Selah studied him. Gray fur like thick wisps of smoke curled and brushed over his heavy musculature. In comparison to a gorilla, he was lean and limber, but there was a heavy strength in his broad shoulders and deep chest. And his eyes. They watched Selah with strange depths to them, a wealth of subtle emotion that she couldn't read, his face heavily wrinkled, his lips pursed.
"How did you get a Bili Ape for your experiments if they're so rare?" She looked over at Dominique and reluctantly pulled away and followed her to the elevator.
"It wasn't by design. When the program was created, we had to take what we could find for testing. The NIH had ended most of the primate programs before the war, retiring the test subjects to zoos, language research centers, the Chimp Haven and so forth. We just took what we could find from whatever sources still had them available."
The elevator arrived and the doors slid open. They stepped inside and Dominique pressed a button for the second floor. "So anyway," she continued, "one of the apes we got was Jojo. He'd been brought over from the Congo in 2019 as a baby for further study. Everybody was fascinated with his species. When the war broke out, he almost starved to death when his center was abandoned. But this crazy and wonderful couple broke him free and took him to their home, where they raised him for four years before he was located and taken back."
"That had to be hard," said Selah.
"Yes." Dominique's voice was very quiet. "He's not had an easy time."
The doors opened and they stepped out onto the first floor. Here, suddenly, there was light, people, activity. Voices, the sharp smell of coffee, a strange low hum that Selah felt more than heard. A guard detached himself from where he stood by the elevator and followed them unobtrusively at a distance of five yards. Dominique led her down a couple of hallways and pressed her palm once more to a security tablet outside a door. It opened and Selah followed her into a series of small rooms just like those in a doctor's office.
"Here," said Dominique. "I'll be with you in a moment. Just take a seat." It was a tiny room, smaller even than her bedroom, and had a gray cushioned stool, an examining table, and small cupboards along the walls with glass fronts containing all manner of strange tubes, bottles, and medical equipment. All it needed was some informational posters on the wall on proper teeth care and the anatomy of an eyeball and it would look just like a doctor's exam room from back home.
Selah sat on the stool, and the soldier positioned himself in the doorway and stared at her. She stared right back. He had a flat, hard face, like poured concrete, and a narrow, focused gaze that seemed devoid of intelligence or curiosity. It was like being stared at by a statue of a Rottweiler.
"What's your name?" asked Selah. 'Potenza' was stitched onto his name tag, right over his breast pocket flap. No answer. "Do you speak English?" Nothing. "Mine's Selah Brown." Silence. "What would you do if I tried to leave this room?"
"I'd stop you," he said, his voice heavy with a Southern drawl.
"How?" Nothing. Annoyance flickered within her. "Did you know you were going to be a nurse guard when you signed up for the military?" Nothing. Not even a tightening around the eyes. "Be all that you can be?" Still nothing. With a sigh, she gave up. Her heart wasn't in it. Perhaps before Miami she would have kept needling him till she got a response, but suddenly it felt incredibly childish. She swung back around. "I'm sorry. That was rude of me." He still didn't respond, but she felt marginally better.
Dominique returned with an Omni in hand. "All right. Let's get started."
It took about an hour. First, all Selah's physical data was gathered. She hadn't grown any taller, but she was mildly curious to see she had lost almost eleven pounds since she had last weighed herself. Her pre-Miami weight. Everything possible was measured, and then Dominique asked her about five hundred questions about her health, allergies, injuries, family medical history, and more. Selah chose not to mention Sawiskera's words on her bloodline, her supposed descent from Teharonhiawako. Finally, she drew five vials of blood, doing so quickly and efficiently, and then pressed a wad of cotton dabbed in alcohol onto the puncture wound and taped it firmly in place.
"All right. That's a start. I'll be working on this over the next week. We'll notify you of the next step as we get to it."
"All right. Dominique?" The other woman looked up from her Omni, eyebrow raised. "Do you think-- General Adams said back in Miami that maybe a vaccine could be made from my blood. Do you think that's possible?"
"I don't know, Selah." Her voice was soft.
"But, I mean, theoretically. Would that be possible?" Selah suddenly, almost desperately needed to know.
