Chimera (The Subterrene War)

by T. C. McCarthy

  My undersuit had blackened. Portions of it were so charred that they crumbled away to reveal blistered skin, and the pain brought tears so that for a moment everything faded. But there was no way to stop; not now. Chen was close, so I grabbed my knife, stood, and stumbled toward an open doorway, through the burning fat of his children that now covered the tunnel floor.

  Chen sat on a chair in a darkened room where holo images of the complex spun over computer terminals, and mattresses and clothes lay strewn on the floor. He was crying. The man wore a lab coat and his beard had grown in since the picture I’d seen was taken, its hairs clumped as if he hadn’t bathed in some time. Chen stared at me through dirty glasses.

  “They weren’t going to kill you,” he said. “You’re an American.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Those were my children. We would have gone quietly but I thought you were the Chinese, that you had come to get rid of me.”

  I shrugged and glanced around the room, checking for an ambush before stepping inside. “You gave Beijing a lot of ideas, so why would they want you dead? The Chinese sure have fielded a lot of neat things in the last few years, Chen, ones that are sure to kill a lot of people.”

  “Those were mine,” he said. “I know what you’re thinking—that I stole secrets from the US labs—but that’s a lie. I don’t know what they told you, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. Everything I gave the Chinese came from well after I left the US. From me.”

  “Oh. So that’s why you ran like a little bitch, because a radioactive China seemed like an attractive place to retire, in Beijing’s underground rat holes? It had nothing to do with you stealing secrets.” I was already bored with the conversation; Chen was a worm. He didn’t have any idea why I was there, and from his whining it was clear that the guy thought he could talk his way to freedom and make some kind of deal.

  “They were my children!” he screamed, changing the subject. “You had no right to kill them all.”

  I lunged and knocked him from the seat with my fist so that he yelled and grabbed his nose, trying to stop the bleeding. “Those weren’t children, you little shit. They were pets. You created them in a test tube and then kept them around so you could pat yourself on the back—reminders of how smart you think you are.”

  Chen picked himself up and backed away. “You’ve killed me now. Even if I go back to the States with you, the Chinese will send someone no matter where you put me, and they’ll track me to any prison. You murdered replicas of Premier Kang’s children, who died in an accident when they were teenagers; they were my ticket to a pardon.”

  “A what?” It took a moment for his words to sink in before I understood. “You were going to bribe the Chinese with them? Give the premier back his little brats so he’d look the other way on your double cross?”

  “He would have forgiven me, I’m sure of it. But now I’m dead no matter what.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But then you must have also been planning on giving them Sunshine.”

  Chen’s face went pale. “You know of Sunshine?”

  “Yeah, Chen. I just can’t figure out how you convinced the Koreans to leave you behind when they left, why they didn’t kill you and destroy this place.”

  “The Koreans are an interesting people.” His manner had changed in a fraction of a second, and where before he’d been terrified, now he was smiling. Smug. Chen moved toward me, but I held up my knife because he wasn’t a worm after all, more like a snake—one I didn’t want anywhere near me. “I arranged it so that they left me with two of their guards,” he continued, “two who had been tasked with destroying all my data and then assassinating me before they left.”

  “But you had already bribed them,” I finished.

  “Like I said. They’re very interesting. You could make a lot of money too, and all you have to do—”

  I leaned into a side kick, connecting with his stomach so he collapsed to the ground and fought for breath. Chen looked up at me. I knelt beside him and ripped his belt off, using it to tie both ankles to one of his wrists, then spat on the side of his face, trying to control the impulse to sink my knife into his throat. The anger was almost too much to bear. He had no clue how many people had died because of the Chinese genetics, and even if he had, it was unlikely someone like him would care. There was one last thing to accomplish with Chen, and I missed Kristen; she would have been helpful in dealing with him and with the mountains of data I was sure to face.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. “I can’t walk if you tie my feet and hands together; how are you going to carry me?”

  “I’m not going to carry you. And you’re not walking anywhere for now. Where’s your Sunshine data?”

  Chen laughed and shook his head. “You’re crazy. I don’t have any data; the Koreans wouldn’t let me near it once I’d sold it to them. They kept me on a short leash, and their computer experts swept all our systems regularly to make sure I didn’t try to hide anything. It took forever to convince them to negotiate with the Burmese for my lab construction; they never trusted me and wanted me locked up. In Wonsan. But they needed me happy, in case they ran into any obstacles on Sunshine, so I used it as leverage to convince them to give me this: my new home in Burma.”

  “But hiding the data is exactly what you did, isn’t it? I know how greedy crapheads like you work, Chen. If the Koreans paid for it, then someone else would too, right? Only you’d need some way to transfer it to a second buyer, which means you’d need some way to store it. And Burma was an interesting location to pick; who was the next customer? India? Malaysia? Thailand itself?”

