by Jon McGoran
“What others?” I asked.
“The other chimeras in the truck,” he said. “Some were at the fixer when I was. Some got picked up in other places.”
“Picked up by the police?”
He looked grim. “Some of them, yeah. Go figure, right? Apparently, some of the police were working with the poachers.”
“So the police got you at Guzman’s? How? We were watching the whole time.”
“We ducked down,” Rex said quietly. “Remember? When the headlights were on us. They must have brought him out then.”
I started to protest—the police officer I’d spoken to on the phone that night had said no one came in. But of course they hadn’t come in, I realized. They hadn’t been arrested. They’d been abducted. “Who are these poachers?” I asked. “What did they want with you?”
“I don’t know. I never actually saw them. I woke up in the back of this old truck. Then the team from Haven showed up with guns and bolt-cutters and saved us. They busted us out and brought in a bus to take us all out of there. They got us out fast. I don’t even want to think about what might have happened if they hadn’t shown up. I was still pretty far out of it when we were driving out, but I remember looking up and seeing a fire burning in the sky.”
“Pitman?” I said. “The poachers had taken you to Pitman?”
He nodded. “You can see that fire from on top of the hill here. But Mr. Jasper won’t say that’s where we were when his people found us. He doesn’t want us seeking revenge, or drawing those bastards from Pitman back here.”
“Who’s Mr. Jasper?” Rex asked, walking closer now.
The gate was up ahead, flanked on either side by a cluster of security equipment. A dirt road ran up to it from the woods and kept going inside.
“He’s the guy who runs this place. He saved my life. By the time they got us here, it was too late for me to see a fixer, so he brought in a genie, an actual medical doctor. They stacked an emergency splice on me.”
“Another splice?” I said, trying to keep the dismay out of my voice.
He nodded. “Yeah, they said it would, like, overwrite the earlier splice and fix any errors. They used some kind of accelerant, but they gave me sedatives and painkillers, so it was a breeze compared to the first one.”
“It’s kickass,” Sly said. “What is it?”
Del held his arms out in front of himself, admiring the stripes and muscles that covered them. Then he looked over with a big grin. “Bengal tiger.”
Pell whooped.
“Damn!” Sly laughed. “That’s awesome!”
“They’re extinct,” I said.
Rex nodded. “Must have cost a fortune.”
“I know, right?” Del laughed. “Jasper’s the best.”
When we reached the gate, Del pressed a button on the security console. He looked up into the camera and said, “Tamil. With three chimeras.” He looked at me. “And one guest.”
SIXTY
The gate swung open and as soon as we walked through it, Del wrapped me in a big hug. Up close, the changes were even more striking. He towered over me, and his arms and chest were thick and solid—not as big as Rex’s, but close. I pulled back, looking up at him and his crazy tiger stripes.
He caught me staring. “Like I told you, I’m fine,” he said with a nonchalant grin.
I punched him in the arm. Hard. “You told me five minutes ago. You still haven’t answered my question. How come you didn’t tell me before? Let me know somehow?”
He didn’t flinch, didn’t squirm, didn’t react in any way other than to put his hands on my shoulders and say, “I’m sorry. Like I said, I couldn’t. This place is a secret. I couldn’t exactly send you a mail drone.” Then he turned to the others and said, “Come on, let me show you around.”
As we walked along the dirt road, the brush seemed greener, the trees healthier. “Did you call yourself ‘Tamil’?” I asked. “What’s that about?”
He turned and looked at me, a bit condescendingly. “New me, new name. All chimeras take a new name. I didn’t get a chance to choose one after my first splice.”
Pell nodded, her head bobbing on her neck. Rex looked away.
Del—or Tamil—studied my face and shrugged. “It’s what we do,” he said simply.
“It’s really lush here,” Rex remarked, looking around. “Compared to the surrounding countryside, I mean.”
