by Greg Cox
They marched down the tunnel in single file, with Noon uncharacteristically last in line. He looked back over his shoulder wistfully, hoping Isis would be okay. His stomach growled, anticipating dinner, and he wondered if the cat was hungry as well. Maybe I should save her part of my supper, he mused, then remembered that he still had a leg of tandoori chicken, left over from lunch, stuck in his pocket, neatly wrapped inside a napkin. That's perfect!
In his imagination Isis was already ravenous, and he couldn't wait to feed her. Breaking away from the line of children as stealthily as he could, Noon doubled back toward the classroom, arriving at the entrance mere moments after he left. He threw open the door, chicken leg in hand, only to freeze upon the threshold, taken aback by the unexpected sight before him.
The cat was gone, but standing in the center of the classroom, not far from where he had left Isis, was an exotic-looking woman that Noon was sure he had never seen before.
Tall and slender, with lustrous long black hair, she was dressed, rather immodestly, in a revealing two-piece ensemble that was far from standard attire at Chrysalis, especially for grown-ups. Two black velvet hairpieces, shaped like the ears of a cat, adorned her scalp, while a very familiar silver collar glittered around her pale, alabaster neck. Noon recognized the collar instantly, just as he knew at once the amused, aloof expression in the woman's golden, almond-shaped eyes.
“Isis?” The woman merely smiled back at him as she removed a spare lab coat from the teachers' closet, pulling it on over her skimpy black garments. The twin cat ears disappeared into a pocket of the jacket, while a tissue lifted from a box on the floor wiped away most of the woman's strikingly exotic makeup. Transfixed and confused by Isis's miraculous transformation, Noon stood by speechlessly as the impossible stranger patted him softly on the head, much as he had petted the cat earlier, and languidly plucked the chicken leg from his unresisting fingers. “But . . . how did you . . . ?” he stammered, finding it unusually hard to craft a coherent response.
The cat-woman held a finger before her lips, bidding him to hush. The astounded child couldn't help noticing that her darkly painted nail curved to a sharp point, like a cat's claw. He nodded meekly as she slipped out the door, leaving him alone in the empty classroom.
“Isis,” he whispered in wonder. Like the goddess. Could it be that the cat really was the Egyptian deity in disguise, or something even rarer and more mysterious?
For once in his young life, Noon didn't know what to believe.
Isis walked by herself down the corridors of Chrysalis. Clad in the borrowed lab coat, which was considerably less snug and comfortable than her usual ebony pelt, she stalked the maze of tunnels, sniffing the air as she nibbled delicately on the spicy chicken leg. The scent of her prey lingered in the sterile atmosphere of the underground complex, so she knew exactly where she was going and why.
It being the dinner hour, the halls were suitably ill populated, much as Isis had anticipated. The occasional stray passersby glanced at her curiously, but the disguised cat-woman roamed with such ease and confidence that few doubted that she belonged here as much as they did themselves. She resisted a strong temptation to smirk at the twolegged monkeys' general gullibility, but it wasn't easy.
She had traveled thus for less than ten minutes before her nose alerted her to the approach of her prey. Purring in anticipation, she deposited the chicken bones, now thoroughly stripped of meat, in a convenient trash receptacle before circling around to come up on the prey from behind. This was proving even easier than she had anticipated; how nice of Dr. Kaur to come this way.
Padding stealthily upon the scuffed tile floors, Isis heard Kaur and her ever-present bodyguards even before she spotted them striding down the tunnel in front of her. If Isis recalled the layout of the complex correctly, and there was no reason at all to imagine that she didn't, then the three humans were heading directly for the room where Seven was caged. Isis could smell the impatience and barely suppressed rage emanating from the Indian woman's pores. Clearly, Isis had tracked her down just in time.
The humans were in a hurry, too, so she had to quicken her pace to creep up on them, even as they remained oblivious of her pantherish approach. Anger filled her, and she bared her gleaming incisors at the memory of Seven locked away in that cage, like some primitive lifeform. Isis had spent too much time in cages herself lately, posing as the Silly Blonde's pet, which only heightened her seething resentment at the way Seven had been treated. Even in this clumsy humanoid shape, every muscle was poised and ready, primed for the pounce.
