by Farley Dunn
Tonight, he heard and smelled something that didn’t belong. The odor was green and plantlike, the wild outdoors, an aroma he recognized from the gaming center.
Justin!
Garik sat up, working to pinpoint the smells and the sound, wishing he could see at night like a timber wolf. Then he would likely have eyeshine, and everyone else would know where he was!
The sounds had gone quiet, but the aroma remained.
“Justin?” he tested.
“Guilty.” The voice was gritty in the darkness.
“Why are you in my bedroom?”
“Why did that little creep pee on me?” A big sigh. “Did I kill him?”
“They took him to the hospital, so I don’t think so.”
Garik rubbed his arms, his fingers gliding over prickles of fear. This conversation in the dark was totally surreal. He listened for an impending attack, the slightest movement of the mantis-adapted man.
“Can I turn the light on?” Garik wanted to see the attack when it came.
“Perhaps not.” Justin breathed harder, almost a pant. “I’m roasted after this. You win, I lose.”
The noise level from across the room increased tenfold, and Garik leaned over as quick as he could and slammed his hand on the light switch on his bedside table. The room erupted into a level of brilliance that assaulted his fear-laced sanity.
No Justin. Garik got out of bed slowly, his eyes searching for anyplace the man might be. In the next room, the front door stood ajar. Garik turned around, pressed his hand to the chair at his desk, and it was warm.
He lifted his hand and smelled of it. Green and soil. Chlorophyll and bacteria.
He wondered how Justin had gotten into his room, and even more, he puzzled how he had gotten out so quickly.
It was frightening what that man could do.
GARIK STUDIED the bearded man across from him in the break area. Half-finished sandwiches and individual bags of chips tumbled across the low table between them like a rocky beach after a storm, with paper napkin seafoam decorating the lot. After the situation on the mall the previous evening, Garik had expected their lunch to be postponed. Jantzen had asked if they could do a light meal in the break room, and he readily agreed.
Now he wrestled with whether to mention Justin being in his bedroom during the night.
Garik took a sip from a canned soda. Several of the tables had been filled earlier, people catching a late snack instead of breakfast, not unusual on the morning after a mall event, but like a wave on the shore, most had washed away when Jantzen arrived.
It seemed to Garik that the purple mist vanishing act set Jantzen apart from the crowd as much as Justin’s combative anger drove people from him.
“I checked on Marco this morning.” Garik wanted to break the ice into last night.
“And?” Jantzen leaned back.
“You always want me to evaluate things, don’t you?” Answer a question with a question. Don’t give away everything you know. I’m learning, Jantzen.
“Yes.” The dark-haired man studied him, his purple-flecked eyes pulling Garik inside.
“Okay.” Garik looked away. He still wasn’t strong enough to play games with the man. “Marco will be okay. Maybe,” and he glanced at Jantzen with a grin, “Justin should have done more. Marco might have learned a lesson.”
“Oh?” A smile cracked one side of Jantzen’s face.
“Marco said that as soon as he’s out of that bed they have him tied up in, he’s going to mark Justin’s other leg.”
Jantzen laughed. “And you see what I deal with every day.”
“What about Justin?” The question just came out. Last night Justin had sounded almost contrite. “I’m roasted after this. You win, I lose.” Didn’t he understand? This wasn’t about winning or losing. This was about making the best of the hand they were dealt.
Even if they hadn’t chosen to play the game and had been drafted in anyway.
“Is that sympathy I hear?” Jantzen leaned forward, lifted his can, took a sip, and replaced it before leaning back again, likely to give himself time to think. “Justin and I were once . . . good friends. I had my, um, alterations done first, and I didn’t expect Justin—”
Garik watched Jantzen’s face, his eyes. Not the purple, but the way he held them, looking off to something that was gone and couldn’t be called back again.
“He did this without telling you, didn’t he?”
“Yes.” Jantzen’s eyes cut to Garik. “I would have told him no, but then, recovery was longer for those of us who served as the early templates, and I didn’t know until after it was done.”
“And you feel sorry for him.”
“I feel sorry for you—”
“Don’t say that.” Garik felt something hard rise up. He didn’t like what they’d done, but he didn’t want sympathy, not ever.
“I apologize. That sounded like pity, and that’s not what I meant. For what you lost, for the things you can never have again.”
“Why not? Why can’t I have them back?” Garik sank into his seat in frustration, his throat raw with emotion. “I haven’t changed. I’m still me. What’s different? Nothing. Even this is coming back.” He grabbed a handful of his hair, and he pulled at it. It was grown enough that he could do that.
“Yes, it is.” Jantzen smiled and stood. “Have you been back to Level 5 since that first night?”
“You know I haven’t. It still gives me nightmares.”
“Do it. Today. I’ll be spending some time with Christian this afternoon.”
“Christian?” Garik sat up, interested. “Last night, he didn’t show. Then with the fighting, everything went sideways. Can I go with you?”
“Visit Level 5 first. Will you do that? Christian and I have some things we need to cover. You will understand better if you do as I ask.”
Garik stood, his face growing hot. “What? You do this all the time, not tell me stuff. You don’t trust me? I thought we were friends.” Garik fought the emotions about to flood his face and shame him.
