Synthetic: Dark Beginning (2 page)

The helicopter landed on the roof of Kora's penthouse but instead of climbing out, she turned to face Randall. “I think someone is abusing Alex.”

Randall took a lazy drink of champagne but Kora thought she saw a flicker of guilt cross his face.  “Maybe some of the other synthetics are getting nasty with her.  They weren't exactly gentle while carting her drunk out of the bar. The fact that she's my assistant does stir up jealousy among them.” 

Drunk or sober, Kora knew the strength of her creatures. “There's no synthetic who can beat up Alex. Trust me, it has to be a human.”

“What a ridiculous idea.  I'm sure Alex was just messing with you.  She loves getting under your skin.”

Randall was greedy, but never violent. Kora felt bad for thinking he might have hit the rebellious pain in the ass. “I don't understand her at all. I must have messed up her brain along with her feet.”  She kissed Randall on his dry lips. No matter how much surgery she did, he'd always have the lips of an old man. “I'll see you in the morning.”

Kora waved to him as the helicopter lifted into the air, then dragged herself into her immaculate, white living room.  She took a deep breath and felt her equilibrium return. She may not love Randall, but she loved her penthouse.  Across from the massive kitchen was a glass bridge that connected to her lab, which was also on the one hundred-twentieth floor of the adjacent building.  This was Kora's entire world and if she was lucky, months went by and she never left home. 

She swept over the bridge, through the security lock, and into a room that was much larger than her living room, but paved in the exact same pale marble.  Ishmael, who'd suckered himself to the side of his new travel tank, turned his tall orange head to gaze at her with huge, luminous eyes that were a mixture of green and gold. He looked like a perfectly normal giant squid, except he wore a multipurpose device on his arm in case he needed to sample some chemicals, or kick back in the bottom of his tank and watch a movie, which was usually
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

“Do you like it?” she asked, smoothing a hand over his rubbery arm that was soaking wet. 

He unstuck one arm at a time and squiggled backward so he could get a full view of the container that resembled a space capsule.  He tilted his head to the side and shrugged with four of his arms. 

“Are you serious?” said Kora.  “I can't get you into my swimming pool but you're going to ride in that thing?”

Ishmael lifted several arm tips and waved them in the air before walking them toward Kora.

“Too many dirty people? Randall and I are the only ones who use it, and the staff cleans it every morning and evening.” 

Ishmael shot her a look she could recognize from a mile away.  By
dirty people
he meant Randall.

She gave Ishmael's side an affectionate slap; she loved the solid feel of him.  Despite her teasing, Kora was relieved he was going tomorrow.  Ishmael was her anchor.  His eyes were the first she saw looking down on her when she woke up at Mirafield, and the idea of life without him was unbearable. 

“Randall told me you think this trip is a bad idea. May I ask why?”  Ishmael squiggled over to a nearby drawer where he fussed with some glassware.  Kora knew he was avoiding the question so she leaned over to inspect his work.  “Are those completely clean? I see a spot on that beaker.” 

He rolled his huge eyes and yanked the drawer out so he could carry it to the washer.  He dumped the glass into the sink, set the drawer down, and signed, “You won't like anything you learn from going home. It's not a good place for you. Forget about your lost past and look to the future.”

“And my marriage to Randall?”

Ishmael's whole body slumped. “You don't have to marry that loser. He won't do anything to you because you're the only one in this stupid company who does any work.”

Kora knew he was right, but she couldn't take that chance. Without her job at Mirafield, she was nothing. And what would happen to Ishmael? They'd probably dump him out in the filthy ocean where he'd contract some terminal illness, get picked on by the other sea creatures, and have no idea how to fend for himself. Kora prepared his meals of organic fish herself, and carefully monitored the purity of his tank water so he stayed healthy. “Could you give me some idea of what it is I won't like if I go back home?”

“Nothing I say will make you understand.” He poked at a filthy test tube. “I've tried and you never listen.”

Kora shoved his arms aside and loaded the glassware into the chemical washer.  She didn't trust Ishmael to have it done before they left. Dirty equipment in the sink all week wouldn't bother him, but she wouldn't be able to sleep at night.  “I would listen if you told me something that makes sense.  The fact that you've refused to tell me the truth is the whole reason we're going.” She slammed the lid shut and pressed the start button.  “I love you more than anyone, but I wish you were straight with me.”

Ishmael ran a tentacle delicately down her cheek.  “Unlike Randall, I've never lied to you. But I know you, Kora, and the only way you're going to believe anything is if you find out for yourself.”

