Rise of the Transgenics (5 page)

It
had
been an almost foolproof plan,
except for one thing—the subjects didn’t want to cooperate.
Anastasia had wanted her freedom and had escaped. The authorities
had captured her. Harry had been taken from prison to do the
necessary calculations. After that, fate had played its hand.

Thrown together by circumstance, they found
in each other qualities they liked. Harry, for the first time in
his life, found himself wanting someone so badly he’d risked death
in order to stay with her. Deep in the Catskill Mountains, Nurmelev
and his creation, Ivan, had died during a fateful battle, and the
crazed scientist had taken a lot of secrets to his grave.

The one good thing was that he’d given Harry
the clues he’d been searching for, the potential for reversing the
process. It all came down to stabilizing the human DNA matrix with
the animal one.

It was a fine balancing act, and one false
move could irrevocably tip the balance one way or the other. Even
worse, one error would cause death, and that was something Harry
couldn’t bear to think about.

In another shift, the sound of the Genesis
Chamber vibrating, the smoke and sparks, Anastasia’s screams, and
his thudding heart all came to the forefront of his mind in living
color. He was trying to reshape evolution. Who cared if the chamber
was probably damaged beyond repair? They could build another one,
but there was only one Anastasia, and he wanted to be reunited with
her in the worst possible way, and...

“Kid, wake up.”

The voice, harsh and insistent, pulled him
out of his daydreams and into reality. He blinked and saw that
Anastasia was still sleeping. A tap on his left shoulder made him
turn his head around. Farrell stood there, a pensive look on his
face. “How is she?” he asked.

“She’s still asleep.” Harry rubbed his eyes.
“What time is it?”

“Around midnight,” the agent answered. “It’s
just us here along with the Director. He says it’s important.”

“What’s going on?”

Farrell shrugged. “Your guess is as good as
mine. He didn’t fill me in, said that you’ve got to come along.” He
inclined his head toward the door. “Let’s get going.”

Reluctantly, Harry accompanied the agent and
they went out of the room, up to the second floor, and into a
meeting room where Merton was waiting.

He bade them to have a seat and opened the
meeting without preamble. “It’s late, we’re all tired, but I’ve
stayed here, as has Agent Farrell, because of the vital nature of
your experiment. Is the girl still alive?”

The guy’s pretty rude, Harry thought, but
decided to go with the flow and be nice. His future—and
Anastasia’s, if she made it through—depended on this man. “She’s
sleeping,” he answered. “We have to wait.”

Merton nodded and tapped a file on his desk.
“This,” he said, indicating the file with a massive forefinger, “is
the sum total of your research. “And,” he added with a certain air
of somewhat incongruous good humor, “I have to say that I am very
impressed. Your research has taken us in a direction we’ve never
even dreamed about.”

Where he was going with all this was anyone’s
guess, but Harry decided to cut to the chase. “And which directions
are we talking about?”

The Director offered a thin smile. “There are
numerous applications that have to be explored, young man. Doctor
Halsey has apprised me of the number of possibilities, as have you.
Medical advances, for one, and then there are military
applications, for another.”

Suddenly, a chill went up Harry’s spine. The
idea of the military using his research didn’t thrill him one bit.
He’d already seen how perverted these military applications could
be. The memory of Ivan, Nurmelev’s pet bone-breaker, remained fresh
in his consciousness.

“Uh, sir, are you saying that you might use
the Genesis Chamber and my notes to make a kind of human-animal
hybrid? When I started working here, I was told that I was only
supposed to reverse what that crazy scientist had started. I think
I did that. We’ll know if it worked when Anastasia wakes up
and...”

Merton held up his hand. “Son, ASR requested
that I have this information ready, just in case. As I told you
before, they’re a private company and they’re footing the bills, so
it’s not my call to make. And I wasn’t the one who suggested any
sort of military usage. That was Doctor Halsey’s
recommendation.”

Harry snorted. It figured. Halsey didn’t know
a rhizome from a nuclear peptide, but he wanted to claim credit for
any and all future discoveries. “Sir, Halsey really doesn’t have
any idea of what he’s doing. The ideas are mine. All I wanted to do
was to help my girlfriend get back to normal.”

