Rise of the Transgenics (17 page)

“We’re going for a ride?” he asked.

For a second, there was no response. Then
Piotr snuffled out an incomprehensible answer. Harry repeated the
question. “So are we going to Disneyland first? California has
warmer weather, beaches and the Pacific Ocean.”

Surprisingly, his statement earned him
another snuffle and a hint of a laugh. In the corner, Lyudmila
turned to regard him, her eyes flashing in the semi-lit room.
Harry’s only thoughts were ones of trying to delay the inevitable.
If he could slow them down somehow, cause them to get upset, lose
their focus...it might buy the person he was searching for some
time.

Time, though, wasn’t exactly on his side, and
there was only one Anastasia and two of them. Combined, they were
supremely dangerous and not afraid to kill. “C’mon,” he urged. “I
can get you a special pass. You can be one of the attractions.”

Lyudmila walked over to him and jerked him to
his feet, shaking him as easily as a dog would shake a rat. “You
are beginning to irritate me, Harry Goldman. I wonder if you are as
smart as Grushenko claims that you are. I also do not think you are
special in any way, and...”

Her rebuke stopped at that point. With a
start, she whirled around and sniffed the air, testing it, almost
tasting it, and when she turned back to him a crafty smile painted
her features. “Huh...I was wrong. You
are
cleverer than I
imagined. Piotr, guard the door.”

“Why must I go?” he asked, eyes dull and
voice still thick. “My rest time has not yet finished, and—”

“She is here,” Lyudmila said angrily, eyes
working the darkness. Her hair stood up and a low growl emanated
from her throat. “That whore is here.”

Harry kept his eyes fixed on his captor and
his face impassive. “I guess you’re not as smart as you think.”

With a sharp cry, she grabbed him by the
collar of his shirt and hurled him effortlessly into a pile of
crates. He hit with a tremendous crash, and the impact knocked him
semi-silly.

Lyudmila spread her arms wide, checking the
ceiling, the rafters, and every corner of the room. “Where are
you?” she called out.

Silence reigned in the room, broken only by a
series of pants from Lyudmila and the heavy breathing of her
boyfriend. A creaking board sounded in the far left corner. Piotr
jerked his head in the direction of the sound, let out a hoarse
roar, and immediately charged, only to run headlong into a series
of rusty metal pipes. After hitting them with a tremendous crash,
he got up shaking his head, and looked around stupidly in an
attempt to figure out how he’d been fooled.

“Idiot,” Lyudmila hissed out. “She is here
and toying with your stupidity...”

Another sound came from the far right corner,
and once again, not thinking things through, Piotr charged. This
time he ran into the wall, which knocked him flat on his back. He
lay there groaning, and Lyudmila let out a string of words in
Russian that which could only be curses. She kept checking the air,
the shadows, and nothing came up. Extending her claws and settling
into a fighting stance, she whirled around and screamed in rage,
“Where are you, streetwalker?”

“Right behind you,” a voice answered.

Anastasia dropped from the ceiling and
surprised the other cat-girl by punching her in the back of the
head. The sharp snap of fist meeting flesh resounded through the
room, and Lyudmila pitched forward. Anastasia followed up her
initial strike by raining blows on the other cat-girl’s ears and
head, and then switched to slashing at her neck, trying to get to
her throat.

Lyudmila wasn’t ready to give up, though, and
kept her chin down, protecting her most vital area. In a lightning
fast move, she twisted sharply, grabbed Anastasia’s arm and tossed
her into a stack of crates. They tumbled around her, and by now
Piotr had gotten up and gotten a fix on her position. He tensed his
body, and actually pawed the ground, ready to rumble. “Kill her!”
Lyudmila cried.

Fear seized Harry, the fear of getting
involved, but overriding that emotion was concern for his
girlfriend’s life. Outside of his shadow boxing skills, he was no
match for either of his captors and he knew it, but lying next to
him was a crowbar. Yeah, he thought, that would work.

Getting to his feet, he lifted it into
position and waited. Piotr started his charge just as Anastasia
dazedly got to her feet. The rhino-boar ran closer, and Harry
stepped up to the plate, swinging for the fences—and connected.

