Spliced

by Jon McGoran

  “I’m Jimi.”

  “I made a mistake,” she said, scurrying to keep up as we walked. She was so beautiful, it was difficult to feel sorry for her. Maybe she had been even prettier before the splice. “I’m not ready for this. Especially not now.”

  I thought about all the feelings running through me because of Del getting spliced. I couldn’t imagine if I had done it to myself.

  Suddenly an orange flash lit up the sky, accompanied by a raucous cheer nearby.

  Two blocks to our left, halfway to Broad Street, a car lay burning upside down in the middle of the street, its charging port emitting blue sparks and orange flames that reflected off the buildings under billowing black smoke.

  “What’s going on?” Claudia asked, her cat eyes comically large.

  “They’re rioting,” I said, my anger mixing with fear as we hurried across the street. “It’s how morons celebrate.”

  Her face hardened into a bitter scowl. “This is them celebrating the Genetic Heritage Act?”

  As if in reply, we heard a loud crunching sound and a crash—another car being rolled—followed by the whumf of a fireball not too far away.

  Our fast walk to Willow Road became a jog. Two blocks later, we heard a ragged chant of “Nix the mixies, nix the mixies!” and a mob of about fifty angry people turned the corner toward us. The chant disintegrated into hoots and catcalls when they saw us, and someone yelled, “Hey, there’s that mixie!”

  I grabbed Claudia and we ran down the cross street and into an alley, the harsh voices close behind. We found a house that looked empty, but it had a steel door, reinforced windows, and a security panel. The voices were getting closer. I looked on, stunned, as Claudia jammed a house key under the security panel and pried it open. As the display started flashing and counting down from fifteen, she pulled several wires and calmly reconnected them. The countdown stopped at eight and the door clicked open.

  The house was furnished but dark and uninhabited. We went upstairs, so we wouldn’t be seen from outside, and found a bed by the front window. Claudia’s face was blank as we watched the rising smoke and flashing lights around us.

  “Why are they doing this?” she asked.

  “Because they’re idiots.”

  “Why do they hate chimeras so much, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. Some people are so filled with fear or hatred, they have to direct it at someone. I guess chimeras are an easy target.”

  A helicopter swung by, its searchlight momentarily illuminating the street.

  “How long’s it been since you got spliced?” I asked.

  “Last night,” she said, looking dazed. “I guess twenty hours now.”

  “You’re doing pretty good.”

  “It was a mistake.”

  I nodded, not knowing what to say about it.

  “My boyfriend and I,” she said, “—my ex-boyfriend—we were supposed to do it together. I’d already started. Then he backed out. He ran home and left me sweating it out on my own.” She paused to gently wipe her eyes. “I was just coming out of it when I found out they actually passed it, the Genetic Heritage Act.” She shook her head, and tears rolled down her face. “Now they’re saying I’m not even a person anymore.”

  “Well, for what it’s worth, you look very beautiful,” I told her. It was shallow and inadequate, but it was true. I didn’t know what else to say.

  She laughed through her tears. “Thanks. I guess it is kind of cool. It’s weird, though. I look into a mirror and it’s not me looking back. I can’t keep it. Not with all these psychos out here. I shouldn’t have done it in the first place, but now with all this . . . I need to get it fixed.”

  “It’ll calm down soon,” I said.

  “Thanks for saving me back there.”

  “Of course. Are you okay?”

  “Thanks to you.” She bit her lip for a second. “You’re not a chimera.”

  “No,” I said quietly.

  “So . . . why are you looking for the fixer?”

  “For a friend. My best friend.” Saying it out loud brought it all back to me. I had to swallow hard to keep it together. “He got spliced, but . . . it went wrong. He got really sick. We took him to Guzman’s clinic, but then the police raided the place and took everyone away. Actually, they didn’t seem to take my friend, but he disappeared.”

  “He got away?”

  “I don’t know. I was hoping Guzman could tell me.”

  “When did he get spliced?”

  “Friday morning.”

