Prophet of Bones (41 page)

Paul looked into the cage. The creature crouched at the back of its enclosure. Black and massive. A dumb animal. But the things he’d seen at the park hadn’t been dumb. And the thing on the bridge certainly hadn’t been.

“Where are the other crosses?”

“Which ones?”

“The human crosses.”

“You’ve met them,” the old man said. “You’ve met them all.”

“Only three in total?”

“Two now,” said a strange, raspy voice. “Thanks to you.” The creature stepped from around the side of the cages, materializing from the shadows. It walked over to stand near Martial, its huge bulk hunched beneath a hooded sweatshirt. The beast from the bridge. It smiled its impossible teeth. Black eyes hidden beneath its heavy brow.

“Where is the soul in all this?” the old man asked Paul. He gestured to the creature, looking truly confused by the hulking thing that stood before him.

The hooded figure ignored the old man’s question. It shuffled around behind Paul and Lillie, seeming to sniff the air.

“You’ve met Trieste, I believe,” the old man said.

Paul only nodded.

The old man continued: “I look for that place where the line isn’t blurry between our species, and I can’t find it. Are these things bound for heaven, I wonder? Are they beasts with human hands?” He moved to the cage and stuck his hand inside his pocket. He pulled out an apple and tossed it inside the cage where the chimp-gorilla hybrid crouched. The hybrid picked it up and ate it in three huge bites. “Or humans with the hearts of beasts? Or something in between.”

The old man turned to look at them. “These are the questions we strive to answer.”

42

“Why us?” Paul asked.

The old man sighed. “Gavin is dead. People with your level of training aren’t easy to come by. They’re out there, of course, but to bring them in…” He shrugged. “It is a risk. How do you show them, and then if they say no…” The old man shook his head. “It’s messy. But with you, it’s already messy. But it is more than that, I admit. Come.”

The old man led them past the cages and out the door. Trieste followed close behind. There was a short sidewalk leading to another, smaller building. A guard in a black suit stood just outside. They entered the building, crossing an empty expanse to a room tucked into the back of the structure. At first Paul thought it might have been an office of some kind, or a storage room, but then he noticed the stainless steel table. A dissection room. Silver walls. A rack of equipment lined the back wall. A small hoist hung suspended from the ceiling. Near the door frame, a long steel handle leaned against the wall—a part of the hoist that had been disengaged.

On the table was a single folder.

The old man gestured for them to come closer. The creature Trieste stayed watchful at the door. Martial opened the folder and pulled out a photograph, which he held out to Paul.

“That was your father when I first met him.”

Paul took the photo. It looked to have been taken somewhere in China. His father, tall and brooding, standing in a lecture hall.

“You look like him,” the old man said.

“I look like my mother.”

“You’re big like your father. Your father’s size. Tell me: your father’s temper, too?”

“No.”

“Your father’s cold-bloodedness.”

Paul was silent.

“Oh, yes.” The old man smiled. “Some of that, I suspect.”

The old man took the photo back and closed the folder.

“Your father worked here, and now here we are with the son. It feels fitting somehow, don’t you think? It feels like fate. So I have shown you all the wonders, and now I have this question: Will you finish what your father started?”

Paul considered the old man. He wondered how Martial would kill him. He wondered how long ago this had all become inevitable. Was it when he broke into the lab? Was it when he first told Charles about what he’d found? Or was it earlier, even. When he’d first gotten on the plane to Flores? Or was it way back in childhood somewhere? Had it all been set in motion on that day when he’d started building the cages? At that moment, a small brown mouse skittered across the floor. Only Paul saw it. A flash of brown fur, then gone. Or maybe it hadn’t happened at all. Maybe he only thought he saw it.

“You’re considering my offer, I can see. I respect that. If you’d said yes too quickly, I would have known you were lying. There is great work we can do here, Paul. Without the government to get in the way. Without the churches and the oversight. We exist in a bubble. Nothing is off-limits. We have nearly endless funding and no oversight. Imagine what is possible. Other scientists work at the edges of things, but we can tackle the large questions themselves.”