The crowbar caught Piotr just under his jaw
and staggered him, and moving faster than even
he
thought
possible, Harry ran behind the massive Russian and brained him,
aiming for the sore spot and once again connecting. Piotr collapsed
in a heap, and Lyudmila, now wild with fury, rushed him. “I will
kill you myself!” she screamed.

Anastasia burst out of the pile of wrecked
crates and grabbed Lyudmila’s hair. With a sharp yank, she spun
Lyudmila around and punched her square in her nose. Blood jetted
into the air, and Lyudmila staggered backwards. Anastasia finished
the job by whipping her tail in a short, sharp arc, which hit the
other cat-girl squarely across the temples. Lyudmila fell to the
floor in a heap.

“Don’t ever call me a whore,” Anastasia said,
glaring at her foe, and kicked her in the side for good measure.
Hands on hips, she panted heavily at first, but regained her breath
after a few seconds.

She switched her gaze to Harry. “You’re
staring.”

Was he? No mirror was handy, but he took her
word for it. “Uh, you’re pretty terrific,” he mumbled, somewhat
ashamed that he hadn’t summoned up the necessary ball-power to help
out more.

A contented aah sound came from her,
somewhere between a purr and a growl. “Don’t be so hard on
yourself. You got some pretty fancy moves with that crowbar.”

“It compensates for me not having claws or
super strength,” he answered.

Anastasia’s eyebrows arched so high they
almost met her hairline. “Are you...are you jealous that I’m this
way?”

“No,” he immediately responded, taken
somewhat by surprise. He hadn’t really expected her to ask that
question. “I’m not. It’s just that—”

“It’s just what?”

He couldn’t formulate an answer, not one that
she’d readily understand. Being weak—nobody—he’d never wanted this
life. It had been thrust upon him, and as hard as he might try, he
couldn’t alter the physical component of himself. Mentally, he
might have stood heads above a lot of others, but physically, he
didn’t rate much above their ankles, and he knew it.

Shuffling his feet didn’t help his case very
much. Perhaps Anastasia understood his anguish and perhaps not, for
she asked in a very sweet way, “Are you jealous that I have powers?
Because if you are, then think again. I didn’t ask for this.
Someone did this to me. I use what I’ve got to survive, not because
it gives me a thrill to be able to jump high or claw someone up. I
was listening before, listening to what that other she-cat said.
She gets off on hurting others. I don’t.”

Something deep inside him, a little worm of
indecision or maybe a worm of unworthiness, wriggled its way up to
the surface. “I was, uh, thinking that, if you met another guy who
had, I don’t know,” he scratched his head, “the same ability you
do, that—”

A loud exhalation of breath from her cut him
off at the pass. “I get it,” she interrupted. “You think that I’d
leave you?”

He felt the blood rush to his face. Ashamed
to admit the truth and not wanting her to see his embarrassment, he
turned his gaze to the ground and gave an offhand shrug. “Yes,” he
mumbled.

“Look at me, Harry.”

The tone in Anastasia’s voice compelled him
to do so, and she wore a strange and rather wise smile. “I am what
I am and I’ve come to terms with it. Didn’t I tell you before that
if I couldn’t be fully human I’d be happy this way?”

“You said so.”

“Well there you have it,” she tossed at him,
as if the truth was self-evident.

Numbly, he dropped the bar, grateful to be
alive and doubly grateful his girlfriend had come back for him.
“Glad you made it,” he choked out and mentally kicked himself for
acting so emotional.

Anastasia threw her arms around him, hugging
him tightly, her fur tickling his skin, yet strangely it felt
comfortable and totally natural. If this was how his relationship
was going to go with her, if she cared that much, then what else
was there to do but to go with it? Right now, he didn’t think of
anything else except that he wanted to stay with her for the rest
of his life.

Her next statement confirmed things for him.
“Did you think I’d ever leave you?” she chided. “I followed you
down to the police station. Alleys, remember? I hid out there, and
when these two,” she spat on the floor near them to indicate her
distaste, “broke you out, I kept up the trail.”

Amazed at her detective skills, he said, “I
didn’t know you could do that.”

Offering a shrug, she whispered into his ear,
her voice, low, throaty, sexy, and altogether winning, “I know your
scent. And I like it.”

Nonplussed by her response and feeling
totally drained by his mini-ordeal, he asked, “What are we going to
do about these two?”