  “So . . . too late for a fixer, right?”

  “At this point I’m just trying to find out if he’s alive. And if he is, do what I can to keep him that way.”

  She was quiet after that, and so was I.

  We found some yogurt and granola bars in the kitchen. Claudia pinned some money to the refrigerator with a magnet. “On me,” she said with a weak little smile.

  We ate our fill and sat back on the bed, looking out the window for hours, waiting. Things showed no sign of calming down until the sky exploded in thunder and lightning and wind, and the heavy clouds finally released their payload.

  By the time the rain let up an hour later, the streets were deserted.

  “Time to go,” I said.

  When we slipped out the back door, my nose was assaulted by the strange mixture of smells—wet ash, burnt plastic, the ozone smell of the electrical fires, and behind all of it, the fresh scent of rain.

  As we hurried over to Willow Road, Claudia and I kept silent. So much was riding on whether or not Guzman was there, what he could or couldn’t tell us or do for us.

  We found the house, but it seemed somehow darker than the houses around it. Emptier. As we approached the door, my heart sank with each step. I knocked even though I knew there would be no answer.

  Through the front windows, I could see bare floors, bare walls, no rugs, no furniture. Mail was piled on the floor behind the front door, envelopes stuffed in the mail slot. I pulled some out, yellow and weathered, addressed to occupant or one of several names that weren’t Guzman.

  I knocked again, then tried the doorknob. The door swung open. We went inside, hoping against hope. But the place was empty. Guzman didn’t live here. No one lived here.

  I looked back at Claudia. She was staring at her watch, calculating how screwed she was. “That’s it, then,” she said. Tears rolled down either side of her face. “This is me. This is what I am.”

  I wanted desperately to say or do something, to somehow make her feel better. Then I had an idea.

  FORTY-TWO

  I had never been the first kid to school in the morning before, but that was the least part of why it felt so strange. My hair was disheveled and my clothes rumpled from a few hours of fitful sleep in some strange house. Also, I had no intention of going inside.

  Standing on the school steps, I felt guilty to have disappeared on Trudy’s watch again. It was Monday morning, so I hadn’t seen her in twenty-four hours. She’d be angry and hurt by how I’d deceived her.

  This would make things even harder between her and my mom, I realized. And the way my screwups were starting to accumulate could do actual, lasting damage to my own relationship with my mom as well. It hit me then how I’d been so worried about Del blowing off school and not getting into college, giving him such a hard time, and now here I was, doing the exact same thing. Latenesses, absences, being picked up by the police. Temple would look at my application and laugh. If I even sent one in.

  When the other kids started showing up, I felt both conspicuous and invisible. Each of them slipped past me without a glance, deliberately looking away from me. None of them were my friends, but some were kids I knew. They weren’t talking to each other, either. Maybe because it was Monday morning, or maybe they were shell-shocked from the Broad Street riots, from the new law. I knew I was.

  It wasn’t like I wanted to talk to any of them, either. Except for Danielle Wrabley.

  She was our last hope of f
inding Guzman.

  When the buses arrived, the stream of nonfriends became a deluge of faces slipping past me on either side. A few minutes later, the first bell rang and the torrent of students slowed to a trickle. I looked up the block to where Claudia was hiding and gave a helpless shrug, conceding defeat. But as I placed my foot on the next step down, a black luxury sedan pulled up, and Danielle stepped out.

  She came up the steps fast—not as fast as I would have been moving if I was that late—but hurrying nonetheless. She kept her head down and moved to step around me. When I stepped in front of her she looked up, surprised and annoyed, the first person to look me in the face since I got there.

  “Danielle?” I said.

  “I’m late,” she said, stepping around me again.

  I moved in front of her again. “I need to find Doctor Guzman.”

  Her eyes widened and she looked back at the car that had dropped her off, but it was already gone. “I don’t know who that is,” she said.

  “I know you were at his house, and I need to find him.”

