16 - Looking For The Jackalope

Doctor Rosenberg finally sighed, letting him know she was still there. “You were the statistical probability, Roan, the lightning strike we knew had to happen. We knew there would probably be a few kids - not many; single digit numbers certainly - that would seem almost normal. We knew it was bound to happen sooner or later. Why it was you? I don’t know. Perhaps your mother and father shared the same strain; perhaps that helped. We will never really know for sure. All we can say is that the virus seemed to infiltrate your DNA in a different way. It seemed like the foreign DNA - the lion strain - seemed to work with your Human DNA at the molecular level, like the organism knew if it wanted to survive it had to work in concert with the host organism. It was a happy push-pull, one not detrimental to you.”

“Are you sure about that?” Tears were still threatening, and his head was pounding with the effort to hold it all back. Or maybe it was just one of his fucking migraines coming on. It felt about the same.

“Well … it was noted in your records that you seem to react to strong smells the same way most babies reacted to loud noises. It was so odd they kept you in the preemie ward, even though you weren’t a preemie. But because most of the babies were in incubators, the smells were less.”

“Surprised they didn’t put me in a cage.”

“They didn’t make them in your size. Well, not back then anyways,” she said, the humor evident in her voice.

He rubbed his forehead, wanting a drink, wanting a Vicodin, better yet wanting some more Demerol. God, Demerol was really nice. Could he get more without breaking something? “Why aren’t I getting sicker, weaker? Why aren’t I dying? I’m thirty six; virus children are usually dead by thirty. Hell, most infecteds are dead by thirty.”

In the silence that followed, he heard her chair creak, leather shifting like glacial ice. He knew he was leaving her scrambling for something to say, but he needed somebody to tell him something, anything. He didn’t care if it was complete gibberish. He wished Dylan were here to tell him what the Buddha might have said about this. Finally, after what sounded like a sip of coffee, she said, “I don’t know. When you came in for the physical as part of the vaccine pre-screen, I must admit I was … shocked. I mean, Paris’s readings were far worse than I ever could have anticipated, but yours just … floored me. You’re in peak condition. Usually only highly trained athletes could pull the stats you did. It’s counter to all the data we have on infecteds, virus children or late adapters alike.”

“Late adapters” was the term for teenage and adult infecteds, like Paris and Eli, like they were behind the curve on picking up an iPod when really they were just unlucky enough to catch a life altering virus after birth. Although Eli wasn’t unlucky - he sought out infection like a prize. And now he was paying for it in the most brutal way possible. And if he’d thought for a moment, not took it on faith that this was some sort of divinity, then he wouldn’t be dying or already dead at County General or St. Joe’s. (He couldn’t remember where they’d take him; in the end, it didn’t really matter.) “So what’s the virus doing different with me? Why isn’t it killing me?”

“I guess it knows that it can’t. That killing the host is shooting itself in the foot.”

“You’re talking about it like it can think.”

“Okay, yes, you’re right. It can’t think. But when it was building your systems from the ground up, there must have been coding somewhere in the DNA that clued it in that a shortened lifespan meant less chance to propagate itself. What does any living organism live to do? Spread its DNA, keep itself going through any means necessary.”

“Which doesn’t explain us gays,” he said.

That made her chuckle. “Maybe you’re a more highly evolved organism,” she replied, laughter still in her voice.

“Tell that to the Religious Right. Okay, so you’re saying I’m not dying because the virus wants me alive to spread it?”

“I’m guessing. That would be the most logical assumption.”

“Yes, it would be.”

“Are you all right? You sound … pained.”

“I’m getting one of my headaches again,” he said, as that was the easiest explanation, and it was possibly true. He still wasn’t sure yet.

She clicked her tongue. “That new migraine medication not working?”

“If you mean by giving me muscle weakness and a sore throat afterwards, yes, it’s working. I wouldn’t even mind that if it made the headaches go away.”

“When’s the last time you had a CT scan?”

It was his turn to sigh. “It’s not a brain tumor; it’s never a brain tumor. I’m in peak condition, remember?”

She ignored that, as she was in full diagnostic mode. “Any vision changes, Roan? Weight loss or gain? Vomiting? Dizziness?”

