The door to what had once been a pawnshop, but was most likely a meth lab now, slammed shut behind me. I’d been quick, because I was that much quicker now—quicker than any human. The door cut off Stefan’s voice and I concentrated. Inside it was quiet. The walls and floor were covered with years of dust and grime. There were bars on the windows, the glass itself covered with newspaper to hide the interior from prying eyes. There were cots all over the one big room. The bodies of several Hispanic men lay dead on them—not because they died peacefully in their sleep, but because there was so little space between them they couldn’t fall to the floor. There were some exceptions where a few cots had been turned or tipped over by death convulsions. Most had guns or knives in their hands or laying by them. They had all, to a man, gone the Basement way. Not one had died easily.
The one closest to me had gray rubbery streamers of flesh spilling out of his gaping mouth—part of his lungs. You couldn’t cough up both of them at once, or just one, but you could cough up pieces of them until you choked and asphyxiated or died from another lack of oxygen: lungs blown to tatters. Either/or. Another man lay on his back, his brain matter having spilled out his ears, nose, and mouth. Someone had crushed his skull.
The next victim was shirtless and curled on the floor, his abdomen split neatly from breast bone to below his baggy jeans somewhere. His arms were curled around the large pile of intestines that had poured free, as if he could push them back inside and hold himself together. The man closest to him had shot himself in the head with his own gun to escape his torment, but first he’d ripped off his pants. His penis and testicles. . . .
I stopped cataloging the carnage. It was nothing I hadn’t seen before—nothing new under the sun that could be done outside the Institute that hadn’t been done inside. The one difference was this wasn’t a reward for excelling; this was freedom.
I could smell anhydrous ammonia fumes wafting down from the top floor. Meth lab—I’d been right. I was also right in not expecting Stefan to listen to me. The door opened and shut almost silently behind me, but he didn’t say anything—battle ready.
“Michael, finally.” The voice echoed in the still air. There was the sound of one footstep.
“It’s been so dull waiting for you and your . . . pets? Isn’t that what you call lesser creatures you keep with you and alive for no apparent reason? I’ve seen them being walked in parks and down the sidewalks in rhinestone collars and pink leashes. Did you forget this one’s leash? Will he bark for a treat? Will he piss himself at what he sees here?”
Peter had drifted nearly soundlessly down the stairs against the back wall. Now he sat, midway down, and dangled one hand over the rusted wrought-iron railing. He was the same as he had been on the Institute tape—cheerful, charismatic. He had changed from the white pajama-style uniform to a black shirt and jeans. Dark shirt, dark hair, shadows clinging to him—Death himself. “So. Look at you, Michael. You have changed. Having seen what was outside our walls, I think all of us would change. Will change.” I didn’t raise the tranquilizer gun yet. I wanted to know more. What did he want with me? Where were the others? Stefan, now beside me, followed my lead. He knew violence and he knew it well, but in this particularly vicious subcategory, I was the expert.
Peter leaned to rest his forehead against the thin metal banister. His eyes were chimera eyes—one blue, one green. He hadn’t bothered to conceal that with contacts as I had. Ordinarily those colors would be the calm pastels of a spring morning. Somehow on Peter they seemed almost blind. He was blind in a way, seeing only what he wanted to see, and what surrounded us now was all he wanted to ever see—destruction. I didn’t see his mask; I saw what was behind it.
“I have to say, Michael, I’m rather surprised. We all knew you wouldn’t graduate. You were days at best from dissection. Strawberry jam in a jelly jar. In the refrigerator you’d go. Yum, yum. Good eating.” His grin was friendly and happy as a golden retriever’s. In two weeks he’d picked up the language, the casual nature, the obscure phrasings we’d not been taught. I was only now coming into my own after almost three years.
How had I not seen him before for what he was?
“But now you’re different.” His eyes went distant as if he were listening to inner instruction, his brain studying the peculiarity that was me. “You have bite to you now. Inside. Before, you would’ve let them walk you down to that metal table, obedient. . . . No, not necessarily obedient, but passive. Passive to the end. Now, however . . . now I think you would fight.”
He was right. I would. I wouldn’t kill, but you didn’t have to kill to fight and try to escape. “You’re stronger.” Peter stood, arms lazily resting on the metal as he bent over as if to get a closer look at me in the dim light that struggled through the paper-covered windows. With our vision, it was an act to make me associate him more with humans, therefore harmless, than with chimeras. It was a good move to put me off my guard. Trained powers of observation can be used against you. Lifelong associations of one thing to another are difficult to break. “You’re a better chimera, but are you good enough to join us and be accepted into the family?”