Sharkman (16 page)

26

D
r. Becker lived on the third floor of the building that housed ANGEL. She had a full kitchen, den, three bathrooms, a library, and six bedrooms—not including the master suite.

It was after four in the morning by the time Anya, Li-ling, and I made our way up the private stairwell to the guest quarters. Any hope of spending the night with the beautiful Ms. Patel was dashed the moment I saw my room.

“A hospital bed? For real?”

Her response was cut off by Nadja Kamrowski, who entered pushing an IV stand. “The accommodations on this floor were intended for cancer patients. If there is a problem, Joe Botchin has a sofa bed in his trailer.”

“No thanks. What’s in the IV?”

“Human growth hormone, vitamins, and something to allow you to rest. Get in bed. I need to start your drip and hook you up to a heart monitor.”

Kamrowski’s left eye was squinting more than usual, and the last thing I wanted her doing was jabbing my vein with a needle. I glanced at Anya, who came to my rescue. “Get some rest, Dr. K., I can handle it.”

I removed my shirt and climbed into bed, awaiting the IV.

Anya closed the door, then surprised me by removing her own shirt.

“Anya?”

“If you’re going to lose your virginity, Kwan, gift it to someone special.” She climbed in bed with me and we kissed, her tongue flirting with mine. Before I knew it we were naked, and yet everything felt different from my groping encounter in the ocean with Tracy . . . lust and love worlds apart.

I always imagined what my first time would be like. You see stars hooking up in movies and they’re moaning and their eyes are rolling and everything’s choreographed and perfect, and then there’s porn and that’s a whole different animal. I didn’t know if Anya was a virgin, but she sure felt like a virgin. Me? I was clumsy and panting and trying my best to force myself inside her before I totally lost control. She finally climbed on top of me and guided me in and I lasted about seven seconds . . . seven seconds of heaven I never thought I’d ever get to experience after my car accident.

When I was done Anya laid down on top of me, resting her head on my chest. “How was it?”

“Best moment in my life.”

“Mine, too. But now I have to hook up your IV drip and say good night.”

“You can’t stay here with me?”

“Dr. Becker would have a fit. Besides, this bed can barely hold you, and we both need our rest.”

She kissed me; then we climbed out of bed and dressed. I lay back down in my bathing suit, allowing Anya to adhere the EKG leads to my chest. I tried not to wince as she slid the IV needle into my vein.

“Kwan, before I leave I’ll fill the bathtub with water—just in case your gills spasm.”

My heart pounded, my mind suddenly consumed in fear. “Is that something I need to worry about?”

“It’s something we obviously need to prepare for, but worrying does no good. Your mind needs to stay focused so you can remain in control.”

“What happens if I can’t control these changes? What happens if I become psychotic, like those rats? If that happens, will you be there to save me?”

She squeezed my hand. “I’m here for you.”

“That’s not what I meant. If things go bad, I don’t want to end up suffering like those rats with the fangs and nasty dispositions . . . or be an exhibit in Becker’s aquarium of horrors. If the human Kwan disappears, I need to know you’ll put me out of my misery.”

“Kwan—”

“Please, Anya! You have to promise me that if things go too far you’ll end my life.”

Hot tears ran out of her blue eyes and onto my hand. “I promise.”

I couldn’t sleep, my thoughts ping-ponging from Anya to the basketball game to the scene on the beach, and finally to the sudden, frightening gill transformation that had nearly ended my life. The fear refused to allow my mind to shut down, and when I finally drifted off the urge to pee shook me out of my dream.

Damn IV. I must have gone to the bathroom five times over the next three hours, each visit requiring me to unplug my heart monitor and wheel the IV stand to the toilet—my bladder refilling throughout the night as the meds continued draining into my vein.

It wasn’t until daylight that exhaustion finally pulled me under . . .

The surface undulates above me like liquid mercury. Curtains of sunlight dance before me, bleeding into the depths below. I move through this liquid universe and the liquid universe moves through me. I can see it and taste it; I can hear it and inhale its scents, but most of all I can feel it. Everything. From the tiniest flick of a shrimp’s tail to the cry of a twenty-ton whale. The sea is a world of vibration, and my body is a tuning fork.

A moray eel pokes its head out of a hole and I can sense the sand grinding beneath its belly. A school of fish feeds on krill in the distance, and their gnashing jaws become my overture. The harmonics attract an audience—a gray whale and her calf. The pair expels thunderous breaths through the surface—the chuffing of their lungs reverberating along the sides of my body, the beating of their hearts taking residence in my blood.

