Rise of the Transgenics (28 page)

“I told you,” Anastasia said, gritting her
teeth, “never to call me that.”

Snapping her body upward, she launched
herself behind Lyudmila and spun her around. With a mighty swipe of
her arm, she tore the other woman’s throat out. A chunk of bloody
flesh hit the floor. Lyudmila stared at it eyes wide in shock. Her
gaze then traveled to Anastasia’s face, and she slowly sagged to
the ground, her blood rapidly spreading over the dirty floor.

It was over.

Harry wearily threw his arm around Anastasia’s
shoulder. Her body sported a number of slashes, some deep and some
not. On the deep ones, the blood ran freely to the floor dotting it
a brilliant red, but she offered a tired smile. “Are you okay?” she
asked.

“How did I do?”

She sighed out, “You did okay, for a first
time.” Then the breath suddenly left her body. Her eyes rolled up
in her head and she passed out, falling limply against him.

Harry picked her up, took her back to the
lab, and laid her on the table. Retracting his claws, he quickly
washed his hands and set to work sterilizing her wounds.
Regenerative powers or not, Lyudmila’s claws hadn’t been overly
clean. He didn’t want to take any chances.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the
remains of Anatoly Grushenko lying in a puddle of his own blood.
Brilliant guy, Harry thought, but totally deranged. “He had it
coming,” he muttered as he worked on his girlfriend.

Remorse—Harry had it once, and he retained
his sense of ethics. Killing anyone hadn’t been in the plan, but
he’d done what he’d done in order to save Anastasia’s life.

Killing Piotr still bothered him, but
thinking about it, he’d had no choice. Harry had always thought of
himself as a bit of a weak nerd, but now...now things had changed.
The rhino-man had killed before and would have done it again. That
was how it stood, and if the same situation happened again, Harry
knew in his heart what to do.

During the procedure, Anastasia woke up,
groaned, and turned over to face him. “Lie still,” he cautioned.
“I’m not done yet.”

Not listening to his suggestion, she propped
herself up on one elbow and faced him squarely. “Answer something
for me,” she said. “Why did you inject yourself with the serum? Why
did you go through that genesis chamber? Was it to save me—or be
with me?”

Harry didn’t know how to answer her question
at first. Six months ago, he’d have never believed this would
happen, but now...now...he didn’t know. All he did know was that he
wanted to stay with her for the rest of his life. If it took
changing his form in order to do so, then it wasn’t so much to give
up. “I did this to help you—”

“And because you love me,” she finished off
for him and reached over to grasp his hand.

“And because I love you,” he echoed. “Now lie
still and let me work, okay?”

With a tired but beautiful smile, she lay
back.

Harry quickly dressed her wounds. Anastasia
didn’t cry out when he put on the antiseptic. Perhaps he shouldn’t
have bothered—her regenerative powers were already at work, and the
wounds began to close almost immediately. Like time-lapse
photography—faster, maybe—the skin knit together, and any evidence
of injury quickly faded.

As for his physical condition, the feeling
within his body was nothing short of miraculous. Every fiber seemed
to dance, to vibrate faster, become denser. He could
feel
it, and knew that he’d entered an entirely different world from the
one he once knew. There might be further changes, and he pondered
the possibilities.

Taking a blood sample from his arm, Harry
slid it into one of the few machines undamaged by the conflict. He
watched as the computer began its readout. Numbers flashed and
matrixes of DNA strands appeared, and he watched, transfixed, as
evolution began to rewrite itself.

While doing so, a gasp brought him back to
reality. “Look at your body,” Anastasia breathed.

Doing as she suggested, Harry saw the slashes
on his arms and torso had begun to close. The implications of an
enhanced immune system, metabolic rate, and increased strength and
speed came through to him. “This is...weird. Do you know what’s
going to happen to me?” he asked.

“You’re the scientist. You should know,” she
said with a faint laugh. “I guess...I guess the same thing that
happened to me will happen to you...and you’ll live as you are—with
me.”