Moving more quickly than any Terran ever could, she struck out at the left-hand bodyguard first. Skilled fingers found the nerve cluster at the base of the man's neck, rendering the ambushed human unconscious before either Kaur or the remaining guard realized what was transpiring. The second guard let out a savage bellow as his colleague crumpled to the floor, but his lumbering attempt to retaliate was no match for Isis's feline swiftness. A scissor-kick to the man's throat, followed by a proficient karate chop to the side of his bull-like neck, dropped him beside his fallen comrade.
“What—?” Kaur looked understandably startled. Both her guards had been neutralized almost before she registered that she was under attack. She spun around in amazement, only to be confronted by two unconscious bodyguards and the unarmed woman who had defeated them so effortlessly. “Who—who are you?” she blurted, fear and confusion written all over her face.
Isis smiled maliciously, her eyes agleam with the thrill of the hunt. She sniffed the air experimentally, then slashed out at Kaur with an open hand.
Kaur flinched and gasped with alarm, but Isis's claws sliced through only the fabric of the director's lab coat, spilling out the contents of one pocket onto the floor. Her eyes widened further when she spotted the two servos rolling across the tiles. “No!”
Realizing the alien weapons were her only defense, Kaur dived for the servos, but Isis's superlative reflexes were too fast for her. The catwoman deftly kicked the small silver cylinders out of Kaur's reach, then tweaked the human woman's nerve clusters as expertly as she had the first guard's. Her eyes rolling backward into her head, Sarina Kaur collapsed next to her vanquished protectors.
Isis smiled with satisfaction, sparing only a moment to admire her handiwork before recovering the wayward servos. The devices shone prettily in the light, but Isis refused to let herself be distracted by the devices' enticing silver luster; there was too much else left to do.
Hearing strangers approaching from several corridors away, Isis used one of the servos to transport both Kaur and her guards into the nearest empty storeroom. With any luck, their sleeping bodies would not be found for some time.
Sniffing the air once more, Isis let her nose lead her toward Seven and the Other One. Her one regret was that there hadn't been more time to play with her prey before disposing of them.
Maybe later. . . .
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE KNOCK ON THE DOOR SURPRISED ROBERTA. SHE KNEW SARINA Kaur was on the way, but she never imagined that the magisterial director would feel obliged to knock before entering the animal storeroom. Then again, someone had probably decided to keep the door locked after she and Isis had barged in unannounced earlier. That's what I would have done, she decided.
Certainly, the guard acted as though he was expecting the knock. Keeping one eye on Roberta, who was still securely ensconced inside her cage, he glanced through the small rectangular window in the door to the hallway. A puzzled grunt escaped his lips as he apparently failed to see the face he'd anticipated. Cautiously placing a hand on the grip of his handgun, he unlocked the door and opened it a crack.
A second later, he slid slowly onto the floor, a dopey grin visible beneath the bushy black whiskers of his beard. Roberta sprang to her feet inside the cage, gripping the bars in excitement. She recognized the effects of a tranquilizer beam when she saw them, so she was not at all surprised to see Isis, in her annoyingly attractive human guise, step
inside and close the door behind her. A servo was gripped in the cat-woman's lethally manicured fingers. Thank goodness! Roberta thought, relieved by Isis's timely arrival.
Not that she was about to let her feline rival know how much she appreciated this rescue; Isis was insufferable enough already. “About time you got here, Your Slinkiness,” Roberta groused. “Hurry and get me out of here. There's something wrong with Seven.”
The alien woman ignored Roberta's remarks, as was her habit. Roberta strongly suspected that Isis could speak, but preferred not to, at least not when Roberta was listening. Fine, the caged woman thought. Just so she lets me out of this zoo. “C'mon! We need to get Seven to a doctor!”
But Roberta was not the only one noisily calling out to Isis. Perhaps sensing her unearthly nature, the other animals reacted strongly to the cat-woman's presence, squeaking and hooting and yelping and barking. The tiger roared either a greeting or a challenge; Roberta could not tell the difference, but feared the primeval uproar would attract additional guards. It sounds like Noah's Ark in here, she thought anxiously, and I don't mean the Bill Cosby routine.