Chapter 2

The parts of Santa Monica that sat outside of Mirafield's walls were surprisingly squalid.  Ragged children played in the streets and people on the sidewalks waved their fists and threw trash at their limo.
“I didn't realize the rest of the city was so poor,” said Kora.

Randall held out his glass and Alex refilled it with champagne. “These people are out here for a reason.”

“And what's that?” asked Kora.

“They lack either talent or motivation. In many cases, both.” He gazed languidly out the window as he sipped from his tall glass.  “If they were worth their salt, they'd be on the inside of Mirafield's walls instead of the outside.”

Kora stared at a six-year-old girl on the sidewalk, her tattered pants hung off of her lean body as she trailed along behind her mother. She'd heard her maids complaining, once, that since the government collapse, the rich had taken over everything, leaving the rest of the population to suffer. “Many of them are just children, Randall.”

“Then their parents are to blame for their laziness.” Randall turned and talked to the driver through the intercom.
“We’re confirming permission to enter Ruby’s property.”

The limo thumped over a cluster of potholes in the Pacific Coast Highway as it passed an abandoned gas station.  “Why couldn't we take a helicopter?”
asked Kora.

“Your mother, Ruby, hates them.  Wouldn't allow us to land any sort of aircraft out here and she has a powerful force field that would take an army to bust through.”

“Why on earth would someone want to break into her property?”

“It's more for those trying to get out,” replied Randall. “She inherited land out here and during the great economic collapse of twenty-five she opened a private prison.”

A prison. Years ago, Ishmael told her that Randall sent his enemies to a prison in Malibu. Kora hadn't believed him and after that, Ishmael just did his work and never told her anything.

“Ruby is the warden, among other things.”  Randall laughed nervously.  “She's a bit eccentric.  A real estate mogul, television entertainer, and a pioneer in synthetic science. She's also a huge vampire fan which leads me to one very important request.  I know you're familiar with our no-vampire policy at Mirafield—”

“Of course, because I'm the one who created it,” interrupted Kora.  Glowing fairies, green-skinned mermaids, centaurs—Kora made them all. Her wealthy and eccentric clients hired her to create every kind of strange artificial being imaginable. Except vampires. That’s where Kora drew the line. Every day another rich weirdo placed an order for a sexy vampire mistress or a brooding hunk, but Kora held firm. Vampires freak her out.

“I know your distaste for the dark creatures, but Ruby can be very convincing, my dear.”  Randall turned to his assistant who'd spent the car ride attempting to set Kora on fire with her eyes.  “Alex, make me a vodka tonic.  I need something stronger to face that woman.  I'm not sure why the air isn’t reaching back here. I’m suffocating.”

He fiddled with some knobs that sent a stream of cold air into Kora’s face. When she turned to the window to escape the blast, she saw tall cliffs rise up in the distance like thick, jagged scars against the smooth beach. “I’ve seen this place before,” she said in a daze.

“It’s called Point Dume,” said Randall, rattling his ice cubes around in his glass before taking a drink. “It’s where movie stars used to build fancy homes during the early part of the century. Ruby moved out here somewhere around the twenties.”

Through the mist, Kora saw the vague outline of a massive structure perched at the edge of the cliffs facing the ocean. She pushed up off her seat to get a better view, but it disappeared as they raced around a bend and came to a stop before the ruins of a grocery store. The skeletons of burnt-out mansions haunted the hills above the highway as if hoards of angry villagers had stormed through with torches and set everything ablaze.  She noticed a toppled post beside the road that read, Dume Drive.  The driver spotted the sign as well and turned, the limo’s tires crunching over piles of dead palm fronds as it crept toward the ocean.

The mansions along Dume Drive were in even worse shape than those dotting the hills along the highway.  Many looked as if they’d been torn down and blazed, leaving nothing behind but driveways leading up to piles of ash.  Dead rose gardens spread along both sides of the road and Kora inhaled sharply when the castle emerged through a jumble of eucalyptus trees.  It looked like a massive sea creature that had fallen asleep after an exhausting climb up the cliffs.  Smooth rocks covering the walls gleamed like a thousand iridescent scales stretched over rounded muscles. A variety of aquatic gargoyles scowled down from every archway, the largest a menacing squid that looked nearly identical to Ishmael.  It writhed above front doors carved with a hellish assortment of sea monsters.  A pile of wind-blown debris lay before the doors as if no one had opened them in decades.  Kora would have thought the building abandoned, like everything else in the area, if not for the presence of an enclosed construction scaffold several floors up.

