by Ana Calin
“Why did you bring me here, Damian?”
No reply, but his gaze on me felt intense. My fingers sought something to keep busy and calm the nerves. They finally settled on the rim of the tablecloth, as did my eyes.
“Look, before you lay down the said list of rules or anything, I’d like one thing to be crystal clear between us: I can see whomever I want. I’m not going to live like a hermit because you want to be sure I don’t reveal too much, or just because you’re playing overprotective out of a sense of debt to my dad. And, after all, if you’re so eager to prove your respect and loyalty, you might as well stop banging his bitch.”
The last part might’ve come out a little bitter. The table tilted under Damian’s weight as he leaned toward me, so close that I felt his breath on my cheek.
“Listen, Alice, and listen carefully. You are to keep Anton Anghel at arm’s length, and you’ll cut his visiting schedule.”
I stuck my chin out and glared at him with all I had. God, this man had a way of driving me nuts. “I won’t tell him anything, so there’s no reason why he should inconvenience you, is there?”
“I’m the only thing that stands between you and BioDhrome, Alice,” he stressed, now very close. “The man at Marvimex – Giant, as you like to call him – he’s still on to you, and he’s not a joke. He’s a hit man, a highly dangerous hit man. But make no mistake, he’s not BioDhrome’s only instrument. He’s not enough, since I’m in his way. So they will use other people as well. People you’re vulnerable to. They have enough money to pay an army of pawns. Haven’t you wondered for one second why Anton would show up now and not at any other time? Why are you so blind? He has a hidden agenda, even a child would see that.”
I narrowed my eyes, unable to resist the urge of biting back. “Of that I’m well aware, Damian. Whatever you do, don’t take me for an idiot. What happened in the mountains might’ve left my face unscarred by some miracle, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to lose the paranoia. With Tony I’m trying, you know. Just trying to bond with people again, and who could be more suitable for such an exercise if not someone I know well. Someone from whom I know what to expect. But now that we speak of things even a child would see . . . If BioDhrome is so big a hydra, your organization – their antagonists – must be just as big and nasty in order to be able to fight them, am I right?”
Damian leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. The shirt tightened on his rocky arms, making his shoulders and chest look even broader. I bit my lip in a useless attempt to suppress the feeling in my lower belly.
“We’re big and nasty enough.”
“Should I take it that you’re also powerful enough to finance operations such as BioDhrome’s as well?”
“I would appreciate it if you would lower your voice.”
A few glances around the room, and I noticed what he was worried about—giggling girls at the bar to our left, their eyes groping Damian, and funneled ears from the tables nearby. The waiter, a tall and lean boy of around twenty in an apron, pretended to clear a table in the nearest corner. His attention was fixed on us – I could tell since he used the moment of silence to glide in and ask for our order.
He acted particularly friendly, with a beaming smile and cute dimples that Damian brusquely made vanish. All business – straight back, frown and all – he was fast with a harsh and concise order – I would have Penne Carbonara and so would he, along with mineral water and jasmine tea.
The boy didn’t wait to be dismissed, but scurried away as soon as Damian’s jaw set. He looked angry. It gave me the chills, but I’d be damned if I’d show it.
“Since when do you decide what I have?” I redirected the fear into annoyance.
His jaw still clenched, he spoke through his teeth. “Penne Carbonara is your favorite dish, though you’re so skinny no one would say.” He looked me up and down. “And it’s the only thing you ever had in this dump.”
“And you just happen to know that?”
“I have a file on you. It’s highly important that I know all there is to know about you.”
“All there is to know?” I decided not to overdo it since I didn’t really mind. “How long have you been keeping this file?”
“For a while now.”
“How long, Damian?”
“If it makes you feel better, it was a necessity, not a pleasure.”
Ouch. Blood raced to my cheeks.
“Well, I’m sorry you had to endure that kind of hardship. Studying me must have been just awful,” I whispered, fingers pulling at the rim of the table cloth. “Of course, you had your reasons. I didn’t mean to suggest that you were . . . in any way . . . you know, interested . . . not in that way. That never, ever crossed my mind.”
