by J. Rock
18.
After ditching the plow machine in the jungle, Altair leads us back up the path and onto the Coastway. We join the general cacophony of pilgrims going about their day, trying to blend in. Very few people are covering themselves now that the Children of Mutanity have effectively outlawed the practice. Traylor and I stick out like sore thumbs. Luckily, Altair came prepared.
Using a kit in his pack and a few juicy fruits he finds in the jungle, he creates a thick paste, grayish, that dries quickly in clumps, adhering to our unblemished skin like face paint.
We look like mutants!
Well, mostly.
Anyone who takes a really close look might not be fooled, but it's good enough for our needs at the moment. That doesn't mean I'm not paranoid though. Every eye that glances our way is a potential threat, and I eye the person right back as an intimidation tactic. It doesn't always work that well, but it doesn't matter. We've been walking the dusty red road for an hour now and no one's raised any alarms. We’ve even seen a group of Children pass by on a horse drawn cart, but they don't even gaze our way.
And that's fine by me.
When the road finally reaches the mouth of the box canyon Venecici sits upon, the dirt gives way to streets of layered brick. It was probably pretty, at one time, but now the bricks are cracked, heaved, or missing, making for often treacherous footing. Traylor almost trips more than once, shaking some of his disguise loose–a white patch is revealed on his cheek. Without preamble, Altair spits, the wad landing directly on the exposed spot. He steps over to my brother and immediately begins working the fluid into the dried stuff still on his face.
"Eww!" Traylor recoils, but Altair is done before he can finish complaining. "That's disgusting!"
I nod my agreement, but can't help but giggle.
"Come on," Altair states, without emotion. Now that we're almost to our destination, he's all business again. Pity. It almost seemed like there was a personality inside that gruff exterior for a time.
We're led down the main thoroughfare a short distance, lined with bustling shops and hawkers much like the Mainstreet Bridge in Krakelyn. The people we see are all openly showing their mutations, some even flaunting them. I'm still not used to that. The streets are dirty and unkempt, garbage lining the gutters. Was it like this before the Final Judgment? Going by the shabby clothing, skinny bodies, and generally low hygiene I'm seeing around me, my guess is that it was.
The Final Judgment just made things worse.
Altair guides us down a narrow alley between buildings. It's darker than I'm used to and my anxiety ramps up. I jump at every shadow that seems move. Of course, we pop out on the next street without incident. I'm looking forward to basking in the sun again, but Altair doesn’t follow the street, instead crossing it and entering another alley. I curse but Traylor seems to love it.
We go on this way for a bit, winding a short way up some streets, mostly using alleyways. By the time we're about halfway up the steps of the city, we finally come to a dead end. We've reached the canyon wall. Altair keeps moving without a word. It’s even narrower here than in the alleys and my claustrophobia kicks in hard. I use some breathing exercises one of the servants at home taught me.
By the time I have myself somewhat under control, we’ve come to a stop. We're between the back of a squat stucco building and the canyon wall. There's a cleft in the wall here and, as I examine it, I realize that it's not a natural formation but a cut, the sides perfectly straight. Altair steps into the cleft and disappears, the darkness nearing total.
"Come on," we hear him call after a few moments.
Traylor shrugs and steps in without hesitation. "Gods deliver me," I grumble, following too. It's cold and moist inside the cleft, the sound of dripping water a constant echo.
"Where are you guys?" I ask, my voice bouncing around me.
"Here," a voice answers from directly behind me.
I jump, heart pounding, seeing Traylor's dim silhouette in front of the entrance.
"You little rat!" I yell, lumbering toward him. Traylor laughs and lets me catch him. "Where's Altair?"
"Something is wrong," a familiar baritone answers out of the darkness. Altair joins us seconds later. My eyes have adjusted somewhat, and I can now just make out his face.
"What is it?" I ask.
"Your Father assured me that there would be lights here,” he says,” leading to a door at the end of the tunnel. I found the door, but it’s locked up tight. This place has been abandoned."
