by Eve Langlais
One half of the cell-like room was covered in charred marks, the soot thickly layering the surface. Yet the spot where the mattress lay was perfectly clean. Unburned. Which meant the red strands of hair left on the stained mattress were easy to spot.
Jane was here.
She just never returned. Not to that room at any rate.
But…what if she, like his other patients, felt a need to return to her maker? To find the man who’d changed them all.
He’d rather deal with her in familiar territory.
Which was why he asked Jett a few questions as they drove. “Did you extend the security system past the perimeter of the house?” Adrian worried about more than simple burglars.
“The motion detection lights and cameras have been placed to the edge of the woods.”
“None within the forest?” he asked.
Jett shot him a look. “Cameras are best placed in open spaces where movement is detectable. In the woods, there are many false positives, given the small animal life and always moving foliage.”
“Surely you program them to only react to large items.”
“Yeah. I could. Which begs the question, why? I thought you said this place was safe.”
“It is.”
“Which we both know is bullshit.” Jett paid attention to the road ahead of him, the middle yellow line the color in the headlights. “Someone attacked the clinic. That kind of act smacks of desperation.”
“Doesn’t it though.” Adrian looked out the window as unrelenting darkness marched by. “But we haven’t seen hide nor hair of that person since, which more than likely means they got what they wanted when they captured Dr. Cerberus.”
“Or they’re biding their time. Hell, maybe they’re the ones who helped the transported patients escape.”
“One would hope they wouldn’t be so stupid.” Those that could function already lived at large. It was only those who still required help that Adrian kept under lock and key.
“Doesn’t matter what they were thinking. Those patients are gone. Hopefully the winter will take care of them.”
“Such a lack of empathy. And to think it is my patients we call feral.” The comment earned Adrian another dark stare.
“You hired me for my practical nature. A good thing one of us can act. What’s wrong with you lately? You going soft?”
Hardly, given the recent blood on his hands.
“Let’s just say I’m beginning to see things more clearly.”
You keep telling yourself that, boyo.
They arrived at Adrian’s house, the body of it dark, and almost invisible, on purpose. The remote location, in the woods, meant any kind of light, even a simple porch one, attracted things. Curiosity of hikers. Moths. Predators.
Which was why he waited for Jett to leave, watching until the taillights vanished before he lit up the place. If the room had an overhead light or a lamp on a table, Adrian turned it out. A beacon to anything in the forest.
A faint hope that a certain lady would somehow manage to follow him. Although, if she traveled on foot, it might take a while. The first patient to find Adrian had taken almost five days, and the lab he’d escaped from was much closer.
He was probably in for a wait, but Adrian didn’t sit idly. He spent hours scouring the internet for signs of Jane. Any mention of fire in a two-hundred-mile radius caught his attention. Some were simple accidents: overturned candle, stove top fire. But then there were the less obvious ones.
Blazing car wreck on the highway.
Unexplained explosion in a chip truck.
A flaming basin of oil at a gas station.
Was Jane the cause?
Not knowing drove him to distraction. To deal with that anxiety, Adrian mulled over everything Jett had told him about Luke and Margaret. She was very pregnant, and Luke was worried enough that he sought out Adrian via Jett.
Which peeved Adrian off for a few reasons. One, Luke should have come to him! He was the one who could offer aid.
But the bigger reason Luke approaching Jett was a problem had to do with the doubts this instilled. Already Jett questioned the strangeness of Becky’s pregnancy. Dealing with the fact his children might be special. Then Luke arrived, panicked, Margaret showing signs of an abnormal pregnancy and suddenly Jett feared. And how did Adrian know his stoic guard was worried? Because he actually said during the darkest stretch of their trip, “Will this pregnancy harm Becky?”
It felt wrong to lie. “Possibly.”
Adrian could offer no reassurance because there was none to give. This was uncharted territory. The babies these women carried were the start of a new race. An exciting time for the evolution of mankind.
