by Jon McGoran
Rex, meanwhile, was the self-appointed protector of his friends, of chimeras in general, and pretty much anyone else in need. He looked out for everybody. It was one of the many things I liked about him.
Rex and Doc were both deeply committed to taking care of their people, and these days, that was more important than ever. Even though a judge had temporarily blocked most of GHA, there were all sorts of appeals and motions. Chimeras in a large part of the country were in legal limbo. A lot of people expected the courts to fully overturn GHA—but a lot of people had said it would never pass in the first place.
“Hello, Jimi,” Doc said as he approached the table.
“Hi, Doc,” I replied.
We didn’t know each other all that well, but we’d been thrown together during some intense moments a few months ago.
“Sorry I’m late,” Doc said.
“I was actually starting to worry,” Rex said.
“Some idiot came by the clinic, one of these belligerent types making threats about what he’d do if I didn’t help him find his girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, who was apparently a patient of mine.”
“That’s scary,” said Rex. “Any idea who it was?”
“He said his name was Brian Kurtz.”
“Was he H4H?”
Doc shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure this was strictly personal.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Eh, nothing. It’s done. Just made me late, is all.”
“So what’s going on?” Rex asked, lowering his voice as he leaned forward over the table.
Doc glanced at me, then looked back at Rex, as if questioning whether he could trust me. I thought about asking if they wanted me to leave, but mostly I thought, To hell with that.
Rex correctly read my expression and gave him a slight nod.
Doc took a deep breath and shrugged. “I’ve been in my lab a lot lately. Working on something kind of big. And I think I just had a breakthrough.”
“What is it?” Rex asked.
“You know there are a couple of different categories of gene splices used today, right?”
“You mean like somatic and germ-line?” I said, afraid of getting it wrong, but—I admit it—hoping to impress.
Doc gave me a tiny smile. “That’s right, plus AAV, adeno-associated virus. Germ-line means the changes to the genes get passed down to your offspring, and somatic—the kind chimeras get—means they don’t. AAV is temporary, impacting only the cells it infects, so as the cells die and are replaced, over the course of days or weeks or months, the tissue reverts to its previous state.” He sat back and scratched his chin. “Been some fascinating developments lately. Some people are using tiny particles called nanospears to deliver AAV genetic treatments, keeping the viral media present and continuously inserting the gene splice into the new cells as each generation arises. In fact, a former colleague of mine now at Johns Hopkins—”
“Uh, Doc.” Rex cut him off, and flashed me a look to let me know he was aware that this conversation was cutting into our time. “Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?”
Doc thought for a moment. “Um…oh no, not really.” Then he leaned forward. “Okay, so as a fixer, I can only reverse splices in the first forty-eight hours at the most, right? Any longer and it’s too late. Well, I’ve come up with a way, using a person’s cord blood, the blood from the umbilical cord from when they were born, to reverse a genetic splice. It’s germ-line, so any changes would be hereditary, but since we’d be using the person’s own genome, which would have been left unchanged by their somatic splice, the effect would be no germline change at all. But the big thing is, we could do it at any time.”
“Cord blood?” Rex cocked his head. “But what good is that decades after they’ve been born?”
“People save it,” I said. “Sometimes.”
Doc nodded at me. “Hospitals ask new parents if they want to freeze it. It costs, but not all that much.”
“Why?” Rex asked.
“It’s amazing stuff,” Doc said. “It can be used to treat all sorts of things—cancers, genetic diseases, blood disorders. But you’re missing the point. This could be huge.”
I couldn’t help thinking about Del, once my best friend, who had died from a bad splice, or from what followed it. I didn’t know if his parents had frozen his cord blood when he was born. His dad probably thought it was an abomination against God. His dad thought a lot of things were abominations against God.
“And this works?” I asked, almost hoping it didn’t—not yet, not so soon after it could have saved Del’s life.
