What Happened to Lori Read online

  The sculptor hummed and flashed. “Interesting. You do not carry MCR1 or OCA2. But your baby might.”

  Presley became visibly panicked. “My baby?”

  “Not your dying daughter with the heart defect, Ms. Presley. I am talking about the zygote-to-be.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You have already forgotten? Yesterday, you had sexual intercourse with Mr. Pilgrim.”

 
 

  “I’m on Depo-Provera. A shot prevents pregnancy for three months.”

  “Yes. But I reversed that. Human sperm can stay viable in the uterus for up to three days, and while healing your UV burn and various contusions I released one of your eggs and helped speed the process along.”

  He held the sculptor over Presley’s pelvis and projected a picture of her internal workings on the wall, magnified thousands of times.

  “Sperm, meet egg. Welcome to the miracle of conception.”

  Grim watched it happen, unable to fathom the enormity of the situation.

 
 

  “She’s… pregnant?”

  “Yes, Mr. Pilgrim. That is what conception means.”

  “I’m going to be a father.”

  “Once again you are repeating the obvious. Did you also suffer from repeated head injuries as a youth?”

 
 
 
 
 

  Grim had only known true joy a few times in his life. The first time he’d gone to Disneyland. The first time he’d gotten laid. Graduating Basic Training. Stepping back on US soil after his first tour of Iraq.

  This beat them all, by a zillion times.

  His eyes welled up, and though bound to a gurney, Grim felt like he could fly. “Presley… I…”

  Presley looked away. “Save it for later, Grim.”

  “I want to tell you that—”

  “I said, later.”

  “Of course, Ms. Presley, we will not know for a week whether your son is a pheomelanin carrier or not.”

  “My son? It’s a boy?”

 

  “If the boy is a carrier, you will be allowed to give birth. If not, you will meet the same fate as Mr. Kadir and Mr. Doruk. We will keep you in a holding cell until then. But you did kill one of my guards, and you have proven yourself to be an overall pain in the ass, so I am going to take one of your hands.”

  “Don’t take her hand. Take mine instead.”

  “No, Mr. Pilgrim. But since you are feeling chivalrous, you can look after it for her.”

  The Watcher stabbed Presley with the needle, and then the sculptor removed her left hand at the wrist, instantly closing the wound.

  The hand floated across the room and the stump touched Grim’s forearm—

  —the Watcher injected Grim—

  —and Presley’s hand fused there.

  Grim stared, incredulous, at his new third hand—Presley’s hand—now grafted to his arm.

  Without consciously trying to do it, he waved at himself.

 

  He glanced over at Presley, but her eyes drilled into the Watcher. Before she said something that made her lose more body parts, Grim interjected.

  “Why do you need my genes? Isn’t that sculptor thing enough to fix your, uh, skin condition?”

  “It is not a skin condition. Our accelerated metabolism results in rampant organismal senescence. My people age, and become ill, and mutate, without gene therapy.”

  “So can’t you swap out your parts with clones or something? Do you have clones?”

  “It is not a question of cloning. It has to do with how complicated our genetic sequence is compared to yours. The sculptor has limitations. Just as it cannot replace large amounts of missing tissue, or entire organs or limbs, it has limited ability when it comes to mutating our DNA.”

  The Watcher rubbed the patch on his arm, and a guard came in, pushing Presley’s gurney away.

  “We’re getting out of here, Presley. I promise.”

  The Watcher smiled.

  “You should save your energy, Mr. Pilgrim. The breeding room is not nearly as pleasant as it sounds.”

  PRESLEY ○ 10:02+am

 

  A guard wheeled her down a corridor and Presley took in the environment with a growing sense of confusion.

  At first, the blinding light and the penetrating darkness, the Experiment and the greys, the crazy physics and backwards reality; it all produced a sense of awe almost as much as it provoked fear. After her capture, Presley had expected to be hurtling through the cosmos, on some sort of futuristic vessel with technology so alien and advanced it defied imagination.

 

  In sharp contrast to the Watcher’s control room/laboratory, which boasted hologram monitors and gadgets and unrecognizable equipment, the hallway appeared to be dug out of mud. Rather than smooth lines, sharp angles, and bright lights and metals, it had an organic feel. Presley had once seen a documentary about fire ants, and this looked like one of their tunnels; drab earth monotones, the walls, floors, and ceilings covered with ridges and bumps and uneven lines, no pipes or wires or decorations.

