Acceptance has never been an easy thing. Harry and Anastasia, newly married, find out love may not be enough. Monsters are out there... and they’re waiting.
Harry and Anastasia are back, this time married and attempting to fit into society. When another transgenic emerges—a mole-man named Leonardo—he tells them an old friend, Istvan, a pig-man, long thought dead, is still alive.
Doing the right thing, Harry and Anastasia go to investigate and find out other transgenics are alive, well, and led by yet another madman, bent on destruction. The trail begins in Italy, and continues on to France, Spain, and finally back to the United States.
As if that wasn’t enough, Anastasia is pregnant and Harry has to worry about her, the baby, and the plans of the madman who hates all transgenics and wants to see them eliminated. Anastasia’s life is threatened as is the life of her baby, and with the outcome far from certain, the quest continues.
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Separation
Copyright © 2016 J.S. Frankel
ISBN: 978-1-4874-0710-0
Cover art by Carmen Waters
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
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Smashwords Edition
Separation
Catnip Book Four
By
J.S. Frankel
Dedication
For my wife, Akiko, and my children, Kai and Ray, as you are all my greatest adventure.
Chapter One: Life at Home
Catskill Mountains, New York State, the present
Harry Goldman awoke early in the morning and watched as the sunbeams poked their way through the window of the cabin. He wondered what kind of research he’d be doing later on. The place was the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. The clock on the night table next to the bed read six-thirty. As for the date, it was June fourteenth. Finally, he assessed his current situation... perfect. With that assessment, a smile broke across his face.
Summertime now, warm and lazy days past and upcoming, he sat up and stretched, his furry limbs extending and twisting lazily in the cool air. Everything had been peaceful for the last few months. No interruptions, no battles, and best of all, his wife, Anastasia, lay sleeping beside him.
For anyone at his age—nineteen—it might have seemed a little young to get married. Too early, opined the experts. Too unusual, said the scientists. What would happen if they procreated? Too unlawful, said the courts.
Concerning point number one, it was a matter of opinion. As for point number two, who cared? However, with number three, it happened to be the biggest bone of contention.
At first, the authorities didn’t know whether it was legal to marry them. “This is a case that will set a precedent,” said their lawyer. “You have to admit, this is somewhat out of the ordinary.”
Somewhat out of the ordinary was just an expression, but it encompassed so many possibilities. Harry and Anastasia were anything but ordinary. As hybrids—or transgenic creations, a mixture of feline and human created by science—they could not be considered anything other than extraordinary.
Arguments for and against the legalization of their marriage took place in the US Supreme Court. The media had a field day with it, and Harry and Anastasia became celebrities, but not by choice.
In a statement to the press, Harry said, “I was born in Portland. I am an American citizen. Anastasia was born in Russia, but she has attained American citizenship, and we are both legal residents of this great state of New York. I see no reason why our marriage should not be allowed.”
Simple words, but they were most persuasive. Pundits and pseudo-experts argued for and against their marriage, but in the end, wiser heads prevailed. The judges took into account Harry and Anastasia’s former human status, the fact of their citizenry, and the fact that it was an election year. A couple of months after they’d filed their claim, Harry received a phone call from his lawyer. “Go ahead,” he said.
Harry and Anastasia got married the same day at City Hall, and the justice of the peace was only too happy to perform the ceremony, complete with pictures and a wedding cake she’d purchased out of pocket.
Carefully slipping out of bed so as not to wake his wife, Harry pulled on a pair of boxer shorts and padded over to the window to gaze out upon the greenery of the forest surrounding their cabin. A single dirt road led up to the place, and the nearest residence lay about a mile to the east.
Call this the ultimate getaway. They had privacy. They had food delivered every week by their handler at the FBI, although some of the other permanent residents of the Catskills dropped by from time to time. It made for good conversation. Drop in on the cat people, talk to them, and maybe even get a picture.
Then there were the true friends. Harry’s best friend, Jason Parham, a computer expert and all-around nerd he’d known since junior high school, lived in the city. His girlfriend Tina, another code-cracker, lived near him. They worked for the FBI as experts in computer surveillance and tracking, although Tina did most of the practical work. Jason was into gaming and anything anime, and he came along strictly as backup to his more Internet-savvy girlfriend.
In his last email, he’d written we have got to link up, man. It’s been too long!
When we have the time, Harry had written back. I’m still on my honeymoon.
Never mind he and Anastasia hadn’t gone anywhere. They’d decided to stay in the Catskills, walk around the forest and creeks by day and run by night, savoring their freedom. At times, Harry wondered if his animal genes were beginning to override his human ones. It was possible, but he had something going for him that others did not.
