“Part of junk DNA,” I said. “What about it?”
“Transformational genetics is a relatively new branch of science that is searching for methods of changing specific DNA, and essentially rebuilding it so that a new tailor-made code can be developed.”
“That’s not new,” I pointed out. “The Nazis tried that, and the whole Eugenics movement before that.”
“That’s selective breeding. That’s cumbersome and time consuming because it requires eggs and host bodies and so forth. This is remodeling, and recent advances have opened developmental doors no one imagined would be possible in this century.”
I didn’t say anything. During the firefight at the Dragon Factory we’d encountered mercenaries who had undergone gene therapy with ape DNA. And there were other even more hideous monsters there.
“The word ‘theriomorphy’ keeps showing up. What’s that?”
“Shapeshifting.”
“Shape…?”
“The ability to change at will from one form to another.” She smiled through the blinding flashlight glow. “From human form into something else.”
“At… will?”
“Oh yes.”
“Like from what to what? You’re making this sound like we’re hunting werewolves or something.”
Her smile flickered. “Who knows? Maybe we are.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I know.”
“Wait… hold on… are we really standing here having a conversation about werewolves? I mean… fucking werewolves?”
After a three count she said, “No.”
“Jesus jumped-up Christ in a sidecar, then why—?”
“Werewolves would be easy,” she said, cutting right through my words. “Werewolves would be a silver bullet and we’d take the rest of the afternoon off for a drink. I wish it was only werewolves.”
I gaped at her.
Seriously… what do you say to that?
-7-
“Okay,” I said, “before I pee my pants here, how do you know about this and what can we do about it? This facility is sealed.”
She flashed her first real smile, and it looked so much like the battlefield grin Grace used to give me that I almost turned away.
“When your task force shut down this place,” she said, “they made a thorough video inventory of everything. High-res footage that showed where every piece of paper was all the way down to the way pencils sat in a pot on each desk. Everything, with a second camera filming what the first camera was doing in order to firmly establish the integrity of the scene and contribute the first real link in the sacred chain of evidence. Am I right?”
Church had told me about that, but I hadn’t seen it. I nodded anyway.
“So we can’t take or touch anything recorded on that video.”
“That’s the size of it,” I agreed.
“The federal order sealing this place contains an authorized copy of that video.”
“Yup.”
“And the teams who were here agreed that absolutely everything has been documented — at least in terms of its existence and placement.”
“Sure.”
Her smile brightened. “Therefore, anything that isn’t on the video technically doesn’t exist in terms of that Federal order.”
“Sure,” I said again, “but how does that put us back in a discussion with werewolves? ‘Cause, quite frankly I’m having a hard timing shaking loose of that conversation.”
The smile dimmed but did not go out. “Not werewolves,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“They’re not werewolves. That’s not what they were doing here.”
Felicity turned and walked a few paces away, going along the hall in the direction I’d come. She stopped, looked through the shadows. “You were in the storage room?”
“Maybe.”
“You were in the storage room,” she repeated, not making it a question this time. “Did you look inside the bathroom?”
“Sure. Nothing there.”
She sighed audibly.
“I wish I could say you were right about that, Captain.”
Without another word she began walking down the hallway toward the storeroom. She didn’t have a flashlight and my beam was currently pointed at the floor in front of me; however she seemed quite at home in the dark.
I felt like I’d walked into the middle of a play for which I had no script and no stage direction.
She paused once in the very outside edge of the light and looked back at me. I had seen Grace turn that way, stand that way.
Look that way.
Then Felicity Hope turned and vanished into the black.
My eyes tingled at the corners and I knew that given half a chance I was going to break down and cry.
“Oh, Grace… ” I said very, very quietly.
-8-
I caught up with her at the entrance to the storage room and followed her over to the small bathroom. As she approached the door she drew a small gun from a shoulder rig.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Getting ready,” she replied crisply, “and I suggest you do the same. I don’t know exactly what’s down in there but things could get very bad very quickly.”
I almost smiled. “In a toilet?”
“I trust you have enough faith in Barrier agents to know that we don’t typically feel the need to arm ourselves to take a piss.” She opened the door and we looked inside. Toilet, sink, white-tiled wall, plastic trashcan. And the partial handprint on the back wall.
I said, “Secret door?”
“Secret door,” she agreed. “And your Federal task force missed it.”
“Balls.”
With her pistol in her right hand she placed her left on the back wall, right over the partial print. She moved her hand to one corner and pressed. The tile tilted inward and there was an audible click.
The whole rear wall swung inward on silent hinges revealing a set of metal stairs that went down into blackness. A smell wafted up at us.
Rotting meat.
Human waste.
And… something else.
A fish stink. Not actually unpleasant, like the way an aquarium supply store smells; or the kitchens at a low-end fish and chips restaurant.
There were sounds, too.
Machines. Whirring motors. Rhythmic pumps. Other mechanical sounds, all soft, all muted.
“How do you know about this?” I asked quietly.
Felicity shrugged. “This information was hard-won, believe me. Literally blood, sweat and tears.”
She moved to the top of the steel steps.
I drew my Beretta. “What’s down there? I mean really, no bullshit about werewolves or boogeymen. What the fuck are we going to find down there?”
Felicity turned toward me. In the crowded confines of the bathroom she was very close to me. I could smell her perfume. It was the same brand Grace used. What the hell was it, standard issue by Barrier? Or maybe it was the top-selling scent in England and I was out of the stylistic loop.
Her body was achingly familiar and devastatingly female. It was the kind of body that no matter how well-balanced and normally un-sexist a man is, he can’t help but be profoundly aware of it. Of hips and breasts, of long legs and a slender, graceful throat, of animal heat that was purely, inarguably, powerfully female.
And yet…
Standing this close to her, there was something wrong about her.
Maybe it was because she was so like Grace that knowing she wasn’t Grace made her feel fundamentally wrong. It was meeting a deliberate fake, a double or stand-in for someone I loved. Everything similar suddenly felt like a cheat, like a fraud perpetrated on my broken heart by a cruel and vindictive universe.