Rise of the Transgenics (16 page)

“However, when I began to see the changes,”
her eyes lit up and a look of near-rapture spread across her feline
features, “The pain vanished, and I knew that I had chosen wisely.
Do you understand that this can be the next step in evolution?
Imagine being able to run fast, jump higher, and outfight almost
any creature around. I have heightened powers of eyesight,
smell...everything a girl could want,” she preened. “Piotr said the
same thing...just not in so many words.”

Harry didn’t have to imagine anything. The
results were right in front on him, and if she considered herself
to be the next step in human evolution, she was in for a very rude
awakening. “You realize you’ll devolve, don’t you? I mean, if you
know about Anastasia, then you also know she devolved, and I had to
work to bring her back. I also couldn’t get rid of the animal genes
inside her.”

“Our creator is aware of that,” Lyudmila
responded, brushing some dirt from her hands. She then set about
grooming her hair, using short and quick strokes with her fingers
to remove the largest particles of waste. “I was apprised of the
shortcomings of the program from the start.”

For a second, her eyes flickered, seemingly
with genuine regret, and her voice grew sorrowful. “Alas, Piotr,
poor thing, does not know. In my case, I will have a normal life
span. In his, he will not live very long, due to the splicing
together of two species. He has not the intelligence to comprehend
his demise. He only knows that his body doesn’t regenerate as fast
as it used to and that he needs to sleep more.”

Listening to all this, Harry didn’t know
whether to feel sorry for her or despise her. While she had chosen
this route, she clearly understood what would happen. She would
devolve, the same as Anastasia, and her boyfriend would die.

On the other hand, they were both murderers
many times over. Sympathy was for the truly pitiful, he decided.
These monsters deserved only contempt. However, his feelings were
tempered by the fact that he was a prisoner and could not fight
them on his terms, and knew that he wouldn’t live long no matter
what he said or did. Once again, he hoped that his girlfriend was
safe, wherever she’d gone.

“Are there others like you?”

Lyudmila blinked. “Why do you wish to
know?”

“Just curious, is all.”

Her harsh laugh rang out, filling the
abandoned room. “You do know the story of curiosity, do you
not?”

The irony of her statement got to him, and in
spite of his predicament, he appreciated the joke and nodded in
understanding. “Yeah, I do.”

Her eyes flickered with indecision, and then
she leaned closer. “There are a number of us. Our creator had many
ideas, many of them clever...and many not. He created me from a
cat, my boyfriend from a splice of two animals, a rhinoceros and a
wild boar native to our country, and others.”

What the
others
were, Harry had no
clue, but he took a wild guess. “I’m thinking he spliced together
some dangerous combinations,” he said. “Boars and lions, tigers and
attack dogs...things like that, am I right?”

Lyudmila shook her head, her long hair
cascading over her shoulders. “You may think what you like. I will
not attempt to dispel your notions.”

Her answer was no answer at all. Still, his
curiosity compelled him to ask one more question. “So...what
happens now?”

She eyed him closely as a scientist would eye
a microbe. “What happens is that we shall have to wait. Piotr and I
were sent here for one reason and one only. You are to be taken
back to our country to help our creator perfect the process of
alteration. Once the process has been perfected, I will have this
body,” she smoothed her hands from her shoulders over her breasts
and down to her hips, “for the rest of my days. While the process
will be painful, I will have what I wish.”

“What’s your creator’s name?”

One word came from her mouth—”Grushenko.”

G—it must have been what Maze had seen on her
computer during her search. It couldn’t stand for anything else.
Turning the name over in his mind, he struggled to remember if his
father had ever mentioned it. He recalled a meeting he’d been to
with his parents when he was very young, something about
transgenics research that his father was doing.

Scientists from all over the world had come
to Portland for a conference. His father had been one of the
keynote speakers. He’d listened to a veritable Babel of languages,
but didn’t remember meeting or hearing about anyone by that
name.