Kwan . . .

Now, it is the deep that beckons. Driven by primordial instinct, I curl into a steep dive, harboring neither thought nor worry nor fear. Blue becomes olive-green as the darkness closes in around me, my eyes accommodating the swift descent into the abyss.

Kwan . . .

The empty carcass awaits my presence, bobbing upright along the bottom. There is no vibration, no scent. No movement, no pulse. I have been summoned into the void by food which lacks sustenance—a scavengers’ banquet.

I circle the dead creature, my current disturbing its slumber.

The dead woman’s eyes flash open.

“Huh!” I shot up in bed, my heart racing, my mind holding fast to the image of my mother, her face pale in death—melding into Anya’s, my girlfriend, hovering over me.

“Kwan, are you all right? You were yelling in your sleep.”

“Nightmare. Anya, get this IV out of me; I’ve had enough. What time is it?”

“Almost one in the afternoon. Dr. Becker sent me in to wake you. They’re discussing ways to fix your DNA.”

The conference room was located on the second floor. It was small and still smelled of last night’s Chinese takeout. Seated around an oval table that looked as old as the building was Dr. Becker, her assistant, Nadja Kamrowski, Joe Botchin, Li-ling—and a new but familiar face.

Jeff Elrod was a heavyset man in his midfifties. He had blond hair that had whitened with age and he wore it long to cover a receding hairline, and I suppose because wearing a ponytail probably made him feel cool. He had thin lips and a wide smile that reeked of ego, but the eyes were dangerous—hazel lasers that locked onto you and burned a hole into your soul.

I knew Mr. Elrod—he associated with my father, but never with others present. It would be a midnight visit for a walk in our backyard or a chance meeting at the mall with “Uncle Jeff.” I had last seen him four years ago lurking in my father’s study at some ungodly hour of the night and it was his presence that compelled me to hack into the Admiral’s e-mail where I managed to cross-reference a rough identity. Elrod’s waistline had thickened since then, but I doubted the former CIA field operative had moved to a desk job.

His eyes locked onto mine the moment Anya and I entered the room.

Dr. Becker stood to make the introductions, but Elrod cut her off. “That’s unnecessary, Doctor. Kwan and I are old friends, aren’t we, Kwan?”

I took a seat across from him, his smile unnerving. “You were my father’s friend. We spoke twice in fourteen years.”

“Three times, actually. You’re forgetting about the time you and your pal Clark Newsom hacked Dad’s computer. Good times, huh?” And he smiled at me like a serpent.

“Why are you here?”

“Why am I here? Well, I’m here as a friend. And I’m here representing a group of investors. See, kid, Dr. Becker led us to believe that she had finally developed a cure for cancer—an immune system booster we expected her to be mass-producing by now. Thanks to you, we know this cure still has a few bugs in it. Of course, Dr. B. wasn’t exactly volunteering that information, but we have other means of obtaining updates. Isn’t that right, Dr. Kamrowski?”

Nadja Kamrowski turned to Dr. Becker. “I’m sorry, Barbara. But time is of the essence. Like it or not, we have a human test subject. We need to use him.”

“How?”

“We place Kwan in the observation tank and allow the full effects of his metamorphosis to come out. Then we use the filtration system to feed him high doses of the three beta-blockers we’ve been working with. Whichever drug or combination of drugs causes his symptoms to abate gets added to the protocol. It’ll take ten days to complete the tests, during which time we can bring in the extra personnel and equipment needed to mass-produce the sharks’ stem cells.”

Jeff Elrod’s eyebrows rose. “Wow, Kwan. Looks like your involvement in this project could shortcut a cure for cancer and make you a national hero, except no one can know about it.”

“Why not?” Anya asked innocently.

Elrod’s eyes took her in. “Anya, right? My, you’re a pretty young thing, just like your mother, Elizabeth. No wonder your father fell in love with her at Cambridge. How is Dad? Still teaching economics at FAU? A tenured professor . . . you and Mom must be so proud. And look at you, following in the old man’s footsteps. The future sure looks bright for our young immigrant . . . unless, of course, you overstep your boundaries. Then it’s bye-bye citizenship, bye-bye Boca, hello New Delhi. But hey, there are worse things than being deported. By the way, my condolences about your big brother—his death was a real tragedy . . . but I digress. You asked me a legitimate question about keeping our work here a secret, and I went off on one of my famous tangents.”

Anya reached beneath the tabletop and squeezed my hand, her limb trembling.

