One more chapter to go! Now if you'll kindly excuse me, I've got people to meet, things to steal, a semester to fail…
Interval 12 – One breath
The bubbles rose, inexorably rose. She felt them brush past her, but in her mind's eye, she also watched them soar upward, pitiful misshapen blobs, like the embryo she knew they would force into her body, a foreign object which she could not afford to love nor could possibly dispose of.
Patterson watched her from the monitors in the observation room of the Vault's cryogenic freezing unit, his hands wandering absently over the top of the cool panels. The other two technicians had left to prep a room for the imminent operation, but in a few moments, they would evacuate the liquid within the cell and all available hands would be required to help bring Alma to her destination.
"Her vitals are strong." He nearly started but caught himself as Wade moved into view, scrutinizing the displays and nodding his approval.
Harlan Wade had seemingly developed a nearly lizard-like silent manner during his extended years of working in sunless laboratories. Patterson had found his behavior startling at the beginning, but the man was clearly a genius, and passionately in love with his work and solitude, so the flaw was not crippling, nor paramount.
"I see our 'defrosting' is going forward as planned," remarked Wade, sounding pleased.
Patterson nodded quickly. Wade moved closer to the displays, staring at the dark form hovering in the spherical cell. Alma's hair wafted around her head like grass in the viscous and slightly milky liquid, intermittently revealing her closed eyelids, hollow cheeks and silent lips.
"We'll just have to make sure what happened last time does not happen again," Wade muttered through unmoving lips.
The technician shrugged inwardly, picking up a notebook forgotten on the control panel. He took out the pen tucked in the breast pocket of his lab coat. As he scratched notes into the paper, he began to feel a slight chill settle into the room. He glanced up, but the futility of the gesture became obvious as he remembered that the windows were sealed shut and the doors nearly always closed.
Then, a sudden glimmer of movement caught his eye. The pen hit the clean floor with a loud clatter.
"Dr. Wade?" Patterson called, his breath a hiss, but he could not take his eyes away from what he was seeing.
The tiny figure stood huddled in the corner of the room, far enough from the prying rays of the fluorescent ceiling lights to be shrouded in enveloping shadows. The bulbs seemed to flicker in her presence and a source-less electrical droning rose in the observation room, filling the sudden silence.
Forcefully twitching her neck into position, Alma cocked her head in a playful gesture; her efforts were wasted, for the very meaning of the movement had vanished for her long ago. Patterson backed away, his breathing uneven, holding the notebook between the agonizingly pale girl and himself, like a cross before Satan. He groped behind him with his free hand for the control panel, something, anything, to lean on, and called out again to Wade.
The girl opened her pale lips; a scream swelled from her bloodied vocal chords and engulfed the room in darkness. The glass screens of the CRT monitors swelled and cracked, flickering hieroglyphs, white noise, blood and madness dancing across the displays like a gruesome masquerade, before broken glass showered the floor. The lights pulsed frantically, outracing each other in tempo and frenzy; amber liquid crawled across the floor in a paroxysm of insanity.
The room seemed to pitch back and forth violently. Crouched on the floor, Patterson cringed, backing away from Alma and into Wade's bloodied and blackened skeleton, the bones clacking merrily together like the pieces of a broken wind chime.
Patterson's screams added to hers. He lifted his hands to his face, every nerve in his body singing in pain, as the exposed skin on his body sizzled like bacon and peeled away, flapping uselessly, to the floor, revealing darker, raw, glistening flesh underneath.
He looked up at the little girl through the tears of pain drawing fiery lines down his face. Alma was suddenly different. She was taller, and her hair was tucked back, leaving her face naked. The red dress was gone; she now wore a blue hospital gown, untouched by the flames licking away hungrily at the control panels and lapping at her ankles, like a well-trained dog. She was older, and her features were more mature, tinged with the tiniest taste of what she would look like as an adult. She looked perfectly human in all respects.
As she moved forward, stretching out an underdeveloped arm that trembled with exertion, Patterson could see her divergence. Alma lurched with every step, a jerking, unnatural movement that twisted her articulations into artistic, but broken and angular forms, as if her bones had been snapped.
"Help me."
"I'm the one who needs help," Patterson managed to protest, before his throat was suddenly and violently punctured and his voice was reduced to a pained wheeze. There he sat, cooking, a living t-bone on the grill.
Alma knelt down in front of him. He tried to back away, but he had hit a wall, and the structure around him cracked and bent and made him a prisoner. Wade was pushed into the wall and ground into granules of dust. Alma's breath was acrid smoke in his ear, her teeth sharp between her twisted lips. But her voice was beseeching.
"Daddy doesn't listen."
-
"Dan. Daniel!"
Patterson gave a start. He didn't look at Amy. Panting, he touched his face; he drew up his sleeves and stared down at his arms. His skin was all there; it was as though his sweat had put out the flames. There were no holes in the soft flesh of his neck. He drew a handful of lab coat to his face; there was not a single trace of smoke in the fabric. His breathing slowed to a canter and his pulse began to steady. He would have jumped and screamed out to the world in relief, but he had realized where he was.
"Daniel?" Amy's voice was insistent. "What's wrong?"
He spun, ignoring her. "Dr. Wade?"
"What?" The bespectacled scientist barely raised his eyes.
Patterson swallowed nervously. "Uh… do we have to do this again? I-I mean… we've already made one boy. Shouldn't that be… enough?"