  A faint yellow glow bathed everything, and every few meters the scenery repeated itself.

 
 

  “Your spaceship sucks.”

  The guard replied in a high, almost childlike voice.

  “What spaceship?”

  Presley tried to look down at her hand.

 
 
 
 

  An image so ridiculous, so insane, it’s almost funny.

 

  The thought warmed her.

  Eventually, the scenery changed, and the brownish décor faded to drab blue.

  Presley was pushed past a large wall of clear material, too dull and cloudy to be glass. She peered inside.

 
 
 
 

  The woman glanced up at Presley as she passed. Her eyes had a faraway, combat-shock dullness to them.

  Next to her, another cell, another prisoner. Male, twenties, red hair.

  No arms. No legs. No genitals.

  He didn’t look at Presley, but she could hear him weeping.

  They passed four more cells, each occupied with a redhead. Two were missing limbs. The other two were intact.

  All had their ears. None looked like the picture of Lori.

 

  They stopped at an empty cell, and the guard rubbed his wrist and the transparent wall opened up like a mouth. He pushed her gurney inside.

  “Behave yourself, and your hand will be reattached. If you continue to obey, you can receive privileges. Better food. A window with a view. An elixir with dopamine receptor enhancers that induces ecstasy. Disobey, and you will lose more body parts. There is no escape. You are here forever. Have a nice stay.”

  “Is this hell? Did we all die and go to hell?”

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sp; The guard smiles. His teeth are rounded, stained. “Satan is real. Hope you never meet him.”

  He rubbed his wrist again, and the supplication collar blinded Presley with pain until unconsciousness blessedly took her.

  FABLER ○ 10:38am

  “Jesus, Fabler, what the hell happened to you?”

  Fabler hadn’t considered his appearance. He still wore body armor—no time to change—soaked and streaked with coagulated blood. Mostly from the Experiment. Some his own.

 
 

  “Bear.”

  “Bear?”

  “Whole family of black bear on my property, Hardigan. That’s why I needed the armor.”

  “So you need two M16s? Christ, Fabler. Call somebody. Call animal control.”

  “You want government people prowling around your property?”

  Hardigan’s face crinkled. “Good point.”

  “I got the mama. That’s her blood on me. Can you smell it?”

  “You do reek like an animal.”

  “Wounded the papa. Need something big to take him out.”

  “Two fully automatic military issue rifles? How about a shotgun loaded with Sabot slugs?”

  “I need range. They can run like lightning, and climb trees. You going to sell me some guns or not?”

  “According to the law, civilians can only buy pre-1986 full auto AR15s, and as you can guess, they’re pricey. Up to $30k each. NFA dealers can purchase later Class C models for significantly less, but I’m pretty sure you aren’t a dealer.”

  “Thirty grand each is fine.”

  Hardigan raised an eyebrow. “Are you wearing a wire, Fabler?”

  Fabler considered reaching over and pounding the man’s face into the counter, but the same paranoia that made Hardigan suspicious was also the reason he likely had the weapons Fabler needed.

 

  “I’m not wearing a wire. I’ve got a duffle bag in my hand. I’m going to set it down and leave. If the amount is agreeable to you, meet me in the alley out back.”

  Fabler dropped the bag of Gold Eagles onto the floor and left the Army Surplus store, heading to his Jeep. He started it up and pulled around the building.

 
 
  < Holly McKendrick disappeared at night. Like Lori. Roughly twenty-four hours later.

 
 

  The rear door to the surplus store opened, and Hardigan came out with two factory-new M16s. Fabler opened the tailgate.

  “You got five crates of NATO rounds, two hundred cartridges each, six extra thirty round magazines, and a mag loader.”

  “You need help getting everything?”

  “No. I need help figuring out the exchange rate of gold.”

  “What I gave you is worth about seventy thou.”

  “That’s too much. Even for a deal like this.”

  “You can give some of it back.”

  “I’d rather not. Been a tough year. Sure I can’t interest you in a nice shotgun with some slugs?”

  Fabler cared more about the time crunch than the money. “Fine.”

  Hardigan made two more trips to and from his shop. The shotgun was a black Wilson CBQ combat model, still coated with a thin sheen of oil.

