by Angel Wedge
The big battle now was in public relations. It was on the news, every single day. The big issue in every political debate was what should be done with these monstrous creations. They were life created against the will of God, and should be destroyed before they bring down judgement on us. They were a valuable clue into how genetic information is really passed on, and while it would be immoral to create more they should still be studied. The creatures hadn’t chosen to be subjected to the tortures of medical experimentation, and the only humane course was to allow them to die in peace. The mutagenic hormone concoction that had allowed the combination of incompatible genomes could be dangerous, and the hybrid animals should be sealed away in case they could cause mutations in the local wildlife. It seemed that both science and religion had piled in on both sides of this thorny question, filling the airwaves with conflicting and confused rhetoric.
“So what’s this got to do with me?” I asked, when my brother seemed to have reached a convenient break in his recap. Before he answered, Paul took a good look around us. The lounge was luxuriously appointed, a rest between flights for first class passengers, but his secret service guys seemed to have kept the place sealed for now. There was nobody else here; it was probably safe to talk openly. I could see his eyes darting around repeatedly, hoping to make sure before he spoke.
“I’ve been there,” he confided eventually, leaning forward to give me an impression of trust. “I’ve talked to Barishkov, though I’m sure you’ll understand I was against his appointment in the first place. I’ve seen the hybrids Faulkner had created. They could tell us so much if we understood how it was done. The one he’s most proud of is part ape, part salamander. Half a dozen of the things, which the behaviourists say is amazing because of the way they interact with each other. They’ve been experimenting for years, combining systems from completely different organisms to see how they interact. With the things they’ve learned, the science behind this madness, it could shed so much light on human physiology. Maybe we’ll find ways to create new medicines, or to treat inherited diseases for good. However you feel about what he was doing, there’s no question that this research could save millions of lives!”
“Or billions of dollars,” I guessed the hard truth behind his enthusiasm, “Your buddies in big pharma are giving you a decent cut for a shot at dissecting Faulkner’s specimens. But you need help spinning the situation so you can get at them, right?”
“Mark,” he said with a tone that could almost have been pity. No explanation, though. He didn’t refute my accusation or try to make excuses. There was another pause. It might have been an uncomfortable pause, or maybe he was just trying to decide what to say. It was hard to tell with Paul.
“We’re both scientists,” he eventually conceded, “You must see there’s something worth researching here. Whether it makes money or not, a scientist has to ask questions and find the answers. We can’t just let a golden opportunity like this go to waste because a crackpot like your brother’s drumming up so much support for this sentimental crap about hurting artificial hybrids that wouldn’t even exist without that lab!”
I tried to hide my shock, but don’t know how successful I was. My brothers didn’t get on. Never had, at least as long as I remember. John had once totalled the family car while wasted, and Paul never forgave him. The eldest brother went off to the city to party without guidance, and the family pretty much disowned him. Paul was the only one who’d tried to keep him ostracised after he found his faith and came back full of remorse, forgiveness, judgement, and hellfire. Now, if they wanted to quarrel, they both used me to pass on their messages.
I’d thought they were over that, now they both had important affairs of God and the world to deal with. Just my luck they’d find themselves on the same issue sooner or later.
“You haven’t answered my question, though.” I’d spent the last month dealing with corrupt, self-righteous officials, men who’d sold out their own families, and smiling businessmen with all the altruism of an alligator. It was Paul’s bad luck he was facing me when I’d yet to get back into the habit of taking shit from anyone. “Why me?”
“Pete Carling can’t get me out there again without looking like he’s playing favourites, but maybe we can get you into the lab. Lucretia Falls, they call the place. I could use an independent analysis from a scientist with no visible party affiliation, but half the biologists I’ve got on the team, I don’t know if I can trust them to reach the right conclusions. Would need to keep my eye on them.” I wondered how he could be so sure I’d get to the right conclusion, or even how he could be so sure that he was right.
“We’re brothers, I know you’ve got my back. And you’re a known humanitarian, great campaigner, all that pro bono BS, your name’s going to give a lot of weight. Not to mention, of course, the truth’s got to come out sooner or later, and you’re just the kind of guy they’d believe doesn’t recognise protocol. Better for patriotism, too, if it’s not some foreigner blowing the whistle. Just be careful, yeah, some things are hidden for a reason. Can I count on you?”
I didn’t reply. I didn’t trust myself to even speak to the guy without punching him. It wasn’t that he’d just insulted the causes I devoted my life to. It wasn’t that he blithely assumed I’d follow his orders like a good little sheep. It wasn’t that he always assumed that whichever side he’d chosen was right, and bent the facts to fit. It wasn’t that he’d marched into a foreign airport and demanded my attention with no warning whatsoever. It wasn’t even the old animosity, the “your brother” quip about John.
It was all of that, and more. To the man Paul had become now, family was just one more set of resources you marshalled to dominate a battlefield of opinion polls and news stories. I seethed, and let him walk away to whatever was his next appointment, while one of his aides gave me details of the flights and bodyguards they’d prepared for me.
