by Ana Calin
“You would’ve done it, too, Leona.”
The sheets rustled as she rolled on the side to face me. I didn’t do the same, but kept staring upwards, eyes darting all over the ceiling in search of words.
“The gas, it raised our adrenaline to a level that stripped us of everything…leaving only the most basic of instincts. We were . . .”
“Enraged animals,” she completed.
“Every one of us was ready, willing, and eager to spill blood.”
“Not every one. You weren’t.”
I couldn’t keep back a bitter laugh. The memory of the peasant in rubber boots, his bad-smelling grin, the wrinkled, bloodshot eyes that my fingers had clawed into, all of it played before me like a movie on fast-forward.
“Oh, yes, Leona, me too.”
She squeezed my hand harder. “That was different. It was self-defense.”
“You call it self-defense when you don’t have a choice. But I overpowered him, Leona. I scratched his eyes, he couldn’t have followed if I’d used the chance and run away. But no, I wanted to finish him.” I took a deep breath. “Malice is in all of us, I guess. When stripped of the icing of civilization and given the proper chemical input, we’re all just instinct. We’d never guess who we really are until we get down there, to the most basic level.”
Another few moments of silence, grotesque memories sucking us both in. When Leona talked again, I heard her as if through static. “I don’t know, but basic isn’t how I felt.”
“How did you feel?”
“Superior.”
The mattress wobbled as she rolled on the other side, her back to me. She cried herself to sleep that night. For hours I thought about what she meant by superior. How could anybody feel like that in the state we’d been? We’d been animals. Stronger than in our civilization-coated environment where most of us are lost to apathy, but still basic.
Indeed better than merely human in some sense. Tougher, more efficient, darn resilient. All due to the gas that had turned our bodies into some kind of high-performance machines. I’d even recovered from multiple fractures and God knows what else before I’d woken up. The realization gave me the chills.
But if the gas alone could do that, resulting in blood tests that baffled doctors, then what had BioDhrome done a whole year with Damian Novac? I shuddered at the idea of him lying on a metal table, needles sticking out of his body, his eyes half-closed and mouth open, tubes snaking down his throat.
Then I thought about Giant. His being so large that he could’ve easily won Mr. Olympia could be ascribed to steroids, the brightness in his eyes to the gas, but combined? In the context of Damian’s and BioDhrome’s story? With his breathtaking looks that bordered on inhuman, Damian seemed to be of the same outlandish league as Giant, so the latter was surely one of BioDhrome’s experiments, too. Then it hit me.
A genetically modified organism.
I sat up in a flash. This is it! This was the result of everything linked together: BioDhrome’s illegal medical experiments, the R.I.S.’s chase for them, my Dad’s part in it as a geneticist, the extraordinary Giant and the striking Damian, all of it led to one conclusion: BioDhrome agents were genetically engineered.
An urge hit me to find out exactly what they’d done to Damian, and what made him unable to live among people, as he’d told me tonight. An Upgrade, Dad’s specific words came to mind. Yes, that’s what they must be called, Damian and the Giant. Upgrades. Superhumans.
For hours I strolled in circles around my room. Barefoot and gnawing at my fingernails. When Leona found me in the rocking chair in the morning, my eyes were still open.
“What are you doing, curled up there?” she inquired, black hair messy, eyebrows raised.
“I’ve got it, Leona. I’ve got it.”
Telling her the conclusion I’d reached during the night was only a matter of minutes. Leona listened with her usual concentrated frown.
George still snored as we picked our outfits for the day. It was an easy and fast process, with Leona grabbing her bags from Marvimex, which she’d dropped on the chair by George’s couch when she’d stormed to him yesterday. I plucked black khakis and a loose sweater from the wardrobe. It wasn’t my favorite outfit, but more creaking would’ve woken George.
Mom was up ahead of us, as usual. A rich breakfast was already on the table: marmalade, chocolate croissants, butter, scrambled eggs and, luckily, black tea, the only thing I managed to get down my throat.