  “Got you some boxes of Sabot, and some boxes of Foster, and then a gross of good old 00-buckshot.”

  “Thank you, Hardigan.”

  “I’m still ripping you off. You sure you don’t want anything else?”

  This was taking too long, but Fabler had a thought. “You got that mannequin inside, with the M9 on its back. Does it work?”

  “You want to use a military flamethrower to kill a bear?”

  “You asked if I wanted anything else.”

  Hardigan scratched his chin. “Haven’t fired it up in forty years, but it worked back then. We’d need to test it.”

  “No time. If you have fuel and you’ll sell it, I’ll take it.”

  “I don’t even know how much it’s worth.”

  “I’ll throw in another twenty grand.”

  “Deal.”

  Hardigan fetched the flamethrower and several cans of fuel, and loaded them into the Jeep as Fabler counted out gold coins.

  The men shook hands.

  “I hope this is enough firepower to handle your situation, Fabler.”

  “I hope so, too. My .45 only seemed to piss them off.”

  “Them?”

  Fabler got in the Jeep and headed to San Diego.

  GRIM ○ 11:30+am

  After being hauled away from the Watcher, Grim descended through a labyrinthine maze of ugly hallways made of poorly extruded plastic, each the same as the next.

 
 

  His guard took him to someplace that looked like all the other places they’d passed, and the wall stretched open.

  Then Grim’s collar activated and zapped him into unconsciousness.

  When he awoke, Grim cursed himself for the fortieth time for willingly putting that damn thing on and then surveyed his new surroundings.

  His underwear gone, he lay on a form-fitting, smooth table, tilted up at 45 degrees. His feet and hands embedded in the table itself, as if it had melted around Grim’s appendages and then hardened, burying them in plastic.

  Grim strained with all he had. The bindings didn’t budge.

  He stared at Presley’s hand, attached to his at the wrist and still sticking up.

  Concentrating, he tried to wiggle her fingers.

  They wiggled. He could feel them move like they’d always been there.

 

  Nothing about the room seemed especially foreboding or hostile. The low lighting had the intensity of candlelight, and while being nude was intimidating, and the weird, alien bondage contraption freaky, it didn’t look like a torture chamber.

 
 
 
 

  A moment later, the table between his legs came alive, stretching out into a long, thick appendage.

 
 
 

  He stared, unease becoming panic, as the arm separated into two thin, long strands, ending in needle points.

 

  The needles continued to extend, perching above his testicles.

  Then they spun like drill bits.

 
 

  The drills began to bear down.

  “MY COLLAR TAKE OFF MY COLLAR SHOCK ME SHOCKMESHOCKME!”

  FABLER ○ 6:58pm

  Passing through the blazing hot, never ending desert of New Mexico, Fabler snapped out of a Lori daydream when he noticed the squad car behind him, lights flashing.

 

  Any hope that the cop was only trying to pass vanished when the sirens blared through the windows.

 
 
 
 
 
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  Fabler weighed his meager options.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  Fabler pulled over to the side of the road, his Jeep rolling onto the sandy shoulder, and had no clue what to do.

  PRESLEY ○ 6:58+pm

  Initially, it appeared her cell contained only a bed, jutting out of the wall.

  But when Presley got off the bed, it flattened away. Not disappearing into the wall, like a hideaway or drawer. But actually becoming the wall. Melting into it until not even a bump remained.

  When Presley moved closer to examine it, the bed grew back.

  In one corner of her cell, when she walked there, a chair with a hole grew out of the floor. It had a button. When pressed, the chair’s center filled with water.

 
 
 

  She spent a while trying to communicate with the prisoners she’d seen earlier. One of them, a woman named Holly, yelled at her to be quiet or they’d be punished. Another babbled nonsense, his coherency not improved by his thick Irish accent.

  Presley did a rough measurement of her room. Four meters by four meters, perhaps three meters high. She took a long time searching every bump and wrinkle of the bare walls and floor.

  One wall did something weird when touched. Like the front of the cell, which was see-through, the rear wall also became transparent if tapped. But the only thing it revealed was blackness.

 
 

  Presley recalled reading something about the Apollo moon landings, and why there aren’t any stars in the background in pictures taken from the moon’s surface, but couldn’t remember the reason for that.

 
 

  She pressed her forehead to it, trying to see anything at all.

  Black stared back at her.

  Presley’s attention drifted to her belly.