“What are you talking about?”
His voice died away as he caught sight of himself in the small mirror that hung on the wall. His face looked the same, but his eyes were now yellow, and his jaw seemed squarer. He’d used the same feline DNA that Anastasia had been given, only this DNA had come from a male Ussuri cat.
He looked at his forearms. They seemed more muscular, and the veins stood out in bold relief. He looked behind him—no tail. As he swung around again, he caught Anastasia’s gaze. “Is that...really you?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he said, and pulled on the door. The lock resisted him for a moment, and then gave way. Rushing to her side, he quickly tore the restraints away. “Are you okay?”
A tiny grin emerged. “Yeah...what did you do?”
He started to say something, but the voice of the doctor interrupted him. “What have you done?”
Harry spun around.
Lyudmila stood next to her master. “I see that he has gone through the same process.” She started toward him, but suddenly stopped when Anastasia got off the bed and strode out of the cell, extending her claws. “He has, but you won’t live to see it, comrade.”
With a howl of rage, she charged Lyudmila. The ensuing impact took them through the door and into the hallway, hissing, spitting, and slashing at each other.
Harry watched, and then the sensation of growth and change occurred once more. His body shook violently, and when the shakes subsided he stared at his fingers. Claws not unlike Anastasia’s, long, sharp, and tough, emerged. “Join the party,” he said.
Grushenko fumbled in his pocket, presumably to bring out a pistol or a knife, but Harry moved faster than even he thought possible and seized the doctor by the throat. “Hey, I’m not one of your patients, remember?”
Dragging him to the center of the room, he waited. Piotr had already pulled himself free, and shaking his head to clear it of the concrete cobwebs, he charged.
Bad move on his part, as Harry held the doctor in front of him as a human shield. Grushenko only had time enough to scream “No!” before his creation ran him through and collided with the cell bars.
The force of his run caused Piotr’s head to smash through the metal bars, and he remained pinned. Grushenko slumped to the floor, dead. Harry went to the cage where the rhino-boar creature was frantically trying to pull his head out.
“You’re stuck,” Harry observed, totally without irony.
Piotr flailed helplessly, and then twisted his head sideways. His eyes bugged out in disbelief when he saw the physical changes. “You...are like me.”
“No, I’m nothing like you,” Harry answered.
The red spot at the base of Piotr’s skull stood out, weeping clear fluid. Harry extended his claws. The movement felt as natural as extending his fingers. He hesitated only a second before plunging his hand into the back of his opponent’s skull as deeply as it would go. Once inside, he squeezed the monster’s brain. The massive creature gave a huge hiccup, and his body sagged.
Harry pulled his hand out and stared at the blood and flesh on it. It caused nausea to well in his gut. He’d just killed someone, but there was no time to think about it. With a sense of urgency, he ran outside to search for Anastasia who was still deep in battle. Lyudmila had her in a chokehold, and a fierce grin split her features. “I have you now, you whore,” she spat. “Your lover will watch you die.”
“I told you,” Anastasia said, gritting her teeth, “never to call me that.”
Snapping her body upward, she launched herself behind Lyudmila and spun her around. With a mighty swipe of her arm, she tore the other woman’s throat out. A chunk of bloody flesh hit the floor. Lyudmila stared at it eyes wide in shock. Her gaze then traveled to Anastasia’s face, and she slowly sagged to the ground, her blood rapidly spreading over the dirty floor.
It was over.
Chapter Thirteen: “What Do We Do Now?”
Harry wearily threw his arm around Anastasia’s shoulder. Her body sported a number of slashes, some deep and some not. On the deep ones, the blood ran freely to the floor dotting it a brilliant red, but she offered a tired smile. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“How did I do?”
She sighed out, “You did okay, for a first time.” Then the breath suddenly left her body. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she passed out, falling limply against him.