He chuckled humorlessly. “Well, I seem to lose about twenty pounds within a space of five days every month. I also get dizzy and my vision changes.”

“Stop being a smart ass. You know I mean outside of your transitional phase.”

He wanted to tell her his vision shifted every time he got upset enough to let the lion out; that his metabolism shifted then too, and if he wanted to force the change, bring it out, he could change his own muscle mass. Maybe this was just the price you paid for having such an ability. “It’s just migraines. As much as I wish they would kill me, they never do.”

He heard her make a small, slightly disgusted noise, the beat of her pen on her desk increasing double time. But after a moment, she switched tacks. “Are you seeing anyone about your depression?”

“Um, yeah. Look, I have to go, I have to take something before this gets worse.”

“Roan - ”

“Don’t worry, it’s taken care of, really. Thank you.”

“Why do I doubt that?”

“‘Cause you’re a doubter.”

She huffed a sigh through her nose, a signal to let him know she didn’t think he was funny. “I’ll be calling back soon.”

“Please do. Thanks.” He hung up the phone, dropped it on the passenger seat, and opened the glove box, searching for the compact first aid kit. Just like most of the first aid kits he had around the house, it had almost no bandages and little else beyond pills. This one had Tylenol codeine, so he swallowed three of the pills dry, and they felt like they lodged in his throat with a bitter taste, not unlike aluminum and lemon rind. He wiped his eyes to make sure the tears were gone, and got out of the GTO, staggering up to the vending machines outside the supermarket. He bought a way overpriced Pepsi and washed the rest of the pills down with its syrupy sweetness. He leaned against the cold brick wall and listened to his heart pound, eyes closed against the curiosity of people walking past, and wondered when this would be okay with him. When living long past his expiration date and watching everyone die around him would be worthy of no more than a shrug. He should be grateful. So why wasn’t he?

“Are you all right?” A female voice asked. Before he opened his eyes her perfume stung his nostrils, some heavily floral thing that threatened to make his gorge rise.

He opened his eyes to see a middle aged black woman looking at his bruises curiously, her face round and matronly. She looked like someone’s young grandmother. “Did somebody hurt you?”

He attempted a faint smile, wasn’t sure it took, and shook his head. “No, I got these a couple days ago. I’m fine. Thanks.”

She eyed him with great skepticism. Yeah, she was definitely somebody’s mother. She radiated warmth like a furnace. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” he admitted, as he felt the codeine start to kick in. For some reason, it always made his hands feel warm first. “But thanks for asking.”

She studied him for a moment, but seemed to eventually accept that and go into the store. Maybe people weren’t all bad - maybe he’d just been a detective too long. He’d spent too many days watching a guy swindle his business partners and cheat on his wife, or stop at a bar on the way to the methadone clinic.

He walked back to the car, determined to get his mind on a case and off of himself. When he had time to think, he was a morose, selfish bastard, and quite honestly, he couldn’t stand himself like this. He didn’t know it, and it didn’t feel like it much of the time, but he was fucking lucky.

Back home he felt warm and sleepy, the pills kicking into overdrive, and he suddenly remembered he left his bike in the underground parking garage. He needed to pick that up. But he also needed to get to work, although the codeine was keeping him nice and cheerful, not at all the morose bastard he usually was. He was hungry, so he went to the fridge and got himself an apple before sitting down at the computer. What an award winning diet he had - Tylenol codeine, Pepsi, and an apple. No wonder he was in peak physical condition.

Since he had no responses from his DMV or Social Security office friends yet, he decided to keep poking around in the few bits and pieces he had gathered on Zoë and Holden’s doomed mother. He put on a Porcupine Tree CD to keep himself awake.

There wasn’t much more to add really. She’d been the daughter of an upper middle class couple, but she got into drugs as a teenager, seemed to have gotten kicked out of her house, and that actually made her drug spiral worse. As it usually did. He supposed these parents had the “tough love” idea in mind, that if they kept them from the house they’d realize the error of their ways and sin no more, but the opposite was usually true: they found a safe haven with a stoner buddy, and got in deeper with the stuff. More intervention was needed, not less, but what did he know? Was he a parent? No. He was just a detective who could draw connections through the lives of disparate and yet strangely similar people, a carrion bird on the sidelines of the midden heaps of other people’s lives.