“Red is strong. If anyone can do this, it’s her,” Jett mumbled, seeking reassurance, and yet Adrian couldn’t state with certainty that everything would be all right because he didn’t know. Would the pregnancy affect the mother? Harm her? Would the child emerge humanish, or something else? Would they be intelligent, taking after their human half, or emerge no better than an animal? Would the bloodthirsty madness that plagued so many be their curse as well?
These types of questions didn’t used to bother Adrian—before. Now that he felt his own grip on sanity slipping, he had time for regret. Even felt a sense of remorse for some of the things he’d done.
The things he might still have to do.
Too late to go back now, boyo. The fun’s just about to begin.
To quiet the voice in his head, he spent the next few days in a flurry of activity: setting internet monitors for signs of Jane, ordering more equipment for his basement lab—including an incubator in case the baby was premature. Then he went on to more customized items: baby mitts to prevent scratching from nails that might be more like claws, baby bottles with sturdy rubber nipples, formula. If the child was born with a full set of teeth, the mother might not want to nurse.
Adrian also made sure his freezer was stocked with meat. Lots of it. Luke might have found his will and humanity to live, but it helped if you kept the more savage side of him fed. Or so Adrian discovered within himself. Nothing like a steak tartare for a nighttime snack when the urge to rip off his clothes and run into the woods hit him.
Do it. Feel the freedom. The rush. Let’s eat al fresco tonight.
Alcohol probably wasn’t the best course of action; however, he liked the warm buzz.
While Adrian fought to keep a grip on his sanity, Jett popped in and out with status reports. Mostly empty ones. The escaped patients had disappeared. The new lab was wiped clean as a precaution. The remaining staff sent to a European location out of harm’s way.
All kinds of safety measure measures taken to protect those remaining, and the secret.
“We’re still watching to see if any of the patients pop up into the public eye. Cop scanners, hospitals.” Jett had it all covered, and Adrian didn’t inform him that, by this point, he’d dispatched three former patients thus far. The latest one the night before.
The wings on Jacob’s back had allowed him to glide in for the attack. But his hollowed bones meant he didn’t have the weight behind it.
Rather than call his cleanup crew again, Adrian buried him in a pile of debris, branches and leaves he’d swept clean, and then set it on fire. The dancing flames made him think of Jane.
Sixteen more to go!
He had to wonder if Jett noticed anything on the cameras. Adrian, after all his questions about the security system on the ride home, had decided to disable the outside devices. He didn’t want Jane spooked if she happened to decide to find him.
On the fifth day of his return home, the knock at his door drew his attention. The hairs on the back of his neck rose—Stranger danger!—and his lip pulled back in a partial snarl. He caught himself and schooled his features before striding to answer.
The sight that met him kept him speechless for a moment—and filled him with a strange joy.
“Take a picture, it will last longer,” Luke snapped, as pleasan
t as ever. For all his gruff demeanor, the man looked good. Fit. Broad in the shoulder, his beard lush and full. His eyes a normal brown color without a hint of glow. No sign of the wolfman he could become.
By his side was a shorter figure swaddled in a cape that hid her shape, but he remembered the fair features of Margaret. Once a nurse at the clinic, she’d fallen for her patient, and together they’d fled. Adrian kept track of them for a while, until the tracker inside the escaped lovers was deactivated. It still bothered Adrian that some nameless party was aware of his research. It made the rage within bubble at the thought of someone trying to steal his life’s work. Yet, oddly enough, they went after Cerberus rather than the true scientist himself. Rather insulting.
Maybe because they knew you were crazzzzzzzy.
“Come in.” Adrian swept a hand, and the pair entered, followed by Jett, who appeared as dark and gloomy as ever. “Where’s Becky?”
“It’s a water day,” Jett replied, meaning her mermaid side had taken over and demanded a full submersion. It happened more and more often of late. By the lines of worry on Jett’s face, Adrian could guess what he feared. That one day she wouldn’t be able to transition back to land.
