Kymiera

by Steve Turnbull

  But what difference did it make? She either got blown up in the attempt or waited here to die.

  The grid was packed with dirt around its edges and refused to move. She had seen a metal pole behind a pile of wood in the corner. She grabbed it and used it as a lever. She almost despaired, before, with a slurping creak, it shifted and opened. It looked old. Much older than the building she was in.

  No time for archaeology.

  She went down feet first and made it as far as her hips, then her coat bunched up. She almost couldn’t push herself back up.

  She stripped off her coat and her top layers of jumpers. Her wings came free and flexed of their own accord. She made a bundle of clothes in her coat—she located some nylon cord, dirty but as strong as ever—and tied up the bundle then made a loose knot around her ankle: She was damned if she was going to end up without a coat again.

  The black hole beckoned. She knelt beside it and stretched her wings forward so they pointed above her head, bent over and went down headfirst, dragging the coat behind her.

  Chapter 21

  Chloe

  By pressing her elbows against the sides she could stop herself falling. Then she realised that her wings were doing the same job; it felt weird, controlling them that way, but it worked. She was not falling headlong. Not that she liked going headfirst. She had a pretty good idea of the sort of unpleasantness she was going to fall into.

  The air roared. She was blinded by sound. Heat poured around her and ripped her breath from her. She covered her face with her hands as flames licked her skin. She did not fall. Her aching wings held her.

  Air sucked back and pulled the cold, damp, foul-smelling atmosphere from below.

  Barely thinking, she struggled down the final distance and fell into the sewer, her coat landing on top of her.

  How arrogant are they? I need to keep moving.

  She climbed awkwardly to her feet. Her hearing had gone again; she knew—hoped—it would come back like last time, but once again she was blind in the dark. There was only the slightest trickle of water in the bottom of the brick drain.

  There are so few people now, compared with before.

  The shape of the sewer was strange, she had expected something circular but this was narrow at the bottom and wider near the top and she had not the slightest idea why. It made it hard to walk and forced her feet into the stream.

  Since she had no idea which way to go, she just chose a direction. It was not as cold down here as it had been on the surface, so she carried her bundle. The surface of the coat seemed brittle, she guessed where the flames had touched it—it must have protected her—but other than that it seemed intact.

  They would try to find her body and when they didn’t they would know she had escaped. How long it would take them was anybody’s guess. A couple of hours? More?

  She stumbled on.

  The air grew colder and, at the same time, a whining sound grew in her ears. A second tunnel joined hers, adding its stream of water, then she saw daylight reflecting round a bend. Less than a minute later she stood at the end of the sewer tunnel looking out on to a semi-frozen river tumbling across in front of her from left to right. She could see a road, bridges in both directions. The opposite bank rose up to a brick wall and there were low buildings beyond it.

  The roaring of the river was the first thing she heard but the unfocused sounds did nothing to help her acoustic vision.

  The water from the sewer simply tumbled out into the river and there was an accumulation of slick ice where it landed. If she had been in the mood she might have thought it looked quite attractive.

  She found the bullet hole in her coat and other clothes. The ache was in her right wing but it seemed to be subsiding. Perhaps it hadn’t been that bad. She had been lucky. Again.

  She got dressed and tucked her wings out of sight.

  The idea that she might be able to fly horrified her. Then she reminded herself that Mercedes Smith had told her she wasn’t a freak—she might have been lying, but that was what Dog had been trying to tell her. She now wished she had listened, perhaps even gone with him.

  But things hadn’t really changed. She needed to rescue her friend, whatever she was turning into, and those other girls—especially if it meant they were not going to die either. She had a suspicion their captors wouldn’t tell them the truth, because the last thing prisoners needed was hope.

  She plunged her hands into her coat pocket and found the piece of paper she had picked up.

  NEW LIFE CONSULTANCY proclaimed the letterhead, and there were two addresses. One of them was the place she had just escaped from. The other was in Alderley Edge, Cheshire. It made sense; there was no way that the small clinic would have carried out any complex genetic manipulation. That would be at this other address.

