Halfkinds Volume 1: Contact Page 4

  “What’s his name?”

  “Lombardi. I call him the ugly one. On to the next.”

  This one is the most human looking. Its posture is hunched over a bit, and it’s a lot hairier than a human. Its nose is flattened and there is a long gaping mouth under it. It has long, styled hair, and it’s wearing short shorts and a pink tee shirt.

  “At first we thought this one was human, but later we figured she was part chimp. And yes, you heard right, that’s a girl. I guess you could tell from her attire. She had a journal and from what we read, she’s a pure technical ace.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We found a lot of device manuals, blueprints, and hacking files in her living quarters. Schematics and some unassembled machines. It seems whatever she got her hands on, she took time to understand how it worked. She’s probably the group’s mechanic and genius. Her name is Candy and her age is twenty.”

  “Candy? Seems kind of an odd choice for a name.”

  “Haven’t you heard? Her mom was a hooker.”

  Agent Leons presses the button to move onto the next image. This being is quite different from the other one. This one is hideous. His skin is a dark green, almost mud colored, and scaly. His eyes are serpent like, bugging out of his head. Sharp teeth burst past his upper lip, overlapping his bottom one. His hands are large and scabby like the rest of his body and each finger has large claws on them. He is the third biggest after Oscar and Alex.

  “This is Curtis. He’s obviously reptile, so we’re thinking he’s bred from a crocodile. We’re guessing he’s about twenty. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a journal, so we’re not sure how he fits in with the family. I theorize that if he does have a role, it’s not good.”

  I fixate on his sharp teeth and leathery skin. It sends chills down my spine. Next to the rhino halfkind, he’ll be the hardest to take down.

  The next hologram image has two halfkinds in it. The first one looks very similar to Tiago, but leaner, skinnier, and with spots. His fur is yellow instead of orange. He also has a large yellow tail, also spotted. The other one has smoother looking skin, though I could see some short hairs on it. It’s black and white, and has a large pink snout for a nose. It’s also bigger, kind of obese like the half bear that Agent Leons showed me earlier.

  “Meet Ace, the half cheetah, and Maddie, the half cow. Each one of them idolizes a different older brother. Ace wants to be like Tiago, Maddie wants to be like Oscar. Oh, and if you couldn’t tell by her name, Maddie is female. And now we come to the last two. Both of them are in their late teens.”

  Agent Leons moves to the next hologram and I see two catlike beings. The first one is has orange fur, its body type is lean and well defined. He has whiskers and hypnotizing cat eyes. His fur covers his whole body and his ears point up. He’s bipedal like all the others.

  His counterpart is similar to him, except everything is more delicate, feminine. She is the only one who I could tell was a girl off the bat. Her eyes standout since they are so enormous, and her face is thin and soft looking. She has a long tail that sticks out of her clothing. Her fur isn’t as long as her brothers, and while she did have the cat ears, she also has long, silky human hair on her head. In a strange way, she is very beautiful, alluring almost.

  “These are the twins, Iris and Isaac,” Agent Leons said. “They’re part cat, and probably about seventeen. And that’s all we know about them really. They didn’t have a journal or many personal effects.”

  Agent Leons eyes Iris perversely.

  “But, man, too bad that one is a cat abomination,” he says. “In a weird way, she looks pretty good.”

  I imaginarily roll my eyes at his comments. “What can you tell me about the one who died, Leonard?”

  “Not a lot, only that he loved his mother very much.”

  “And the detective just shot at him?”

  “No, Leonard attacked first with a kitchen knife.”

  “He was hostile?”

  “It seems so.”

  “What is my mission exactly?”

  “You are to assist in the hunting and termination of these eleven halfkinds.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s an order from the Council via the United Species Alliance.”

  “Seems like a pretty shady order. I’m not a hired assassin.”

  “Well, you’re not. You’re a soldier. And soldiers do what they’re told.”

  “They think for themselves, too.”

  Agent Leons looks to the ground and shakes his head.

  “Look, Simon,” he says. “I don’t decide the orders, but this is one from the top. You already know how much a taboo interspecies relations are. If word got out that these things exist, it’ll be chaos. It’ll be opening a can of worms that will lead to God knows what. People, animals will take this as another accident, like what happened a few hundred years ago. Suspicion and fear will ravage the streets. These things are atrocities and their very existence shouldn’t even be put into light. If this interspecies breeding begins, within a few generations people will wonder exactly what it means to be human. And it’s not the way Mother Nature intended it to be.”

  He takes another sip from his cup.

  “Messing with genetics,” he continues, “playing God, it’s not our role. If our ancestors had only known the repercussions of all this experimenting, then we’d still be on the top, instead of sharing it with all these others animals. But here we are again, put face to face with an evolutionary crisis. It’s not only the Human Council that wants this done, it’s been decided among all the species councils that these things need to be put out because of the threat they bring to all life, for future generations. This time, we have to put a stop to this before it can even begin.”

  He puts his cup down.

