‘I’ve remembered something,’ he offered in a low voice, when he grew close enough. ‘I’ve been here before. Long ago, when I was a child.’
I stared back as he moved towards me, his Roman regalia so at odds with the forest surroundings.
‘But you can’t have,’ I responded. ‘No child ever left Isca Pantheon, no matter how privileged. You’ve said so yourself.’
‘I know, but I’ve seen this place all the same,’ he responded from the shadow of the trees. ‘With Octavia.’
I nodded. My mind was racing.
‘Lake … I think she’s up ahead … and …’
It was August’s turn to nod. ‘I’ve seen the smoke – she’s agitated,’ he muttered, striding ahead.
And this time we stayed together, until we reached a high wall made of ancient mossy stones.
‘Isca’s original Roman wall,’ August muttered.
He reached out to touch the reddish stone bricks, and for a brief second, I wondered how much of a difference his two-thousand-year-old Roman DNA signature coding really made.
There was a poignancy about it, the ancient world and the future connecting in the same time and space; both claiming advanced civilization and yet both pivoting about the same archaic savagery. Arafel couldn’t be more different, or more precious.
‘Think you can scale it? With a lift?’ August gesticulated.
I smiled, turning back towards the grainy, timeworn wall, and was seated astride its top within a breath. Slowly, I scanned the landscape inside. It was so unexpected.
If there had been a castle here once, it was long gone leaving only a crumbling gatehouse fortified by a thick portcullis. But the long, white clinical buildings set inside the landscaped lawns were uncomfortably familiar. They had the same clean lines as Pantheon, and grew up out of the ground like a poisonous fungus. Somehow I knew, without setting even one step inside, whose handiwork I was staring at.
Jas leapt up beside me as I extended a hand to August. He scrambled up, in a most un-gladiatorial way, and gripped the front edge as though it might disappear into thin air.
‘Not so great with heights,’ he confessed.
I smiled tightly before returning my attention to the buildings inside the wall. They were in no way as big as Pantheon’s domes, but looked to be made of the same thick impenetrable material.
‘Satellite research centre,’ August muttered in a suffocated voice.
I shot him a glance, and knew this was answering so many of his own questions.
‘With Cassius you can never be sure you’ve seen the whole.’
Rajid’s wisdom had never seemed more apt.
‘Do you remember it?’ I asked.
‘I think so … bits of it anyway. I always suspected Octavia of having back-up facilities, but never anything this … big.’
A robin chirruped its bashful song somewhere behind us. The irony made me want to laugh out loud.
‘Could they be here, do you think?’ I asked.
Eli’s athletic figure swam in front of my eyes, first as he advanced down the ruined cathedral nave with a pack of vultures flanking him, and then later as he sheltered the young Prolets. He’d changed so much over the past year. I thought of our shared affection for the man sitting with me now, and a surge of feeling blazed through my veins. It was all so complex, but he had everything to live for. And Max and Aelia? Were they here too? With the rest of the Prolets? I gritted my teeth. I was done with wondering.
‘Talia, wait!’ August shot out a hand, but he was too slow.
I was already on the ground, and a second later Jas was with me, clearly not content to let me out of her sight after her solo adventure. I turned to offer August a hand, only to find him scrabbling ungracefully down the wall, before dropping the last few feet.
‘Don’t be a little fool, Talia!’ he hissed, recovering his balance. ‘I’ve already lost Aelia and most of my men.’
I blinked as what he wasn’t saying gleamed in the duplicitous sunshine.
‘We stick together … Besides.’ He nodded towards the top of the rectangular building, stretching out of which was some kind of fortified watchtower. ‘Perimeter tower, for keeping intruders out, and everyone else in.’
‘And Lake?’ I asked breathlessly.
He held his finger to his lips, before propelling us both at sprint pace towards the end wall of the satellite facility.
The whole building was suspiciously silent, and as we got close I could see there were no guards standing sentry anywhere. I frowned at August as we reached the smooth white walls.