Good lord - codeine, self-reflection, and Porcupine Tree didn’t mix.

As he was sitting there, wondering if he should take something to counteract the codeine or just go take a nap, his phone rang. He let the machine pick it up, but as soon as he heard it was Holden, he decided to try and talk to him. It might sober him up. “Hey, how’s Kai?”

“Oh, real happy. He’s very proud of the fact that he broke that fucker’s nose.”

“It was a good kick. He still afraid of me?”

“You picked up on that, huh? Yeah, he describes you like you’re a vampire or something, all weird eyes and scary teeth.”

Roan laid down on the couch and looked up at the ceiling. It was odd, but he knew Dylan wasn’t here simply from the feeling in the air. It stirred in a different way, the way sounds traveled was different; his scent still lingered, but quite faintly, fading more and more as the time passed by. How odd that other people couldn’t scent other people unless they wore too much cologne or smelled really bad. How odd that he was a loner who still needed a pride to keep him from going nuts. “Was that what I looked like?”

Holden paused long enough that Roan knew he was carefully weighing his words. “You looked like a special effect.”

“That could mean a lot of things. Could you be more specific?”

“Well …” Another cautious pause. “Your pupils changed shape, and you were bleeding from the mouth as all these teeth started springing from your gums, and your skin looked like it was boiling around your jaw. I heard this noise like someone eating potato chips, this crunching sound … but it was something in your jaw. It was starting to … change shape. Lengthen, I guess, but it was kind of hard to tell. You could really see the cat in you. I didn’t know infecteds could just change like that.”

“They can’t. It’s just me.”

“Well, no duh. I figured that. I saw that YouTube clip. It’s just … seeing it in person. It’s surreal. When it’s on a screen, you can still maintain disbelief, you can tell yourself that someone is really good with iFilm or something, But when it’s happening right in front of you, and so fast … suddenly it’s like everything is possible. UFOs could exist, and so could vampires and werewolves, and maybe there are ghosts in the cemetery. Maybe everything we believe to be true isn’t true anymore.”

“So you’re saying I rocked your world?” Roan smiled at his own joke, and realized he was stoned. Maybe he shouldn’t have taken three pills.

“I’m saying everybody should be fucking scared of you,” Holden replied, with surprising honesty. “We’re merely Human, and you’re not. You’re … I don’t know.”

“A freak.”

“No. The new breed; the next step. Maybe you’re the viruses ultimate result - not sick people who occasionally turn into big cats, but people who are big cats too. A synthesis of the two. A hybrid greater than both the sum of its parts and its progenitors.”

Roan was so stoned he wasn’t actually sure he was hearing this. Was this coming from somewhere in his own head? “Are you high?”

“No. You make me want to go back to college and study virology. Humans evolve and viruses evolve too, right? What if our evolution converges? What if this is what the virus ultimately is? A convergence. A mutually exclusive attempt at both viral and mammalian evolution. You’re just ahead of the pack.”

He tried to think about that, tried to take it seriously - Holden sounded serious; his usual slightly snarky tone was gone - but Roan couldn’t help but giggle. “Wow, that’s just … wow. I oughta get Doctor Rosenberg to call you.”

“Who’s Doctor Rosenberg?”

“A friend of mine.” He rubbed his eyes, which felt dry and itchy, and asked, “What were you calling about, Holden?”

“I wanted to see if you found out anything more about my sister.”

At least Roan could talk about that without giggling. He told him what little he’d discovered about her up to this point, and then segued into what he’d discovered about his mother and his rumored father. He was well into his spiel when Holden interrupted, “Wait. You said my father was a man named Dane who met my mother at the Mission Creek Church?”

“Named or nicknamed, yes. Why? Does that sound familiar?”

Holden was quiet for a long, telling time. “Shit. That motherfucker!”

“You know him?” It sounded like a question, but it wasn’t really. Yes, Holden knew him; his anger was red hot and pulsing over the phone. “Who is it?”