I eye Altair warily. "Are you sure this is where we're supposed to go? This hole in the wall?"
"The laboratory is inside," Altair explains. "A lot of, um, secret research took place here and needed to be secluded. There is only one way in or out. Your Father gave me a key." Altair holds up something small and metallic, just visible through the dim. "It doesn't work. The lock has been changed."
"Well, that's odd," I admonish with a sigh. "So what do we do?"
Altair slips his pack off his shoulders, beginning to rifle through it. "Ah!" he says after a time, pulling out a small black pouch. He opens it, revealing a tiny coterie of metal instruments.
Lockpicks!
Traylor knows what they are too. "Can I watch you?" he asks, full of glee.
Altair shrugs. "There will be nothing to watch. It's pitch black down at the door."
"Can you even pick a lock in the dark?" I ask. The contemptuous look I'm rewarded with is all the answer I need. Altair disappears once more down the tunnel. Traylor and I do follow, keeping one hand on the wall as a guide. Altair stops us and we quickly hear clanking as he goes to work. I can't see a thing. The tunnel has a slight curve to it, so that now the light of the entrance is no longer visible.
Time stretches on. More than once I hear Altair curse to himself. Finally, a loud clanging echoes in the void and a shaft of light, soft and white, appears out of the dark. Altair swings the door wide, a hallway stretching before us nearly as dark as the tunnel itself. A square of light from a room at the end gives us just enough to see by. I can see now that the door itself is actually a massive metal bulkhead, a flywheel mounted to it. Altair picked this thing open? I'm shocked, but unsurprised. There seems little that this man cannot do.
"You two wait here," Altair orders, producing a pair of his deadly throwing stars from each of his sleeves. "Just in case." I nod, but Traylor looks like he wants to protest. I silence him with a deathly glare.
Altair moves on without us.
He stalks calmly, his large boots hardly making a footfall in the gloom. I get the vague impression of other openings along the hallway–other doorways–but Altair barely gives them a cursory glance.
His sights are locked on the room with the light.
He reaches the room, peeking around the corner, then slips inside. Nothing happens for a full minute. I hold my breath, anticipating. This was supposed to be a safe place for us, but at the moment, it hardly feels that way.
A silhouette appears at the other end of the hall.
For an irrational moment, I think it's someone other than Altair, but then the shadow starts waving to us. "Come on," his voice floats.
Traylor and I exchange a look then move, mimicking Altair's stalking movements but creating much more noise than he did. I see that all the doors along the hall are closed, presumably locked. Most are labeled, and my curiosity is peaked.
I don't even know what half the words mean:
BIOHAZARD
CAUTION: LIVE SPECIMENS
CHEMLAB
GENETIC RESEARCH
DNA EXTRACTION
MUTATIONS: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
My heart pounds harder with each new sign I read.
Mutations! They worked on mutants here!
I can't help but wonder if Father knew what this place really was. Mutants were to be eradicated without prejudice in the old world. Experimentation like this would certainly violate the laws of the gods. Father would never send h
is children here if he knew the truth. Would he? How well does he know this Ursa woman anyway? Well, it would seem that Ursa has skipped town, because this lab is deserted.
We reach the lighted room and Altair guides us inside.
The place is a disaster.
The room is large, lined on one side with long metal tables covered in various instruments, glass containers (a rarity), and specimens. A few of the tables are overturned, the floor covered in glass shards and biological materials.
"These aren't, um, dangerous, are they?" I ask as Altair leads.
Altair shakes his head. "I don't know, but I don't think so." He gestures to a desk tucked into one corner of the room. A path has been cleared to it through the debris field. "Someone has been using this place recently," he says.
I huff. "Maybe they left because of the mess," I interject.
Altair shakes his head again, moving toward the desk. "Why would they bother clearing a path then?" he asks.
I throw my hands up in the air. "How should I know? I don't know this Ursa woman any better than you do!"
