Hellbender (The Fangborn Series Book 3)

by Dana Cameron

  “It’s good to see you,” she said. “I’m just here to do a quick introduction, then see how things go with you guys.”

  “More like, make sure I’m on the level,” the pixie woman said. Her voice was quiet and low, but her words dripped with sarcasm.

  “Zoe, this is Dr. Lisa Tarkka,” Heck said. “We’re hoping she might be able to assist you with some of the materials we recovered from Sebastian Porter’s office in Boston and with the sword you brought with you. I’ll be back to get you later, and we’ll do the recording the congresswoman asked for.”

  “So, you’re Zoe?” She looked me up and down. “I thought you’d be taller.”

  I automatically didn’t like her. “Nope.”

  “I don’t know why I said that. Probably because everyone’s been telling me stories about you.” She bit on the cap of a pen. “You don’t look like a threat to global security.”

  “Maybe that’s what freaks people out so much.” I tried to keep my patience, because it was becoming more and more the sort of interaction I had these days. “But really, I’m pretty much just a person.”

  She seemed to wrestle with herself, before giving in. “Will you . . . Can you Change? I’d like to see it. Please.”

  “What will that do? Why do you want to see?”

  “Because . . . I may never get a chance to see it again.”

  “You worked for the Order.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my words. “I’m sure I wouldn’t have been your first.”

  “No, like I told your friend, Vee Brooks? I worked for a company that subcontracted for a company that was an Order organization. I was just starting to do some very cool things when I started to learn what my boss was really up to. While I think it’s very weird and very dangerous to have something—someone like you and your family running around killing people randomly—”

  “Not randomly,” I said automatically.

  “Look, we can talk philosophy later. I thought I was working on how to interface technology with our central nervous systems. I’ve brought you this, on the off chance you can help me learn more.”

  She pushed a small rectangular box forward. I looked at Claudia, who nodded. So far Dr. Tarkka didn’t intend me any harm, which matched my own take. I didn’t get any feeling of warmth, either, and I was going to be ten times more careful when it came to the Order’s hacked artifacts.

  Inside was a chip. It looked like it had a half scarab gem embedded in it, and had dozens of hair-fine gold wires running in circuits. It was the marriage of antiquity and cutting-edge science, quite literally, because presumably, there would be some kind of Order tech compensating for the missing parts. I was at once curious and repelled. “What does this do?”

  “I don’t know. My boss was into a lot of weird stuff, outer edges of physical and the biological, in human enhancement technologies, or HET. How far can you go, he used to ask, until your patient is no longer human?”

  I shuddered.

  “My specialty is neurobiology with a focus on orthotic prosthetics. Mostly the mechanical and technical, though I know the wetware side of things pretty well. I’m not fully conversant with this artifact, but I’m the last one around who knows anything about it. He was given it by Dr. Sebastian Porter, who . . . recently passed away, I hear?”

  I nodded. No need to say anything more on that subject. “And . . . do we plug this into a computer, or some kind of reader?”

  “Yep. You.”

  My heart sank. I was hoping she wouldn’t say that. It must have read on my face, because Dr. Tarkka said, “Look, you can bite me if you want, make sure I’m telling the truth, but I’m just in this for the work.”

  Claudia and I exchanged a glance. We knew she was being honest.

  “I’m going to need to examine it.” I was going to be extra careful, knowing it had been Porter’s. That gave me an idea: When his body was consumed by the mercenaries who hung out in my lab, the only part of him left was a gold ring. I’d have to consider what that did and compare it to this.

  “Fine. I’ll stay here while you do.”

  “I might be a while. I don’t know what it looks like when I . . . go elsewhere.”

  “That will be interesting to see, too.”

  “Why are you here? Why are you doing this?”

  Her face lit up. “Like I said, I’m in this for the work. Now I’m finding out that there is a whole new—species? subspecies?—of human, and I’m not giving up the chance to get in on that!”