“Just visit Level 5. You won’t regret it.” Jantzen glanced at the table and sighed. “I’ll send someone to clear this away.”
“I’ll do it,” Garik grumbled after the man was gone.
He wasn’t sure if his answer meant he would visit Level 5 or clear the table, but if he cleared the table, he could postpone his visit to Level 5, so that was where he started.
― 7 ―
GARIK SMASHED the Level 5 on the elevator’s control panel and watched the doors close him in.
What was he doing? He closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the wall, and let his thoughts fall into themselves, pulling him into a black hole of memories.
Marisa. Halo Sunchaser’s passkey in her hand. She couldn’t have known what would happen. He couldn’t either. Would he have run to join her if he had?
Yes. Friends don’t let friends go into danger, even of their own making, without standing by their side.
The doors opened, and the clean, bright light of the bottom level of the Tower’s basements washed into the tight, steel box. The memory of standing in this spot with Marisa and wondering if Gunther Diehl would walk up, tell them they were in the wrong location, and politely escort them to a suitable exit wiped away the months he had been trapped in the maw of the Corona Tower.
A rising surge of longing washed over him for Marisa’s face, for sitting with her on the roof of their apartment building, visiting her at the flower shop, her laughter when his thoughts carried him away, and her reminding him that she was talking to him.
The sounds of the creatures in the cages on Level 5 filtered into the elevator. The door dinged as if to say, “Going up! I’m headed up!” and he moved forward, stepping in its way. He tried not to look into the cages, rather checking right and left while deciding where to go. He gripped his passkey. It now took him anywhere but to the food court, except during events. It was his lifeline back upstairs. He didn’t want to be trap
ped here.
A worker in a white smock appeared from the end of a bank of cages pushing a cart. Garik froze, hearing those words from so many weeks ago. “Hey, you!” He expected to hear, “What are you doing here?”
Instead, the man raised a hand, called out, “Hello. We’re expecting you,” and began to walk his direction.
“I’m Garik.” Fear gripped him, despite the man’s greeting. The BolaWrap hitting his legs, the feeling of falling, his head smashing into the floor. “Jantzen said—”
“We know. This way.” He reached out a hand. He was already moving, Garik’s guide through the basement. “Avery Isken. Normally I’m in the labs up on Two, but we all rotate to Five to help with the animals at least twice a month. I didn’t make it to the event last night. I was down here covering for Nataly Jago. Have you met her?”
Garik shook his head.
“No reason why you should. I hear something happened during the event—that’s why Justin’s here. It’s a shame, but he would have made it down here sooner or later. It happens with his kind.”
His kind? Garik didn’t know how to respond.
“Hey, you’ve arrived at feeding time. I’ve got the rest of that cart and one more to go. If you’re still around, there’ll be dinner tonight. You can stay and watch if you want.”
“Help with the animals,” Garik repeated, repulsed. Was that what Christian would become, an animal to these people? Visited at feeding time, then locked away until the next feeding?
“We have a fresh shipment in, rhesus monkeys. Really cute.” Avery glanced at him expectantly, then he shrugged. “Find me when you leave if you think you might. This is it. Take the third door on the right.”
They stopped at a dividing wall with double glass doors separating the cages from a softly lighted corridor on the other side. The doors whooshed aside, and fresh-smelling air tumbled over them.
“Third on the right.” Garik wasn’t sure if he was asking for confirmation or putting off the inevitable. In either case, this was more Level 2 than the experimental operating theater he’d expected.
“Yes. Once people make it here, they don’t get many visitors. I wasn’t aware you two were friends. Shows you never know.” Avery turned and his feet were loud on the hard floor.
Friends? Visitors? What about Christian? Garik had been under the impression he would be sliced up and offered to the latest participant in the human-hybrid program.
He stepped inside and felt the air change as the doors closed behind him. He remembered the way the air had tumbled over them. He turned to look and knew the doors were hermetically sealed. Positive air pressure prevented anything out there from getting in here. It made sense.
He knocked at the third door, mystified. Justin would make it down here sooner or later? What did they want to harvest from Justin? An extra set of joints? He shivered and knocked again.
“I’ve eaten. Go away.” Justin, yelling.
“Good. Then you won’t eat me,” Garik yelled back.
“What are you doing here?” The door cracked slightly, revealing a darkened room.
“To see you, I think. Jantzen sent me.” Garik looked back at the glass doors, wishing more than ever he hadn’t come.
“Idiot.” Justin slammed the door.
“Do you want me to go?” Garik closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the door. It was cold.
“No.” The sound of a chain being undone, and the door released. “Come in.”
Garik pushed the door wide, forcing it into the gloom, and saw Justin disappearing into the depths.
At least he thought it was Justin. It was something. If it was Justin . . . Garik’s picture of his own future turned upside down.
“SO, WHAT did you expect when you came down here?” Justin growled, a seething cauldron of animosity. Within the growl, a new clicking noise that Garik didn’t recognize.
“Not you.” The space was living quarters of a sort, though of a temporary kind. The darkness gave it a forbidding cast. “Why no lights?”
