City of Night

thicker and more sinuous neck than any man had ever enjoyed. The eyes, when turned toward a camera, appeared to have the elliptical irises of a cat, though no genes related to feline vision had been spliced into his chromosomes.
    This suggested either that Victor had made a mistake with Werner or that somehow Werner’s astonishingly amorphous flesh was able to extrapolate every detail of an animal from mere scraps of its genetic structure. Although it was an outrageous concept, flatly impossible, he leaned toward that second explanation.
    In addition to the six camera coverage of Werner’s lycanthropy-quick metamorphosis, microphones in the isolation chamber fed his voice into the monitor room. Whether he was aware of the full extent of the physical changes racking his body could not be determined by what he said, for unfortunately his words were gibberish. Mostly he screamed.
    Judging by the intensity and the nature of the screams, both mental anguish and unrelenting physical agony accompanied the metamorphosis. Evidently, Werner no longer possessed the ability to switch off pain.
    When suddenly a clear word was discernible “Father, Father”—Victor killed the audio feed and satisfied himself with the silent images.
    Scientists at Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and every major research university in the world had in recent years been experimenting with cross-species gene splicing. They had inserted genetic material of spiders into goats, which then produced milk laced with webs. They had bred mice that carried bits of human DNA, and several teams were in competition to be the first to produce a pig with a human brain.
    “But only I,” Victor declared, gazing at the six screens, “have created the chimera of ancient myth, the beast of many parts that functions as one creature.”
    “Is he functioning?” Ripley asked.
    “You can see as well as I,” Victor replied impatiently. “He runs with great speed.”
    “In tortured circles.”
    “His body is supple and strong.”
    “And changing again,” said Ripley.
    Werner, too, had something of the spider in him, and something of the cockroach, to increase the ductility of his tendons, to invest his collagen with greater tensile-strain capacity. Now these arachnid and insectile elements appeared to be expressing themselves at the expense of the panther form.
    “Biological chaos,” Ripley whispered.
    “Pay attention,” Victor advised him. “In this we will find clues that will lead inevitably to the greatest advancements in the history of genetics and molecular biology.”
    “Are we absolutely sure,” Ripley asked, “that the transition-module doors completed their lock cycle?”
    All four of the other staff members answered as one: “Yes.”
    The image on one of the six screens blurred to gray, and the face of Annunciata materialized.
    Assuming that she had appeared in error, Victor almost shouted at her to disengage.
    Before he could speak, however, she said, “Mr. Helios, an Alpha has made an urgent request for a meeting with you.”
    “Which Alpha?”
    “Patrick Duchaine, rector of Our Lady of Sorrows.”
    “Patch his call through to these speakers.”
    “He did not telephone, Mr. Helios. He came to the front door of Mercy.”
    Because these days the Hands of Mercy presented itself to the world as a private warehouse with little daily business, those born here did not return for any purpose, lest an unusual flow of visitors might belie the masquerade. Duchaine’s visit was a breach of protocol that suggested he had news of an important nature to impart.
    “Send him to me,” Victor told Annunciata.
    “Yes, Mr. Helios. Yes.”
     
     
     

Chapter 50
     
    Laffite opened his eyes. “I’ve revealed myself to you. Further proof that my program is breaking down. We must move secretly among you, never revealing our difference or our purpose.”
    “We’re cool,” Michael told him. “We don’t have a problem with it. Just sit for a while, Pastor Kenny, just sit there and watch the little birds dropping off the wire.”
    As Michael spoke those words, less than a minute after he had terminated his cell-phone conversation with Deucalion, the giant entered the parsonage kitchen from the downstairs hall.
    Carson had grown so accustomed to the big man’s inexplicable arrivals and mysterious departures that the Desert Eagle in her two-hand grip didn’t twitch a fraction of an inch but remained sighted dead-still on the minister’s