Only the late Russian scientist’s name,
Nurmelev, came to the forefront of his memory. Grushenko’s...no. “I
never heard that guy’s name before,” he responded, trying to figure
a way out of here. He quickly shifted his gaze past her shoulder,
but there was only one way in, and she stood in the way of getting
out. “I only know about Nurmelev. He wanted to build an army of
spies, once they devolved, and you’ll also change. Doesn’t that
bother you?”

A scornful laugh greeted his question. “No,
it does not. I am not familiar with the name you have just
mentioned, but that is of no importance. As to the spy program, I
will perform my duties honorably. I do not mind being what I am,
for I am enhanced. That is enough for me.”

“Doesn’t this Grushenko want to build an
army?” Harry probed, wanting to know more and wondering if the
police were searching this section of the city. If they ever found
him, would they shoot him as well?

Once again, a laugh, harsh and deep, greeted
his query. “From what I know, the answer is no. I have already told
you that there are others like us. That is all the information you
will get from me. Clever as you think you are, aware though you may
be, you are really in the dark and have always been there. You may
think that you know everything, Harry Goldman, but you do not.”

She sat back then, a satisfied smile playing
around her lips. She looked very much like Anastasia, he thought.
With the same height and build, and the same whiskers and ears, she
could have been his girlfriend’s clone, but for two key
differences. Lyudmila’s eyes were the color of death, and she
enjoyed killing. He’d heard the terrible glee in her voice when she
ordered her boyfriend to savage the prisoners, and she’d probably
felt the same emotion when she was doing the savaging.

Maneuvering his body to a more comfortable
position, he found her staring at him. “What is it?”

“Do you find me attractive?” she suddenly
asked and gave him a confident, knowing smile. “I have heard that
you have feelings for Anastasia. We are aware of your relationship
with her.”

“You know?”

A slight shrug greeted his question. “There
is little that we do not. Back in Russia we were provided with
extensive information on this city, its people, and you.”

Her eyes glittered. “Even if we hadn’t been
told, when I waited in the forest with my Piotr, I saw how you
looked at Anastasia, how you talked with her, the pitch of your
voice and hers...it was easy to understand.” She then repeated her
question of him finding her attractive.

No, he didn’t, not really, but curiosity got
the better of him. “What did you look like before?”

Wordlessly, she reached into the pocket of
her shorts and pulled out a folded picture. Carefully unfolding it
and smoothing it out, she handed it over. It showed a young woman,
perhaps only a year or so older than Anastasia, medium height, a
svelte figure, and plain, nondescript features. The eyes, however,
hadn’t changed during her transformation. They remained cold,
empty, and devoid of any human emotion.

Handing it back, he said, “Maybe you look
better as a cat—maybe.” It was the most honest answer he could
give.

Lyudmila carefully tucked the photo away and
asked, “Did she tell you of her previous life?”

Aware that this woman knew all about him yet
not wanting to say too much, Harry offered a shrug. “She had
amnesia when I first met her. All she knew was her name and that
she was born somewhere in Russia.”

His captor considered the answer, lips pursed
as if in thought, and then with a vindictive smile, asked, “Do you
find me as attractive as you find the whore?”

The remark stung, and instinctively he lashed
out and punched her as hard as possible right in the jaw. Her head
rocked back an inch or maybe two, but another tiny smile emerged,
this one colder than ice and very calculating. She raised her arm,
claws extended, for a moment. He thought she’d rip his throat out,
but right then he didn’t care. Fear didn’t rule—anger did.

“Is that all you are capable of doing?” she
sneered and retracted her claws. “I know that Anastasia was a
prostitute in her previous life. I know that she sold her body many
times over for mere rubles. She is not worthy for any man.” The
sneer got deeper. “And you are no man.”

Venom over, he decided to give some venom
back. “My girlfriend is special,” Harry responded hotly. “You talk
about being worthy. What I’m thinking is that you’re just trash,
your boyfriend is a sub-human moron, and the scientist who created
you obviously mixed your genes in with a cockroach’s. I wouldn’t go
out with you if my life depended on it.”

