Catnip (5 page)

At the age of sixteen, Harry had experienced,
well, nothing. In a moment of pure naiveté, he figured that sooner
or later he’d hook up with someone…but another problem had
surfaced. He didn’t know jack about meeting the opposite sex. He
had little in common with the other kids, and also had a nasty
tendency to sweat around girls. Right now he needed a shower.

“So what do you think?”

The agent repeated the question and it
startled him back to reality. “Uh, think about what?”

“Everything,” Farrell replied testily.

With the exception of the cell, the room was
bare, a twenty-by-twenty square of white on white. His laptop sat
next to a computer disc on the lone table in the center of the
room, with a single chair tilted against the table. A faint hiss
which signaled air coming through a vent was the only other noise
around. This place reminded him of a hospital, sterile and
lifeless. “It’s a room,” he said carefully, his eyes still on the
cat-girl in the cell.

A spell of dizziness hit him. He hadn’t had
much to eat in the last few hours, it was hot, and now…this. He
slowly backed out of the room, and Farrell followed him. In the
hallway, they regarded each other silently. Harry took a number of
deep breaths before speaking and stole a peek inside. “What
is
that?”

“You tell me. She seems friendly enough.”

Harry caught the sarcasm in the other man’s
voice and answered appropriately. “I can’t tell if she wants to eat
me or rip my head off.”

“Just tell me what she is,” Farrell said.
He’d gone from sarcastic to businesslike in the matter of two
seconds. “You’ve got the background, so fill me in.”

Harry couldn’t, but at the same time he
recognized the mixture of feline characteristics with human ones.
This woman—she looked to be around his age—was obviously the
product of transgenic engineering. All the plastic surgery in the
world and all the best makeup artists couldn’t make anyone look
like a she-cat. He’d seen simulations of the various combinations
before. In fact, he’d run them himself.

His breath abruptly caught in his throat and
he coughed. The realization that someone out there had taken his
theories and turned them into reality made him wonder who’d
actually managed to pull it off. “Someone’s been playing God,” he
muttered.

Farrell cocked his head to one side. “Come
again?”

“It’s what my father used to tell me,” he
answered, and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his
hand. “I can’t tell without checking her DNA first, and I need my
computer. You still have it, right?”

The agent nodded and jerked his finger at the
door. “You saw. It’s inside. We, uh, we couldn’t crack the password
you used.”

Harry suppressed a laugh. For all their
vaunted knowledge, the FBI couldn’t crack a simple lock-and-key
code. Maybe they were aiming too high. “I suppose you tried hacking
into my computer?”

Farrell stabbed his finger at the laptop in
an accusatory manner. “We tried, but you encrypted your files. I
thought you were just one of those chemistry nerds.”

The remark stung. Then, once more admitting
the truth to himself, he acknowledged he
was
a nerd, the
home-loving, stay-in-your-room-and-study kind of nerd. “I’m a nerd
of many talents. You didn’t screw up my computer, did you?”

“Trust me, the files haven’t been
corrupted.”

Harry snuck another look inside the room. The
cat-girl was sitting on her haunches and staring in his direction.
Her whiskers twitched, as did her ears and he had the distinct
impression that she was staring at
him.
She abruptly stopped
her inspection and shifted her gaze to the far corner of the
cell.

“I can’t tell for sure, but she seems to be a
cross between a cat and a...a girl,” Harry said, and then felt dumb
for stating the obvious. He closed the door, just in case the
cat-girl decided to listen in.

The agent pursed his lips and nodded. “It’s
clear you’re the product of a fine education.”

Once again, the sarcasm in his voice made
itself evident, and it was both totally withering and totally
effective. Harry felt the blood rush to his face in embarrassment,
but before he could respond, Farrell asked, “Can you tell me what
or who made her this way or what type she is?”

“Why are you asking me? I don’t know anything
about cats.”

“Are you allergic?”

