CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE DOOR EMILE disappeared behind was my focus for hours. I searched the room for a piece of metal to tear out the guts of the electronic keypad keeping it locked. Halfway to wedging the panel open with an unscrewed knob from the dresser, the door flew out of my hands and an imposing presence stood in front of me.
“You’re awake,” he said, closing the door behind him. I knew the man’s voice. I thought he died months ago.
My head moved like an out-of-date android.
Father? Was I dreaming?
My lungs were full of needles, making it difficult to speak.
He looked different, and he sure as hell didn’t look dead.
“Mr. Barcel? May I speak to you?” A man on the other side of the closed door called for my father.
My father nodded at me and exited out of the way he came. My steps followed him, hanging by the locked door, gawking as I held my ear to the door and listened to a familiar doctor.
“Cancer metastasized to every conceivable organ,” Dr. Kraye tried to speak in hushed tones to my father, but failed at being discreet. “Frankly, from her panels, I’m confounded she’s lasted as long as she has. A monthly dose of blood from the original donor of the Vorarei virus couldn’t have kept her alive this long. She should’ve died days ago. Maybe weeks.”
“Trivial matters,” my father said. “You need to assure me the injection you gave her last night worked, and once I’m able to change her, she’ll be as we expected. Will her strength rival the original donor? Will she be under my control? It’s very important I’m able to control her once the transformation is complete, thwarting Claudette from controlling her in any aspect.”
What the actual fuck?
“From all the studies I’ve conducted, yes,” Dr. Kraye affirmed. “I would do it posthaste. Her organs have decayed. We have a small window to act. In two hours, I cannot give you a definitive answer about what could happen if she’s turned past a certain point.”
“Thank you, Dr. Kraye. You’ve done well.” My father replied.
The sensor on the door handle made a soft humming sound, and the door swung open.
I backed away, facing the man who regarded me, seemingly unfazed by recent events. He ushered me farther into the bedroom the second Emile arrived.
I stared at my father in utter awe. My father was the friend Emile referenced?
Emile moved to stand at my bedside. “It’s time, sir.”
“You’ve done well, Emile.” My father gave him a congratulatory smile. “I know it was difficult to be in league with a dangerous woman like Claudette, but it gave me invaluable information. You will get what I promised you once Calind is dead.”
“Um, hello.” I waved at my father to get his attention. “Remember me? Your daughter? I thought you died. Do you have anything to say about the fact that you’re alive now?”
My father and Emile exchanged odd looks. “She remembers some of it,” Emile informed my father.
“You’ll excuse me if I don’t show you the affection we have never before exchanged with one another,” my father said. “I have particular reasons for my behavior. You were the one who killed me.”
“W-what?” The memory streamed behind my closed eyes and made my head throb. I was at my father’s bedside, as I was the last time I saw him alive. I retrieved a needle from inside my handbag and injected it into his line. I silenced the alarm on the machines tethered to him. In a whirlwind, someone or something removed me from his bedroom and locked the door behind me. The next thing I knew, I was walking out of the house and wandering onto the private beach as though I were in a daze.
“B-but you’re my father,” I said, denying what unfurled in my memory bank. “I hate you, but I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“I’m not your father,” he said. “You were a creation, devised inside a lab.”
“Why are you lying? You’re my father and Claudette, the woman you claimed you were in love with, is my mother. Remember? You always said she broke your heart.”
“Claudette has stirred your mind to such a severe extent that you’re unsure of what’s real in your past and your present.” He said her name with an exasperated sigh and a hint of hatred. “She planted many lies in your head pertaining to your upbringing. You and I seldom spoke to one another. You grew up in a lab most of your life. Had it been under my control, you’d have remained in a lab.
“Claudette held responsibility for any semblances of a life, fiction or true. She forced me to place you within the ranks of my company, and I was helpless to stop her. When I attempted to curtail the both of you, she infected me. Shortly thereafter, I hacked your chip to control you and had you kill her.
“She wasn’t my wife or my lover. She was a business partner who misled me and told me she intended to help me find immortality through your birth. I later discovered she intended to steal you away and prevent my facilities from using you for further study.
“Once I convert you, you’ll live as I intended you to. At Barcel, for further development of a transportable way to sell immortality to the masses.” My father—Raymond reached for a knife and slit his wrists. He tried to bring his arm, dripping with blood, to my mouth.
I wanted to scream, but I could only do it in silence.
My limbs moved as if someone else was the pilot. I grabbed my father by the neck, raising him high above the ground as though he was weightless, because he felt weightless.
“The control chip,” Raymond strangled to order Emile. “Use it. Make her stop.”
“I-I can’t,” Emile sputtered, frozen in place. “I can’t move.”
“Who turned you?” A voice unlike my own bled through my mouth, controlling me and preventing me from questioning what Emile and my father were discussing.
My father appeared to recognize the voice and the color drained from his face. Clearly, the man was scared shitless. “C-Calind.”
I brought my hand back and hurled my father across the room.
A look of dread possessed Emile’s face as he stared at my father. “We failed. We’re too late to save her.”
Her? Why was he speaking as if I wasn’t in the room?