Del nodded. “Jasper is detoxifying the land. Those idiots in Pitman, and people like them, like my dad, they were so desperate to get the last bits of carbon out of the ground, they ruined the land doing it.”
“They’re still doing it,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “Pitman has an illegal coal well, right in town. Even my dad admitted they weren’t safe, and he said Pitman’s was one of the worst—no backflow preventers, no basic safety precautions, nothing. I can’t believe the government hasn’t shut it down. I guess they don’t care, out in the middle of nowhere. Too busy harassing chimeras.” He turned and looked at me. “You know my dad worked on that thing when I was a kid, right?”
“In Pitman?” Even as I said it, though, I realized that was why the town had sounded familiar.
He nodded. “Remember he used to drag me to all these messed-up little towns and the stupid local kids would tease me all day? Well, that’s one of them. I remember at night, I’d lie in bed and look out at those flares through my window—all those different towns, but each of them had a flare; that was the one familiar thing. Then one time Stan pulled me aside, in some horrible town with an especially half-assed rig—might have even been Pitman—and he tells me if I ever see one of those flares go out, I need to run like hell, because it’d take about a minute to build enough pressure to blow up the whole rig, five minutes to blow up the whole town.”
“Are you serious?” Sly said.
Del nodded with a laugh, but his eyes showed a glimpse of fear at the memory.
“Sometimes protesters would try to climb the towers, cap the thing, and make it blow. Stan would get so pissed. I saw it once, this young guy scrambling up the side of the rig, all these old farts huffing after him, terrified he was going to blow the rig.” He looked far off for a moment. “I was rooting for him, too, that kid.”
Rex caught my eye. His face was blank but somehow his eyes made it plain he wondered if Del was a little bit crazy.
“Anyway,” Del continued. “That thing is like a time bomb waiting to go off, even apart from the slow-motion death it’s leaching into the soil. You tell me what kind of people put something like that in the middle of their town.” He shook his head. “Mean, horrible people, in a miserable little town.”
They weren’t all bad in Pitman, but they had a lot of hate, too, with all their rabid H4Hers. A lot of people were just scared of the unknown, the unfamiliar, but man, anyone who didn’t like different sure wouldn’t have liked Del.
“You can smell it all the way up here sometimes,” he was saying. “The sulfur and ammonia. You see what they’ve done to the area; you’d think they’d learn.” He shook his head. “Anyway, Jasper has restored thousands of acres.” We came over a slight rise and there, spread out in front of us, were several acres of green farm fields, being tended by a handful of people. They seemed to be chimeras. “We grow most of our own food here.” He pointed to a wind and solar array just visible beyond the trees. “And our power.”
Pell looked around, wide-eyed. “It’s perfect, just like—”
The bushes behind us rustled, and a high-pitched squeal rang out, instantly doubling in volume and suddenly in stereo as Pell’s face split into a huge smile. I turned and saw Ruth running toward her, arms outstretched, screaming. The two of them collided and their arms wrapped around each other. Laughing and crying, they danced in a circle.
Just as it started to get awkward, Ruth let go of Pell and hugged Rex, then Sly, and then me, too.
“What happened to you?” Pell asked, stroking Ruth’s feathers. “God, I was so worrie
d.”
“It was scary,” Ruth said. “I was walking along outside, then suddenly I wasn’t. They drugged me somehow, a dart maybe, although I never found a mark. I woke up with a hood over my head, in the back of this big truck. I never saw their faces. There must have been thirty of us in there, all chimeras. They kept us in there for hours and hours. Then we were parked on the side of the road, and these guys with guns came and rescued us, took us here. It was terrifying, pitch-black in that truck. I was in there a few hours before I realized Ryan was with me.” She paused and looked around. “So, Ryan didn’t come back with you? Did he find his mom? He said he might not come back right away, that he needed to make things right with her.”
“They shot him,” Del snapped. “Those bastards from Pitman.”
“No!” She put her hand over her mouth.
