Chameleon (The Ripple Series) Read online

  CHAMELEON

  Book Two in the Ripple Series

  Cidney Swanson

  Copyright © 2011 by Cidney Swanson

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978–0–9835621–3–9

  For Natalie

  Excerpted from My Father’s Brilliant Journey, by Helga Gottlieb

  Killing Kathryn Ruiz and her daughter Samantha seemed a simple assignment. My father could have given the task to any of his several assassins, but he chose Hans. The choice set off whispered speculations at Geneses’ headquarters. “Who were they, the mother and child? Anyone important?” “Are they chameleons? I heard they were chameleons.” “Does this child pose a special threat?”

  The child, then seven, would indeed pose a threat; she was a latent as opposed to an actualized chameleon; and she was important, being descended directly from an important blood–line. These things my father knew, but he kept them to himself.

  He’d given the assignment to Hans for a much less interesting reason: Kathryn Ruiz and her daughter lived in a small town. In Las Abuelitas, a new car or a new face could not hope to escape notice, and Hans knew how to keep a low profile. Not that his murders were hum–drum affairs—he had a fondness for gas leaks and consequent house fires where only the foundation remained. But he carried out his assignments such that investigations were never lengthy and often avoided entirely.

  Hans began his task by purchasing the car of a man the townspeople considered a harmless drunkard. Hans spent a dull day hidden in Harold’s car, observing the neighborhood, noting the Ruizes did not have a gas line.

  When the mother and child drove up to the house, Hans heard a seven–year–old’s squeal of pain or frustration and saw something small scurry out the car, the girl following it into the street. The mother stepped out into the road as well. Because it was dusk, Hans couldn’t be sure if the something small was a cat or a dog. The creature paid no heed to the calls from the little girl: a cat, most likely. Perhaps, in his mind’s eye, Hans saw himself running the cat over with his new set of wheels.

  This was the solution to his assignment. He started the engine.

  Seeing no headlights, Kathryn at first thought the car she heard must be on an adjacent street. Then her ears warned her to clear the road. She grabbed the child at the elbow and pulled her to the sidewalk. But the little girl, intent upon her kitten, dashed back. Kathryn shouted and ran, intending to push the child out of danger. She failed.

  By the time Hans collided with his twin targets, he noted he’d reached forty–five miles per hour. Hans always double–checked his work. He exited the car, raced invisibly towards the bleeding pair, checked quickly for one pulse and then the other. Satisfied that they were dead, Hans darted back to his waiting vehicle and drove off as curtains drew aside to reveal the faces of curious neighbors.

  “Crazy Harold, driving too fast,” they said. “Probably drunk again.” The neighbors let their curtains fall shut, returning to their televisions and dinners.

  Harold’s drunken state when Hans found him again made it almost too simple. Hans drove out of town, Harold in the car beside him. An empty bottle of Jim Beam provided a nice bit of set dressing. Hans chose an especially sharp curve to send the vehicle over the cliff. Locals called it Dead Man’s Curve. He held the wheel straight and drove off the edge. Harold looked confused when Hans’ body evaporated into the safety of nothingness.

  The invisible man smiled at the gratifying explosion.

  (Note to self: Of course, Hans failed to kill Samantha, and my father later reversed his orders. Instead of wanting her dead, he wanted her alive: why?)

  Chapter One

  WINTER CHILL

  I sat beside our pool gathering the last gasp of fall. Blowing past me in gusts, the air breathed November’s chill, heavy with the sweet smoke of burning autumn leaves.

  I’d returned the plate from my birthday cake to the bakery today. As soon as I’d walked inside, my ex–friend Gwyn had run behind the kitchen door.

  It hurt.

  I wiped tears from the corners of my eyes. The sky grew darker, threatened wintry rain, and I breathed in the melancholy passing of autumn.

  Behind me, the sliding glass door opened, but I didn’t turn. It had to be Sylvia, worried about me. But then I turned to see Gwyn, standing and holding papers in her hands, as if I had conjured her with my tears.

  My hand rose self–consciously to the bruising upon my face, and I saw her lips draw tight and thin.

  She dropped a piece of paper and the wind caught it. We chased it, darting along the deck towards Sylvia’s garden. I trapped the paper with one foot, reached down to grab it, and handed it back to Gwyn.

  “Actually, they’re for you.” She handed me the remainder of the pages.

  As I took them, the wind gusted again and the pages flapped—frightened white birds trying to escape. I held them tight.

  “I thought some of those might help Will. There’s stuff for you, too.” She looked at me and shook her head as she inspected my bruised face. “This is what a true friend does.”

  I dropped my eyes to the pages I held. Articles, printed off the internet. About how to recover from the compulsion to harm animals, how to leave an abusive relationship. I didn’t know what to say. “Thanks” wasn’t honest. I wanted to scream over the injustice of the situation. No words came.

  “I’ll be seeing you,” said Gwyn. “But I can’t be your friend until you give him up. It’s not right and you know it.”

