“I didn’t know everything that would happen,” he said, and finally turned, his eyes focusing on me. “I thought it would take you a bit longer to figure out where I got the materials for my new girl. She took a lot of work, you know. You should be impressed.”
My stomach gave a lurch. Nathan squeezed my hand, lending what strength he could. I took a deep breath to stop my head from spinning, and said, “I am impressed. I don’t know many people who could do something like that.” Sherman and his army of chimera; Dr. Cale and her assistants. I knew way too many people who could do exactly what he’d done. “That still doesn’t explain why you came. It’s dangerous for you to be here.”
Dr. Banks laughed. It was a brief, sharp sound, and it made me flinch, because he shouldn’t have been laughing. Laughter was dangerous with Dr. Cale sitting right there, doing a slow burn as she watched the conversation slip away from her. Please, trust me, I begged silently, wishing she shared the pheromone connection I had with Adam. He would have understood, somehow. He would have picked up on my silent, primitive prayers. He’ll tell me, but he’ll never tell you, not even when you’re taking parts of him away. Dr. Banks was the monster, and would remain the monster no matter what was done to him.
The trick was not becoming monsters in the process of learning what we needed to know.
Maybe Dr. Cale had some connection to us through our shared DNA—or maybe she was just learning to trust me. Either way, she didn’t say anything as I kept staring at Dr. Banks, willing him to speak, willing him to believe that I was still the innocent, sheltered creature he’d worked so hard to create.
“It’s dangerous to be anywhere right now, honeybunch,” he said finally. “There’s sleepwalkers all over the Bay Area, all over the state, all over the country. We’re losing ground faster than we can take it back. Pleasant Hill is completely deserted, except for a nest of sleepwalkers that we can’t quite seem to nail down. USAMRIID’s had to completely close off the city. You’re lucky you’re on the other side of the water. I might not have been able to reach you if you’d been near the compromised area.”
Pleasant Hill must have been the location of Sherman’s mall. I worried my lower lip between my teeth before saying, “It doesn’t seem very dangerous here.”
“You’re standing next to a woman who was just threatening to take my limbs off with a hacksaw,” said Dr. Banks. “I think your definition of ‘dangerous’ may need to be reconsidered.”
“I would never use a hacksaw on you, Steven,” said Dr. Cale sweetly. “Too much chance you’d bleed out, and I wouldn’t want that. It would be over too fast.”
“If Dr. Cale isn’t mad at you, it’s not dangerous here,” I said hurriedly. “Why did you come? Why did you bring A… Anna here if you knew it was dangerous?” I had to force myself to say the name of his pet chimera. I wanted to call her “Tansy.” I didn’t want to call her anything at all.
“Anna’s why I came here,” he said, his gaze swinging back to Dr. Cale. “She’s not doing so good. We need your help.”
“You hurt my daughter—you may have killed her,” said Dr. Cale coldly. “Why should I help you?”
“You should help Anna because part of your ‘daughter’”—he scowled in obvious distaste—“lives inside her. If you really care about your little science experiment, you’ll keep my girl alive. And if that’s not enough for you, well…” Slowly, he began to smile. He didn’t bother keeping his lips closed, and both Adam and I flinched away from the glossy white display of his teeth. “I’m assuming Anna passed my message along, or you wouldn’t have come to see me so quickly. You want the girl back. I understand that. You put a lot of work into her, and it would be a shame to lose it like this. I can help you. I can get you into SymboGen. I can make sure you walk away with everything your heart desires, and all you have to do is help me.”
“Why do you make a face like it’s bad when you call Tansy my sister, but let Anna call you her father?” asked Adam. He was scowling, an uncharacteristically fierce look on his face. “It’s the same thing.”
“No, it’s not, you little abomination,” said Dr. Banks. His tone didn’t change at all, remaining calm and even somewhat smug, like he thought he had somehow managed to get the upper hand on all of us. “I let Anna call me her father because it’s easier to control something that thinks it belongs to you. Surrey calls you her children because she’s sick in the head.” His gaze flickered to Nathan. “If I was her biological child, I think I’d be pretty damn disgusted by that, personally.”
“Then it’s a good thing you’re not my brother,” said Nathan coldly.
Dr. Banks looked briefly surprised. He covered it quickly, but the flicker of confusion had been evident to all of us. When he came here, he hadn’t been expecting to find us working together in relative harmony. Whatever information USAMRIID had on the place, it wasn’t enough to give him a full picture. That was a good thing. We might still have a chance.
“Why would I want her body back?” asked Dr. Cale.
“Because she’s brain dead but on life support, and I know how much you love your vegetables,” said Dr. Banks. “Maybe you could cultivate yourself a replacement.”
I balled my free hand into a slow fist. I had hated people before—had even hated him before—but until that moment, I hadn’t known what it was to hate someone so much that I wanted to scratch their eyes out just for the pleasure of watching them stumble blindly through the rest of their life.
Luckily, Dr. Cale had more experience than I did at talking through her hate. She snapped her finger. Fang seemed to materialize out of the shadows behind her. He was carrying a portable, battery-operated bone saw, and it said something about how good a job Dr. Banks was doing of upsetting me that I didn’t bat an eye. If Dr. Cale wanted a bone saw, well. The only person she was likely to use it on definitely deserved it.
Dr. Banks did not share my serenity. He jumped to his feet, pressing himself against the wall of his cell like he thought it was going to do him any good at all. “Now Surrey—”
“Two questions, Steven,” she said, sounding absolutely calm. I suppose she had reason to be. After all, she was the one who controlled the man holding the bone saw. “If you answer them both honestly and to my satisfaction, I promise not to cut off any of your fingers, or the hands those fingers are attached to. Lie to me, withhold information from me, and that promise goes away. Do you understand?”
Dr. Banks hesitated. Nathan sighed.
“My mother, whatever you want to call her, doesn’t fuck around,” he said. “She doesn’t make threats, because threats are meaningless. She makes promises, if you’ll forgive the cliché. Please, either tell her what she wants to know or tell her that you’re not going to, so that I can take Sal out of here before the fingers start flying.”
“Still protecting that girl’s delicate sensibilities? You’re going to have to stop one day.” There was no venom left in Dr. Banks’s voice: he sounded like a man who had looked into the depths of his own soul and found nothing there but dark inevitability. His gaze slithered back to Dr. Cale. He squared his shoulders, sitting up a little straighter, as if posture alone could somehow turn him into a noble, tragic figure. “What do you want to know?”