by Ann Aguirre
He led us out of the main room, which was full of equipment for which I had no name, but I recognized the articles as belonging to the old world, which I had believed to be lost. I was a little awed that any of the things still worked and that Dr. Wilson employed them as a matter of course. Soldier’s Pond had more such artifacts than Salvation, where they eschewed old technology by choice, but this was a veritable treasure trove of functioning equipment. The Wordkeeper—the man who guarded our relics down below—would’ve been astonished.
The same bright bulbs—long strips of light that flickered—lit the halls, lending the pale walls a milky tremor. Fade stayed close and I noticed he kept a hand on the knife strapped to his thigh. Wilson opened a door on the right, and the reek was unmistakable; this reminded me of the tunnels, where the Freaks had lived and bred for years undisturbed apart from the occasional run-in with our Hunters.
I expected to find a breach in his security. Instead, I saw a row of man-size cages. They were all empty, save one. To my abject shock, a Freak occupied it. The monster rattled the bars, prompting a sigh from Dr. Wilson.
“Yes, all right. It’s past feeding time. Just be patient.” He went to a white rectangular unit and withdrew a bucket, then hauled out a substantial portion of bloody meat, which he then tossed into the cage as if the Freak were his pet.
The beast fell on the food with its claws and it ate voraciously, hunched over because the cage wasn’t quite tall enough for it to stand upright. I watched with a growing sense of horror. What was the purpose of this? Tegan had said once that she would like to study the Freaks to understand how their bodies worked and possibly to work out what drove them. Maybe that was what Dr. Wilson was trying to do here?
“This seems cruel,” I said.
“Don’t fret. Timothy is old, only a year or so left. In the wild, he would’ve already been slain for his weakness. And he’s contributing to my ability to understand their culture.”
“My friend Tegan is curious about them too. What have you learned about their eyesight?” I recalled how she’d wondered when she heard the story about the way I slipped past the horde to rescue Fade.
“It’s on par with ours, meaning not good. They rely on their olfactory senses more.”
“What do you mean, ‘not good’?” Fade asked.
“Compared with some animals, humans have terrible vision. A hawk, for instance. The mutants have an advanced sense of smell, however, akin to a hound or wolf.”
At that, the Freak glanced up from its gruesome feast, strings of meat threaded through yellow fangs. Now that Wilson had pointed it out, I could see that it was missing four teeth, crucial ones for ripping and tearing. From context, I figured he meant their society—and once, I’d have found the idea absurd—that they could have customs and rituals similar to ours, but that was before I’d glimpsed the Freak village hidden in the trees. I realized that Dr. Wilson could probably give us a better picture of what happened to the world … and what we could do about it.
So I put aside my shock and asked, “We came to retrieve information for the colonel, but I wonder if you could answer some questions first.”
“As long as it’s not about Timothy.”
The Freak looked between us as if it recognized that Wilson was talking about it. I shivered. “It’s about what happened before, actually.”
“You want a history lesson? Well, I have time to indulge you. Let’s have a drink then and I’ll answer your questions.”
Fade was still staring at the Freak, but he followed when we left the room. The thing whimpered as Wilson pulled the door shut, like it was lonely. That bothered me too. I didn’t want to sympathize with the monsters, not even a little; that would make it harder to kill them.
This time Wilson took us to the kitchen, though it was unlike any I had ever been in before. There was no hearth for cooking, only more rectangular units like the one where he’d gotten the meat. It was bright and clean, though, and he gestured for us to take a seat at the table. I did, feeling like the world had once again stopped functioning according to the rules I knew. Fade perched beside me; he looked every bit as flummoxed as I felt.
Wilson turned a lever and water gushed into the pot he was holding. The scientist moved a dial and concentric rings kindled to a glowing orange. It was astonishing. Then he set the pot to boil; at least that much hadn’t changed. He joined us at the table with an expectant look.
“Go on, then. I’ll grant you the time it takes the water to heat and our drinks to steep.”
I nodded. “At this point, sir, I’m not even sure what to ask. So whatever you can tell me about what left Gotham in ruins and Muties everywhere, well, I guess I’d find that helpful.”
“You really don’t know anything?” he asked, visibly surprised.
“Only what we were able to glean from old papers, but they weren’t clear,” Fade put in.
“Then let me be concise. A long time ago, in labs similar to this one, scientists developed all kinds of terrible things. You probably don’t know what biological or chemical weapons are, do you?” He sounded like he pitied our ignorance.
I squared my shoulders. We were trying to amend that lack, weren’t we? “I don’t.”
Fade shook his head silently. His father’s stories only went so far, and he was young when his mother died. There was a limit to what you could learn when the people who raised you didn’t know the truth, either.
“They came in many forms—gas, powder, liquid—but they served only one purpose, death and destruction. Whenever such things are created, bad men want to test them. That led to war among the great nations of the earth. Are you with me so far?”
I could tell he was simplifying matters for us, and while somebody else might be insulted, I appreciated it. What good were answers if I didn’t understand them? So I nodded and said, “I’ve heard part of this story, but with a religious slant. My foster father told me men were full of hubris and meddled with matters best left to God.”
