“Your children?” I said.
The monster reached the nest.
“You should be happy to have solved the case,” Mr. Visser responded. “This is my wife. My beautiful wife. It wasn’t death, after all, but transformation.” He laughed. “All of those candy canes have made her even more magnificent.”
“The skin,” I said, “was … she’d stepped out of it. Sort of. That’s why she wasn’t torn to pieces.” The hole she’d slid out of hadn’t looked big enough to allow this thing to climb out, though.
“I truly did think she was dead,” Mr. Visser said, “that the pod I had given her had broken her.” He sighed, his joy wobbling a little. “I believed that a pod could help her pain, to mend her leg. It was so terribly damaged. I’d been reading stories online of the wonder cures people had made from pod, of how it could be harvested as medicine, that it doesn’t need to be as feared as it is.”
I’d read many of those ridiculous articles myself. People telling their miracle stories of how pods were the gift that could heal any ailment, the fact that this was not public knowledge, nothing more than a conspiracy to keep us all in line with what the council and government wanted us to believe.
It was the opposite of what the Conclave believed, the other end of a dangerous spectrum.
“Pods are—”
His face went red with an instant fury. “Do not begin to lecture me! I know what pods are. They woke the sperm that lingered from our last lovemaking, that impotent seed in her infertile body.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe he’d just said that.
“You heard me. The night before my darling disappeared, we’d made love. It was terrible, over quickly, leaving her in pain with that wretched leg of hers. But the pod had transformed her, allowed her to be a mother, and to give me the gift of fatherhood. Just look at her, at all of this evolution.”
I’d fallen in a pod, I must have. A big one, floating in it like a piece of fruit suspended in jelly while having the worst kind of trip. This was too freaky.
“She has evolved beyond the limitations of human existence, becoming something new. There is no pain for her now, only wonderment. We are to be parents.”
Oh, God.
“Soon, you will see. Doctors told us we would never have children of our own, but they will be proven wrong. So very wrong! You are about to witness a miracle.”
She’d gone from not being able to have kids, to a creature who laid eggs in the quickest time ever. Her skin had only been found yesterday!
“This is not your wife, Mr. Visser.”
“Of course, she is! You,” he pointed an angry finger, “made me believe she was gone.” He laughed then, shaking his head. “But you didn’t lie. How could you lie when you do not understand? Your brain is too small, too human.”
“Look,” I replied, “she may be your wife technically, but not the wife you once knew. She’s pod-born, but way beyond humanity now.”
“That’s right! Ascended! Just look at her!” The broken, sullen man who’d come into my office was so ecstatic that he looked like someone else.
But the fact was, she was beyond the old Mrs. Visser. Some pod-born were like Sonny—having additions to their physical make up. Others, like Mrs. Visser, were completely altered. There was no coming back from this. She was changed. Sure, she may have recognition and affection for her husband, but that wasn’t enough. She couldn’t stay here under the city, free to go up and kill.
The monster took a bone in her clawed hand, then drove her pointed mouth through it. A sucking noise followed.
Mr. Visser was smiling like a proud husband. “Such healthy marrow.”
The more mouths to feed meant more victims.
Not on my watch.
“Why didn’t you tell me you gave her pod?” I asked.
He sneered at me. “Because you would have held it against me, used it as a weapon to paint me with guilt, to make me believe I had harmed her with it while I was still in the dark about her glorious rebirth.”
I could understand his happiness at finding her alive, but this wasn’t right.
“You won’t hurt her,” he told me, eyeing my weaponry. “I won’t allow you too. She is the love of my life, my everything. I have her back when I thought she was gone. Think about the man you love.”
Jake.
He was the love of my life.
This creature was Mr. Visser’s wife.
The love of his life.
If the situation were reversed …
I didn’t bear thinking about it.
“She’s killed innocent people,” I said.
“How many people die every day? It is nature, evolution. The pod-born are beginning to take over, pushing away the time of man.”
Seriously? We were going down that route? Maybe he was right. The pod-born weren’t going away and would continue to be made. They were often a problem, like in this moment, and were growing in number. It took a creature or object coming into contact with one to make the transformation if they didn’t just cause an acid trip. Nothing was truly born from the pods outright—like stepping out of the primordial ooze. Everything was made.
At the moment.
The creature was busy attending to the eggs, nuzzling them with her head.
Philosophizing didn’t matter. Facts were facts. I wasn’t about to let her continue. Every moment I was in this chamber was keeping me from finding Jake.
“Why shouldn’t my children be fed?” Mr. Visser demanded.
“They’re—”
“I will have to kill you,” he cut me off and pulled out a kitchen knife from his pocket. It was small, but I could see it was sharp enough to cut through me.
First up would be a reasoning tactic. I didn’t hold out much hope for this course of action.
“Listen, Mr. Visser. I don’t have to kill her.”
“What?” He frowned in confusion. “You would let her live?”
“Yes, but not here. She’d have to go to one of