“And I didn’t stand in your way,” Merton
countered, tapping the file once again. “To be honest, I’m not
really all that keen on trying to recreate what this, uh, Nurmelev
character did. I read your report and also Agent Farrell’s. I
wasn’t here at the time. I was stationed in Los Angeles. It seems
that bear creature you managed to kill was something out of a
nightmare. However, I am obliged to follow up any possibilities and
potential new discoveries your research might uncover. And Doctor
Halsey is also very interested in the concept of using transgenic
genes.”

All this talk, Harry felt, was merely a
cover. With a shock, he realized that they were going to take away
his work, and probably take Anastasia with them. “They can’t do
that, can they?” he asked Farrell, and tried like crazy to keep the
pleading tone out of his voice.

Farrell’s gaze swung between the table and
his superior, and he licked his lips. “Sir, with all due respect,
I’d have to agree with Goldman. He’s the expert here, not Halsey,
and I’ve seen firsthand what kind of damage a hybrid creature can
do.”

He lifted up his right arm and rolled up the
sleeve on his shirt. A number of deep reddish-purple scars stood
out on his forearm. “This is what that bear creature did to me. I
saw it crush a man’s head like an eggshell. There are too many
things that can go wrong, and too many possibilities that the
science will be used for the wrong ends.”

Merton’s eyes widened ever so slightly. “I
didn’t realize you had considered all the philosophical
implications of the research.”

“Getting carved up changes a person’s
perspective, sir,” Farrell replied in a voice that suggested the
Sahara desert at high noon. “If you’re going to use what Goldman’s
done, then stick to medicine.” Verdict given, he rolled down his
sleeve again.

The Director received the information without
so much as one muscle twitching in his face. It was like talking to
a rock. Finally, he let out a sigh, rubbed his eyes, and picked up
the file, turning his cold eyes in Harry’s direction. “Sometimes, I
really hate what I do. I want to repeat, son, that this isn’t my
call. I read your notes over. I read about and heard about the
damage that bear thing did. And in spite of what you hear about the
clandestine nature of the FBI, we’re not the bad guys here.”

Who was, Harry thought. “There are other
agencies,” he pointed out. “You know what they’ve done in the past.
And I don’t know anything about ASR. I only found out about it the
other day.”

Merton lost his air of equanimity and his
voice got hard. “If you’re talking about the CIA and NSA, then I
know very well what they’re capable of. I also happen to know that
they want this research. I’ve kept it classified, and so has the
director of ASR. Not even the President knows about this, and he’s
not going to unless it’s absolutely necessary. So I’m not about to
roll over and be anyone’s lapdog, and
you
are not one to
lecture
me
about how to do my job, is that clear?”

Harry thought this was a huge pile of crap,
but said nothing. Power lay in the hands of those with pull and
connections, and he neither the pull nor the connections. Tired and
defeated, he simply waited.

Merton heaved in a deep breath and let it
out, and with the exhalation, his calm exterior returned. “If it
means anything, son, I’m on your side. I’ll talk to the head of ASR
later on. He’s on a business trip and can’t be reached now.
Farrell, I need to talk to you—alone.”

Harry caught the obvious cue and left the
room, making his way back to the lab. Once there, he saw that
Anastasia was still out, and parked his butt in the chair. His
heart had begun to hammer from stress during the meeting and it
still beat wildly. They wanted to use his work to pervert nature
once again, all in the name of science. He was damned if he did and
damned if he didn’t, and he sure as hell didn’t want to see the
horror begin again...

“Harry?”

A voice, soft and feminine, broke through his
state of unconsciousness. The voice sounded so familiar, but his
unconscious mind wouldn’t let him process the facts. Still half out
of it, he blinked and dumbly looked at his watch. It was six in the
morning. Had he been asleep that long? Perhaps he needed the rest,
and...

“Harry?”

The voice came once more, and this time he
looked up and found Anastasia staring at him, a faint smile on her
lips. One hand held Farrell’s jacket over her private parts and the
other caressed his face.