  Hopefully.

  It was her only lead. The only problem was that Alderley Edge was miles away.

  Chapter 22

  Melinda

  ‘Shut up,’ hissed Vanessa.

  They had had to put up with her all morning. For some reason the tests had been cancelled and, while they were not allowed to leave the room assigned for meals, they had been left to their own devices. It had been some of the most tedious hours Melinda had ever spent, especially with the constant griping from Vanessa. To distract herself she focused on trying to make the electrics oscillate.

  Melinda didn’t like to think badly of people but she really didn’t like the girl. And the teeth, in that angular face, were unnerving. She was like something out of a werewolf movie.

  ‘Canidae,’ she said at one point. ‘Not a dog, not a wolf. Fox.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Me,’ she said. ‘I’m talking about me. I heard them talking once. I have fox in me.’

  But that was earlier. This latest interruption from Vanessa was just another in a long line of irritating outbursts. She had better hearing and they couldn’t ignore the fact, so they shut up and let her listen.

  They just stared at the walls, the ceiling, the door, Vanessa herself who stood by the door, her head leaning against the wall with her eyes closed.

  ‘Any chance you could both stop breathing?’

  Melinda and Lucy exchanged glances. Lucy’s comment earlier about leaving Vanessa behind if they had a chance to get out was looking more attractive. She could happily strangle her, after rendering her unconscious with a judicious zap to the head, of course.

  After a few minutes, Vanessa yawned as she ambled back to the table and sat on the edge. Like Melinda she only had a light dressing gown over her hospital clothes. Melinda doubted they would have anything that fitted Lucy’s bulky form. She went out in all the wrong places. In some ways she was glad she didn’t know what Lucy had looked like before, so she didn’t judge what she had become.

  But she never complained about it. Melinda wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, or a bad thing.

  ‘Couldn’t get much,’ said Vanessa, her back to the guard. She had been well-behaved for a couple of days so they had backed off a bit. ‘And it was only one half of a phone call.’

  ‘Well?’ said Lucy. She was not good at disguising her dislike of Vanessa, but then she’d had to put up with her for longer.

  ‘He was saying he doesn’t want to move us. Arguing with the bloke at the other end.’

  ‘Did they say why?’

  ‘Trouble on the outside. Police and Purity, apparently.’

  ‘We always knew this wasn’t the Purity,’ said Melinda.

  Vanessa gave a pitying look. ‘Obviously.’

  Melinda frowned. ‘Were you ever put into quarantine?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then don’t claim you know the difference,’ said Melinda trying not to shout. ‘It’s fucking horrible.’

  Vanessa grinned. ‘Swearing are we, Miss Goody Two-Shoes?’

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ said Melinda.

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘If they’re t
hinking of moving us then the police must be closing in.’

  ‘They’d only have to look at the death rate,’ said Vanessa. ‘And we’ve all helped in that area.’

  ‘They can just hide that,’ said Lucy. ‘When you’ve got as much money and power as they have.’

  All three were silent for a short while, then Melinda said, ‘They might decide they don’t need us—or it’s too dangerous to move us.’

  ‘They’ll just gas us,’ said Vanessa.

  ‘Only if they think they can keep us locked up at the next location. Maybe we’re too dangerous.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘And yet they didn’t kill you, did they? So perhaps they didn’t think you were very dangerous after all.’

  Vanessa stood up and leaned over the table towards Melinda. ‘Want to try me, electric girl? I’ll tear your bloody throat out. See how much zap you’ve got when you’re missing a head!’

  Lucy’s hand clamped around Vanessa’s wrist. Melinda could see her trying to break the grip without losing her cool. Lucy’s arm didn’t move.

  ‘Sit down, Nessa.’

  ‘Vix.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want you to call me Vix.’

  ‘That’s not your name.’