Harry picked her up, took her back to the lab, and laid her on the table. Retracting his claws, he quickly washed his hands and set to work sterilizing her wounds. Regenerative powers or not, Lyudmila’s claws hadn’t been overly clean. He didn’t want to take any chances.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the remains of Anatoly Grushenko lying in a puddle of his own blood. Brilliant guy, Harry thought, but totally deranged. “He had it coming,” he muttered as he worked on his girlfriend.
Remorse—Harry had it once, and he retained his sense of ethics. Killing anyone hadn’t been in the plan, but he’d done what he’d done in order to save Anastasia’s life.
Killing Piotr still bothered him, but thinking about it, he’d had no choice. Harry had always thought of himself as a bit of a weak nerd, but now...now things had changed. The rhino-man had killed before and would have done it again. That was how it stood, and if the same situation happened again, Harry knew in his heart what to do.
During the procedure, Anastasia woke up, groaned, and turned over to face him. “Lie still,” he cautioned. “I’m not done yet.”
Not listening to his suggestion, she propped herself up on one elbow and faced him squarely. “Answer something for me,” she said. “Why did you inject yourself with the serum? Why did you go through that genesis chamber? Was it to save me—or be with me?”
Harry didn’t know how to answer her question at first. Six months ago, he’d have never believed this would happen, but now...now...he didn’t know. All he did know was that he wanted to stay with her for the rest of his life. If it took changing his form in order to do so, then it wasn’t so much to give up. “I did this to help you—”
“And because you love me,” she finished off for him and reached over to grasp his hand.
“And because I love you,” he echoed. “Now lie still and let me work, okay?”
With a tired but beautiful smile, she lay back.
Harry quickly dressed her wounds. Anastasia didn’t cry out when he put on the antiseptic. Perhaps he shouldn’t have bothered—her regenerative powers were already at work, and the wounds began to close almost immediately. Like time-lapse photography—faster, maybe—the skin knit together, and any evidence of injury quickly faded.
As for his physical condition, the feeling within his body was nothing short of miraculous. Every fiber seemed to dance, to vibrate faster, become denser. He could feel it, and knew that he’d entered an entirely different world from the one he once knew. There might be further changes, and he pondered the possibilities.
Taking a blood sample from his arm, Harry slid it into one of the few machines undamaged by the conflict. He watched as the computer began its readout. Numbers flashed and matrixes of DNA strands appeared, and he watched, transfixed, as evolution began to rewrite itself.
While doing so, a gasp brought him back to reality. “Look at your body,” Anastasia breathed.
Doing as she suggested, Harry saw the slashes on his arms and torso had begun to close. The implications of an enhanced immune system, metabolic rate, and increased strength and speed came through to him. “This is...weird. Do you know what’s going to happen to me?” he asked.
“You’re the scientist. You should know,” she said with a faint laugh. “I guess...I guess the same thing that happened to me will happen to you...and you’ll live as you are—with me.”
Her sentence ended on a hopeful note. The analytical part of his mind knew that other changes would most likely occur. However, the emotional side of his brain said that it didn’t matter. Anastasia had summed up the course of his life in
one sentence.
“Yeah,” he answered, now committed to who and what he was. “Yeah, I will.”
He would stay with her and only her. When he’d met her before, he wasn’t sure how the world would take her. Now, since he’d gone through the transformation, he knew there was no going back. A momentary stab of fear went through his being. A second later, though, a strong sense of determination kicked the fear out. Whatever else happened, he was prepared to take it in stride.
Checking out the remains of the lab, he spotted a number of undamaged vials lying on the floor. “What is it?” Anastasia asked.
Excitement surged through him. Grushenko had been onto something here. Finding a sterile dropper, he put a sample onto a slide and slid it under the electronic microscope. Taking a drop from another vial, he combined both and intently viewed the results. Something was indeed happening. “Yeah,” he grunted softly, “this might work.”
