A few hours earlier…
“Put your fucking hands up and get down on your knees!”
Guns.
They’ve got guns.
I forgot about guns.
Hard to believe, really, but I did.
I thought I could fight a dozen men, and to be fair to me, if I had been willing to transform and rip their throats out, I could have. However, in human form, with weapons drawn on me, I am forced to put my hands up and surrender.
“Go and get the girl,” the leader of the security patrol says. “We need her.”
“You want me to go get her?” I suggest.
“No. You’re coming with us.”
They take me back to Veronica, who is gloating right up until she realizes that Lydia got away.
“You won’t be able to bring her in,” I tell them. “Not without me.”
“She’s a glorified copywriter. I’m sure she will be easy to find,” Veronica says, dismissing me immediately.
“I wouldn’t count on it. She’s persistent. That’s why she waited for me for so long, and it’s why she will outwait you, too. Just let me go, Veronica. I know you’re pissed about the cat thing, but in a few months, or maybe years, it will be something you can laugh about.”
“Of course,” she says. “I’m going to laugh about it with you stuck in my metaphorical basement, and your little side piece pumping out hybrid babies we can use for further experimentation.”
“I never agreed to that.”
“Of course you did. You just didn’t pay attention to what you were agreeing to when you agreed,” she says. “Any genetic material synthesized in the course of this research belongs to the company. You synthesized genetic material in yourself. Thus, you belong to the company. And your girlfriend will too.”
“This is an overreaction.”
She slams her fist on the table. “Don’t you tell me what’s an overreaction!”
“That’s also an overreaction,” I comment, deadpan. Maybe some of Lydia’s bratty energy is rubbing off on me. Or maybe I’vealways been that way; we just tend not to give men the moniker. Worth thinking about, perhaps.
“Neither one of you are going to see the light of day again,” Veronica promises me. “You are going to do your work here, for me. You are going to share your discoveries with the company, and she is going to produce testing protocols.”
“That’s the cat talking, Veronica. You have to let the energy go. I’m sure it wasn’t fun finding yourself in a feline body, but now you understand how the product works, you have more of an insight than most.”
Her eyes glitter at me with what I would call animal fury, but I think the anger is all too human.
“I don’t want your rationalizations, Simon,” she says. “You’ve fucked with the wrong person for the first and last time.”
I’ve got to calm her down, or this is going to get out of hand.
“I got stuck in animal form too,” I say. “It wasn’t pleasant. It was frightening.”
Her expression hardens for a moment, and then she seems softer, and I make the mistake of thinking I might have gotten through to her.
I haven’t, of course.
“I wasn’t frightened,” she says. “I was inspired. The things that can be done with this technology are myriad, perhaps even endless. You have forever taken the line between man and animal and made one the other. There will be people who choose to live as dogs, or cats, or lions. Our species can depart for the animal kingdom whenever it chooses. You are invaluable, Dr.Seek. And so is your little mate. So I will have the two of you in my custody for as long as it takes.”
“You can’t do this to people, and you know it.”
