Going Through the Change

by Samantha Bryant

  Both women were dressed all in black, Helen’s clothes now fireproof, she hoped. They had made it through a quick round of experimentation in a quiet corner of the park, anyway. Helen felt sore and tired after the adventures of the past few days. She wasn’t built for being thrown across rooms by angry men or running away from the police.

  Just for a moment, she thought longingly again of her ex-husband’s armchair. But the moment passed quickly. Sore muscles and bruises or not, Helen felt more alive than she could ever remember feeling. If this was the cost, she’d pay it.

  There was something thrilling about being a part of all this. Helen had not led a life of adventure. She had married her high school sweetheart, raised their child, and sold real estate. George hadn’t liked to travel, and Mary had left as soon as she’d turned eighteen to seek her own adventures. That left Helen. She’d been so bored. Life had brought her none of the joy and excitement she had imagined as a girl. Instead, she felt like she’d wasted her youth on drudgery and then missed the payoff.

  Since she’d met Cindy Liu, life hadn’t been boring, at least not most of the time. Okay, the time in the hotel room had her crossing her eyes from boredom, but at least there was the promise of something exciting on the horizon, something like sneaking into a burned down laboratory to find illegal gemstones to grind into powder for a secret formula. Take that, George! Helen’s adventure was much more exciting than a little cross-country motorcycle trip and a mid-life crisis divorce. She just wished it had come a little sooner, when she was a little younger.

  She looked at her new friend, who was skipping down a footpath in someone’s garden, her large messenger bag bouncing against her thigh. “Don’t you love being out at night?” Cindy grinned. “It feels like anything could happen!”

  It did, indeed.

  When they arrived at the back of the burned-out house, Helen grabbed Cindy’s arm to stop her. Cindy had been just about to stroll across the lawn like there was no reason for caution. They were going to have to get Cindy’s brain working right. Helen was not interested in being her babysitter, or in inviting the scrutiny of the authorities. “Wait! Look around first. Let’s make sure no one is watching.”

  At three in the morning, the small neighborhood was tucked up tight. Helen listened carefully, but didn’t hear so much as a dog barking. “Don’t you have something we could use? Like night-vision glasses or something?” she said to Cindy.

  Cindy shrugged. “Nah. I’m not so much interested in machines and gadgets. Biology and chemistry, now that’s interesting. Gears and wires? Not so much.”

  Helen let her Mission Impossible dreams slide away. No gadgets then. When they had gone to the storage unit so Cindy could gather some things, Helen had assumed she’d have something useful. “So, what’s in the big bag?” she asked, gesturing at the heavy messenger bag Cindy had lugged along with them.

  Crouching in the grass, Cindy opened the bag and pulled out an old fashioned atomizer and sprayed herself with something. Then she pulled out small cylindrical tank filled with glowing insects, sat it in the grass, and opened the lid. “Our flashlights,” she said as the insects gathered around her in a circle. Then she pulled out another tube and laid it on the ground. A long, green snake crawled out, and Cindy affixed a sort of leash to it through a little metal loop that seemed to be embedded its flesh. “And our tracker.”

  Helen was not especially pleased to see bugs and reptiles. But then the bugs spread out across the lawn, making a swath of soft green light. She had to admit, it was beautiful. Unlike lightning bugs, these bugs stayed lit. They also stayed close to Cindy. Helen was dying to know how this all worked, but she knew now wasn’t the time to ask. She followed Cindy and her menagerie across the lawn.

  As the band of light began to encompass the house, Helen saw the extent of the damage. The house was still standing, and recognizably a house, but it looked like it could fall over at any time. Pieces of it were entirely missing. There were danger signs and yellow caution tape surrounding the house at a perimeter. The whole area stunk horribly of chemicals and smoke. Helen remembered the boom they had heard as they fled the scene. It wasn’t going to be safe to go back inside the lab. The whole structure could fall down around their ears.

