Revolution (7 page)

At that point, Harry really wanted to let
fly... but insult or not, he decided to give it a pass. He’d pay
and leave—that was the plan. With a lightning-fast move, he grabbed
the basket back, but the other man noticed his hand. “What’s going
on here?” he asked. “You got yellow eyes and... fur?”

Harry didn’t bother answering. These morons
would find out sooner or later, so he rolled up his sleeve and
showed off his forearm, fur and all. “If it makes you feel any
better, I’m the same all over. Is there a problem?”

In an instant, the big dude’s mean look
disappeared. An expression of fear replaced it and he gulped. Legs
shaking, he took a step back, but reached for his pocket. “You’re
some kind of a freak and...”

He never got a chance to answer, as Harry
dropped the basket, trapped the man’s arm with his left hand and
extended his claws on his right hand. Wicked-looking things, he
shoved them under the man’s chin to the point of nearly breaking
the skin. There were times when a person could stand the insults.
Right there and then, he decided that this time was not one of
them. “That wouldn’t be the word I’d use, buddy,” he growled. “I’m
the kind of person you don’t want to meet.”

“
Aah...” the large dude said in a choked
voice. The front of his pants suddenly got wet. “I’m... I’m sorry.”
He twisted his head around to look for his friend. “Joey, you gonna
help me, man?”

“
I don’t think he can,” a familiar voice
sang out.

Harry swiveled his head around and saw
Anastasia at the doorway, her hoodie down. The fur on her neck and
the top of her head stood on end and her tail lashed the air. She
took up a position right behind Joey with her claws near his
throat. Joey was trembling all over and seemed incapable of speech.
“Now, here’s what you’re going to do,” Anastasia instructed the
quivering Joey. “You’re going to leave. My boyfriend and I are
busy. Do you understand that?”

“
Yeah... yeah, I got it,” he managed to
squeak out.

She released him and he took off. Harry let
go of the other punk and he made a beeline for the door. Anastasia
stepped aside to let him pass, but stuck her foot out at the last
second. He tripped and sprawled flat on his face. “Leave!” she
hissed.

Wet pants and all, he picked himself up and
ran to join his friend, stumbling as he went. Harry felt a faint
smile come over his face and turned to the cashier, who was by now
shaking like a leaf in a storm. His face read fifty shades of
terrified. “Hey, I support PETA, you know?”

Harry laid down thirty dollars. “So do I.
Keep the change.”

Sticking out his elbow, Anastasia linked arms
with him and together they strolled out into the sunshine. “Nice
job with the other punk,” he offered.

Once they were back in the car, Anastasia’s
mood of jauntiness vanished. She sat in her seat, hands clasped in
her lap. When she looked at him, it was with a mixture of amusement
and despair. “You can talk about easy, but I don’t want to have to
go through this every day. I just want to have a normal life, as
normal as possible, I mean.”

“
I know. That’s why I’m working on a way
to turn us back to, uh, what we were.”

She gave a slight nod. “If it works, I’m up
for it.”

Harry meant what he said, but he also knew
that up until he did find a way to reverse the procedure, then
things would never be normal. Once back at the cabin, he called
Farrell and told him about the incident. Naturally, the older man
screamed at him for going out without an escort. He drove up the
next day, his car throwing up a cloud of dirt as he screeched to a
stop outside the cabin and ran over to the door.

“
Just so you know, kid,” he began as soon
as the front door opened, “I told the clerk at the store that a
movie was being filmed here. He believed me when I said some of the
extras were walking around.”

It was a BS excuse, but this was the closest
people had come to discovering their existence, and Harry wasn’t
into show-and-tell, not yet. Since the fights three months before
with Lyudmila and Piotr, most of the populace in and around New
York wanted to know about the transgenics.

Officially, all four had been caught and were
being held in an undisclosed location. That was the story concocted
by the FBI and New York’s finest. So far, it seemed to be
working... but incidents like this, Farrell reminded them, could
bring the reporters. “And I don’t want the press to find out about
this. It’s not time.”

“
Is it ever going to be time?” Anastasia
asked. Anguish crept into her voice. “I know what I am and what I
look like. But it’s everyone else that’s going to have to get
comfortable with me—us,” she corrected herself so as to include
Harry—”and I don’t want to live in solitary confinement for the
rest of my life. I’m not even an American citizen yet.”

