by Lissa Kasey
The last kept his ass sore but helped him focus. The guards following him everywhere made him feel secure. But he missed Shane. He missed working, even if it was just to flirt with Candy where others could cheer and laugh. Somehow it made him feel important to be doted on, even if it was just a material way.
Manny chowed down on a forty-ounce steak. Aki smiled out the window to the park beyond. The day was bright, and in just a few days, he’d be going on his first real date, with Shane, of all people, who smiled like sunshine and spit words sweet as honey.
In the park a man got up from a bench, turned, and waved to Aki.
Hyeon.
Aki clenched the table, fighting the urge to get up and chase after the man even after he disappeared as a crowd passed by. Everywhere Aki went, he saw Hyeon or the biohazard symbol that stained his memory with so much blood. He feared more and more each day that he was going crazy. He was unsure of the lines that separated reality from fiction. Which was the real life? And how would he handle it if he simply awoke back in a lab in the camp again?
THREE HOURS by train and then an hour through customs. He rented a car at the border, a bit shocked that crossing through the fence really did seem to take him to another world. The sky was the same until he drove farther south, but nothing else was. There was nothing but barren dirt as far as the eye could see. It almost looked like a desert, but Shane knew it to be part of southern Nebraska before WWIII. City M was somewhere between what used to be Chicago and Cincinnati. He knew they didn’t get as much rain this far south as they did around M, but he didn’t expect the barren expanse of dirt. Dry he expected, but no trees or grass anywhere?
The sky darkened, even though it was not past two in the afternoon. Black soot covered everything the farther south he drove. It looked like a war zone, nothing living for miles, just the barren dead stumps of trees and empty wasteland as far as the eye could see covered in black tar-like ash.
The North seemed a paradise compared to this with all its lush green grass and blooming trees. Shane had been given strict instructions, a gas mask, and several hasty shots to stave off radiation sickness. He was pretty sure nothing here could hurt him. After all he’d survived the man-made plague that swept through the end of the Third World War, resulting in his and many others’ mutations. His A-M genes were a blessing when everyone else died horrible deaths around him.
The camp, or the remnants of it, came into sight just after four in the afternoon. The landscape was so dark and debris-strewn he had to slow the Jeep to a crawl. At the border they said the camp hadn’t functioned in a decade. It had been abandoned by the government and was considered unsafe. He’d been advised to avoid it, but when Shane invented some sob story about a client looking for a past relative that led to the camp, the guards had been quick to point him in the right direction.
He took out his com unit and recorded the scene. Maybe someday he’d ask Aki to recount the tales of horror, help the kid heal by setting old memories to rest.
There were large concrete-and-metal structures sprawling in a shattered circle around a giant pit. The biohazard symbol was everywhere. The walls, the ground, hell, the structures probably made the shape of it as though the darkened air and inches of acidic soot wasn’t warning enough.
Shane had to wear the mask just to filter out the stench. Even years unused, all he could smell was death. If anyone had come to clean up the camp, they’d left without lifting a finger. Blackened bones were piled in a jumbled heap in the middle of the pit, more bodies than Shane could even think to count. Others lay as though they’d fallen, never getting up again. The soot made some of them still look alive; others, the flesh was gone, though not from parasites, as nothing alive could exist here for more than an hour or two, or so the guards had told him at the border.
Shane wandered from building to building. They all just seemed to be large storage-type rooms, filled with dead. Some were dressed as guards, but most were in the barest of tattered clothing. Children. Stretched as far as the eye could see. The way the bodies lay so close in the last one made him think of Aki and how he must have huddled together with the rest of these for warmth and maybe comfort despite his abilities. On a far wall, a crayon drawing caught his gaze. He carefully maneuvered around bodies to crouch low enough to examine it. Angels and sunshine. Even after all the years gone by, the remains of the disaster still showed hope. Shane sighed and made his way out.
There were no signs of kitchens, bathrooms, or anything other than the hovels meant to herd the psis until they died and could be thrown in the pit to burn. How horrible. He glared at the blackened sky and headed back to the car. Aki had run from this place, somehow had climbed the electrified fence that towered forty feet of concrete, to cross the border into the North in the dead of winter.
It was eleven hours to drive straight from the border to City M. Less if you took the train. By foot it would have taken weeks. Most people didn’t leave the Cities, so while he might have gotten a ride from one end of City J or K to the other, he’d have to walk through the wilderness to get to the next town. And the cities were a couple hundred miles apart. In winter with nothing but rags on his back, how could anyone survive? How could Aki have made it so far?
Shane arrived back at the gate, used the Northern radiation showers, threw out the clothes he’d worn—they’d be lethal to anyone else anyway—changed into a fresh batch he’d stuffed in a locker, and headed back to the train. All he could think about was that cold dark place where Aki must have once slept. The stink of death around him never-ending, and the depressing thoughts of no escape, no hope tainting every breath he took. How had the kid survived? How could anyone survive that?
