Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

AT THE LAB , Luther said they should sequester themselves by sex, the men together and the women together, so they did, on opposite sides of the lab. They had brought blankets and pillows, but Riley didn't think she'd be able to sleep.

She relayed the conversations they'd had with Harris to Jonathan, who didn't say anything about it. He just made a lot of faces.

Then, separated, she was alone with Angela.

In the darkness, they lay next to each other, on the floor, both breathing loudly.

Riley didn't think she'd be able to sleep, but somehow she did.

She awoke to the light of morning coming in through the windows.

Angela was already awake, checking her gun, standing at the doorway. "We have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that Jonathan and Luther changed all the way in the night."

Riley bit down on her lip. "We need to… get a rescue coordinated, don't we?"

Angela hesitated.

"I think it's madness that we're letting this happen to us is all," said Riley. "We have to call someone . If we had more resources, a better medical facility, doctors—"

"I think we need to talk to Anderson Scott first," said Angela.

Riley folded her arms over her chest. "It's disturbing, the way everyone here kowtows to him. He's just a man. He owns Harmonia, that's all. He has too much money. He's not God."

Angela shrugged, sighing heavily. "You're right. It's like some kind of weird cult influence, isn't it, working for him for too long? You get it at every turn, from every single communication from the top, that the most important thing is to protect the project, and that protecting Anderson Scott protects the project, because he's the one who is funding it. He does things for you, here and there, and you start developing loyalty."

"What has he done for you?"

"My mother had some awful medical debt. I put in a request to see if there was a way… maybe she could become my dependent technically or something, and then I could get her on my health insurance?" said Angela. "He contacted me about it, and he waved his magic wand and erased all her debt and then put her on the company health insurance. He told me how grateful he was that I was out here, serving the project, this amazing discovery that would have this amazing affect on humanity at large. He made it sound like I was doing missionary work or something, you know? I felt…"

Riley sighed.

"He's done similar things for others," said Angela. "He doesn't interfere with us often, but when he does, he wields his power in very godlike ways. You're grateful to him."

"So, fine," said Riley. "Let's get in touch with him. Why hasn't anyone gotten in touch with him?"

"Nancy was the liaison," said Angela in a tiny voice.

"No one else had the capacity to contact him?"

"No," said Angela.

"But Jonathan is in charge down here."

Angela didn't answer.

And Riley realized that Jonathan was not really in charge, not in that way, and that all the people down here were under some kind of strange spell. Or maybe it was shock or trauma or something else. Since the minute she'd stepped foot in this place, things had been going wrong. If someone had outlined a scenario for her where she was in fear for her life, she had an expectation of the way she'd behave, but maybe that wasn't true. Maybe this sort of situation made people behave positively erratically.

What was the situation, anyway?

Being mutated into amphibians?

Right. Who had any idea how to behave in that situation?

"He's going to be angry when he finds out that the lizardthing is dead," said Angela. "And when he finds out that we're all mutated… I don't think that going public with that information is within the scope of protecting the project."

"I just said let's talk to him," said Riley.

"Well, Nancy—"

"We have all of Nancy's electronics," said Riley. "Luther's supposed to be able to get into them, right? So, Luther needs to do that."

"Assuming Luther hasn't turned into something with webbed fingers and big bulging eyes who wants to fill us up to bursting with his eggs," said Angela.

"Yes, assuming that," said Riley, her voice breaking.

RILEY PEERED INTO the open door of the main laboratory. "Hello?" she called.

"In here," came Jonathan's voice. "But to warn you, things have, erm, progressed."

She stepped inside, Angela behind her, holding the gun.

"You're talking," said Angela. "I guess that's a good thing."

"Harris can still talk," said Riley.

"Yeah, I guess so," said Angela. "He said it came over them, right, like some kind of rage fit?"

"A rape fit," said Riley and then she—horrifyingly—giggled.

Behind her, Angela smirked.

And then Jonathan came into view and they both stopped laughing.

He was still Jonathan, but his skin was not skin anymore. It shimmered, smooth and slick, like a salamander's. His features were still human shaped—he did not have the flat nose or the bulging eyes on opposite sides of his face that Bub'd had—but his eyes were black, all black, no iris, no white, just black pupil. His fingers were webbed. He was wearing a lab coat and a pair of pants, but no shirt beneath. His feet were bare. Webbed toes as well.

"I've been crying," he said. "As much as that happens for whatever I am now, I suppose. There aren't tear ducts in the same way, I don't think. Anyway, apologies for… for…" His voice broke.

Riley went to him out of instinct, and she wrapped her arm around him. "Oh, God, Jonathan, God, I'm so sorry."

He collapsed into her for a moment, letting out a shuddering, sobbing sort of breath, but then he pushed away. "That's not a good idea, the closeness, Riley." He turned his back on her, shaking his head.

She backed off. "Wait, do you want…?"

"It's a scent you're giving off," he said. "It's odd, because typically, when you smell a scent you identify as an animalistic sex scent as a human, there's a barrage of shame and embarrassment mixed in there with whatever other arousal you might feel. Less of that, really, which is disturbing. I'm wondering if there's been some effect on our emotional behavior—"

"A flattening?" said Riley. "Me too."

"You think we smell like sex, Dr. Greyson?" said Angela in a low voice. She had her hand on her gun.