Mom grinned, guessing what knotted my stomach. “Anxious about seeing Damian today?”
Leona’s eyes flipped up at me over the rim of her teacup.
“He’s just a friend,” I muttered. The word prickled my tongue.
“Now that you mention it, I never got to ask,” Mom said. “How long have you known each other?”
I thought about the first time I’d laid eyes on him mid-November. “Two months,” I replied, recounting our history in my head.
I’d stalked him from afar for about a month and then made plans over the Christmas break with Leona to get his attention. I couldn’t help but smile as I remembered stumbling into his arms at that party. We’d started talking in the cafeteria afterwards. Then the trip to the mountains and the events that had shaken us to the core. And now we had . . . wow, already mid-February. “Three, maybe.”
“Hmm,” Mom said. “I’ve seen great loves develop over that amount of time.”
“Not the case here,” I retorted, a little acrid.
“He seems to like you,” Mom insisted.
I rolled my eyes for the first time in over a decade. “Are you in league with Leona? The guy is every girl’s fantasy. The competition’s fierce for him. And he’s actually seeing one of the campus Barbies, so forget about it.” A flash of Damian rolling his hips between Svetlana’s legs made me wince.
Mom placed the aluminum-foil clad sandwiches in our bags. I remembered the rice pudding she’d packed once back when I was in elementary, the entire classroom laughing and pointing fingers at me in the lunch break.
“What are you doing, Mom?”
She ignored the question and proceeded. “He’s great looking and, as far as I can tell, darn smart, of course there’s competition for him. But his eyes are on you, my dear.”
Leona intervened. “Jenna, are you saying you have a good feeling about this guy? I thought you hated that whole Prince Charming vibe.” She sounded and looked surprised, too.
“Actually, I do have a good feeling about him,” Mom replied with a warm smile and the look of wisdom on her face that I’d trusted all my life. Had I been wrong about her superior mom intuition?
The morning unfolded as per usual. We took the bus to campus—a true pleasure ride. It was packed and stunk of onions, but there was no way Officer Sorescu was going to offer his private escort services ever again, so crowds were the safest place to be.
The campus hallways were an explosion of voices and laughter, and the cafeteria was as busy as ever. I risked a glance over my shoulder in search of Damian and found him looking as muscular as ever in a thin beige knit. It was tight on his arms, and made my chest squeeze up into a ball. He was in the middle of an animated conversation with his friend when Svetlana teetered up to him on her sky high, pin thin heels—giggling girlfriends included. Her long arm coiled around Damian’s like a viper around a thick tree branch, her grin large and white, her hair falling long and glossy platinum down her back. Dressed in a white blouse and slim khakis, she looked beautiful and seductive. Damian didn’t even glance at me, but Svetlana’s girlfriend whispered something in her ear, and Svetlana looked at me and doubled over with laughter.
“Stop glaring,” Leona said as she placed her tray on the standing table, facing me. “It’s obvious you’re jealous, and that doesn’t work in your favor.”
Leona was right. I shook off the feeling, lest anyone notice my bitterness showing.
“This isn’t about Damian,” I grunted, still looking daggers at my father’s mistres
s. “I feel I owe it to my dad to smash her face.”
“I’m sorry, Alice, but your dad has no one but himself to blame that his much younger lover fell for his much younger bodyguard. Or friend, or pseudo-son, or whatever Damian really was – is – to him. Besides, I don’t believe you. This is about Damian, and you know it.” She slid a plastic bottle of water over to me. “Here, cool off.”
I caught the bottle, unscrewed the top, and took a swig with my eyes still on Svetlana. Yes, jealousy ate at me like an army of rodents at a piece of cheese.
Svetlana averted her gaze. Perhaps it was obvious in my glare this time that I was ready to tie a pretty bow around her neck using her own jugular, even if it cost me a bruised face.
She began rummaging in her designer bag, and I looked away. When I looked back up, a man’s face blocked my view. He stood real close, and I had to back up a couple of steps to bring him into focus. My mouth popped open.
