Chapter 4

Andrew jumped up. Emily was standing in the doorway.

“Forgive me for the intrusion; I’m not armed.” She lifted her arms and turned, hands in the air, spreading fingers wide apart.

“Is she your girlfriend?” Nellie Barkov asked as she rose from the sofa with a smile. “What’s your name, darling?”

“Mom, she’s a criminal I’ve arrested,” Andrew stated.

“That’s a pity. She’s pretty!”

If only you knew what this “pretty’ person tried to do!

He headed to Emily slowly. “How could you open the car?”

The girl smiled. “I have extraordinary abilities too. I can feel electronics.”

“Genetic transformation?”

“Yeah.”

“No wonder, considering who your father is. It means that’s one more charge that will be laid against him and you – concealment of genetic deviations. You should have a special mark on your nose bridge. Get back into the car!”

She held up her palms. “Just a minute! Your nose bridge is clear, too. Why don’t you have the mark?”

“I don’t need it. I am a Normal.” Andrew glared at her, his pulse racing. Only Deviants required the mark.

“Really? When was your DNA tested?”

“In my childhood, just like everybody’s.”

“In that case, I’d say somebody substituted the results. Am I right?” The girl looked at his mother.

Nellie frowned. “Why do you think, young lady, that my son has genetic deviations?”

“His reflexes are fast. Too fast. Probably he hasn’t gotten a single wound in all the years of police service, has he?”

“You’ve guessed right,” Andrew answered. “But deviations are not the reason. I’ve been training since my childhood.”

Dammit, why am I making excuses?

Emily looked at him. “In my opinion, you feel threats in advance, and training has nothing to do with it.” She shifted her gaze to Nellie. “Your son should know the truth because his life will depend on it. President CHENG Wenming is lying when he says nobody will be left alone to fight the elements! The government officials are preparing a secret asylum for themselves because they know no one will survive on the surface.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve just overheard a conversation between the Director of the Secret Service Novak and a general. I’m sure the President is aware of what’s going on!”

Is she crazy?

Barkov grasped the girl’s arm. “Go to the car!”

“Andrew, wait!” his mother exclaimed suddenly in a harsh tone.

He turned his head to her in bewilderment. “What’s the matter?”

Nellie asked the girl, “What’s your name?”

“Emily.”

“And your surname?”

“Housman.”

His mother’s eyes widened. “I see. And how could you overhear the conversation between the Director and the general?”

“I’ve told you, I have special abilities. I can tune to any electromagnetic waves. E-vision, mindphones, the Internet… This time the sound reached me from above. I think that the general flew over our city by plane, that’s why I could hear them so well.”

“What a load of bull!” Andrew said.

“No,” Nellie retorted. “Scientists from BioTech had made successful experiments with rats for them to react to electromagnetic signals.”

Emily nodded. “That’s how I knew about my father’s fate. I heard the transmissions between you and your captain. Then I read your appointment calendar on your mindphone and went to your lesson ahead of time so I could find some way to make you release my father.”

Nellie made a gesture to her son. “Let’s talk in private. I want to tell you something.”

After a short hesitation, Andrew released the girl’s hand. “Wait here.”

He followed his mother. She approached the farthest window and stared at a bush of roses growing in front of the house. At last, she took Andrew’s hand and said quietly, “This girl might not be lying. I don’t want to see my son dying. I’ll tell you everything.”

“What do you mean, Mom?”

“I took part in the BioTech Corporation tests. My genetic code was changed.”

Andrew could scarcely believe his ears. For several years, he had been searching for criminals using BioTech technologies while his mother had participated in the corporation program! That was impossible!

As if reading his thoughts, she whispered, “I did it before I met your father. I was young and silly. They promised that when I got married and delivered a baby, it would be better fitted to life… And they paid good money for that. The harm of BioTech products was not well known then. The Corporation boasted its charity. It helped orphans, built schools, hospitals… I didn’t know it would lead to problems or that GMO people would be shunned, marked as outcasts!”

She stopped talking as she stared at the roses again. He was keeping silence, too, trying to digest the information. Nellie gave a deep sigh and continued even quieter – so that he could barely make out the words with difficulty. “Son, I am a GMO. A genetically modified organism. You are a GMO, too. Later on, I thought that I’d made a mistake. So when your DNA was tested, I swapped the results. But now… I’m not sure that it was a mistake. It has kept you safe all these years as a policeman.”