“I think I’m close. I mean, something like this would have to be tested out the wazoo. I’ve got some funding of sorts, nothing official, just people who support my work. But it’s nowhere near the resources for any kind of legitimate testing. I still know some people who have that kind of funding, though, at Penn, at Drexel. But here’s what I’m worried about—”
Before he could finish his sentence, the door opened and Ruth and Pell burst back inside with a third person propped up between them. I didn’t recognize him. He had some kind of bird splice, but different from Ruth and Pell. More colorful. The feathers that framed his head were bright yellow, but they were also matted and filthy and dripping wet. So were his clothes. His head hung down on his chest.
Rex and I rushed over to them. Doc followed, slower.
“Who’s this?” I asked, and Rex said, “What happened?” as we both helped them move him to a chair.
“We don’t know,” Ruth said, out of breath.
“We found him on the train tracks,” Pell added.
“The Levline?” Rex said, alarmed.
“No,” Pell said, “the freight train.”
Doc was already examining him, gently lifting his head. He was young, our age or maybe younger. There was some sort of metal bottle hanging around his neck, with a plastic mask attached by a hose.
Doc looked at it, then up at Ruth and Pell. “What’s this?”
“No idea,” Ruth said.
Doc looked in the kid’s pupils, felt his pulse, and then put an ear to his chest and listened to him breathing. The kid looked terrible.
“Is it a bad splice?” I asked, and I felt myself turning even paler than usual. I’d seen up close how devastating it could be when a splice went wrong.
Doc shook his head. He looked worried. “No, I don’t think that’s it.”
Jerry came around from behind the counter, looking concerned but exasperated. “Should we maybe get him into the back?”
“No,” Doc said. “We need to get him to my clinic. Now.”
CHAPTER 3
Doc’s van was parked out front. Rex and I carried the sick kid out and got into the back with him. Ruth and Pell followed, but when Pell started to climb in with us, Ruth put a hand on her arm.
“The meeting,” Ruth said. “It’s important.”
Pell paused as Doc started the motor.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We got it.”
What I meant was, Doc had it. Ruth and Pell weren’t going to make much difference, and neither was Rex or I. Doc was the only one who really mattered.
Pell nodded. “Keep us posted.” Then she stepped back and closed the door.
Doc drove away, fast but not reckless.
The kid was totally out of it, but I held his hand anyway, feeling strangely awkward. I hadn’t seen Rex in so long, and now here we were, sitting with an unconscious stranger between us and Doc in the front seat. It didn’t feel like the best time to resume our conversation. Not that we’d even really had a chance to start it in the first place.
The kid’s sleeve had slid back, revealing a slender, dirty wrist with a white plastic band around it. I leaned in for a closer look in the dim light coming from the windows.
“What’s that?” Rex rumbled.
“It looks like a hospital bracelet,” I said. The interior of the van lit up as we passed some lights outside.
“A hospital bracelet?”
“Something like that. It says ‘Patient name: Cornelius.’ No last name. It doesn’t say what hospital, either, just some numbers.”
Cornelius looked like a nice guy, with a soft brow and a mouth that seemed like it probably smiled a lot. The splice suited him: the yellow feathers nicely offset his bronze skin, and his strong beak-like nose suited the angles of his chin and his cheekbones. Maybe it was the fact that now he had a name, but I felt a pang of intense sadness. He was not well at all. His breathing was shallow and fast, and his face was speckled with nicks and cuts and what looked like little burns. His clothes were torn and singed. I had a lot of faith in Doc Guzman’s abilities, but I didn’t think Cornelius was going to make it.
“He doesn’t look good,” Rex said softly. Then the back of the van was plunged into darkness, meaning we had left the city and crossed into the zurbs. No municipal electricity, so no streetlights.
“No, he doesn’t,” I said. “Do you think he needs this?” I held up the grimy metal canister around his neck.
“We’ll be there any minute. We should let Doc decide.”
A moment later, the van lurched and came to an abrupt stop. Rex opened the back door, and together we carried Cornelius out.
