Of Cinder and Bone

by Kyoko M

Their conversation quieted as the pair came within earshot, and the stranger cast a bored look over Jack. His brown eyes immediately lit up as he spotted Kamala and he smirked, his gaze lingering over her chest and legs.

  “Ah, aniki, tell me you know who this lovely lady is?”

  “Dr. Kamala Anjali,” Yagami told his friend impatiently. “She and Dr. Jackson are working in the field of biological engineering.”

  The stranger offered his hand and she took it. “Kireina, ojō-sama. Hajimemashite.”

  She nodded to him. “Hajimemashite. And you are?”

  “Kazuma Okegawa.” He clapped a hand on Yagami’s shoulder. “Yagi-kun and I go way back.”

  “I see. What brings you here?”

  Okegawa’s smile suddenly seemed rather pointy. “Business.”

  “Is that right?” Kamala didn’t disguise the skepticism in her tone.

  “Hai. Things are getting a bit hairy with his otō-san and imōto-chan, so I came over to lend a hand as his advisor.”

  Dr. Yagami knocked his friend’s hand away. “Kazu, this is not the time, nor the place. I told you, I have it under control. Go home.”

  Okegawa rolled his eyes. “Can’t believe you’re still so uptight. Fine. I’ll meet you tonight for dinner. Take me somewhere nice, ne?”

  “Fine.” Yagami opened the door to the lab and disappeared. Okegawa stared after him, shaking his head, and then smiled at Kamala again.

  “Until the next time, ojō-sama.”

  “Same. And for the record, you’re not supposed to smoke in here.”

  He chuckled, spewing one more mouthful of smoke, and then snuffed the cigarette out in a nearby water fountain before leaving.

  Kamala watched him go warily and then nudged Jack. “You okay?”

  “Oh, I was just wondering if I should use my invisibility powers for good or evil.” He opened the lab door for her.

  “I’ll be sure to alert the women’s locker room.”

  “Hey! I’d never do that… more than once…”

  Once more, Yagami wasn’t alone. He had two assistants this time, and he wasn’t at the microscope; instead, he stood at the white board writing out equations and barking instructions to the interns. Jack felt his hackles rise at the electrified air in the room. Things seemed to have taken a turn for the worse in his project.

  “Ah, I think we should make this a quick session today,” Kamala murmured as she set her stuff down at their usual desk.

  “Agreed.” They got started, keeping their distance, and it managed to work for a few hours.

  Around one o’clock, one of the female assistants accidentally erased an equation to write something else down, and Dr. Yagami launched into a scathing rant at her expense.

  “You’ll make a McDonalds manager very happy someday,” he snarled, snatching the eraser out of her hand. “Get out of my sight.”

  She fled. Jack and Kamala exchanged glances. She set down her pen and stood, walking over to the white board where he was replacing the equation.

  “Dr. Yagami, might I have a word with you in private?”

  “Save it,” he growled. “I don’t have time for any of your witty repartee.”

  “Doctor,” she said softly. “You just rudely dismissed someone who was only trying to help you. A volunteer, no less. For a minor offense. You’re not thinking clearly.”

  “I’m clear-minded enough to know I don’t need useless people working for me.”

  “And no one will want to work for you when you’re being irrational and flying off the handle at any provocation.”

  He shot a glare at her. “What the hell do you care? Aren’t you busy trying to save the world with your dragons?”

  Kamala crossed her arms and stared at him. He kept glaring, but after a moment or two, he broke off the eye contact and rubbed his sinuses. “Fine. I will take a smoke break.”

  “Good. I’ll join you.”

  “You don’t smoke.”

  Kamala smiled slowly. “Cigarettes? No, I don’t.”

  She walked past him and held the door open. Dr. Yagami blinked at her, but followed. Five minutes later, they were sitting on a railing at one of the back entrances, passing a blunt back and forth between them.

  “This is absolutely not going to help my work in any way,” Yagami said mildly, handing the bud back to her.

  “Me neither. But at least it will mellow you out enough that you aren’t screaming obscenities at interns.”

  “Where the hell did you get weed anyway?”

  Kamala shrugged. “Faye. She likes to have a little when she’s got a big project due. It’s healthier than drinking.”

  “Why did you have it with you?”

  “Because Jack and I are both stressed out.”

  He cast a sidelong glance at her as she offered it to him after she’d taken another hit. “You can read that behemoth’s emotional states? Incredible.”

  She rolled her eyes. “The behemoth is one of the smartest men I’ve ever met.”

  Yagami grunted. “He’s got no imagination. The focus of his project is woefully naïve.”

  “That’s science. We do all we can in a world we can never hope to truly understand. It’s for the good of the environment, which we have to thank for this little smoke break. Cut him some slack.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “And anyway, I didn’t bring you out here to talk about Jack. What’s going on?”