‘Guess you need less security with an ancient, unstable mythological beast around.’ He winked.
‘You see her?’ I whispered.
He nodded towards some smoking trees just visible at the front of the building. I swallowed hard.
Of course, she had to be close. Cassius wasn’t going to rein her in until he had what he wanted.
‘Hominum chimera is a morphing beast; needing careful handling and a guard she trusts. I can’t imagine she has either right now.’
Pan’s gentle silence had never seemed more noble. He’d been charged with the guardianship of the mother of all mythical beasts, a changeling with the ability to rouse and challenge the forces of nature. No wonder he had protected her so fiercely.
And then there was the pale, thin child herself, the one who’d shown me the sparse living arrangements in the tower, her double eyelids her only distinguishing feature. Even then, I’d assumed her to be just another discarded Pantheon experiment.
‘It’s her multi-genus DNA. From what I’ve read, no one species is completely dominant so, given a particular trigger, she morphs into the creature that best responds. And as she comprises three different sets of genetic coding, all competing for alpha position, she is highly unpredictable.’
‘And her current form …’ I asked, already knowing the answer from the glimpse of reptilian tail and smouldering trees.
‘I’d say the draco,’ August answered curtly. ‘As far as I know she has multi-genus fused DNA from the draco – or dragon, the Nemean lion and the goat.’
‘Yeah, waaaay too easy if she were the goat,’ I breathed.
‘Don’t underestimate her in any form. Classical writers believed the chimera to be a metaphor for a volcano with good reason!’
There was silence while I digested the enormity of what we were facing.
‘But what does it mean for her humanity?’ I whispered finally. ‘If it’s overshadowed by so much other DNA? How much of it is Lake?’
It felt like a question far bigger than either of us, far bigger than this clinical white centre, and its unethical experimentation.
A ghost of a smile flickered across August’s face. ‘If a chimpanzee’s helix is broken and human DNA inserted, is it animal or man? It’s a point I’ve argued often in the Senate. Nature isn’t always perfect either. Chimerism, although rare, can occur naturally. Original humans have been known to possess two sets of DNA … it’s rare, but possible. So even a pure Outsider life isn’t perfect. But perhaps that’s the point.’
I stared at the Roman scientist, who was still such an enigma, in so many ways.
But any further conversation was lost in another bone-grating cry. She was only metres away now, at the front of the building. I craned my neck to glimpse her, before recoiling in shock. She was unlike any beast of Pantheon I’d seen.
Lake, in chimera-draco form, had to reach at least five metres high. She was ash-grey with spiny, arrow-point scales, which stretched from the tip of her thrashing titian tail to her muscular neck, where a black band flickered with an intermittent light. Veins of regal purple stretched down her torso and into the top of her powerful forelegs. But it was her double-lidded honey eyes that were most unsettling. Eyes that didn’t belong on such a vast, serpentine creature. Lake’s eyes. Set inside a hideous creature designed with one thing in mind. And apart from the black metallic collar, she was shackle free.
&
nbsp; I drew back to catch my breath.
‘She’s untethered,’ I whispered. Panic welled up my throat as I sank my fingers into Jas’s soft fur, trying to steel my nerve.
‘She has a perimeter collar.’ August nodded, pale-faced. ‘The tower is sending out an electrical field that will channel a few thousand volts through her collar should she try to go beyond a certain perimeter … probably the Roman wall,’ August added casting his gaze around swiftly, ‘which means she’s free to deter, but not to escape.’
‘And, it’s still her? In this form?’
He drew a breath. ‘From what I’ve read about Hominum chimera, when she’s in human form, she’s human; when she’s in draco form …’
I nodded.
Jas growled again, pawing the ground.
Somehow, I knew she could sense Eli, and the thought gave me the fire I needed.
‘I’ll draw her off; you get inside and see if you can find them.’
