Revolution (11 page)

Reaching the morgue mid-morning, they brought
Martuska upstairs, put her in a bed, and Harry held her down. He
was afraid that she might wake up at any moment, and right now, he
wasn’t in the mood for another fight. “You’re still bleeding,”
Harry said to Anastasia as they worked.

He half expected her to say, “I ain’t got
time to bleed,” but instead she simply offered in a sour voice,
“I’ll heal.”

As he looked on, her wounds had already begun
to close, but she moved stiffly, and sharp grunts of pain came from
her mouth.

“What are we going to use for straps?” he
asked.

“I’ll take care of it.”

Since nothing was immediately available,
Anastasia ran to the lounge and came back a few moments later
holding some rough looking strips of leather. “Use these,” she
said. “I got them from the chairs.”

Once she was secured, Harry hunted down some
bandages and he and Anastasia did their best to bind the wounds of
the two older men. Neither Farrell nor Bartok complained during the
procedure. After they finished, Bartok lit a cigarette and blew out
a plume of bluish-gray smoke. Anastasia pulled a face, but said
nothing. She did, however, open a window to let the fresh air
in.

Harry glanced inside the holding room.
Martuska still hadn’t regained consciousness, but he was pretty
sure that when she did, she was going to be pissed. He went back to
where the others were sitting. “Are those going to hold her?” he
asked, skeptical of the whole idea.

“They should,” Bartok replied. He turned his
gaze on Istvan. “You need to tell us everything. You know this...
thing. Tell us.”

Istvan gulped down air, his mouth quivering.
“She came to the laboratory almost at the same time I was there.
She was... university student, I think. I do not know for sure, as
the scientists and guards beat us if we spoke to each other. But I
listen, always I listen. She say she come from northern area of
Hungary. They steal her from home one night and bring here to this
place.”

Tears began to run down his cheeks. “She
scream when they started experiment on her. Scream and beg...” His
voice trailed off.

“Istvan, you must tell us,” Bartok urged and
this time he didn’t sound so overbearing. “Talk to me.”

Immediately, Istvan switched to Hungarian.
The conversation continued, the little man speaking passionately,
his vocal chords straining and his voice full of loss. In contrast,
Bartok’s voice sounded soothing, almost fatherly in nature. He led
the conversation by asking questions, sometimes in English and
sometimes in his native language.

Haltingly, the details emerged. At the
underground lab, Martuska had been drugged and her memory wiped.
Once the transformation was complete, she became the eyes and ears
from up on high. “You mean, for Grushenko?” Harry asked.

Istvan nodded dully. “Yes, she... how you say
it... she scouted for him? He tell her to search for people to
bring in. He always look for young people, always fit and healthy
and strong people.”

“They killed a lot of older people in Russia
and Hungary. Serbia, too,” Farrell pointed out.

“They were target practice. That is what
guards told me,” Istvan whispered. “I do not know why they brought
me.”

Harry cut in. “Let’s find out.”

Going over to the medical cabinet, he found a
syringe, a dropper and a slide. “I also need a centrifuge and some
more equipment. Do you have a DNA analyzer?” he asked Bartok.

“I can get one,” Bartok replied. “Why do you
need it?”

Now Harry was in his element. “I want to find
out why Istvan is so special. We all have enhanced immune and
regenerative systems, but Szabo and maybe this Kulakov or whoever
found something different. I want to know why.”

“I will make a call.”

Bartok walked off to make the arrangements. A
few seconds later, they heard a faint moan from the next room.
Martuska had woken up. Harry, Anastasia and Istvan went to the room
and found her struggling against her bonds, her eyes full of hate.
When she spoke, it came out in a raspy, incoherent voice. Farrell
came in a few seconds later. “Do you understand what she’s saying?”
he asked.

Istvan shook his head. “No, she does not make
any understanding to me,” he replied, shivering at the sight of
her. “I think she say a word, but I cannot be sure. When Grushenko
did his experiments, he say that sometimes vocal chords do not work
so well. I can talk, Szabo can talk, but there are others who could
not.”

