by Jeff Sampson
I couldn’t speak. I mean, I knew my mother was involved with BioZenith. I knew she was the project lead on HAVOC and was the one who’d made me the way I was.
But I never knew my mother. She was an abstract figure my whole life, just a name and a photograph, no one I truly loved. This was my dad. The man who raised me alone. The one who’d fed me a steady pop-geek diet that was a big part of who I was.
The one who protected me from the world. Until now.
A hand on my hand. I looked at my dad’s pleading eyes as he reached over to grip me. His eyes were pleading, begging me to forgive him.
I yanked my hand away. “You knew,” I whispered.
“Leelee, not at first,” he said. “I swear I wouldn’t have let you go through all this alone if I’d known everything that was happening.”
My eyes burned with tears, but I refused to let them fall, to let Mr. McKinney see me crying for my daddy.
“You knew!” I shouted. My voice echoed through the house, and my dad flinched.
“You let her experiment on your own child?” I said, shaking my head at him. “You let your wife put chemicals into her baby? You let her make me into a freak? Hard-code who I’m supposed to be? Why would you do that?”
My fingers gripped the edge of the table so hard I could feel the polished wood splintering. Nighttime’s strength. In my anger, she was slipping more and more to the forefront of my brain.
My dad only shook his head.
Mr. McKinney cleared his throat and stood up. He placed a hand on my dad’s shoulder and said, “Greg, why don’t you take a break and let Emily and me speak alone? I’m sure she’ll be ready to hear what you have to say when she calms down.”
“I am calm,” I lied through gritted teeth.
The two adults ignored me. Eyes on the floor, my dad stood and nodded absently. He shuffled past me into the foyer, then into the living room and disappeared.
I didn’t know if I would ever be able to look at him the same way again.
“Just a clarification,” Mr. McKinney said as he sat down again. “We never did any sort of procedure on babies. That sort of late-term engineering never would have worked. Your father merely donated his genetic material to his lovely, devoted wife so that she could create you in a test tube and enhance you before implantation into her own womb. She’s quite dedicated to her science.” He let out a small laugh. “In fact, it might interest you to know there were multiple Emilys. You were just one of the two who lived long enough to be born.”
“Two?” I asked.
“The other would be the recently deceased Emily Cooke,” he said. “Don’t worry, no relation to you. Caroline and the Cookes were in a bit of a competition to see who could produce and implant the first viable human-animal vesper, and the winner got to keep the name Emily, as both ladies wanted it.” He waved his hands in front of him. “And wouldn’t you know, it ended up a tie.”
“A competition,” I said flatly. “Great.”
This is what I should have wanted—my own big scene of exposition where the baddie lays out why he did what he did. Hell, I was supposed to spend my evening reading the BioZ files on my computer anyway.
But all I could think of was my dad, ashen faced and remorseful, admitting he knew about me and had done nothing to help.
“I’m sure you have a lot of questions for me, Emily,” Mr. McKinney said. “I’ve spoken with the other parents involved, and we all agreed that after what happened to Dalton, we can’t sit back and observe anymore.”
“You couldn’t have thought of that when Dr. Elliott decided to take a gun and start hunting us?” I spat.
Mr. McKinney sighed. “Well, Emily, I hate to admit it, but we were as blindsided by that as you were. You weren’t supposed to be activated. The project was considered on hold indefinitely due to certain inherent dangers. Dr. Elliott, however, took it upon himself to use our systems to remotely activate your genetic mutations so that he could identify which children were vespers and then eliminate them. By the time we figured out what was happening, he was already dead.”
I loosened my grip on the table and took in a breath. There were indentations on the tabletop where I’d clenched my fingers.
“Do you know why Dr. Elliott wanted to kill us? And how come he couldn’t identify us without, uh, activating us?”
Mr. McKinney crossed his arms and put his chin to his chest, thinking. Finally he said, “We have our theories about why Gunther did what he did. But nothing concrete. As for your identities, we kept them top secret. Only those directly involved in the project knew who the parents and children were. I was actually impressed with your friend Spencer—I had no idea he’d be so capable as to break into my private system.”