“I’m sorry.” He reached over the table and touched my arm. Those imbecile butterflies went all crazy again, and I swore to God I’d choke them or die trying. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No, I know.” I looked at him and took in every detail of his face as I continued. “Don’t worry about Tony either. I’m not offering him my trust wrapped with a ribbon or anything, I’m just trying to live a normal life. I need a distraction, you know, in order to relieve the memory of all that’s happened. And it won’t be only Tony, you might see me with other guys, too. But I won’t mind if you’re around to watch. Watch over me, that is.”
I looked up and smirked, and Damian Novac looked astounded. Oh, it felt like balm on my ego.
The waiter brought our drinks at that very point. I took the opportunity to look at him. Just a short glance and a shy smile, of course, I didn’t want to overdo it and risk Damian seeing through my strategy. But the delight was over sooner than the taste of lukewarm jasmine tea on my tongue.
Damian’s eyes flashed. “These games are dangerous, and you shouldn’t abuse your powers.”
What?
He leaned in closer, and I felt his hand wrap around my thigh under the table. It paralyzed me. Its warmth permeated through my jeans, the buzz spreading to my womb. I exhaled slowly to keep my heart rate from shooting up.
“As you might have noticed, things are different about you lately,” he said. “I think you should know exactly what happened in the mountains, and how it changed you in order to make sure that you understand the situation. You see,” he lowered his voice to a dark whisper, his hand kneading my thigh, sending waves of static all through my body. “BioDhrome agents had been lurking in the woods by the cottage days before we arrived there. They derailed the train, too, but I guess you figured that out yourself – if I learned anything about you, it’s that you’re very smart. But even so, I don’t believe you realize how they did it. No person with their wits about them would. I could tell you, but you wouldn’t believe me.”
Try me, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. I only looked long and deep into his eyes.
“Keep contact,” he said, and I understood he referred to my gaze.
Then, slowly, he turned his head in the direction of the door, leaning slightly back to be able to see behind the bar, the end of which was right next to our table. All he had to do was extend his hand to touch it.
Soon the eyes spying us followed his gaze, curious as to the subject of his interest and leaving us unobserved for a few moments. The corner table that Pretty Waiter Boy had cleaned earlier was still unoccupied, while the group behind Damian, drunk and absorbed in their poetry, kept their backs at us. In a flash of complete privacy, Damian’s hand dashed towards the bar and touched it with just two fingers. Then I swear that the finest hairs stood all over me.
He didn’t seem to be straining at all as he pushed the heavy oak that sustained over three meters of drinks, mixers and other bar-props in its drawers. It lifted slightly, just enough to expose an inch of metal fittings that anchored it to the floor.
The scene lasted only a second, then the mass of wood settled back on the ground, Damian’s fingers seemingly guiding it and preventing a loud drop. But they didn’t stop the blast in my bra
in.
“What in God’s name!” As if bitten by a snake, I flexed to jump up. But Damian’s hand, covering most of my left thigh, revealed its purpose there – it instantly turned into a concrete cuff that moored me down.
“This is how they did it,” he whispered, eyes fixed on mine.
“This is freaking impossible,” I stressed through my teeth. Didn’t lean in though, instinctively keeping distance from him. My heart slammed frantically against my chest. “You’re freaking Hulk strong!”
“Keep it together,” he warned, hand still hard on my leg. With a glance around he made me aware that my reaction had drawn attention back at us. He was once again very close, his breath warm on my cheek, the scent of fresh wood strong in my nostrils. “Listen, Alice. BioDhrome agents are different. They’re what we call Upgrades – upgraded humans. That means they can do things that normal people cannot do. Things like hoisting a train carriage off tracks with their bare hands, as unthinkable as that may sound. Giant is one of these Upgrades.”
He paused, searching my face as if to assess if I was ready for more of this. I broke into low laughter. Part of my wit was still about me, as he would put it, thinking this could only be bullshit, while part of me based judgment on the extreme experience in the mountains and on what I’d just seen Damian do. Catwoman and Dracula may be pure fantasy, but his inhuman strength was freaking real.