“No, I’m…” He abruptly stopped talking. He’d
never owned a pet and outside of Parham the anime geek and his now
gone parents, he relied on science to get him through the day. The
rules and regulations of chemistry and DNA were his best buddies,
always different yet always the same and always exciting. No matter
how bad his life got, once inside a lab he felt at home. Now, he
was just bewildered. In an attempt to get the subject back on
track, he rubbed his head as if to get the neural synapses moving
again and asked, “Who is she?”

The agent leaned against the wall. “We don’t
know. The police picked her up a couple of days ago. She refused to
answer any questions, although a witness, one Nick
Winter—homeless—said she spoke to him. Said she was strong, fast,
and mean. You just saw what happened to one of my men. She can take
the full charge of a Taser and still fight, that’s how tough she
is.”

He sighed. “New York’s finest caught her, but
they didn’t know what to do with a case like this, so the precinct
captain in Manhattan contacted us and now we have custody and
jurisdiction. There’s a media blackout in effect. We don’t want the
public to panic.”

Harry’s first thought was, of course they
don’t
.
He could see the headlines now:
How many other
mutants are wandering around?

Then he wondered aloud what they’d been
feeding her. Farrell laughed. “Well, the first thing we did was
hose her down. She smelled, and it was pretty rank. Someone found
her some clothes, and after she got dressed we tried offering her
milk and she just hissed at us. One of the other agents mentioned
sandwiches and coffee and she perked up, so it follows she can
understand English. That much we’ve learned. We pushed in some
sandwiches on a plate and she ate them, and then pushed the plate
outside, which means she’s got some intelligence.”

“She’s got manners,” Harry stated. “You
really don’t know who she is?”

The agent shook his head. “We have no prints,
no name, and nothing else to go on. We’re running her picture
through state and nationwide records right now. We’ve also
contacted Interpol, just in case. They haven’t called us yet, but
when they do, we might have something to go on.”

Harry was confused. “So what do you want me
to do?”

Farrell pulled himself away from the wall.
“I’m not a scientist,” he said peevishly. “Our people can’t type
her. Your father was one of the foremost transgenic researchers in
the world.”

“He only did fruits and vegetables.”

Farrell threw up his hands in frustration.
“Okay, that was him. You’re you, and according to all reports,
you’re even better than your father was. We need to know who and
what she is, and we need to know now.”

“You couldn’t get anyone else?”

“No one’s come close to what you can do,
whiz-kid.”

Harry rubbed his forehead in frustration.
“Uh, look, Agent Farrell…”

“Call me Miles. We’re going to be working
together, so we might as well be friends.”

Miles,
Harry thought. He figured all
the men in black had tough names.
Miles
didn’t sound tough
at all. And screw any friendships with anyone else at the moment,
especially this jerk that’d arrested him in the first place and
managed to ruin his life and a promising career. “Uh, sir, I’m not
a technician. I’ve never seen a transgenic person before. I’ve only
run simulations.”

“Do you know anyone else who knows as much as
you?”

It was a fair question. Harry recalled the
times some of the other researchers had spoken to his father.
They’d come in a couple of times every year up until his father had
taken ill, men and women from everywhere in the world. After his
father’s death, though, no one had bothered to come around or even
called to offer their condolences. It totally sucked, but that was
how life went.

Oh, the question of who was better
qualified…“Uh, haven’t you tried checking on all the other
researchers yourself? I mean, my father knew people from China and
France and more…”

Farrell waved off his suggestions, his
features set like stone, and he recited, “The US government is not
in the habit of consulting foreign researchers on matters such as
this unless absolutely necessary. The potential for damage and
misuse is enormous. In short, we can’t trust them.”

“I can see all the
damage
right in
front of me.” Harry pointed to the door and the agent’s face
flushed a deep red. “So why can’t you trust an American
researcher?”

Farrell inhaled a deep breath and slowly let
it out. “We
did
try talking to some of them. They all said
it couldn’t be done. They’d all done the basic equations. Even your
father never got as far as you did.”

He spread his hands wide in a gesture which
meant he wanted help. “All I’m asking is that you unlock the data
you have on your disc and tell us what you know. We’ll get a blood
sample and have one of our techs analyze it. After that, the rest
is up to you.”