“Just … I’ll call you back,” he said, sounding unusually flustered, hanging up abruptly. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought smooth, know-it-all Holden had just been caught flatfooted and at a total loss.

Sometimes this job was just so great.

He must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew, the Deadwing CD was repeating itself, and someone was pounding on his door. He was still stoned, though; the codeine was still making his hands, feet, and face feel unusually warm. It was a nice feeling.

Roan opened the door to find Holden standing there, his peroxided hair messy, but in a far less calculated way than usual, his clothes an oddly casual combination of loose blue jeans, battered hiking boots, a brown canvas jacket, and a green t-shirt about one size too big for him. If it wasn’t for his collection of necklaces, he might have thought it was just a bad Holden impersonator. “Roan, c’mon, let’s go.”

For a moment he just stared at him. Had they had another phone call that he’d forgotten? “Pardon me?”

He dug his hands in his pockets nervously, shoulders hunched in a way that made him look humble and smaller. “I need you to come with me.”

Was Holden just not making sense, or was it the drugs? “What’s this about?”

Holden took a deep breath, steeling himself, and then admitted, “I need you to come with me so I don’t strangle my father with my bare hands.”

Well, when he put it that way, how could he say no?

15 - Ashes to Ashes

Roan couldn’t help it. He blurted out the first thing that popped into his head. “Are you fucking nuts?”

“Hear me out,” Chief Matthews said, unmoved by his profanity. “You wouldn’t be a beat cop. You’d be a community liaison, someone who would act as a bridge between the department and the community. I know you still have a lot of contacts and trust in certain parts of the community -”

That made him snicker. “You mean amongst the whores and gays and junkies.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“No, I’m sure you wouldn’t.” He leaned back in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose. He wanted to go off on her, since the fact that he was gay and infected was the only reason she was asking him to fill this post. He was the perfectly PC choice, hitting two out of three targets; if only he had a bum leg or was a Pacific Islander, he’d have been a minority trifecta. It was exactly why they hired him for the force in the first place. He didn’t think Matthews was quite so baldly grasping, or at least he hoped not. He took a breath and exhaled slowly, getting his temper under control before it bubbled over. “Look, I know you mean well, but I can’t imagine returning to the police force under any circumstances. That part of my life is over.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“Yes, it does. I can’t be that person anymore. I can’t live that life.”

She sighed, as if he was the final straw. “Would you at least think about it?”

“I’m not going to change my mind. I’m sorry, Chief, but that part of my life is done. And I was never good at it. Even as a pencil pusher, I have no idea why’d you want me back. Entertainment value?”

“Don’t be that way. You were an excellent officer until … well, I hardly need to tell you.”

“But I was miserable most of the time. Hardly anyone wanted to partner with me because I was the fag and I could give them cooties or rape them or something; my infected status was just icing on the cake. Ask me about the stuffed cats that ended up in my locker or the dildos that got shoved in my tailpipe. Hilarious shit like that. You know why I got along well with half the people we dragged in? Because I liked them better than most of the people I was forced to work with.” Looking back on it, he had no idea how he’d held his temper so long. He supposed some of the misery was tempered by the fact that he got to leave shift and go back to Connor, before things got really rough. Yes, he was a moody “artiste” type and had never quite gotten over the shit of his childhood nor successfully conquered his alcoholism, but he wouldn’t lie and say they didn’t have good times. They had great times. There was some awful irony in the fact that the guy who’d probably helped keep him alive and kept him from snapping during that period of his life was also the one who eventually snapped and committed suicide.

“That type of harassment wouldn’t be tolerated anymore. You know that.”

“And it’s almost beside the point. I can’t do it, Chief. Find someone else.”

“You won’t think about it?”

“I did. I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

She sighed heavily, and he heard her tapping a pen on her desk. “You’re the only one I even considered for this position.”

“I’m flattered. I’m sorry I couldn’t help.”

“Yeah, me too.”

He hung up feeling simultaneously bad and good for himself. He hadn’t realized until this moment that rejoining the force was utterly unthinkable to him. He just knew he wouldn’t be able to do it anymore, partial lion transformations aside. It just wasn’t who he was anymore.