  She tried to go around me but I stayed in front of her. Someone was walking toward us from the football field. Mr. Sciorra, talking into his radio.

  The buses pulled away and the second bell rang.

  “I just need an address,” I said.

  She shook her head. “He told me not to tell anyone.” She tried to step around me, but I blocked her way again.

  “Please.”

  “Hey!” Sciorra called out. “It’s late! You need to get inside.”

  Danielle scowled at me. Then her face relaxed. “Whatever.” She pulled out a secure web phone and thumbed through it. “He’s in Silver Garden. 7823 Hampton Road. But don’t tell anyone I told you.”

  She slipped around me and ran up the steps.

  Sciorra shouted after me, “Jimi? Is that you?” But I was already running.

  The house on Hampton Road was similar to the one on Lorber. Next door, a massively obese guy was sitting on the steps, drinking from a bottle of lemonade-flavored vodka.

  Claudia had stayed close to me the entire way there, checking her watch every five minutes. When we finally climbed the steps onto the porch, I saw a light on inside and felt a wave of relief so intense it made me nauseous. Claudia looked like she was going to faint. I knocked on the door with one hand as she squeezed the other. Half a minute later, we both let out breaths I don’t think either of us knew we’d been holding. I leaned over to look through the window. A reading light was on next to an armchair. An old-fashioned paperback book lay open, facedown on the table. A dozen more were stacked on the floor.

  “This is his house,” I whispered. “This is where he lives. I’m sure of it.”

  Claudia’s nails dug into my hand. “Then where is he?” she whispered, her voice shaking.

  I knocked again, then turned to the neighbor. He didn’t look friendly, but he didn’t seem like he was a threat. “Excuse me,” I called out. He turned his head halfway in our direction. “Do you know where Doctor Guzman is?”

  He gave a slight shrug, then looked away.

  As I stepped away from the door, Claudia said, “But . . .”

  “Let’s check the back.”

  The narrow yard that wrapped around the house was pocked with puddles of muddy water. Next to the back door, there was a bundle of rags on a plastic chair. When we got closer, I saw it was a person.

  Claudia started to scream, but I held up a hand and it came out as a stifled squeal.

  “Is it Guzman?” she whispered, her lips trembling.

  The body wasn’t quite normal, spindly legs tapering to painfully thin ankles that disappeared into a pair of red sneakers. “It’s a chimera.”

  Then I realized the sneakers were red because they were soaked in blood. There was a pool of blood between them.

  “He’s hurt,” I said, running over even though I had no idea what to do. He’d been shot or stabbed. The fact that the blood was still dripping gave me hope that he was still alive, but I didn’t know how badly he was injured, and I didn’t want to risk making things worse.

  I tapped his shoulder gently. “Are you okay?” As soon as I said it, I felt stupid. Unconscious and bleeding out, he was obviously not okay. But somehow, “Hey, are you alive?” seemed inappropriate.

  The chimera looked up at me, wincing in pain. Recognition registered in his eyes at the same moment it registered in mine.

  “Jimi,” he said with a smile. “What are you doing here?”

  FORTY-THREE

  Jesus, Ryan, what happened?” I said.

  “You know him?” Claudia said.

  I ignored her. I wondered if this was how things would be with the new law, if this was someone’s idea of preserving our genetic heritage. “Who did this to you? Did it happen in the riot?” I thought back to what Ruth had said—if this is what human is, maybe I didn’t want to be one, either.

  He looked at me cross-eyed, struggling to focus. “What riot?”

  “Never mind. Where were you? What happened?”

  He smiled again and mumbled something, then said, “They’re going to Chimerica.”

  “What?”

  “They’re going to Chimerica.”

  “What are you talking about? Who?”

  “Ruth and Del.”

  “Del’s okay?” The relief was so intense, my legs almost gave out underneath me. I grabbed Claudia’s arm for support as tears sprang to my eyes. “Where, Ryan? Where is he?”