The house shuddered, similar to one on an overactive fault line. A second quake hit, cracking the walls. Then an ear-piercing sonic boom reverberated throughout the room. The windows shattered from the outside in, flinging glass everywhere. I hovered near the floor, shielding my face.
The room darkened.
“It’s him. I feel it.” My father struggled to stand and wiped the cut, in the middle of healing, on his forehead. “The kill dart with Regan’s blood should’ve ended him. How is he alive?” My father turned to Emile, accusatorily. “Did you taint the blood? Was it an order from Claudette?”
“I-I don’t know.” Terror filled Emile’s eyes as he looked expectantly at the door.
Raymond’s body slammed into the closest wall. He slid against the surface, professing his agony with a series of screams as he sank to his knees and brought his hands to his head.
The house grew darker, and a blur streaked across the room. The back of a man dressed in black sweats and a hood over his head stood in front of Raymond. He turned toward my direction. His hood hung low enough to cast a shadow over his face. He extended a hand toward Raymond and sent his body into a never-ending series of violent convulsions.
“It’s painful…isn’t it?” The voice with that accent I couldn’t place with particular origin exuded contempt. It was Calind’s voice. “It’s the least of what you deserve, you ingrate. I gave you the immortality you begged for and this is how you repay me?”
“I have to look out for myself.” Raymond choked on his words. “You weren’t trustworthy.” He cowered and vomited blood tinged with foam. Each time he expelled the sickness, his body decayed and his limbs twisted until they no longer resembled a human form.
As I watched Raymond die, the remaining clouds gave way, and I relived the entirety of my father’s death. It happened the last time I saw him. I was at his side, injecting poison into my father’s line. I sensed Calind behind me during the act. I turned to see him. His image flickered as though he wasn’t there. The movie, showing a glimpse of my horrible reality, faded away to disclose what was in the now.
Calind reached out and my father’s body separated from his head, landing in two different directions. He twisted up his hand as it glowed with a blue hue and ignited. Raymond’s remains kindled, burning into ash and disappearing with a strong gust of wind.
Calind delayed his pace as he approached Emile, who was trying yet failing to be strong.
A scream in my head controlled my mouth and made me act. “Stop, don’t kill him.” I launched myself in front of Emile by someone else’s force of will. As I looked at what remained of who I thought was my father, I couldn’t rest an indicator on any one feeling. A black hole had trapped my emotions.
The finger, pointing to the perpetrator of the death of my mother, June, and many others landed on him. The notion that he couldn’t have done these things, because I killed them, became strong enough to induce a migraine.
“You’ve done enough,” I said to Calind, unable to breathe.
Calind paused and appeared to study me. His face remained hidden by a shadow. “If I catch you near Regan again,” he warned Emile, “what happened to Raymond will seem like heaven on Earth.” He attempted to walk past me and confront Emile toe-to-toe.
Reaching out, I clutched Calind’s arm, shaking my head.
Fitting my chin over his fingers, Calind subdued me. “I’ll keep my promise to not kill him.”
I released his arm, allowing him to walk beyond me toward Emile’s position. Whatever Emile saw in Calind’s face made him shake in fear. “Leave,” Calind growled.
Emile scrambled up, scurrying out the door.
When Calind swiveled around, I startled at the sight and receded from him.
His skin was paper thin like a newly developing person. Every vein and artery underneath his skin was visible. Needle sharp teeth retracted behind a regular set of teeth.
A rush of images pierced my head, making me remember the things Calind had tried to make me forget and melded with what I knew of the present.
My head shook of its own accord. “No. Fuck no. Y-you’re a…” The wall stopped my stride. I glanced at where my father—Raymond once stood as the rush of guilt, sadness, and regret washed over me. “If this is my reality, I don’t want it. You killed my father. I killed my father…the first time. Those people?” I picked up my trembling hands, cursing them. “I killed all of those people. And Claudette. I can feel her clawing around inside my head. I feel her—”
“Shh.” The shadow reappeared on Calind’s face as he approached, his steps hurried, and touched my face. “I won’t have my last moments with you ruined this way.” Moving my chin, he leaned in and kissed me. “Let it all fall away, Regan. Forget everything that hurts you. Snuff it out of existence.”
A swarm of darkness covered the gunk inside my head, sending me into a tailspin before everything grew silent.
It was like waking up from a nightmare you couldn’t remember. I knew the house around me and didn’t know how I’d gotten there, why I was there, and why Calind was there, his olive skin glowing, his hair perfection, and looking as though he was ready for a winter jog.
“What’s going on? Last I knew we were in Alaska. Why are we here?” The unknown pulled at me, luring me out of my body, and out of this space. I touched my cheeks, finding moisture on them. “Calind, what’s going on?”
“We were here to say goodbye.” He tightened his embrace, keeping me still.
“To what?”
“Your past.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
He stroked a hair clinging to the side of my face. “You’re transitioning.”
“Transitioning? That’s a cute way to say dying.”
“Where should we say goodbye?”
“Not Alaska.” It took too much energy to give him a full smile. Even if I could have faked the emotion, my smile would’ve have been the saddest thing he’d ever seen.
I stifled my grief over saying goodbye to Calind and my fear of death aside, wanting to spend my last moments getting fucked to oblivion while I still had the energy.
“Take me someplace warm.”