by S. E. Babin
“What about Watson?”
“What about him?” I asked.
“He altered you. He pretended like he didn’t know you when it’s possible he was around for much of your childhood.”
I plucked at the green grass around my feet. “I don’t know. I’m angry. I just…I need to know the rest. Once I do, I can better decide.”
“I think we should go visit my chemist friend. We can’t abandon Masters. You have the choice of what to do when we go back, but we owe him a great deal.”
I nodded. I had everything we needed.
“Good. We’re close by.”
I looked around at the forested area and laughed. “Is he Robin Hood?”
“No. Even better. He’s delightfully insane.”
“Oh goody.”
We walked side by side and chatted about nonsensical things. Aaron’s favorite color was green. He had one sister I’d already met and a brother gallivanting around the world he rarely saw. His mother was ill—the catalyst that began this entire thing—and his father left years ago when he was a teenager.
I filled him on my upbringing, though he knew most of it. There wasn’t too much to tell about it, but Aaron had missed everything after his abrupt exit. I couldn’t deny it still hurt to think about what he’d done. But I’d once again placed my trust in him. If he betrayed me this time, I would kill him.
And then, I’d rewind time and kill him again.
And again and again until I’d worked out all of my anger on him. I suspected he knew it, too.
He stopped at a massive tree blocking the path and knocked loudly three times. I stared at him like he was a crazy person.
“I know how it looks. Trust me, I do.”
“I’m not so sure you do.” Was Aaron a little whackadoo in the head? We were in the middle of a forest and I was pretty sure it wasn’t in Texas. The air was too cool and dry.
But damn me if the tree didn’t split open. “The hell?” I whispered.
“I told you he was crazy.”
“He’s tin foil hat crazy.”
Aaron shushed me and led me down the exposed stone staircase.
“Who is this guy?”
“Stop talking. Just relax and trust me. This guy is brilliant. He can tell us what we need to know.”
I shut my mouth and decided to send caution to the wind. We descended into something straight out of a sci-fi novel. It was like my dad’s compound on serious crack.
A tall man stood in the middle of the room. He was quite handsome for being a tin foil hat wearer, but even pretty people can be crazy. He wore a pair of wrinkled jeans, a plaid shirt, and bright white Converse. Intelligent green eyes peered at us from behind black wire spectacles. His hair stood out in all directions and appeared to be either the result of careful, meticulous styling or just a guy who didn’t care and ran his hand through it to brush it. I was aiming for the latter. He didn’t seem like a guy to waste that much time on hair when there was nuclear physics to learn.
He nodded at Aaron, but his eyes never left me. “You’ve brought a friend.”
Aaron gently pushed me forward. “Yes. Apologies for the drop in, my friend. This is Penelope Wilde.”
I stuck my hand out for a shake.
He eyed it with distaste and I slowly dropped it once I realized he wasn’t going to touch me with a ten-foot pole. I tried not to let that sting too much.
“I’ve never heard of you before.”
Errmmm. “There are seven-point-four billion people in the world. I’m not surprised.”
The man startled me by barking out a laugh. He stepped a little closer and slapped me once on the shoulder. “True! But if you were important, I would have heard of you by now. And I have not heard of you. So,” he pulled his spectacles down to peer at me, and I was startled by the vividness of his eyes, “you are not important.”
“Everyone is important,” I said, trying my best not to sound like I wanted a participation trophy.
He poked out his lip. “Awww. You’re one of those, are you?” He raised his voice in a high-pitched breathless tone. “Everyone is special. Everyone has a place in the world. And everyone deserves to be loved.” His green gaze snapped with annoyance. “You are wrong. Most people are dust. Then carbon. Then disease infested. And then back into dust. They eat. They shit. They procreate. Then they die.”
I blinked.
Aaron cleared his throat. “Orion, her last name was originally Holmes.”
Orion’s gaze narrowed and then widened in surprise. “Penelope Holmes. As I live and breathe.” He walked around me slowly, looking me up and down like I was on auction.
“Oh, so now I’m important?” I snapped.
He waved a hand. “You know it’s true. There are few people, few catalysts in this world. Few people who can propel the world to its true destiny. And if you are truly Penelope Holmes, then you are one of them.”
“Super. But we didn’t come here for that.”
Orion grinned, showing off superhero straight white teeth. “Of course you did. You just don’t realize it. Every action has a reaction. Whatever you are doing here now will affect your actions in the future.”
“Well…yes,” I said, confused. “If I’m hungry, I’m going to eat.”
“Precisely. But it’s more involved than that, my dear. Where will you eat? What will you eat? Will you go left or right? Left, you’ll have a nice burger, meet a cute guy, get a number, get married, and have two-point-five children. But go right…go right and you’ll walk right into a store holdup. Your hero complex will come out and you’ll step in front of a mother with two children and save her from a bullet. You’ll die and her young son will grow up and invent a lightweight bulletproof, invisible vest. He’ll make it affordable and widely available. He’ll credit your act of heroism for the invention. In turn, gun deaths drop considerably and the population doesn’t decrease like it has in the past. More resources are used, more trash, more waste, more people, more disease, more violence…more everything. So your death results in massive population and overuse of resources eventually leading to the next Black Death.” He stared intently at me. “Do you understand how one person could be more important than another?”