“See, sweetheart, sometimes it’s better for business not to air your dirty laundry. Growing gills . . . that’s dirty laundry. Dunking a basketball—that’s good stuff. Which is why your boyfriend here is going to be allowed to be a star athlete after he cooperates with Dr. Kamrowski. By the way, Kwan, I spoke to Oprah’s people and let them know you’d be rescheduling your interview while we finished doing all the necessary medical testing—that way our biotech partners can help other paraplegics dunk basketballs, too. But, hey, let’s not put the cart before the horse—first we’ve got to get those beta-blockers in your system, right Dr. B?”

Dr. Becker nodded nervously. “Yes, right. Kwan, we ordered breakfast for you—why don’t you and Anya eat while we—”

Jeff Elrod slapped his palms on the table, the acoustic blast causing everyone to jump. “Breakfast . . . the most important meal of the day. Except my watch says it’s already thirteen hundred hours, which means breakfast is over. And since lunch is for union workers and other useless dregs of society, why don’t we get junior here in the freakin’ tank and if he gets hungry you can feed him a fish.”

I turned to the black ops agent, my eyes burning into his, the muscles in my upper back contracting. “Maybe you should join me in the tank, asshole.”

Anya held on to me, Joe Botchin and Dr. Becker hurrying around the table to join her lest I grab Jeff Elrod by his throat. “He’s testing you, Kwan. Remember what we spoke about last night? Stay in control. Let it go.”

I took a deep breath—only to find myself wheezing through the partially closed esophageal membrane in my throat.

Dr. Becker probed the side of my neck. “His gills are more pronounced. Get him into the tank—now.”

Anya dragged me out of the room, Jeff Elrod’s smile unnerving.

27

I
was in serious trouble by the time we made it out to the catwalk. Johnny Roig was standing by the open top of the forty-foot-wide, thirty-foot-deep cylindrical aquarium, the tank’s water level nearly reaching the rim.

“We’ve had the heater running all night; if it’s not warm enough for you—”

I pushed the man aside and jumped in.

For an anxiety-filled thirty seconds I couldn’t breathe, my chest on fire. And then I burped a long belch of air that seemed to squeeze my stomach flat and crushed the cavity beneath my rib cage as my lungs collapsed, sending a sizzling trail of bubbles out of my mouth.

With every molecule of air gone, I opened my mouth and inhaled my briny surroundings until my gills opened and I could breathe again. The instant the air was purged, I sank feetfirst to the bottom of the tank.

Within seconds, my body adapted to my underwater environment. My sinus passages pinched beneath my nose and eyes, flattening the contours of my face. My ear canals pressed together until the cavities were sealed. Protective membranes slid over my cornea and eyes and my fuzzy liquid world came into focus as if I were wearing swim goggles.

I kicked off my shoes and socks, then pulled off my jeans and shirt and stood on the Plexiglas bottom to take inventory of myself and my surroundings, still wearing the bathing suit I had worn to the beach party.

I was neutrally buoyant, standing on a grilled surface that vented filtered water into the aquarium. The slightest push off the bottom and I rose ten feet, the slightest twist and I spun.

How did I feel? There was a part of me that felt petrified . . . I mean, after all, I was changing both internally and externally, and that’s pretty scary. At the same time I was breathing underwater, and that was just beyond sick.

The tank was cylindrical for a reason—the shape allowed sharks to swim in a perpetual circle in order to breathe—something that I could accomplish simply by opening and closing my mouth. Above my head, the circular opening revealed the catwalk and the ceiling lights above. Otherwise, I was surrounded by the aquarium’s curved glass walls, which distorted the periphery of the observation room, rendering it a convex fish-eyed world.

Turning slowly, I discovered my audience.

Dr. Becker and Dr. Kamrowski were jabbering away, though I could hear nothing. Joe Botchin was setting up folding chairs for himself and Li-ling. Jeff Elrod paced back and forth, his eyes wide with wonder, even as he videoed me on his iPhone.

Looking up, I saw Anya descend from the catwalk’s spiral stairwell. Pushing away from the bottom, I swam up to her—and was suddenly overcome by the bizarre sensation of my skin thickening over my entire body. I opened and closed my hand, the muscles taut. The pigment along the back of my arms appeared to be darkening to a grayish-brown, and it felt almost alien in texture—like rubberized sandpaper. A closer inspection revealed triangular-shaped dermal denticles that rubbed smooth from head to toe but bit when stroked the opposite way.

Within seconds my flesh had become living armor. Not only was it protective, but it seemed to channel the water! With a flurry of kicks, I felt myself accelerating across the width of the tank as if it were filled with oil.