The limo descended a steep drive and came to a stop before a pacing figure dressed in an elegant black robe with a fur-trimmed hood. Kora instinctively sank down in her seat while Randall sprung from the limo with outstretched arms.

“Ruby, you look ravishing as always,” he said.

“And you look drunk as ever, Randall,” she replied in a hoarse voice, followed by an infected cough. “Someone removed enough of your flesh to make another one of you. I suppose that makes you quarter of a man, now, instead of half.”

Randall paled, his lips moving as if searching for a reply.  “I have been working out lately.”

“Where’s my new body?” demanded Ruby.

“We have your glorious new vessel right here,” said Randall, pointing at Alex as she guided the synthetic’s temperature controlled chamber up the steps.

Kora watched through the open door as a man with a massive hump directed Alex to place the synthetic's chamber on a long gurney. Kora had never seen anyone so deformed, and it made her stomach swell with nausea.  She watched the hunchback fasten the chamber down with a series of leather straps and roll it away, nearly slamming it into Randall who was too busy prattling away at Ruby to notice.

When Alex returned, Kora reluctantly climbed from the limo. “This doesn’t seem right. No one told me we were going to a dumpy old castle.”

“Too much dirt and ugliness for you, Doctor?” replied Alex, prodding Kora up the steps into a room that looked fit to imprison a medieval queen.

The robed figure tossed back her hood to reveal the powdered face of an old woman with dark eyes lined in coal. Her hair was neatly cut Betty Page style but a stripe of gray divided the black at the top of her head like a stream of dishwater through a pool of ink. A set of vintage diamonds circled a neck that at one time must have been long and graceful, but now sagged with papery skin. Two bright red lips parted to reveal a row of teeth that were as white and straight as sun-bleached bones.
“What do we have here?”

“You remember Kora?” Randall seemed relieved that he was no longer alone with Ruby.

“You must be the new client,” said Kora. She held her hand out in an effort to appear professional.

“This can’t be her.” Ruby stared at Kora’s fingers, then ran her eyes wildly up and down her body.

A nervous smile twitched onto Randall’s face. “What could you possible be mean, Ruby dear?”

Ruby grabbed Kora’s arms and raised them to the sides as if performing a physical examination.  “You've brought the wrong girl.”

“I know what you’re thinking, but I can assure you that this is Kora,” said Randall.

Ruby growled and circled Kora like a suspicious cat. “But it looks nothing like her. I would never have approved of something so…excessive.”

“How am I supposed to look?” said Kora, making no effort to hide her irritation.

Ruby leaned forward until Kora could see the dark makeup trapped in the wrinkles around her eyes. “You always wanted to be pretty. I’ll admit the blue hair is a surprise but the rest is predictable. I should have known you’d pull a stunt like this.  Are you trying to impress someone with this cheap circus?” Ruby cranked Kora’s head sideways to peer inside her left ear. “There’s a definite lack of symmetry, but I have a feeling you did that on purpose. Everything you do has some sinister reason behind it.” Ruby sauntered over to stand before Alex who towered over her. She started with her feet and slowly worked her eyes up to Alex's defiant face. “You’re Randall’s favorite kind of candy. Lucky for you, he has a foot fetish. Are you strong?”

Alex set her big feet apart and straightened her shoulders. “I was designed for battle.”

Ruby laughed and then coughed. “I may not look it, my dear, but so was I.”

“Alex,” snapped Randall, “go get my luggage out of the trunk.”

Ruby swung around to face Randall. “You don’t think you’re staying?”

“I know we discussed this,” said Randall, pressing his hands together, “but we want you to reconsider this dangerous request that we leave during the project. Mirafield never allows employees to work offsite without proper security in place to ensure everything runs smoothly and our interests are protected.”

“I don’t give a damn about your interests.  Kora and the synthetic body are mine, and I want them here alone,” said Ruby.

Randall drew in a deep breath. “We need to think carefully about who we’ll be marketing the product to when this is all over: sensible tycoons in need of a beautiful new body. With all due respect, my dear Ruby, you do have a history with mutants.”

A wry smile twisted Ruby’s bright red lips. “It’s time to trot home with your little blond warrior. Don't you have a wedding to plan?”

“And an entire celebration to launch our new products, but you come first, my dearest Ruby,” said Randall as she herded him toward the door.

“Yes I do, but I have everything I need. Goodbye.”

Randall blocked the door with his foot. “Then I’ll be back for the surgery and Kora, remember, absolutely no vampires,” he said right before the door slammed closed.