Ivan the bear-man couldn’t speak very well,
Harry recalled. Nurmelev said that when the subject was
transformed, they sometimes lost their ability to speak and
sometimes the scientists had sacrificed certain abilities in order
to enhance others. Speech was one of them.

Anastasia had retained her ability to speak
and think at a human level, as had Doug and Lyudmila. Martuska’s
eyes, though, told an entirely different story. They were full of
hate. Even if she had a normal IQ, Harry knew that if she got free,
she’d try to kill everyone.

“What do you think she’s saying?” asked
Anastasia, warily eyeing the monster on the bed.

“It is
vadasz.
It means hunter.”

Hunter... the word sent a chill down Harry’s
spine. In a burst of clarity, he realized that Szabo’s plan was a
lot wider in scope than he first thought. “She’s a scout,” he said.
“The kidnappings, the murders... Szabo or Kulakov or whoever’s in
charge has others like us doing his dirty work for him.”

A soft growl came from Anastasia. “Are you
sure?”

Right now, Harry wasn’t sure of anything. He
was in way over his head and he knew it. After another glance at
the bed, he asked, “What are we going to do with her? She’s on
their side, right?”

Istvan nodded. “She has no memory of what she
was. She is like Szabo, a killer. I must leave this room. It make
me sick to look at her.”

He quickly left and Martuska continued to
stare and screech. She also began to thrash around and her
movements practically caused the bed to jump to the other side of
the room. Anastasia held her down, avoiding the thrusts of her
beak.

“Find something to put her out!” Farrell
yelled.

Harry ran outside to find Bartok. Spotting
him, he called out, “Come on!”

Together, they raced down to the third floor.
Inside the lab, Harry found a syringe, but because he didn’t
understand Hungarian, he told Bartok what to look for. After a few
frantic seconds of searching, Bartok found a vial. “I have it!” he
cried.

It would have to do. Harry stabbed the end of
the needle in, withdrew the fluid and ran upstairs, where he
injected Martuska. She continued to thrash around, but eventually
the sedative took hold and her struggles grew weaker. Seconds
later, she was out. He blew out a deep breath. “I had to give her a
double dose. I don’t know how long it’ll keep her out.”

“I will watch her,” Bartok said, still
breathing heavily. Blood had soaked through his bandage and he
didn’t look too healthy, but he gave a confident nod. “I have
ordered the equipment. It is from our best hospital and will arrive
tonight. Please be patient.”

With nothing better to do, Harry took
Anastasia’s hand and led her outside to the lounge. Farrell trailed
behind them, talking into his cellphone. “I’ve got your friends
working on this,” he said when they all took seats. “They’re
checking on who this Kulakov might be, and we’re also coordinating
with the Russians. When they find something, they’ll let us
know.”

It seemed like a plan. Harry sat down,
Anastasia leaned her head against him, and they decided to sleep
off their jetlag.

Two hours later, someone knocked on the door
downstairs. Bartok went to answer it and came back carrying two
bags of groceries along with another laptop. “Come with me,” he
said to Farrell.

They went downstairs and came back carrying a
centrifuge and another machine that was a DNA analyzer. Harry knew
which model it was. It wasn’t as fast as the DNA strand analyzer
he’d used back in New York, but it would work. Bartok set up the
computer. “This has a greater memory than the other computers here.
It is now ready to work in English,” he said. “What else do you
need?”

Harry looked at Istvan. “I need a sample of
your blood,” he said. After getting a vial full of it, he started
his analysis. “This will take about twelve hours,” he said.

While waiting, they passed the time talking,
watching television which none of them understood except for Istvan
and Bartok, and raiding the food supply. Harry had just finished
stuffing a loaf of bread into his mouth along with a number of
tasty sausages when Anastasia popped in.

“Are you feeling better?” Harry asked. He
noticed that her wounds had just about healed. The scars on her
face faded... faded... and were gone.

Anastasia twirled around gracefully on the
ball of her left foot. “Yep, and I’m hungry,” she declared. “Oh,
chicken,” she gushed as she spotted a bag and took a sniff.

She opened it up, pulled out an entire
roasted chicken, and held it up, tilting it this way and that as if
appraising its value. Taking a bite, she chewed and savored it,
tilting her head back in a move of gastronomic ecstasy. Before
long, she’d devoured every bit of her meal. “I didn’t realize I ate
so much,” she said, daintily wiping her lips with a napkin.