I swallowed hard. “Was that a true scenario?”
He grinned and the intensity of the situation dimmed a little. “Well, what do I know? I’m just a chemist.”
He spun around. “Follow!”
I gave Aaron a what-the-hell look and he smiled at me sheepishly.
“I suggest we follow.” He swept his arm low and I wanted to kick him. I sighed and followed Orion farther into his mad scientist lair.
Walls and walls and walls of labeled beakers lined the back wall. Several tables full of microscopes and various other equipment I’d never seen were stacked evenly in rows. Every available surface was full of something. Another wall was full of books meticulously labeled with things I’d never heard of. Years and years of research lay in those shelves. Orion was becoming curiouser and curiouser.
He spun back around and faced us. “Tell me why you’re here, yes?” He flipped his lapels up. “I assume you have a compound you are unable to identify. Something you need help recreating or maybe even destroying, yes?”
At Aaron’s nod, I pulled out the vial from Irene’s office and Aaron forked over his serum and the vial of my blood. Or…whatever it was. He held them up to the light and both winced as he shook them.
I couldn’t quite hide the hiss of my breath as he tossed one in the air.
“Relax, pretty girl. I’ve never dropped a single vial.”
“Yet,” I muttered.
“Ha! That’s exactly right. Yet!” He winked at me. “All right. No one watches Orion work, yes?” He pulled a remote from his shirt pocket, hit a button, and a wall to the right of us opened. “Make yourself at home in there and I will return as soon as I am done.”
I didn’t move.
He fixed me with a flat glare. “There is no room for negotiation. No one w
atches Orion work. Go now or leave my forest.”
Aaron tugged my arm and I reluctantly followed.
Once we were inside what was supposed to pass as a waiting area, the wall shut behind us with a thud.
“Aaron?”
He sat on a dusty couch that had seen better days and patted the place beside him, sending dust puffs up. “I’ll stand,” I said.
“We brought Orion in on a couple projects for COTO. He was invaluable to our team.”
“So why is he living in an underground bunker like a weird Rumpelstiltskin?”
He snorted. “Because one of the projects we gave him uncovered an ingredient no one was supposed to know about. Once COTO realized what they’d done, they tried to give Orion protection, but he was almost killed by the people who were harvesting the ingredient.”
“What ingredient?”
Aaron rubbed the side of his eye. He looked exhausted, just like I felt. And who was I kidding? I’d seen better days myself.
“It was a compound called XC-17. Discovered in Colombia, drug lords started adding it to their cocaine blends to extend the length of the high.”
“Where did it come from?”
He smiled bitterly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
I waved my hands around. “I’m inside a tree bunker. Humor me.”
“True.” He chuckled. “It’s from the nightshade plant.”
“Devil’s Breath?” I’d once watched a documentary on a drug so dangerous, it could completely strip your free will. When the film was finished, I sat there for several minutes thinking about never traveling again.
“No, but good guess. It’s a different one. As if nightshade weren’t already bad enough, right?”
“So, Orion discovers the XC-17 and what, he’s chased by Colombian drug lords?”
“It sounds completely far-fetched, I know. But, no, as cool as it would have been to say you were being chased by El Chapo, it was so much worse than that.”
“I’m pretty sure I don’t know what’s worse than drug lords.”
“How about the United States government?”
“No way.”
“I love how innocent you are, Penelope Wilde. The government is the deadliest criminal of all. The XC-17 produces a high four times as long as a regular drug and clenches the addiction. It makes it permanent. Someone can no longer just try something once, have a bad trip, and call it good. It digs its claws in. The person spends more money. The government lines its pockets. And eventually the body shuts down and just dies.”
“That’s terrible,” I whispered, suddenly understanding why Orion was living in an underground bunker. “How long has he been on the run?”
“A decade.”
“Why does he let you in?”
“We were fast friends when I worked in COTO. He’s a nut job, but he’s absolutely brilliant and funny too. The guy can play a mean game of poker.”
“Huh.” Against my better judgment, I sat down beside him while we waited for Orion to finish his diagnostics.
“Are you worried?” Aaron asked me.
I leaned my head back against the couch and pulled my neck to one side to stretch it out. “Wouldn’t you be? I don’t understand how I’m alive right now and not deformed—or worse.”
“The human body is an incredible thing.”
I pulled my neck to the other side. “My father should have let me die.”
Aaron stilled. “No.”
I lifted up my hair and pulled my neck forward, feeling the stretch. I sighed. “You saw it. You don’t agree?”
“I think your father did what he needed to do to save your life. Anyone who loved you would have done the same thing.”
“But he never told me exactly what he did.”
“You are here now. Does it matter?”
I lifted my neck back up and let my hair fall. “Of course it matters. I don’t want to suddenly start sprouting fangs and fur and howling at the moon.”
“But I like dogs.”
I smacked him.
“Seriously. Don’t ever say that. You’re here. That’s what is important.”
I didn’t acknowledge that. A comfortable silence settled over us and I felt my eyes drift closed. I was mentally and physically exhausted.
