Chunk 22

you can kill! Repeat!!!"

"You can kill your chimera..." I obediently said, but the meaning of these words still remained somewhere there, beyond this universe.

Glass and plastic fragments crunched—this was Gorbosia jumping onto the overturned table, bending her knees, crouching like a cat before a jump, and freezing for a moment. Then with a whistle she spun the axe around her wrist, and again the thought stirred in me that there was some elusive falseness in this movement.

This is just a chimera. Not the one you recognized in it.

And then I understood—she was spinning the axe together with her arm! Rotating the wrist not as people do, but as if on a hinge: turning around the joint, clutching the handle in a death grip!

"Chimera," I repeated, but this time the word acquired meaning. "You're not Gorbosia at all!"

Letting out a high "e-e-ekh," the woman lunged forward in that same swift rat jump. But now everything was different. I was no longer a bag of gelatin dying of fear. I was a soldier with a weapon in my hands.

You can kill your chimera.

Two shots precisely in the chest—and the creature hit the wall like a sack. I barely managed to step back. When she fell to the floor with a crash, I shot her twice more, but it seems there was no special need for that.

"Quick learner..." Irma slapped me heavily on the shoulder, and I couldn't say what was more in her voice—joy or sarcasm.

The woman lay face down, hunched and lopsided as in life, in a puddle of completely ordinary red blood. Irma and I stood and looked.

"I think I told you not to sleep," Irma noted reproachfully.

"I don't know how it happened... I dozed off for just a minute..."

"A minute's enough. Their only weak spot—they're vulnerable to the one whose nightmare they copy. Our fear for them is like a computer program. And if it turned into a horror from your childhood, and you found the strength to shoot at it, the mycelium needs a different program. And it discards this chimera like junk—lets it die. Understand?"

"Truthfully, no."

"Here..." Irma took the woman by the forearm of the right hand that still gripped the axe. "See?"

On the skin were some blue spots. Or not spots... They appeared literally before our eyes, spreading in a fanciful pattern.

"What is this?"

Instead of answering, Irma took Gorbosia by her withered left hand, over which such blue patterns were rapidly spreading, and folded both her arms on her chest. Forearm over forearm.

"Now do you see?"

Now—yes... The blue patterns on both arms finally transformed into a tattoo—Gothic script writing.

"ONLY GOD," said the inscription on the right.

"JUDGE ME," the left finished the thought.

"She's resetting," Irma explained casually. "Your nightmare turned out ineffective, and the dead chimera becomes what it was."

"She's another Nathan Gogh?!" I felt awkward that I had to say this idiocy aloud.

"Strange as it is, yes. All chimeras are initially exact copies of specific people."

Gorbosia's facial features also began rapidly changing. She more and more looked like a man.

"Believe me, right now the mycelium is growing new fruiting bodies nearby. Like boletes after rain... And soon they'll come for our souls," Irma assured me, "but this time the mycelium will choose as a program some other fear of yours. So you'll stand again like a paralytic while they twist our heads off."

I was stung with shame.

"Listen, Irma, I don't understand myself what was wrong with me..."

"Relax, Lieutenant! It's not your fault. Chimeras produce infrasound inaudible to the ear, which amplifies your feeling of fear a hundredfold. It's physiology—there's no immunity."

"Like a neuroconstructor..."

"You don't even imagine how right you are," Irma nodded. "The sound chimeras produce is one of the few things we managed to study well. Research data got to 'Artillerist Hans' along with everything Vandlik stole. They returned to Earth. The mutagen didn't work. So they tried to squeeze at least something from this expedition. And your neuroconstructor appeared."

"My God... You're right, it was developed as a weapon!"

"Bingo!" Irma slapped me on the shoulder. "And when it turned out fear by itself doesn't kill, they decided to come back for chimeras."

I looked again at the dead creature. Then bent over the woman to examine the axe in her hand... For two seconds I didn't understand what was wrong. And when I realized, I froze with my mouth open. The woman's fist and the axe handle were one whole! I didn't believe my own eyes. The handle turned out not to be carbon at all—she'd only imitated it, and actually it was something like bone... But most horrifying—the "metal" part from butt to blade. It consisted of countless nail plates that seemed to have grown on each other.