A look of sorrow came over Farrell’s face. He
wasn’t the type to show emotion readily. Hard-ass persona or not,
he’d always been there to lend a hand. “I’m hoping that one day you
won’t have to worry about it. But right now, you do, and so do we.
And I’m still working on the papers for you. I promised, and I
intend to keep my promise...”

A low moan broke through Harry’s trip down
memory lane. Istvan started at the sound. “What is wrong with
her?”

“She gets carsick,” Harry explained.

“Oh.”

“Anyone want a barf bag?” Farrell called
out.

Anastasia grunted, stifled another moan and
said, “Just shut up and drive.”

Upon reaching Manhattan two hours later, they
entered FBI headquarters through an underground garage and Farrell
took them to Harry’s former laboratory. “We’ve got some of the best
computer techs working for us, tracking down the sources and
extrapolating all the information,” Farrell explained as he led
them inside. “Meet the team.”

In spite of the terrors, he’d encountered
only a few hours ago, Harry cracked a smile at the two people
sitting in front of a row of desktop computers. “Jason, Tina, how’s
it going?”

Jason Parham, a tall and lean nineteen
year-old—the same age as Harry—nodded hello. He and Harry had been
best friends since junior high, but while Harry went into the field
of transgenic research, Jason had stuck to his games and computer
work. Tall and lean to the point of emaciation and extremely geeky
looking with long, straight black hair down to his shoulders, he
sat next to his girlfriend. “I’m doing okay,” Jason said. “I got my
computers and my partner in crime, er, justice with me.” He
indicated Tina with a nod.

Tina Mazerowski, also tall and lean and
dark-haired, was no less a tech nerd, but was the more outgoing of
the two, with a pretty face and sparkling green eyes. She nodded as
well.

However, when they got a good look at Istvan,
their jaws simultaneously hit the floor. With a look of
uncertainty, Tina eyed Istvan and then shifted her gaze to Harry.
“I thought I was seeing twins. First it was a cat and now I’m
looking at two cat people and a...” she started to say.

“You mean a pig,” Anastasia finished. “Yeah,
he’s that way, and Harry and I are this way. Deal with it. We
have.”

Jason shrugged. He’d seen Harry three months
back when the changes began and was used to it. But as for Tina, it
seemed that she was having a hard time processing reality.

“Since when did you start working for the
FBI?” Harry asked in order to break the slight blanket of tension
that hung in the air. Farrell stood beside them with a smirk on his
face. “Did you volunteer or—”

“We recruited them,” Farrell interrupted.
“They know more about hacking than anyone else, and Jason’s your
friend, so we reached an agreement.”

Harry suppressed a grin while Anastasia’s
eyebrows arched in amazement at the display of hardware. “And what
do you get out of it?” she asked.

Jason swept his arm around the room and a
grin crossed his face. “What do we get? Talk about unlimited
computer time, class credit and a humongous paycheck, that’s what.”
He folded his arms across his narrow chest. “Gaming heaven, man,
that’s what it’s all about to me.”

Farrell noisily cleared his throat and
pointed at the computers. Jason amended his statement by saying,
“After work, I mean. The job comes first. The only drawback is the
hours,” he added, and put his hand over his mouth to stifle a yawn.
“Irregular schedules suck.”

“It’s a lot better than school, but we still
have to go,” Tina added. “Who’s Porky?”

Istvan’s already pink face turned chartreuse
and he mumbled something incoherent while turning his eyes to study
his feet. Anastasia took up the slack. “His name is Istvan, he’s
Hungarian, and we need to find a place, Tina.”

In response to being called by her proper
name, Tina groaned and reached for a paper bag under the computer
console. Sticking her hand inside, she withdrew a candy bar,
unwrapped it and shoved it in her mouth. “I told you, my name is
Maze,” she mumbled while ingesting it. “Call it a dippy nickname if
you want, but I like it.”

Tina’s nickname had come about due to her
being able to navigate through any program and hack through any
firewall. She was also a severe chocoholic, couldn’t live without
it, but if it kept her going, then no biggie, Harry thought. “Uh,
Maze, we need you to find a place in Hungary,” he began. “It’s
where we might find another lab. Can you do it?”

