Once I was alone I started crying; it didn’t make any sense. We’d come all this way only to have the jungle betray us, and I wondered if the satos back at Nu Poe had let us live just so Margaret could have the fun of torturing Ji and me for a few days. It had all been a waste of time. Despite the sweltering heat, the room’s stone floor was cold and I tried to press my bad eye against it to help reduce the swelling. The exhaustion and pain combined to overwhelm me; within a few seconds I passed out again, which was a welcome relief from reality.
Margaret shook me awake, and I had no idea how much time had elapsed. There were no windows in the cell, but she had her candle to alleviate the darkness.
“It’s a life with great purpose,” she said, “killing the Burmese and Chinese. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
“I don’t see any purpose except for sport.”
Margaret pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and I almost drooled. She placed one between my lips and lit it so I could breathe and let the nicotine wash over receptors that had been screaming for it for days, calming as soon as the drug hit them. Even the pains from hunger and lack of water vanished.
“It is a sport. Those who win get to shape the world. The Chinese are a scourge and have no concept of God, and you have no right to decide whether we’re right or wrong in our determination. We’ve spoken to them. Captured them and interrogated them. The Chinese have no concept of what it’s like to live outside their armor; their metal frames are to them as limbs are to us, and their ceramic is their skin. So why did I call them human? I lied. They are animals, and the scouts we trapped using you and your partner are searching for something, scouring the jungle for indications of a thing the Chinese want very badly, and I wonder if you’re too stupid to realize what that thing is.”
I gripped the cigarette between my lips, wanting it to last forever and scared that it might drop if I spoke. I clenched it between my teeth and mumbled, my voice a dry croak.
“You have an advantage; I haven’t had the chance to interrogate one.”
“The Chinese thought it would be easy to walk through our defensive line; they don’t even consider Germline units a threat because to them we’re inferior. Obsolete. They want Thai resources—metallic and genetic. When they take a country, they absorb its occupants for experimentation, looking for new and advantageous traits that they can insert into future production models. Eventually they will cover the world with one race, half-machine, half-synthetic man. But there’s a problem, and it’s called Sunshine.”
I drew on the cigarette again, deeply, and held the smoke in before speaking; now I understood where she was going, and the thought of my mission returned, the excitement making me feel better. “Chen. They want Chen.”
Margaret nodded. “They want Chen.”
“Why? What does he have, and why is Sunshine such a threat?”
“Because,” she said, walking behind me so that I couldn’t see her. The sound of water pouring broke the silence, and she lowered a bowl of it to the ground in front of my face, then poured more of it over my body, working her way from my neck to my feet. It was unbelievably cool, and my muscles relaxed to the point where I thought I’d fall asleep again.
“Sunshine,” Margaret continued, “is the brain child of Chen, who realized that what the Chinese intended was unholy, so disgusting that even a mercenary like him couldn’t be paid enough to be a part of their plans. So he escaped from the Beijing underground. And with him he took an idea that he then sold to the Koreans, an idea that he’d held from the Chinese because it would render even their forces obsolete. A chimeric race. A mixture of animal and man, with proteins so elastic and inhuman that to produce them would truly be an act of creation, something that even God may never have envisioned.”
“I’m not a biologist,” I said. “And I’m tired. I don’t get it.”
“Shape-shifters. Chen’s Sunshine, if successful, would create a race of beings that would be able to take many forms, man or animal. Armored or not, the things would be fearless and absolutely loyal to those who created them, and could appear in the form of enemy troops and infiltrate at any time. The idea is genius. Chen is a long way from perfecting it, but he made enough progress that when the Chinese learned of his defection and found some of his notes, they came here to Burma. For him. Thailand and the South China Sea are also priorities, but ones that they are willing to postpone. We learned this by playing with Chinese scouts and by capturing one of their division level officers and then torturing him until he broke.”
The words spun in my head as I put the pieces together—the armor schematics from Spain and everything else. Now that I’d seen the Chinese in action I understood why the Koreans had worked against the Genetic Weapons Convention in secret and why the US had decided to leave it. Beijing had grown powerful. China hadn’t signed the convention, and now that they had started spreading into Burma, it wouldn’t be long before someone would have to deal with them. Sunshine was hope. It wasn’t something to be feared, and I wondered if the brass knew the details, would they still want me to kill Chen, but it didn’t matter. He’d helped the Chinese get to where they were today, and for that alone he deserved to die. It was still a shitty mission; but now it was the best one I’d ever had.
“I have to find him,” I said. “Please let me go. My job is to find him and get all his data.”
“And kill him?” she asked.
“And kill him.”
Margaret sat again and lit her own cigarette. Mine was finished, and I tried to drink from the bowl, but it was difficult, and I had to kneel with both legs spread as far as I could get them, leaning over the bowl to lap at the water with my tongue. I couldn’t get enough. My throat screamed from being so parched, and I finally resorted to sticking my face in the bowl and sucking in as much water as I could.
“I’m too old,” said Margaret. She blew smoke and stared at the candle, her eyes seeing something that wasn’t there. “It’s been years since Catherine left us, and now I understand what she had been trying to teach me.”