Eventually lunch came around, and Fiona decided to order from the deli, since she had no idea there was one around here not inside a grocery store. She got their BLT (and requested that they not skimp on the bacon - Dylan would have been horrified), and he ordered the spanakopita, although he had to tell her what that was, as she apparently had never heard of it and thought he was making it up to be an ass.

He intended to read more of Zoë Williams history while he ate, but Fiona was bored and came in his office to eat lunch with him. Suddenly it seemed like a mistake hiring her.

After she’d finished off her sandwich, which she proclaimed not bad, she started a small tour of his office. She suggested he get a plant, which made him point out that he didn’t have a window in here. She said a good fake would do, if only to “green” the place up. “It doesn’t really have your personality showing,” she claimed, making vague hand gestures. “It’s kinda … blank.”

“All my personality is over there,” he said, pointing to the far corner. Zoë had run away from a group home a couple of times, and once did a brief stint in juvie over it. He didn’t blame her.

Fiona walked over to the far corner, by his old fashioned filing cabinet (Paris had once hidden a mini-cooler full of soda in there), where two framed pictures sat out of the way of any client’s notice, but visible to his. He knew when he heard her gasp and ask, “Hot damn, who’s the beefcake?” she’d seen Paris’s picture. It was a wonderfully arty photo taken by a friend of theirs named Stefan before he moved to France (he was bound and determined to be a fashion photographer - Roan hadn’t heard from him since Paris’s funeral). Although it looked like a professional model shot, it was taken in the backyard; Stefan positioned him just so, so late sunlight was coming through the evergreen branches, casting Paris in a honey like glow. It was Paris’s idea to take off his shirt, because he wanted Roan to have a “sexy picture” to put up in his office. Paris looked happy, healthy, and like sex on legs, which was pretty much what he was, so that worked.

The next photo was actually an animation still from The Simpsons, featuring Lionel Hutz, that Dee had gotten him for his birthday a few years back. What a seductive picture of his late husband and an inept cartoon lawyer said about his personality he didn’t really want to know.

Luckily Eli showed up before she could start analyzing him. He was wearing another long coat - it looked like London Fog this time - still leaning heavily on his cane, looking gaunt and cold in his expensive clothes, the virus shedding enough that he could scent the leopard in his sweat. It made him want to start growling, but he somehow suppressed the urge.

He gave Eli the print out Randi gave him, detailing all incidents of fraud and embezzlement, and he shook his head as he went over it, somewhat disbelieving but not by much. He had known there was some fraud, he just had no idea it was that bad. As soon as he finished flipping through it, he chuckled in a dark, humorless manner. “How’d I know you’d be just the guy to find this stuff? You’re like the last honest man on Earth.”

“I lie as much as everyone else. I just do my job. Diogenes would hardly crown me for that.”

He gave him a funny look. “Dioga who?”

And here he thought he’d been making a reference. “No one. An attempt at a joke.”

“Oh.” Roan watched as Eli labored to get up, still a tumultuous and difficult prospect. It made Roan realize anew that everyone with the virus got weaker and weaker as time went on, but not him. In fact, in defiance of all logic, he was getting stronger. That made no sense at all. What the fuck was wrong with him? He couldn’t even die like a normal infected?

Once Eli was on his unsteady feet, he pulled another folded check out of his pocket and tossed it on his desk. Roan didn’t bother to look at it. “You paid me enough the first time.”

“Consider it a bonus.”

“I don’t need it, Eli.”

He scoffed. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me? I see the cars you drive and the clothes you wear - yes you do. I thought all you gay guys wore only designer jeans, True Religions and all that. What the fuck do you wear? Generic? It’s sad, man. You can’t even tell you’re gay.”

Roan glared at him, wondering if Eli was deliberately trying to make him mad so he didn’t pity him. “I’m not a waiter. You don’t tip me.”

He sighed and fixed him with a weary, annoyed look, his sharp eyebrows meeting at a point just about his surgically perfect nose. “In that case, consider it a gift.” His cell went off at that point - Eli’s ringtone was “Year of the Cat”, which made him want to decapitate him with the wastebasket - but he answered it like the rude bastard he was and was still talking to someone as he limped out of the office, the papers tucked under his arm. Roan finally unfolded the check and looked at it. He’d written it out for a thousand dollars. That was a really good tip.