August spoke the words calmly, but I could tell it was costing him everything to suggest separate paths. It was likely suicide, for us both. But what was the use in living, if everyone who mattered was gone?
I slid my fingers into his, and he gripped back as though it was taking all his restraint not to pull me in there and then, the adrenaline of our semi-conscious dream beside the river not quite spent. Lifting our hands, he pressed his lips to the backs of my cold fingers, and I strained until I ached. Strained with the loss of so many lives, and a dream, of two people growing old together beneath Arafel’s magenta sky.
‘Et in Arcadia Ego,’ he whispered briefly.
Then he was gone. And I was in chaos.
Chapter 23
There was a bellow of instant fury, and I clenched my teeth as I slid around the corner. Jas slunk low on my tail.
I spied August immediately, running alongside the far wall, with the draco’s reptilian head thrown back in violent anger. But it had worked. And his swift action had already ensured the double entry doors into the facility were unguarded. Briefly.
Jas leapt into a graceful sprint towards the entrance, and I followed, my eyes trained on the draco’s gleaming titian spine. She roared her anger skywards again, livid that anyone dare cross her territory. Then she started advancing on August, her weight reverberating through the ground, and serrated jaws projecting bright orange bursts of flames I could feel fifty metres away.
As I reached the double doors, I grabbed the handles and twisted downwards, my heart pounding. They swung open into a dark silent interior, and Jas sprinted inside. Then I stopped dead, the whites of my knuckles gleaming in the shadows. As far as I knew, August and I were the only ones left alive. What was I doing?
‘To be courageous, is to act courageously, Talia.’
I set my mouth grimly. Grandpa’s wisdom was always lurking.
‘Hey, Lake!’ I yelled irreverently, spinning on the spot, and for a second it felt as if the whole world paused.
The spiny, honey-eyed draco shifted slowly around, her head low, and jowls pulled back in a hideous grimace. Lake’s trademark double lids hung low over her glare, offering no sign of recognition. Instead she threw her head back and released a scorching trail of flames to the sky. She was angry, and determined I should know it.
‘Hey, it’s me, Lake!’ I tried, holding up my hands, ‘Tal … remember? The girl who gave you her last meal? In the tunnels?’
The draco’s vast spiny head sunk lower, and she took three heavy steps forward, her nostrils flaring with steam, and exposed canines glinting in the sun. She was distracted enough to give August a chance.
‘Talia!’ he exploded, running out from where he’d been cornered. ‘For the love of Nero, this isn’t a game! Move!’
‘I know that!’ I returned, side-leaping another long, smoky volcanic flare. ‘I just remembered …’
‘Just remembered what?’
August’s tackle impacted before he finished, driving us both backwards through the open doorway at a crippling speed. I hit the sterile floor first, and braced myself as our tangle of limbs slid towards the bank of units fixed to the back wall.
‘That in no part of the story, did Bellerophon get fried by the chimera,’ I whispered when we stopped.
He rolled his eyes and enveloped me in a crush, just as one huge double-lidded eye levelled against a ground-floor window.
‘Draco!’ I croaked as the first burst of flames reached through the open doorway, charring the solid frame opal black in a single breath.
We were on our feet and running before she had time to try again, chasing the hind legs of a pining leopard up a circular flight of steps. A bank of cameras whirred and swung as we reached the top, and I couldn’t help a sardonic smile.
‘Not dead yet, Cassius,’ I smirked, blowing a kiss as August dragged me past.
We were in a long white corridor, similar to those in Pantheon’s laboratory, and the sickly formaldehyde hit me like a wall.
‘Which way?’ I asked, my momentary hope wavering.
There were endless doors leading off the clinical space. And, bleakly, I recalled the multitude of long clinical laboratory corridors in Pantheon, and the horror that lay behind each.
But I’d underestimated the best watch-cat in the world.
With a low yowl, she set off at a sprint towards the T-junction at the end. She rounded to the left without hesitation, her beautiful flecked coat a luxurious contrast to our surgical surroundings. August and I wasted no time in setting off in pursuit. We hadn’t come this far to lose her now, and as we turned the corner, I glimpsed the tip of her tail disappearing inside the last door on the right.
