Xenofreak Nation (9 page)

Harry Vega clapped his hands together and turned to Bryn’s friends. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to cut the party short.”

Maria got off the bed and said, “Wow, girl, this reeks.”

“Yeah, are the cops stupid, or what?” Kim said.

After they’d gone, Bryn expected her father to come back into her room so they could discuss the turn of events, but after a few minutes she heard his low voice coming from the kitchen. She assumed he was calling the XIA to let them know they’d made some kind of terrible mistake. Either they’d captured the wrong people in the first place, or someone in the records department screwed up.

Thoughts spinning, she picked up the box of birthday chocolates Maria had given her and wandered down the hall with the intention of leaving it on the counter for her father. Just as she was about to round the corner into the kitchen, she heard him say, “…and donations coming in. You’ll get your money.”

It wasn’t what he said, but the harsh way he said it that made her pause and listen.

“It’ll have to be next week after the check clears the bank. I’ll meet you—” He stopped and then said in a defensive tone, “Okay, okay…fine.”

Bryn heard the little beep that indicated he’d ended the call. She walked into the kitchen and asked, “What was that all about?”

Her dad jumped and put a hand to his heart. “How much did you hear?”

She frowned. He looked not only guilty, but almost frightened. Slowly, she said, “You owe someone money..?”

He set the holophone in its charger and took a few deep breaths before responding. “It’s politics. Sometimes you have to grease the wheels to get anything done.”

“You’re bribing someone? With PHS money? Can you do that?”

He sighed. “Technically, no, Sweetheart. Essentially what I’m doing is wrong, especially given that the money was donated and PHS is a non-profit organization. It’s hard for me to think of it as embezzlement, though, when it’s so very necessary to the cause. These guys—you know, the legislators—are all on the take these days, even though it’s considered legal. They only listen to their caucuses, the groups who fund their elections who are in turn funded by big business. Caucuses influence the way they vote, caucuses even write the damned bills for them!”

Bryn recognized that he was getting worked up for one of his lectures, so she interrupted. “What about the photos?”

“I had to take that, Brynnie. It was—oh, the mug shots. Um, yeah, let me call Agent Smart. Heh, ‘Agent Smart,’ that kills me.”

Bryn had no idea why her father thought Agent Smart’s name was so amusing, but she did wonder what he’d started to say about the photos. He picked up the holophone again just as it occurred to her: the picture of her on the newscast—the one with her porcupine hair in all its glory—had been taken right here in the kitchen. It had flashed by so quickly she hadn’t picked up on it at the time, but now she realized the background had been familiar.

Her father was the only other person who’d been in the house since the kidnapping. He’d taken that picture when she wasn’t looking and released it to the media.

Chapter Eighteen

They needed to disguise themselves quickly and the best way to do that was the last thing Scott wanted to attempt: home invasion. All the houses in this neighborhood looked alike; older two-storey brownstones built right up next to each other. They had no side yards to speak of, no garages and most of the front yards were taken up by huge old oak trees.

Padme shot down the first two houses he picked. One had a couple of neat rows of well-tended planters in the front yard with brightly blooming roses. By the door, a flagpole proudly displayed a faded American flag. “Retired couple,” she said. “They’re most likely home right now.”

He started down the walkway of the next house, but she threw her arm out to block him and nodded towards small porch overhang. “Camera.”

She approved of the third house, with its sparse grass and no cars parked out front. They walked up the steps and knocked. Padme gestured to the doorknob and said, “Pick it.”

Scott couldn’t admit he had no idea how to pick a lock, not with his claws or anything else.

“It’d take too long,” he said.

He looked around furtively before picking up a decorative stone that had an embedded brass plate engraved with the word, “Welcome.” He had every intention of using it to break the narrow window next to the door, but by its light weight he could tell it wasn’t a real rock. Underneath, a lone key lay on the concrete.

He flashed Padme a triumphant grin.

“Luck smiles upon us,” she said drily.