  Yagami sighed, rubbing his face with one hand, the blunt clutched between his first and second finger, scowling. “We had a major setback in the project. I’m looking at two, three months of revisions and additional experiments to counteract it. The fellowship deadline is a month out and there’s virtually no way to eliminate the extra time I’ll have to spend getting us in the right direction. If I don’t produce the results, the last two years of my life will have been spent in vain.”

  She touched his shoulder tentatively. “I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head and inhaled, holding it for several seconds before exhaling harshly. “I don’t need sorry. I don’t need anything but to return to my work. I have to get this done. There is no other choice.”

  “It’s not just about the project, is it? What’s going on with your family?”

  He smoked for a while, staring out at the trees. “My father’s dying. Lung cancer.”

  Kamala sighed. “How long?”

  “A year, maybe more if he’s lucky. Keiko convinced him to write me out of the will. I’m completely cut off, all because I refused to take over the company.”

  “It’s that bloody important to him?”

  “Apparently.”

  She balled her hands into fists. “Bastard. Is there any hope that you can change his mind?”

  “Doubtful. All the drugs he’s on keep him unstable. Without my mother around to be the voice of reason, it’s likely going to be permanent.” He snorted. “The sad thing is… I’ve got money. I’d want for nothing. But it’s insulting. Once it goes public, I’ll be seen as the disgraced son with nothing more to show than a failed attempt at being a scientist.”

  “You haven’t failed yet.”

  “Hmph. How does that phrase go? ‘It’s all over but the crying,’ I believe?”

  “Giving up is failure. Everything else up until that point is merely an inconvenience.”

  He regarded her again. “You’re not bad company, you know. I see why Rhett is so attached to you.”

  She hopped down onto the walkway, grinning. “I have that effect on people. Take your time finishing that. Hope it helped.”

  He allowed a miniscule smirk to touch his lips. “Somewhat.”

  “Good.” She went back inside and visited the ladies’ room, briefly applying her heavy spiced perfume to hide the smell before returning to the lab.

  Jack didn’t look up when she returned to the desk. “Shake a
nd bake?”

  “Yes.”

  “Think it worked?”

  “Only time will tell.”

  “Any left for me?”

  “Why, Jack, when have I ever left you out to dry?”

  “Atta girl.”

  ~ * ~

  Jack had never been the type to wake up gracefully, but it was even less so when he was awakened by his phone screaming, “Son of a bitch!” at six o’clock in the morning.

  “Ack!” he cried, and promptly lurched towards the vibrating device currently belting out the lyrics to Nathaniel Ratecliff and the Night Sweats’ “S.O.B.” Unfortunately, the momentum took him right over the edge of his bed and he landed unceremoniously on the carpet.

  Groaning, he reached a long arm up to the nightstand and answered the phone with a partly angry, partly winded, “Yes?”

  “Dr. Jackson,” a male voice said. “Sorry to wake you.”

  Jack flopped onto his back and nursed his stinging ribs. “No, ‘s totally fine. Who is this again?”

  “Dr. Thorne. I’m the one responsible for the physical exam of your komodo dragon, Sarah.”

  “Ah. Right. Salutations, doctor. What can I do for you?”

  “I, uh, think you and Dr. Anjali might need to come take a look at something.”

  Jack sat up, his blood ice-cold slush in his veins. “Oh God. What happened? Did her body reject the implantation? Was she hurt by another animal? Did she bite someone?”

  “No. The implantation didn’t hurt her at all. In fact, the parthenogenesis was also a success, but that’s not why I called.”

  “Why are you calling?”

  “The eggs have already started gestating.”

  Jack went silent.

  “…Dr. Jackson? You there?”

  “Hold on a second.” He lowered the phone and glanced around the room, locating the baseball bat underneath his bed. He flipped it around and then leveled it over his shin.

  Then he whacked himself with it.

  “Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick!”

  “Dr. Jackson? Are you alright?”

  Jack rubbed his throbbing shinbone. “Yeah, I just had to make sure I was actually awake. Did you just say the eggs started gestating? Are you sure it’s Sarah?”

  “She’s the only Komodo dragon in the veterinary hospital,” Dr. Thorne said, and his tone sounded so dry it could have made a home in the Sahara desert. “I’m telling you, her eggs are already in the sixteen-cell stage. That’s why I need you and Dr. Anjali to come down and verify what I’m seeing, because frankly, I can’t account for a komodo dragon accelerating through several stages of cell development in only twenty-four hours.”

  “How in perfect blue hell is that possible?”

  “Like I said, Dr. Jackson. You need to come take a look.”