“What?”
“That I was born to die. War is all I have, and war is how I’ll leave this world, so to fear death is useless.” She stood and walked toward the door, saying one last thing before she left. “You are an interesting man. Interesting to us for many reasons, and the things you said to your partner last night during our hunt, those rang. It reminded us of what it was like when we first stepped from the tanks, when the ateliers were everything perfect. Sleep. We’ll talk more of your mission when you’ve recovered because there is something I need you to do.”
The next few days passed in a blur. Satos came into the cell to deliver a cot and dressed my burns and shoulder with microbots so that the invisible things repaired damaged tissues in a matter of hours, but at some point I came down with a fever. It wasn’t anything serious, but the wounds and days of marching followed by torture were too much, and in that weakened state, infection found a willing host. The fever passed within a couple of days. By that time I was nearly normal and sane enough to wonder if they had made the effort to torture me and then nurse me back to health just to start the whole process over again. But I remembered what Margaret had said and thought that it was unlikely; she had a bigger plan in mind, and whatever it was, it required that I be well enough to walk under my own power.
I had just woken from a nap when three girls entered, removed my undersuit, and then dressed me in a loose sarong. They handed me a combat knife.
“What’s this for?” I asked.
“Follow us,” one said.
“Not unless you tell me why I need a knife.”
But they stared at me without answering until I walked toward the door, and then the girls followed me through the temple’s narrow passages, telling me where to turn as we moved through a maze. We stepped into the temple’s main chamber. It was nighttime, and the satos had filled the room with hundreds of candles so that it glowed with a yellow light, and Jihoon sat on the floo
r, his hands still bound and his chin touching his chest. He looked unconscious.
Margaret knelt in the middle of the floor, praying, and looked up at me. “You are better now.”
“Thanks. Let my partner go.”
“He isn’t worthy. And you don’t give the orders.”
I lifted the knife and held it by the blade. “This a gift?”
“Not really. We got it from your equipment.” Margaret pointed to the floor, and the other girls formed a loose circle with her at its center. “Sit with me and talk, Lieutenant.”
I sat and rested the knife on the floor. “You said we’d talk more about my mission. About Chen. Where is he?”
“He is here. All around us.”
“What?” She was speaking softly now, almost whispering, which put me on edge. “What are you talking about?”
“This temple is Chen’s. His research institute is about a kilometer below us, where the fool thought he’d be safe from the Chinese and from me. The main entrance is outside Moulmein, and when the Chinese entered Burma, he panicked and blew the only access tunnel, but even now they dig to get at him. We estimate that Chinese forces will reach Chen by tomorrow morning at the latest.”
It hit me then—the warm air that we’d felt when I first entered with Jihoon days ago. The temple had never been abandoned; it had never been inhabited in the first place because the thing was nothing more than camouflage, a smoke screen designed to hide the workings of Chen’s complex.
“Air handling?” I asked.
“Air handling. A service duct runs from a chamber below us and down to the institute’s main pumping station where they pull clean air from the top of the mountain and expel it here, routing it through the temple’s entrance tunnel to allow time for the exhaust temperature to equilibrate. That way, it won’t show up on Chinese sensors.”
“Why haven’t you gone down after him?”
Margaret sighed and then turned her head to stare at me. “Because I’m tired, Lieutenant. I can’t see anything except for the fact that soon we’ll be gone; there’s no replacing me or my sisters once we pass.”
I shook my head. “There are thousands of satos still in Thailand. You won’t be going anywhere soon.”
“Not true. There are thousands, but now that we see the way, that we’re to die and that it is a blessing, we take more risks. We die more quickly every day. Who will lead the Gra Jaai when we’re spent?”
“How about one of the Gra Jaai?” It was a logical answer, and I couldn’t understand why succession was even an issue since her followers were so fanatic.
Margaret sighed again and looked away. “No. Most don’t have a great deal of experience, and none have seen our birthplace, America, or have the benefit of the kind of training it can give its soldiers. They are brave, but what we feed them in the tanks is subadequate and lacks programs to address modern weapons systems. We need someone who can help with all these things. A human man or woman.” I saw where she was going and started to get a sick feeling, wondering if I’d known it would come to this all along. “You. Only you can lead them. You have age and experience none of them can match and might be able to convince your superiors to provide you with modern tank-training programs. Also, you know the Americans and yet haven’t been corrupted, don’t trust them, and don’t want to go home. Why is that, Lieutenant?”
I looked at Jihoon and saw he was hurting. Other than that, his condition wasn’t clear from that distance, and all I wanted to do was check on him, but Margaret wouldn’t have allowed it and it enraged me—to have to waste time like this, talking. And what she suggested was beyond comprehension; Margaret didn’t know me at all, or she’d have known I was no leader.
“You’re insane,” I whispered. “I don’t want to go back to the States because it isn’t my home anymore. You wouldn’t understand. And I don’t know anything about the Gra Jaai or your religion so to pick me as some kind of replacement—even if I wanted the job—makes no sense at all.”