  “The poachers got us, then these other people rescued us. They took us to a safe place called Haven.” He lowered his voice. “It’s a secret, but I came back anyway, to tell Sly and Pell and Rex about it. And to say good-bye to my mom. It’s dangerous to get there,” he said. Then he looked down at his midsection. “Dangerous to come back, too.” He let out a laugh that turned into a cough. Then his head sagged onto his chest.

  “Where’s the doctor? Where’s Guzman?” Claudia demanded.

  Ryan snickered, then winced again in pain. “I was kind of hoping he’d be here. But I guess he’s out.” His eyes looked heavy.

  Claudia let out a soft whimper.

  “Where is Haven?” I said. “What is it? Are Del and Ruth still there?”

  “Not for long,” he said with a smile. “They’re going to Chimerica. . . .” Then he sighed and closed his eyes.

  I gave him a gentle shake, but he was out of it. He was going to die unless I could think quickly, and at that moment, I could barely think at all.

  I looked up at Claudia. “The coffee shop,” I said. “It’s not too far. If we can get him there, they can help him.”

  She stood frozen for a moment, and I realized how devastated she was. She wasn’t quite out of time, but if Guzman wasn’t here, she was pretty much out of chances, out of hope.

  Then she looked down at Ryan, and when she looked up, there was compassion mixed with the tears in her eyes. “I got this side,” she said with a quick nod as she put her shoulder under one of Ryan’s arms.

  I took the other side and we stood him up, revealing a puddle of blood on the chair where he’d been sitting. His legs tried feebly to participate as we maneuvered him to the front of the house. The neighbor was gone—not that I expected him to help us anyway.

  “It’s just a few blocks,” I said. “Past the Lev station.”

  Claudia nodded again and we started walking.

  The first couple of blocks weren’t bad, especially where the street dipped down under the Lev station. Climbing back up on the other side was a different story.

  A handful of commuters walked past us, avoiding eye contact as they headed for the train.

  A small woman stopped right in front of us with a sweet smile. For a moment I thought she was going to help.

  “Whatever happened to that thing,” she said, pointing at Ryan, “he brought it on himself.”

  She had an H4H pin on her sweater.

  I tried to think of something smart to say, something deep and
noble and cutting that would make her stop and think. But I came up empty. I stuck out my tongue. It felt juvenile and inadequate, but I had to do something.

  She cringed and her face pinched into a scowl. For a second I thought, I guess I told her, then I saw Ryan’s middle finger raised in a salute.

  I laughed as the woman hurried off, but the laughter died in my throat as Ryan went slack and I looked up at the hill, still rising in front of us. The gentle slope now seemed like a steep climb.

  The train came and went, and suddenly the street was deserted—no cars, no pedestrians, just the sheer brick walls of warehouses on either side of the street. We passed a blackened spot on the asphalt where a car had been torched.

  Tears of frustration burned in my eyes, and I wondered if we’d made a terrible mistake, if we should have left Ryan at Guzman’s, called the police, gotten him to the hospital, and hoped for the best. Maybe they wouldn’t know what to do for him, but they might be able to keep him stable for a while—long enough to give us information.

  Ryan’s head fell forward, limp. He was dying. And with him, maybe, any chance of finding Del.

  “We need to carry him,” Claudia said.

  She was such a little thing, I didn’t know how strong she could possibly be, but we each put an arm under his knees and lifted him. He was tiny, but we were exhausted by then, and we staggered under his slight weight.

  Finally, the street leveled out and I spotted the sign for the coffee shop, half a block away. I was still wondering if we would make it when the door opened and Pell walked out.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Pell!” I cried feebly.

  She did a double take, then sprinted over.

  “Jesus, is that Ryan?” she said as she got behind him. She put her hands under his arms so Claudia and I could take his legs. “What happened? Where’s he been? Where’s Ruth?”

  I shook my head, not yet able to speak.

  The front door of the coffee shop opened, and Pell’s boss came out scowling, probably coming to tell Pell to get back to work. When he saw us carrying Ryan, his face turned even darker.