The Chimera Vector

Chapter 6

Chapter Six

‘We need a new set of wheels,’ Sophia said.

They’d been driving for twenty minutes and the road was feeding them between two mountains, their peaks dipped in fog. Coming up on their left, a town peppered across the mountainside forest.

‘Let’s hope they have more than camels,’ Jay said.

Two-story yellow-clay houses were nestled in a stepped fashion, the rooftops acting as walkways for the levels above. Sophia couldn’t see any vehicles in the town itself, but up ahead was a repurposed hospital bus.

‘It’ll have to do,’ she said.

Jay pulled in beside it, then hunched over the steering wheel, rubbing his eyes. ‘That even gonna make it over the next hill?’

‘You want to stay in a military Land Cruiser?’ Sophia said. ‘Might as well paint a red crosshair on top.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know,’ he said.

‘What about some clothes?’ Damien asked, peering through his window. ‘Military uniforms and a hospital gown don’t exactly blend in.’

There were clotheslines on one of the rooftops. Dry clothes. No one was outdoors yet, it was too early.

‘I’ll need some shoes too,’ she said.

Jay sighed. ‘Anything else? Juice? Breath mints?’

‘I am kinda thirsty,’ Damien said.

Jay was about to answer back but sneezed instead. It was absurdly loud inside the 4x4.

‘Bless you,’ Sophia said.

Damien slouched in the front seat, arms folded. ‘Pretty sure goat herders on the other side of the mountain heard that one.’

‘Whatever,’ Jay said. ‘You snored like a trumpet in the ward.’

Sophia remained still in the back seat. Since their capture in the desert, something was different. She felt ... strange. She examined the hospital bus parked next to them. At least, what had once been a hospital bus. The drab olive paintwork remained, but it was decorated with straw-colored curtains and had collected a small army of trinkets on the dashboard.

‘Where’s your knife?’ Sophia asked Jay.

He pulled the KA-BAR from its scabbard, then opened his door.

‘Thanks.’ She took it from him. ‘Oh, and Jay. Quietly.’

He winked. ‘It might interest you to know that I have the grace of a ballet dancer.’

Jay shut the door quietly, leaving Sophia and Damien in the 4x4.

‘I hope not,’ she said.

Damien forced a smile, but it faded quickly. ‘We killed those marines, didn’t we?’

‘We had to,’ Sophia said. ‘They were going to put us in the dirt.’

She could rationalize that, but she couldn’t rationalize everything else that had happened. Instead, she watched Jay plot a careful path to the clothesline, pausing to survey the town around him. Not a soul in sight. Good. She pried the 4x4’s cigarette lighter from its socket and began sterilizing the tip of the KA-BAR knife.

‘We killed that family,’ Damien said. He watched her sterilize the knife. ‘I thought…’

‘We didn’t know.’ Sophia withdrew the knife from the flame. ‘Get the hip flask.’

Damien searched the pockets of his stolen uniform for it.

She offered the underside of her right forearm. ‘Pour.’

He unscrewed the lid and splashed alcohol on the skin over her RFID. Now she stank of cheap whisky.

The RFID was a radio-frequency identification tag encased in silicate glass and implanted under her skin. It was pill-shaped and about twice the length of a grain of rice. It kept precise GPS coordinates on all operatives in the field, above or below ground. As long as they had them under their skin, the Fifth Column, and Denton himself, would always know where they were. He had been using the RFIDs with the Fifth Column’s Assetrac—or asset-tracking—system for years now.

Sophia cut her skin with the knife, drawing blood.

Damien’s eyes widened. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Making an incision,’ she said.

Using the tip of the blade, she coaxed the RFID out. The fingers on her right hand twitched involuntarily. The pain almost made her drop the knife, but she clenched her teeth and fought through it. The RFID slid out. She discarded it between her feet. That can stay in the Land Cruiser, she thought.

Now, Denton could no longer track her.

She wiped the blade. ‘More whisky.’

‘We’re not getting extracted, are we?’ he asked.