  “Be there faster than you can say jack rabbit.” He hung up and leapt to his feet, ignoring the sharp pain lancing through his left leg as he hobbled towards his closet.

  ~ * ~

  “Jack?”

  “Yes, Kamala?”

  “Pinch me.”

  “Yes, doctor.”

  “Ow!” She smacked him in the shoulder as he grinned and drew his hand away from her backside. “That is not funny.”

  “What? You didn’t say where.”

  She rolled her eyes. “So, you’ve lost your mind. I guess I’d better ask someone else what the hell is going on.”

  “Sorry. I am of sound mind, I promise. Or as much as I usually am.” He examined the sonogram clipped to the lit board, one hand folded over his mouth as he squinted at it. “Honestly, Kam, I’m at a loss for words. How can she possibly be this far along? Did we miss something?”

  Kamala shook her head. “We were precise. Utterly and totally precise with the cells we grew. I’ve never seen anything like this in all my years as a scientist. The only thing I can think of is that the dragon DNA that we recreated has some sort of genetic mutation. No one knows the gestation period of these creatures. They died out in medieval times. Perhaps this is normal for them.”

  “Maybe,” he said, frowning. “But what concerns me is if it’s going to take a toll on Sarah. What if her body can’t cope with the rapid growth of the fetuses? We don’t want a Breaking Dawn situation on our hands.”

  Kamala stared flatly at him. Jack shuffled his feet, blushing and clearing his throat. “I, uh, couldn’t sleep the other night and it was on, alright?”

  She rolled her eyes again. “We’ll keep a close eye on her, then. Daily checkups. There has to be some way to account for this phenomenon.”

  “Yeah. But that’s not the scariest part.”

  She blinked at him. “What is?”

  “Kam, if she’s already at a sixteen-cell stage of pregnancy in twenty-four hours… how long until the birth?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THRESHOLD

  “This is a bad idea.”

  “Really? I couldn’t tell, even though you said it five hundred times on the way here.”

  “I’m merely preparing you for the inevitable disaster. I want it on record that I said this is a bad idea.”

  “Duly noted, Jack.”

  He leaned his lanky frame back against Kamala’s Volkswagen and thumped the base of his skull against the roof of the car a few times. Kamala was also leaning on it, her brown eyes scanning the bustling travelers sweeping past them at Logan Airport’s pick up area. She checked her watch. They had only been here a few minutes, but if their party didn’t arrive soon, the cops would boot them out of their temporary space and they’d have to circle back around. Their guests were late.

  She listened to the steady thunk of Jack hitting his head on the roof, and then stuck her hand inside the outer pocket of his coat. She slipped her warm fingers through his cold ones and squeezed once. He stopped hitting his head on the roof finally, but his sour disposition didn’t soften any.

  A moment later, a plump brunette woman dressed in a conch-shell pink peasant blouse and khakis underneath a mahogany leather coat, walked through the glass doors, her hazel eyes flicking around at the cars lining the curb. They settled on Jack and instantly filled with warmth. She smiled, and dimples puckered at her cheeks.

  Jack rose to his full height and reluctantly let go of Kamala’s hand, stepping forward to walk towards the woman. He stopped about a foot away and shifted his weight, a shy grin touching his lips.

  “Hey, stranger,” the woman said softly.

  “Hey, stranger,” he replied just as softly.

  She let her gaze roll over him from head to toe, eventually settling on his face. “Still ain’t eatin’ enough, huh?”

  Jack shrugged. “Oh, I eat. Just doesn’t stick to my bones.”

  “Same old, same old. Good to see you, kiddo.” She wrapped her arms around him and he did the same, kissing the top of her head.

  “Good to see you, Ma.”

  They stayed there for a long moment, and then he drew back. “Where is he?”

  “Oh, he had to stop at the john. He’ll be along in a second.” She peeked around his shoulder and her smile widened. “Is that her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s gorgeous. You never mentioned that.”

  “Wasn’t relevant.”

  She eyed him. “Since when?”

  Jack groaned. “Don’t you start.”

  She shook her head disapprovingly and started towards the Volkswagen, her hand extended. “You must be Kamala. I’m Edith. Call me Edie.”

  Kamala shook her hand. “It’s so nice to finally meet you, Edie. Truly a pleasure.”

  “Pleasure’s all mine, honey. I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done, taking care of him since I’m not around.” She paused. “Well, putting up with him, to be honest. Rhett can be a handful when he wants to be.”

  “Ma,” Jack said warningly. “We talked about this. How
you weren’t going to do the whole ‘embarrassing parent’ schtick?”

  Edie pouted. “Who says I agreed? That’s how you should gauge how much I love you. How will you ever know unless I tell Kamala here every single humiliating story about you that I’ve witnessed?”