I smirked at him. “That’s Spencer for you.” Going stern again, I asked, “So after the shootings, rather than tell us what was going on, you wanted to just watch us?”
“Of course!” Mr. McKinney said. “This was our only opportunity to see how the modifications would work without any interference. The personality changes, the way the wolf genetics manifested themselves, the eventual melding of the three states that you achieved…” He shook his head. “Fascinating.”
“Yeah,” I said. “How about ‘messed up’? You don’t exactly seem broken up that your standing back and ‘observing’ led to us almost getting shot in the BioZenith labs and, oh yeah, your son being taken through a portal by shadowmen.”
Mr. McKinney let out a sound that was halfway between a groan and a sigh. Leaning over his chair, he grabbed something off the floor, then placed it on the table: a black leather satchel. Reaching inside, he produced a touch-screen tablet. Ignoring me, he silently powered on the device, pressed a few buttons, and then slid it across the table. It skidded to a stop in front of me.
“Of course I’m concerned about my son,” Mr. McKinney said, his voice cold. “You have no idea how much I care for my boy. But I have the good fortune of knowing exactly where he is.”
“The other dimension,” I said. “The one where the shadowmen came from.”
He snorted. “Shadowmen. I suppose that’s one way to describe them. Trust me when I say we are very familiar with them. Especially those at BioZenith who have been on the other side.”
“My mother,” I said. “And Tracie’s father.”
He nodded. “Very good. See, how would we ever know that you could have learned so much on your own if we’d interfered?”
I leaned forward and opened my eyes wide. “I just don’t even know. Us silly old teenagers actually looking for answers when we turn into mythical creatures, it’s crazy talk.”
The man rolled his eyes and flicked his hand. “Sarcasm. Wonderful. Why don’t you go ahead and watch the video I pulled up, hmm?”
Reaching forward, I grabbed the thin tablet and slid it toward me. Angling my head over it to block the glare from the dim light, I pressed the play symbol on the black screen.
Distortions were all I could see at first, veering from scrambled lines like a bad TV signal to oily smears like the surface of a soap bubble. After a few seconds of this, a face came into view. It was shaded in gray and the features bordered on indistinct, but enough was there for me to recognize the face from the old photographs we had lying around the house.
My mother. And she didn’t look a day over thirty—when she should have been nearing fifty. Maybe time worked differently there. That’s how it is for, like, Narnia, anyway.
The woman smiled. “Hello, Emily. I can’t speak long as our connection can only be held open for a short time. I wish I could see you and speak to you in person, to see for myself the woman you’ve become.” Her smile faltered and her eyes drooped. “I never wanted to leave you or your father, but my work took me here, and I’ve been here so long that the radiation that keeps the Akhakhu from crossing through the portals has affected me as well. I know you must feel so many things, but know that you can trust Harrison—Mr. McKinney—and that we can help you. Maybe soon I can…I
can even speak to you in person.”
A muffled voice sounded, and she glanced to the side. Speaking quickly, she said, “And don’t blame your father, he—”
The screen went black.
I stared at it for a moment. Processing.
So that was my mother. The woman who literally created me. The woman who sat in meetings discussing how to use her own body as an incubator for some otherworldly experiment, who abandoned me in favor of her science, who’d messed with every part of who I was without letting me grow up to be…whatever it was I would have been.
I expected her to seem cold, detached. Evil, I guess. But she didn’t look evil. In fact, she sort of looked like an older version of me.
I didn’t know what to feel.
Mr. McKinney stood, grabbed his satchel from the table, and walked to stand next to me. He picked up the tablet and cleared his throat.
“There’s much more that we should discuss,” he said. “But we should do it with everyone. You and the rest of your ‘pack’ will meet with us, yes? You can convince them to come despite their feelings toward their parents.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Why not.” Looking up, I asked, “I found everyone, didn’t I? All the wolves?”