“As are you,” I whispered. “You’re an Upgrade. An agent.”
“Not an agent.”
“Still, you’re a bad guy. You said it yourself.”
With his stare still hard and fixed on mine he said, “Bad guy or not, I’m your best hope of staying alive.”
“But you’re one of BioDhrome’s projects.”
“One of their hitmen once, to be exact.”
BAM! My head went light.
“Which means nobody knows them better than I do, Alice,” he continued, “but I still can’t foresee everything. This is why I need you to cooperate, for your own safety. The hit in the mountains had been prepared days in advance, as I told you. The peasants in the village had been intoxicated with the gas in their homes until they lost control the way our group later did at the cottage. They attacked each other and devastated the entire place, which is what our group would’ve come to if you hadn’t baited them out of there. You saved many lives, Alice, and I admire your courage. What you did was a special and rare thing. But the gas effects are a complex matter.”
“The gas must be a complex substance . . .”
“Less so than you imagine, actually. Despite the appearances, it isn’t the inhaled gas that makes you stronger. The gas only unlocks possibilities that are already there. It gives your genes a kick, if you want. The chemicals your body produces settle at a specific level – just an infinitely small unit above or under that level would’ve produced no unusual effects – and your body starts to perfect itself, so to say. Everything about you takes a huge step towards perfection, and your looks make no exception.”
Here his voice caught menacing undertones. The corner of his mouth crooked up. “Which brings us back to Mr. Dimples, Anton Anghel and, well, men in general. You see, your body starts to perfect itself, each trait when claimed. For example, after you’ve fallen down that ravine in the mountains, you needed the ability to self-heal. So your brain activated it. Which is why the traumas of fight and fall left no marks on you. And that night at Marvimex – that night you needed your looks as weapon.
“Yes, that’s right. You needed to soften an attacker whom you wouldn’t have had a chance of escaping otherwise. Your reptilian brain knew that, it did its calculations in a split second. Your attacker was much stronger, fighting him or outrunning him were out of the question, so your only chance was seduction. It’ll take a while until this extraordinary physical attractiveness will deactivate and go into hibernation until needed again, the way your ability for self-healing did.
“So you see, poor Mr. Dimples never stood a chance, and I’m aware that neither does Anton Anghel. I don’t doubt that he’s into you, Alice, it’s pretty hard not to be under the circumstances, but that still doesn’t explain his popping into the picture at this very point. Which brings us to the reason I brought you here of all places.”
Slowly, his hand withdrew from my leg, but his eyes glinted, intense as he stared deep into mine.
“I have information that Anton Anghel works for BioDhrome, and that he has a contact person in here. This is where Anghel spends his entire time whenever he’s not waiting for you at the cafeteria, by the way. I’m told he never attends his own classes, never sets foot in his university. All he does is drink himself senseless and write poetry, fantasizing without a hope of making it big one day.
“It turns out my informers were correct – the person who links Anghel to BioDhrome already reacted to our presence. He started texting feverishly under the table, and he’ll leave the place in a hurry when he thinks he found a good moment – since I’m busy with you; had I come alone or with irrelevant people, he would’ve felt watched every second, and wouldn’t have made the same decisions; he would’ve been more cautious.
“My men are outside, and they’ll follow him. He will guide us to BioDhrome’s front-line, and from there we’ll follow other leads to its leader – whom I’ll crush once and for all.” The last words were a low threat that sent chills crawling down my spine.
“Why so radical?” I breathed, my eyes scanning the place for the man Damian talked about.
“You still ask? Weren’t they radical with us? Alice, they would’ve let you die in pain in the mountains, or tortured you to upgrading.”
“Is that what they did with you? Torture?”
His eyes remained hard on mine, but the answer was there.
“Did you tell my dad?” Tears lurked behind my words. “Does he know what you’ve been through?”
“He does.”
