Rise of the Transgenics (13 page)

“This way, Goldman,” Officer Mean said, and
shoved him over to a desk where another cop fingerprinted him. He
stood there in silence while he went through the procedure, and
once done, the cop handed him a dirty rag so that he could clean
his fingers.

A few tabloid reporters with some
photographers in tow, hungry for online or paper news, broke away
from talking to a group of scantily dressed women to come his way
and shout out questions.

“Hey, are you the killer?” one of them yelled
and told the photographer beside him to start snapping. Flashes
went off and Harry covered the side of his face. Oh, way to make
his day even worse, he was going to be on the seven o’clock news
report. “Look this way, kid, and get famous! You’re front page
news!”

Another reporter rushed over with a mike in
hand. “I’m Larry Owen with the New York Daily,” he said in a
breathless, demanding manner. “I heard that you’re responsible for
the murder of no less than sixty FBI agents six months ago and the
murder of two more up in the Catskill Mountains just a short time
ago. Give me a statement. Just a few words, that’s all I’m asking
here.”

“Go to hell.”

That seemed like a decent sound bite. The
reporter didn’t look overly shocked. Instead, he uttered a series
of expletives.

Another policeman trundled over, shoved the
reporter away, and pulled on Harry’s arm. “Picture time, son,” he
said while steering him in the direction of the stairs.

One level down, he was taken to another room
to have his mug shot taken. He waited while six other men went
ahead, and when it was his turn, he stood against the wall’s height
chart, held out his number, and the photographer snapped away.

“Turn to your right,” the photographer
intoned. Move completed, the photographer asked him to face front.
Once that procedure was over—and by now he was beginning to think
he’d never make it out of here alive and he hadn’t even been
charged yet—another officer escorted him to another room.

“I’m taking you to the holding cell now,” the
police officer said. “You don’t have a lawyer, do you?”

“No sir, I don’t.” Harry wondered if giving
Farrell’s name would work, but decided not to say anything. For all
he knew, the agent wouldn’t back him, and right now all he felt was
numb.

“Did the officers who arrested you read you
your rights?”

“Yes sir, they did,” Harry answered
truthfully.

“Too bad,” the answer came. “Killers like you
don’t deserve any rights.”

They marched along a narrow hallway for
another few paces and stopped outside a room. Harry’s escort said,
“Here we are.”

Entering the room, the police officer nodded
at another guard who took out a key and opened up the holding cell.
“Move inside,” the first police officer ordered, and pushed him
through the door.

Filthy was the operative word here. A lone
toilet sat in the far right corner, broken and overflowing, and a
thin, yellow river of pee slowly spread over the floor. Nine men
occupied the small space. Some of them didn’t bother to move their
feet while three others jostled for space on the lone bench.

In an effort to find a measure of peace,
Harry stood well away from the pack and wondered if he’d get
whacked here, in a cell, or somewhere in between if Piotr and
Lyudmila showed up. A sense of despair threatened to overwhelm him,
but he did his best to fight it down.

After thinking it over, he decided that it
didn’t matter. He’d been locked in a tiny room along with robbers
and drug addicts, possible rapists and murderers, and every single
one of them towered over him and outweighed him by at least fifty
pounds. Here, size did matter.

The stench of the human waste coupled with
body odor and the occasional fart didn’t help much, either. So to
take his mind off his unfortunate incarceration, he thought back to
his earlier days.

Oh, wait, they’d sucked, too. Bad idea, but
once started, the memories wouldn’t stop...

“Punk.”

One word, it was just one word, but it could
be used in some many ways. As a noun, it meant a weakling or
someone who ran afoul of the law. In Harry’s case, it meant the
former.

As a verb, it denoted making someone feel
inferior by abusing them physically or verbally or both. Once
again, in Harry’s case, he was always on the end of the punking,
always the punked and never the punker, if such a word existed.
Somewhere in the depths of his mind, he knew that such a word did,
in fact, exist, and he hated it.