"I don't know. Developing vaccines is a complicated process. Especially for something we don't really understand, like vampirism. Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? Can we do so from your blood? I have no idea. But I intend to find out."
Selah nodded. She felt crestfallen. Had hoped for ...what? Some sort of validation? An affirmation that she yet had something to contribute? She didn't know.
Dominique entered the last of the data and stood up. "OK, we're done for today. I'm going to get to work. Jim here will see you back to your room. Thanks." Something in Dominique's tone--or perhaps it was her face--told Selah she meant it. Selah nodded and looked at the floor. "Hang in there, all right? I'll try to come by as much as I can. Perhaps I can find a way to have you help me with the apes. Would you like that?"
"Sure." Selah nodded. Dominique smiled, squeezed her shoulder, and left the room with the vials of blood. The soldier stepped aside, and Selah walked past him and out into the hall. Through the security door and into the general hallway beyond. Past offices, past a number of doors labeled with obscure medical terminology, and then back to the elevator, to go down. Down into the depths with monkeys and Hybrids, where all such monsters and freaks belonged.
Chapter 9
The next month passed slowly. Selah soon realized just how completely insulated she was from the outside world, with absolutely no way of keeping track of the war. Their Omnis were on a closed circuit, so that while they had access to endless immersive films, books, games and more, there was no way to tap into the public web and learn the latest news or connect with outsiders. None of the guards would tell her anything, and in the quiet womb that was the Hybrid quarters, it almost felt as if there was no war at all going on outside.
Her only occasional snippets of information came from Dominique, and even she was guarded when it came to passing on news. Clearly, there was a standing order against relaying information to the test subjects. Still, Selah found that Dominique was pliable; of all the people she interacted with at the lab, she had the greatest natural warmth and generosity, and during unguarded moments, let slip the occasional tidbit or fact while they worked in the primate lab.
Dominique arranged it so that once a day for a single precious hour, Selah would be allowed out of the Hybrid quarters to help her with the monkeys. It wasn't glamorous work, but with Dominque's partner having fled, she needed somebody to help her with the busy work. She refused to talk about the vaccine, explaining right off that Wigner had forbidden any discussion beyond basic primate care. When Selah had tried to whisper a few questions, Dominique had subtly indicated the various bubble cameras embedded in the ceiling and shaken her head. Deflated, Selah had let go of her questions, but quickly grew interested in her new work.
The monkeys were divided into three categories that defined their potential threat level. Selah was allowed to work at first only with the green-tagged apes, and after the first week with a handful of the blues. Never the reds, however; they remained fully under Dominique's care. Selah assisted in cleaning out the cages, feeding, swapping toys amongst the apes, and perhaps most surprisingly to her, simply talking and interacting with them.
"They're so much smarter than we give them credit for," Dominique had told her early on when one of the chimps, Gertie, had enacted a form of ransom with one of the toys in a bid to be given more. "But more than that, they're social creatures. Keeping them caged like this prevents them from that basic, necessary form of interaction that they need. Just having you here, talking, laughing, walking around--that's like a cold cloth on the forehead of a fevered patient. So be yourself. Be loud, be natural. It does them good to see people, to see you."
She was never allowed close to Jojo, however. Though the massive chimpanzee was subdued, thoughtful, and never prone to bouts of excited hooting or floor slapping like the other chimps, Dominique told her how sudden and terribly vicious he could become with strangers. It was almost hard to believe; he simply sat--a dark, hulking shadow in the back of his cage--and watched Dominique wherever she went. There was a fervency to his fixation on her that unnerved Selah, but Dominique seemed pleased, and would spend far more time talking with him and sitting before his cage than with any other primate, completely without fear of being within his grasp.
"I tried for the longest time to help his parents acquire visitation rights," Dominique once said, sitting cross-legged before Jojo's cage as she gave him strips of beef jerky. He seemed to have a special fondness for Teriyaki. "But it never came through. It was heartbreaking. They moved to McCance, down the mountain, and lived close by for a year till they ran out of their savings. Wigner kept promising that he'd make it happen, but I think--I don't believe he really ever tried to help at all." She smiled sadly as she teased Jojo, pulling back a strip of jerky every time he reached for it. "Poor Jojo. I always wonder if he remembers the Congo. If he dreams of it. And if that's a blessing or a cruelty."