He placed his hand on the man’s arm and sought to reassure. “It’s probably just the pregnancy hormones.” Which were snowballing in Becky. Her pregnancy was advancing at a much faster rate than Margaret, who had removed her cape to display a gorgeously round belly that jutted from her body and was much larger than a woman at her stage should be.
“How do you feel?” was the first thing Adrian asked.
“How do you think I feel?” was her retort. “I’m huge. And uncomfortable. Hungry all the damned time. My ankles are swelling, and I swear this kid is going to come out adult sized.
A faint smile touched Adrian’s lips. “It just feels that way. If you’ll follow me, I’ve got all the equipment set up in the basement.”
“Said every mad scientist before cackling,” Luke muttered.
Even Jett snickered.
They poked fun at Adrian, but good news, no one had tried killing him yet, which he considered a step in the right direction.
The basement might connote ominous overtones, but the space itself was bright and big. The house, built into the side of a hill, meant the back half of the lower level was above ground. A large sliding glass door opened onto the lower patio and provided natural light to the medical facility he’d created.
Luke whistled as he looked around. “You just can’t help yourself, can you? One lab destroyed and already got a new one up and running.”
“Not everything I did was bad,” Adrian replied in defense of his actions.
That brought a snort. “Does that help you sleep at night?”
No. Only the cannabis oil he mixed with alcohol did. “I didn’t realize you wanted us to have a discussion on the morality of my actions. Perhaps we should return upstairs to a more comfortable seating environment.”
Luke’s face tightened, and Margaret placed her hand on his arm. “Don’t let him get to you.” She turned her gaze on Adrian, not warm, or even friendly. “Let’s do this. Show my husband that the baby I carry isn’t going to pull an alien and rip its way out of my body.”
“Not funny, Maggie,” growled her protective mate.
“But the truth.” She turned a look on her husband. “You’ve been terrified that this baby will hurt me since Sven and his buddies examined me.”
“What happened?” Adrian asked as he washed his hands and slipped on a white coat.
A foreboding expression pulled at Luke’s features as Margaret answered. “We went to see a guy. A biologist. He managed to get us into a clinic where he could use some of their equipment.”
“What did you see?” Adrian asked while pointing to the bed he’d had delivered only the day before. No rails on it. No manacles. Unlike the ones he used to have at his clinic in the mountains.
“A moving blob,” Luke grumbled.
Ultrasounds often appeared that way to those not trained to understand what they saw.
“It was a baby,” Margaret said with clear exasperation.
“With a tail!” Luke exclaimed.
Adrian managed to keep his features from showing he was startled, but Jett didn’t. “A tail? That’s nothing. How about I raise you a tail and add fins. My wife’s got a pair of tadpoles swimming around in her tummy.”
For some reason three sets of eyes turned on Adrian, who raised his hands. “Don’t start. Margaret’s is the first pregnancy that’s been viable past the first trimester. And as for Becky…I’ll admit this is new territory for us all.”
Very new, since the last few pregnancies of patients with staff resulted in miscarriages, and one of the mothers didn’t survive. In his defense, no one had expected her to commit suicide after the miscarriage. But after that, they were much more careful to ensure none of the women saw the child until they’d had a chance to check it over.
“Let’s stop screwing around. Get on with it,” Luke growled.
Margaret lay on the bed, and Adrian grabbed the bottle of gel. She lifted her shirt to show an impressive belly, the skin stretched, the belly button popped.
A squirt of the cold gel made her tummy mountain wobble. Margaret laughed. “Junior doesn’t like it.”
Luke placed his hand on the moving hump, and it stilled. “Junior needs to behave for a minute while the doc checks him out.”
The wand slid with ease over her belly, and immediately the sound of a heartbeat filled the air. Strong, fast, much faster than the second thud of its mother’s in the background.