Barkov was shocked with her confession more than with the news about the next “end of the world’. He had always considered himself to be an ordinary guy – a Normal. There seemed to be nothing special in his good reaction – it was like an ability of other people to waggle their ears or to reach the tip of their nose with their tongue. He’d just been grateful to be fast enough to evade harm in a job that was dangerous every day. He’d thought it was luck and training, but now… Is my mother a criminal? Does this mean I should not have children? That I can’t work in the police? That I’m a Deviant and a criminal myself? No! She has to be wrong.

“It’s not possible to swap the test results. Every lab has a protection system.”

“It was not so good then. I was lucky.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I wanted you to lead a normal life, not in a reservation for freaks. Will you forgive me?”

Nellie looked at her son with pleading eyes. His heart withered.

Yes, she was a criminal. She delivered a son knowing about her genetic deviations. For that, she could be sentenced to 20-year imprisonment. And substitution of the test results could yield imprisonment for life.

I must not allow that.

Andrew embraced her, trying to look calm. “Mom, don’t worry. I don’t blame you.”

“Thank God! Prison is not the worst thing. I was afraid that you wouldn’t forgive me. Let others condemn me, but not you! Don’t tell anybody anything, son. If the disaster doesn’t happen, you can keep working in the police just as before.”

Andrew still didn’t believe in the near doomsday, but his career was already finished. How could he catch lawbreakers knowing that he was an offender himself? It’s high time for me to change professions anyway. Suddenly a thought crossed his mind, even though it seemed far-fetched: I’ll try to get a job as a singer at a restaurant!

Barkov had loved music from his childhood. He remembered from his mother’s stories that he had inherited it from his father. George used to sing Russian folk songs often, especially in a local group that played at festivities. But that was just a hobby. Neither he nor his son had outstanding voice qualities.

“I’ll quit anyway. And I’ll find another job.”

At that moment, Barkov realized he’d pronounced the last phrase too loudly. But it was too late.

“Another job?” Emily asked. “So, am I right? You’ve got modified genes?”

Andrew turned to the girl. She was looking at him with a provocative smile, her head up. Of course, he was not obliged to answer her. She was under arrest and he was still a policeman. But what if Emily started to ask the same questions during the court proceedings? What if the judge scheduled an expert examination?

“It’s none of your business,” he gave a brusque answer.

The smile disappeared from her face. “Really? The charge against my father has been put forward based on your words. There are no more witnesses. Maybe it was not him who fired a shot at you from the grenade launcher but someone else who you failed to catch!”

Nellie Barkov moaned in terror. “Grenade launcher?”

Emily continued. “Our attorney will claim that you accused an innocent man! Your oath will be void because you are a GMO.”

There was nothing to say against that. As soon as the court had the expert results, Andrew would turn from a policeman to a suspect himself and a criminal as well. Besides, expert examination of his mother’s DNA would be scheduled for sure, which he could never allow.

“What do you want?” he asked gloomily.

“You must free my father immediately,” Emily answered quickly.

“That’s impossible. He’s already at the pre-trial prison. I don’t have a right to take him out of there.”

“To the devil with the right! You have speed!”

“It’s easier to kill you,” he growled. “When there’s no person, there’s no problem.”

The girl turned pale and stepped back.

Suddenly Andrew realized that her blackmail threat had really been a great risk on Emily’s part. If he was a bad man at heart, he could send her into eternity without a second thought. It was a convenient moment; with so many people killed by the current disasters there would be no thorough investigation, if any at all.

“Don’t be scared, I’m joking. Let’s sit down and talk.”

The girl headed to the sofa glancing at Andrew with caution.

Her footsteps made the floor shake. Barkov was surprised. She seemed to be a slender girl. How could she tramp like a hippopotamus?

She stopped. The floor began to shake even harder. Hollow rumbles came from everywhere. Finally Andrew guessed what was happening.

“Earthquake!” he exclaimed. “Out, quickly!”

Emily turned around and rushed to the door. Taking his mother’s arm, Barkov followed the girl.

They crossed the front yard and stopped in the middle of the empty road. The rumble turned into a roar as though freight trains were coming from all quarters. Crowns of trees growing along the road were tossed about. Window glasses vibrated. A young woman holding the hands of two small kids ran out of the adjacent house. Some more people poured out of distant buildings.

Andrew felt the asphalt under his feet flex like an inflatable mattress and begin to wave. Women’s and children’s screams supplemented with car alarms split the air.

A crack appeared in the road a few steps away. Snaking and widening, it spread to the house opposite his mother’s. A fountain of water rushed out of the crack – probably the pipeline laid along the road underground had broken.

All of that continued for a few seconds. Then the shaking and rattling stopped as suddenly as they had started. The crack stopped widening, but water kept gushing out of it flooding the road and the green lawn before the nearest house.