  I took the one free hand he had and laid it on the floor, kneeling on his forearm so he couldn’t move. There weren’t any second thoughts. Wheezer wouldn’t have died if it weren’t for the mission, the mission wouldn’t have existed if it weren’t for Sunshine, and the world would be a better place without people like Chen. I slammed the edge of my knife blade down. He screamed with the loss of his thumb and kept screaming in a way that sounded broken, as if Chen couldn’t decide whether to sob or yell.

  “My God that must hurt.” I wiped the blade on his lab coat and then placed it against his index finger. “Where is your data?”

  Through his sobs, Chen managed to speak. “In my pocket. I couldn’t risk storing it on any of the computers or servers.”

  “You have got to be shitting me.” But I reached into his lab coat pocket and yanked out a plastic wallet, inside of which he’d stored multiple data chits. His other pockets were empty.

  “I’m going to tell the Chinese what you did,” Chen whispered. “That you killed the premier’s children.”

  “I’ve seen the Chinese in action. And they wouldn’t give a shit one way or another.”

  Chen saw the flash of light on metal and inhaled to scream, but the knife sliced into his neck and cut it short. There wasn’t any point in wasting more time. And I’d have to risk leaving without destroying the computer equipment because with the loss of my flame unit there wasn’t any way to accomplish that task, and without Kristen there was no time to check every computer and server. I wouldn’t have known what to look for anyway or how to access the systems.

  By now the vibration of the Chinese fusion borer shook the floor as it neared. I sprinted down the hallway, keeping my fingers crossed that I wouldn’t get lost, then almost dove through the access hatch. Who knew how much time I had? For the first time in my life, I was grateful for satos and prayed that they were still in the temple because the mission wasn’t over yet and one thing was sure: I’d need all the help I could get. The Chinese still had scouts between us and Nu Poe, and more would be on their way.

  The mission was over. Now that it had been accomplished and even though we hadn’t done everything we’d been tasked to do, a feeling of satisfaction gave me new energy as I did my best to fit into Margaret’s undersuit and armor. Jihoon was on his feet again but limping, and he grinned at me as I tried to pull her clothes o
n.

  “Those are girl’s hoses.”

  I flipped him off. “Stop staring at me.”

  “I just think you’re sexy. For an asshole. You know you’d better not have to take a leak, because you’ll have to take off your whole freakin’ suit to do that.”

  The satos had gone outside to make sure the area was clear, and by the time I pinched my new armor shut—the carapace so tight that I had trouble breathing—we heard the borer crash into Chen’s complex below with a muffled thump followed by a tremor. I grabbed my carbine and slid into the cloak while we moved. The winding passage lasted longer than felt reasonable, and a sense of urgency made me want to sprint, despite the fact that Margaret’s boots were at least two sizes too small and would soon make walking an agonizing prospect. I plugged the cloak into my suit and powered on. When we moved out into the jungle, my map popped onto my heads-up and we headed east toward the satos’ red dots and into daytime, which meant we’d be more visible to Chinese scouts.

  “I hate them,” Ji hissed over the radio.

  “Who?”

  “Them. Satos.”

  “I told you that you would.”

  He panted as he talked, and I wondered if he’d make it far without passing out. “I didn’t get it. Now I see why you wanted them all wiped. They break my ribs, torture me for days, and then all of a sudden apologize and fill me with micros to fix me up. I still hurt all over.”

  “Are you going to make it all the way back?” I asked. “It might take us two days to get to Nu Poe, longer if we run into trouble.”

  “I don’t care if I have to crawl to get out of here; I’ll make it.”

  The monkeys scurried through the trees overhead, and a sense of panic had infected the jungle, making me uneasy as we jogged through the brush; there was no point in being quiet. Chinese forces would follow aboveground now that their troops had moved into Chen’s complex, and soon the area could be crawling, so I pushed as hard as I could, trusting that the satos had cleared the way ahead. A blurred shape brushed against my shoulder and made me dive. Behind me I heard Jihoon curse, then saw his tracers flick by my head to snap through the leaves until a loud hissing filling my speakers and my goggles frosted over, darkening to protect me from the glare of a thermite grenade.

  Once the fire had died, I stood and looked at the molten wreckage of a Chinese scout; next to it was the body of a sato, her head shredded by Jihoon’s fléchettes just after she had crammed a thermite grenade into the scout’s armor.

  “Jesus Christ, Ji.”

  He sounded panicked. “I didn’t know it was one of them. Shit, Bug, I didn’t know.”

  “How am I going to explain this one?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll cop to it. It was an accident.”

  “No, you won’t; don’t say a word to them.” Jihoon didn’t get it. The girls were perfect at this job, and if he told the truth they’d see his mistake as a serious flaw and could use it as an excuse to wipe him. To them, he would be admitting he was a liability. “Keep your mouth shut and let me handle it.” I looked at her again and kicked a rock. “Goddamn it all.”

  The bushes next to me moved as Ji pushed past. “I don’t know why you’re so freakin’ worried. It’s just a meat machine, right?”

  “One we needed,” I said, following him as we moved out again. “And there’s more to these chicks than you realize. They’re not all crazy.”

