Xenofreak Nation (25 page)

The background of the holo seemed to be moving, so Bryn asked, “Are you mobile?”

“Yes! I’m on the bus. Phaco told me that awful Padme took you to the loony bin. I went to set them straight about your father, but they said you’d been released and he’d been arrested. Huzzah!”

Bryn smiled, but it must not have been convincing because Carla said, “Oh, honey, I know it’s been a crappy few days, but things will get better now. You can come stay with me for reals this time!”

Bryn looked around the empty kitchen, seeing only ghostly memories from the past. “I’d like that.”

“Well, today’s my day off, so there’s no time like the present. Oh, wait, I need to hit the grocery store first so I can offer you more than Pop Tarts and beer, so come over any time after two, okay?”

“Sounds great. I’ll see you this afternoon.”

Bryn puttered around the house, looking for anything else she might want to take with her now that she wasn’t packing stealthily in the middle of the night. She went back into her father’s office to shut off his computer and found herself pulling up a search engine. She typed in her name and opened the most recent news article. She skimmed it, but it looked like a rehash of old news. There was no mention of her father’s arrest, but that was sure to come. She wondered if the news vans would swarm the house again. The thought made her cringe, and she decided to leave right then. She reached out to shut down the computer, but something caught her eye and she stopped with her hand extended.

Halfway down the article, one sentence leapt out at her. “Two of the kidnappers, Scott Harding and Padme Lango…” she didn’t even read the rest. Her eyes were frozen on Scott’s last name.

An unrestrained grin formed on her face. “I knew it,” she said.

Chapter Forty-four

Scott woke slowly and wondered why it felt like he had a mouthful of cotton. He was lying on a narrow hospital bed, fully clothed. Memory returned: he was in Dr. Fournier’s secret facility, and it had been right under him the whole time. A turn of the head showed a sealed water bottle on the table next to him. He reached for it; even if he wasn’t dying of thirst, hydration was important to flush out the residual effects of the drug.

He sat up and downed the entire bottle. Dizziness hit him in waves every time he moved, but he thought it might have more to do with the fact that he hadn’t eaten since he’d grabbed a quick burrito at Bluto’s the afternoon before.

The room he was in was nothing like the exam rooms in the Warehouse. Those were deceptively run-down, with dirty walls and beat-up equipment. Here, all looked sterile and hospital-like. There was no evidence that this place had once been a parking garage. The walls were painted grey and the ceiling was composed of white drop panels. The floor was polished linoleum. A tiny camera dome in the corner monitored his every move. Within minutes, the door opened.

He was halfway expecting nurse Vonda or Nancy, but it was Padme.

“Good morning.” She came close to the bed as he swung his legs off the side. Her dark brown eyes gazed so steadily into his it unnerved him.

“How’s Lupus?” he asked.

“Stable. The bullet missed any organs.”

“Why’d you dart me?” As if he didn’t know.

Padme stepped back, but she was still watching him closely. Was she trying to communicate something? He recognized the make of the camera in the corner; it would have a sensitive microphone with voice recognition software. Even a whisper would be picked up and analyzed. Scott took Padme’s demeanor as another warning; probably, as she’d suggested often enough in the past, he still wasn’t fully trusted.

“Dr. Fournier would like to speak with you,” she said. “Come with me.”

Scott slid off the bed and stood unsteadily. Padme offered him her arm. It was the first time she’d voluntarily allowed him to touch her, not that he’d ever tried. He needed the support, though, so he took it, grabbing her thin upper arm and trying not to lean too heavily on it as they walked out into a dimly lit, wide hallway. They took turn after turn, passing several sets of double doors like you’d see in a hospital. Scott felt like he was in a rat maze, a cold, underground warren.

“Where are we?” he asked, without expecting an answer.

“This is the Clinic.”

He nodded. The place was bigger than he’d expected, but quiet. They saw no one on their trek. He wondered how Fournier got power, water, sewer and ventilation down here.

“It’s huge,” he commented.

Padme pulled him along. They finally passed someone, a man in doctor’s scrubs. Scott thought he recognized him as one of the doctors who’d worked on Lupus.

“When I arrived,” Padme said. “It looked nothing like this.”

“How does he keep it secret?” Scott tried to sound only mildly curious.

“Loyalty.”

There’d been builders down here, there would be doctors and nurses that came and went. Loyalty on such a scale seemed inconceivable, but it had to exist, because this place existed and after years of looking, the XIA hadn’t a clue where to find it. Scott didn’t have a chance to ask Padme what she meant by ‘loyalty,’ though, because they’d arrived at a wooden door, different from all the others, heavier and more official-looking. She knocked. Scott noted the presence of another security camera.

The door clicked and Padme opened it. Scott was feeling steadier, so he let go of her arm as they entered. The room wasn’t large, but it was carpeted and the lighting was brighter. A glass-topped desk guarded another door and sitting at the desk was a girl, maybe in her early to mid-teens. Scott stopped and stared. It wasn’t her xenografts, fans of small, grey and white patterned feathers where her eyebrows should be that stopped him, but her face. She looked exactly like his sister May—if May had lived long enough to reach adolescence.

Padme placed a hand on his arm, as if in warning. “This is Nicola.”

Pretty, blonde-haired Nicola stood. She smiled and said, “He’s busy so it will be a few minutes. Are you hungry?”

Nicola’s smile, so like his sister’s, broke through Scott’s carefully concocted impassivity—tears stung his eyes. He knew who she was, or rather, what she was. To hide his reaction, he ducked his head and said, “Starving.”

Nicola walked to a paneled cabinet and opened it. Inside was a concealed refrigerator. By the time she brought him a plastic-wrapped sandwich and a soda, he’d gotten control of himself.