“We tie them up and hand them over to the
authorities,” she said with an air of practicality. “That should
prove to everyone we’re not the bad guys here. What else can we
do?”

“If you’re looking for a suggestion, I’ve got
one,” said someone whose voice was hoarse and rough from drinking
too much or smoking too many cigarettes. “I’m gonna suggest that
you give yourselves up, mutants, and stick your hands up, too.”

Whirling around, Harry saw no less than
twenty people standing just inside the doorway, armed with knives,
baseball bats, crowbars, and rope. One of them carried what looked
to be a blowtorch. They all wore looks of incredulity on their
faces, and there wasn’t one smile among them, not unless you
counted the mean variety.

“Who are you?” he asked, aware that his
question had to be one of the oldest and probably one of the
dumbest questions in the book. While he wanted to say something
pithy, nothing really came to mind.

“We’re the welcoming committee,” a man said,
pushing his way to the front. Tall and lean with a mean, scarred
face and a pair of cold blue eyes, he carried a wicked looking
blade in his hands, at least ten inches long and slightly curved.
“You’re not welcome.”

For a moment, time hung in the balance, the air
seemed to stop circulating, and the world stopped spinning on its
axis. No one said a word, no one moved, and everyone waited for the
first play by the other side. The crowd jostled each other, but
gently, all in the name of seeing the two cat-girls and the
monstrosity lying on the floor.

Harry broke the ice, swallowing a few times
and feeling like he was about to face the worst that humanity had
to offer. “This, uh, this isn’t what it looks like,” he said,
slowly backing up and gently pushing Anastasia behind him.

This mob—and there was no other word for
it—wanted blood, but he had the uncomfortable feeling that if push
came to shove, it would be their blood spilled, and not that of the
transgenics. As for himself, he wasn’t so sure.

“Go ahead and tell us what it looks like,”
said a mean-faced woman with a mop of wild red hair shoved
carelessly under a woolen cap. “I can see it with my own eyes, and
I don’t like what I see.”

If Harry wasn’t certain of the crowd’s
intentions, Anastasia seemed to be very sure and shoved away his
hand in order to stand alongside him. “If you don’t like what you
see, why don’t you say it straight out?” she asked in a mild voice.
“Since you’re here, you could listen to our side of the story.”

Behind the mildness, though, there lay an
edge of barely contained fury. She’d already demonstrated how well
she could fight against enhanced people. If she really cut loose,
then the majority of people in this mob, armed though they were,
wouldn’t stand a chance.

The leader blinked, along with the rest of
the group members. Clearly, he was expecting some kind of walkover.
“You...you can talk?”

“I can,” she answered, bringing her claws out
slowly and holding up her hands so that everyone could see. “I eat
food, too, and sing and dance. How about all of you dance your way
out of here? Go home and forget about all of this. I won’t tell if
you won’t.”

Playing with them—she was playing with them,
Harry thought, and it was working. They were on the edge
of—maybe—calling the whole thing off...and then Anastasia crossed
her arms over her chest and challenged, “I’m waiting.”

Indecision showed on the leader’s face for a
brief moment, but then a meaner look than earlier broke through.
Apparently, he didn’t like having his authority, such as it was,
trampled on. “All right, you can talk,” he stated. “You can talk,
so just answer me this before we take you down. Who iced those
agents up in the Catskills? Who killed all those FBI people?”

Murmuring broke out among the members present
and they moved restlessly, tapping their sticks, bats, and metal
rods in their hands. It seemed as though they didn’t want to waste
any time getting to the good part...but they’d have to. A few
seconds passed, the murmurs turned into squabbles over what to do,
and finally the leader held up a fist indicating that he wanted a
little silence. More quiet followed, and Anastasia broke the calm
first.

“It wasn’t him,” she said, pointing to Harry.
“He had nothing to do with it. I didn’t either,” she added.
Stabbing a finger at the now-stirring duo on the floor, she stated,
“They’re the real killers.”

Mr. Leader took a tentative step forward,
squinting in the dim light. “So what in the hell is really going on
here? What are you? Is this some kind secret government experiment
that the President’s been hiding from us? Or is this some type of
mutant war? Are you fighting between yourselves or against the rest
of us?” He swept his hand backward to indicate his fellow members.
“What exactly are you?”