Barkov looked at Nellie and Emily. His mother was standing, her teeth clenched, and looking around while Emily’s mouth was wide open.

He tugged at her arm. “Stop shouting!”

She closed her mouth and looked at Barkov in bewilderment as if he had just dropped from the moon. It became quieter at once. Gradually, neighbors’ yells subsided, too.

Barkov looked over at his mother’s house. It seemed to have no damages. There was not a single crack on the façade. That was luck!

Andrew knew from school that earthquakes could be caused by movement of tectonic plates at their joints or by eruption of volcanoes. But neither had ever happened in Miami. Why was it the case now?

Nellie Barkov answered his unvoiced question, “If the Earth core has slowed down, and the crust continues to spin with its own speed, friction arises between them. That part of what President Cheng said was true. I’ve worked as a land surveyor at construction sites and know about subsoil, and the geologic changes we’re seeing now are consistent with what I’ve learned. Earthquakes will happen everywhere. Even where they have never been.”

“You see, I was right!” Emily blurted out with untimely joy. “The world is collapsing!”

Andrew recognized her outburst – he’d seen it before in victims who are so traumatized that they laughed at something that had no humor.

“Yes,” Nellie confirmed. “Most probably, yes.”

Emily turned her attention to Nellie. “Bring your son to reason then. Let him release my father! Don’t you understand that otherwise I’ll never see him again? Show compassion!”

Nellie stared at the girl and replied after a pause, “I’m sorry that your father is an offender. I’m sorry for you, too. And for all other people. However, most of all I’m worried about my son’s fate. Do you understand that, Emily?”

The girl lowered her head and said in a dismal voice, “Sure.”

Nellie continued. “Therefore, I’m going to ask him to act not for you, your father or someone else but for himself,” she turned her eyes to her son. “Andrew, free her father, please!”

Andrew thought he misheard her. “What?”

Nellie looked around her. Neighbors didn’t pay any attention to them. The young woman’s children were crying and she was trying to calm them as she took them back to their house. The others were so far that they would not be able to catch her words.

His mother talked in a subdued voice looking him straight in the eye, “Son, the situation couldn’t be worse. The processes in the earth’s crust alone can kill the whole of humankind. We’ll also face problems with the air, oceans, solar radiation. We live on our planet like in a test tube, in very comfortable but delicate conditions. If there’s a minor shake-up, our number’s up. If what Emily overheard is true, the government officials are trying to escape to a refuge. They won’t let you or me in. But there is another way. I’ve heard about her father.” She cast a glance at Emily who was listening to her intently. “Many years ago Housman worked at BioTech. He was a promising young scientist, wrote articles… If you help him, he might help you. Tell your bosses that he’s innocent!”

“What are you talking about, Mom? How could he help me?”

“He’ll change your genome. He’ll make you… a superman.”

Andrew laughed. “Will he crossbreed me with a tarantula? Mom, it’s not time for jokes now!”

She took his hand. “I’m serious. No crossbreeds – that’s too primitive. BioTech has been around for a long time, and underground laboratories exist, and they continue their work.”

Andrew shook his head. “It’s not that simple to find them. You know quite well that a whole security department tries to find their location, but without much success.”

“That’s the point! That’s why you need Housman. He has relevant ties for sure,” Nellie shot an inquiring glance at Emily. “Doesn’t he?”

The girl nodded.

His mother’s words boggled Andrew’s mind. They contradicted all his views of genetic engineering. This science was the cause of terrifying mutations that happened to people all over the world. It could lead humankind to destruction.

“Mom, do you realize what you are saying? BioTech has already tried to create a superman. Don’t you remember the results? Gills and chicken wings on newborns, wool at puberty, sterility in the second generation! Is that salvation?”

“They hurried too much at BioTech,” Nellie objected. “They needed profits. They committed a crime not by intention but by their experiments on people without calculating all the consequences. Hopefully science has made great advance since then. This is our only chance.”

“Yes,” Emily interjected. “They have continued their research, but slowly, carefully and made great strides. I’m sure my father can help you. Help us all.”

His mother’s words seemed to be logical. Maybe Emily was right too, although he suspected she’d say anything to be with her father again. Of course, it would be better to change than to die. But how real was the threat? President CHENG Wenming promised them all problems would be solved. Arrestee Emily Housman asserted that the President lied. Who to believe?

I must know exactly if the refuge for the government is being built. If yes, things are really in a bad way.

“Mom, go back home, lock up and call me at once if a Cadillac with those guys shows up, okay?”

“Yes, my boy.”

He kissed his mother and made for his vehicle. “Emily, get in the car.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll find out soon.”