The old man moved back to the doorway. He gestured out at the cage that held the chimp-gorilla hybrid. “You see, Paul, why I did not wish to be rash in my decision on how to deal with you. Though there are many qualified scientists who work in this branch of cytology, it is a rare man with the vision to look past ethical vagaries to what is really important. But this is a special kind of work—a calling. When you need a specialist, you can’t just interview several candidates for the job. You can’t invite someone to do this and then take no for an answer.”

Paul and Lilli stared at the man and said nothing. Behind him, the hooded creature swayed slightly, rocking on its feet. Paul eyed the hoist handle that leaned against the door frame. Three feet of steel.

“Gavin said you killed him.”

“Who?”

“My father.”

The old man froze. The smile left his face.

“Gavin said that?”

Paul nodded.

“Then Gavin was a bigger betrayer than I’d suspected. It was you he betrayed as well.”

“How is the truth ever a betrayal?”

“Because it means you’ll never forgive. It means you’ll say no. Your friend Gavin killed you when he told you that.”

The old man lowered his head for a moment. When he raised it, he looked at Paul. “The beast you killed was born of woman,” the old man said after a long silence. “Artificial insemination, of course.”

Paul took Lilli’s hand in his.

“A volunteer,” he added, his voice trailing off, “of sorts.” The old man seemed lost in his memories. “A woman named Sacha Etting.”

“How did she live with it?” Lilli asked.

“Not well. Not for long. She died some years ago. Cancer, unrelated to the procedure.”

Paul stared out through the doorway, at the cages against the far wall. His eye found the steel handle again, leaning against the door frame. “Human mother, chimp father.”

The old man nodded. “And Trieste here was the opposite cross.”

Paul didn’t turn to look.

“Chimp mother, human father,” the old man said. “And there are differences between the two crosses, it would seem. Just as a liger is different from a tigon and a hinny is different from a mule. This cross is better.”

“Your son?” Paul spit the words out. He thought of the beast pulling him up on the bridge.

“My son?” At that, the old man started laughing. He laughed long and hard, until the laugh turned into a coughing fit, and the chimps joined their voices in screeching. “You haven’t figured it out yet, my boy? You haven’t guessed?”

“Guessed what?”

“I have cystic fibrosis, which impacts the motility of cilia in my cells. This causes my lungs not to function correctly. I would have been dead decades ago if not for lung transplants. But the disease has many pleiotropic effects. It also affects the motility of sperm cells and the development of vas deferens—all men with cystic fibrosis are sterile.”

Paul’s brow furrowed.

“The sperm, Paul, was provided by your father.” The old man gestured to the hooded shape that stood off to the side. “Trieste is your half brother.”

“No.” Paul jerked his gaze toward the creature. A few inches shorter than him, but massively muscular. Black hair. Prognathic face. Wide, powerful shoulders.

“Is he not?” the old man asked. “Look at him.”

“No!” Paul screamed. He lunged for the hoist handle, curling his hand around the cool steel. He swung it with all his strength, catching Trieste in the face, smashing the creature in the eye. Trieste went down hard—the thud of meat on cement.

Paul grabbed Lilli’s hand and ran.

They were at the other end of the building when Paul heard it. A roar of anger and pain. He chanced a look back. Trieste was rising, rage twisting its strange features into a demon mask, teeth bared. It shrieked again.

“Kill them!” the old man shouted. “Kill them both!”

Trieste surged forward.

Paul and Lilli ran for their lives.

They made it to the far door, bursting through to bright sunlight, stumbling into the guard posted just outside. Paul saw the confused expression on the guard’s face as he ran past. The guard hesitated for a moment. He had no orders. Then Paul and Lilli were past him, still running as the guard called out, “Hey! Stop!”

Paul ignored the guard and pushed open the door to the next building. The guard followed but was too slow. Paul and Lilli darted inside, swinging the door closed before he got there. The guard hit the door hard, but Paul kept his shoulder against it. He realized that he still carried the steel bar in his hand, and he wedged it between the door and an I-beam, preventing the door from opening.