“Only one fetus,” Adrian remarked aloud as he tapped on his keyboard and slid the wand, taking measurements, doing his best to contain his excitement. The doctor in him was giddy. There was a child in there. Viable. Alive. And…different.
There was no denying certain aspects about the baby she carried, but Adrian didn’t say anything aloud. Not yet. What he did instead was manage to get a good shot of the baby’s face. He tilted the screen. “This is your son.”
Margaret gasped, and her eyes shone with tears; whereas Luke canted his head and squinted. “He looks like an alien.”
“Luke!” Margaret exclaimed.
“Man has a point,” Jett added, having gotten close enough to also watch the proceedings.
“All babies appear alien on ultrasounds.” Adrian moved the wand to show them a hand. “Four fingers and a thumb on his left hand.” Same for the right. “Toes.” The limbs of the child’s arms and legs perfectly formed. “No claws,” he added to reassure.
“What about…” Luke didn’t say it.
So Adrian moved the wand and said it for him. “The tail? It’s still there, but I should note that, while rare, babies are still born every year with them.”
“Is this your way of saying he’s normal?”
“No.” Adrian didn’t couch the truth. “Your child is different. How could he not be given who his father is? But”—Adrian held up a hand to forestall Luke’s next question—“he is healthy. The rest of him is perfectly formed, if a bit large.”
“So he’s not five months old?”
Adrian shook his head. “Given his size, I’d say he’s full term or close to. His lungs appear perfectly formed, which is usually the concern in preterm births. My recommendation is we deliver your wife soon to avoid complications.”
“What kind of complications? Is the baby too big?” she asked.
Adrian shrugged. “By my measurements, close to ten pounds, which is not in and of itself unusual. But you have narrow hips. If we wait too long, a natural birth might not be feasible.”
“My mother had me via C section,” she admitted. “Apparently I had a big head.”
Luke snickered. “Isn’t that my line?”
“Luke!” Margaret exclaimed, slapping him in the arm
The man sobered to ask, “Other than having a giant squash, can the baby hurt her?”
Adrian shrugged.
“I wish I could say no with one hundred percent certainty, but with every pregnancy, there is a possibility of something going wrong.”
“All things I already told you.” Maggie swung her legs over the table and sat up. “When should we schedule the inducement?” she asked Adrian.
“Soon. I’ll need to get some more materials first. But I don’t want to delay too long.”
He also made sure to get some samples from her: blood, urine. She vetoed the amniotic fluid test.
“How can I contact you?” Adrian asked as he saw them to the door.
“You don’t. I’ll be in touch,” Luke said.
Closing the door, Adrian leaned on it and closed his eyes. Elation at the first birth of one of his patients filled him.
Success. Finally, after so much failure. But at the same time, trepidation hit him. Not just for the baby, the first natural born of his kind. What would the child be like? Would it develop like a normal human child, or would the animal characteristics take over? Was Luke right to fear?
And then there was Luke. A man who’d been on the brink of death, having given up on life. Now, he appeared saner and healthier than ever, but only because of Margaret.
Adrian didn’t have a Margaret. And the madness crept closer.
Close? I’m already here, motherfucker!
Chapter Eight
A day had passed since Luke’s visit, and Adrian occupied it spending large sums of money rushing to prepare, a sense of urgency filling him.
It felt as if he snowballed toward something. Good? Bad? He couldn’t tell. But he suspected it had to do with Jane. Every time he turned a corner, he expected to see her.
Which was weird and oddly ominous, given he wasn’t one to believe in portents.
Forget it, boyo. She isn’t coming. Why would she come to you? He could almost see his mind, the split part of it curling its lip in disdain.
I can help her.
Sure, you can. With a bullet to the brain, just like you did to the others.
They attacked me, he justified, arguing with himself.
Can you blame them, boyo?
He’d never meant to hurt anyone. He simply wanted to heal. Why did no one appreciate that?