Inside, the place was tidy enough, but a thick layer of dust on nearly every surface suggested the occupant wasn’t terribly concerned with housekeeping. One of the back bedrooms told them why. It was empty except for large black bars mounted parallel to the ceiling and floor on each wall.

“Cool,” Scott said. The setup was a holoroom, an expensive hobby for serious hard-core gamers, which explained the unused look to the rest of the place.

“We should hurry,” Padme said, reaching past Scott to shut the holoroom door.

“What, are you afraid I’m going to geek out?”

“No, I’m afraid I will.”

The other room was the bedroom, and they rummaged through the closets and drawers to select from their unwitting host’s clothing. Scott went into the bathroom and stripped down completely. He knew their clothes weren’t bugged, but Padme didn’t, so he had to keep up appearances.

He dumped the hamper out on the bathroom floor and tossed his stuff in, shoes and all, before squeamishly pulling on the newest-looking pair of the dude’s tighty-whities he could find. The jeans were short and too snug, but the pullover hoodie fit okay. The dude’s footwear was ridiculous; wherever he was, he must be wearing his only good shoes, assuming he owned any. Scott had to choose between a beat-up pair of work boots or some grungy tennis shoes. He’d picked the boots so Padme wouldn’t have to clomp around in them, hoping as he slipped them on that he wouldn’t come away from this with a nasty case of foot fungus.

He saw an actual pair of glasses sitting on the sink and put them on, but took them off again when they blurred his vision too much to ignore. When he went back into the bedroom, Padme had changed into jeans as well. They were large on her, but she’d rolled the legs into cuffs and found a belt somewhere. She, too, was wearing a hoodie that she’d pulled up to conceal her ears. She put her clothes and shoes into the hamper as well, stuffed the occupant’s own clothing on top and then fastidiously washed her hands.

By unspoken agreement, they were trying to leave as small a footprint as possible in this man’s home. The longer it took him to realize he’d been invaded, the more of a lead Scott and Padme would gain. Or so she’d think.

“Here,” she said, handing him a baseball cap.

He had to adjust the strap to make it bigger and the hat had a rather embarrassing video game logo on it, but it hid his distinctive haircut well enough.

“Let’s get out of here.” He led the way down the hall, but came to an abrupt halt two steps into the living room.

“What the hell are you doing in my house?” The speaker was Caucasian, about thirty years old with a receding hairline and weak chin. He had something in his right hand, but since he wasn’t pointing it at them, Scott assumed it wasn’t a weapon. The poor guy looked terrified.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Padme said. “We just needed to borrow some clothes.”

The man’s eyes flicked back and forth between Scott and Padme. “You’re those xenos who escaped.”

Scott was slightly encouraged that the man used the term ‘xenos’ instead of xenofreaks. He took a chance and asked, “You a brother?”

The guy hesitated, but said, “Not XBestia.” He lifted his shirt to reveal a porcine graft on his thin white belly, the least expensive kind of xenoalteration available. It was a Celtic emblem or logo of some sort—not one of the symbols representing a rival gang to the XBestias. Scott figured the graft probably meant something in whatever online hologame the guy participated in.

Dr. Fournier no longer did porcine grafts, but he wasn’t the only game in town by a long shot. Demand for genetic engineers and xenotransplantation surgeons had been high when the technology first surfaced. Schools and training facilities had sprung up everywhere, but eventually the job market was glutted. Desperate out-of-work engineers and surgeons began providing underground non-organ grafting and transplantation services to the unique new xenofreak demographic.

The practice became mainstream when the lead singer of the UK bang-metal band Stank Afterlife appeared onstage with a functional pair of snowy albatross wings attached to his back. He couldn’t fly, of course, but the xenosurgeon did such a good job rearranging his muscles and tendons that with the help of the nanoneuronal implants in his cerebellum to aid in motor control, the singer had nearly full range of motion in his new feathered appendages.

“We were just leaving,” Padme said. “We didn’t steal anything except the clothing.”