Altair says nothing, taking a seat at the desk. Piles of paper are stacked haphazardly all over it. Next to the desk, wooden cubbies are used for filing the papers, just as chaotic. On a shelf above the desk, I see the only objects in this place that haven't been tossed about: a series of fotos. I gasp. They're the only fotos I've ever seen outside of my Father's study! The first depicts a woman who might have once been beautiful, with sleek black hair and bright blue eyes. Her face is marred by a bright red, virulent rash, cheeks swollen. The second foto depicts the same woman. She still has the rash, but now her face appears to have grown a sort of grayish scaling. The third shows the woman again, and this time she's got massive boils on her forehead, looking ready to erupt at a touch. The last foto is much the same, though now the woman's face appears to have cleared up somewhat.
Had she cured some of her mutations?
Was this Ursa?
"What do these letters mean?" Traylor's voice startles me out of my reverie.
I look over to see him studying a sheet of paper on the desk. It’s covered in a series of lines of varying thicknesses, each labeled with a different combination of the letters: ACGT. There is text stamped near the top of the page, but the only words I can make out are GENOME and DNA. I've heard these words before in school, but I hardly remember what they mean anymore.
Science of the Forerunners.
I gasp, snatching the page from Traylor's grasp
"Hey!" Traylor protests.
"My gods," I say, breathing heavily. "This is Forerunner stuff! Forbidden knowledge! If my Father knew about this..."
"He won't," an unfamiliar voice intrudes from behind.
I whirl, but Altair's got me beat, on his feet in milliseconds, throwing stars at the ready. A large wooden object comes flying out of the dark, swung by a creature I've only heard about in stories: an Everwinter mutant.
What else could it be?
The thing screams, swinging its club straight for Altair's head. The young man ducks without flinching, falling to the floor in the splits, one leg in front, one leg behind. I'm astonished. Even I can't do the splits! Altair lashes out with one closed fist, striking the attacker squarely in the sternum. The creature drops its weapon and stumbles away, gasping.
It crashes over to a table at the far side of the room, sweeping everything off with horrible, grey-scaled arms. It takes me a moment to realize that the thing is actually searching for something. I look at Altair. He's on his feet again, eyes glued to his adversary, not approaching it. The creature finally finds what it's looking for–a small cylinder of some sort–and raises it toward its mouth. Altair raises his throwing stars, in case this is another weapon of some sort. A soft hiss issues from the cylinder and the creature stops hyperventilating immediately, breathing normally once more.
It's a breathing device.
"Those won't be necessary," it waves at Altair in a shockingly normal voice. A female voice. "I thought you were intruders. Vandals."
Altair relaxes and the woman does likewise. She turns fully toward us for the first time and I gasp as I have done so many times since arriving here. “You're Ursa, aren't you?" I say. The woman nods. Her face is much like the fourth foto above the desk, though the boils and tumors are starting to rise once again.
"Who are you?" she asks, becoming more serious. "And how in the name of the gods did you get in here?"
I defer immediately to Altair, letting him take the lead. "Are you in danger?" the Assassin asks, deftly sidestepping the woman's questions. "Your laboratory has been ransacked."
Ursa looks around as if noticing the carnage for the first time. "This?" she asks with a laugh. "No, no, nothing of the sort. I did this. I was in the process destroying my research when you people interrupted."
"Um, yeah, sorry about that," I offer with a genuine smirk, trying not to laugh at the woman's indignation. I'm still holding the sheet of paper with the strange lettering all over it. "Your research... This is Forerunner stuff, isn't it?"
Ursa waves it away with a scoff. "It was. But I never should've gotten involved. My greatest fear was that the technology would fall into the wrong hands. And now it has."
"What do you mean?" I ask. I look over at Altair, but his expression appears clueless. And Traylor...
Wait, where did that little bugger go?
Ursa points to her face, then to ours. "The mutations," she admonishes. "They're my fault."
It feels like my heart has stopped in my chest. "Y-you're fault?" I stammer. There were only two people in this world that could be blamed for the mutations, and I'm one of them. The other is probably dead.
Gods damn you, Jude.