He nodded. “Emily Cooke, Spencer Holt, Tracie Townsend, my son, and yourself.”
“Good,” I said. “Then email me the time and place and we’ll be there.”
He smiled at me, a toothy shark’s grin. “I’ll do that right away.”
I sat at my chair, staring across the dining table into the dark kitchen until I heard the front door open and shut behind me. Then I slowly lifted myself up, walked through the living room, and headed upstairs to my room.
Sitting at my computer, I brought up the files we’d stolen from BioZenith and Mr. McKinney’s computer. Clicking through, I zeroed in on those files specifically about Project HAVOC: Human-Animal Vespers, Original Crossbreeds. I didn’t trust Mr. McKinney any more than I did from the first moment I met him, and I could have sworn I saw something during my initial read-through of all these science papers….
Then I found it. The list of the “vespers” that made it to term:
Vesper 1: Emily Webb
Vesper 2: Emily Cooke
Vesper 3: Dalton McKinney
Vesper 4: Tracie Townsend
Vesper 5: Spencer Holt
Vesper 0: REDACTED
That would be six vespers, not five like he’d said.
Mr. McKinney had lied to me.
I scanned through every one of the HAVOC files I could find, reading through the fancy science jargon as fast as I could. It took half an hour, but I finally found a name buried in an innocuous-looking file about some Secret Santa gift exchange from 1996.
And amidst the talk of gift-spending limits and discussion of the appropriateness of having the holiday party at a local bar instead of in the offices, under a list of newborn babies who everyone was going to pitch in and buy gifts for, I saw the name of someone I knew but hadn’t seen in almost eight years.
Vesper 0’s name was Evan Cooke.
At first I thought it was a typo, that someone meant to type Emily Cooke. Then I remembered the little towheaded boy who was the other Emily’s sidekick when we were all in elementary school. I hadn’t known him—or, many people—all that well, but I did know that he was Emily’s cousin.
And for some reason we weren’t supposed to know he existed.
I set about searching the internet for an email, some way to contact him. The usual places—Facebook and Twitter—weren’t bringing anything up, so I went back to the older, defunct social sites. Midway through searching those, there came a knock at my door.
“Leelee?” my dad asked softly through the door. “Can we talk?”
I stopped typing and tore my eyes from the screen. My fingers trembled over the keyboard. I opened my mouth to say something, but no words came out.
My dad and I used to talk about everything. Before junior high, he was literally my best friend—the highlights of my day were coming home, blabbering on about school, and then curling up to watch TV with him.
My friend Megan became my confidante once puberty hit, and slowly we’d grown distant. But I always thought, if I really needed to, I could confide in my dad again. Spill all my secrets and have him hold me and assure me he still loved me.
I’d felt so intensely guilty, hiding my new life from him. I thought I was protecting him. But he was the one hiding things from me, and a whole hell of a lot longer than three weeks.
It turned out I didn’t really know my dad like I thought I did.
A sigh from the other side of the door. “I only just found out this evening you’ve been changing,” his voice said, muffled. “I never wanted this for you. I only agreed to it because…I was young. Your mother was—your mother is—so smart and she said this would make our baby perfect. And you are. And they offered us so much money…. I’m so sorry, Leelee.”
I didn’t know how to respond. What, I wouldn’t have been good enough as a normal baby? Possibly messing me up for life was worth a cash payout? I know he didn’t mean it that way, but that was all I could think, and I knew spitting those words at him would hurt him deeply.
So I didn’t say anything at all.
Silence as I waited for him to speak again. He never did. At long last, I heard my dad’s footsteps walk away.
Swallowing the sob in my throat, I forced myself to focus on the task at hand.
Evan Cooke’s existence had caught Mr. McKinney in a lie. Before we had our little child-parent get-together between my pack and BioZenith, I planned to talk to this secret vesper and see what he had to say.
3
I’M PERSISTENT. SUE ME.
