I’m thinking is that you’re just trash, your boyfriend is a sub-human moron, and the scientist who created you obviously mixed your genes in with a cockroach’s. I wouldn’t go out with you if my life depended on it.”
With a sudden movement too fast for him to react to, she backhanded him across his face and grabbed his jaw, almost crushing it. “As a matter of fact, your life does depend on it, at least for a little while,” she breathed and pushed her face an inch away from his. The scent of human carrion lay foul upon her breath. “I could slash you to ribbons now, but Grushenko wants you alive. He needs you. Once he is done, though, I will have my way with you, and it will be done slowly.”
Threat given, she slammed his head into the wall and the darkness came up to meet him once more.
Regaining his senses minutes or hours later, head aching and body feeling like it had been run over by a herd of angry elephants, Harry found that his hands and feet had been tied together. He resembled a trussed up pig, ready for the slaughter. Searching the room, he saw that in the far corner Lyudmila had curled up next to her monster significant other, sleeping, and he heard her faint snores and Piotr’s louder ones.
With a soft grunt, he flipped himself over and wiggled his fingers, twisted his wrists and tried his best to slip his bonds. However, he found that his captor could add knot-tying to her list of accomplishments and he soon gave up, exhaling a soft breath of frustration. At the very least, he’d managed to get some of the blood flowing to his limbs, but that was all.
Recalling what Lyudmila had told him, obviously whoever this Grushenko was, he wanted to learn the secret of stopping the devolvement.
Or did he? She’d said that he wanted his creations to devolve, so maybe he had another endgame in mind. Was he building an army? He’d obviously been able to crossbreed species. His results with Piotr, grotesque as they were, showed that he was the equal, if not superior, in intellect and technique compared to any transgenic expert around.
Ideas, many of them involving matrixes and chemical compounds, flooded Harry’s mind, and he tried to concentrate on the process, step by step, figuring out certain equations and time spans. His head hurt from where it had hit the wall, and he shook it, trying to get rid of the pain. It didn’t work, though, and he closed his eyes, hoping to get some sleep.
Sleep didn’t come as he felt a hand roughly shake him. “Get up, Harry Goldman.”
The hand then yanked him into a seated position. Lyudmila and Piotr towered over him, the latter rubbing the back of his head. “Is something missing?” Harry asked.
Clearly, while Piotr understood the reference, he didn’t appreciate being the butt of jokes. Glowering, he lashed out with a kick to Harry’s leg. The impact of an iron-hard leg meeting his caused him to groan in pain. The pain immediately flowed from his lower body right to his head, causing the headache to intensify. Piotr didn’t believe in the gentle approach, and he spit out his next question. “Play football much?”
Sarcasm obviously didn’t make for good international relations as the massive rhino-thing drew back his arm. Lyudmila interrupted him by saying Nyet and added a few other words.
They were enough to make him lower his arm, but he leaned over to deliver a warning. “Making fun of me will hasten your end, little man.”
He walked off to lean against a post, breathing heavily. Lyudmila squatted down beside Harry and undid his bonds. “We must get ready to move soon, to another location, so I am letting you free. If you try to escape,” she warned, smacking the side of his face, “then Piotr will hunt you down.”
Harry noticed that the rhino monstrosity was shaking his head and occasionally put his paws to his temples to rub them. “What’s his problem, among many?” he asked.
For a moment, the expression on her face turned almost kind. “His head hurts him all the time,” she said softly. “When he came out of the process, he was uncontrollable at first. Grushenko inserted a microchip at the base of his skull in order to try and calm him down, but Piotr tore it out. The wound has never healed properly.”
She shrugged and straightened up. The look of sympathy on her face faded, replaced by a hard-edged one. “We shall have to move soon. Our ride has been delayed, but it would be foolish to remain here.”
Pivoting on her foot, she stalked off. Harry sat back rubbing his wrists and massaged his aching legs. Carefully and slowly extending them so as not to provoke the man-thing in front of him, he worked on getting the blood back into his legs. A second later, he stopped when he saw a familiar figure detach
itself from the shadows. Hastily, he averted his gaze from where he’d been looking and focused on his male captor.
“We’re going for a ride?” he asked.
For a second, there was no response. Then Piotr snuffled out an incomprehensible answer. Harry repeated the question. “So are we going to Disneyland first? California has warmer weather, beaches and the Pacific Ocean.”
Surprisingly, his statement earned him another snuffle and a hint of a laugh. In the corner, Lyudmila turned to regard him, her eyes flashing in the semi-lit room. Harry’s only thoughts were ones of trying to delay the inevitable. If he could slow them down somehow, cause them to get upset, lose their focus...it might buy the person he was searching for some time.
Time, though, wasn’t exactly on his side, and there was only one Anastasia and two of them. Combined, they were supremely dangerous and not afraid to kill. “C’mon,” he urged. “I can get you a special pass. You can be one of the attractions.”
Lyudmila walked over to him and jerked him to his feet, shaking him as easily as a dog would shake a rat. “You are beginning to irritate me, Harry Goldman. I wonder if you are as smart as Grushenko claims that you are. I also do not think you are special in any way, and...”
Her rebuke stopped at that point. With a start, she whirled around and sniffed the air, testing it, almost tasting it, and when she turned back to him a crafty smile painted her features. “Huh...I was wrong. You are cleverer than I imagined. Piotr, guard the door.”
“Why must I go?” he asked, eyes dull and voice still thick. “My rest time has not yet finished, and—”
Rise of the Transgenics Page 12