After wrapping both vials up in a piece of cloth he tore from the blanket in the cell, he put them in his pocket. Then he went back to examining his own results. As he stared intently at the still-moving numbers of his shifting DNA, a noise from behind him broke his spell of concentration.
He turned back to find Anastasia sitting up and regarding him with a grave expression on her face. “What’s going to happen to us?” she asked in a quiet, pensive manner. “Are we going back to the States again?”
“This is your home,” Harry pointed out. “You were born here. You could stay.”
Anastasia shook her head violently at the stay part. “No, I don’t belong here. This country has given me nothing. My parents gave me life, that’s all.” She grasped his hand and held it to her breast. “My place, if it’s anywhere, is with you. My country is where yours is.”
Harry remained silent, touched by her gesture, yet wondering about the future. As if reading his mind, Anastasia reached up to caress his face.
“And you?” she asked. Her fingers tickled the skin on his now-healed arm, stroked the fine hair that was beginning to grow thicker, and she leaned her head on his shoulder. “Are you ready for all this?”
Elated by her touch, Harry tapped a few keys and his matrix appeared onscreen. It showed his cells slowly fusing with the animal DNA, and the matrix seemed to be holding. “Yeah, I think so,” he answered, shrugging. “I just wonder...if I’ll have a country to go back to. Being the same as you isn’t bad at all. But the other people...”
His voice suddenly cut out and Anastasia turned him around to face her. “The other people will just have to get used to us,” she stated emphatically. “And we’re not so different. Being different...is that a bad thing?”
Would it be? It wasn’t as if he was giving up his humanity. In fact, this just made him a little different from the norm, nothing more and nothing less. “No, no it isn’t.”
Putting his arms around her narrow waist, he held her close and they briefly kissed before she nuzzled his chin. “So what do we do now?” she asked after breaking their clinch. She tested her arms by gently rotating them at the shoulder and slowly twisting her torso first to the left and then to the right while waiting for his answer.
“I’ll tell you,” a familiar voice said from behind them.
Spinning around, Harry saw Agent Farrell as he walked in, his face still bandaged and his right arm supported by a sling. Six Russian soldiers stood behind him, guns at the ready. They did the usual stare-and-gawk thing, and then one of them, an older man who wore a number of medals on his chest, curtly said something in Russian and they left the room.
Farrell watched them go. “This was all done in the spirit of cooperation.” His voice rang with irony. “It’s a shared mission, and I had no control over it, I’m telling you that now. We’re on their turf, so,” he shrugged, “a little information sharing is where it’s at.”
“Nice of you to show up after all the dirty work is done,” Anastasia pointed out.
There had been that moment of tenderness in the hospital back home, but not now. Somehow, Harry preferred it this way.
Farrell offered a resigned look. “I got the call from the State Department only a day ago and came here as soon as I could. It seems that I was late.”
“You always seem to be,” she snapped back, but this time, a smile appeared on her face. “I hope you managed to get in a few games on your computer during your convalescence.”
Soon, they were trading friendly if somewhat barbed insults. In order to tone things down somewhat, Harry placed his hand on his girlfriend’s shoulder and gave it a sharp squeeze. “Let’s cool it for now.” Addressing Farrell, he asked, “Do you feel as bad as you look?”
Farrell grunted his assent, looked at the two corpses in the corner, and turned his attention back to the young couple. “I’ll live.” A sigh, something that said this comes with the territory, came from him. “I’ve had worse. So have you both. And for your information, Anastasia, they wouldn’t let me at a computer during my brief stay.”
His gaze then traveled from Harry’s face to his hands and for a change, he cracked a slight smile. “You’ve been busy.”
“So has someone else.”
The agent nodded. “Yeah, it seems so. Well, if you’re finished with the upgrades for the moment, let’s get out of here. The plane’s waiting and I’ve got a lot of reports to make.”
The trip back to the airport was uneventful, and Harry and Anastasia slept deeply, locked in each other’s arms. Once they reached the States, a private car picked them up at the airport and hustled them off before anyone could get a grab-shot in. They immediately went to headquarters, where Farrell debriefed them in the now cleaned-up and repaired laboratory.