He also hated being weak. Traveling back to
junior high school days, he remembered getting back at his
tormenters through science. After coming home with a split lip plus
a bruised face and body one day, his father, also small and spare,
kindly gave him the facts of life while patching him up. They’d sat
in the kitchen, just the two of them, as Harry’s mother had gone
out to buy food for the evening—and more bandages.

“It’s okay to be afraid, son,” the elder
Goldman said, dabbing iodine on Harry’s cuts. “Everyone is, even
the biggest and toughest men in the world. Being afraid is only
natural, but they’ve learned to hit back. Hitting back isn’t
against the law, not last I heard.”

“But I always lose, Dad,” Harry wailed,
hating himself even more for being weak. The teachers didn’t stop
the punking jobs, no other kids would stand up for him and what was
wrong with this picture?

His father stopped the patch job and
straightened up, and this time his voice didn’t sound as soothing
as it usually did. “Losing happens, son. But if you don’t hit back,
they’ll keep doing it. Hitting back will make them think
twice.”

Sage advice given, he left the kitchen.

As he sat there, nursing his wounds, Harry
realized that no one was ever going to help him. He had to do it on
his own, and eventually he’d found the strength to hit back.
Cornered animals always did, and he did, as well. A feeling of
pride surfaced, and even though he got his ass kicked yet again, he
did manage to exact some revenge against one bully by using itching
powder...and subsequently got suspended.

The suspension came as a blessing in
disguise, as his parents allowed their gifted son to study at home.
“Just do the school homework, Harry,” his mother counseled. “Then
do what you want.”

It was the best order he could have been
given. Homework took all of ten minutes, and then it was off to
experiment city. Following in his father’s footsteps led to more
research, breakthroughs and setbacks. Additionally, more
revelations about the riddle of a person’s DNA surfaced. Then he
recalled his first incarceration, working with the FBI, and his
first meeting with Anastasia. All of those thoughts circulated
through his mind in a flash.

He didn’t think he’d ever be allowed to work
on his own, but Farrell had given him an amazing amount of leeway.
To work on problems solving gene mutations which led to a whole
host of diseases, enhancing strength, telomere analysis and more—it
was like a dream come true to a young kid with no family.

Luxuries had never interested him. On his
first day at the lab, Anastasia held in his arms, Farrell had given
him the guided tour, which took all of five minutes. “The Director
doesn’t want you out on your own in the big city,” he started off
by saying. “There are too many possibilities of someone kidnapping
you, so you’re going to be our guest. We can’t spare the manpower
to guard you, anyway.”

“Nice to know you think so highly of me,”
Harry had remarked, doing his best to rein in his sarcasm.

If Farrell heard the sarcasm, he didn’t
bother responding to it. Instead, he ticked off the amenities on
his fingers. “You got your comfy bed in the corner, your toilet,
and a fridge,” he intoned, but in a light voice, a change from his
usual hard-ass attitude. “You also got your computer, your
analyzing machines, and if you need any extra towels or clothes or
books to read, just ask and we’ll get them for you, within
reason.”

Harry took his time examining the machines.
State of the art and brand new, they gleamed, shining out the
possibilities of using them to their fullest extent. The whole
concept of being able to use what he knew excited him.

Anastasia wriggled in his grasp and then
jumped out of his arms onto the floor, purring, and went off to
examine the room. Finally, acting as any cat would, she gazed
disinterestedly at the machinery and then found a comfortable spot
on the bed to curl up on. “What do you think, kid?” Farrell
asked.

“Uh, these are great,” Harry blurted out,
waving his hand at the array. “Am I on a time schedule or
something?”

The older man shook his head. “Not really,”
he said. “We just want results, and you’re the person to deliver
them. You wanted Anastasia with you. I pulled the strings to make
that happen, so you have to make your brand of magic happen. You’re
all set, so get to work.”

He left the room. Once the door closed, his
girlfriend, who’d been lying on the bed but not sleeping, picked
her head up and said in a soft voice, “Yeah, get to work.” A hint
of a smile played around her lips.

With the exception of Anastasia, he really
didn’t know many people. Jason had always been his best—and
only—friend. Yet rules and regs applied here, and a few days into
his job, he received the word of the law. There was to be no
outside contact unless first authorized. “It’s against the law or
something?” he asked.