“Some might agree with him,” Wilson said.
“Edmund also said there were horseless carriages and flying wagons,” Fade offered doubtfully.
“He’s correct, but they were called cars and planes. You can find wreckage of them to this day.”
“Do you still use them?” I asked.
The scientist shook his head. “Fossil fuels are no longer in production. The only reason we’re able to continue using technology that runs on electricity is because we’re positioned favorably for our windmills to generate enough power to keep the town going.”
“What’s a windmill?” Fade wanted to know.
“If you came in from Soldier’s Pond, you won’t have seen them.” Wilson got a scrap of paper and sketched, then he launched into a complicated explanation of how the thing turned in the wind and that generated the power.
I had no interest in that. As the pot whistled, I grasped that the man’s limited patience with our curiosity would soon be coming to an end. He had important work to do. “What about the Muties? How did the world end up like this?”
“I mentioned the war,” he said, spooning some herbs into three cups. “It was … long. But it wasn’t fought with guns and bombs. We tested new horrors on one another, time and again, usually in the cities, where the populations were highest. The last of these synchronized strikes was more virulent than anticipated.”
“Virulent?” Fade asked.
“Powerful. It took effect quickly and the results were horrific. A vast number of the population died and the bioweapon created lesser plagues that troubled us for years to come. Governments created quarantine centers and tried to control the contagion, but all such measures failed. In fact, one vaccine even made the problem worse.” Here, his account faltered. “My forefathers were responsible for part of that … and I’ve continued their terrible work.”
“You must’ve had a good reason,” I said.
He lifted a shoulder, continuing the account. “But not everyone died. The
pathogen affected others differently. Some DNA chains mutated, a systemic devolution. They became primal and savage, concerned only with the urge to feed.”
“The Freaks,” I breathed, forgetting to use their Topside name. Though I didn’t grasp everything, I had the gist.
The scientist looked interested. “Is that what you call them? Fitting, I suppose. And, yes.” He paused as if trying to figure out how to phrase a complicated idea so that we’d understand. “Others simply changed. DNA is the building block of our bodies, containing all the code that makes us who we are. It’s the reason you have brown hair and blue-gray eyes. It also carries incredible amounts of data regarding your ancestors and lineage.”
I stared at the back of my hand, awed. “Can you read this code?”
Fade’s eyes were wide because this sounded like more of Edmund’s stories. “Can the code be broken?”
“It’s not cipher in that sense, but, yes, if I had the proper equipment, I could show you what I mean.” He took his pencil and sketched out what looked like a long figure eight on its side. “This is what I’m talking about.”
“And it’s hidden in our bodies?” I asked.
“Somehow I don’t think this is pertinent to what you really want to know. You’re curious about the changed folk, yes?”
I nodded, remembering Jengu and the small people who had saved my life down below. They’d been changed, definitely, but not monstrous like the Freaks, so I understood what Wilson was talking about.
“This is an unproven hypothesis, of course, but I suspect that an alternate evolutionary track was activated in their DNA. Some other animal in their genetic history took precedence, creating a divergent physiology, and since the pathogen was so powerful, it forced these changes much quicker than should’ve been possible in nature, occasionally with horrific results. Such a shift would naturally take millions of years.”
“So the world was poisoned,” Fade said, “and it made monsters out of some people and changed others, and a lot more died?”
“In a nutshell, yes.”
“But why is everything so broken?” I asked.
Wilson strained the leaves out of our drinks and brought them to the table. I made up my mind to sip slowly, so I could keep accruing information. I wasn’t altogether sure whether I believed him, but his account dovetailed with Edmund’s just without the religious shadings. Fade cupped his hands around his mug, and I wondered if he felt as overwhelmed as I did.
“After the quarantine centers failed, governments tried to protect their dignitaries. Evacuations of the wealthy, influential, and powerful took place in cities around the world.”
“Leaving Gotham empty apart from the people who were expendable,” Fade said grimly.
“Yes. They were left to fend for themselves without support or infrastructure.”
“Are those governments still out there?” I asked.
“To the best of my knowledge, no. The information I have comes from historical records. Those new enclaves fell in the chaos that followed, and new towns and settlements sprang up, populated by pockets of survivors.”
“Like Salvation and Soldier’s Pond?”
The scientist nodded. “Granted, since I have no way of communicating long distance, I cannot tell you what it’s like in other parts of the world. But if things were different elsewhere—and if they had the means—surely they would’ve made contact by now.”
That made sense to me. “How do you know all of this?”
“Journals. My people have always been scientists and they kept meticulous notes on everything that occurred, insofar as they were able. Would you like to see them?” When I shook my head, Wilson looked troubled. “I wish I had a child to whom to pass on this legacy. My wife passed and I never found anyone—oh, never mind. That isn’t why you came.”
In that moment, I saw him as he was, an old man surrounded by relics of a lost age, irrevocably lonely with only a caged Freak for company. He might be the smartest person I’d ever met, but he was also the saddest. I restrained the urge to pat his hand, thinking he wouldn’t appreciate it.