“We don’t know where it happened,” Rex said.
Del waved him off. “If he got shot anywhere out here, it was someone from Pitman. There’s no one else around.”
“How is he?” Ruth asked.
“He’s alive,” Pell said quietly, putting a hand on her shoulder. “But it’s bad.”
“I was afraid something would happen to him,” Ruth said with a sob. “I told him it was dangerous, but he said he needed to see his mom before he left. I was so desperate to get word to you, I thought, if he was going anyway . . . We knew it was against the rules. We’re not supposed to leave once we’re here, or tell anyone where we are.”
I looked at Del, confused.
“I told you before. Jasper doesn’t want to risk H4H finding out where we are. He doesn’t want them coming after us.”
“I helped him draw a map,” Ruth said. “So he could get to the Levline, and to help you find us.” She started crying.
Rex took out the map and held it up.
Ruth nodded, eyes wide when she saw the bloody fingerprints.
Rex squeezed her shoulder. “He’ll be okay.”
“Put that away,” Del snapped. “And don’t let anyone see it or know about it.”
Rex cocked an eyebrow as he tucked the map back into his pocket.
“Sorry,” Del said, lightening up. “It’s just . . . they have to take the secrecy thing seriously here. There’s so many crazies out there.”
“Okay,” Rex rumbled, acknowledging it if not accepting it.
He looked at me as Del turned to continue walking. I shrugged, then followed along.
Pell put her hand on Ruth’s cheek, smiling. “It’s so good to see you, Ruthie.”
The dirt road curved briefly through more woods and up a small hill to a wide lawn in front of a massive wooden lodge. It was made of logs and had several sections, each with a peaked roof. Giant windows, decks, balconies, and an immense porch all overlooked the lawn and surrounding woods. Two chimeras were playing Frisbee on the grass.
Sly whistled at the sight of it. “Nice place.”
“Pretty impressive,” I said.
Del laughed. “I know, right?”
I paused. “So, how long are you planning to stay here?”
Rex and Sly and Pell stopped to hear his answer. Ruth looked down and bit her lip.
“Not long,” Del said with a grin, looking at the others. “Soon, we’re going to Chimerica.”
SIXTY-ONE
Chimerica?” I repeated. “Really?” Despite what Ryan had said, and Sly’s theories, I still wasn’t buying its existence. I guess I had assumed that when we got here, we’d find out that Ryan had been hallucinating from blood loss or something.
“There’s no such thing,” Rex said quietly, without much conviction.
But when Pell looked at Ruth, Ruth nodded in confirmation.
Del, still smiling, nodded too. “Yeah, there is. Haven’s a temporary refuge. Soon, we’re all going to Chimerica.”
“Where is it?” I asked.
“That’s a bigger secret than this place is.”
Something caught his eye and he turned and waved at the house. An older man in a suit was standing at the top of the wide steps, waving at Del.
“I’ll tell you more later. That’s Jasper,” he said. “You’re going to love him.”
As we approached the lodge, I noticed a copter port in the back, with two quadcopters parked on the platform. A handful of black off-road sedans were parked below it. In the rear was another structure, bigger than the lodge, but modern and simple.
“Those are the dorms,” Del said, pointing at it. “There’s not enough room for everyone in the lodge, so most of the chimeras are in the dorms. I’m in the lodge, which is great, but the dorms are still pretty cool.”
“I see you have company, Tamil,” Jasper said. He was in his mid-sixties, and he had a kindly face, like someone’s grandfather, but something about him creeped me out. He had a WellPlant in his brow, like lots of rich people, but his eyes were flat, like painted disks, not much more expressive than the WellPlant above them.
Del smiled back at him. “Mr. Jasper, I’d like you to meet my friends—Sly, Pell, and Rex. And this is Jimi.”
“Welcome to Haven,” he said, his smile so broad it made my cheeks ache. He stared at Rex for a moment. “My, you’re a big one, aren’t you? How did you all find us?”