I wouldn’t be taking them, I knew. It was the story of a lifetime, a Pulitzer on a plate. But it wasn’t my story. It wasn’t a cause I’d taken to heart. Travelling out to some remote location for a guided tour of a UN-managed science lab, then writing a story to toe the party line, would be like signing away my integrity as an investigative journalist.
Paul Jennings could go to hell, as far as I was concerned.
If only I’d stuck to that decision, then maybe I wouldn’t have ended up in a cage, surrounded by the creatures he labelled monsters.
Chapter 8 — Escape Plan
The moon was visible through a rare break in the clouds, and its light just about penetrated the small, high windows of this secret lab. It was still dark, but as my eyes acclimated to the dim glow, I could start to make out more of my prison. The cages and workbenches had breaks for three doors on one long wall. They looked like they belonged to a bank vault, huge steel panels with some kind of seal around the edges and a control panel rather than a simple switch. Maybe they lead to a clean-room or something, or an inner lab where only the more secret experiments were conducted. Maybe that was where the DNA samples were stored, or whatever raw materials they needed for constructing their Frankencreatures. As I tried to guess, I realised just how much could have changed in the years since I’d been seriously interested in the sciences.
On the opposite wall, beside the door I’d been dragged in through, was something that caught my attention a little more. It was a computerised control panel, incredibly complex, to allow management of the room’s temperature and humidity as well as a dozen other parameters. Once I’d spotted it, the pattern of flashing lights in the corner was pretty recognisable: one of the status LEDs was slightly out of line in order to fit around the Klingelstoffe Technologies logo. I really hoped that meant what I thought it might, and that I wasn’t just grasping at straws out of desperation. I’d seen a similar system to manage a lab’s environment once when an old flame had put me on the trail of a corporation in Denmark that might have been bribing government inspectors to overlook some medica
l ethics legislation, and I’d discovered a few known glitches in the KST-350 series in the course of researching all the building’s alarm systems.
I was wondering if I could use the system to escape, but I was distracted on the point of making a plan as I saw movement in a nearby cage. I could see eyes, glittering in the moonlight as if the creature was generating its own light. I even wondered for a second, before reminding myself that Faulkner’s team had been making monsters for a decade or less. They might cross different species, but they couldn’t make something like that in so little time. From the eyes I would have said it was a cat, those narrow pupils staring straight at me. But the eyes were a kind of pink colour, so pale they were almost white, and I’m sure no cat had that pigmentation. I smiled for a moment, imagining Paul’s outrage if he got his research permits and it turned out the most interesting thing the lab had produced was a big cat with different coloured eyes.
The eyes seemed too widely spaced, though it was hard to tell in the darkness. What was I looking at? When I tried to focus, I could just make out a dark shape hunched in the bottom of one of the nearby cages. I couldn’t even tell how big it was, or how far away, but I guessed it was slightly smaller than man sized. Maybe a panther, or a tiger or something. I knew there were tigers in the jungle, even though we hadn’t seen one on our mini safari, because they were considered so important by the tribes in the area. I couldn’t tell if it was the same creature that had been watching me when I was outside. It could have been the same eyes, which meant it was a lot more alert than most of its brethren. Then the eyes lazily closed, its interest in me eventually lapsing, and I tried to focus again on my escape.
I pulled out my camera and turned it on. I never thought I’d be so grateful that the guards failed to take it away. Maybe he hadn’t known what it was; the tribal elders said they should avoid all modern technology, though I didn’t think anyone who stuck to the old ways would be willing to work in a place like this. I put it on video mode and hit record, allowing me to turn on the LED flashlight. It would be easily noticeable from outside if I pointed it too close to the door, I knew, and my battery wouldn’t last long doing this, but it was the only thing I could think of to help me out of this situation.
As much as I wanted to explore the nature of the specimens, I knew that there was no point gathering more information if I was handed over to whatever kind of authorities actually ran this place. Finding an escape had to be my priority, with my battery already depleted and no idea how long I would have light. I found what I was looking for almost immediately: there were fire alarms around the room, one of them only a dozen feet away from me. It was an old one, break glass to activate. It was close, but not close enough to reach. I went through my pockets, and eventually found a set of totems I’d purchased in Oimbawa while playing the role of a good reporter interested in the local culture. They were about the size of my thumb, but the hard wood might just be heavy enough. I weighed one in my hand, drew back, and pitched it towards the alarm.
Needless to say, it missed. My light moved with every motion of my arm, and it would have been a miracle to get my target on the first attempt. Still, I had to keep trying. Another throw and another miss, I heard the trinket bounce off something unseen and rattle across the floor. I coiled my arm back for a third attempt and beamed with elation as my missile clinked against the thin glass.
It didn’t break. The light glinting off the glass changed a little, so maybe it was chipped or cracked. I had to hope that was good enough. I held the last totem in my hand, praying that this time could be a hit as well. If it didn’t, the only things I had left to throw were my phone – useless anyway, as the signal from the communications centre didn’t reach the lower levels – and the camera. I had to make this shot count.