"Lord..." I groaned. I felt nauseous. "This axe grows from her..."

"If she'd come across a real one, she'd have used it," Irma shrugged. "And so—true, a chimera can grow anything."

"Are they intelligent?"

"Chimeras?" Irma scratched her chin. "Well, some semblance of human brain a chimera has, because inside the fungal structure human cells are preserved, including neurons. It's a bit like how terrestrial lichen uses algae cells... But chimera thinking is like a drugged-up addict's. For example, it can use firearms or even get behind the wheel, and immediately—can't figure out how ordinary doors open. If you need to pull toward yourself, but the chimera pushes—that's it. Will spend two hours throwing itself at them, trying to break them, but to pull the other way—won't think of it. I've seen this with my own eyes. Something very simple can corner a chimera, but what exactly—you'll never guess in advance. And there's no sense in their actions whatsoever. Except one—they kill."

It was twenty past one. To the basement level where the lab was located led narrow metal stairs resembling a ship's ladder.

"I'll go first."

Irma slowly nodded:

"Careful."

Already on the stairs I felt some anxiety. My heart, which had been beating at a moderate trot pace, suddenly without reason broke into a gallop. Though no—

there was a reason. A smell... The barely perceptible aroma of wild strawberry. But so faint I wasn't sure myself if it was there.

"Do you smell what it smells like?"

She sniffed.

"No. What?"

"Probably imagined it. Okay... Let's be more careful... I don't like all this..."

"Do you feel something? Anxiety?"

I nodded, mentally thanking her for choosing the word "anxiety" rather than "fear."

"It's infrasound," Irma said confidently, pulling out her weapon. "It will be just as scary as the first time. Even worse. But you'll have to overcome it."

I also pulled my weapon. The short corridor ended in a turn, beyond which our path was blocked by a solid armored shutter with a huge red inscription "EMERGENCY ZONE." Irma took out the key card.

"Ready?"

She stood by the lock at the other end of the wide door.

"That's what you dragged me here for, right?" I guessed. "The door's too wide, and you need a second pair of hands to apply the cards simultaneously."

She nodded, not even trying to make excuses:

"But not only. I trust you."

"I know. Well, plus the fact that Okamura got scared as soon as you crashed through the fence of the restricted zone."

I didn't hide the sarcasm, meanwhile trying to get even for her dragging me into this adventure. But she seemed completely indifferent—she shrugged:

"That too."

I sighed and raised the card to the lock.

"Three... Four!" Irma commanded, and we simultaneously applied the cards.

Nothing. If I'm honest, I managed to feel relieved: I really didn't like this whole stunt. But then the door clicked loudly.

"Come on!"

We grabbed the brackets at the very bottom of the shutter. It reluctantly crept upward and finally revealed to our eyes ordinary, completely glass doors. Irma hurriedly applied her card to the lock and unlocked it. Warm

stagnant air hit us with dampness and such an incongruous aroma of fresh wild strawberry.

"Yes!" Irma squeezed me tightly in an embrace. "It worked!"

But I stood with my mouth open, trying to clothe in words what I saw:

"What the hell is this..."

33

"A basement of an abandoned building," Irma chuckled. "What should it be like, in your opinion?"

The laboratory resembled movie set decorations. The walls and ceiling were thickly braided with some roots. They'd torn out carbon-plastic panels "with the flesh" and hung from the ceiling like vines. Right on the floor thick moss or something grew like a carpet...

"Now do you feel what it smells like?" I asked.

"Oh yes. I'd even gather some pollen, taking advantage of the opportunity."

I stared at her. She giggled. Joking. Decided to relieve the tension.

"Let's go," Irma stepped through the glass doors. "The quarantine compartment is there, around the corner. Then we get in the all-terrain vehicle and—home."

We walked silently. I stared at the jungle that had grown here under artificial light. In some rooms were whole bushes. A thought flashed that there might be animals here. Light panels burned with carefree dim light, as if they were nightlights in the corridor of a house wrapped in sleep. Or rather, lanterns in a park... The feeling of anxiety let go. Got scared of my own fright—that's what it was. Not a premonition and not an approaching chimera. And yet I caught myself waiting for something scarier than the woman with the axe to appear. For example, a huge, calf-sized bog spider from Proxima. And I involuntarily twitched my shoulders. Yes... Spiders were the only thing missing here. Not that I have arachnophobia... But few things evoke such feelings in me as spiders.