18
A rumble and a loud thud woke me with a jerk. I untangled myself from Aaron’s warm body and straightened my clothes.
Orion’s face was a blank mask, but his eyes burned with anger. He jerked a finger and I shook Aaron awake. We followed him, groggy and dragging our feet.
We settled around a small table where Orion had set our vials. “The first one,” he said, “appears to be a compound for the fountain of youth.” His gaze flicked to mine and I squirmed. “Much like your father’s, but with a fatal flaw. Whoever created this was trying to replicate the immortality serum Sherlock created so long ago. But they failed.” He paused and picked up the vial. “But as failures go, it wasn’t a bad one. From what I could tell, it extends the telomeres, so someone injected with it could look forward to probably an additional one to two-hundred years of life.”
I blinked. “That doesn’t sound like a failure.”
He shrugged. “It is compared to what your father created.”
I guess he had a point.
Orion set the vial down and picked up Aaron’s. “This is a waste. Destroy it before it kills someone.” I chewed on my lip and stayed silent.
Orion picked up the other vial. “I should throw you out of my home for this one.” He peered at both of us over his black spectacles. “Aaron, you, of all people, know what happens when you bring me something someone else doesn’t want me to know about.”
I was cursing profusely inside my own head.
“I believe only two other people know about it,” Aaron said in explanation.
“That is two more people who may kill to get this information!” he snapped.
“Right,” Aaron acknowledged. “My apologies.”
Orion’s mouth thinned to a white slash before he gathered his composure to speak again. “First, I want to ask you something.”
“Anything,” Aaron said and I cringed, knowing what I would ask if I were in his shoes.
“Who or what does this belong to?”
The what part of that sentence didn’t sound so promising.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Aaron swallow hard. Was he going to answer him?
The seconds ticked by and I saw Orion’s jaw clenching in anger.
“Get ou—”
“It’s mine!” I blurted.
Orion rolled his eyes. “Try again.”
I put on my most earnest face. We needed answers. “It is. I swear.” I held out my arm. “Draw blood from me. Do whatever you need to do to convince yourself.”
He carefully set the vial down and I tried to squash the sting it caused when he wiped his hands on his pants. “Impossible.”
“I swear,” I said softly.
“You would be dead.”
“Except I’m not.”
He took me by the arm and manhandled me over to a chair. He shoved me into it, ignoring Aaron’s shouts, tied a tourniquet around my arm, and unceremoniously plunged a needle I prayed was clean into my arm.
Seconds later, Orion shouted in disbelief. He didn’t bother giving me a Band-Aid, and Aaron had to loosen the tourniquet.
“What the hell are you?”
I choked down my urge to say, I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy…
Instead, I said, “Just me. Penelope.”
“You are not just Penelope,” he hissed. “You’ve been exposed to things I’ve never seen before. You are immortal. Yet…not quite human. Penelope, your DNA has been permanently altered. You…there may be no children. No offspring without dire consequences. You must be very, very careful to keep your secrets close and enemies closer.”
“What’s in it?” Aaron asked.
Orion shook his head. “An altered form of Sh
erlock’s serum. Evidence of genetic splicing. Powerful narcotics.”
“Narcotics?”
“I can only think it’s used to give you a higher pain tolerance.”
“Awesome.”
He grinned then, wonder shining in his eyes. “And you aren’t the least bit concerned about the gene splicing?”
“One day, I may need a regular job, and I want to be able to pass a drug test.”
Orion looked at Aaron. “Funny girl.”
I was, in fact, terrified over the gene splicing, but what the hell could I do? Absolutely nothing.
“Have you noticed anything strange lately? Any weird behaviors or other abnormal occurrences?”
I gave him the run down. He was more interested in the time slips, but didn’t think they were a direct result of the experimentation, more a side effect of it. He was thoughtful about my eyes, but muttered it was probably a result of the splicing, and permanent.
Super.
“Nothing else?”
I shook my head. “Just higher sex drive.”
Aaron’s eyes hit me with a laser like intensity.
“I still have all my willpower, though.”
“Damn it,” Aaron muttered.
“I dare say you should be extremely careful over the next few weeks. The couple hours I had your DNA on the scope, it had already changed. This is not over, Penelope Holmes. And it may not be over for a while.”
“Am I going to grow horns?”
Orion chuckled, but immediately sobered. “It’s a miracle you’re up walking around and not a pile of ooze on my floor. I hesitate to say anything. I will say it’s a good sign that you’ve remained mostly human. I would make sure not to go anywhere too public over the next few months.”
That was on par with what my father had told me, except for the public thing. I had the contacts in my bathroom back on the compound, which would allow me to walk around town mostly normal. My thoughts wandered, but I was abruptly jarred back to reality by Orion’s next words.
“I’m so sorry, Penelope. It appears your father has tried his best to turn you into a weapon.”
We left the tree house and I watched as it put itself together seamlessly. That was some cool technology.
Aaron reached over for my hand and took it. There were really no words for it. I suspected my father saw the chance to both save my life and in some way permanently alter me. It was devastating, but should I have expected any less? Or hell, any more of him? He was how he was. And I was how I was.