He had genius. His father had been a DNA researcher in the field of transgenics, and Harry had inherited his father’s intelligence and then some. As one of the foremost experts in transgenic research, even at his young age, he’d completed his own work and gone beyond most everyone else in the field. That was how the FBI had found out about him over a year before. They’d arrested him for allegedly doing illegal research.
“I was doing computer tests,” he’d objected at the time.
They came straight to the point. “Too bad.”
Long story short, the law did not take kindly to having a seventeen-year-old nerd-slash-genius turn evolution on its head. Harry got tossed in jail for his efforts. But during his stay, Anastasia had been arrested in New York that same year by the police, who’d subsequently turned her over to the FBI. She’d suffered from amnesia, but gradually remembered who and where she was from.
Who she happened to be was a young woman roughly nineteen years of age, dying of AIDS, who’d been kidnapped by a crazed scientist. Where she’d come from—Russia. The scientist had used a combination of drugs as well as something cal
led a Genesis Chamber to transform her into a hybrid with the express purpose of using her talents as a spy.
Harry had been taken out of jail by the same organization that had caged him in the first place. “You’re working for us now, kid,” said Miles Farrell, a hard-bitten, taciturn man in his fifties who’d been put in charge of the case.
In short order, once he and Anastasia had gotten to know each other, they’d also fallen for each other. After numerous adventures, she’d devolved into a cat, he’d brought her back to her half-human state, and they’d found out her roots and who was behind it all.
Thinking about changes, he’d been this way for almost a year. A jumble of random images raced through his mind, most of which involved DNA research, mixing and matching genes, and the complications related to such genetic manipulation.
Honeymoons had a tendency to take a person’s mind in different directions, but he’d been running some tests on his computer as of late, checking his DNA.
Recalling his latest results, they’d shown his condition as well as Anastasia’s to be stable. Stable meant they wouldn’t devolve. That was the good part. The bad part was his initial calculations on reversing the process to alter his condition to that of being wholly human had been incorrect.
“What do you mean, incorrect?” Anastasia posed the question as he hunched over his computer.
With a sigh, he leaned back and cracked his knuckles. “It means the animal cells have permanently bonded with our human ones. There’s no way I can separate them, not with the technology we have now.”
His wife didn’t seem to be overly dismayed at the news. “Well, I got used to myself a long time ago. If we’re together, that’s enough for me.” She’d come over to run her hands over his shoulders and then hugged him. “And you feel the same way.”
“I do.”
It came as a revelation to accept his changed condition. He was young and strong, with an immune system and regenerative capacities practically off the charts. Additionally, he and Anastasia were more than capable of doing anything a human could and perhaps even better...
“You’re up early.”
He spun around at the sound of her voice. Anastasia lounged in bed, the bed sheet covering her body from the top of her chest down. Like him, she was furry all over, gray fur with black spots, a young woman with catlike yet human features. To him, she was perfect.
While he took in the beauty of her body outlined under the sheet, her eyes, yellow, like his, captured his attention and they asked the question why are you up and away from me? “You couldn’t sleep?”
Shaking his head, he returned to bed and slipped under the covers with her. Their hands joined. “No, I decided to get an early start. You know we’re going to be on television today.”
A sour look formed on her face and she abruptly disengaged her hand from his. “That man—Baskins—he’s going to do a hatchet job on us. You know that.”
Harry did, but at the same time, if they were going to change the hearts and minds of any potential friends out there, they had to make themselves known, available, and open. However, the question of whether anyone else would make themselves open to friendship remained.
Anastasia lost her scowl and nuzzled his face in a gentle, loving gesture. He thought it would lead to something else. Unfortunately it was not to be, as she pulled back and gracefully slipped out of bed to go to the dresser. There, she withdrew some clothes. Her tail, long and flexible, lashed the air as she padded her way to the shower room with the parting line of, “I’m going to get clean.”
“Can I join you?”
She tossed him an indulgent smile. “We’ll have time for that later. We have to think about what we’re going to say.”
With a snap of her narrow hips, she sauntered off, and Harry lay back, wondering about her question. They had answered most questions before.
“Do you eat?”
“Are you human under all that fur?”
“Are there more of you out there?”
Mundanity ruled with the first two questions, but as for the last, he’d never been able to come up with a satisfactory answer, not without scaring someone. In the past year, he, along with Anastasia, had met up with and battled various hybrids, combinations of dog, pig, boar, cat, bear, and other denizens of the forests and open fields, along with mutations involving sharks, goats, insects and more.