  ‘I’ll choose any fucking name I want for myself,’ said Vanessa. Her wrist and hand below the grip were turning white, making the freckles stand out. ‘I’ve got a fox in me, so I’ll be Vix, short for vixen.’

  ‘I’ll call you V,’ said Lucy. ‘And if you want to believe it stands for Vixen, Vix or just plain Vanessa, that’s your choice. Now, sit down.’

  Lucy released her arm. Vanessa sat down and rubbed the place where Lucy’s grip had left livid white and red marks.

  Melinda went to the water cooler and topped up her mug. She sat and brought the mug to her lips. ‘We have to get out of here.’

  ‘Who died and made you boss?’

  ‘For god’s sake, Vanessa!’

  ‘Vix.’

  ‘I don’t care. Can we just think about what I just said?’ She glanced at the camera and took a real sip this time. ‘How and when.’

  They argued for the next two hours. Lucy and Melinda tried to discuss and Vanessa argued. Sometimes she would argue against a point she had just made when they agreed with her.

  Finally, Melinda and Lucy were happy enough with their ideas. ‘And if you want to join in, Vix, then we would love to have you along.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  And that was that.

  Vanessa decided she wanted to go back to her room, leaving the others on their own.

  ‘Do you think she’ll tell on us?’ Melinda said staring at the door that Vanessa and the guard had disappeared through.

  ‘No,’ said Lucy. ‘She’s a total pain in the arse, but she wants out as much as we do. And she knows she can’t do it on her own.’

  ‘It’s a lot of energy to put out,’ she said after a while.

  ‘You’ll be fine.’

  Lucy smiled. ‘So, what are you going to call yourself?’

  Melinda laughed. ‘Vanessa’s crazy.’

  ‘Electric Girl?’

  ‘Miss Electron?’

  ‘Zap Woman.’

  ‘Eel Girl.’

  ‘Eel?’

  ‘I figured it out. If Vanessa has fox in her, I must have electric eel.’

  ‘That’s not even a mammal.’

  Melinda shrugged. ‘It’s the only thing I could think of that actually has batteries.’

  Melinda looked at her friend. The folded skin so thick it moved like hardened leather. If she wore no clothes nobody would even notice. Outside, in the real world, she would never be able to fit in. But they would notice the bump on the forehead, which was developing a point. And the only name that fitted was unicorn.

  Melinda thought of her parents. They would be terrified she was dead, but when they knew what she was, and that she would be dead soon anyway, they would suffer all over again. Was it right to do that to them?

  She had been over this a hundred times already in the darkest hours of the night. Was it fair to give them hope only to have it dashed away?

  ‘Do you want to see your parents again?’ she asked quietly.

  Lucy’s eyes were the one thing that still looked completely normal. They started to moisten.

  ‘I want to see them,’ she said and wiped away the tears with fingers that were like rocks. ‘I don’t know if they would want to see me.’

  Melinda nodded. ‘I’m sure they would.’

  Lucy’s mouth creased into a wry smile. ‘Nice of you to say so.’

  ‘I have a friend, Chloe, her dad runs the local FreakWatch. If anything happened to her he really would be freaked.’

  ‘My parents are okay, I guess,’ said Lucy. ‘They don’t do anything like that, but I just don’t know if they could cope with this.’

  Melinda nodded. She wasn’t sure how much she had changed physically, if at all. With her it was mostly on the inside.

  ‘But we can’t stay here.’

  ‘No,’ said Lucy in agreement. ‘If I’m going to die, I want to do it out there.’

  Chapter 23

  Mitchell

  Yates was in the main office outside the meeting room, waving at him behind Graham’s back. It looked as if something had come up and he needed to talk to him directly, but that wasn’t going to be easy.

  And then there was the interesting problem of Special Agent Graham himself. When he walked into the office today he was sporting even more injuries than he had after the explosion. Mitchell was sure no one else had noticed, they did not have cause to be in the man’s presence as much as Mitchell himself. But there was no question that the man had fresh cuts on his left cheek.