She needn't have worried. With a single emphatic hiss, Isis silenced the raging menagerie, who ceased their bestial racket. Roberta had to admire the way Isis cowed her four-legged peers, even if there was something distinctly creepy about it. What can these dumb animals tell about her that I can't?
Stepping over the body of the tranquilized guard, Isis rushed over to the cage and knelt down beside the comatose Seven. Before Roberta could even ask Isis what she was up to, the cat-woman thrust her busy hands through the bars of the cage, yanking open Seven's collar with both hands, then jabbing his breastbone with the knuckles of one hand. “Hey!” Roberta objected, alarmed by Isis's rough ministrations. “What are you doing?”
Isis did not reply, but Roberta's startled queries were answered by a hoarse cough from Seven himself. He blinked once and lifted his head from his chest, looking about with a somewhat dazed expression. He shook his head roughly, as though to clear his mind of cobwebs, then surveyed the situation with a far more focused gaze. Alert gray eyes shifted from Roberta to Isis and back again. “I see that everyone is accounted for,” he remarked dryly, “but I'm afraid I don't recall convening this meeting.”
“Gary! You're back!” Relief flooded Roberta. “Thank God! I thought you'd gone all Rip Van Winkle on me. I tried and tried to rouse you, but nothing worked. I was afraid that—”
“I appreciate your concern, Ms. Lincoln,” Seven interrupted, “but now is not the time for lengthy emotional displays.” He looked automatically at his shackled wrist, only to recall that his watch had been removed. “How long was I out?”
Roberta had been stripped of her timepiece as well, but she could make a safe guess. “It must be five, six P. M. Saturday,” she estimated. Despite her jubilation at Seven's hasty recovery, she couldn't just accept this new development without explanation. “But what was the matter with you?” she demanded. “You had me scared to death.”
“My apologies,” he replied. “My brain and body went into deep shutdown mode to prevent me from revealing any of the Aegis's most crucial secrets.” He stood up slowly, his wrists still cuffed to the bars of the cage. A wince betrayed his discomfort as stiff muscles were called back into service. “It's a conditioned response, triggered by only the most grueling of interrogations.” Beads of sweat dotted his brow, suggesting that Seven had not yet fully recovered from his long ordeal. “A similar state can be attained by the most skilled yogis of your own era. Fortunately, Isis possesses the knowledge and skills to return me to full consciousness.”
Roberta noticed a small bruise forming on Seven's chest, exactly where Isis had jabbed him so sharply. She didn't know whether to be reassured or ticked off by Seven's explanation, but a note of aggravation definitely crept into her tone. “Well, you might have let me in on the trick,” she protested. “What if Julie Newmar here hadn't been able to pussyfoot her way back to this place?”
Isis hmmphed indignantly, giving Roberta a distinctly condescending look, but Gary Seven simply raised an eyebrow as he asked her skeptically, “And would you have been able to resist the temptation to snap me out of my cataleptic state prematurely, while we were still in the hands of the opposition?”
“Maybe,” Roberta answered tentatively. To be honest, she wasn't sure how long she could endure seeing Seven so seemingly close to death. “I think.”
“In any event, your point is well taken,” Seven stated in a conciliatory fashion. Isis wrinkled her nose dubiously, clearly unconvinced of any need to appease Roberta. “Perhaps we can discuss training you in the proper manipulation of pressure points—some other time. At the moment, we have more urgent business to attend to.” He tugged on his handcuffs, rattling the sturdy chain between them. “Isis, if you please?”
The servo hummed for a fraction of a second, and the steel links connecting the cuffs disintegrated instantly. Seven lowered his arms, for the first time in who knew how long, grimacing briefly as he flexed his fingers experimentally, insuring that everything was still in working order. A moment later, the servo hummed again, and the lock holding the cage door shut fell with a clang onto the concrete floor.
“Thank you, Isis,” Seven said as he emerged from his former place of captivity. Isis handed the pair of servos over to Seven, who obligingly returned one of them to Roberta. The blond woman glanced down for a moment to brush some clinging straw off her tweed skirt, but when she looked up again, Isis's human incarnation had vanished, replaced by an alert black cat, standing smugly atop the crumpled fabric of a discarded lab coat. Isis mewed insistently, urging Roberta to hurry.