Doc was already unlocking the front door to the clinic, which sat in the middle of an abandoned strip mall in the zurbs, a half mile outside the city. The only light came from the van’s headlights, but they were bright enough to light up the entire row of stores.
As Doc opened the door, a figure stepped out from around the farthest store. I could barely make him out in the darkness, but he looked like trouble.
“We have company,” I said to Rex.
He nodded. “Hey Doc,” he called out, just loud enough to be heard. “Is that your friend from earlier?”
Doc turned to us, then saw the guy approaching. His shoulders slumped and he nodded. “Brian Kurtz.”
Kurtz stepped into the light, looking drunk and disheveled, with manic eyes set deep in a pale, freckled face under a blond buzz cut. He did look belligerent, but he also looked scared and confused. Like a little boy only slightly hidden under a thin veneer of whatever he thought a man was supposed to be.
“Look, kid,” Doc told him. “Like I said before, I don’t know where your friend is. But even if I did, I couldn’t tell you.”
“Right. Patient-doctor confidentiality,” Kurtz replied with a sneer. His voice sounded even younger than he looked. “Like a real doctor would be set up in a crappy place like this out in the zurbs.”
Rex met my eyes and whispered, “Put him down.”
I slowly lowered Cornelius’s feet to the ground. Rex moved him upright, handing him off to me so that I could lean him against the van. With his head closer to mine, Cornelius’s wheezing sounded even worse. Some of his feathers were bent and broken. Rex stepped slowly away from the van and closer to Doc.
Kurtz froze for a second as he took in Rex’s size. The sneer returned, but the fear didn’t leave his eyes. “Oh, so you brought your mixie bodyguard to protect you, is that it?”
Cornelius was slipping from my grasp, and as I readjusted my grip, Kurtz looked over at me and laughed. “If that’s your friend and he’s sick, I’d be careful bringing him to this guy. You might not be happy with the result.”
Rex took a step closer and Kurtz whirled on him, pulling a gun from his waistband. The tension in the air skyrocketed and my stomach clenched.
“Okay, kid, now let’s calm down,” Doc said, showing his open hands in a soothing gesture. “That’s serious business right there. Deadly business.”
Kurtz clenched his eyes for a moment, then opened them as he clumsily swung the gun in Doc’s direction.
“Doc, look out!” I yelled.
Rex lunged, whipping out one long arm with extraordinary speed and snatching the weapon.
Kurtz seemed stunned, staring at his empty hand for several seconds before realizing Rex was now holding the gun.
“I told you before, son,” Doc said gently. “I don’t want any trouble.”
Kurtz turned to Rex. “You…you need to give me that back.”
Rex opened the gun’s cylinder, shook the bullets into his palm, and flung them into the air. A moment later they pitter-pattered back to Earth in the overgrown, trash-strewn lot across the street.
Rex clicked the cylinder back into place, and as he was handing the gun back, an oddly smug, malevolent smile flickered across Kurtz’s face. Then I realized why.
“He’s got more bullets,” I called out.
Kurtz flashed me a murderous glare as his hand moved to his pants pocket. I might have heard a faint clink as he did.
Rex snorted and pulled the gun back, then heaved it into the dark sky.
Kurtz tried to track the arc, but it had disappeared. “Hey…,” he said, pausing as a distant, muffled crash emerged from somewhere in the night, “that was my dad’s gun.”
Rex took a step closer and loomed over him. “Get out of here.”
Kurtz took a step back. “You’ll be sorry you did that,” he said, his voice jagged with emotion. Then he turned and ran, disappearing around the corner. Rex, Doc, and I exchanged glances as a car door slammed and tires squealed.
Rex and I lifted Cornelius again as Doc opened the door.
“Does that happen a lot?” I asked as we carried Cornelius inside.
“It happens,” Doc replied, slapping a switch to turn on the battery-powered lights.
“You shouldn’t be out here on your own,” Rex said.
Doc avoided Rex’s eyes. “Just take him straight back and put him in the chair.”