Wade's knuckles, clutching the back of a swivel chair, went white. Angrily, Wade turned his back on the technician. He began to punch in the commands on the nearest keyboard.
Amy grabbed Patterson's arm. "What the hell is going on?"
Patterson looked away. Sweat ran down the sides of his face and fear clung to him like the memory of that little face that had burned itself into his mind. He couldn't bear to look at the cryogenic container, even as the last key was forced down with a strange finality, the machinery clanked into gear, plumes of water vapor and vaporizing liquid nitrogen were jettisoned into the air and the fluids drained out of Alma's holding cell.
-
The breath gasped into her. Alma's eyelids fluttered open, her eyelashes clinging uselessly to each other as though to save themselves from drowning. Her vision was blurry; for her, the first things to come into focus were the clouds that drifted inanely across the bright blue sky.
The sounds outside, once dulled by the pulse and weight of the water, were overwhelming. She felt the waves of reproach wash over her body like choking water as she lay on the wet concrete. She did not look at the onlookers, for each mouth was open to the same words, each face the same contortion of agony.
"Alma, silly girl," the woman said, her head appearing neatly across from the lifeguard's. "Mommy was worried sick about you!" Smiling, she rubbed and patted Alma's cheeks, but the little girl, even at this tender age, knew that her mother was thinking of the tirade she itched to deliver her daughter.
"Marina, come on," the man said, squeezing Mommy's shoulder. Alma saw sunlight reflect off the mirror surfaces of his spectacles before he turned away, impatiently surveying the hotel. Marina did not react; moving closer, he added, under his breath, "Think of our baby."
"Fine, Harlan, fine." Mommy's head withdrew and the woman waddled away, clinging to her husband, who rubbed her distended belly affectionately.
As the crowd dispersed, the lifeguard was uneasy. She had duties to return to, but something about this girl prompted her to remain. There was something unusual, something not-quite-right about this little girl; something in the way she still lay on the concrete, motionless, scarcely breathing, with her sodden, dirty crimson dress strewn about her, even when her parents were already out of sight and disappearing down the wooden stairs to the beach. It was as if she was savoring the moment, too pleased with her brush with death to leap back joyously into life.
"Are you okay, honey?" she asked. A sudden wind blew against her exposed back, and she shivered.
The pale purplish lips stirred, but no sound emerged. She looked dead. Her eyes were on the lifeguard, and yet, they were clouded and unfocused, as if she were elsewhere. What was wrong with this little girl? What was her problem? The teen suddenly felt a wave of guilt crash over her as a silver tear ran down Alma's face.
The sounds of splashing coming from the hotel pool seemed to dim. She looked up to spot the parents in the crowd, but they were definitely gone. And when she looked back down, so was the little girl.
-
The sky was cold on this August day; somehow even the southern warmth had deserted the bay. Harlan Wade's arm curled around Marina's shoulders. She felt and enjoyed the subtle protection, although it did not shelter the only part of her body that she believed actually needed warmth at this moment.
Harlan stared down at the footprints he generated, then briefly turned and glanced at the long trail leading back to the hotel. The beach was deserted; the only splashes within earshot were generated by the bathers in the heated pool. Few people wandered far enough to get more than a whiff of the Eastern coast's salty air.
"We need to have a talk about Alma."
"Alma? What about Alma?" Harlan, though he could not see his wife's face, could imagine clear as crystal her expression. He knew she was tired of the constant arguing their daughter had provoked during her brief years of existence; these were mostly over her strange behavior and the necessity of sending her to an institution for evaluation and possible treatment.
He mustered the few words he could grasp. "Honey, I'm sorry." He squeezed her arm, but she drew away. Harlan's chest heaved a sigh. "Damn it, Marina! Why do you have to be so goddamn childish?"
She whirled on him, dark eyes flashing. "Childish? Oh, you wouldn't know a thing about childish, Harlan! You keep saying you mean good for Alma but I know what you want! Ever since you took her to your workplace –"
"I've only wanted what's best for our daughter. Don't tell me you've done more for her than I have. You won't even look at her." Spittle landed on a rock and Harlan's finger pointed accusingly. Marina was hunched, facing away from him, and did not answer. "You're despicable."
"Despicable." A titter of laughter escaped his wife. "I may never have loved Alma the way I loved you, but I'll never send her to become a lab rat!" A sudden pain, like a knife jab to her swollen abdomen, caused her to stop with a gasped "Harlan."
"What!"
"I-I think –"
He turned; he paled. He ran to his wife's side, where she had collapsed in the cold, wet sand. Already, her blood, having mingled with the salty sea water, had stained the beach an eerie pink.
"Marina!"
He cradled her, too stunned to make a move. Her eyes were clouded over. There was something wrong about the way her body sagged in his hands, the way the strands of hair over her wax-like, pale face barely fluttered with her breaths.
"I… think you were right." Her lips trembled.
Harlan followed his wife's gaze. His eyes alighted on the small form a few feet away on the beach, where the water could leech at her ankles. A thin smile twisted Alma's lips as she stood looking down at her father and dying mother.
A gurgling sound came from Marina's vocal chords; a thin jet of blood squirted into the air, dotting his face. Harlan tore his eyes away from Alma's, stared into Marina's eyes and screamed in the direction of the seemingly derisive laughter coming from the swimming pool:
"Somebody, help! Marina!"
Marina Wade did not reply. She was not breathing.