While my new shark skin gave me speed, I still swam like a human, and humans are awkward in the water, certainly no match for sharks. Worse, I looked freakish and felt like a sideshow exhibit—all of which contributed to a building sense of anxiety.

How long did I have to remain in here?

How soon would those beta-blockers start to kick in so I could go home?

I torpedoed over to Dr. Becker and her colleagues—and suddenly realized I had no means of communicating. Their voices were muffled—until I pressed my hands to the acrylic wall and discovered something else about my skin: my shark epidermis possessed neuroreceptors that registered the tiniest vibration, acting like an inner ear.

Touching the aquarium glass, I could hear everything outside the tank.

“Becker, what’s he doing?”

“It would appear, Mr. Elrod, that he’s trying to communicate.”

“He wants to know how long he has to stay underwater,” said Li-ling, reading my lips.

“You think he can hear us?” Joe asked.

Dr. Becker shook her head. “The glass is far too thick. Besides, look at his ears—his ear canals have sealed to prevent damage from the water pressure.”

I was about to correct Dr. Becker when Jeff Elrod pulled her aside. “By pressure, you mean he’s capable of diving into deeper waters. How deep?”

“That’s impossible to say.”

“Well, how deep can a shark dive?”

“As far as I know, there aren’t any limits.”

“Does the kid have limits?”

“Again, it’s impossible to say.”

Elrod’s face was reddening. “Let’s play a game, Doctor. Let’s pretend your life depends upon you providing me with accurate answers.”

“Are you threatening me, Mr. Elrod?”

“Very much so. Now how deep can the kid dive?”

Dr. Becker appeared flustered. “Whether it’s ten feet or ten thousand feet, water pressure only affects things possessing air cavities—lungs, sinuses, and ear canals in humans; steel hulls in submarines. In order to breathe from his gills, Kwan’s air cavities must collapse.”

“Then he may not be susceptible to the dangers of extreme depths?”

“In theory. The only way to know for sure is to subject him to hydrostatic pressure testing. For our purposes, that’s not necessary. We want to reverse the mutation, not quantify it.”

“What would it entail, this hydrostatic pressure testing?”

Dr. Becker was about to object, but thought better of it. “When you test a dive watch, you place the watch in a container of water inside a hyperbaric chamber and increase the pressure to simulate submersion at depth. With a human—it’s never been done.”

Jeff Elrod smiled, patting the geneticist on the back. “Good talk. You can go now.”

I heard tapping sounds and traced them to Anya. She had typed a message to me on her iPad, dictated to her by Nadja Kamrowski.

Dr. Kamrowski says you must remain in the tank at least ten hours. We cannot begin the beta-blockers until your metamorphosis is complete; otherwise any latent symptoms may become resistant to the drugs.

Seeing my despair, Anya pressed her hand to the glass as a gesture of support. I did the same—the nerve endings in my dermal denticles so sensitive that I was able to feel the vibrations of her pulse.

It wa
s going to be a long day.

Three hours passed. I had held out hope that the mutations had ceased when my feet started to change. The deformity began as a hunk of cartilage which protruded from the back of my heels like a two-inch spike, only it continued to thicken and grow. By five in the afternoon, the prominence had peaked into a pair of gruesome fourteen-inch-long bony structures—my feet now resembling a miniature pair of concave skis, the curvature preventing me from standing.

I was petrified.
Would my entire body begin sprouting these mutant growths?

My handlers were perplexed. None of the rats had developed these foot deformities.

Finally, it was Li-ling who suggested a potential purpose. Tapping on the glass to get my attention, she held both of her arms in front of her, then pressed her palms together before moving them from side to side.

It took me a moment to comprehend. With my feet and legs pressed together, the protrusions along the back of my heels formed the curved upper lobe of a tail fin!

Rising off the bottom, I pressed my legs together and attempted moving my hips back and forth like Li-ling suggested. It was awkward, sort of like twirling a hula hoop, and my body kept rolling sideways until I figured out where to position my arms. But the combination of streamlining my legs while swishing my feet east-west propelled me through the water so efficiently that in no time it became second nature, and I found myself circling the periphery of the tank, my body undulating like—well, like a shark.

Kwan Wilson—Sharkman.

The more I swam, the better I felt. At some point I closed my eyes, entering a Zen-like state that shut down part of my brain, allowing me to sleep—my skin’s neuroreceptors feeling the interior walls of the tank as I glided and breathed . . .

Glided and breathed.

Glided and breathed . . .