“I'm coming, I'm coming!” the human woman exclaimed, stepping out of the cage and slamming the iron door shut behind her. In the next cage over, the restless tiger growled at the commotion, swiping his paw at Roberta, who took pains to stay safely out of the big cat's reach. Just what I need, she thought irritably. Another feline pain in the butt.
Seven took a moment to adjust his rumpled clothing, straightening up his appearance as much as was possible under the circumstances. His jacket had gone missing, and his plain white shirt was stained with sweat. Scowling, he rubbed the thick layer of stubble carpeting his lower jaw, no doubt wishing he had time to shave. Roberta knew how much he disliked disorder, in himself as much as anything else.
He quickly got down to business, however. “Now then,” he addressed them crisply. “Tell me everything you've learned about the Chrysalis Project.” Roberta and Isis both answered immediately, the cat's mewing competing with Roberta's hasty recitation of her adventures. Seven held up his hand to halt the cross-species clamoring. “You first,” he specified, looking at Roberta.
* * *
“This is just as bad as I feared,” Seven declared after quickly debriefing both Roberta and Isis. Roberta, naturally, hadn't understood a word of the other agent's feline vocalizations, but Seven appeared to glean useful information from the cat's vociferous mews and squawks. “Never mind Kaur's killer bacteria, for the moment. Chrysalis needs to be shut down immediately, just to stop them from producing any more genetically enhanced children.” His expression was as grim and troubled as Roberta could ever remember seeing it. “As is, the superhuman prodigies they've already created constitute a potentially destabilizing element at this critical juncture in human history.”
“Er, we're not going to have to . . . d o something bad. . . to the kids, are we?” Roberta asked anxiously. She couldn't imagine that Seven would seriously consider exterminating dozens of innocent children just because they messed up the Aegis's timetable for humanity, but he didn't look at all happy to find out that Kaur and her scientists had already begotten several batches of scarily smart superkids. Me, she thought, I'm just freaked out to find out that Kaur really is planning to let loose some sort of global epidemic. Does Walter know about that part of her plan? Does Lozinak?
“It's not their fault that their parents sou
ped up their DNA,” she pointed out, trying to stay focused on the fate of Noon and the other children.
Seven shook his head. “We are not butchers,” he reassured her. “The existence of a certain quantity of genengineered children is simply a challenge that we will have to cope with in the years to come. But we can make certain that this foolhardy project ceases immediately, and that the children are removed from the fanatical influence and ideology of Kaur and her associates.” A hint of genuine animosity crept into his voice at the mention of Kaur and her vision for the future. “The last thing we need right now is Chrysalis encouraging these children to see themselves as apart from—and above—the mass of humanity.”
Roberta breathed a sigh of relief, glad to know that the welfare of the Chrysalis kids was at least a factor in Seven's calculations. “So what do we do now?” she asked.
“That nuclear reactor you mentioned sounds like the most effective means of ridding the world of both this installation and Kaur's mutated bacteria,” Seven announced. “If I can activate its self-destruct procedure, Kaur and the others will have no choice but to abandon Chrysalis and its entire infrastructure.”
Roberta gulped, remembering the concrete silo housing the underground fission reactor. “A nuclear explosion? Isn't that a bit, well, extreme?”
“Trust me, Ms. Lincoln,” Seven said gravely. “Extreme measures are called for to eliminate the dire threat Chrysalis poses to the future safety of this planet. Fortunately, this facility's remote location works to our advantage; for better or for worse, underground nuclear tests are a fact of life in this era. One more will make very little difference in the grand scheme of things.”
He rubbed his chafed wrists, still red and raw from the cruel grip of the shackles. “I only wish there were a surefire way to eliminate all knowledge of Kaur's custom-made bacteria. Unfortunately, scientific knowledge, once discovered, is harder to eradicate than any physical installation; there's no telling how many of Kaur's people know the exact genetic sequence for the bacteria, or how many copies of the recipe exist elsewhere on the planet.” Seven wasted little time lamenting what could not be altered, preferring, as usual, to focus on the task at hand. “At least the atomic blast will destroy Kaur's ability to manufacture the bacteria in mass quantities, as well as incinerating whatever stockpiles may already exist.”