  Her enthusiasm would have been contagious if I hadn’t realized that she wasn’t thinking of me as a person but as a specimen.

  “And if these things were made to work with your biology, I want to see what happens when it is put to the test. I’m the best chance you have of learning about these objects.” She shrugged her narrow little shoulders. “If you find more notes, other scientists, I can help.

  I didn’t like her attitude, but she was right.

  “Okay, I guess we should talk to Heck about getting you started.” I stood, held out my hand. “Welcome aboard.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “I’m hiring you. Your knowledge and experience is as scarce as hens’ teeth, and we need them both. We’ll pay you, put you up, but this is no part-time gig, and right now, we’re on death-march schedule. In, or out?” I’d learned a lot listening to Vee talking about her work in the Normal world.

  “Ahhh . . . can I have some time to think about it?”

  “Sure,” I said, glancing at the clock. “I have half a minute before my next meeting.”

  “I was thinking more like overnight.”

  “You don’t need that long. Either you’re signing up to be working on the most cutting-edge science in the world—so cutting edge, we don’t even know all the words for it—or you’re not. Let someone else get the Nobel Prize. I hear Stockholm is freezing in December, anyway.”

  “Okay, okay, you got me, I’ll do it. Any chance you would Change for me?”

  “Can’t now, but I bet you’ll see it soon enough. And wouldn’t you rather see it when you can get it on video and hook me up to all sorts of monitors and stuff?”

  My sarcasm didn’t register. The look on her face was one of a hungry kid outside a bakery. Dr. Tarkka could only nod.

  “Then let’s set up an appointment for that. I’ll establish the ground rules, but we’ll have fun.”

  I had no idea if we’d have fun, because she seemed like a grump at best and a bit of a ghoul at worst. But this was the first time I’d ever hired someone and it sounded like a nice thing to say.

  I had to run to my next appointment, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t stop in at my lab. I was getting tired of juggling all these new ideas and responsibilities and information, but there was nothing for it.

  The mind-lab continued to be the space where I was able to make the most sense out of the artifacts I’d found after they became a part of the construct I thought of as the bracelet. After they became a part of me. The space was soothing and familiar and that let me relax enough to be willing to experiment with these ancient and mysterious objects. The more I tried different combinations of the artifacts, the more I learned about them.

  In the lab, I put the scarab chip on the counter. I ran a diagnostic on it—well, I called it that. It was really just a list of things I’d learned to look for that were dangerous or had led to drastic changes in my powers before. It wasn’t much to go on, but I didn’t have a lot of time, and it did let me rule out the dangers I was aware of, like not trying to mix the powers from Pandora’s Box with an extra blast of energy from Vee. Once was enough to teach me that I wanted to avoid a repeat.

  The screen showed me nothing recognizably dangerous. That just left a whole new universe of elements I couldn’t recognize.

  It suddenly occurred to me that I’d been able to bring the chip, or maybe its essence, into the lab. Very useful to know. I called Sean, who had been cataloging the artifacts with the undergrads.

&nbs
p; “Recognize anything? Good, bad, dangerous, odd, or otherwise? Any ideas what it might do?”

  Sean shook his head. “Zoe, I can’t keep up with all of this. Since the library . . . we’re just swamped. We’re gonna have to make some changes, you want to go any faster.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “It’s more a question for Dr. O anyway, isn’t it?”

  I’d nearly forgotten about my newest . . . tenant? Too early to say “friend.”

  As soon as I’d had the thought, he was there, in the archaeology lab. He had a chipped and tea-stained mug with a picture of Beethoven on the side and was happily nibbling a biscuit. The crumbs stuck to his cardigan indicated this might not be the first biscuit he’d had today, but there were ink stains on his fingers.

  I guess he’d been busy at work.

