“Angel?” Julia asked.
“Yeah,” Chapel said. “Excuse me.” He holstered his weapon and took out his phone. “Julia — you watch Ian. If he tries to get free, just shoot him.”
“I guess I don’t get to be protected,” the chimera said. He didn’t sound particularly offended.
Chapel ignored him and walked over to the door of the shack. He dialed Angel’s number and put the phone to his ear. Waited for the cheap phone to find a signal.
And waited. And waited. Eventually the phone beeped at him three times to say his call had failed.
“You won’t get reception out here,” Taggart said, looking mildly amused. “The mountains are in the way of the nearest cell tower.”
“This is Angel we’re talking about. She’s very good at getting around obstacles.” Chapel tried the call again. “Huh,” he said, when the call failed again. The third time, he said “Damn,” instead.
It took him a while to realize that the phone in his hand was just a cheap disposable. He’d been working with Angel so long he’d come to think she was magic. That she could communicate with him anywhere. But that hadn’t been the case, had it? In Atlanta, when he’d gone too far underground, she couldn’t reach him. In Denver, her signal had been jammed.
Crap. He’d lost his arm. He’d lost the backing of the DIA. Now he’d lost his guardian angel. He’d been reduced to just his own, natural resources. He had to think this through. Pick his next step very carefully.
“Okay,” he said, walking back over to the others. “Okay. We just have to do this the old-fashioned way. I’m going to go outside and scout the road, make sure we have a clear route out of here. Then we’re all going to get on the snowmachines and head for the nearest town.”
“That’s Healy, back at the highway,” Taggart told him. “It’s just a little tourist trap of a place, though. They sell things to the tourists who come to see Denali.”
“If we can just get to civilization, any kind of civilization, we can hide in the crowd there. That’ll help,” Chapel told him. He looked at Julia — then at Ian. He didn’t like the idea of leaving her in the shack with the chimera. The alternative wasn’t great, but it would have to do. “You,” he said, pointing at Ian. “You’re with me.”
“Okay,” the chimera told him.
“You try anything, I will have to kill you,” Chapel said.
“Understood. Just make sure you understand — that deal goes both ways. You try to execute me, and I’ll twist your head off.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Chapel told him.
Chapel untied the chimera and let him grab his parka. Then he went to the door and cracked it, peering out into the afternoon light. He saw nothing but snow out there — it had been falling the entire time they’d been inside talking. A thick layer of snow sat on top of the snowmachines, and more snow had fallen against the door so it tumbled inside around his shoes and started to melt instantly. The weather could be a problem, he thought. If they got back to Fairbanks only to find the airport shut down while it was snowing, they could be stuck, vulnerable and alone, waiting for the CIA to show up.
Nothing for it.
“Come on,” he said to Ian. The two of them pushed their way outside, shoving the door open against the new-fallen snow. Outside, visibility was cut down considerably by the snow in the air. Their feet made loud crunching noises with every step. If someone was out there, waiting to ambush them, they would never know it.
DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, ALASKA: APRIL 15, T+83:55
Chapel’s feet sank deep into the snow with every step, slowing him down to a crawl. If he’d had snowshoes, maybe it would have been different. “Why did it have to be Alaska?” he asked.
The question had been rhetorical, but Ian answered anyway. “For the grizzlies. If you’re going to study hibernation, you need to understand why small animals do it so well but large animals have a hard time with it. And why grizzly bears, which are very large, can do it while primates can’t. And if you want to study grizzlies in anything like their natural habitat, you need to be right here.”
“Taggart told you all that?” Chapel asked. He headed through the clearing, intending to make it as far as the road before he turned back. “You and he are getting along pretty well. Considering you were supposed to kill him.”
“The Voice wanted me to do lots of things,” Ian replied. “But I’m not a machine. I don’t do things just because someone tells me to.”
“The Voice got you out of that camp,” Chapel pointed out. “Some people would think maybe you owed it.”
“People, maybe. Not chimeras. We know better than that.”
“How did you get here so fast?” Chapel asked. “You can’t have come over land. You must have flown. The Voice must have arranged things for you.”
Ian stopped in place and seemed to have to think about it. “I stowed away in the cargo hold of a plane that brought me as far as Fairbanks. From there I walked. The Voice gave me directions. As long as it was helping me, sure. I did what it said. When it wasn’t helping me any more, I stopped listening.”
“Stay in front of me,” Chapel said, gesturing for the chimera to walk ahead of him on the path.
“You don’t trust me,” Ian said. “I don’t blame you. You met some of the others. Malcolm, and Quinn, and Brody. I’m different.”
“I met your old gang,” Chapel pointed out. “The ones who helped you kill Alan and his gang.” Ian said nothing. For a while they just kept wading through the snow, headed south, toward the road. Chapel thought about Samuel. The Voice had told Ian to kill Samuel, and Ian had refused. Maybe — just maybe — there was something to what Ian claimed. Maybe he was different from the others. Maybe he could control his impulses. Maybe that meant Chapel couldn’t treat him like the others. Couldn’t treat him like a monster.
That was a dangerous line of thought. But if Ian really was able to control himself, to act like a human, then Chapel had to treat him like one, too.
“I met Ellie Pechowski, too,” Chapel said, finally.
“Miss P,” Ian affirmed.
“Yeah. She said you were different. And I’ll admit, you showed a lot more leadership potential than the others. A lot more emotional stability. But you’re still a chimera. You’re still genetically programmed for violence and aggression.”
“You’re still a human,” Ian said. “You’re still programmed for mercy and compassion. It didn’t stop you from killing the others.”
“I did that to protect other humans,” Chapel said. “You did what you did — why? So you could escape from Camp Putnam? See the real world for once?”
“Would that be an unacceptable reason to you?” Ian asked. “Would you have done any differently?”
Chapel thought about it. The chimeras had been created for a purpose they didn’t understand. Then, simply because of what they were, they’d been locked away from the world forever. In that situation, yeah. He would have done almost anything to get his freedom. But he would have wanted something else, too.
“They gave you books to read in there. Did they ever give you Frankenstein?”
Ian shook his head.
“I read it after I lost my arm. I felt like I was made out of spare parts, then, and I thought maybe I’d find some answers there. It’s the story of a man, a scientist, who creates a new life form. In the book he builds it out of parts of dead people. Dead humans. Then he animates it with life, but he’s so horrified at what he’s done that he runs away from his own creation. Refuses to accept it. The creature ends up killing everyone he loves, and then pursuing him halfway across the world to hound him to his death.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Ian asked.