In childhood I could watch for hours as a cross-spider with a thick patterned abdomen weaves a web, but would never take it in my hands. Not because it could hypothetically bite (actually, if you take it right—it couldn't), but because of something ancient and irrefutable, written somewhere at the DNA level thousands of generations ago. And once my father showed me a karakurt. A large black spider with a round, almost spherical abdomen—so inflated, as if about to burst. And bright red dots like beads. This was in the south, at grandma's—father found it in the flowerbeds. "Never touch such spiders," he said seriously. Before that he hadn't said anything similar even about scary-looking hairy tarantulas, of which there were many.

Since then the image of the karakurt attracted me. I read in reference books everything I could find about them, and the black spider with red dots became for me a symbol not even of danger but of disgusting painful death...

I shook my head. Hardly such memories are appropriate now. Just not spiders. Think about anything but them. And not about those calves from Proxima's swamps—huge dark-brown creatures with shiny strong carapace and claws on the tips of chelicerae the size of a hunting knife... I was again caught by a whole stream of memories. Stop! Mentally crumpled and tore the intrusive image. Enough! But then a simple and logical thought dawned on me—Nathan Gogh is too small for a bog spider! And if a chimera decides to take this image, the little spider will come out completely pathetic. A weakling. This idea amused me. I even quickened my pace. Especially since we'd turned the corner and the massive quarantine doors were already visible through the hanging weave of roots. And no spiders. Neither giant bog ones, nor small ones with red dots...

I remember once in summer—also at grandma's—we were playing with other children in a vacant lot. The grass—mostly feather grass—was tall and swayed under wind gusts like a sea. And we fell into it on our backs, arms spread, and shouted: "I'm not here! I'm not here!". I also fell, and the feather grass offered its stems, carefully accepting me in its embrace. But then a tall blade of grass bent over me, as if looking into my eyes. And on its tip I saw an abdomen huge as a cherry, black with red dots—a karakurt. It hung there, clinging with all eight legs, and the blade bent, ending up right by my face. I froze, afraid to breathe, because I imagined how the spider falls on my chin and its round body immediately rolls down my collar... I practically felt it. Practically saw how I jump up, panicking trying to shake out the karakurt, and he, frightened no less than me, pressed by fabric against something warm and alive, sticks his chelicerae into my body and injects venom.

From these memories I involuntarily shuddered and mechanically ran my hand over my collar, as if wanting to make sure no spider had fallen in. Then, in childhood, everything of course ended well. The spider never fell, and I climbed out from under the cursed blade and ran away... But the imaginary fall of the deadly poisonous karakurt down my shirt left in my memory almost the same scar as if it had been real. Even now goosebumps ran across my skin, and it was hard to fight the desire to take off and immediately shake out my tunic...

Dim duty lighting lamps swam rhythmically overhead... We'd almost arrived—the door a few meters away. I look around just in case. No one. But then Irma stopped and strangely waved her arms. As if she'd run into something.

"What's there?"

"Some thread," she said uncertainly, running her palm over her face.

On her fingers something really whitened. But much thicker than a thread and somehow too light... A wild guess flashed in my head, but I refused to believe. And Irma was already reaching for another such strange thread. And the moment she touched it, a wave of suffocating fear filled me right up to my throat. Like with Gorbosia's appearance. I hear nothing more except the pounding of my own heart, which seemed to break its chain. The web trembles under Irma's fingers, and it seems to me everything around has slowed again, as if I'd used pollen, but now only my thoughts outpace events while I'm as slow as the entire frozen world around us. Something cracks overhead, and pieces of plastic panels rain down from above. I try to jump back, but my body's too clumsy. Don't make it.

From the hole in the ceiling a huge spider, fat as an overfed boar, black, falls right on us.