  “Goddamn, think of all the shit us humans could’ve done if we hadn’t messed around, if these animals never got smart. We could’ve been walking around this planet like gods, dominating the world with all the advances we would’ve made the past few hundreds of years. I can’t even imagine all the cool shit that’d we’d be playing with right now. But that stuff never happened. We had the plans, but once the animals were as smart as us, the plans were put on hold. Now we’re stuck in a loop of politics and ever increasing shit.”

  He looks me in the eye and moves in closer. His face changes from business to a more relaxed expression. A slick smile flashes, like one a used hovercar salesmen would have. The pressure I feel from him makes me uncomfortable.

  “This is from the top,” he says. “If you do this, the Council, hell the United Species Alliance, won’t forget it.”

  He’s right. I don’t want to let down either group and the credits they would pay me would be pretty nice. With a direct order like this, I might be the one giving out briefings in the future.

  “All right, I’ll do it then.”

  “Good. Follow me and I’ll introduce you to your team.”

  “Team? I normally work with people I know.”

  “Well this isn’t a normal case.”

  Chapter 4 – Iris Lawton - Outcasts

  November 15, 3040 11:21 AM

  When we woke up this morning, we discovered that Leonard had gone missing. I remember earlier seeing him asleep next to us on the dingy ground of this abandoned building, and then mysteriously, he was gone.

  We’re not sure where he snuck off to, but Tiago has a good idea. He knew how much Leonard loved mother, we all did. We remembered how outraged Leonard was when we left so hastily, that we didn’t even give her a proper burial. Tiago thinks that Leonard went back home to let her rest peacefully.

  I personally didn’t want to leave mother rotting away in that house either, but things happened so fast, and we were afraid because mother had told us so much about how the outside world would persecute us. When the others said that someone could stop by the house within a day or two, I was petrified. If we are discovered, they’ll kill or capture us for their experiments, like mother war
ned us. I don’t want to die. That’s why I agreed with the others to leave so quickly.

  But Leonard, I could tell that he didn’t want to. He said nothing, but his face gave it away. When Leonard was sad, his upper lip would tremble a little, and his large, black eyes would blink rapidly. I saw both of those things happen the moment we left home.

  It was hard for him. It was hard for all of us. I didn’t sneak out like Maddie or Lombardi did, so that house was the only place I knew for seventeen years. Mother kept us in a very sheltered existence. She let us go on the infospace to learn about the civilization around us, but it wasn’t tangible. We couldn’t interact with it physically.

  From what she told us, I figured the world wasn’t a nice place to live in. But the idea she reinforced most often was how all of them, humans, dogs, gorillas, pigs, all of the animals, would be against us. We were different, too different for a world like this.

  I didn’t want to believe her, but who else was there to believe?

  “He should be returning at any moment,” Tiago says. He had sent Ace to go back to the house, to see if Leonard was there. Ace was eager to help out and he is the best equipped to scout the area, even in broad daylight. He’s part cheetah, meaning he runs the fastest of all of us, and the paws he has help him tread lightly. He boasts about his prowess, how he’s so good he could run circles in broad daylight. It’s not something I would do, but his cheetah ancestry also means he’s not that smart.

  “Do you think Leonard really went back home?” I ask Isaac, my twin brother.

  Isaac twitches his nose and his whiskers shake. “I don’t know Iris, but it seems pretty likely. He was the closest to mom. Remember how much she used to baby him? He always was her favorite.”

  Isaac speaks in the past tense and it irks me a little. Mother is dead, and we now have to talk about her as a memory, not someone in the present. It makes me sad. I wasn’t as close to her as Leonard, but she was still my mother. She took care of me and my brothers and sisters, and it’s something I couldn’t shake in just a week.

  I twitch my nose and sniffle a bit. I try to prevent the tears from coming out of my eyes, but in doing so I let out a faint sigh. Isaac senses my sadness.

  “Are you okay?” he asks me. Isaac is the one I am closest to, he is my twin after all. He is usually my confidant and can sense my emotions better than any of my other siblings. He’s earnest and on good terms with the rest of the family, but they usually refer to us as one entity. They say it must be a cat thing, that we stick to our own kind. I think it’s because Isaac understands me, and I understand him.

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” I say.

  “You’re sad about mom, aren’t you?” he asks.

  “Yeah. I mean, who isn’t.”

  “Tiago for one.”

  Since mother had died, Tiago quickly took his place as the leader. Throughout the week, he was the one who had been giving orders and telling us how to ration our supplies. He was also the one who commanded Ace to search for Leonard.

  I can’t imagine how it must be to have the weight of ten other siblings on your shoulders. Isaac thinks that in the last few days, Tiago has come off way too cold, especially the way he handled us leaving in the first place. I could tell Isaac disagreed with how we left mother and the house so suddenly. It seemed wrong to leave her corpse to rot. He wanted to punch Tiago in the face.

  But I know what we did was for the greater good. Tiago was thinking rationally. It was too dangerous to stay in one place, and Tiago had to do what he could to protect us. Sometimes the best decision isn’t always the most popular one.

  Tiago has also been discussing with our second oldest brother, Oscar, on what our next move should be. It’s odd that they are working together, they’ve never really seen eye to eye on anything. One is a softy, one is as hard as a rock. I guess to formulate a plan, you need to hear both sides.