A calculating look passed over their host’s face. He lifted his arm and opened his hand. A set of keys rested there.

“Look,” he said. “I won’t report this for an hour. That’s how long my lunch is. But you gotta take my piece of shit car and dump it in a river or set it on fire, okay? The tranny is on its last legs and I’d rather get the insurance than get it fixed.”

Chapter Nineteen

Bryn did what she always did when she was angry with her father. She took the family photo album off its place on the hearth and closeted herself away with it. Her mother had put the album together with old-fashioned photograph prints. The cover was a cross-stitched pattern of hearts and flowers. Bryn ran her fingers over the faded needlework, remembering how happy she’d been when her mother allowed her to stitch an entire flower all on her own. She’d been four or five at the time.

The photographs covered Bryn’s whole life, from her parent’s wedding where you could barely see the bump under Miranda Vega’s homemade wedding dress, to the last week of her mother’s life, when they’d waited so desperately for a human donor organ to replace the failing pig heart. Bryn didn’t often look at those later photos because as much as the pictures of her mother smiling and happy and living her life made her sad, the ones of her mother gaunt and yellow with fear in her eyes broke her heart.

Today, maybe because of her own recent brush with death, she flipped to the end of the album and looked at every shot of her mom’s battle, from the momentous weeks after she survived one of the first bioengineered xenotransplants in history, to her last days.

Pictured were several old friends of the family who no longer came around. Her mom’s best friend Carla had taken most of the photos towards the end, and had been the one who shuttled Bryn from school to the hospital, where Bryn would sit quietly and do her homework or read. Her father was rarely there. Carla hadn’t hidden her anger with Harry Vega very well. Bryn recalled one particular argument between them where her father had justified his absence by yelling at Carla right there in the hospital hallway.

“I have to work,” he’d shouted. “We’re drowning in medical bills! They gave her a goddamned pig heart for free, but are they taking responsibility now that it’s crapped out? No. We’re on our own. The only thing I have to look forward to is the life insurance.”

He’d apologized for saying it, of course. He was always remorseful. Her mom told her the stress had gotten the best of her dad and that Bryn shouldn’t hold it against him. That he was absent because he needed to be strong and he couldn’t be when confronted by Miranda’s impending death. It was her mom’s way; making the best of things.

“It’s easier for him to bury himself in work,” she’d said.

“But he’s never here,” Bryn had cried.

Her mother had patted her hand. If Bryn had it to do over again she wouldn’t have complained, wouldn’t have added to her mother’s burden. “He’ll be there for you when it counts,” Miranda Vega had said. “Right now, he’s letting you have all my time.”

It hadn’t rung true. Bryn had been young, but she knew excuses when she heard them. Her mother was too good a person to allow Bryn to think badly of her father. The man who would be left to raise her alone.

She pulled a tissue from the box on the end table blew her nose. She started to close the album when a photograph caught her eye. One of the nurses posing next to her mom’s bed looked familiar—not familiar from the past, but alarm-bells kind of familiar. Bryn looked more closely and then gasped as recognition dawned. The woman in the picture was younger, thinner, and significantly more pleasant-looking, but it was definitely Nurse Vonda.

She didn’t have time to ponder the implications; her father knocked and opened the door without waiting for her to invite him in.

“Honey, I’m sorry your birthday is so sucky this year,” he said, as if ‘sucky’ were a strong enough adjective. “I got you a present. I know you had your eye on these, and I know I told you they were too expensive, but under the circumstances, I thought they might cheer you up.”

He held out a small box from a jewelry store in the mall. A few months ago, he’d needed to get his watch repaired, or he wouldn’t have gone within a hundred yards of the mall, with or without Bryn. She remembered expressing mild interest in a pair of silver drop earrings while they’d waited. Inside the box, the earrings sparkled against the black velvet lining. She swallowed back tears. Her dad had always been clueless about gift giving. He was often thoughtless, but not deliberately hurtful. The earrings would have been perfect a month ago, but if she put them on now, they’d be completely hidden behind fur and quills.