It seems while falling it accidentally pushed me, throwing me aside. Lucky, because I'd already fallen into that jelly stupor and definitely wouldn't have jumped aside myself. A fat, huge female with an abdomen swollen like an overloaded backpack and chelicerae full of venom. A karakurt, only thousands upon thousands of times larger than terrestrial relatives. I try to get up but seem to overcome literal, physical resistance of space. Of course it wasn't space resisting, but my own body paralyzed by infrasound's influence.

The spider, raising its front legs high, threateningly rears up. And what is revealed to the eyes immediately causes pulsing viscous nausea: instead of a chitinous carapace I see a phantasmagoric weave of naked human bodies. Female. Legs, tangles of long hair, breasts with large dark nipples, and in the very center—the cyanotic face of dead Rosalyn Dilan. The chimera consists of no less than six clones. They're masterfully connected—like the creation of an insane artist who was in such a hurry he painted it only from above, leaving under the powerful karakurt's cephalothorax a horrifying tangle of girls' bodies.

Shots rang out—clever Irma oriented herself first. The spider rushes forward but stumbles through chunks of collapsed ceiling, legs slide on the smooth floor, and she falls on her abdomen.

Pistol... Confusedly I search for it with my gaze... There it is—under my feet. I pick it up, but panic that lives separate from my decisions scalds me like a stream of boiling water, knocking air from my lungs and overwhelming with one single senseless, irrational desire—to freeze.

"Shoot! Shoot!" I realize Irma's been screaming this for a while.

I need to shoot, I know. The spider's already rising on her legs... "Only you can kill your chimera." If only I could find the strength in myself...

The spider gives me no chance: from growths under the abdomen that stick out fancifully between Rosalyn's bodies, she shoots several sticky streams at my face that harden instantly into white threads.

Splat! I instantly lose orientation and, trying to tear off the web, tangle myself even more. As if they'd wrapped me in plastic wrap...

"This is the end," surfaces in my head. "Don't move so she'll kill you quickly."

This idea, wild in its essence, looks so convincing that I obey, finally losing the sense of reality. The most important thing seems to be precisely this—to endure the horrifying, painful moment of injecting venom with tiger-claw-like tips of chelicerae... Helplessly blindly I retreat several steps, almost feeling the imagined pain from a spider bite. But then I fall, tripping over some root. Purely instinctively I shoot several times, sincerely believing this is the end. It will hurt. Especially when my

nervous system is attacked by neurotoxin. Most likely, hellish pain in the spine will be the last thing I feel in this world...

Something's wrong. Too long... I tear off the web, afraid to see up close eight spider eyes... The spider writhes sluggishly on its side, trying to get up—I shot off two of its legs! Irma mutters something through her teeth and endlessly long tries to replace the battery in the inductor. She's as if stuck on this, because it seems she doesn't understand what's happening around.

"Run!!!" I shout and drag her, grabbing her by the collar.

"No!" Irma even tries to break free; seems she's lost her sense of reality. "We need the mutagen!"

I forcibly drag her to the lab exit.

"Help!" I shout and point at the emergency shutter. "Help lower it!"

And not waiting for her, I jump up, grabbing the bracket. I hear the spider behind the corner knocking with legs, trying to get up. I'm not at all sure my panicked shooting counts as an attempt to "kill my chimera." I wouldn't count it... Irma gets up—it seems to me too slowly.

"Come on!"

The shutter won't budge. I flail on it like a schoolboy on a pull-up bar. Irma hesitates.

"We need to go back! You killed her!" and she looks at me pleadingly.

My weight isn't enough to lower the shutter.

"Help me! Irma, come on!"

She shakes her head and seems about to cry. For two seconds I don't know what to do and only jerk on the shutter. But then it suddenly drops half a meter at once. And then as if it changed its mind—and again I can't budge it. Finally coming to her senses, Irma rushes to help. But the shutter seems to remember it's been without attention for sixty whole years. I hang on it, writhing like a snake. The shutter makes a pitiful sound, advancing a few more centimeters...

Then I saw.

The surrounding world with all its chimeras, giant spiders and dead clones ceased to exist—in the middle of the corridor stood my daughter, frightened, with tears smeared across her cheeks. My little Elza. Behind her back from around the corner crawled the gigantic karakurt missing two legs on its side, and in its movements was no more haste or predatory fuss. The prey turned out closer than it expected.

