Джозеф Нассис - SNAFU - Heroes [An Anthology of Military Horror]

“Freeze! Federal agent. I’m armed.”

My words bounced off the darkened walls and melted into nothingness.

Then, from behind me, someone spoke my name.

A woman’s voice.

Soft.

Familiar.

Achingly familiar.

An impossible voice.

“Joe…”

I whirled, gun in one hand, flash in the other, pointing into the darkness.

A woman stood ten feet behind me.

She was dressed in black. Shoes, pants, jersey, gun belt, pistol. All black. Dark hair, dark eyes.

Those eyes.

Her eyes.

My mouth fell open. Someone drove a blade of pure ice through my heart. I could see my pistol begin to tremble in my hand.

I stared at her.

I spoke her name.

“Grace…”

I don’t know what time does in moments of madness. It stops or it warps. It becomes something else. Every heartbeat felt like a slow, deliberate punch to my breastbone, and yet I could feel my pulse fluttering.

She held a pistol in her hand, the barrel raised to point at my chest, and I had an insane, detached thought.

You don’t need a bullet to kill me. Be her and I’ll die.

Not, be her, and I think I’ll die, too.

She licked her lips and spoke.

“Who are you?”

The accent was British. Like Grace’s.

But…

But the tone was wrong.

It didn’t sound like her.

Not anymore. It had a moment ago when she’d spoken my name. But not now. Not anymore.

“Grace,” I said again, but now I could hear the doubt in my own voice. “I…”

She peered at me over the barrel of the gun, her eyes dark with complex emotions, fierce with intelligence.

Very slowly, very carefully, she raised her gun so that the barrel pointed to the ceiling and held her other hand palms-out in a clear no-threat gesture.

“You’re Captain Ledger, aren’t you?” she asked.

I kept my gun on her.

“Who are you?” I asked, but my voice broke in the middle, so I had to ask again.

“Felicity Hope,” she said. “Barrier.”

I stood there and held my gun on her for another five seconds.

Then…

I lowered the pistol.

“God almighty,” I breathed.

She frowned at me; half a quizzical smile. “Who did you think I was?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Felicity Hope holstered her piece and came toward me. “You called me Grace.”

I said nothing.

“You thought I was Grace Courtland, didn’t you?”

“Grace is dead,” I told her.

“I know.” She stood there staring at me.

Up close, I could tell that it wasn’t her. This woman’s hair was paler, her eyes darker, her skin had fewer scars. But the height was the same, and the body. The same mix of dangerous athleticism and luscious curves. The movement was the same, a dancer’s grace. And the keen intelligence in the eyes. Yeah, that was exactly the same.

Damn it.

When the universe wants to fuck with you it has no problem bending you over a barrel and giving it to you hard and ugly.

I cleared my throat. “Did you know her?”

She nodded.

“Was she… a friend?” I asked.

Felicity shrugged. “Actually, we weren’t. Most of the time I knew her I thought she was a stuck-up bitch.” She watched my face as she spoke, probably wondering what buttons she was pushing. Then she added, “But I don’t think I really knew her. Not really. Not until right before she died.”

“How?”

“What?”

“How could you know what she was like right before she died?”

“Oh…we spoke on the phone quite a lot. She was officially still with Barrier and had to make regular reports. I was the person she reported to.”

“You were her superior officer?”

She looked far too young. Grace had been young, too, but Grace was an exception to most rules. She’d been the first woman to officially train with the SAS. She’d been a senior field team operative in some of the most gruelling cases on both sides of the Atlantic. There was nobody quite like Grace and everyone knew it.

Felicity shook her head. “Hardly. I was a desk jockey taking field reports. I know I’m not in Major Courtland’s league.”

“No,” I said ungraciously. “You’re not. Tell me why you’re here.”

She said, “Changeling.”

“Which means what exactly? The name keeps popping up in searches but no one seems to know exactly what it is.”

“What do you know about transformational genetics and self-directed theriomorphy?”

“Some,” I said, dodging it. “What do you know about it?”

“Too much,” she said.

“Give me more than that.”

“They’re making monsters,” she said.

I shook my head. “Not in the mood for banter, honey, and I’m never in the mood for cryptic comments, especially not from total strangers I meet in dark places. This is American soil and a legally-closed site. Spill everything right now or enjoy the flight home.”

She took a breath. “Okay, but I’ll have to condense it because there’s a lot.”

“So,” I said, “condense.”

“Can you take that flashlight out of my eyes?”

“No,” I said, and didn’t. The light made her eyes look very large and moist. If it was uncomfortable, then so what? I was deeply uncomfortable, so it was a running theme for the day.

She said, “Ever since the dawn of gene therapy and transgenic science it’s become clear that DNA is not locked. Evolution itself proves that DNA advances. Look at any DNA strand and you’ll see the genes for non-human elements like viruses hard-wired into our genetic code.”

“Part of junk DNA,” I said. “What about it?”

“Transformational genetics is a relatively new branch of science that is searching for methods of changing specific DNA, and essentially rebuilding it so that a new tailor-made code can be developed.”

“That’s not new,” I pointed out. “The Nazis tried that, and the whole Eugenics movement before that.”

“That’s selective breeding. That’s cumbersome and time consuming because it requires eggs and host bodies and so forth. This is remodeling, and recent advances have opened developmental doors no one imagined would be possible in this century.”

I didn’t say anything. During the firefight at the Dragon Factory we’d encountered mercenaries who had undergone gene therapy with ape DNA. And there were other even more hideous monsters there.

“The word ‘theriomorphy’ keeps showing up. What’s that?”

“Shapeshifting.”

“Shape…?”

“The ability to change at will from one form to another.” She smiled through the blinding flashlight glow. “From human form into something else.”

“At… will?”

“Oh yes.”

“Like from what to what? You’re making this sound like we’re hunting werewolves or something.”

Her smile flickered. “Who knows? Maybe we are.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I know.”

“Wait… hold on… are we really standing here having a conversation about werewolves? I mean… fucking werewolves? ”

After a three count she said, “No.”

“Jesus jumped-up Christ in a sidecar, then why—?”

“Werewolves would be easy,” she said, cutting right through my words. “Werewolves would be a silver bullet and we’d take the rest of the afternoon off for a drink. I wish it was only werewolves.”

I gaped at her.

Seriously… what do you say to that?

“Okay,” I said, “before I pee my pants here, how do you know about this and what can we do about it? This facility is sealed.”

She flashed her first real smile, and it looked so much like the battlefield grin Grace used to give me that I almost turned away.