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"No kiddin'."
I struggled up to my knees. The flesh I wore felt heavy after the incredible
lightness of being without.
Somewhere down deep in the cellar, beneath my consciousness, the body's
original occupant crouched in the darkness and shuddered with his hands over
his face. With any luck he'd stay down there until it
was time for me to leave. "So this place you came from before you came here,
they get all the Trek editions first run? Or just in syndication?"
"Dad . . ."
* * *
I was lucky that Whozits was too stunned by the turn of events to resist my
taking over his body. It was hard enough just learning how to walk all over
again. All aboard the Disorient Express. By the time I
got the outer door open I was able to stagger about after a fashion but I had
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zombies in my backyard that shuffled with more grace and speed on less flesh
and bone.
Will I couldn't keep calling him "wolf" looked up at me as I pulled the door
closed behind us.
"What's the plan?"
"What do you mean, what's the plan? You're the one who's omniscient!"
"I never said I was omniscient, I only said that I know some things that I
can't get all loose-lipped about. This is your gig; I'm only trying to lend a
helping hand."
We both stared down at his paws.
"You'd think I'd get some credit for crossing all sorts of metaphysical
barriers, chasing after you all the way to New York, watching out for your
innards after you lost your outtards, hitching a ride with
Witch Hazel out there all the way to the Rockies, and then pushing this poor
old wolf carcass up the mountainside to help you again. Omniscient? If I'd
known you were going to give me this much grief I
would've stayed home and hung around haunting Mom."
"Sorry," I said. "I'm having a bad day. You've got to admit these aren't the
ideal circumstances for meeting your future offspring."
"Not if they're human, anyway," he agreed, scratching at something behind his
ear.
"It's not that. It's all this!" I swept the hall with my arm. "Nazis. Secret
mountain fortress.
Laboratories equipped with advanced genetics technology. They've cloned my
dead wife and daughter and are using their fetuses as hostages! Who knows?
Maybe they've cloned Adolf Hitler."
Will shook his head. "It's been done."
I stared at him, aghast. "It has?"
"Another story, not here, not your karma." He hesitated. "I don't think . . ."
He shook his muzzle.
"Not now, not tonight. Try to stay focused, Dad. Plenty of fascist fish to fry
later if all goes well tonight."
"Swell. Even if you do learn from history, you're doomed to repeat it." I
turned and staggered up the hallway toward the inner door.
"So what is the plan?" he called after me.
"I'm working on it."
I opened the inner door. Another guard met me on his way out. Cigarette-break
man.
"Hans? What happened?"
"What?" I hoped my voice didn't sound strange.
He was too busy peering at my face to pay attention to the vocal inflections
of a single syllable response. He wasn't one of Mengele's clones. That
shouldn't be too surprising as Gretchen had counted eleven surviving adult
replicants and I'd already noted at least four times that many in the
barracks, alone.
"You look terrible!" the guard exclaimed. "Did you have an accident?"
"Uh," I half-coughed, half-grunted, "yeah. Fell down."
"The transport will be here soon but I think I have enough time to help you
down to the infirmary if you need assistance."
Decisions, decisions . . .
"Don't move!" he whispered. His hand went down to his holster and unsnapped
the cover.
Uh-oh.
"There's a wolf behind you."
Oh.
Oh!
I clenched my right hand into a fist. Then I stepped in as he drew his pistol
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and punched his jaw with a swift uppercut.
He stepped back and looked at me in disbelief as I shook my stinging knuckles.
"What did you do that for?"
Apparently Hans was a "lefty." And I had grown overly dependant on the
preternatural strength of my former body.
"Uh, Greenpeace?" I said. As Will leapt past me and knocked the man to the
ground.
I pointed the Heckler & Koch at man and beast as they rolled over and over but
there was no way to get a clear shot. And putting a fortress full of Nazis on
red-alert was not part of any potential plan that
I was still working on.
Suddenly it was over. The guard got a firm grip on the wolf's head and gave it
a wrenching twist.
There was an audible cracking sound and the beast went limp.
"Son of a bitch!" I hissed as I swung the automatic weapon up and at the man's
head.
He threw up his hands. "Whoa, Dad; best not to invoke family lineage in the
house of one's enemies."
"Will?"
The guard wiped some blood from his hand onto the fur of the dead wolf and
climbed back to his feet. "In the flesh." He staggered a little. "Bipedal.
Going to have to work on this balance thing a little." He felt his face. "And
what happened to all of those wonderful smells?"
He staggered toward me a little and I felt tears gather at the edge of my
eyes.
"Dad? What's wrong?"
I shook my head and sniffed. "I just saw my baby boy take his first steps."
* * *
We killed another ten minutes in the temperature lock before returning to the
main "lobby" of Brut
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