I released my hands, plopping to the floor. It seems Irma also jumped down and tried to grab my sleeve, but I easily broke free. She shouted frantically after me. I didn't hear. I ran at full speed to protect my tiny daughter. Raced, blinded by the greatest of all conceivable fears—fear for her life. Not understanding that Elza couldn't be here under any, even the most fantastic circumstances. Not seeing that my little girl's legs didn't end where ankles should be, but continued, growing into the shins of Rosalyn Dilan kneeling.

Fear is cocaine. It makes you deaf to reason's arguments, and you see only what you're afraid to see.

- Part 3: Woman with Jaguar Eyes

Part 3

Woman with Jaguar Eyes

1

Light cut my eyes even through closed eyelids. Very bright. I squinted with all my might. Felt better. And immediately felt something on my cheeks. "Hands," I understood. "Someone's hands in rubber gloves." My eyelids were roughly pulled down. Blinding white light slashed me, it seemed, not even in the eyes but in the frontal lobe of my brain and spread as pain from temples to the very back of my head.

"This is him," a voice sounded very close to my face.

The light immediately disappeared. My cheeks were released. For some time I sat squinting and enjoying the darkness. Then carefully blinked. Purple spots still jumped before my eyes, not letting me see anything normally. Finally I could focus. Right in front of me squatted an unfamiliar dark-skinned man in a snow-white biological protection suit. On his face was a transparent mask, and in his hand—a thin steel rod. "Flashlight," came from somewhere deep in my subconscious. "He was shining it in your eyes."

Behind him stood more people in white suits and transparent sealed masks covering their faces. The man stood up and approached them. The room was rectangular, large and completely empty, if you don't count the chair I was sitting on. Floor and walls faced with white tile... No windows. Only a large rectangular mirror covering the whole wall. The classic pseudo-mirror from movies came to mind, where on its other side invisible observers always stand...

I'm sitting. My lower back hurts. I straightened and tried to raise my hands, but something hard immediately cut into my wrist. Looking down, I discovered with surprise on my wrists... By the way, what is this? Hard to think, as if my brain's fogged by some drugs. Earphones... Handjobs... No. Close but not it. What did they inject me with?! I jerked my hands, and the metal objects on them quietly jingled.

The people were silent, staring at me unblinkingly. Won't be surprised if they don't blink behind their masks... Handcuffs! Remembered the word. Lord, why am I in handcuffs... How long have I been here? This thought led me to a dead end. Don't even remember how I ended up in this room...

"Who are you?" my own voice seemed foreign to me.

"How do you feel?" the voice from under the mask was female. Maybe even familiar.

I tried to make out the face, but the woman stood too far away and reflections on the mask hid it.

"Do I know you?" I asked.

"And does it seem to you that you do?"

Perplexed, I uncertainly shrugged. For a moment the light went out and immediately came back on. Fluorescent panels unpleasantly flickered, gaining working power. What's wrong with their electricity? And where am I, after all... Again helplessly surveyed the people in white. Like snowmen. Why are they in these suits?

And if they're in suits and I'm not... Understanding came sharply, like a finger snap—together with tactile sensations. Like the hardness of plastic touching my buttocks, like the smooth coolness of the floor where my feet stood. I'm naked. I lowered my eyes to make sure. Not a scrap of clothing. They stared at me just as dispassionately. For a moment it seemed this was a dream. One of those strange, stupid delusions when you find yourself in what your mother bore you in in a public place. For example, at work. There's a crowd of people around, and you walk naked as if that's how it should be. But then a timid suspicion creeps into your head: maybe you shouldn't have come to the office like this... But the suspicion is still very weak, and you try to brush it off, but as soon as the strange thought visits you, everyone immediately begins to notice your indecent nudity. They say nothing, but in their gazes (first at you, then at each other) you can absolutely clearly read the answer: no, you shouldn't have come in such a state. And here, as if breaking through a dam, shame hits you like a waterfall, trampling, shattering to pieces your self-confidence.

I swear, for a few seconds I was convinced I'd wake up now. But the sensation of the surrounding environment with its hard corners and

fluorescent light, the smell of chemicals and...