"You smell like women, I suppose. Or whatever we are. If I'm laying eggs, am I really the man? You women seem to have retained uteruses, however, so if you're going to maybe carry the eggs until maturity, maybe that means you're still female. In cases like this in nature, we would usually say, however, that the fertilization element—whatever participant has the testes, that's the male. But testes and ovaries are essentially the same things in humans. It's just a question of what hormones work on them in utero. So, could they change with the right hormonal soup applied to them?"

"Okay, I get that—for you—it's a big question about whether or not you're a man or a woman or whatever," said Angela. "After all, you've been a white man your whole life, so your identity has been a source of comfort and power. The rest of us have have had to learn to dissociate from our identities to various degrees already, since we aren't white men and the world doesn't revolve around us. Can we go back to the part where you can't handle touching us because you feel the danger of losing control again?"

Jonathan ran a hand over the top of his head. He had hair there, some hair, but it was falling out. Clumps came off when his webbed fingers touched himself. He brought a shaking hand down to look at, fingering the hair as it fell between his fingertips. He let out a funny, strangled noise and collapsed into a nearby table, holding himself up for balance.

It was quiet.

"I gave myself another injection last night," said Jonathan. "But when I looked at a sample of my blood this morning, it didn't seem to have worked at halting the progression the way it had. On the other hand, I may have stabilized. Under the microscope, things don't seem to be mutating anymore. So…" He looked up at them. "I don't know what that means. We have to ask ourselves, did the other men behave the way they did because they hadn't had this injection or because they were the sort of men who couldn't keep control of themselves under the best of circumstances?"

"You'd like that to be true," said Angela. "You'd like to believe that your morality is going to save us, doctor, but know this. You bring that stinger thing you're packing near me or Riley and I will put as many bullets into you as it takes to keep you from coming any closer."

Jonathan nodded slowly. "Understood, Ramirez."

"Jonathan…" said Riley. "I'm so, so sorry."

"Where's Luther?" said Angela.

"He and I were both… understandably distraught," said Jonathan. "I gave him another injection, took a sample of his blood, and then I think he went off to grieve privately. I don't know."

"Great," said Angela. "You two split up, and we said we needed to—"

"We didn't say anything about sticking together," muttered Jonathan. "His blood isn't mutating either, anymore, if anyone is interested in that."

"We did want Luther to try to get into Nancy's laptop or phone or something," said Riley. "I think we need a rescue, and the first place to start is apparently to contact Anderson Scott—"

"No," said Jonathan.

"No?" said Riley.

"No, I don't want to bring this back to society," said Jonathan. "We're a danger, aren't we?" He tilted his head to one side. "Maybe the two of you could go back, I suppose? But me? This? No."

Riley thought about it. Regardless of who they told, they'd be sequestered somewhere, undoubtedly. They were oddities, and they'd be studied. Her body had been altered, she knew that, and maybe it could be changed back surgically, but likely not.

Maybe just… a hysterectomy? Did she want that?

She had thought she did want to have children, but she had to admit that her chances had been slipping away, each year, as she got older and older. It wasn't just that it was harder to get pregnant in your thirties, it was that she was growing more and more used to being alone.

In the end, she supposed, she wasn't sure if she was the sort of woman who could be a mother. Mothers were required to set aside their own pursuits and desires and dreams and goals, and subjugate all that to the betterment of their offspring. One could argue that mothers didn't have to do such things, but it was a bit of a biological imperative. With her clever, human brain, she could find ways around it, she supposed.

But she knew from talking to other women that it would always be there—a strain between her own needs and wants and the needs and wants of her child. She'd always feel guilty because she'd be elevating one to the detriment of the other. There would be posts on her social media timeline about mothers and self-care, people pretending there was a solution to this problem, but there was not. It was a friction that simply existed.

She thought some women found it easier to sublimate themselves to their children. She'd always loved her work so much, though. Maybe that was all there would be. She would just work, or so she'd thought.

But… now…

What if all that was gone?

She turned back to look at Jonathan, thinking about the fact that they'd sort of accidentally created an entirely new species here, and thinking about studying that, thinking about all the firsts they could observe together, all the information they could compile, all the discovery …

She sucked in a breath.

Jonathan looked up at her, narrowing his black eyes. "Something just happened to your scent," he said in a gravelly voice.

"Did it?" she said faintly. She turned to Angela. "You'd want to go back, I suppose? You have family. Your mother. You were talking about your mother."

"I don't know what we're talking about here," said Angela. "Did someone suggest the possibility of us staying out here forever or something?"

"No, no one said that," said Riley, shaking her head. "I suppose that's not even a real possibility, is it?" However, the place was self-sustainable. It was too far out in the middle of nowhere to be able to be on a power grid, so the electricity was all from solar and wind power. They had the internet from satellites.

There was the food question, of course. The stuff in the freezers wouldn't last forever, but maybe they'd be able to fish more easily if they were mutated in the way they were. There was food growing out here—animals and plants and all manner of things. If everyone thought they were dead out here, they might survive very well.

"I guess let's go looking for Luther," said Angela. "Let's see what happened to him, how bad off he is."

"Should I come along?" said Riley. "Maybe Jonathan and I should talk science things."

"I've got the gun," said Angela. "You should probably stick with me."

Riley shrugged. "I'll take my chances."

Angela looked her over. Sighing, she shrugged back. "Suit yourself." She left the lab.