Chameleon (11 page)

For the first time, I began to see the full force of what we were up against. How could we possibly hope to prevail?

At last, with Mickie’s help, I stood. Before us, the sun settled for the night, a bloated red ball that hovered ominously over the horizon of Paris before giving up at last and vanishing.

“Earliest sunset of the year,” said Mickie, quietly.

“Perhaps we have dwelt enough for one day upon the darkness in this world,” said Sir Walter, looking sorrowfully my direction. “If you have no objections to the consolations of the Holy Church, we might attend a sung mass.”

“We’re Catholic,” Will said.

Mick made a small noise that might have been a laugh, but she raised no objection.

“My family doesn’t really go to mass,” I said. “But it sounds fine by me.” I thought I could use some
Lord, have mercy
right now.

“Sir Walter, I just have one last question. Sam, do you mind?” Will turned his dark eyes upon me.

“No problem,” I murmured. Like I could say no to him.

He turned back to Sir Walter. “The black book, those experiments? It seemed so purposeful, like he was after something more than traumatizing them,” said Will.

“Of course, my friend. He broke their spirits in order to train his army,” said Sir Walter.

Mickie spoke in a crisp tone. “Enough. We’re done for today.” Protectively, she placed an arm around me.

All conversation was at an end, and we stood quietly with our own dismal thoughts. Sir Walter conjured a taxi out of a mass of yellow headlights streaming towards us, and we rode in silence to a building marked
Palais de Justice
.

Will took a long, hard look at me as we parked. “Do you want to just go back to the hotel?”

“I don’t want to offend Sir Walter,” I whispered.

The French gentleman overheard us and chuckled softly. “God cares not, child. Perhaps rest is what you need now, more than the celebration of the Mass.”

Mickie and Will exited the cab as Sir Walter spoke to the driver in rapid French. Winking at me, Sir Walter shut the door, my driver departed, and I collapsed once more into the back seat, exhausted. I rested my gaze on shuffling pedestrians as the taxi crept along the boulevard. The traffic reminded me of times I’d visited San Francisco; people on the sidewalks made better time than we could driving in a car. But it felt so good to be sitting.

I watched the faces of the pedestrians moving past. I smiled, imagining the stories Gwyn would make up if she were with me.

If we were friends.

I sighed. Gwyn’s voice tickled inside my head.
This guy has to go home and tell his wife they’re being relocated to Iceland in the dead of winter; that woman just found out she’s pregnant with octuplets; that guy won the national lottery and spent it all on cheap whiskey …
I heard her laughter in my head and tried to play the game myself for awhile. But my own mood was too somber.
This girl just found out that there was a dad in World War II Germany who tortured his own children.

My eyes landed on a burly man with white–blond hair. For the most part, Parisians seemed to be dark–haired, so this guy stuck out. I watched him as he drew nearer, his expression a dour
transferred–to–Iceland.
My taxi driver slowed, causing the brakes to squeal noisily. The pedestrian looked up as he passed us. I twisted away just as he met my eyes, certain of who I’d seen:
the blue–eyed man from Helga’s lab—Ivanovich!

I shrunk down into the seat, fear filling my veins like ice.

He doesn’t know you
, I said to myself. He’d seen me last with a black nylon stocking that smashed my face beyond recognition. As proof that I wasn’t recognizable, he hadn’t connected my stocking–ed face with the drawing of me advertising my supposed “lost purse.”

But that didn’t matter, I realized. He
did
know what I looked like. He might not realize we’d met three weeks ago in Helga’s lab, but he knew me as “Jane Smith,” the fake name I’d given the first time I visited UC Merced. And from the poster, he knew his employer wanted me.

I snuck a peek out the back window of the taxi. Would he double back and pursue me? In the deepening twilight, it was impossible to be sure, but I didn’t locate anyone with blond hair looking back at my taxi.

I let out a huge sigh of relief.

And then I took in a gasp of air, ready to scream as the man with ice–blue eyes materialized in the taxi beside me.

My scream never came. Before I had a chance, my pursuer threw large arms around me and rippled away, taking me with him. I quickly lost all sense of direction as he began a mad, invisible race through Paris with me locked in his arms.