“You don’t have to understand them or their religion, Lieutenant. If I select you, you become their religion. From everything I’ve heard you are already like us, already a killer, or you wouldn’t have been able to hunt the way you have for the past several years.”
The satos around us stood ramrod straight and stared at nothing, carbines slung over their right shoulders. A white number 1 had been painted on their chests. Each of them wore the same kind of protective cloak Jihoon and I had worn, rolled up and tossed over their left shoulder along with the bulky hood. This was her personal guard. Even if the satos weren’t fearless already, I suspected that these girls would throw themselves in the path of anything to save Margaret, and it impressed me that someone in this world still had that kind of dedication.
“I don’t believe in anything,” I said. “That’s why I’m good at killing. I just don’t care anymore, and all I want is to complete my mission and get a child back. That’s it.”
“Then you and your partner die.” The way she said it, so casually, as if she’d just said we should go for a walk, shocked me.
“What, here? Now?”
Margaret nodded and stood, unbuckling her combat suit and wriggling out of it until she wore only her undersuit. A knife glittered in her right hand. “Now. You promised you’d kill me that night in the clearing, and I can’t turn down the challenge; it’s our way. Pick up your knife.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why not just shoot the crap out of each other with carbines?”
“Get up.”
I lifted the knife and rose, taking a step back. “This is crazy. You’re crazy. All I want is to get Chen and have someone look at Jihoon. They don’t want me to kill you, Margaret.”
“I want you to die,” she hissed and then leaped, just as fast as Lucy had or the ones I’d encountered on the street in Australia.
Margaret slammed her shoulder into me and swung her knife toward my stomach so that I had to roll away, landing on the hard marble with a grunt before jumping to my feet. She came again. There was no waiting with this one, and the sense that she had an infinite supply of energy startled me, forced me onto the defensive so that with each attack I moved farther back and closer to one of her girls until my elbow struck the cold ceramic of armor. The girl pushed me toward Margaret, and I stumbled, almost falling onto her knife; the mistake forced me to slam my head into her stomach to keep from falling, and I twisted away from the blade so that it missed my chest, instead cutting through the skin of my shoulder.
Margaret grinned and pointed to the blood running down my arm. “Don’t be afraid. Everyone makes the journey at some point.”
I shook my head. Sweat dripped from my forehead to the floor, making the spot slippery; I stood still as long as possible, letting the blood and sweat fall to form a tiny puddle at my feet. “I’m not scared. I’m tired. I’ve lived in a combat suit for so long that until now I couldn’t remember using an actual bathroom. My ass hurts. My arms and legs ache all the time. I’m old, Margaret, and you’ll never make it to my age because you’re a psycho bitch.”
Her smile disappeared, and Margaret lunged forward so that I barely dodged the knife, but she’d expected the move and slammed her fist into my windpipe so that I grabbed my throat in an effort to breathe, my shoulder screaming with pain now that the initial shock of being cut had worn off. She backed off. A few feet away, Margaret crouched and grinned as she passed the knife from one hand to the other, and I stretched, moving my head from side to side and pretending not to care what happened next, but I did care. She was inching forward again, toward the slick spot on the floor, and I prayed to anything out there that she’d take another step. When she did, I attacked.
Margaret blocked my knife on its way down and sliced at my chest. I backed away. She started to jump forward, trying to press the attack home, but her foot slipped on the wet floor, and as she fell I kicked upward into her face, putting all the energy I had into the blow and screaming with the effort so that when my foot conn
ected with a crunch I grinned, unable to contain my joy. Margaret’s head snapped back. From there conscious decision gave way to an instinct born from having to deal with her kind for years, and my knife arm almost had a will of its own when it flashed forward so the blade slammed into her exposed chest. She looked at me in terror and gasped when I used my other hand to slam against the knife’s grip, forcing the blade to pop out the other side. She collapsed to the floor then, still breathing but fading fast.
I knelt beside her. “I freakin’ hated you. I wanted this for a long time, but what the hell were you thinking?”
“And now?” she whispered, so quietly that I had to lean over. “How do you feel about me now?”
“Now I hate you even more. I’m no leader, Margaret. When the Chinese return, they’ll be ready for your tricks, and this time they’ll dig; they’ll hit your people underground where they’re defenseless. Thailand is gone.”
She smiled and reached to brush the hair from my forehead. “You’re ugly, Lieutenant. And you’re right that you’re no leader because you’re so stupid. Things were put in motion a long time ago so that by the time you return to Nu Poe, we will be ready. And you don’t have to be a leader for the Gra Jaai to follow, you can even be a stupid killer. Just help them and let God lead.” As soon as she finished the sentence, Margaret’s eyes went blank and her arm fell limp to the floor.
A single girl started wailing, but the rest of them smiled. I stood and made way so they could crowd around the body where they produced a white sheet, covering Margaret from head to toe in a rough fabric so that the final product resembled a cocoon. When they’d finished, one of them approached me and bowed her head.
Chimera (The Subterrene War) Page 26