“Hyper-charged metabolism,” Harry said,
wiping his mouth. “I’ve been eating more, too.”

“It comes with the territory.”

Another screech sounded and Anastasia snapped
her head around. “Unfortunately, so does that,” she said.

Martuska had shaken off her drug dose and it
had been only a couple of hours. “
Vadasz, vadasz,
” she kept
screaming and almost got out of her restraints until Anastasia
clobbered her and knocked her cold.

“That’s for slicing me open,” Anastasia
muttered. “Next time
I’ll
do the slice and dice deal.”

Bartok came in long enough to see that the
prisoner was out He informed them that he’d get more food and left
the morgue just long enough to shuttle back and forth between his
downtown office and the supermarket.

For the rest of the time, Harry did his
analysis and worked on ideas. He only took a quick ten-minute break
here and there to stretch out.

Finally, by nightfall, the results came in
and he’d found what he was looking for. He sent the information to
his own computer in an email file as a precaution. Next, he put the
vial of blood into a small storage unit he’d found in the morgue.
It would keep the blood from decaying. He might need it.

That job done, he called everyone into the
meeting room. They clustered around the computer. Pointing at the
screen, he laid out what he knew. “This is your blood and DNA
analysis, Istvan. From what I can figure out, you have long
telomeres, almost three times as long as a normal person’s. Added
to that, your T-cell count is almost off the charts.”

Istvan stared at the profile, bewilderment
written all over his face. “I do not understand. What does this
mean?”

“It means that you’re going to live a very
long time and you can’t contract cancer, leukemia or any other
disease.”

In spite of the pain he had to be feeling,
Farrell let out a long, low whistle. “That’s why Szabo or Kulakov
or whoever wants him.”

Harry sat down and punched in some numbers.
“There’s something here that I don’t get. The enhancement we went
through,” he pointed to Anastasia and Istvan, “improved our immune
systems, but not this much, unless...”

“Unless what?” Anastasia prodded.

Harry remained silent, turning over the
implications in his mind. It couldn’t be true, but apparently, it
was. Computers didn’t lie. Whether Istvan knew it or not, he was
the one-in-a-million genetic link that every scientist and
researcher in the world had been searching for. He was the key, the
final link to semi-immortality.

A tap on his shoulder brought Harry back to
Earth. He turned around and found Anastasia staring at him,
puzzlement in her eyes. “You’re thinking of something.” It came out
as a statement and not a question.

“Changing Istvan wasn’t necessary,” he
answered, feeling bad about what he had to say. “He’s a genetic
freak.”

Istvan started at the word freak. “What do
you tell me?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it in a bad way,”
answered Harry and as a way of reassuring Istvan, he pitched his
tone low. “It’s a good meaning in this case. Some people are born
strong. Others are born fast or with high IQ’s or something else.
In your case, your blood carries the cure for almost every disease
out there. Your DNA is practically bulletproof. You’ll live a long
time, maybe four hundred years, if this readout is correct.”

Istvan’s eyes grew round. “But... I don’t
understand. If my blood is so strong, then why did Grushenko change
me?” Tears began to leak from his eyes. “I was small before, but I
was normal. I would live long life. Why did he change me?” he
shouted and ran from the room.

Farrell spoke up, his face softened with
perhaps the realization that another monstrous plan was at work.
“Do you know why, Harry?”

Harry felt a wave of pity for the little guy.
“I’m not sure. I, uh, I’ll go and check on him. Give me a couple of
minutes.”

Outside, he found Istvan huddled near the
stairwell. Sitting down beside him, he gave the pig-man a friendly
pat on the shoulder. “You didn’t know, did you?”

Istvan didn’t answer. He shied away at the
touch at first. When he turned around, with no surprise at all,
Harry noticed that the transformation from semi-human to porcine
form seemed to be happening even faster. His ears were floppier,
his body had become more rotund and at the bottom of his spine, a
bulge appeared. Even through the uniform, Harry knew what it was.
It was a pig’s curlicue tail.