At first I had no thought of struggling free; the crazy–fast speed at which we moved disoriented me. Then we slowed and dove
underground
passing through floors, rock, soil, and I didn’t know what–all. I grew afraid that if I tried to materialize, I would end up doing so within something solid.

Images from his mind flooded into my own. Fearful this could be a two–way occurrence, I focused on preventing him from gaining anything from my mind. I dwelt upon one single image: the WANTED poster of me with the sticky note reading
Do Not Harm
. I repeated this single image again and again in hopes the message might influence my captor.

Overlaying this image of mine, I saw visions from Ivanovich’s mind: Helga in a raging passion, a wall made of stacked skulls, a row of red–filled vials, a birds–eye view while skimming over the surface of an immense lake or perhaps ocean; on and on the images came in relentless waves—more images than I figured I probably had in my head over the course of several weeks. This guy’s brain was way too busy.

And then all at once we stopped. I felt my flesh returning as my captor threw me from himself. I hit the ground hard and tumbled over, hurtling into a desk.

My weight and speed pushed the desk into something more solid. A wall? I heard the sound of things falling to the floor, dislodged by the collision. From where I lay, I saw what looked like a dog bone rolling towards me and coming to rest.

I tried to rise, but the room spun wrong–ways–up, and I shut my eyes tight. As I fell back to the rough flooring, I hit my head. Stupefied, I lay still. I thought maybe my head hurt, but then I wasn’t so sure. Maybe it just felt heavy.

“Deuxième’s got her, that’s right, she’s ours now,” said the man. His voice sounded wrong. I struggled to work out why.

“Such a deal of blood. So very, very red. But dirty. Not good clean blood,” he continued.

I realized he was muttering in French. And he wasn’t directing his speech at me. I lifted my head a centimeter to see who else was in this place. My brain tried to make sense of what I could see in the dimly–lit space. Rows of sticks decorating a wall. I squinted, examining the patterns, far more complex than any brick–laying I’d ever seen. And then it dawned on me that I was looking at a wall made not of sticks, but of bones.

He’d brought me into Paris’ underground bone–charnel. And there was no one else here.

As he continued speaking, I realized something else was wrong with his voice: it didn’t sound like Ivanovich at all, in fact. He spoke in a high pitch with a frantic, breathy quality. He sounded nothing like the man I’d fled in Helga’s laboratory, but he looked identical, right down to a dark mole below his left eye.

“It’s necessary to be sure; It’s necessary to be correct. We can’t call
die Mutter
unless we’re sure. Check her blood. Check her blood.”

He was talking to himself, I realized. As he continued muttering, I kept my eyes pinched almost closed. It felt like it gave me an advantage, although I had no plan at the moment, except to calm my pulse and try rippling.

‘Cause that’s always worked so well for you when you’re scared.
I had to face the possibility that I wouldn’t be able to find my rippling “zone” here any more than I had in Helga’s lab. I wasn’t Will; this didn’t come to me second–nature.

Deep breath in, slow breath out,
I told myself.

“She might wake up. She might not. Let’s tie her hands together,” continued the voice. “That’s a good plan Deuxième, a good plan.”

And with that, he seized both my hands and duct–taped them together.

Crap!
My heart started pounding again, and my head with it.

“Lots of blood, lots of blood, but it is not clean. Deuxième can’t use dirty blood.”

I felt a tickle beside my ear as I identified the smell of my own blood. I’d cut something by my ear.

“Can’t get a clear look at her now she’s got her eyes closed. She needs to wake up. Deuxième has things to make her wake up.”

Through squinted eyes, I saw him open a cupboard that appeared to be full of medical or scientific supplies. He located a small vial and then rummaged until he found a needle.

Oh, God! What’s he going to pump inside of me?

“She must wake up. This will wake her up.” Here, he laughed. It was a childish laugh, and it sent a chill down my spine.

“I’m awake!” I cried out in French.

“American,” he said. “She sounds like an American.”

I didn’t say anything in response. I’d seen a mouse once on television, frozen before a rattlesnake. I knew how it felt to be the mouse now.

