Monster Like You

Chapter 4

"She's a hybrid."

The words of my colleague Rea Marse were still ringing in my ears when I returned home late in the evening. Short and seemingly fragile, but in fact flexible and strong, as I have seen over the years of working together, the Kaori (fictional nationality) girl was in charge of our medical issues. She came to this conclusion after five hours of research.

"She's half chameleon, in the conversion stage. But for the second half, she.." dark, swamp–green eyes on a slightly swarthy face looked at me across the table. "You."

I swallowed hard, and Elsdon, who was present at the meeting, since I managed to involve him in our case, noticed, turning to Rea.

"That's what I said. We just call them chimeras: creatures that are created from others. More precisely, they were called until the spell of the chimera was lost along with the ritual, as a result of which the union of organisms took place. Now these are legends."

"It looks like someone found what you lost and brought the legend back to life," with these words, Kiaran laid a small tablet on the conference table. "We found these recordings at Penn's house. It has not been possible to study everything yet, because there are months of video and audio recordings, as well as a lot of text documents and encrypted files. But something is already clear. The project Johnson was working on was called "Abys". She called the girl found in her house Alyssa or just Alys."

"And what is the essence of the project?" Elsdon asked with obvious curiosity, looking at me.

Of course, Kiaran instructed me to study the recordings from the tablet, and that was my job: to collect and study information, draw conclusions from it. And it was because of me that we did not have time to move far: instead of quickly "digging up" files, as usual, I "hung out" for a long time on some views, watching my double. The way she spoke, what she did and how she did it.

"In the creation of a super soldier and super spy. Alyssa is a combination of a fearless appearance, an extraordinary mind - forgive me if this sounded immodest - and incredible strength. The chameleon's nature is obviously responsible for the latter. Like lizards, she is almost invulnerable, her regenerative abilities are even higher than theirs. And more... she's ruthless."

I exhaled slowly, remembering the recording from which I had gleaned most of the voiced information. Penn called it "the third phase of the experiment", and from the outside it looked like a fight without rules: a hybrid girl against one of the hired guards. Alyssa was unarmed, her opponent had a knife.

A hefty guy, a head taller than her and half as wide in the shoulders, at first was confident in his own abilities and allowed himself a few provocative comments, from which even my blood boiled. Several times he managed to get Alyssa with a knife, but the wounds healed in a matter of seconds, even the blood did not have time to really run. When the opponent was somewhat discouraged by what was happening, Alyssa easily disarmed him first, and then immobilized him. On the recording, Penn could be heard commanding, "enough is enough", but Alyssa did not obey. She whispered something to the big guy, then with a sharp movement she wrung his neck.

"Yes, apparently, she killed her creator herself,'' Rea agreed with my last statement.

Actually, she had a longer name - Reannon. Common among the Kaori, whose lands became part of Great Britain already in my lifetime, but rare in our region. The Kaori preferred to stay in their territories for the time being. But Reannon remained an orphan, she was adopted as a baby by an employee of the Corps. That's how she ended up in the capital.

"We found hybrid DNA on Penn's neck," she explained her assumption.

"In other words, she's a monster," Gervase summed up.