I slowed down as we approached. The building had been suspiciously empty so far, and there was a distinct technical hum in the air. We crept forward softly, the sound of machinery burrowing beneath my skin, evoking memories of invasive tubing and a blue noxious liquid. Stealing life. Stealing Grandpa. I bit my lip. August and I had nothing but his knife and my dart tube between us, but for some reason I wasn’t afraid.
I’d lost so much already, what was the point of losing more time to fear?
Which was exactly why I pushed open the door and walked in, my soft padding footsteps echoing oddly in the quiet space. I paused to scan our new surroundings. Two opposite walls of the huge chamber were lined with banks of screens that flashed and whirred with hundreds of changing numbers and images. The third wall was lined with countless vertical white tanks.
Occupied vertical white tanks.
And my small flame of hope finally guttered and expired. The tanks here were less the life-freezing canisters of Pantheon, and more the observation tanks of the chimera ward, but the faces staring out were still as wan and pale as the dead.
I broke into a run towards the tall oblong tank Jas had chosen, her flank sunk low in fierce protective mode. The solid lower half concealed what lay beneath, but there was a clear window into the face, and my world started to crumble as soon as I got too close for denial.
‘Eli!’
My agony echoed pointlessly around the lifeless chamber, making nothing and no one look, except August. Jas lifted her large front paws, and stretching up the front of the canister, letting her beautiful feline face sink as close to the glass as she could. Now a fully grown adult snow leopard, she was taller than my brother, and had to incline her majestic head to see inside.
But her plaintive soft mew took me straight back to the icy winter he’d brought her home, a tiny bundle of white and grey flecked fur, tucked into a makeshift sling around his neck. She’d understood him like no other animal, and now I could tell she understood again.
I let my hand fall onto her muscular neck, and felt her warm skin quiver as I forced my eyes to his pallid face. He was staring out at me, his scalp attached to a plate of coloured tubing, and next to him was Aelia. Their skin was the colour of fire-ash, and their eyes tightly closed, but their chests were rising and depressing. My body flooded with a raw grief that threatened to choke every
last thought. Were they dead? How had Cassius caught them? What had they suffered before being incarcerated in these coffins?
There was blood on my lips, and I was only dully aware of its bittersweet metallic taste. Of iron. Pungent and earthy. I ran my tongue around my mouth, painting it like a declaration of war, trying to think though it felt like the walls were closing in around me.
Every one of the uprights contained a pale-faced guard. It seemed even Cassius’s own gladiators hadn’t escaped. And each was wan and lifeless, aside from the synchronized lifting and depression of their chests. It was almost more terrifying than their colour, their collaborative rhythm. I scanned the tanks numbly; the young Prolets, Max and Unus were nowhere to be seen. They had to be here somewhere. Where else could they be?
‘August, help me unhook all this stuff,’ I demanded hoarsely. ‘August?’ I repeated, suddenly aware I hadn’t heard him utter a sound for the past couple of minutes.
I spun around and spied him staring at a screen on the opposite side of the room. Cursing, I ran across and closed my fingers around his listless forearm, pulling insistently. Until I realized what he was staring at. His own face. Only much, much younger.
Citizen MMMDCCXCVIII to be exact, or so the moving screen said.
A toddling infant running across a manicured lawn, a brief glimpse of a sterile white building, and Octavia, watching. Waiting. Fast-forwarding to a golden-haired boy. Learning and excelling at gladiatorial training school, Equite division. Fast-forwarding again to a young knight’s triumphant graduation, with combat trials and celebrated brilliance in the field of genetic modification and biotechnical engineering. Finally, his secondment to the Government’s Scientific Programme and rapid escalation to the role of Commander General.
It all amounted to one clear thing: his clear preparation for a life as Octavia’s Deputy Director General.
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