  Helen heard Cindy coughing softly. In the hotel room, after their escape, Cindy had mixed up a concoction of pink bubbly liquid and drank it. The stuff had made her vomit what looked like black tar, but her breathing had returned to normal. It was amazing but disgusting. Helen didn’t really want to watch that again.

  She walked to Cindy’s side, intending to offer to go ahead without her. She saw Cindy put on a little cotton mask, the sort you might wear doing home improvement projects. She handed a matching one to Helen. Helen didn’t know how it would help, but she slipped it around her head, stretching the band wide over her hair so as not to destroy her hairdo. The mask smelled of something sweet. It must be a kind of filter for the air. Helen didn’t need it. She seemed to be immune from the effects of smoke and ash as well as fire. When she had passed out in the testing booth, it had been because it was an enclosed space, and her fire had eaten all the oxygen. Still, it was sweet of Cindy to think of her comfort. Maybe the adult woman was still in there, fighting all those youthful hormones.

  Helen had almost forgotten the snake until Cindy hissed at her to slow down or she’d step on it. The snake was zigzagging across the lawn. When they neared the house, it stopped. It raised its head and stuck out its tongue, bowing its head in different directions. Suddenly, it moved quickly toward a tree just outside the basement window. The tree was small with a low-hanging branch that had gotten charcoaled in the fire. Helen figured this must be what Patricia was talking about when she said Jessica would be waiting for them in the tree.

  Helen stood and watched as Cindy got down on her hands and knees and began feeling around. She made a low cooing noise, and all the luminescent bugs gathered in a ring around her, lighting the ground beneath the tree.

  Cindy squealed and leaped back, putting her hand across her mouth. She looked apologetically at Helen, whose hands were aflame in preparation to defend them from whatever had startled Cindy.

  “Slug,” Cindy said, and shuddered.

  Helen swatted the flames out against her shirt, happy to see the fireproofing was working, and covered her mouth to hide her laugh. Dr. Cindy Liu, grossed out by slugs? The good doctor didn’t let it stop her, though. Wiping her hands on the jeans they had picked up for her at a thrift store, she continued her search, working her way completely around the tree.

  Helen actually saw it first, a glitter among some rocks just at the edge of the ring of light. “There,” she whispered, pointing.

  Cindy grabbed at the green stone and held it in the air triumphantly. Then she threw herself back down and patted the ground in the entire area. After a few minutes, she leaned back on her heels, defeated. “There’s only the one piece,” she said. “That’s not going to be enough. I need the other pieces to make enough of the formula.”

  Helen leaned against the tree, thinking. As she did, her hand brushed the low hanging branch. Something tickled her fingers. She looked, expecting to find a spider’s web. There, hanging from a knot in the tree branch was a clump of long blonde hair.

  Pulling at the tuft of hair, Helen met the eye of her new friend and saw her own thoughts reflected there. The tiny blonde, Jessica, the one who refused the good doctor’s help and left such a mess in the lab. She’d been the one who escaped the lab and waited in this tree. If anyone had the rest of the gems, it would be her.

  “I think I know where we need to start looking,” Helen said, raising a hand with all five fingers aflame. “Where does your flighty little blonde live?”

  inda was just putting the finishing touches on a Tres Leches cake when the phone rang. She considered not answering it. The cake was an apology of sorts for David. He was angry with her for putting herself at such risk and not even talking to him about it first. “Tu vida es m
i vida,” he had said, and he wasn’t wrong. She would have been angry with him, too, in the same circumstances. A person with a family should not take such risks with their health and safety. Linda had quite nearly been burned to death, and they didn’t even know yet if they had learned anything that justified the danger.

  Of course, Linda had not known the extent of the danger she was in. Patricia had not been completely honest with her about what they were walking into. Guard duty against a potentially crazy, but still quite small and physically nonthreatening Asian woman was quite a bit different than guard duty that involved fighting a woman who could throw fire. Patricia’s sense of invulnerability made her cocky, perhaps. Or maybe she just didn’t think about others with the care she should. Linda still wasn’t sure that she liked Patricia.