Maze chuckled and elbowed Jason. “Can I do
it?” she asked in a mocking tone. “There’s nothing this girl can’t
do and that’s a fact.”

After popping a few tasty chocolate morsels
in her mouth, she set to work, muttering to herself as her fingers
danced like lightning over the keyboard. “Okay, tell me where,
Porky.”

“My name is Istvan,” the little man
interrupted. This time a note of belligerence entered his voice, a
first for him. He puffed out his chest and stood tall, all four
feet of him. “I am not Porky or fatty or anything. I do not wish to
be like this, but I am still person.”

Jason nudged Maze. “Yeah, remember what
happened last time you made a joke about Anastasia.”

Maze blanched and threw a look at Anastasia,
who stood with her arms folded across her chest and a stony
expression on her face. The one rule everyone observed was simple.
Never call her “Miss Kitty”. It was a nickname guaranteed to set
her off. Harry didn’t see the need for anyone to remind his
girlfriend of how she looked, or him for that matter. “Maze, can
you find this place if Istvan gives you the rough coordinates?”

Maze’s face softened. “Yeah, I can do that.”
She switched her gaze to Istvan. “Sorry for the asshat remark. Come
on over and help. Give me the closest point you can think of and
I’ll see what I can do.”

Hesitantly, Istvan walked over spoke softly
to Tina. Anastasia chose a nearby desk and perched on top of it.
Jason took the opportunity to pull Harry out into the hallway,
while Farrell stayed in his position, overseeing the whole
operation.

“So what is it?” Harry wanted to know once
they were outside.

Jason’s face wore a look of gratitude. “First
off, that formula you gave me for my aunt, remember? I gave it to
the doctor. He tried it and now she’s fine.”

Said formula happened to be something Harry
had found in Grushenko’s laboratory in Chernobyl. It was a possible
cure for some types of cancer, and he’d given it to Jason so that
his aunt, suffering from the disease, might have a chance. “That’s
good news,” he said. “Glad I could help.”

“It’s good that you’re back, man,” Jason
said, and a note of admiration entered his voice as he took a step
back to eye Harry up and down. “You’ve changed.”

The assessment didn’t surprise Harry that
much, but he wondered what his best friend really thought. “It
doesn’t bother you?”

Jason shook his head. “We’ve always been
friends. What you did, you did for Anastasia, am I right?”

“Yeah, that’s about it.” Actually, Harry had
taken the serum in order to fight against an unstoppable opponent.
However, right now, he didn’t see the need to go into detail.

“Then it’s all good,” Jason affirmed with a
quick nod. “And I know it’s good with Maze, too. She’s just gotta
get used to it, but really, it’s cool.”

Harry was about to answer when Maze shouted,
“Hey guys, I got something!”

Running inside, Harry and Jason grouped
around the computer to the left while Farrell, Anastasia and Istvan
took the right. Maze stuffed some more chocolate in her mouth
before spelling out the details. “This is it,” she pointed to a
spot on the map. “It’s in the Gemenc forest like Istvan said. I had
to use the surveillance satellites, and searched for anything with
an unusual heat pattern. That forest gets pretty warm in the
summer, but I found a regular pattern of heat emissions.”

“You’re sure?” Farrell asked.

Maze chomped and swallowed before answering.
“It can’t be anything else.” A quick touch of a button and a
thermo-graphic image sprang up, showing a solid block of heat well
under the surface. “That region of Hungary is part of the Danube,
but there are no hot water springs or water tables in that
area.”

With her index finger, she pointed to the
base of the graph. “And, the emissions of energy are high, regular,
and they’re coming from about a mile underground. To me, that
indicates a complex of some sort and they’re using a lot of
power.”

She spun around in her chair, doing a seated
happy dance. “Can I rock it or what?”

“You can and do,” Jason said enthusiastically
and slapped palms with her.

“Okay, we have the place,” Farrell cut in.
His voice took on a no-nonsense air. “I have to coordinate with the
Hungarian government on this. That’s going to take at least a day,
if not more. They’ll want to be included in the loop, so I’ll have
to give them something.”