Fortunately Fade distracted the man from thinking about his dead wife. “I have a couple more questions, if you don’t mind. Unrelated.”
“Go ahead.”
“My parents both died of sickness in the ruins. It swept through and carried a lot of people with it. Was that one of the lesser plagues you were talking about?”
“The initial deployment was such a long time ago,” Wilson said gently. “So I rather doubt it. But there are a number of diseases that could account for it. What were the symptoms?” Fade told him, then the scientist asked a number of questions about their living conditions and the water they drank. “It sounds like dysentery, but I can’t be sure.”
Fade didn’t look as if it helped to have a name for what took his parents away. But it was good to know that our stories down below were so much rubbish—that the poison that started the problems had long since vanished, leaving the world to heal as best it might.
“Why didn’t I die too?” he demanded. “I drank the same water, lived as they did.”
Wilson shrugged. “Perhaps your immune system was better. Or possibly you were just lucky. Do you recall whether you were sick at all?”
Fade shook his head, obviously frustrated. “Maybe a little, but never as bad as my mother, first, and then years later, my dad.”
“You said you had multiple questions. What’s the other?” Though we were obviously nursing our drinks, I could tell the man was eager to get back to work by the jogging of his knee.
“The Muties … why are they getting smarter?” The moment Fade asked that, I wished I’d thought to do so.
Wilson appeared delighted with this question. “Again, this is an unproven theory, but I suspect the mutants have what I’d call genetic memory.”
Fade and I swapped looks, then I said it for both of us. “I don’t understand.”
“Genetic memory is when a species recalls everything its ancestors know, so with each successive generation, the offspring is a little smarter than those that came before.”
“So that would be like if I remembered everything my dam and sire knew, and their dam and sire…” I trailed off, overwhelmed by the idea.
“We shouldn’t have seen such a shift so quick, though,” Fade protested.
“Ordinarily, no. But the mutant life cycle is much shorter than a normal human’s. I suspect that’s the price they pay for their exceptional speed, strength, and olfactory sense.”
“How short?” I asked.
“Two years of childhood. Four to maturity, and they rarely live to be older than ten.”
“But … the ones down below didn’t change that fast,” I said.
“I imagine there were fewer resources, so they were probably starving. From extensive dissection, I’ve deduced that they’ve evolved into optimal predators, but in times of privation, their bodies cannot cope. They cannibalize their own systems to survive, but once they begin digesting their cerebral proteins, cognitive ability cannot help but suffer.”
Fade said quietly, “They look, smell, and act different now. The ones we’re fighting seem organized and they’re not covered in sores anymore.”
“I can only guess, young sir, but I’d say their evolutionary shift has stabilized and they’re turning into beings capable of competing with humans on all levels.”
Discharge
Those questions exhausted Wilson’s patience. He downed his drink in one gulp, then escorted us back to the main room, where he returned to gathering up documents for the colonel. Eventually he presented us with a leather folio, similar to the one that housed my precious maps. The scientist wore a hard expression as he handed the papers over to us.
“Make sure you tell Emilia that the pheromones aren’t a solution. The complications I spoke of earlier have a significant impact on the general populace.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
He sighed. “
For some, exposure to mutant pheromones imbues certain irresistible urges. They become violent and in some cases … feral.”
“So they attack and try to eat you?” I was horrified. “How is that better?”
I’d much rather fight Freaks; at least I understood why they hated and wanted to kill us. If they truly remembered everything their people had suffered over the years, then I was right, and they did blame humanity for their pain. That didn’t mean I’d let them annihilate us.
“It’s not,” Wilson said. “I thought if I distilled a compound, based on excretions from the mutant endocrine system, it might make them think this territory was already occupied by their brethren and leave it without need for conflict. That part of the spray works as intended. But I didn’t anticipate how certain human physiologies would react.”
Of that, I only understood that he was coating the area in Freak-stink and it was driving his townsfolk crazy. “That’s the colonel’s plan? Her soldiers will massacre each other.”
“If they’re susceptible. So make sure you tell her, this is not the miracle cure she’s looking for.”
Fade laughed. “She’s not thrilled with us right now. I can’t guarantee she’ll listen.”
“Since I’m not sending any of the treatment with you, she’ll have to send another envoy if she wants to discuss the matter further. I hope not,” Wilson added, looking worried. “I don’t have the personnel to defend the lab if she decides to take the compound by force.”
“Destroy it,” I said flatly.
I could see he was conflicted because it was an idea that he’d had that actually worked, if not as intended, but in the end, he came to the same conclusion. The colonel couldn’t be permitted to unleash this plague on Soldier’s Pond. People using questionable mixtures on one another was what started this trouble in the first place, a long time ago. We didn’t need another mess before we cleaned this one up.
“Now I need you to go. I have work to do and a round of experiments ready to check.”
I put the packet of papers in my pack. “Thanks for your time, Dr. Wilson. We appreciate it more than you can know.”