  What she hadn’t told David was how exciting she had found the fight, how good it had felt to use her strength that way. Like when she had broken the glass to free Jessica from the tube she was imprisoned it, Linda had felt exhilarated, full, alive in a way that ordinary life didn’t often bring. She would like to find a way to help others like that more often. It seemed a waste to have this power and not use it to make the world better somehow. When she had been the small and weak one, how often had she wished that the strong would stand up for her? Now, she was the strong.

  But that was a long conversation she wasn’t ready to raise with her husband just yet. She was still reeling from her good fortune in keeping him by her side at all. Few husbands in this world would stand by a spouse in her circumstances. She needed him.

  So, an apology cake it was. Tres Leches cake was also the favorite treat of their youngest daughter, Viviana, and David was going to try and get her to come by that evening to talk about Linda’s changes. Linda hoped they might get through to her.

  Viviana had still not accepted Linda as a man. While she was no longer denying Linda was Linda, she still insisted the story they had told her could not possibly be true. People didn’t just change gender. Not because of soap. Viviana still believed her mother had surgery and was angry at her for not telling the family and letting them talk her out of it.

  Never mind that a sex change operation does not make a person eight inches taller. Never mind that a sex change operation involves months of hormone therapy. Never mind that a sex change operation does not make a person any stronger than they were in their previous life. That girl was terca como una mula. Linda sighed. Yes, stubborn. Just like her mother.

  When the phone persisted in ringing, Linda put down the spatula she was using to ice the cake and took the call. “Hello?” At first, there didn’t seem to be anyone there. Just breathing. Was it just a prank call? “Listen you―I don’t have time for this―”

  “Leonel,” a woman’s voice sobbed. “Please. You’ve got to come. They’ve got my mother!”

  “Jessica?” Linda’s question went unanswered. The line was already dead.

  Staring at the phone in her hand, Linda started out of the room in three different directions, trying to decide where to go, and then ended up standing still in the middle of the kitchen. “They’ve got my mother,” the voice had said. She was sure it had been Jessica. She checked the phone. Yes, it had been Jessica’s phone number. “They” would have to be Dr. Liu and her crazy fire-throwing dragon lady, Helen. Why would they want Jessica’s mother?

  Linda started to call back, but hung up halfway through the call. Jessica might not be able to talk, and if she called, she might be putting her in further danger, letting the bad guys know that Jessica had made the call in the first place. She needed information. She needed a plan. She needed Patricia.

  atricia pulled up in front of Jessica’s house at almost the same time as Leonel, parking her Lexus behind his pale blue work truck. She hurried to join him in the shadow of the large tree across the street from Jessica’s house, as they had agreed.

  They watched the quiet house together for a few minutes. Patricia had dressed for action in her new knee-length yoga pants and a shirt that Suzie thought would stay in one piece even if spike holes appeared in the back. “Where is she?” Leonel asked. “Do you see anything?”

  Patricia narrowed her eyes, searching the block in front of her. The daylight was fading fast. The house was quiet. There was no sign of danger. She didn’t even see an unusual car, only Jessica’s minivan. “I don’t see her.” She flexed her shoulders, loosening them, preparing for a fight. “Do you think she got inside?”

  “Eva wouldn’t have opened the door, and everything looks okay.” Leonel looked worried, though. He was chewing his lower lip and tugging his ponytail over his shoulder to play with the strands of hair. At least he was outwardly calm now. He had sounded so panicked on the phone that it had been difficult to figure out what the problem was.

  “Let’s walk around the outside first,” Patricia suggested. “Reconnaissance.”

  The two walked up to the front door together, both swiveling their heads constantly, looking for trouble, but not knowing which direction it might come from. At the front walk, they split up, each walking up one side of the house.

  Patricia’s side was quiet. She moved warily, watching for open windows or doors or signs of fire damage. She found she could actually see pretty well in the dark. According to Leonel, Jessica had hung up after her brief warning, like she was worried she’d be caught making the call. Leonel thought Eva and Jessica were being held against their will. Patricia thought she might be right. Cindy was definitely behaving erratically.