Her sentence ended on a hopeful note. The
analytical part of his mind knew that other changes would most
likely occur. However, the emotional side of his brain said that it
didn’t matter. Anastasia had summed up the course of his life in
one sentence.

“Yeah,” he answered, now committed to who and
what he was. “Yeah, I will.”

He would stay with her and only her. When
he’d met her before, he wasn’t sure how the world would take her.
Now, since he’d gone through the transformation, he knew there was
no going back. A momentary stab of fear went through his being. A
second later, though, a strong sense of determination kicked the
fear out. Whatever else happened, he was prepared to take it in
stride.

Checking out the remains of the lab, he
spotted a number of undamaged vials lying on the floor. “What is
it?” Anastasia asked.

Excitement surged through him. Grushenko had
been onto something here. Finding a sterile dropper, he put a
sample onto a slide and slid it under the electronic microscope.
Taking a drop from another vial, he combined both and intently
viewed the results. Something was indeed happening. “Yeah,” he
grunted softly, “this might work.”

After wrapping both vials up in a piece of
cloth he tore from the blanket in the cell, he put them in his
pocket. Then he went back to examining his own results. As he
stared intently at the still-moving numbers of his shifting DNA, a
noise from behind him broke his spell of concentration.

He turned back to find Anastasia sitting up
and regarding him with a grave expression on her face. “What’s
going to happen to us?” she asked in a quiet, pensive manner. “Are
we going back to the States again?”

“This is your home,” Harry pointed out. “You
were born here. You could stay.”

Anastasia shook her head violently at the
stay part. “No, I don’t belong here. This country has given me
nothing. My parents gave me life, that’s all.” She grasped his hand
and held it to her breast. “My place, if it’s anywhere, is with
you. My country is where yours is.”

Harry remained silent, touched by her
gesture, yet wondering about the future. As if reading his mind,
Anastasia reached up to caress his face.

“And you?” she asked. Her fingers tickled the
skin on his now-healed arm, stroked the fine hair that was
beginning to grow thicker, and she leaned her head on his shoulder.
“Are you ready for all this?”

Elated by her touch, Harry tapped a few keys
and his matrix appeared onscreen. It showed his cells slowly fusing
with the animal DNA, and the matrix seemed to be holding. “Yeah, I
think so,” he answered, shrugging. “I just wonder...if I’ll have a
country to go back to. Being the same as you isn’t bad at all. But
the other people...”

His voice suddenly cut out and Anastasia
turned him around to face her. “The other people will just have to
get used to us,” she stated emphatically. “And we’re not so
different. Being different...is that a bad thing?”

Would it be? It wasn’t as if he was giving up
his humanity. In fact, this just made him a little different from
the norm, nothing more and nothing less. “No, no it isn’t.”

Putting his arms around her narrow waist, he
held her close and they briefly kissed before she nuzzled his chin.
“So what do we do now?” she asked after breaking their clinch. She
tested her arms by gently rotating them at the shoulder and slowly
twisting her torso first to the left and then to the right while
waiting for his answer.

“I’ll tell you,” a familiar voice said from
behind them.

Spinning around, Harry saw Agent Farrell as
he walked in, his face still bandaged and his right arm supported
by a sling. Six Russian soldiers stood behind him, guns at the
ready. They did the usual stare-and-gawk thing, and then one of
them, an older man who wore a number of medals on his chest, curtly
said something in Russian and they left the room.

Farrell watched them go. “This was all done
in the spirit of cooperation.” His voice rang with irony. “It’s a
shared mission, and I had no control over it, I’m telling you that
now. We’re on their turf, so,” he shrugged, “a little information
sharing is where it’s at.”

“Nice of you to show up after all the dirty
work is done,” Anastasia pointed out.

There had been that moment of tenderness in
the hospital back home, but not now. Somehow, Harry preferred it
this way.

Farrell offered a resigned look. “I got the
call from the State Department only a day ago and came here as soon
as I could. It seems that I was late.”

“You always seem to be,” she snapped back,
but this time, a smile appeared on her face. “I hope you managed to
get in a few games on your computer during your convalescence.”