“Tony?!”
He smiled a shy smile. “Hi, Alice.”
I stared at him, unable to utter a word. It had been a long time since this guy had stood before me, although part of me thought not long enough. He looked older and run down—his face was bloated and blotchy and his smile sagged like some sort of misshapen pumpkin. Too much partying, I thought. The air of arrogance was still in place though, his hair slicked back like that of mobsters in old movies. He looked halfway presentable in his coat á la Clark Gable.
“I,” he began, voice shaky. “I saw you on the bus, I –”
“Aha.” Eyebrows high up, I still couldn’t recover from surprise.
“You were with Leona,” – who, I now noticed in a glance, also stared with an open mouth – “and I wondered if I should come and talk to you. I, I heard what happened, you know.”
“What did you hear?” shot automatically out of my mouth.
“The whole story, you know. The train, broken down in the mountains. The avalanche, you were trapped there. Until they found you, the villagers, you know,” he stuttered.
“I see,” I said, thinking of the adjusted version the R.I.S. had given the police, and the police had given the public.
“You’re looking good, Alice, really good.” Now he ogled me from head to toe, much the way Officer Sorescu had the evening before.
“It took a while until I decided to come here and talk to you,” he said.
“I understand.”
“You do?”
“Perfectly.”
“You still haven’t forgiven me, have you?”
“You still ask?”
A slam on the table made me wince, and the bottles clatter. Leona’s eyes stabbed Tony, her fist clenched, knuckles showing white.
“Watch yourself, asshole,” she spat, so loud that every head in the cafeteria turned in our direction. My eyes darted to Damian, who looked at us like a wolf ready for attack. I had an idea.
I placed a light hand on Leona’s forearm. She gave me a questioning glare with a quirked-up eyebrow.
“It’s all right, Leona. The man has good intentions. Why don’t you tell him what happened in the mountains, if you feel up to it. I sure don’t yet.”
Leona glared at Tony. It took a few moments until she was able to address him again, eyes down to her books, hand angrily flipping pages to stay busy. While she detailed our adventure, I casually observed and gauged Damian’s reaction.
A tight jaw and fixed eyes on us for the win—maybe he feared we’d say too much.
Tony stayed until after the last class that evening. He was there every break. He must’ve really wanted to redeem himself.
“Listen, Tony,” I said, smile broad, eyes soft, hand light on his shoulder, all to convey the show as far as to the corner Damian’s group had gathered in. “Let’s talk about this in a more comfortable place. Why don’t we go to Portofino?”
Of course Tony jumped at the chance. But, contrary to what I’d expected, Damian didn’t follow.
The place welcomed us with its orange walls adorned with paintings of fishermen throwing nets in calm seas, and broad tables laid with shell-shaped dishes. Leona was pretty creative when it came to stories, so she gave Tony details about this imaginary peasant granny who’d fed us homemade bread and roasted pork. It felt a bit like the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, with Leona often displaying a disturbed expression as if she remembered watching someone being chained and stuffed with food, then sliced open.
Tony made himself smaller and smaller in his chair, eyes wide like onions as he constantly expected a sharp edge to the story that Leona’s tone threatened with. Soon unable to put up with the game I myself had initiated, I cut in.
“It’s getting late,” I said, and threw another glance out the window to check if Damian and his crew came strolling down the paved little street that linked the white university building and Portofino. They didn’t, and dusk was falling. No point in waiting any longer.
But, as we emerged from Portofino there it was, his black BMW with dark windows, parked by the restaurant. Damian himself was nowhere to be seen, yet for a moment I hoped with all I had that he’d somehow been watching us, concealed, eating his heart out.
Then Damian appeared with Svetlana and two laughing couples from the nearby gas station. They’d most probably had their dinner at the local fast food joint. Leona chose that moment to drag me forward.
Tony used the walk to the bus station to fill us in on the changes he’d made in his own life over this past year. He sure could monopolize a conversation.