We carried Cornelius through the small waiting area and into the large treatment room in the back.
It felt strange to be at Doc’s clinic again. I’d only been there a couple of times, several months earlier, all in the name of helping Del after his splice went bad.
A lot had gone down after that.
And worst of all was that I’d lost Del—again and again, it seemed—until the day he died, and I knew nothing would ever be the same.
Being at the clinic was bringing back a lot of memories for me, and Rex seemed to pick up on that. After we laid Cornelius into one of Doc’s barbershop examination chairs, Rex put his arms around me and pulled me close.
“You okay?” he said as Doc bustled around Cornelius.
I nodded as we both watched Doc work. His expression seemed to support my grim prognosis. He picked up the canister and looked at it, confused.
“I was wondering if maybe he needed to use that,” I said. “To breathe.”
Doc glanced at me, then sniffed at the mask. He fiddled with a knob on the valve, then sniffed it again and jerked his head away. “I don’t think so,” he said, giving it a shake. “It’s pretty much empty, but it doesn’t seem like it was good air to start with. Maybe that’s what made him sick.”
He pressed a button on the bottom, and it made a loud, whirring noise.
“What is that?” I asked, as the noise faded out.
Doc turned it around, looking at it from different angles. “It’s got a compressor. It’s refillable. Probably meant for short-term use, I guess.”
He sniffed at it again. “Smells better now.” He shrugged and put it aside.
As he checked Cornelius’s pulse again, I said, “He’s got a bracelet on the other wrist. Like a hospital bracelet. Says his name is Cornelius.”
Doc lifted Cornelius’s other wrist and studied the bracelet. He nodded to himself, then began cutting off Cornelius’s filthy shirt. The skin underneath seemed unaffected by his splice, but it was scratched and bruised. Doc listened with a stethoscope to his heart and lungs, poked his midsection, and thumped it with two fingers, listening to the sound.
“His condition is deteriorating,” he said, as he turned to a drawer and took out a vial and a syringe.
I knew what it was: vitamins and stimulants meant to boost Cornelius’s strength,
keep him going while Doc figured out how to help him.
As Doc wiped Cornelius’s arm with an alcohol swab and gave him the injection, I had a vivid memory of him doing the exact same thing to Del.
It hadn’t worked then, and it didn’t seem to work now.
Doc attached an oxygen monitor to Cornelius’s finger, a glowing plastic clip connected to a machine the size of a toaster on a tall metal stand. When the digital displays on the monitor flickered to life and started cycling through numbers, Doc started drawing vials of blood. He took four of them, and put them into four slots on top of an ancient-looking white plastic apparatus that said DIAGNOSTICOMP. He flicked a switch on it, adjusted a couple of knobs, keyed in some numbers on a keypad, and then stood back as it began to whir and hum.
Apparently satisfied, he turned back to the oxygen monitor and frowned. He readjusted the clip on Cornelius’s finger, then smacked the monitor itself. His frown deepened as he removed the clip.
“Either this thing is broken or his blood oxygen level is totally out of whack.”
Rex gestured with his thumb toward the corner of the room and said, “What about the hyperbaric thingy you used on Del?”
Doc and I both followed his gaze to the hyperbaric bed, a rectangular platform covered with a plastic bubble that was supposed to help people heal using super-oxygenated air. It was connected to a bunch of hoses that snaked up to the loft upstairs. It used to be suspended from the ceiling up there. I was relieved to see it was now firmly attached to the floor.
“I doubt it’ll help,” Doc said. “But I suppose it couldn’t hurt. We won’t know much more until the blood tests are done.”
Doc opened the lid and turned to Rex. “Would you mind?”
Rex lifted Cornelius’s limp body out of the chair and laid him down in the bed.
Doc gently closed the lid and hit a few switches. The hoses stiffened, filling with pressurized oxygen, and the plastic bubble clouded up.
Doc walked stiffly over to the blood analyzer, suddenly looking tired and old. “We’ll give him five minutes and see if that helps.”