My night consisted of repeatedly dozing off momentarily before snapping wide awake again, my brain a flurry of thoughts about my crazy sci-fi life. There was more than a little tossing and turning, and by five a.m. the sheets were basically torn off my bed and my stuffed toy dog Ein was tossed on the floor.
I figured it was as good a time as any to officially wake up.
I jumped to my computer and opened my email. There was a new message, and my heart leaped in excitement—until I saw it was from Mr. McKinney.
Friday, Sept. 24, 2010—4:54 a.m. PST
From: Harrison.McKinney
To: missleeleewebb
Emily—
I consulted with the others last evening. We think it’s best to convene as soon as possible, so we propose tomorrow at 1 p.m. We will have a lunch in our cafeteria—our private chef George Bonet is a master—and then give a private tour of the facility, during which we can share all that we know with one another. Please confirm ASAP.
—Harrison McKinney
What a treat. I’d already had an unofficial tour of BioZenith, and let me tell you, it’s not exactly a trip through the Nestlé museum. Who wouldn’t want to eat a big lunch and then go view the giant, mutated fetuses BioZenith keeps around in vats? It sounded super appetizing.
I grabbed my phone and flipped it open to text Spencer.
5:07 AM: Hey, you up?
Nothing for a few minutes. Then:
5:09 AM: no
5:10 AM: OMG you can text in your sleep? You have skills!
5:10 AM: mmhmm Im cool like that. wut u need?
5:11 AM: Crazy stuff went down last night after you dropped me off. We should talk right away. Can you come get me?
5:11 AM: its dark out that means sleep time
I grinned. Poor Spencer.
5:12 AM: All right, go back to bed. I’ll see you at school later.
5:12 AM: k
I swiveled in my desk chair, unsure what to do with myself. I refreshed my in-box, but there was still no email response from Evan Cooke. Or Tracie or any of the cheerleaders, for that matter. What, was I the only one who was up before dawn? What teenager doesn’t just jump out of bed at like five a.m. ready to run to school? I mean, really.
Finally I decided to just go to
school insanely early. It’s not like I wanted to eat breakfast across the table from my dad, anyway. I still didn’t know what to think or feel. How much had he known about me, and when did he find out I was turning into a wolf? In the video my mom told me not to blame him for anything, but how couldn’t I when he was obviously involved in making me the way I was?
The further along all this werewolf-hybrid-other-dimension stuff went, the more I learned that you can’t trust anybody. But I thought at the very least I could trust my parents.
I pulled on a pair of jeans, a sweater, and a jacket, then walked quietly downstairs to put on my shoes and collect my bag, both of which I’d left by the front door. No one was awake yet. I opened the front door, then stopped to look back at the living room, the foyer with my dad’s computer desks, the dining room. It all seemed smaller somehow.
A chill, damp wind rushed over me. I zipped up my jacket, put my bag over my shoulder, and left the house.
The early-morning trek to school was a hazy, misty blue, as though the world was in that bleary time halfway between asleep and awake. It must have rained overnight, because the leaves were wet and plastered to the street like festive fall wallpaper, and grass squelched beneath my shoes as I took shortcuts through various front yards.
It was around six by the time I made it to school. There were already cars in the teachers’ parking lot, and I could see some walking through the buildings carrying stacks of papers in one hand and steaming thermoses in the other. There were even some other kids here, mostly the athletes who came early to get in a workout before school.
My eyes went to the track that ran around the baseball and football fields as I walked over the gravel auxiliary parking lot where the late-arriving students usually parked. I half hoped to see a tall, broad-shouldered, fresh-faced, red-haired boy out there sprinting to keep in shape during football season. But of course Dalton was gone. Stolen by the shadowmen.
I cringed as the memory of Dalton, naked and scared out of his mind as he was dragged by shadowy beings through a rip in the universe, flashed through my thoughts. I tried not to imagine what could be happening to him over there, what those shadowy things could possibly be doing to him. It was a relief to know Mr. McKinney knew—or thought—Dalton was alive, at least. But that didn’t mean he was okay.