My head jerked to the right at a cry from one of the animals. I didn’t throw, not wanting to waste a shot while I was distracted. It could have been the cry of a baby, or the scream of a scared cat, but lower pitched and with thoroughly unpleasant harmonics. There were dozens of eyes on me now, pinpoints of reflected light attracted by the sound. I wondered what the monster–
No, I interrupted my own thoughts. I was curious about the animal in the next cage; the monsters here were the scientists who had created these things. I turned my light in that direction for a moment, wondering how much pain the creature was in. It recoiled, grabbing bunches of straw bedding to try and hide from the light. I reflexively tapped the ‘photo’ button to make sure I had a clear image of the creature before it was concealed. When I saw what was on the phone’s screen, though, I quickly wished I hadn’t. I saw a picture straight out of a nightmare.
In one of the larger cages, so it could move around the room to some degree, was a kid. Not a goat, not a young animal. A human child, but with the edges of humanity stripped away by some unprincipled research. It was over four feet tall, maybe almost five, and seemed to be human in proportion as far as I could tell, but the familiarity didn’t continue to the details. Its body was covered by an irregular coat of short white hair. In some parts it was almost like the hair on my arms, exposing alabaster pale skin beneath, but this was interleaved with stripes closer to the thickness of a cat’s coat. Not irregular patches, but the kind of thing you’d expect if you shaved a tiger’s stripes. The fur was as white as the skin, the differences in texture making the whole thing surreal. On its head it had a flowing mane of pure white that was matted into the fur on its back, as if some confused deity had been unable to decide which human and animal elements to include.
The face seemed mostly human, aside from the pale pink eyes with no whites that had been watching me from the far side of the cage. Maybe the mouth was a little narrower than most, the teeth arranged differently, but it wasn’t something you’d notice with a casual glance. Its ears were too high on the head as well, but otherwise they looked like a man’s. It wasn’t how I would have expected a monster to look, if I had even dreamed of monsters made from humans. With high cheekbones, it was a face you might even have considered beautiful by some standards, if it weren’t for the soft fur and those eyes.
It lay in a fetal position now, trying to use handfuls of what little bedding it had been provided to hide behind. For a second I couldn’t look away from those strange pink eyes, at once curious and repulsed by this travesty against nature. I wondered if it was in pain, if the experiments Faulkner’s men had conducted or the very fact of its unnatural creation had left a legacy of torment. But then I reminded myself that whatever its origins, this was a living creature and deserved some measure of respect. It was also a female, maybe I should say a woman, and physically mature despite its small size. It took a while for that fact to hit me in among all the other abnormalities of its body, but once I noticed I had to turn my gaze away. Maybe it was a weird thought; who knows what the laws of decency are when it comes to half-human creations? In any case, I looked back to the alarm and left the creature to the privacy of darkness.
I focused on the fire alarm, trying to ignore everything else. Back in a very different lab, I’d learned from a few news reports that some bleeding-heart programmer at Klingelstoffe had heard that these systems were designed to be used in labs with live animal subjects. They’d cared about the welfare of lab rats despite clearly having no experience of how animals acted when they weren’t well trained pets. Several near-disasters had been caused by all the cages in a lab springing open when the fire alarm was triggered, and wildlife of different species being plunged into a noisy, panicked space together with strobe lights and sirens. These cages didn’t have any clear latch that I could tamper with, so there must be some kind of electronic locking in the cage bases. I just had to hope it was tied into the environmental controls, and that the glitch was still there.
The creature beside me moaned again, and now that I’d seen it I recognised the similarity between that sound and a cat’s curious mewl combined with a baby’s cry. It sounded part feline and part human, just like it l
ooked, but the pitch was too low and it sounded strange to my ears. I tried to put it out of my mind, throwing the last totem. The wood tumbled away, rattling on the floor in the darkness. I cursed, wondering if I dared try with my phone. Then I felt a touch on my knee, and jumped back but not quickly enough. There was a hand reaching out through the bars; a hand rather than a paw. It would have looked almost normal, if not for half-inch serrated claws. Some of those claws were roughly broken, maybe from struggling with the cage, but one was long enough to snag the phone pouch from the filthy floor beside me.
“Hey!” I called out, but the creature’s hand had already withdrawn to its own cage. That device was both the only way I’d get my pictures back to civilisation – assuming I could even get to somewhere with coverage – and one of the last things I had to throw for my escape attempt, so I had to get it back. I jumped over to the bars and tried to snatch it, but my face hit the cold metal with a clang and the creature was still out of reach, pulling open the rugged leather case. I breathed a sigh of relief when it threw the phone back to the cage floor, instead curiously examining the spare battery I’d taken to carrying with it. If I’d thought of it earlier, that would have given me three more projectiles instead of two. Now, stretching my arm as far as it would go into the creature’s cell, I could just get the clasp of my phone between two fingers. I pulled it slowly towards me, hoping that Faulkner’s grotesque creation would be amused with what it had, a featureless grey rectangle, for a few minutes longer. Then I was back to where I’d started with only two more chances to set the alarm off, neither of which I really wanted to use.