“Thanks.” He sat with Padme on a leather couch and devoured the sandwich in less than five minutes, all the while trying not to drop crumbs on the pristine rug. The wait for Dr. Fournier stretched into half an hour before Nicola said, “He’s ready for you.”

Padme jumped up and smoothed her hands down the front of her shirt, movements jerky. Scott had never seen her nervous before, but it made sense that she was now. Fournier had control over Lupus, who had control over her.

He had no idea what to expect when he walked through the other door. He recognized the man sitting behind a typical administrator’s desk from photographs, although the older Fournier’s face had deeper lines around his eyes and his light brown hair was thinning on top. Fournier came around the desk, held out his hand and said, “Cougar. It’s good to see you.”

Scott had never actually met him since he’d been unconscious before, during and after his surgery. He shook Fournier’s hand and then stood there as the doctor examined his fingers, squeezing each one to force the claw out. “Looks great. Having any problems?”

“No, sir.”

“Excellent. Thank you for recovering the panda.” He looked at Padme. “Any word on how they knew?”

“None, but it’s unlikely to have come from our end.”

Fournier shook his head. “Jacques swears it wasn’t his people, but he’s been clumsy in the past. Ah, well. Did you give Cougar the tour?”

Padme said, “No.”

“Well, I think he’s earned it.” Fournier waved towards the door and Scott took that as a dismissal. He followed Padme back out to the reception area. Nicola smiled May’s smile again and he tried to return it, tried to keep in mind the circumstances that brought the girl into the world weren’t her fault. Just like they hadn’t been May’s.

Padme led him into the main hallway and he found that Fournier had followed behind them. For the next twenty minutes, they toured the floor with Padme as their guide. It was much like what Scott was led to expect it would be, essentially a combination hospital and research facility, only perhaps on a larger scale than the XIA suspected. They had all the equipment on hand that you’d see in a regular hospital, including the newest non-rad body imager.

Scott met over a dozen personnel: scientists, doctors, nurses, bioengineers and technicians, none of whom seemed normal. They all had xenografts or alterations; some of them were twitchy, like they were on drugs or had a neurological deficit, and one refused to make eye contact or shake his hand. Most were abrupt and moved quickly on, like they didn’t want to stand in Fournier’s presence any longer than need be.

The floor space was divided into operating rooms, recovery rooms, various storage rooms, and laboratories. Well before they reached the section housing the bioengineered animals, Scott heard and smelled it. He wore his neutral face as they walked past cage after cage of furry and feathered creatures, most balled up in slumber, but some of them bawling or squawking for attention. There was an entire wall of glass cages filled with mice, rats, snakes, lizards and baby alligators and crocodiles. Padme led them past a room with a disturbing sign over the door that read, ‘Vivisection.’

“The pigs and most larger animals are kept off-site,” she said.

Scott didn’t see the panda, and Fournier, as if he’d read his mind, said, “The panda has her own special accommodations through that door, but we won’t disturb her after what she’s been through. She wasn’t bioengineered, so she’s not a compatible donor, but her children and hopefully clones, will be. The client is a very powerful Chinese drug lord who is anxious to desecrate one of his country’s national emblems.”

Scott was relieved when they left the animal rooms behind. Next, Padme showed him the staff living quarters, small rooms with bunk beds that looked like they belonged on a submarine. Again, Fournier anticipated his questions.

“We have staff from all over the world,” he said. “They understand the need for discretion, so are content to live on site. As incentive, they are paid extremely well. And they do get out on a regular rotation, but only a few know the Clinic’s true location. Many of them are wanted for criminal offenses, so it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. The Clinic is a secure facility that allows them the leeway they desire to conduct experiments that their governments, and ours, have deemed…unacceptable. We are making huge strides in many areas. It’s unfortunate that none of us will ever be published in the medical journals…unless the laws change.”

They arrived at a heavy-duty door on the far side of the floor from Fournier’s office. “I must go,” Fournier said. “Padme will show you the control center.”

Scott shook his proffered hand again. When Fournier was gone, Padme held her palm under a holobeam security scanner and the door to the control center clicked. He followed her into a room that looked like something out of NASA mission control only on a much smaller scale. There was one office chair, and Padme sat on it.

“We are safe to talk here,” she said. “This is my territory and there are no bugs.”

“So, the rest of the Clinic…”

“Is heavily monitored, as is the Warehouse. The slightest word or gesture out of place is compiled in a report that goes directly to Fournier every day. The loyalty I spoke of isn’t voluntary.”

Scott looked around. “This is some impressive equipment.”

“It is state-of-the-art. One of the engineers you met invented the grease you enjoy playing with. Another is an autistic savant who worked with me to develop Fournier’s nanoneuron program.”

Scott had been keenly interested in everything he’d seen and heard thus far, but now he felt a curl of excitement in his gut. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yes. Our nanoneurons are not like the ones used elsewhere. Most function simply as the intermediary between the brain and the xenotransplant. Ours are a little more complicated.”

Scott reached out to touch the controls on a holo projector, pretending to be listening with half an ear. Padme slapped his hand away and said, “Pay attention. This is important.”

She already had his full attention, but now he looked at her so she’d know it. Her eyes had that intensity he’d been seeing all afternoon and she had streaks of pink high on her cheekbones. She said this was her territory. All the clues he’d picked up about her technical abilities led here.

She said, “You’ve probably been told that nanoneurons use the brain’s electrical activity as a power source, similar to the microtransmitters I told you about, the ones that use gastric-acid as a battery. Like the microtransmitters, our nanoneurons use cell towers, but instead of sending signals to the towers, they receive them. In this way, we can change the programming at any time.”

“I don’t get it. Why change the programming? It’s pretty specific to each person’s xenoalteration, right?” He flexed the fingers on his left hand, extending his claws.