Ursa seems to sink into herself. "Yes, I, um, we used to do experiments here. On mutants. We were looking for a cure. I was looking for a cure." Ursa pauses, gathering herself. "You see, I've always been a mutant. I was born one. Oh, not as you see me now. Most of my current mutations are self-inflicted. Trial and error, you might call it."
My jaw nearly hits the ground. "You experimented on yourself?" My astonishment floors me.
Ursa nods timidly. "Mutants are, ahem, were outlawed in Eversummer, as I'm sure you know. Thou shalt not suffer a mutant to live. That made it nearly impossible for us to acquire test subjects. So I volunteered myself."
"Why weren't you killed before?" a voice floats from the back of the lab. We all turn to find Traylor, nosing about–as I should have known he'd be doing.
Ursa looks startled, but I try to soothe her. "Sorry, that's my little brother. He doesn't know the meaning of tact."
Ursa nods, granting Traylor a smile. "It's a valid question," she admits. "The world would be a better place if more people asked questions, young man." Traylor blushes, despite himself.
Ursa sighs. "I was lucky," she explains. "I was able to hide my mutation most of my life. It was nothing major anyway, and my parents were free thinking types. They never bought into the True Body Plan dogma."
I laugh to myself, louder than intended.
"What?" Ursa asks, seeming offended. "What is it?"
I shake my head. "Sorry, it's nothing. It's just... I really wish my Father was here to see this."
"Dogmatic, was he?" Ursa asks.
I nod emphatically. "You could say that. He's the reason we're here. He sent us."
"He sent you?" Ursa echoes, the disbelief plain on her face. "If you don't mind my asking: who is your Father, young lady?"
"Jonathan Quinn," I reply without hesitation. "High Deacon of Krakelyn."
Ursa nearly chokes on her own breath, coughing violently all of a sudden. "Did... Did you say…Jonathan Quinn?"
"Yes," I confirm. "He sent us here because he thought you could help us. You see..." I turn to Altair, who nods for me to proceed. Gently, I pull at the grey matter that is plastered all over my face. My mutant disguise. It peels away with some difficulty, but I manage to get one cheek uncovered.
"I'm Juno Quinn," I say with a smirk. "And this little bugger," I wave dismissively, "is my brother, Traylor." Traylor gives the astonished Ursa a wave from the back of the room, fiddling with something. "And we're not mutants, Ursa. We're the last humans."
"J-Juno? Traylor?" Ursa mutters to herself in astonishment. She stares at me then spins to look at Traylor. She stalks calmly over to my little brother, going to her knees beside him. She pulls at his disguise, revealing a small patch of unblemished skin.
"Gods deliver us!" Ursa mumbles. She runs her hands all over Traylor, feeling his skin, his limbs. Traylor looks exceedingly uncomfortable. I smirk at him openly. Ursa then pulls something from an inside pocket of the long doctor's coat she wears.
We don't see what it is before it's too late.
Traylor screams and takes off, disappearing out the door and down the hall.
"Traylor!" I scream, but I know he's long gone.
My eyes fall to Ursa who's standing there stunned, holding an empty syringe in her right hand like a shooting iron. Altair is already out the door, chasing after my brother.
"I'm sorry!" Ursa begs. "I just... I just wanted a blood sample! I need a sample. If you two are as pure as you say you are... I may very well be able to cure the mutations! All of my other samples were tainted by the Final Judgment."
I put a hand on the strange woman's shoulder, shaking my head. "It's alright. Come on, we gotta go find him. He can't have gotten far. Traylor, um, had a bad experience with needles when he was younger. He HATES them." Thinking quick, I find Altair's pack and root through it, finding some of the leftover paste he'd made. I apply it to my face quickly, remasking myself.
Ursa sags, as if she should have known. "I'm sorry."
"Don't worry," I comfort her, "we'll find him. Let's just hope he doesn't draw too much attention to himself." Despite everything, I like Ursa. She feels like someone I can trust.
"Let's go," Ursa agrees, and she leads me out of the lab and back into the streets of Venecici.