Their last encounter with a megalomaniacal madman named Szabo, a former Hungarian soldier, had proved to be their toughest. Szabo, a combination of a shark and bear, had proven almost impossible to beat, yet Harry had triumphed and now... now all was quiet. There’d been no reports of transgenics massing for an all-out attack for the last few months... but that didn’t mean more transgenics didn’t exist.
They did. He’d been checking. Reports had started popping up all over Europe around three months earlier, mainly in Italy, France and Spain. Some accounts detailed clashes between the hybrids and the local populace, while others talked of discussions held. Nothing conclusive had come from said discussions. They’d talked... or so the news reports said.
The bottom line was hybrids existed, and the world had to get used to them—or not. It was the not factor Harry worried about. In the back of his mind, he had the feeling he and his wife would never fit in with the regular populace no matter how many talks and meetings they went to. At times, he missed the companionship of others like him.
In particular, he missed a friend of theirs, a pig-man named Istvan. A dwarf in human form, he’d been kidnapped by Szabo for an endgame only a mad scientist would have been able to dream up. All hybrids had the unfortunate propensity to devolve into their dominant animal form. Istvan’s blood carried a peculiar enzyme that managed to stop the devolution.
Unfortunately, he’d disappeared after the final battle with Szabo. It had taken place in Russia, and a search had failed to disclose his survival or demise. “I want to believe he’s alive,” said Anastasia in a heartfelt manner.
Harry had also wanted to believe, but Istvan had never shown. They’d given him up for dead. Now, safely ensconced in a quiet and quaint wood cabin deep in the woods, they went on with the task of living and trying to carve out a new lifestyle.
“No one’s going to hire us except as sideshow acts,” Anastasia complained one day. She’d been poring over online jobs, and with a sigh of disgust, she’d switched off the computer. “We have no skills except for being able to run fast and fight hard.”
True enough on that point. Harry would have liked to work in his own chosen field—transgenics—but the other private companies had not been open to the idea. The government had also nixed the idea for reasons not given. His lawyer had prepared a case, but matters like these took time, so any research done had to be done at home.
As for other possibilities of finding gainful employment, mentally ticking them off one by one, he came up with possible jobs as bodyguards, runners, MMA fighters, models, and...
“There’s always the circus,” he joked while dismissing the other avenues to mainstream success.
“Get serious, Harry.”
While they didn’t lack for money or food, they both hungered for acceptance. Matters seemed to be breaking their way when a popular talk show host, a man named Peter Baskins, asked them to appear on his program, Peter’s Daily. Anastasia had balked at going in front of the camera at first.
“You know what his pattern is like,” she’d objected when he brought up the subject. “He gets people who are disabled or in the LGBT set and then starts mocking them. Think about what he’s going to call us.”
“We haven’t gone—”
“Freaks,” she’d interrupted, stabbing her forefinger at the floor. “I’m not a freak,” she stated in no uncertain terms. “I’m a girl, just a very furry one.”
“And I’m your furry husband.” It went without saying, but he felt like it needed to be said, anyway. “We’re the same, remember? Let’s give it a shot.”
Anastas
ia’s expression, somewhere between dubious and pissed, had stayed in place, but in the end she finally threw up her hands as if to concede his point. “We’ll try...”
The honk of a horn disturbed things and Harry snapped back to the present. Farrell was early. Then again, he usually dropped in early to deliver their groceries. Hustling out of bed and over to the front door, pulling on a pair of jeans as he went, he opened up, and sure enough, their handler was in the process of getting out of his car, a beat-up old Ford. He probably hadn’t thought of changing it for the last ten years.
In his hands, he carried two bags of groceries and made his way over to the cabin. “Good morning,” he said, puffing under the load.
“Hi,” answered Harry as he took the bags. “You’re here early.”
“Since the FBI tasked me as your minder, I’ve got too much time on my hands,” Farrell replied, still panting. “This is all I do.” Tall and rail-thin, he’d been working with Harry ever since Anastasia had made her presence known.
In the past, he’d been a by-the-book type, taciturn and unemotional for the most part, but over time he’d mellowed, and Harry had come to trust him. Still, he’d never been able to bring himself to trust the FBI as a whole. The authorities still didn’t know what the presence of hybrid humans meant. In a sense, this was a test of human nature, and Harry had experienced the ups as well as the downs since his transformation.
Some people were shocked and repulsed, while others simply accepted them for what they were. At times, he wished they’d just get over it, but perhaps that was hoping for too much.
“Where’s your significant other?”
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