  She thought back to what Jessica had told them all about Dr. Liu’s strange behavior before her kidnapping. Cindy had seemed calm when Jessica first arrived. She was maybe a little nervous, but nothing that set off Jessica’s alarm bells. She offered tea and sat with Jessica in the small kitchen, chatting pleasantly. Jessica had answered a lot of questions about the nature of her problem. She was feeling hopeful that Cindy might be able to help her.

  To hear Jessica tell it, Cindy had lost it when the younger woman tried to leave. She’d stabbed her with something, imprisoned her in the tube―the same one Patricia had admired during her lab tour, no doubt―and experimented on her. As hard as it was to believe, Patricia had no reason to doubt Jessica’s story. She had no reason to lie.

  Kidnapping? It was a desperate and impulsive move. It showed no awareness of Jessica as a person, like she didn’t matter beyond the information that could be gleaned from studying her. That wasn’t like Cindy. Cindy was methodical. She always had a plan ten moves ahead. Surely, she realized kidnapping Jessica was going to be impossible to hide. Jessica had a family that was looking for her. The family knew Cindy and where she lived. Cindy herself knew Jessica. Cindy could be a little cold when it came to other people, but not like this. This was sociopathic. It just didn’t add up. What did she have to gain that made such a risk worth it?

  Patricia considered. They had all seen how quickly Cindy was getting younger. What if she wasn’t able to stop it? That could make a woman desperate. What if, somehow, she thought that Jessica held the key? That could make a woman do things she wouldn’t normally do, like kidnapping, threatening an old friend, taking up with strange new people. What if whatever she was doing to herself was affecting her mind?

  Patricia was so deep in thought that she didn’t hear it when Jessica hissed at her from a small balcony above her head. Only when a marble Jessica had thrown clipped her on the shoulder did she understand what she was hearing and look up. Having caught Patricia’s eye, Jessica threw a leg over the railing and lowered herself to hang by her hands. “Catch me!” she called, and let go.

  Patricia did her best, but catching Jessica still knocked them both to the ground. Concerned about the noise, Patricia scuttled to her feet ready for action, just in time for Leonel to round the corner at a run and nearly knock her down again. Jessica grabbed both women and tugged them to the back right corner of the house with her.

  “This is the blind corner, where the boys go when they don’t want me to see
what they’re up to in the yard. It’s not visible from any of the house windows.”

  Jessica sat down on the ground hard, wiping tears away with the back of her hand. The other women waited for her to calm down and speak. Leonel pulled a wad of tissues from one of his pockets and passed one to Jessica, who blew her nose noisily. “She’s in the kitchen with my mother. Mom told her I wasn’t home, but her friend just burned the locking mechanism out of the door. She shoved her way in, and now they’ve got my mother trapped at the table.”

  “They?” Leonel asked.

  “Helen is with her, too. I’ve been listening through the baby monitor. We still have the two-way system so I can talk Max back into his bed without going upstairs. Mom had turned it on so we could use them to communicate across floors. She was trying to let me get some rest. I was asleep when I started hearing voices in the kitchen through my bedside monitor.”

  “And your children?”

  “At their other grandmother’s house. Nathan took them for the day.”

  “Gracias a Dios.”

  Patricia tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Leonel, how do you feel about hitting a woman?”

  Leonel answered quickly. “To help our Jessica and rescue her mother, I would do this. But I am worried. With my strength, I could kill her.”

  “I don’t want my mother hurt. We’ve got to find a way to get her out safely. I’ve put her through too much already.” Jessica was near hysteria again.

  Patricia had no patience with this sort of thing. Why were young women always so dramatic? Why couldn’t Jessica be more sensible, like Suzie? She fought down her angry impatience. Yelling at her wouldn’t help. She’d be even more useless if she started blubbering.

  “Shut up so I can think!” she growled.