Harry decided to test his keeper. “What if I
say no?”

The agent’s voice came out the same way a
hammer banging a gavel in court would. “Then you go to a maximum
security lockup. No special privileges, full-time in the can. And
Miss Kitty can stay here until her hair falls out. Right now, I
don’t care which.”

Both jailer and jailed stared at each and
Harry blinked first. After thinking about it, he didn’t have much
of a choice. No, on second thought, he knew he was screwed. With a
sigh, he opened the door, went inside, and got his computer going.
Miles Farrell looked on, his gaze impassive, and Harry inserted the
disc in the side and downloaded the information. “You’re not going
to tell me the password, are you?” he asked.

Harry knew he didn’t have to, but on the
other hand visions of a jail cell and someone who wanted to be his
special friend
persuaded him to cough up the details. “It’s
Linoleic acid,
” he said. “Two words and linoleic is
capitalized. Acid isn’t.”

He worked on a few equations, typed some
commands in, and then turned the computer around to face the agent.
“There it is. That’s as far as I got.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that
the cat lady was observing him with interest. She’d obviously been
listening to everything they’d been saying, and he wondered if she
knew about everything in the room. Her eyes darted back and forth
as if memorizing and categorizing every single object.

The agent ignored the cat-girl and focused
his attention on the computer. He peered in to look at the data
more closely and arched his eyebrows. “What am I looking at?”

Harry pointed at a chemical matrix on the
screen. “This is what would happen if I combined shark DNA with
human DNA. It’s also what you arrested me for. Pretty stupid, too,”
he added.

Farrell pulled a face. “We went on the
evidence available. You knew damn well it was against the law.
Why’d you do it?”

Harry ground his teeth together in
frustration and then resignedly blew out a gust of air. “I was
looking for the gene that knocks out cancer. That’s what my father
died from. I figured that if I could somehow combine the two, then
the immune system would fight off the illness, can you comprehend
that? It’s not I like ever
tested
it with a real live
person. This is as far as I got until your Storm Troopers hauled me
in.”

The agent shrugged. “Sorry about your old
man, but I was just following orders.”

Harry had heard that before, justification
for doing evil. It seemed as though personal freedom of thought
obviously didn’t matter much to US lawmakers. Then he noticed
Farrell staring at the screen. “Do you understand what you’re
looking at?” he asked.

The agent shook his head. “All I see are
numbers. Did you manage to figure it out?”

Now Harry felt embarrassed. He didn’t want to
admit failure. He’d been working over every equation and
permutation in his mind and still couldn’t get it right. “No, not
yet, because I had a lot of problems, and…”

A sound from the cat-lady interrupted him.
She started meowing, a low, husky, and oddly sexy sound, and
shifted her feet. “Looks like we should have brought a box of kitty
litter in,” Farrell muttered.

He reached inside his suit pocket and took
out a small Taser. Going over to the bars but keeping a respectful
distance, he waved the weapon in front of the prisoner. “See this?”
he asked. The cat-lady watched him warily, but didn’t back off.
“You know what this is, right? I’m sure you do.”

Harry took in the scene, and for some reason
it reminded him of a trainer with his pet in front of an expectant
crowd. In the back on his mind he thought of how much damage those
claws could do, but at the same time this wasn’t an animal, not
completely.

Farrell unlocked the cell door and carefully
backed up before waving the girl out. “Well, c’mon kitty, you want
to use the bathroom, don’t you?”

She slowly extended her arm, her middle
finger upraised, and Harry stifled a laugh. Whoever she was, she
was a badass. The agent grimaced and waved his hand in the
direction of the bathroom. She stepped out of the cell and walked
quickly and gracefully to the far end of the room, where a sign
indicated the lavatory, and entered. Farrell closed the door for
her and stood outside, Taser at the ready. “She saw the bathroom on
her first day here and made for it in a second,” he said. “She
doesn’t want to talk, but she knows where the toilet is.”