Sophia met his gaze. ‘If you were Denton, would you reassign us after what we’ve done? Or would you cut your losses?’

He frowned. ‘I feel different. My memories of all our operations, they’re … wrong.’

She stared at the incision in her arm. It was hard to believe what she was doing. Her thoughts didn’t feel like her own any more.

‘You’d cut your losses,’ she said.

He doused her blade in whisky, then took an unexpected mouthful. ‘Jay won’t like that.’

‘He doesn’t have to.’ She handed the knife to him. ‘Your turn.’

He stared at her, then at the knife.

‘What if your memories are right?’ Sophia asked.

He took the knife.

Leaving him to his own incision, she pulled out the tube of Dermabond and applied a thin stripe of the violet liquid across the cut. She held it in place with two fingertips on either side. Once it was set, she poured whisky on Damien’s forearm, then drank some of it herself. It burned down her throat, but the burn was comforting.

Damien gritted his teeth as he cut out his RFID. With that done, she handed him the Dermabond.

Jay had returned. He was wearing a thick woolen jacket and a headscarf, but fortunately no glamor turban. There were two other jackets slung over his shoulder. He opened the driver’s door and waved a wad of notes.

‘Two million rials,’ Jay said.

Damien grabbed the notes. ‘That’s around 200 bucks.’

Sophia took the clothes, mostly Western attire and a pair of sneakers he’d gotten specifically for her. She also found a sweater and jeans that looked like they’d fit.

Jay dangled a set of keys. ‘Found these inside the bus.’

‘Let’s hope it has some gas,’ Damien said.

But Jay’s gaze settled on Damien’s wrist. The Dermabond.

‘The hell you doing?’ he asked.

‘We’re burned, Jay,’ Sophia said. ‘If we go back to Denton now, we might never get another mission.’ She looked out her window, across the horizon. ‘Or fresh air.’

Jay’s mouth hung open, his lips cracked. Without a word, he climbed back in the driver’s seat and quietly closed his door.

He took a breath, then said, ‘We were defending ourselves.’

‘Do you think he’ll find that answer reassuring?’ Sophia said.

‘Our track record speaks for itself.’ Jay gripped the steering wheel, his fingers turning white. ‘Hell Soph, you haven’t missed a target since ... I don’t know when.’

Sophia leaned forward, between their seats. ‘When Denton asks you what happened … with the marine patrol, at the air base, what we did to those military police sergeants … what are you going to tell him?’

Jay said nothing.

‘That you went off the reservation?’ she asked. ‘That you were confused? That everyone was trying to kill you?’

‘The patrol was! We had to protect ourselves,’ he said. ‘It’s the truth.’

‘That’s not the point,’ she said.

Jay turned to lock gazes with her. ‘Then what is it? ‘Cause this ain’t making any sense to me.’

‘We’re broken, Jay,’ Sophia said. ‘We’re the ones not making sense.’

Jay glanced between them. ‘Then we need to go back. We need to go back to the island and get ourselves fixed.’

‘I don’t want to,’ Damien said.

‘Why not?’ Jay asked.

Damien shook his head. ‘Because I don’t want this anymore.’

The 4x4 went quiet. Jay leaned back into his seat and exhaled slowly.

Sophia could see a wafer of orange upon the horizon. The sun was rising. ‘If you’re not coming with us, I’ll need the keys,’ she said.

Jay held onto them. ‘And go where?’

‘Cross the border, back to Tehran,’ she said. ‘We’ll have a better chance of obscuring ourselves from Fifth Column satellites.’

Jay looked over at Damien. ‘You’re going too?’

Damien nodded.

‘When we reach Tehran,’ Sophia said, ‘if you still want to go back home, we won’t stop you. But we will need to keep moving.’

Jay nodded, then sat in silence for a moment, staring through the windshield. ‘You’ll need a new identity.’

‘I know. But we need to make a decision now,’ she said.

Jay sighed heavily, then rolled the sleeves back on his jacket, offering the underside of his forearm.

‘I’m only agreeing to this because Tehran has good beer,’ he said.