  Someone must have put them there, but Graham was not claiming victory over some nefarious element. He hadn’t captured a freak, or put anybody else into quarantine. Instead he acted as if nothing had happened. To Mitchell’s experienced mind that meant only one thing: a woman. And as far as he knew there was only one woman in Manchester who knew Graham.

  Which was interesting in itself, because he had Yates’s report on the visit to Sapphire Kepple. Lament had been at pains to point out that he had advised against it, or, at least, to contact Mitchell first. Just as well he hadn’t because Mitchell would have forbidden him to see her.

  And then he would have done it anyway and Mitchell might have been forced to suspend him.

  No. Yates played that one just right. They had an ally in that area, though perhaps not a very stable one. Going up against Utopia Genetics was not easy.

  Then there had been the brief meeting with Superintendent Dix. He was not happy about it at all, but had given Mitchell permission to do his job.

  Which brought him back to Yates trying to grab his attention.

  ‘So,’ said Mitchell to Graham, ‘do you have any ideas as to our next course of action?’

  Graham had been staring at his tablet, but whether he was actually looking at anything Mitchell was not sure. He had barely touched the screen.

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything left for me here,’ he said.

  ‘Really? I thought you were keen to track down Chloe Dark.’

  ‘Just another freak. Nothing you can’t handle.’

  ‘What about the girls?’

  ‘We’ve wiped out the people who had them. They’ll probably starve to death or die of cold.’

  Mitchell hesitated. ‘And you’re happy with that outcome?’

  ‘Happy? No, but there’s nothing left, is there?’

  ‘Just plodding police work.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Graham finally looking up. ‘You do what you’re good at and you’ll find their bodies eventually I expect. Maybe in a week, a month, year.’

  ‘We do like closure,’ said Mitchell. ‘You’ll be leaving then?’

  Graham smiled thinly. ‘Trying to get rid of me? I don’t blame you.’ He sighed. ‘There’s a few things I have
to wrap up in regard to the death of Paul Banner. The kind of responsibilities you have when you’re the senior officer.’

  ‘I expect you were hoping for a commendation, or at least a promotion out of this?’

  ‘Can’t win them all.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mitchell in apparent surprise, as if he’d just noticed. ‘It looks like Yates wants something, if you don’t mind?’

  Graham turned in his seat. Yates was standing outside looking along the corridor, not into the room. ‘He’s one of the loose ends.’

  ‘Yates?’

  ‘What was he doing at Paul Banner’s house?’

  ‘You can ask him now if you like.’

  ‘No,’ said Graham and waved his hand dismissively. ‘You talk to him. I imagine he’ll say exactly what he put in his report.’

  Mitchell resisted the temptation to point out that’s precisely how it should be, and took the opportunity to leave the room. He and Yates moved towards the lifts in order to be out of Graham’s direct line of sight.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Lament’s found something.’

  ‘All right. You go in and see Graham, I’ll talk to Lament.’

  ‘Why do I have to see Graham?’

  ‘He wants to know why you were at Paul Banner’s house.’

  ‘It’s in my report.’

  ‘I know, just do it.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘And don’t be flippant, he’s got no sense of humour, it will go badly.’

  ‘Sir.’ Yates flipped him a mock salute and turned on his heel.

  There was a car waiting for him at the lift exit that drove to the back of the car park before Lament appeared on the screen.

  ‘I know where they are.’

  Mitchell sat up. ‘How sure are you?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me how I found out?’

  ‘Do I need to know?’

  ‘Knowledge is power.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Mitchell. ‘Tell it the way you want.’

  ‘Once we had determined Utopia Genetics was behind the kidnappings, I was able to focus on their properties. I did note there had been a serious upswing in deaths of their research staff in the last few weeks—since the most recent set of kidnappings. They had managed to give the impression those deaths were spread out across various sites, and if I hadn’t been looking I wouldn’t have noticed.’