Other than Selah's time spent in the primate lab, she spent the first couple of weeks in her room, plugged into a basic model Omni, watching movies and listlessly playing games. She spent a little time at the gym, a small, glittering steel playground for the soldiers, but only used the treadmill. She ate her food alone and only emerged when summoned by Dominique or a soldier to ascend to the surface for more tests.
She watched the days crawl by, and wandered what was going on. How far the vampires were spreading. How California looked, Arizona, Utah, Washington State. It was all incredibly unreal in the silent bowls of the USAMRIID, listening to the quiet exhalation of the air conditioning or music pumped far too loud over her headphones. From Dominique, she learned that the vampires hadn't yet penetrated any of the major cities, that the Blood Thralls failed to display any real intelligence. They moved on foot and without coordination. That was probably the only thing that had saved them thus far.
Slowly, the other soldiers drew her out of her shell. Gordon offered to teach her chess a couple of times and seemed immune to the coldness of her rebuffs. One evening, he knocked on her bedroom door with a board held aloft in one hand like a waiter might hold a tray, a bathroom towel folded over his other arm. Laughing despite herself, she let him in and spent the next hour learning how to move her knight, the value of the king, and the true power of the queen. Games became frequent, and eventually she allowed him to coax her into joining the others during their meals.
Tom was a subtler, but just as persistent presence. He would often just stand next to her in the bathroom as they brushed their teeth, or work out alongside her on a different machine. When she started frequenting their little common space, he'd lounge next to her, legs kicked out over the table, and they'd link their Omni's so that they could watch a movie in tandem. He had a thing for raucous Spanish films directed by Almodovar from the '70s and '80s, and sweet Japanese cartoons where high school students did little more than pine for each other. Selah found herself able to gently tease him about his preferences, which he accepted with a quiet smile.
She met the other two soldiers in quick succession. Jenette Ruiz was a blonde woman with an obsession for fitness, brash, loud, and quick to laugh, her body a toned instrument that she tested and measured every day in the gym for hours. Selah often caught Jenette staring at her with some measure of confusion, clearly not understanding her desire for isolation, but not willing to press her.
Eric Van Holt was the oldest one there, in his late thirties and exuding a quiet, dangerous competency and self-sufficiency. He spent almost all of his time reading, his long, narrow face creased with thought, his index finger across his lips--what Selah discovered was his characteristic pose--as he focused on the text.
The weeks passed and she settled into a comforting routine. The Hybrid's resilience lay not only in their martial skills, she came to realize, but in their mindset; Gordon and Tom were persistently cheerful, no matter how circumscribed their little world, while Lee was a constant source of wry humor and deadpan jokes. Even Jenette and Eric contributed to the group's sanity, with the first often organizing competitive games, while the latter would occasionally cajole everybody into reading different parts from old plays or arranging movie nights.
One morning, Dominique came to fetch Selah, brimming with excitement, all smiles. Selah slowly came out of her shell as they walked toward the elevator. "What is it?" she asked. "Good news?"
But Dominique only winked at her and put a finger to her lips. They ascended that day for the first time to the third floor, and emerged into a quieter space, moving through an open plan office toward a series of large corner units at the back. She ushered Selah into a large conference room, their ever present escort, Jim, remaining stationed at the door. It was the sight of Wigner that set Selah's heart to racing, however; she hadn't seen him since she had first arrived. He was sitting at the head of the table, frowning into his Omni, but when she walked in he looked up with a smile.
"Selah. Please, take a seat. We have some exciting news to share."
"Did you guys do it? Did you figure out a vaccine?" She moved to one of the plush leather chairs and pulled it out, sinking into it as if falling into a dream. Dominique sat down next to her, and another man entered the room, setting his Omni down on the table as he slid into a seat as well. Selah ignored him--she got the vague impression of a lab coat, dark skin, maybe Indian--but her eyes were glued on Wigner.