CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Russell:
Sunlight poured through the lab windows, casting stark black-and-white patterns on the far wall. Cages. Bars. The long soundproof room was lined with crates, like tiny jail cells. In the beginning the animals barked whenever we entered the room, eager for attention. Now they whimpered, withdrew into shadowy corners and tried to look invisible. Ellen and I worked a late shift, after the rest of the crew had gone home. I could tell the stress of the project was beginning to get to her.
Of course, she didna€?t have a shoebox full of gen-spikes to help her forget what we were doing. So I guess I could understand the circles under her eyes. The hollow way her cheekbones stood out, like she didna€?t eat, or maybe couldna€?t.
She knelt beside one of the open cages, running her fingers through the fur of a golden retriever. It was dead.
a€?Can you tell me again why we agreed to experiment on dogs?a€? she asked.
I shrugged. a€?It was in the research done by Smith and Clarksburga€”a€?
She stood up. a€?You dona€?t mean Clarkson? Immanuel Clarkson?a€?
a€?I guess.a€?
a€?That Nazi? I cana€?t believe wea€?re using his notesa€”a€?
a€?He wasna€?t a Nazi, he was justa€”well, I guess he was just about as bad.a€?
Ellen shook her head. a€?Tell me about the research.a€? She paced the long room, glancing in on the dogs that she passed.
a€?The government started it, years agoa€”a€?
a€?The U.S. government?a€?
a€?Yeah, about fifteen years ago somebody discovered that dogs could recognize their owners, even after resurrection.a€?
a€?I thought that was an old wivesa€? tale.a€?
a€?Apparently some old wivesa€? tales are true. So the government started running experiments, behind our backs of course. Nobody at Fresh Start knew what they were doing. After resurrection, one of their operatives would go to a neutral location, someplace they had never been in their previous life. Somebody else would bring their dog, the dog that had belonged to them before, see, and kind of a€?accidentallya€? let the dog off the leash. About seventy-five percent of the time, the dog would run to its previous owner. Even though the dog and the resurrected person had never met. I guess certain dogs tested higher. German shepherds, Doberman pinschers, poodles, golden retrievers. So those were the breeds that Clarksburga€”I mean Clarksona€”decided to work with.a€?
Ellen was kneeling beside a cage at the end of the room, petting one of the dogs through the bars. I think it was the black German shepherd. Omega. I kept telling her not to name them, that it made it harder to do the experiments if you got too close to the animals, but it was almost impossible to say no to her.
She had a way of getting whatever she wanted.
I cleared my throat, suddenly feeling awkward. Sometimes she made me wish that I had never met my wife, that maybe Ellen and I could have had a chance at something more permanenta€”although I never knew for sure if she felt the same way.
a€?We need to record the data,a€? I reminded her.
She nodded, and lifted the tag that hung on the shepherda€?s cage. a€?Omega,a€? she said while I wrote down the information. a€?Life Fifteen: last death sequence on August third. Formula T3-a.a€? She moved to the next cage, where a Doberman cowered, unable to look her in the eyes. a€?Theta. Life Seven: last death sequencea€”a€? Ellen paused. When she spoke again, her voice was heavy with emotion. a€?a€”yesterday. That would be August fourth. Formula T3-b.a€? She walked to the next cage, to the open door where the dead golden retriever lay. a€?Epsilon. Life Ten: last death sequence this morning. August fifth at one A.M. Formula T6-a.a€?
a€?Still no signs of life?a€?
a€?No.a€?
a€?Whata€?s the longest period so far between death and resurrection?a€? I asked as I flipped through the log.
She stared off into space. a€?That would be Tau. The time between her last death and resurrection was three hours. After that she only lived for about twenty minutes, and then she was gone for good.a€?
a€?Three hours.a€? I was trying to be objective, to avoid thinking about the golden retriever, the smiling dog that my little girl would have loved. a€?So Epsilon has been dead for almost nine hoursa€|Do you think therea€?s any chancea€”a€?
a€?No.a€? Ellen shook her head. a€?But Ia€?d still like to give her a little more time. Just in case.a€?