With a sudden movement too fast for him to
react to, she backhanded him across his face and grabbed his jaw,
almost crushing it. “As a matter of fact, your life
does
depend on it, at least for a little while,” she breathed and pushed
her face an inch away from his. The scent of human carrion lay foul
upon her breath. “I could slash you to ribbons now, but Grushenko
wants you alive. He needs you. Once he is done, though, I will have
my way with you, and it will be done slowly.”

Threat given, she slammed his head into the
wall and the darkness came up to meet him once more.

Regaining his senses minutes or hours later,
head aching and body feeling like it had been run over by a herd of
angry elephants, Harry found that his hands and feet had been tied
together. He resembled a trussed up pig, ready for the slaughter.
Searching the room, he saw that in the far corner Lyudmila had
curled up next to her monster significant other, sleeping, and he
heard her faint snores and Piotr’s louder ones.

With a soft grunt, he flipped himself over
and wiggled his fingers, twisted his wrists and tried his best to
slip his bonds. However, he found that his captor could add
knot-tying to her list of accomplishments and he soon gave up,
exhaling a soft breath of frustration. At the very least, he’d
managed to get some of the blood flowing to his limbs, but that was
all.

Recalling what Lyudmila had told him,
obviously whoever this Grushenko was, he wanted to learn the secret
of stopping the devolvement.

Or did he? She’d said that he wanted his
creations to devolve, so maybe he had another endgame in mind. Was
he building an army? He’d obviously been able to crossbreed
species. His results with Piotr, grotesque as they were, showed
that he was the equal, if not superior, in intellect and technique
compared to any transgenic expert around.

Ideas, many of them involving matrixes and
chemical compounds, flooded Harry’s mind, and he tried to
concentrate on the process, step by step, figuring out certain
equations and time spans. His head hurt from where it had hit the
wall, and he shook it, trying to get rid of the pain. It didn’t
work, though, and he closed his eyes, hoping to get some sleep.

Sleep didn’t come as he felt a hand roughly
shake him. “Get up, Harry Goldman.”

The hand then yanked him into a seated
position. Lyudmila and Piotr towered over him, the latter rubbing
the back of his head. “Is something missing?” Harry asked.

Clearly, while Piotr understood the
reference, he didn’t appreciate being the butt of jokes. Glowering,
he lashed out with a kick to Harry’s leg. The impact of an
iron-hard leg meeting his caused him to groan in pain. The pain
immediately flowed from his lower body right to his head, causing
the headache to intensify. Piotr didn’t believe in the gentle
approach, and he spit out his next question. “Play football
much?”

Sarcasm obviously didn’t make for good
international relations as the massive rhino-thing drew back his
arm. Lyudmila interrupted him by saying
Nyet
and added a few
other words.

They were enough to make him lower his arm,
but he leaned over to deliver a warning. “Making fun of me will
hasten your end, little man.”

He walked off to lean against a post,
breathing heavily. Lyudmila squatted down beside Harry and undid
his bonds. “We must get ready to move soon, to another location, so
I am letting you free. If you try to escape,” she warned, smacking
the side of his face, “then Piotr will hunt you down.”

Harry noticed that the rhino monstrosity was
shaking his head and occasionally put his paws to his temples to
rub them. “What’s his problem, among many?” he asked.

For a moment, the expression on her face
turned almost kind. “His head hurts him all the time,” she said
softly. “When he came out of the process, he was uncontrollable at
first. Grushenko inserted a microchip at the base of his skull in
order to try and calm him down, but Piotr tore it out. The wound
has never healed properly.”

She shrugged and straightened up. The look of
sympathy on her face faded, replaced by a hard-edged one. “We shall
have to move soon. Our ride has been delayed, but it would be
foolish to remain here.”

Pivoting on her foot, she stalked off. Harry
sat back rubbing his wrists and massaged his aching legs. Carefully
and slowly extending them so as not to provoke the man-thing in
front of him, he worked on getting the blood back into his legs. A
second later, he stopped when he saw a familiar figure detach
itself from the shadows. Hastily, he averted his gaze from where
he’d been looking and focused on his male captor.