He glared out the window as the world, bright with blooming, living things, sped by. The Gem really was paradise. Aki had food, he had a roof over his head that didn’t leak, he was warm, and no one treated him like they were just waiting for him to die. People smiled at him, flirted with him, let him feel important and beautiful. Of course he’d be hesitant to give it up, coming from as much horror as he had. Shane glared at his reflection in glass as the sun began to set. Aki had been right to refuse him. He’d been so clueless, thought that somehow he could provide more for Aki than what the Gem had.
But how did one improve on paradise?
“Candies, flowers, jewelry! Buy something for the one you love. Who will be waiting for you when you get off the train?” A woman wheeled a cart down the aisles. Colorful roses, big boxes of candy, and a lockbox of jewelry sat on top of the cart. “How will you show them you love them? Thank them for waiting for you?”
Shane smiled at the thought. Love. Was that what he felt? Was that why he needed Aki so much? Not infatuation, but love. He wanted the psi to himself, of course, but he really wanted Aki to be happy. To smile the way that lit up his eyes and made cute little wrinkles at the top of his nose. So maybe he couldn’t offer paradise. Shane wondered if love would be enough.
TWENTY-THREE
AKI GRIPPED Manny’s arm again, connecting with ease to what the ISS doctor had called Manny’s “quiet space.” Much like Candy’s colored clouds and Paris’s rain, every person had an internal place that would keep Aki from viewing everything about them if he could connect to it. It wouldn’t work on everyone, he’d been warned. And strong emotions would yank him out of it and into their scattered psyche… but for a first step, it certainly felt like he’d accomplished something. He could find the place in most anyone now instantly without glancing through other memories.
Manny’s quiet place was just an empty room. A breeze blew through an open window and he seemed to sit in a rocking chair, just letting himself sway. The more Aki focused, the more the room became real in his head, like he was there, but if he let it fade, he could still touch Manny and function mostly as normal. So far he’d been careful about whom he touched, only using Manny, Bart, and a handful of other companions as test subjects. This wouldn’t be enough to keep him out of anyone’s head during sex. He�
�d already been warned and was well aware of the limitations when Royce had accidentally shoved him out of the quiet place and into a memory of someone who used to scream at the other companion all the time.
Aki had wound up with a bloody nose from that one, and Bart had put a pause on the practice. The former soldier had almost insisted Aki go back to the ISS just to be sure it wasn’t more serious than a nosebleed. But it stopped soon enough. And Aki was never one to be deterred by pain. He’d also refused to leave the Gem since seeing Hyeon outside of Artie’s.
“Forgot this on your bed.” Candy handed him his phone, which was ringing, just as Aki headed downstairs to find food. Shane had sent him a schedule to override the one Paris had given him. He was supposed to eat, and then there was a detailed list of how he was to clean up for his date tonight.
“I’m not leaving the house until Paris comes to get me,” Aki told his best friend. Candy nodded but disappeared into the kitchen.
The phone rang again as he entered the main entry to look for Claudius. Maybe he could convince the guard to run to Artie’s and get some sugar buns for him.
Detective Jackson stood there, phone to his ear. He clicked it off and put it away. Aki’s phone stopped ringing.
“You here to tell me I’m your long-lost brother too?” He’d had a rough week. Ino, then the first class at the ISS, which had given him a headache that wouldn’t let up; his schedule had been changed, which always made him cranky, and now Jack.
“Yeah, no. I have a half dozen brothers. Not in need of more. I’d actually like to talk to you about Shane. He’s taking you out tonight, right?”
Aki frowned. “I didn’t realize you were that close.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call us close. He’s been a little off since he quit, so I’ve been making sure to call on him. Heard Paris has too. Kicking his ass into gear. Saw Shane today and he’s a man on a mission. Getting furniture moved into the new place and setting up his office.” Jackson ran his hands through his hair. “Never saw him that motivated before.”
“I don’t understand. Quit? I thought he was taken off the serial case.”
“They were going to fire him for pulling up medical records that have linked all the cases and provided new leads. But that’s how things go. Bend the wrong rule and you’re expendable. He quit before they could fire him. Is going into business for himself. He didn’t tell you?”
He’d only called to command Aki go to training and for the date they’d be going to later. “He told me to go to some ISS class.”
“Yeah, shielding basics. Great class. I think you’ll pick it up quick. I know Dr. Vitoric is teaching this one, so she can help you focus. She’s great. Got me back on track.” Jack motioned to the entry dining area. “Can we go sit? If that’s okay. I don’t want to take time away from your day. I know you’re still recovering from being ill.”
Aki nodded and followed him to the companions’ private dining room. Paris would be arriving soon to help him prepare for his date, and he needed to eat. It was on his schedule. Aki was nervous, but he’d also been practicing the things Dr. Vitoric had shown him in the first class, including some shielding techniques that they were going to expand on today.
“Not sure what I can do for you, Jack.”
Jack swung his bag off his shoulder and pulled out a smaller com tablet. “I have a video to show you.”
“I don’t need porn, Detective.”
He smiled. “You’re walking porn, Misaki Itou. Me, I’m a simple man with simple needs. But I believe everyone should make decisions with all the information necessary. What I’m about to show you is so far from porn, it’s almost painful for even me to watch.”
“It’s not a snuff film, is it?”