“From California. That is where she lives.” He stared at me, tilting his head sideways to get a better look at my face along the ground.

“Maybe she will tell us her name.”

His icy blue eyes drew closer to mine and I flinched.

“What is your name, girl?”

I said nothing, still thinking about that stupid rodent. I didn’t want to be the mouse.

“Deuxième forgets that she is American. Lazy Americans speak only English.” These things, he murmured to himself in French. Then, switching to English, he addressed me once more. “What are you called?”

“I’m Jane Smith,” I lied, figuring it was safer to stick to that identity than reveal my actual name. “What are you called?”

Here he flashed a grin of polished teeth. “Now I am Deuxième. Later Ivanovich will be here and Deuxième will get to rest.”

“You have … two names?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said, wrinkling his brow. “When Deuxième sleeps, Ivanovich is our name. When Ivanovich sleeps, we are Deuxième.”

I nodded as though what he said made sense. It didn’t, exactly, but I didn’t want to antagonize him. Helga’s thug was more than just an
über
–man. He had some form of
über
–multiple personality disorder that she’d employed to her advantage.

“Deuxième needs clean blood,” he said, turning back to the cupboard.

As soon as he turned his back to me, I began scooting backwards and away from him towards a low opening in the wall behind me.

He spun back around. “No!” He grabbed me roughly and shoved me down onto a small wooden bench. Grabbing the duct tape once more, he ran it over my lap, securing me to the bench. “Jane must stay here.”

His simple speech reminded me of a child.

“I don’t want to stay here,” I said, adjusting my tone to match his. My voice came out surprisingly calm.

“Sometimes Deuxième is unhappy to be here, Jane. But Deuxième does what he is told. Ivanovich got us in trouble.
Die Mutter
said Ivanovich deserved to be banished. Poor Deuxième had to come here as well.”

“Come here from where?” I asked.

He stood, confident that I could not longer escape. He ignored my question as he returned to searching his cupboard.

“From California?” I asked.

“Mmmm–hmm,” he said, inflecting the sound just enough that it meant “yes.”

“Samples must always be clean. Clean samples yield clear results,” he said as he spun back around. In his hands he held two empty vials and a different kind of needle along with a length of rubber tubing.

No,
I thought.
Please, no!
He wanted to draw blood. With a needle.

Panic or fainting would take me farther from being able to ripple. Could I distract Deuxième and prevent him from drawing my blood?

“Deuxième
means ‘Second,’ right?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said as he began tying the tubing above my elbow.

I tried not to stare at the wickedly sharp needle he’d placed on the bench beside me.

“Was there ever a … First?” I asked.

He grabbed the needle. His face looked troubled. “He is gone,” he said simply. “She destroyed him with too many experiments.”

“She did?” I asked.

His hands had stopped their activity and he looked down and to one side.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Were there more than the three of you at any time?”

“Just three. Until she destroyed Bruno.”

“Why would she do that?”

“
Die Mutter
needed to experiment,” he said, frowning at me. “Why else?”

“So he had to die?” I asked. “That must have been terrible for you.”

Deuxième looked unhappily at the vials in his hand. “Yes, very terrible. Without Bruno, Ivanovich and I must work longer hours.”

“Wait, what? What do you mean
work longer
?” I asked. I was tied to a wooden bench by a man holding a freaking needle; I couldn’t run out of questions.

“While Bruno lived, Ivanovich and Deuxième could rest for sixteen hours and work for eight. Now Ivanovich works twelve hours while Deuxième rests and Deuxième works twelve hours while Ivanovich rests.” He looked very despondent as he reported this to me, eyelids drooping.

“So one of you is always … awake?” I asked.

“The body we share does not require sleep. We are the
über–kinder
, fore–runner of the new man.” He didn’t sound very excited about this.

“That sounds like a painful life,” I said.
My heart rate is slowing,
I thought silently. I just needed to keep him talking.

“
Painful
,” he said. “Yes,
pain
is necessary.
Pain
is the great motivator.” His eyes fluttered and he seemed to shift into a higher state of alertness with each repetition of the word “pain.” He stared at the objects still in his hands and began testing my arm for a vein.