  He stopped and threw his hood back so I could see his faceplate. “Are you kidding me? After all you’ve said about them over the last couple of weeks?”

  “They’re all we have buying us time in Thailand. You’re supposed to be the smart one, so think about it. We need every one of these betties alive and fielded to slow the Chinese down until we have a chance to get our forces ashore and into the bush. They’re the only thing in this place that makes any sense.”

  “Holy shit,” said Jihoon. “You’re thinking about taking Margaret’s offer. You want to stay here with them, even after all we’ve seen on this shitty op.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  The dots on my heads-up showed the girls about a hundred meters away, but even as we moved they barely registered because Jihoon had gotten me thinking. It wasn’t a shitty mission. I’d been on tens, maybe hundreds, and this was the first that had made me feel good; getting to Margaret and Chen had mattered and now that it was over, the aftermath hadn’t left me with the feeling that I’d killed one cockroach just to have to chase after a thousand more in some never-ending extermination of rotting girls. The girls were loathsome and always would be—a metaphor of what the world had become and how far down we’d gone as a race—and the realization hit me; I understood why most people hated satos. They were a warning of our impending extinction. Not anytime soon, maybe not for another hundred years, but the way had been mapped and there wouldn’t be any deviating from the genetic singularity that had grabbed hold to pull us across an event horizon we’d been too stupid to recognize and avoid. So hating them made sense, revulsion a normal reaction to a situation from which there would be no escape, the same way most people hated to think about the fact that someday they’d die. Who didn’t go through life hoping to live forever? Satos were bitches to the average soldier on the line because although they didn’t know it, a part of their subconscious keyed into it instantaneously—that they were a million times inferior to the girls, who were a million times removed from what your average person defined as “normal.” Satos were like a flashing neon sign: say good-bye to the old definition of humanity because we’re your future.

  Now Korea would have Sunshine, and as soon as I gave up the data, then America would have it too, and I could almost imagine the day when our efforts at gene therapy, organ replacement, bioenhancement, and everything else on the menu would merge with the wholesale creation of artificial life in a tank. Breeding stations were already obsolete—maybe families too—and nobody knew it. But now I did. All I had to do was see the little family that Chen had created, and it opened the door to an infinite number of questions, like how long would it be before some rich senator in DC would pay anything to have someone recreate a child she’d lost to a car accident or a tornado? How long until a black market popped up to fill the need? Exhaustion and old age combined within the jungle to make everything crystal clear until it became a thing of beauty for one reason: I accepted the reality of my role. I was a killer. The path chosen by the Chinese was one branch on a tree that had an infinite number of branches, and although I couldn’t stop us from moving forward with genetics, there was a chance to help the world from taking Beijing’s route—one that involved turning men and women into animals, into armored slaves. It hadn’t been a shitty mission at all, and I was tired of running from the truth because we’d created a world in which Phillip would have to grow and it would be my job to open his eyes. Mine had been ripped open—the eyelids stripped. But here, in the bush, his awakening to the newness would be like a gentle immersion where he’d have decades to acquaint himself with the scientific frontier, a wild west complete with a balance of horrors and promise. Better than the tanks. Better than a school.

  Jihoon had been right. Killers belonged in the field. Killers belonged together, and my hatred of the girls was probably never going to leave, but for now at least we both had the same goal—murdering Chinese—and that was enough. The mission hadn’t changed anything in me; it had just made me see the same stuff in a new light, and if I stayed, the satos and I could slaughter an entire branch of human evolution to save another, one that was a little more palatable.

  We joined with the girls in an area that sloped downward and had been cleared by a recent mudslide. “Your girl is dead,” I said, hoping it would preclude any questions about what had happened. “Let’s keep moving.”

  “The other man is slow,” one of them said, clicking into the private frequency.

  “So?”

  “Death and faith. We do as you say. But we w
ould move faster without him, and he could stay behind to hold off any pursuing Chinese.”

  “There are no pursuing Chinese,” I said, pissed off because she was right. “So for now we make sure he stays with us.”

  The girl sounded strange, and at first I thought she was growling at me, until I realized that she was crying. “You took our Lily. Margaret is dead and so now we follow you, but some of us will not forget how it happened.”

  “Margaret was ready to go. You’ll do as I say or you can join her because I just don’t give a shit right now. Move.”

  We set out in a jog, and my feet threatened to burst through the sides of my boots so that already they started to blister; the pace was going to kill us if the Chinese didn’t. Twice Jihoon slipped as we descended the gentle slope of the mountain, and the last time he didn’t stop until he landed against a banyan tree, his chameleon skin deactivated when his forearm controls inadvertently triggered. Everyone froze. At first I didn’t know why I stopped because the bugs around us started chirping immediately, suggesting that for the moment nobody was around us; but there was a feeling—like the air inside my suit had gotten heavier, the input from my speakers tinged with threat. Then, from behind us in the direction of the temple, came a distant crash.

  “They have arrived,” one of the girls said.