“I’d never show something like that to you.” He scrolled for a moment, then something popped up on the screen. He enlarged it and tapped it to make it play. On screen was a small, empty, white room. Aki frowned at it, the feel of it vaguely familiar. The floor was concrete and in the center a drain.
“What is that place?”
“Safe room. Or panic room. Whatever you call it. All the houses in the Woods development come with them as standard requirement. They are made for this.”
The video suddenly exploded with action. A door slammed open, and Jack fell on the floor, panting. He was bloody, clothes torn, and he ripped at them as the heavy door swung shut and latched itself behind him. He ripped at the tatters of his shirt like it burned him. A second later he seemed to be ripping at his own flesh. Blood and matter splattered the room. Aki gripped the arms of the chair as dread filled him. Blood covered everything, but Jack kept tearing, twisting, moving in ways that weren’t natural to a human. His body shifted and moved with a mind of its own, a rippling mad thing, until finally his back burst open. The gore and mess was so great it was like an explosion, making Aki fight to hold back his breakfast.
Sprinklers turned on, hosing down the room and revealing a large dark animal. Something feline and very scary looking. What the fuck was that?
The video ended.
“That was my deepest, darkest secret. My demon, Aki.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The plague that wiped out most of the soldiers at the end of World War Three? That virus mutates people into this. Most die. Some, like me, survive. I was exposed later. Experimentation, they told me at the time. What they were doing was mutating the virus to create new animal strains. Exposing us to an incurable plague. They expected it to kill me.”
That almost seemed worse than death. So much blood and pain. “It can’t be real.”
“McNaughton is much the same. Though the appearance of his demon is different, it’s the same nightmare.”
Aki sucked in air, trying to gain a steady thought as his head spun. How was this for real? People didn’t turn into animals. “Is this some sort of trick?”
“Would you like me to play it again? You can zoom in and out. I assure you the gore doesn’t look any more pleasant up close. The sprinklers only clean so much. I usually spend a week after my change mucking out the safe room.” He tapped the screen, and it restarted. It didn’t make more sense the second time.
“Is that really you?” Some sort of jungle cat. Nothing about them looked the same, not the dark hair or the eyes, and as the creature looked at the camera just before the recording stopped, nothing human stared back. “I mean, how can anyone survive that? The loss of blood alone….” The video had no sound, but the expression on Jack’s face while he was tearing at his own flesh and then the end with explosive change was nothing but pain. “It’s horrible. I don’t understand.”
“This is what they did to me, Aki. I was not a psi. I was just a kid trying to survive in a world where the poor are exterminated. The ISS is researching it, but they don’t know what it is other than a mutation like your psi genes. A lot of soldiers came out of the war like this, the virus that caused it gone like it never existed, but the results are permanent. McNaughton and Ino are among that bunch. The gene actually makes us disease resistant; in fact seems to stop aging all together. Shane is almost seventy-six; Ino is in his eighties. If it weren’t for the pain of the change and the fact that, even among those who survive the virus, less than two percent survive their first change, most would consider this a fountain of eternal youth. Only when viewing this reality, do they realize it’s nothing but pain.”
“You’re telling me you’re some kind of werewolf?”
He smiled sadly. “As you can see, I don’t turn into a wolf. Though the mythology is similar. From what the ISS has been able to understand so far, the South took a psi gene that had been mutated for healing and mutated it again and again until it became so virile it began killing the host. Like many science projects gone wrong, they decided to use it against the North. Creating a super virus from the coding so instead of being transferred through genetics like the psi gene, it became a plague. A virus that destroyed any who did not mutate. We call it A-M, animal mutati
on.” He pointed to the screen. “We think it’s to build an army of these creatures. Deadly, fast, and they heal almost anything. The only thing they didn’t count on was the animal instinct, which is to kill for food or to protect, but not on command. Humans and animals don’t mesh well that way. They can be trained to kill. Humans, however, balk at being commanded that way, though it can be done. And maybe that’s the case here. But when I’m this, I’m not me. It’s hard, nearly impossible to think like a person in that form. I’m just a predator, and everyone else is prey. Especially if it’s another animal in my territory.”
“But you’re a person, not a cat.”
“Not in that form. It’s not like old myths. No full moon or anything can predict it. Some of us are on a regular cycle, sort of like a woman is on a cycle. The gene multiplies until it needs to take control, and once it does it resets and has to start over.” He glared at his hands like they were foreign, dangerous things. “For me, my blood begins to boil, like a fever, only with a temperature high enough to kill a normal person, then my skin aches. I can time it. A headache starts, so bad it feels like my head will explode. Once that begins I’ve got about thirty minutes to get to the safe room.” He tapped the screen. “That place keeps others safe from me.”
“And if you can’t get to the room?”
“Remember the picture I showed you? Of the person reduced to hamburger? I was sent over from the ISS because of what I am. They think whoever is taking these kids is an A-M. And the Woods where I live is really just a containment camp for us. Better than what you had in the South. But we’re just as much prisoners. I know some A-Ms who can’t function as people. They will live the rest of their lives in the bowels of the ISS, praying for a cure to something that no one even knows where to start to fix it. And then there’s you.”