  “So . . . can you tell me about this?” I moved the scarab and chip to the workbench and tapped twice, splitting the “screen” on the surface into two parts. One showed the diagram of the scarab chip. Alongside it, on the other screen, I brought up a list of the artifacts I had already assumed into my form, their diagrams, and the powers that appeared or were enhanced after their addition. Nothing seemed to match this chip in any respect. Which was actually pretty exciting. Like baseball cards or other collectibles, you can find the common stuff pretty quickly and get a good range fast. But after a while, it gets harder and harder to find something you don’t already have.

  “Far as I can tell, there’s no one-to-one correlation between my powers and the artifacts,” I said. “It’s like the artifacts are organized like those clear film map overlays that show the changing borders, or geographical details, or major cities depending on how many you put down. Or maybe like passes of an old-fashioned color printer. One pass lays down all of one color, next pass adds the next color, which also creates a third color, next pass adds more colors, and the definition of the picture becomes clearer, more resolved.”

  He had been watching me intently, and reached out, touching the screen that had appeared in the workbench. He tried rearranging some patterns of artifacts and then looked up at me.

  “Another analogy might be the arrangement and activation of certain genes,” he said. “It’s not really my game, biology, but it might be like a characteristic not depending on just one gene that’s switched on or off but requiring a certain combination of several switches, in the right order. More than one factor’s needed to make it work.”

  I shrugged and nodded. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Do you mind if I spend some time on this?” He nudged the chip gingerly, almost as if afraid. “This is certainly different from the Fangborn artifacts I studied . . . when I was alive . . . and the ones that have melded with you. It might give me some excellent insights, the way they came at the problem.”

  I thought about it and slapped the work-surface screens. A big red seal appeared, glittering in the corner of the screen, with the words “Read Only” on every “page.” It didn’t interfere with the text but like a watermark, was just visible behind it.

  “It would be a huge help to me, thanks,” I said. “For now, we’re going to keep this so you can look at these things, see if you find anything by arranging them differently, but I’m the only one who can make them happen. Activate them or add them . . . to me.”

  “Fair enough.” Geoffrey had already gotten the hang of how to flick through the pages of artifacts. The light from the screens reflected on his face, coloring his gray beard. “You know how I died?”

  “You’d said you’d been studying . . . the physics of Fangborn abilities?”

  “Yeah. Bit o’ this, bit o’ that. Whether how the Change transformation the vampires and werewolves can do is a quantum entanglement of some kind, and whether the famed identification or prediction of evil the fanged ones claim can be derived from one single, huge algorithm. Spooky action at a distance, you know? But what I was working on at that precise moment I died was how some of these artifacts might have been created.” He stroked his beard, his eyes unfocused, thinking hard. “This might be a match made in heaven, Zoe, m’girl.”

  I nodded. “If you can help me in any way, it would be a serious relief. Right now, what would help most is some kind of index, or a schematic, or a guide for the DIY newly enhanced Fangborn,” I said. “I don’t know if such a thing exists, but maybe you can create a rough version? Anything that might lead me to a better understanding of how to use, make, or fake the artifacts I had, might mean, literally, the difference between life and death. And not just mine.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “So what about this thing?” I held up the scarab and chip.

  “Not Fangborn, not entirely. It looks like something the Order pieced together, trying to make a Fangborn artifact work without . . . the right . . . components? Energy?” He looked confused. “We’re going to need a whole new vocabulary for this.”

  I nodded. And we were going to have to get Lisa up to speed in a hurry if I had any hope of making progress here.

  Then again . . . we had no time. Claudia and I were both certain that Dr. Tarkka was not out to hurt me. And then there were my own skills in mundane artifact analysis. This was too pretty to be used in torturing Fangborn. The gold curlicues of the circuits, the way the scarab had been set into the chip . . . It almost looked like jewelry, meant for a lady.

  It was no riskier than the other artifacts I’d assimilated, I decided suddenly. “Okay, I’m going to plug it in.”

  He was up for it. “Where do you reckon?”