I nodded. Like I said, I would do almost anything for Ellen.
?
It was an ever-twisting road, this quest for immortality. It was a journey with no clear beginning or end. I felt like a pawn, a dead marionette hanging on tangled strings, and I could feel my conscience bleeding out with every injection I squeezed into a patch of coarse dog fur, with every gen-spike I slammed into my own muscle-weary flesh. I had to hide the stench of my addiction. The heavy fragrance of flesh decaying from within, the atrophy of muscles stretched past their natural limit followed me everywhere I went. I started wearing loose clothing so no one would notice the bodybuilder physique that came and went on a regular basis. I took four showers a day. I began to avoid intimacy with my wife, so she wouldna€?t see the obvious evidence of genetic restructuring, and at the same time I opened my bed willingly to Ellen.
I think a part of me wanted to get caught. I wanted an end to the horror.
I just never expected the ending to come the way it did.
Like a crash of lightning. Immediate and irreversible. Like the death of my father.
With blood on my hands. Again.
?
She dropped by in the middle of the night once. I thought I was alone. This section of the lab was off-limits to the general staff. Not even Chaz was allowed back here.
They were all dying. Our experiments were failing. We lost three dogs in the middle of the night. One more that morning. Only one was lefta€”the German shepherd, and he was pretending to be asleep. But I knew he was watching me.
He was always watching me. I was always the one who killed him.
Ia€?d reached a limit, I guess, some line that I drew in the sand and dared myself to cross. I didna€?t know what to do. We were one step away from losing everything, from failing.
And if I failed, they would kill my mother.
I got ready to euthanize the last dog, prepared the injection, set it on the counter and then stared at it. After a long quiet moment, I picked up the syringe, rolled it between my fingers. It would be so simple to just slide the needle into my own skin, let the drug flow through my veins until my heart stopped. The pain would disappear, all of this would just fade away. I pulled up my sleeve, stretched out my arm. At that moment, images of my mother, sick and dying, flooded my mind. Without realizing it, I began to weep. The syringe slipped from my fingers, I crumpled to the floor and buried my head in my hands.
I think Ellen must have been standing in the door, watching.
She picked up the syringe, tossed it in the wastebasket, and then knelt beside me.
She started to cry and I thought that she understood. It seemed like we were one person that night, one mind, one soul. But I was wrong.
She had no idea what was truly in my heart. No one did. Not even me.
?
I couldna€?t sleep. For two days I lived in a twilight world of caffeine and tequila, my thoughts rising and falling through the depths of a murky, wave-tossed sea. I had moments when I thought we would somehow make it. That our last dog would survive and we would finally conquer immortality. We would succeed where the gods had failed.
And then I would sinka€”stony weights fastened about my wrists and anklesa€”plummeting through blue-and-green despair. The dog would die. It would stay dead. My mother would die.
But I knew it wouldna€?t end there. My mother was only todaya€?s pawn. Tomorrow they would burrow their talons into someone I loved even more. They hadna€?t whispered their plans yet, but I could feel them, could see them written in a black scrawl across stormy clouds.
Isabelle. My daughter. My reason for living.
She would wear the stain of my failure like a butchera€?s apron.
As much as I feared for her life, I knew that there were things they could do to her that would be much worse than death. At times, the vile imagination of man far exceeds any demon dream, any scene in hell with scorching flames.
Images of the Underground Circus danced like the lake of fire in my mind.
I downed another glass of tequilaa€”the real stuff, not the synthetic crap. And then another. When I caught my breath, I slammed a gen-spike into my arm, sucked in the swirling moonlight, black and gold, cloud and shadow, filled my lungs with the sour and the sweet. Closed my eyes. Said a prayer, something I rarely did anymore.
Then I went to the lab. To check on my last hope. Omega. I wanted to bury my head in his fur, to believe in the loyalty that flashed in his dark eyes.
I wanted to believe in something again. Anything.