An entirely new range of analytical equipment had been set up, along with a new laptop and three computer discs. “What are these?” Harry asked, picking up one of the discs.
“We managed to salvage some information off your old computer,” Farrell answered. “Not much, but enough, and we transferred what we could onto those discs. They’re yours to use.”
Before Harry could thank him, Farrell dropped a document with some pictures of the now-deceased terror twins on the table and sat back with a more than satisfied smile on his face.
“You’re looking pleased,” Anastasia observed. “Do you want to fill us in, or do we have to guess?”
The agent inclined his head and his smile grew broader. Harry decided that he preferred the old hardass version. This happy-face stuff was going to take some getting used to.
“First things first,” Farrell said as he pulled out his smartphone. Logging on to a news site, he showed them a recent press conference. The Chief of Police stood at a podium filled with microphones and spoke to a number of reporters. He looked to be ill at ease, and cleared his throat a number of times during his speech. “I have just received word from the FBI that the four individuals who were responsible for the recent atrocities have been apprehended.”
“I’m shocked, Agent Farrell,” Anastasia said with only a slight mocking tone to her voice. “Apprehended isn’t the word I’d use.”
“I was thinking...kidnapped would be better,” Harry suggested. “After all, we just got back from the Ukraine, and I didn’t even have my passport.”
Farrell shot them both a dirty look. “Certain concessions had to be made. Listen up.”
“...the details given, two of them were killed in a battle with agents in Homeland Security,” the Chief continued, “while the other two are being held in an undisclosed location, awaiting further trial. We are officially calling off our search and we hope that all citizens will resume their normal, daily lifestyle...”
A second later, Farrell shut off his phone. “I think we can forget about the lynch mobs for now.”
Maybe, Harry thought. Maybe they could...but he caught sight of himself in the mirror. Things would never be the same...
“You were right, by the way,” Farrell said.
Harry broke off his inspection to catch the agent�
�s words and turned around. “I was right about what?”
“You remember the older Russian soldier who was with me?” Farrell asked. “Well, it seems as though he made a few calls on my behalf and came up with a list of thirty-five transgenics like these two.” He motioned with his good arm at the pictures of Lyudmila and Piotr.
“According to my new Russian best friend, they had all the earmarks of Russian intelligence. We’ve got our people looking into it. Of course the Russian government is officially denying involvement. But since they’ve seen what one of their countrymen did and the results of that research, they’re going to have to deal with us.” He flashed a rare smile. “They want our secrets and we’ll have to share some things with them—but not everything.”
Harry stayed silent, and Anastasia had a wary look in her eye. He knew what she was thinking. There were others out there. They were more than likely watching, taking notes on what had worked and what didn’t, and lying in wait. Let them wait, he thought. It’ll give us more time.
“So what happens now?” he asked Farrell, who was examining the pictures with great interest.
Farrell answered in a surprisingly thoughtful voice. “We go on with our research. We could take you in—both of you—but that’s going to be your call.”
With a slow yet not calculated move, something that was more instinctive than thought of, Harry extended the claw on his middle finger. “This is my call.”
Farrell actually chuckled at the gesture and nodded at Harry’s newly shaped hands. “I don’t suppose you’d like being in jail.”
“I didn’t like it much the first time.”
Harry’s observation caused Farrell to let out a sharp laugh. A second later, he cut it short and his mood turned serious. “No, I didn’t think you did. Therefore, as I said, it is your call. Just so you know it, my ass is on the line, too. I was the one who authorized bringing Anastasia back along with Merton.” He paused to rub his chin, as if ruminating on the intransigence of life.
“Unfortunately, Merton’s dead, so I’ll have to take the blame for that, too,” he continued. “But the Bureau’s going to have a hell of a time covering their actions.”
Rise of the Transgenics Page 21