“Hi,” he said, unable to speak for a moment.
Her hand, covered in fine fur, strong and yet gentle, felt warm and
reassuring, as did the sound of her voice. “Are you...I mean, do
you remember...?” he asked.

His speech stopped when she launched herself
at him, kissing him firmly on his mouth and she held him tightly.
“Yes.” Her voice came out in a low, throaty whisper of time lost
and time remembered. “I know who I am. My name is Anastasia, my
heritage is Russian, your name is Harry Goldman, and I love
you.”

Clutching her just as tightly, he felt a
quiet sob escape his throat. His experiment had worked. In a moment
of weakness and yet not weakness, he felt the absurd sting of tears
work themselves from his eyes, and hastily wiped them away. “I
thought...I wasn’t sure...” he began.

Anastasia broke the clinch and scratched her
ears. They twitched and a smile broke through on her face, as if
chasing away the old demons. “I wasn’t sure, either, but you took a
chance and here I am.”

“Yeah, here you are.”

One millisecond later, their lips met once
again in a rush of long held back emotion, need and want. Harry
thought that if he died right then and there, the heavens would
have another happy customer. Their kiss ended, and he asked,
somewhat uncertainly, “Is it okay, I mean, you looking this way? I
tried to get rid of the animal genes in you, and—”

Her hand came up to run itself around the
contours of his face. “I told you before that if we could be
together, then it would be okay. I’ve come to terms that I may
never look like...” her voice faltered only a second... “Look like
I used to.”

A split second later, she stretched out,
bending her torso first to the left and then to the right,
muttering “This feels normal.”

She continued to stretch and then did a
graceful pirouette, dancing her way over to the mirror. A series of
flips perhaps ten feet in the air followed. Like the old adage of a
cat always landing on its feet, she did the same, landing
gracefully and without a sound.

Abruptly she froze in front of the mirror,
examining her face, and then contorted her body into various
positions. After that, she self-consciously pulled the jacket
closer to her on her return journey back to where Harry stood. He
watched the action and felt overjoyed that not only had his
calculations worked, he had his girlfriend back.

“And here we are again,” Anastasia said,
cutting through his reverie. “Uh, I’ll need some clothes. I don’t
think wearing Farrell’s jacket is going to cut it.”

Suddenly bashful, Harry felt his face turn
hot, and after he mumbled something about her covering up, he
searched the room. Luck was on his side when he found a spare sweat
suit in one of the cabinets. Baggy and somewhat threadbare, it
smelled musty, but there was nothing else. Anastasia slipped it on
and wrinkled her nose. “I’ll have to get a skirt and blouse later
on.”

“It’s winter,” he reminded her. He
remembered, though, how good she looked in a skirt. Yellow—she
looked great in yellow.

“I have fur. I’ll live,” she said with a
chuckle.

Suddenly they clung to each other, and
Anastasia, her voice deep with longing, said, “I wish we had a room
together. I—”

Her wish was interrupted by the sound of the
door opening, and Farrell poked his head in. His face brightened
when he saw her up and around. “Glad to see you made it.” At the
very least, he sounded sincere.

If he sounded sincere, Anastasia didn’t seem
to believe him or didn’t care. “You would have to come at the wrong
time,” she said in a sour voice. “I just got my legs back again,
and you had to walk in.”

Farrell smiled, but there was no humor in it.
“Love will have to wait. We’ve got trouble.” He turned to Harry.
“I’ve been here all night, waiting around.”

“Were you that concerned, Agent Farrell?”
Anastasia asked with a slight tone of sarcasm creeping into her
speech. “I’m touched.”

“Don’t be, it’s part of my job,” he answered,
but he inclined his head anyway.

It seemed as though he cared, Harry thought,
but it was a given that the agent would never admit it. He also
left out any mention of the meeting, and it would remain a secret
for now. “So what’s going on?” he asked.

“We got a call a few hours ago. Someone was
killed, someone you know, Anastasia, and we’re back on the
case.”

Her ears pricked up. “I know this
person?”

“You do,” Farrell affirmed. “His name is—or
was—Nick Winter. He was clawed up but good. His throat was also
torn open.” He grimaced and waved his hand at the chamber. “It
seems we have a clone.”