He quickly ran out of documents on Zoë Williams, but he expected to. One of the things that most people didn’t know about the foster care system, unless they had been involved in it in some way, was, as soon as you were eighteen - and you were healthy - you were out on your ass. Didn’t really matter if you had no money or no place to go, you were legally an adult and no longer the state’s responsibility. Oh, they weren’t so brutal as to fling you out in the cold, they tried to soften the blow, but the budget didn’t exist to transition all these kids. Many ended up homeless or crashing on the couches of friends or relatives, sometimes even living with the parents whose abuse and neglect landed them in the system in the first place. Roan knew he was very lucky. He knew of an outreach center for gay youths that he went to, and they helped get him set up after he was unceremoniously dumped out of the system (he wasn‘t healthy - he was an infected - but he was otherwise healthy, so good enough). If he hadn’t, he might have ended up a street kid like Cowboy. He donated money to them every year out of gratitude. There was a very thin line between making it and slipping between the cracks, although many people who had never seen that line up close seemed to forget it was there.

Roan composed what he hoped was a heart tugging email about his client’s wish to reconnect with his long lost sister, and he sent it to his contacts in the DMV and the local Social Security office, as they had access to records that would surely indicate where she was now. The problem was they weren’t really supposed to give out that kind of information. Still, if you knew the right people, and could concoct a poignant enough story, they could cough and point in the right direction.

He’d just pressed send when Fiona suddenly threw open his office door, and exclaimed, “Roan, get out here, now!” She then took off, not waiting for him to ask further questions. He hurried after her, and caught up with her in the parking lot.

She was talking as soon as he reached the door, but his eyes instantly fixed on Eli’s silver Lexus, which shouldn’t have still been here. Then he saw the papers up against the front wheel, bristling slightly in the breeze. He barely heard Fiona as he headed towards the Lexus. “ - back from Randi’s office when I saw him just keel over, like he’d been shot or something, but I didn’t hear anything -”

“Call 911,” he told her, finding Eli laying on the pavement, hidden by his car. He was face down on the asphalt, one arm sprawled out like he was trying to hail a cab. Roan took a deep breath and didn’t smell blood, so he carefully turned him over on his back and felt for a pulse.

Eli barely had one. He was shockingly pale, his veins blue and visible against skin that seemed thin and almost translucent. He hadn’t been shot or hit with an object; he was ill and simply collapsed. Roan ripped open his expensive shirt, which actually felt rather good (it probably cost more by itself than half his wardrobe), and couldn’t believe he was going to do this. Yes, it was Eli, but still, if he died and he did nothing, it would eat at him. He laced his hands together and started chest compressions, counting them off in his head before stopping to tilt Eli’s head back, pinch his nostrils shut, and breathe into his mouth. He waited for Eli’s heart to take over, for his lungs to do the job they were supposed to do, but they hadn’t yet.

Fiona came over to report that she’d called 911 and they were on their way, then offered to help. He let her do the chest compressions, as there was a very small likelihood that if they could bring him back, Eli could possibly cough blood, and he was an infected. Roan was in no danger from his blood.

The ambulance arrived within a couple of minutes, which was actually fast for them in this part of town, but by that time he was lightheaded from trying to breathe for two people. Luckily it was the ambulance crewed by Dee and Shep; he trusted them to handle an infected safely.

As soon as Dee saw Eli, he looked at Roan with open shock. “Tell me you didn’t finally beat the shit out of him.”

He scowled at him, but leaned against the car, as he was too winded to be much angrier. “If I did, he’d be in pieces.”

Dee seemed to accept that with a small nod, then completely ignored him and Fiona as he got to work on Eli. They set up a portable IV and got him on a gurney with awe inspiring speed and efficiency, but as they loaded him into the back of the ambulance, they were still trying to get him to breathe on his own.