  She turned and walked away as I stood there, my throat swelling, eyes stinging. As I heard her car start, icy rain began to fall.

  Chapter Two

  GENESES

  Cross country finished for the season and I feared I’d see Will less, but we still had classes. We ate lunch together in the cafeteria where Gwyn cast dark looks at Will and avoided meeting my eye. Though we were around each other constantly, I couldn’t figure out Will’s feelings for me. At times, he seemed interested. A look captured as we ran together, his hand on my skin, resting a millisecond too long. I knew I should ask him. But how do you strike up that kind of conversation? So, it’s been awhile since we kissed … is there something you’d like to tell me? I guess deep down, I knew it had been impulsive on his part and that he regretted it.

  Or maybe he’d told his sister and she’d forbidden him from dating. As his legal guardian, Mickie had a lot of say in her brother’s life. Anyway, our lives were complicated enough without throwing a relationship in the mix. Having the ability to turn invisible, or ripple, might sound pretty cool. And that was the problem: other people thought it sounded cool and wanted to capture or kill Will and myself because of our genetic abilities. We’d kept our skill secret from all outsiders and even my parents.

  Mickie and Will had been in hiding ever since her former college advisor, the geneticist Dr. Pfeffer, had been murdered. A “witness protection thing minus the protection,” Will called his life with his sister in Las Abuelitas, California. One of Pfeffer’s last acts had been to secure the cabin for Will and his sister, bringing them to my home town last year.

  I was supposed to be comforted by Will’s reassurances that Dr. Pfeffer had left no trail linking Mickie to Pfeffer. He’d paid her in cash when she helped with research; he’d allowed no conversations by phone or even email; he’d insisted she disguise her appearance on her visits to his lab. If he had needed to sen
d her anything, it had been done by regular mail, stuffed inside what appeared to be wedding invitations.

  Of course, my life was in at least as much danger as either of theirs; last month we’d learned that Pfeffer’s successors—and probable murderers—wanted me as well. The fact that they wanted me alive and not dead didn’t comfort me.

  We all felt eager for the French Club trip to France which would allow us, at last, to meet Pfeffer’s trusted friend, Waldhart de Rocheforte, whom we jokingly referred to as Sir Walter. His letters had a decidedly chivalrous tone. Will and I would go on the trip as students; Will’s sister would be a chaperone.

  At school today, I carried the lunchtime conversation along without Will saying much. Something was really bugging him; his eyes kept glassing over, even in History—a subject he loved. As we walked into Biology, I brought it up.

  “What’s with you today?”

  “Tell you after class.”

  I took notes on the circulatory system wondering what had him upset. He walked out with me after class dismissed.

  “So?” I asked.

  “We got another ‘wedding invitation.’ This one came with a video,” he replied. “A disturbing video.”

  I frowned. Sir Walter continued the habit of his friend Pfeffer, sending information disguised in large, calligraphy–covered envelopes.

  “Am I invited to come watch this disturbing video?” I asked.

  “Mick wanted you to come over as soon as possible,” he replied. “I couldn’t sleep last night after we watched it.”

  We shoved Will’s bike in the back of my Blazer and drove the two miles to Will and Mickie’s shabby cabin, located just a mile down the highway from my own McMansion.

  “Sam, thanks for coming so quickly,” Mickie said, opening the door for me.

  Will handed me the latest wedding invitation. “Read it. Then we’ll watch the recording.”

  I looked at the familiar loopy handwriting of our mysterious contact in France.

  Ma Chère Mlle Mackenzie,

  Please allow of me to offer apologies for not responding sooner. Much has happened. Since I last wrote to you, I have been working upon plans which will slow, and I pray stop, those whom Pfeffer opposed.

  Pfeffer told me before his death that he had located a manuscript—a small leather book, black. If he managed to pass it to you, guard it with your lives. The language would appear strange to you; it is obscure and little–spoken these days. Many lives might be saved by what it reveals about Helmann’s dark activities.

  I am most eager for our upcoming meeting.

  Your friend and well–wisher,

  Waldhart de Rochefort

  Mickie completed a circuit around the room, closing blinds and curtains. On her computer, she typed through several password encryptions and the video began.

  Intrigued, I watched images of war, poverty, starvation, and want in all its many faces from places around the globe while a deep–voiced, compassionate–sounding woman spoke of how desperate things had become for our planet. I was just deciding it was a commercial for a global relief project when a man drifted across the screen, dressed like Laurence of Arabia, or maybe Moses. He smiled as fountains of water blossomed across a desert land yielding row after row of crops. And as a farmer’s daughter from central California, I can tell you that doesn’t happen overnight. Someone had clearly designed the film to make impracticable tasks appear simple. The narrator switched to an urgent, hopeful tone calling on me to help bring this prosperous future into reality.

  The image passed to a scene where happy, blond–haired, blue–eyed children sat on picnic blankets in a sunny garden, learning the multiplication tables and the periodic chart of elements. Interspersed were images of the children looking dreamily at a statue of the man who’d greened up the desert.