“Open the door!” the guard shouted. “Open it ri—” The guard paused, as if startled, his voice leaving the doorway, and a moment later the entire steel door shuddered in its frame as something huge smashed against it. The beast roared again, a sound beyond insanity. The fists came again, and the steel bar shuddered and flexed.

Paul and Lilli backed away. The door wouldn’t hold for long.

They were back in the ape house. Inside the room, the noise had risen to a sickening level. The gorilla-chimp hybrids pulsed in hysteria.

The door frame shook again, as Trieste’s fists struck twin dents in the metal door.

Paul’s gaze darted around. In the center of the room was the control booth. A room with steel bars. “Come on,” he shouted. They ran for it. From behind them came the sound of twisting metal as the door broke inward off its hinges.

Trieste screamed in wordless rage. Paul looked back. The creature’s left eye was swollen nearly shut, its massive brow split and bleeding. It charged, dropping to an inhuman lope, lunging across the room on four limbs.

Paul looked back toward the control booth and knew they wouldn’t make it.

“In there!” Paul screamed at Lilli and shoved her toward it. Then he turned to face the charge, to buy her time. Trieste might have been a locomotive. Paul was knocked off his feet. He skidded across the room, sliding close to the cages as a huge thigh-sized arm reached out from between the bars but missed. Paul rolled away from the steel bars.

Trieste came for him, lost in rage, charging in too close to the cages, and the dark arms clutched through the bars for him, just out of reach. Just brushing Trieste’s shoulder. Trieste raised its arms in a killing attack, but Paul rolled away just in time. The huge fists came down on concrete. Paul rose to his feet. Trieste picked Paul up and threw him at the control booth. Paul struck the safety glass and collapsed. From inside, Lilli screamed.

The creature came for Paul.

Paul raised one arm in defense. The blow would have killed him otherwise. The fist came down like a hammer, battering his arm away.

It was like the creature he’d fought in the woods. Only worse. Bigger. Stronger. Paul realized then that he was going to die.

Trieste grabbed him by one leg and flung him again, knocking him back against the wall near the broken door.

Inside the gated room, Lilli screamed again: “Paul, run!”

But Paul was beyond running now.

The creature approached slowly, taking its time. It seemed to notice something on the floor near the twisted door.

The creature stepped over Paul. Then it did something very human. It picked up a weapon. The same steel bar that had been used to wedge the door closed, the one Paul had used against it. It walked back to where Paul lay, and it stood over him. It raised the bar high in both hands.

“Die, brother,” it hissed in a sandpaper voice.

At that moment, there was a loud clang, metal on metal. Propagating forward, so that Paul heard it next to him and up ahead at that same time.

Trieste froze for a second, confused. Paul turned his head and saw Lilli behind the safety glass, her face pale and bloodless. She mouthed a word to him. His foggy head took a moment to process it, and then he understood.
Run.

At that instant, one of the cage doors swung open. No longer locked. Then another. And another. The first gorilla hybrid stepped out of its cage, and then others followed, exploding outward in a snarling burst of black fur, and suddenly the room was filled with beasts.

Trieste turned, eyes wide. The first beast charged. Trieste swung the bar, and the gorilla hybrid batted it away. The two creatures struggled, and then another hybrid, and another, joined the fight. Screaming, thrashing violence. Hair flying, the thud of breaking bones. Paul dragged himself along the floor, trying to attract as little attention as possible. Trieste screamed in rage and pain as it was slammed to the ground. Paul heard bones break, and then fists came down. Inside the control booth, Lilli ducked under the table, staying out of sight.

Paul crawled.

He made it to the far door. He slid across the portal and pulled himself to his feet. As best he could, he walked. Those things wouldn’t be distracted for long. Paul crossed the narrow cement walkway between buildings and made it to the next door. He pushed inside, crossing the room. The room under construction. He hobbled to the far door and opened it. He looked out and saw a gorilla hybrid charging across the open space between the buildings, chasing down a man in a white lab coat. The man didn’t have a chance. It was over quickly. A shot rang out, and the hybrid turned. More shots. The guards were defending themselves. It was a war zone out there. A noise from behind him turned him around. He saw nothing but he knew he wasn’t safe. There was a loud thud as something huge struck the other door.