Soon, they were trading friendly if somewhat
barbed insults. In order to tone things down somewhat, Harry placed
his hand on his girlfriend’s shoulder and gave it a sharp squeeze.
“Let’s cool it for now.” Addressing Farrell, he asked, “Do you feel
as bad as you look?”

Farrell grunted his assent, looked at the two
corpses in the corner, and turned his attention back to the young
couple. “I’ll live.” A sigh, something that said
this comes with
the territory
,
came from him. “I’ve had worse. So have
you both. And for your information, Anastasia, they wouldn’t let me
at a computer during my brief stay.”

His gaze then traveled from Harry’s face to
his hands and for a change, he cracked a slight smile. “You’ve been
busy.”

“So has someone else.”

The agent nodded. “Yeah, it seems so. Well,
if you’re finished with the upgrades for the moment, let’s get out
of here. The plane’s waiting and I’ve got a lot of reports to
make.”

The trip back to the airport was uneventful,
and Harry and Anastasia slept deeply, locked in each other’s arms.
Once they reached the States, a private car picked them up at the
airport and hustled them off before anyone could get a grab-shot
in. They immediately went to headquarters, where Farrell debriefed
them in the now cleaned-up and repaired laboratory.

An entirely new range of analytical equipment
had been set up, along with a new laptop and three computer discs.
“What are these?” Harry asked, picking up one of the discs.

“We managed to salvage some information off
your old computer,” Farrell answered. “Not much, but enough, and we
transferred what we could onto those discs. They’re yours to
use.”

Before Harry could thank him, Farrell dropped
a document with some pictures of the now-deceased terror twins on
the table and sat back with a more than satisfied smile on his
face.

“You’re looking pleased,” Anastasia observed.
“Do you want to fill us in, or do we have to guess?”

The agent inclined his head and his smile
grew broader. Harry decided that he preferred the old hardass
version. This happy-face stuff was going to take some getting used
to.

“First things first,” Farrell said as he
pulled out his smartphone. Logging on to a news site, he showed
them a recent press conference. The Chief of Police stood at a
podium filled with microphones and spoke to a number of reporters.
He looked to be ill at ease, and cleared his throat a number of
times during his speech. “I have just received word from the FBI
that the four individuals who were responsible for the recent
atrocities have been apprehended.”

“I’m shocked, Agent Farrell,” Anastasia said
with only a slight mocking tone to her voice. “Apprehended isn’t
the word I’d use.”

“I was thinking...
kidnapped
would be
better,” Harry suggested. “After all, we just got back from the
Ukraine, and I didn’t even have my passport.”

Farrell shot them both a dirty look. “Certain
concessions had to be made. Listen up.”

“...the details given, two of them were
killed in a battle with agents in Homeland Security,” the Chief
continued, “while the other two are being held in an undisclosed
location, awaiting further trial. We are officially calling off our
search and we hope that all citizens will resume their normal,
daily lifestyle...”

A second later, Farrell shut off his phone.
“I think we can forget about the lynch mobs for now.”

Maybe, Harry thought. Maybe they could...but
he caught sight of himself in the mirror. Things would never be the
same...

“You were right, by the way,” Farrell
said.

Harry broke off his inspection to catch the
agent’s words and turned around. “I was right about what?”

“You remember the older Russian soldier who
was with me?” Farrell asked. “Well, it seems as though he made a
few calls on my behalf and came up with a list of thirty-five
transgenics like these two.” He motioned with his good arm at the
pictures of Lyudmila and Piotr.

“According to my new Russian best friend,
they had all the earmarks of Russian intelligence. We’ve got our
people looking into it. Of course the Russian government is
officially denying involvement. But since they’ve seen what one of
their countrymen did and the results of that research, they’re
going to have to deal with us.” He flashed a rare smile. “They want
our secrets and we’ll have to share some things with them—but not
everything.”

Harry stayed silent, and Anastasia had a wary
look in her eye. He knew what she was thinking. There were others
out there. They were more than likely watching, taking notes on
what had worked and what didn’t, and lying in wait. Let them wait,
he thought. It’ll give us more time.