  I shook my head—it didn’t matter. Pre-bracelet, I would have assumed it went behind my ear or I should eat it. Now, I knew, I could put it anywhere, so long as my intent was to internalize what powers it might have. I found a suddenly available square slot on my bracelet, exactly the right size for the chip. I slotted it in. It fit perfectly.

  I’d had my healing powers on deck, just in case the thing was booby trapped, but so far, so good. No sparks, no smoke—or the metaphysical equivalent thereof. Also good.

  I thought there would be pain—there had been a load of hurt other times, with just the straight-up Fangborn artifacts that I was pretty sure would end with my death. There was nothing here, a frisson, something barely noticeable, like clothing that doesn’t fit exactly right. But it was manageable. All I felt was a vague brushing of minds outside me, very indirect, very primitive. Nothing like my own proximity sense. These minds were far away. They didn’t feel like human minds, however, or Fangborn. They felt more like dragons, if anything.

  I unslotted the chip and tossed it to Geoffrey.

  “Nothing?” he asked.

  “Not a lot. Maybe you can find something. I’ll catch you later.”

  No further enlightened, I met up with Heck and Elizabeth Nichols, who said they wanted to record me giving a dry run of what was going on. Later, they’d review it and we’d add anything I’d left out for the official version.

  I took a deep breath, tried not to squint too much, and looked into the camera, as silly and self-conscious as I felt doing it. I thought about how I was so very much the tail wagging the dog, all these important people acting on my say-so, and how I knew that I was responsible for so much happening right now. I tried not to sound too weary or uncertain as I started.

  I took a deep breath. We were on the brink of I-Day. I was going to tell people in high places about the Fangborn, the Order, the Makers, the dragons, and just the thought of that was scary.

  “Hi. I’m Zoe Miller and I’m a werewolf, one of the Fangborn. If you don’t know . . .”

  Chapter Eleven

  I didn’t get released from the taping until about ten that night. I ate ravenously, very glad the kitchens were used to Fangborn irregular hours and large servings. I heard a loud exclamation of “Oh, hey!” from the doorway and saw Danny and Vee, holding hands.

  Danny, a Normal, was the one constant I’d had from childhood, and his friendship meant everything to me.
When I’d last seen him at the Battle of Boston, he’d been badly injured, bleeding from a serious gut wound. I’d healed him remotely, hoping that it would work.

  To see him now, you’d never know he’d ever had a scratch—even his glasses were intact. He was only a few inches taller than me, maybe five eight, and ten pounds lighter than me, too, and everything about his paleness and dark curling hair screamed “geek!” But in the past few months, Danny had come into himself even more than when he’d left school and found his niche in the tech world. Working with the Fangborn challenged his quick mind, and his talent with languages had proved invaluable with a global, polyglot Family.

  They rushed over and Danny threw himself at me; Vee gave me a cautious hug.

  “Sorry,” she said after a moment. “I’m just worried . . . Last time we met, you ended up in Japan by mistake.”

  I nodded. “Not you. I mean, I think part of that was your extra energy, but mostly it was me just not knowing what I was doing. I’m going to proceed under the assumption that whatever happens, I’ll be able to find my way back again.” I held up my new backpack and my new resolution to have my stuff with me at all times.

  She nodded. Danny grabbed my hand again.

  “You . . . you . . . teleported! What did it feel like?” Danny could barely contain himself. “What did you see?”

  “It hurt like I was in a full-body fryolator, and I didn’t see anything. If I can avoid doing it again, I most certainly will.”

  Danny was crestfallen. “Well, that’s not very—”

  “Dan, let’s get Zoe a drink,” Vee said impatiently, “and if she wants to talk, she can.”

  “I love that idea so very hard right now,” I said, busing my tray. “Is there a place where a girl could get a very large vodka?”

  There was a TV lounge nearby with no TV, and Vee hit someone up for a bottle. After my first large gulp, I stared with something like reverence at the tumbler I had. “Dear sweet baby Jesus, this is bliss. Hey, either of you run into Max yet? You know, the guy who looks like a Fellborn but is actually really decent?”