“I sold my car to pay for my last year at Shaguna,” – a private university with bad reputation, but no matter – “and I no longer live with my Mom.” Here he smiled at me as if that was supposed to give me some sort of satisfaction. It was funny, seeing him in his cheap suit swaying in the ride, holding to the overhead rail, yet giving me looks like he was the most powerful man alive. I barely repressed the urge to laugh.
“Now I live with Cocker and Furious in a rented apartment at the Lighthouse,” he said. “You remember them, don’t you, Alice?”
“Sure.” Like I could forget the two thick-necked drunkards Tony would leave me for often in the evenings—his ride or die boys.
I tuned out his chatter, my mind spinning around Damian, and drowning in jealousy. It was unacceptable that I allowed him to make me feel so used and powerless. Then I glanced up at Tony and realized that was my pattern.
Tony accompanied us to the gate. I was no longer angry with him. Tonight he’d been an instrument that had failed its purpose. He’d used me in far more vile ways, so this was the least he could do.
He started visiting daily at the cafeteria. A week later, at noon, Leona sent him for coffee – the poor guy went out of his way to win her favor as my best friend and influential counselor.
“Don’t look now, but Novac’s been watching you,” she whispered in my ear.
“What?”
“Whenever you glance at him, he looks away.”
Butterfly wings flapped in my stomach. “He’s surely wondering what the deal is with Tony. He’s already made it clear that he means to protect me, he owes it to Dad. Maybe he feels guilty for keeping his whore warm.”
I threw Damian and Svetlana a jealous glance.
“No matter how detached he manages to appear, he’s watching you! Trust me. Whenever you turn your eyes from him, his settle on you. I mean, c’mon, he’s followed the freaking bus every night, Alice.”
Another flapping of butterfly wings that I struggled to repress. “So what. He’s playing the bodyguard.”
“Oh, yeah? Even here, in the full cafeteria, where nothing can happen? I don’t buy this detached act, he’s drinking you in. It’s growing more obvious by the day. Even Svetlana noticed.” Her eyes flicked to the woman, and mine followed. Indeed, she glared at me, while Damian talked to another campus heartthrob, Gino Bogza or the blonde Elven Prince, as I liked to call him.
“Leona, he’s just keeping an eye on me because he feels he owes it to Dad.”
I let my shoulders slump. I was tired of this scenario. “He extracted Dad, who is now safe with his organization, and I . . . I’m giving up.”
“Give up?” Leona interrupted. “What if Hector Varlam is right? What if the organization Damian and your father work with is as nasty as BioDhrome? What if more people will be caught in this war between them like the Wretch and Marius Iordache? More people will die, Alice, and it will partly be on us if we don’t do anything about it!”
“And what do you suggest we do? Grab machetes and march to war?”
“I suggest that we work with Hector. I’ll go right away and tell him about the Giant, and how Damian confessed to working with BioDhrome’s antagonists. All this information could be vital in order to prevent the mountains debacle from ever happening again. We need to help take down BioDhrome. Meanwhile, you keep your lover boy busy so that he doesn’t worry about where I am.”
“He’s not my lover boy,” I snapped.
“Stop that. He watches your every move. You make sure things stay that way until I’m gone, so that he doesn’t notice and send someone to tail me.”
Maybe she was right. Maybe I owed cooperation to the R.I.S. and to others who might fall prey to this war between the organizations. If Damian and his people were clean, then they had nothing to fear. I nodded with a heavy heart and let her go.
Leona used the crowd pouring out of the cafeteria in the evening to leak out as well. A chance Tony took to inch closer to me at the standing table, and further from his coffee-to-go.
“You were here all day, Tony,” I said with an awkward smile, making myself smaller and taking a step back. “Aren’t you tired?”
“Sure I am,” he replied with a slimy grin, his piggy face too close to mine. “How about we call it a day and grab some dinner?”
I glanced over to Damian to gauge his reaction to this, but he happened to look away. My chest caved in with disappointment. Jealousy my ass. This isn’t working.