She was very close. He couldn’t help but smell her faint but sweet perfume and feel the warmth of her body so near his.
“When that maniac jumped in the cab and told the cabbie to drive, I thought for sure he was going to kill me.”
Chapel pulled himself back from what he’d been thinking. He put out of his mind how good she smelled, and instead he studied the woman’s face. She was a lot tougher than most civilians he’d met, mentally and emotionally. She could handle this. “That was his plan. He killed your mother to make her… I don’t know. Feel guilt for something she’d done. He thought killing you might make her see the light. The fact that she was already dead, that his plan made no sense, doesn’t seem to have occurred to him.”
Julia nodded. She shoved her hands in the pockets of her stained lab coat. “I gathered as much from what he said to me.”
“He spoke to you? In the cab? This could be important,” Chapel insisted.
“Don’t get too excited. He just kept saying he was going to make my mom pay. That she owed him, and that I was how he was going to fulfill that debt. That was all he said — well, that and he kept threatening the cabbie if he didn’t go faster. At one point he reached through the opening in the partition and grabbed the cabbie’s ear. He nearly tore it off. I’m going to assume — because I know you won’t tell me even if I’m wrong — that he was on drugs of some kind. Speed, or perhaps PCP. That’s the only explanation I have for why he was so strong.”
Chapel knew there was a question hidden in that statement. She was asking if he knew of another reason. He didn’t, so it was easy to stay quiet. Even if he’d had an explanation, he couldn’t have given it to her. I am a silent warrior, he thought to himself, repeating the creed of the army Military Intelligence Corps.
She reached up and touched his face again, more gently this time. Her hand was very warm.
Without warning, she leaned in and kissed him. Her lips were soft and warm, and when they pressed against his, her arms went around his neck. For a moment he couldn’t think straight.
Then she let go of him and walked across the room to put her flashlight back in its drawer, as if nothing at all had happened.
“Not that I’m complaining,” he said, “but what was that for?”
“Because you saved my life, and because, I guess, you avenged my mother,” she said, her back turned toward him. “And maybe because I wanted to. Don’t worry. I wasn’t trying to start something. When you walk out my door, you’re never coming back. I know that.”
“Listen, Julia, I—”
“We need to make sure your brain wasn’t damaged,” she said, clearly intending to change the subject.
“I feel a little light-headed… now,” he said, smiling at her.
But she was done with whatever had passed between them. She was back to her professional mien. She folded her arms and leaned against the counter behind her. “Your pupils are normal, which is very encouraging, but I’m going to ask you some questions. What city are you in?”
Chapel frowned. Seriously? She was just going to kiss him and then immediately pretend like nothing had happened? He shrugged in confusion. “New York,” he told her.
“Good. What’s today’s date?”
“April twelfth.”
She nodded. “Very good. What agency do you work for?”
Chapel reared back. He shook his head.
Julia sighed and folded her arms. “I’ve met enough spies in my life to recognize the type, Captain Chapel. I know you’re in the intelligence community. You’re tracking down assassins sent to kill former CIA employees. This has something to do with work my parents did twenty years ago, and—”
“Stop,” he said. “You don’t want to continue in that line.”
“Oh?” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Is that a threat?”
“It’s an apology, though I guess I didn’t phrase it very well. I’d love to tell you what’s going on,” Chapel said. “Really. I think you deserve to know. The problem is, I don’t really understand it myself. I was given a very minimal briefing and sent after these men. Anything I do know about them, I can’t share with you.”
She stared at him for a while, perhaps giving him a chance to relent. If so, he didn’t take it. Eventually she just nodded and turned away.
And that… was that. Whatever had happened, whatever had made her kiss him — whatever might have happened was over. She was done with him.
He had a strong urge to run away. Like he’d done something wrong. There was one thing he had to ask her, though.
“I blacked out on the way here,” he said. “Sometimes people say things when they’re blacked out that they don’t mean to. Did I say anything that I wouldn’t remember?” he asked.
“You kept calling out for somebody named Angel,” she told him. “And you said one word a couple of times. ‘Chimera.’ ”
Chapel nodded. “You don’t know what that word means, do you?”
“I do have a postgraduate degree, Captain,” she said, a nasty sneer in her voice. “A chimera is a creature with the body of a lion, a goat head on its back, and—”
“—the tail of a snake, sure,” Chapel said. Enough. He should just go. There was another target in New York City he had to check on, and three more detainees out there he had to take down. There was no time for tiptoeing around this woman’s feelings. “Thanks, anyway.”
“Except,” she said, “to a geneticist it means something completely different.”
“A geneticist? Like your mother?”
“Uh-huh,” she said.
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+11:03
“In genetics a chimera is an organism that has more than one kind of DNA in the same body,” Julia told him.
“What, like a mutant?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No, a mutant is an organism that has the normal DNA for its species except a couple of genes are randomly changed from what they should be. A chimera is much weirder. Part of its normal DNA has been replaced by DNA from another source. Sometimes that happens naturally, when two eggs are fertilized in the same womb but one absorbs the other. That’s one way you get people with two different color eyes, for instance — that’s called chimerism. It can mean something else, though, as well. It can refer to transgenic organisms.”
“Transgenic?”
“A transgenic creature is a kind of chimera where the two or more different kinds of DNA come from completely different species. I don’t mean mules or ligers or that sort of thing, where you have two animals so closely related they can interbreed. Transgenics is when a human being intentionally adds unrelated DNA to an organism’s genetic makeup. Say, adding firefly genes to a tobacco plant so it glows in the dark. Or growing a human ear on the back of a mouse.”
Chapel’s head reeled, and not from the concussion. “They can do that? And it doesn’t just kill the mouse?”
“Not if it’s done right. Only a small number of genes are switched, normally. And yes, we can do that now. It has been done, successfully.”
“But why?” Chapel demanded. “Is this some kind of sick mad scientist thing? Like, crossing a monkey and a shark to get a monkey with big teeth?”
“It’s done for slightly more noble reasons, usually. Like with spidergoats.”
A vision of eight-legged goats spinning webs across mountaintops filled Chapel’s head. “Now I know you’re full of it.”
“No, really. It’s been done. They introduced some spider DNA to a goat ovum, and the result was a spidergoat. It looks just like a normal goat, but its milk contains threads of spider silk. Spider silk is much, much stronger than steel, but because of the size of spiders it’s tough to harvest. Spidergoat silk is a lot bigger and longer than the stuff a spider makes. They use spidergoat silk to make body armor for soldiers. At least, they’re starting to.”