“You can’t see, can you?” A rough laugh. “Ask Christian. You will soon enough.”
“I don’t get it. See what soon enough?” Jantzen, why did you send me down here? Garik would walk out, but the man had wanted him to discover something.
“Me, this room, you, everything. You don’t think who you are right now is all you’ll become, do you?”
“I don’t know what to think. No one tells me anything.” Jantzen had, though, perhaps without meaning to. I don’t know which changes are accelerating initially.
“I’m part mantis, bred for my lack of fear. I’ll tackle any opponent, no matter the size.”
“That, I know.” Garik had fought him.
“They haven’t found anyone better, but I’m not their super soldier.”
“Super soldier.” Garik heard himself repeating Justin, and he didn’t care. Jantzen had said something similar.
“Yeah. I’m too obvious, and I’m still changing.”
“Still changing.” That could explain what Garik had seen when he followed Justin into the room.
“You like to repeat people, don’t you?” Justin laughed, adding a click at the end. “I used to do that when I was coming to grips with a new concept, especially one I didn’t want to accept. I guess you need to see so you can get your head around this. By the way, I’m glad the little shrimp will be okay.”
“Lemur.” Garik wasn’t certain he wanted to see.
“Lemur, schlemur. He was a foot taller when he started. Has anyone told you that?”
They hadn’t. Julia flashed into Garik’s head. She was tall, and she was part boa constrictor. They grew to massive lengths. How tall would she be eventually?
He pictured himself as wolf boy. Hairy ears, bushy eyebrows, and mitts like Christian’s. It was too much to take in.
Just when he was ready to curl up and wish it all away, Justin said, “Surprise,” and turned on the lights.
It was worse than Garik had imagined.
JUSTIN WAS bare from the waist up. His head wasn’t much different, perhaps larger eyes. It was his torso that no one could miss.
“It’s better when I have on my coat.” Justin shifted position, and he stood. “It irritates my back.” He turned. His back was more elongated, but the real difference was in the bulges running down his spine.
“What’s happening?”
“Well, it seems mantises can fly.” Justin smirked. “And that’s becoming me. Not what I wanted to be able to do.”
“So, wings in there. They are still growing, right?”
“My arms, too. Did you notice? Popeye.” He held them in front of him. The sections between his human elbows and his shorter forearms had thickened, like the massive front legs of the insect he was modeled on. “I don’t know . . . I’ll take that back. They don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to stay here.”
“This happened all of a sudden?” Garik thought of himself. How much warning would he have?
“No. I’ve been hiding it as best I can. You’ve seen my duster.”
“I thought as much, but not that it was getting worse.” Would John one day hop everywhere he went, Joanie require a saltwater pool, or Marco . . . it dawned on him. “Marco will continue to become more lemur-like, won’t he?”
“And end up here eventually.”
“And?” Like, what would happen? Would Marco also be “harvested” for his DNA-enhanced attributes?
Justin shrugged, but whether he didn’t know or didn’t want to say wasn’t clear.
“Christian—” Now it was clear that the man had begun to shed more heavily, and his hands—all of him—had become more hound-like than ever. “Does it happen to everyone?”
“They’ve made progress. Your chances, perhaps, are better, if they were careful.”
Garik understood why Jantzen had insisted he visit down here. Jantzen could have explained, but that wouldn’t have satisfied Garik. Now, he understood at least the tip of wh
at Christian might have to face and why he was being reassigned to the lowest level in the research facility.
“Will they let you continue to live here?”
Justin moved to the small kitchenette in the corner, and he rummaged in the fridge before pulling out a cardboard container. It was unlabeled. He stabbed a straw into the top. It was blood-red when he took a sip.
“Why do you think I gave all of you those recordings?” Neutral, not attacking.
“We didn’t know. You planned to turn us in, we thought, but I don’t think you did.”
“I was angry.” Justin nestled into the couch, avoiding pressing his back against anything hard. “But I wouldn’t have turned you in.”
“We weren’t planning anything to do with you. Why would you be angry?”
“Now you’re getting it.” Justin’s voice grew thick, laced with emotion. “You didn’t include me.”
“Why is that a problem?” Say it, man, or bug, or whatever you are!
“Are you stupid, too?” Justin lashed out. “I’m surrounded by idiots.”
“No, I’m not stupid. I’m seventeen, I should be in high school right now, and I’ve been kidnapped to be a part of whatever you people are doing down here. I don’t understand any of this.” Garik felt the room jump ten degrees.
“You didn’t volunteer?”
“Don’t you listen? Or are you stupid? I fell into all this—” literally “—and I want to go home. I’m told that’s impossible. The best I can do is try to help Christian escape.”
“And I want to be part of that.” Justin flexed his arms, revealing more strength in them than his thin torso might suggest. “I can help. Is it a deal?”
“I have to ask everyone else.” Garik was sure Joanie and her friends would be grateful for all the help Justin could provide.
“I can appreciate that. Don’t wait too long. We may not have much time.”
Garik left the way he came. He kept his eyes averted from the cages, still unclear if Christian or Justin would someday be living in one of them. He kept his hand wrapped around his passkey, refusing to think about not being able to board the elevator and leave this place.