It left in a scream of sirens. Fiona sat up against the car, nearly shoulder to shoulder with him, and Roan realized Eli’s cane had rolled against someone’s Miata in a parallel space. The buttons of his expensive shirt littered the pavement like loose change after a drunken brawl. “Think he’s gonna make it?” she asked him.

He shrugged. “He looked bad. Worse than I thought. You know, it’s funny - I thought that fucker would live forever.”

“Yeah, I’m afraid my ex-husband will too,” she admitted.

There was no working after this. As soon as he caught his breath, he gathered up Eli’s cane and the papers he’d given him, and returned them to his office. He told Fiona she was off for the day, and closed up the office.

In his car - no, Paris’s car; Eli wouldn’t know a classic muscle car if it ran him over - he realized his face was torn between being unbearably itchy and softly aching from the bruises, an uncomfortable combination. So he drove to the nearest drugstore, bought an electric travel razor, and then ducked into their men’s room to shave it off. He was prepared for the funny looks he’d get, but he’d hit a lull in the crowds, and no one came in while he was shearing his jaw. Some of his bruises had a yellowish cast to them now, increasing the amount of colors on his face.

He stopped at the first hair cutting place he saw on the way home and got his hair properly cut, as people were probably tired of seeing his half assed jobs. He ended up with a slightly overweight stylist who had a truly impressive mane of long, curly black hair. He told her to do whatever he wanted with his hair, he didn’t care, just as long as it was shorter.

She commented on the color, as everyone did, and started talking about how to accentuate his “feline” face. He knew she meant it as a compliment, that it was supposed to mean he was handsome, but it was difficult not to get angry. Did he really look feline? Was the cat lurking that close to the surface? He stared at his reflection and tried to see it, and wasn’t sure if he saw it or not.

As soon as he got out of there, he sat in his car, feeling like his head was two pounds lighter, and strangely numb. In the rearview mirror he saw his eyes, like green glass underwater, and wondered if they were even remotely Human.

He pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number he hadn’t called in ages. He had no idea if she was still even there, maybe she’d retired, but the call went through. She even answered the phone, which was a shock - she didn’t have a secretary? “Doctor Rosenberg?” he asked, a bit surprised.

There was a shocked pause. “Roan? Is that you?”

He had no idea she could recognize his voice on the phone so easily. “Um, yeah. Somehow I didn’t think you’d pick up.”

“I’m a cantankerous old woman with nothing better to do. Of course I’m going to pick up the phone.” She paused briefly. “I’m sorry about Paris.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry about the study.” It was actually a good thing they dropped out when they did. The study to find a vaccine was a total wash out. For some reason it actually started mutating during the study and hastened the death of two infected people, so it was rapidly shut down and the doctors were forced to admit that they still didn’t know enough about the virus to fight it effectively. It was funny - no one knew where the fucking thing came from, and no one knew what the fuck to do about it.

“I haven’t given up,” she told him. “I’m just not making a lot of progress.”

“I know the feeling.” He watched out the windshield as people walked back and forth in the parking lot, normal people with decidedly normal lives. Did he envy them? Pity them? Did he want them to know they were being watched by a public danger? “So, umm, tell me if I have this right. The virus works essentially the same way as traditional gene therapy. The virus is just a delivery system for new genes that invade your DNA.”

“Basically yes, that’s correct.”

“And most virus children are born deformed or brain damaged because there’s too many conflicting messages between the RNA and DNA.”

She hesitated slightly. “Yes … although it’s a bit more complicated than that. Many have extra chromosomes, and deformed DNA strands. It’s like the DNA tries to split the difference between Human and cat and can’t do it, as you would expect. That’s not even a theoretically workable hybrid. I’m surprised that as many as five percent of virus children survive beyond birth. Most are so damaged it’d break your heart to see them.”

He closed his eyes, and was enraged at himself as he felt tears gathering, which he attempted to will back to nothing. He didn’t feel so fucking sorry for himself he was going to cry about it. “Why am I so different?” he asked her, only partially sure he wanted to hear the answer. “What happened to me?”

She was quiet for so long, he was almost relieved.

You must go here . Because we wish to make things difficult for you. (See, if you know me personally, this makes every bit of sense in the world.)