  That’s when I realized it was the film’s music that really got you. This was music that should be played for astronauts soaring to infinity and beyond. Music to launch tall ships with broad sails. With music like this you could convince a person to do or dream anything. Including a blondes–only future. I shivered, reminded of the black book. With the exception of dark–eyed “Pepper,” the children in the black book had been fair and light–eyed.

  I became distracted by memories of the awful things recorded in that book and only half–caught words the video punched.

  PROSPEROUS … HARMONIOUS … WORTHY … FOLLOWERS … NEW ERA … THOUSAND YEARS …

  The propaganda clip ended, cutting to a man standing behind a podium, emblazoned with the phrase “Geneses Corp Worldwide.” The man looked ready to give a speech to the small gathering of crisply dressed business men and women.

  “Imagine, if you will, a world without hunger.” A dramatic pause. “A world without poverty or ignorance.” Another dramatic pause. “A world without pollution, overpopulation, global warming, disease …” He paused even longer as the camera panned slowly across the small audience. “You will ask, ‘how is it possible?’”

  “How’s it possible without killing off four billion innocent people,” muttered Mickie.

  “As with all visionary undertakings, we work for a future that will be enjoyed by our children and our children’s children. There will be sacrifice—necessary sacrifice—made by our own generation in order to bring about this new world.

  “But ask yourself, if there are none bold enough to take the steps we propose, what will the world of tomorrow look like? I need not spell this out for you.” Behind him flashed images of disease, war, fetid water, and dying crops.

  “The deaths of so many should indeed cause grave concern. And it is of grave concern to me, as I am sure it is to you. Yet, these souls will perish.” Here he sighed deeply, gazing downwards and shaking his head as if with regret. “Whether by our hand or another’s, they have, even the youngest of them, less than a century before they will be gone and forgotten.” Another sad shake of the head. “Such a waste. And while they live their squalid existences of abject poverty and suffering, they continue to consume and destroy the very planet that gives them life.”

  More images of corpses and the dying, flies crawling along their diseased bodies.

  “Who would prolong this level of suffering another hundred years, or another fifty, or even ten, when it lay in his power to put an end to it? To deliver mankind into the paradise for which he was intended by his creator?”

  Here the music began to swell in quiet hopefulness.

  “Once we have laid to rest the billions who consume and destroy, whose lives are but a daily torment even to themselves, we shall bring about a world without cripples or blindness, a world where no child lives in reach of the icy hand of cancer, where everyone has enough and enough time within which to enjoy it.”

  The music crescendoed; we were back to the launching–of–tall–ships overture.

  The video ended before I could tell what the audience’s response had been.

  “What. Was. That?” I half–whispered the words, not sure I wanted an answer.

  “We don’t know,” said Will.

  “But this is a total game–changer from what I thought we were up against,” said Mickie. “It’s bigger than just killing off people with the gene for Helmann’s Disease.”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said. “If I understood correctly, that dude is discussing the need to sacrifice a generation of people living now so that his new world can happen. I’d guess Geneses isn’t putting that on their website. They’re the biotech company in San Francisco, right? The one fighting for a cure for cancer or something?”

  “That’s their public image,” Will replied.

  “So, guys, I’m lost,” I said. “What does this video have to do with rippling or Helmann’s Disease?”

  “Oh, there’s a connection.” Mickie spoke softly. “Sir Walter labeled the video ‘Helmann’s Speech.’”

  Letter from Helga Gottlieb to her father, circa present day

  My Most Dear and Revered Father,

 
I write to explain an undertaking which I believe will at once please you and benefit mankind. I have begun these past several months to compile a collection of essays and stories which one day I hope to use to tell to all the world the story of your Accession to Greatness, and thus the story of the Salvation of Mankind through your Glorious Revitalization of the Earth in the near future.

  As you know, I have in my care the journals compiled during the years of your youth and containing your earliest efforts at the Improvement of the Race of Man. Hans believes I should ask your blessing. However, I trust I have your permission as I sift through these thousands of entries to create a Biography of the Greatest Man ever to live, that is, your own illustrious self.

  Believe me to be, Sir, your most obedient daughter and devoted servant,

  Helga Gottlieb

  Chapter Three

  BLACK BOOKS

  I lay awake listening to the howling wind as it chased a snow–storm toward the Sierra Nevada mountains. Sleep felt as far away as summer right now. I shivered and dove farther under the covers as rain began pelting my window.

  Helmann—as in some descendant of the black–book–writing–Helmann who tortured children in the name of science—had plans to bring about the end of the world as we knew it. Will and I had already discovered that there was a connection between Geneses and Dr. Helga Gottlieb, the scientist who had taken over the lab where Will’s sister had secretly studied rippling with Dr. Pfeffer. Finding out that Helga was therefore connected to Helmann horrified me, but it wasn’t a great surprise either. All the signs pointed to her being descended from either the children in the black book or Helmann or both.