  We can’t hide in this warehouse forever and our supplies are slowly dwindling. The younger ones, like me and Isaac, have to rely on their leadership in order to get through this.

  I myself am scared of what the future holds, but I’ve always been afraid. What kind of future could I ever possibly have? We have no home anymore and we can’t bounce from place to place forever. Even worse, if something did happen to Leonard, if he got found out, our existence would be known. We’d be mobbed down and murdered.

  Thinking about my future makes me shudder.

  Suddenly, we hear knocking from the back entrance of the warehouse. I grab a lead pipe I had been sleeping next to. We had locked the doors tightly, but we are still on edge over possible intruders. First we hear three fast knocks, followed by a pause, and then two more fast knocks. I ease up a little. It’s the secret knock we had made before. Ace has returned.

  “Ace, is that you?” I ask.

  Isaac shushes me. “Let Tiago handle this.”

  “Ace, what is the code?” Tiago asks.

  “Aww, c’mon, just let me in,” Ace says impatiently.

  “The code,” Tiago says again sternly.

  “Eight,” he says.

  Tiago had made a coding system for us during the week. If there was someone with us or someone had taken us hostage, we’d respond four. If we were injured, we’d respond fifteen. Eight means everything is clear.

  Tiago instructs Alex to open the locks. This place isn’t automated, it’s old. We were able to find some industrial padlocks in the warehouse, but only Alex has the strength to unlock and lock them thanks to his rhino DNA. Alex usually does a lot of the physical work in our family, like lifting heavy things and helps with the tough manual labor. His personality is rough, like his grey skin, and brutish, like his large physique. He usually hangs with Tiago. I feel Tiago keeps him around for protection, like a bodyguard. Personally, Alex kind of frightens me.

  Ace bursts through the door, breathing deeply. He is wearing a coat that is hooded and wide lens black sunglasses. We concealed his identity as much as we could, especially since he’s moving in daylight.

  He rests his body on his knees to recuperate.

  “Give me a minute,” he says, panting.

  We back up and wait, all of us are on pins and needles to know what he discovered. Isaac and I exchange glances. I have a worried look on my face, but he shakes his head reassuringly. Ace finally gets settled in.

  “What did you see?” Tiago asks.

  “I was able to make it about a hundred feet away from the house. When I got there, there was already a group of people snooping around. They were taking our things and putting them into a large storage hovercar,” Ace says.

  “Were they bill collectors?” Maddie, my half cow, half human sister asks. Some of my brothers look at her dumbfounded. Her question doesn’t surprise me though, she’s not very bright.

  “I don’t think so,” Ace responds. “They look like they’re members of law enforcement or something. I saw the letters USASD on their vehicle.”

  “United Species Alliance Science Division,” Candy responds. She’s probably the smartest in our family, and is usually on top of the world’s current events and scientific breakthroughs.

  “The United Species Alliance?” Oscar asks. “What do they want with our things?”

  “I don’t know,” Ace says.

  “You heard him,” Tiago interrupts, “It’s the science division. They come to experiment on us.”

  “You don’t know that,” Oscar says defensively.

  “What other reason could it be? It’s their science division,” Tiago emphasizes the science. Oscar is silent. I look around and see the grim expression on everyone’s face, even Isaac’s. The hard truth is becoming apparent, mother was right about the outside world.

  “What about Leonard?” I ask Ace. “Did you see him?”

  Ace is quiet and looks at the floor. His nose begins to twitch and I hear a small sniffle. His whiskers droop down and his pointed ears fold to the side of his head.

  “Yeah, I saw him,” Ace says. “The science
team packed him away in a body bag.”

  I don’t understand what Ace means at first. Body bag? Why would they need that? But then Ace makes it all too clear.

  “Leonard is dead,” he said.

  The room is silent. I think back to when Leonard was a child and mother held him in her arms so proudly. I remember how much he adored her, how he never questioned her, and always went by her word. He was endearing not only to her, but to all of us. A baby brother to everyone. He was the only one who cared about mother enough that he went back to see her off. And now, he was dead for it.

  “How did it happen?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I just saw him being carried away into the truck.”

  None of us want to speak. Leonard was so young and caring. He didn’t know the world like we did, because it wasn’t his nature to acknowledge the brutality around us.

  But that’s what caused him to die. He deserved better.

  “He was murdered,” Tiago says angrily.

  All of us acknowledge the truth that Tiago speaks, but none of us step up to respond to him.

  “That science team probably ran into him and killed him,” Tiago says. “Mom was right, they want to experiment on us like we’re a bunch of freaks.”

  “Now let’s not jump to conclusions,” Oscar says. He stands up from his sitting position and looks Tiago straight in the eyes.

  “It’s the only conclusion!” Tiago yells. “What else could have happened?”

  Oscar is silent. He knows Tiago is right, but doesn’t want to admit it. Admitting it would show the truth that we were not welcome in this world, that we would be killed without hesitation.

  “What do you think we should do now?” I say, interrupting the conversation in order to ease the tension.