“He’s the only person you ever trusted with that secret, isn’t he?” I inquired softly.
He hesitated, then answered plainly, “Svetlana knows, too.”
Jealousy punched me full in the stomach. I forgot all about Tony and BioDhrome. “Of course, your sweetheart knows. She knew who and what you were all along.” I grew vehement, though keeping it low. “You’re surely working together.”
“Let’s leave Svetlana out of this.”
“Are you protecting her?”
“It’s not that.”
“What is it then, Damian?” I snapped. “I know she dug out the story Marius Iordache published about you nine years ago, and I know she somehow confronted you with it. Leona told me about that night at the Bourbon Pub.” An idea hit me. “It’s Svetlana who recruited you and got you on the antagonists’ side, isn’t it?”
Before I even realized it happening, Damian lifted my chin with two fingers, his stare hard as if I were an errant child who needed to get things inside her head once and for all.
“Listen, Alice. I’ve been working with BioDhrome’s antagonists – the Order of Lords by their true name – ever since I left BioDhrome almost a decade ago. Svetlana couldn’t have had anything to do with it, as you must realize.”
“What made you switch sides then, if not a beautiful woman?” I spewed.
“The promise of becoming something other than a beast engineered into a killing machine.” The deep tar in his voice gave me goose bumps. “I proved potential, that’s why I advanced so rapidly in BioDhrome’s assassins’ ranks. But with them, I had to obey orders. With the Order of Lords I get to decide when to use my skills. There’s no one to tell me who I am to take down, I make my own decisions.”
“You’re still a hitman, then? Only that you work for someone else?” A part of me slapped the other. What did you expect he was doing with the blades under his sleeves, carving pottery?
“I don’t work as an assassin. That’s a pleasure I grant myself once in a while, when I run into scumbags like BioDhrome’s Upgrades.”
“Pleasure? You
find pleasure in killing?”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
“Hell, no. I don’t understand, Damian. You kill people!”
“Lower your voice,” he hushed me. “We didn’t come here to have this conversation.”
“No, we came here so you could lay down some stupid set of rules that I won’t follow.” I tried to stand. In a second his hand was back on my thigh, keeping me down.
“Those I kill are not what I’d call people, Alice.”
“That’s what all fanatics think about their victims. What Hitler thought of the Jews.”
“No, this is different.” His grip tightened so much that it hurt. “I hunt creatures like myself, criminals engineered into Upgrades, into killers normal men don’t stand a chance against. You must understand, what BioDhrome does with men like me, it’s . . . it’s like enhancing deranged murderers, turning them into Terminators. That is giving them power, Alice, physical strength beyond measure, brains to rival geniuses, and good looks. But on the inside we’re still the rotten devils we were born to be. We’re hideous, and we should be squashed like the creepers we are before we get to do too much harm.” His voice grew softer, his touch on my thigh turning into a strange caress. “But Alice, no human, no matter how strong and well-trained, could take out someone like Giant. For that you need another Upgrade. You need a monster like me. That’s the only thing that justifies my existence, and that enables me to live with myself. I only seek to eradicate my own kind. A cause I share with all Upgrades in the Order of Lords.”
Chapter Twelve
“I guess you’re not that rotten after all,” I said. “Maybe you weren’t born a beast, but a guardian of mankind. All right, maybe that’s a bit pompous. What I mean is, since you went for med school, and hunt down creatures that mean us harm, you must like normal people.”
“Normal people.” He smiled, looking boyish and vulnerable for a moment in a way that made my head spin. “When I switched sides Alice, I did it for this very reason. Normal people don’t have a chance of surviving if these oppressors ever decide they want this world all for themselves. You know, all that speculation about alien contacts, about angels and demons walking this Earth, they have their roots somewhere. Humans are highly sensitive and sensorial creatures, so they sensed there was something so much like and at the same time so unlike them out there. In the absence of information they resorted to archetypal models such as demons and angels, which they later transferred to fantasy characters like vampires, aliens and superheroes to explain what their sixth sense told them – that human potential is limitless.”