Del cleared his throat. “Um . . . Ryan told them.”
Jasper’s smile faltered. “Ryan, eh?” He frowned. “Did he tell anyone else?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
He nodded, thinking. “Well, I am going to have to talk to him. We have rules for a reason. Is he back?”
I shook my head.
“He’s been shot,” Rex said.
“Good lord,” Jasper said. “Is he all right?”
“He’s alive,” Rex told him. “But it’s serious.”
“It was those people from Pitman, I know it,” Del said, as if the bitterness in his voice was the only thing holding back the rage.
Jasper turned to Rex. “Is this true?”
“We don’t know.”
“It had to be,” Del snapped.
Jasper held up his hands and made a soft shushing sound. “You don’t know that, Tamil. These days it could have been anyone, maybe someone from Carston. It could have been a hunting accident.”
Del let out a harsh laugh. “There’s no one hunting these hills. There’s nothing left to hunt.”
“Enough,” Jasper said sharply. “It doesn’t matter, because we’re not going to do anything about it. As I’ve told you before, we can’t be leading trouble to our doorstep. I won’t allow our residents to be put in danger like that.”
Del looked away and nodded begrudgingly.
Jasper turned to us, his smile back in place. “You look like you’ve had quite a trip. I bet you’d like to freshen up, maybe get something to eat. How does that sound?”
Food and a shower sounded pretty good. But I had serious doubts about this place. It seemed great, maybe too good to be true. I don’t know what I’d expected, but this was not it.
As Del led us into the lodge, I kept thinking about that fence, how we weren’t just protected, we were trapped. Jasper was weirding me out, too, with the whole secrecy thing and the rules. And his eyes.
I should have been overjoyed that Del was alive and well, and I was. But I was also angrier than ever. Not only had he been happy to leave me out there thinking the worst, he was also planning on leaving forever. Leaving me to deal with the fallout with my mom and his dad. Leaving me to deal with the police. Leaving me. I thought about the mess I’d made of my life in trying to find him. He hadn’t just thrown away his own future, he was wrecking mine.
And he’d been planning on doing it all without even saying goodbye.
SIXTY-TWO
The dining room had a big wooden table and a chandelier. It was obvious the place had been some kind of resort at one point, and it looked like someone had sunk a lot of money into restoring it. Pell and Sly seemed wowed by it all. To me it felt like the whole place was trying too hard. And
the way Rex met my eyes over the table, I think he felt the same way.
They gave us grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. Del talked the whole time we ate, mostly about how great Haven was and how great Jasper was. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed to be about how great Del was, too, since he was now a part of it.
He was describing how the table had been restored from some mansion a hundred miles away, how a helicopter had brought it in.
“And what’s the point of that?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Seems like a lot of trouble and expense. If what he’s really trying to do is save chimeras, why is Jasper spending so much money making the place so grand? It’s a bit much, don’t you think?”
He looked like I’d slapped him. “No, I don’t. I think it’s awesome. Why shouldn’t it be nice?”
“Well, you’re not going to be here long anyway, right?” I could feel myself getting snippy. “Aren’t you going to Chimerica?”
“Yeah, so what?”
“I don’t know. It’s all just weird, that’s all. The big fence and the secrets and all that.”
“The fence protects us,” he said indignantly. “You saw what happened to Ryan.”
I could feel the others looking at us, the scene getting tense.
“So, when are we going?” Pell said. “When are we going to Chimerica?” I think she wanted to know, but she also wanted to change the subject, calm things down.
Del sat back and gave her a knowing smile. “Soon,” he said.
I went back to my sandwich.
When we were done, Ruth took Pell to the infirmary and Del brought the rest of us to our rooms. Sly was in a room next to Ruth and Pell’s, right off the lobby. Rex’s room was at the end of the hall.
Rex paused in the doorway, glancing at Del, then looking back at me, before he went in and closed the door.