“Loose lips, kid,” Farrell invariably
replied, putting an end to the possibility of all communication
with sentient life in the big city. “No calls, and the ones we
allow you to make will be monitored, so that’s that. It’s a short
leash, but you’ll get to run around—within reason.”

Within reason
meant being accompanied
by an agent on the rare times he was allowed to go outside to
sample a decent meal, buy some clothes or just breathe non-filtered
air. Anastasia always went with him. As they walked through the
lobby, his girlfriend padded softly beside him. As always, an agent
trailed behind. Harry heard a few laughs and comments of “nanny
time” and in the streets, he received the usual stares.

Anastasia went willingly, but she balked at
having a leash put on her. “Sometimes you have to put your paw
down,” she said when they were alone, slowly extending her claws as
a warning. “This is one of those Hell no Kitty moments. No
leash.”

When the minder questioned the possibility of
her running off, Harry offered the excuse of, “She’s trained, sir.
She won’t leave.”

Anastasia acted as any cat would by rubbing
her head around his legs and the agent’s legs. She purred loudly
and gave them a winsome look as she sat on her haunches and
practically begged to be petted.

“Fine,” Farrell said in a sour voice. “As
long as she’s trained, she can go with you.”

The same agent always went with them. Large,
built like a brick wall, he had a square, pockmarked visage and
thin brown hair. He never laughed, never joked, and never said
anything much with the exception of, “Just do what you have to do,
kid, and let’s get it over with. I’ve got a real job waiting for
me, not playing nursemaid.”

Anastasia growled her disapproval, but
keeping up the act of being an ordinary housecat, she didn’t
speak.

One time, though, she came close. Harry had
taken her with him to a pizza shop down the street from
headquarters. His minder had stopped to make a phone call and waved
Harry on ahead. “Go inside and wait for me,” he said. “This is
official business.”

As they walked along, a man in his thirties,
large and solidly built, with a mean looking face and a large
mixed-breed dog, strolled in their direction. Immediately, the dog
started to bark, and Harry picked Anastasia up in his arms as a
protective measure. The dog’s owner smirked. “Nice kitty you got
there, boy. Are you afraid of the big bad dog? Big dogs bite.”

Right away, Harry experienced that old
familiar fear, fear of being punked by someone larger and meaner.
Growing up the underdog in every situation hadn’t helped much, and
right then his minder had his back turned to the action, still
talking on his phone. Harry despised bullies, but fought down his
own inner quakes and said, “My cat doesn’t like moronic dog owners.
Keep on walking.”

Anastasia hissed and bared her teeth, and the
dog kept barking. The owner lost his smirk. “Boy, you got a mouth
on you,” and grabbed Harry by his collar. “You know who you’re
messing with?”

“An idiot,” Anastasia said, and sank her
teeth into the man’s hand.

Mr. Dog Owner let out a shocked howl and his
dog leapt up, fangs bared. Anastasia didn’t hesitate and slashed at
the dog’s eye, tearing the skin open just above the eyelid. Blood
spurted out, and the man quickly backed off, yanking hard on his
dog’s leash.

“What’s going on here?”

The agent had finally come to the rescue and
stood behind Harry, hand on his gun. “We got a problem,
mister?”

No problem, as the man was already in the
process of backing up. “That cat...it talked,” he said in a voice
filled with awe...and fear.

A second later, he ran off, pulling his
yowling mutt behind him. The agent chuckled. “You got a talking
cat?” he asked.

“Meow,” Anastasia said, and Harry swore that
she was grinning.

Later on, just the two of them back in the
lab, Harry sat at his computer, brooding. Once again he’d failed to
act, and chickening out shamed him. Anastasia jumped on his lap,
purring loudly. The purrs soon stopped, though, and she looked at
him, her yellow eyes mesmerizing. “I know you were scared back
there,” she said quietly. “But you have to act sometimes.”

Harry didn’t say anything at first. “Yeah, I
was scared,” he finally mumbled out.