28

Between Worlds

Research Log 003 – Doctor Nashade

25 May 2021 – (D)evolution
“There does appear to be some form of natural birthing process that the females
undergo periodically. All the typical human anatomy remains intact, and from autopsies I’ve
conducted on deceased subjects, it functions in the same way, except for a few minor
modifications. Further study is required to understand exactly what these modifications are
meant to do. This is an extremely fascinating project, studying this form of mutation. It’s as if
the evolution of certain parts of the body is accompanied by a corresponding devolution of the
mental faculties. I have my own medical theories about how this might be possible, but those
can be addressed at a later date.
“The observation of the 5 Anthro subjects has corroborated all of the witness statements
that insist these creatures have a preference for the taste of human beings over all other types
of flesh. Being a military installation dedicated to this very research, it’s clear that General
Bressling is committed to the work of this project above all else, including the survival of the
civilian population. His mindset is a fortuitous happenstance, as it will enable me to procure
plenty of control subjects for the many tests we will need to conduct in order to learn as much
as we can about how the Anthros differ from us.”

--------------------

Wednesday night is dinner night with Adam, and this week we’re adding Vili and Natalia
to the mix. On Tuesday, when I get back from the away mission, Ines has gotten all of the
necessary ingredients, telling me not to worry and that her cooking has gotten much better.
She should be able to make a meal for five, no problem. I say nothing to either encourage or
dissuade her, preferring to let the results speak for themselves.
Wednesday, I’m suiting up to go out again with the Away Team and map more of the
forest. Before I leave, Ines tells me that Natalia has offered to come over early to help her with
the meal prep. I snicker, making a snide comment about even Natalia knowing better than to
trust Ines with the kitchen all by herself, and I get a literal egg on my face. This is followed
immediately by a kiss that makes cleaning up the mess more than worth it. With a goodbye
and a tentative “be careful” from Ines (“I love you” hasn’t been uttered in the house since we
got here), I swing my pack over my shoulder and head out.
An inexplicably eerie feeling sets in as we ride out of Ashborne. Unlike yesterday, I’m
with the whole team, as is typical for these missions - in fact, everything about this venture
outside the walls is just like every other time, except for the sense I’m getting as we go. For
some reason, I’m not enthusiastic about going out today. I can’t tell if my downturned face is
casting a pall on the others or if they’re feeling just as out of place as I am, but it’s not my
imagination; even Wesley and Bridger aren’t their usual, chatty selves.
My senses are on edge while they map the terrain. At first, being out here and walking
around with others was mind-blowing. Ines and I were always in sync, but out here I have to
get used to being surrounded by so many audible footfalls, others moving in and out of my
peripheral vision. I’ve always had a good sense for where others are in my vicinity (my dad
called it my ‘Sixth Sense’), and it took almost a month before I was fully comfortable with the
number of people with me out here. Most of them probably feel a sense of comfort from it -
safety in numbers and all that - but for me, it just contributed to the tension and the lack of
anonymity. Maybe that’s one of the reasons Kowizaki doesn’t think I’m a team player. Maybe
I’m not. I keep looking from one guy on the team to another, letting a few of my milder
suspicions roam free while instinctively concocting takedown plans for each and every one of
them just in case. We all carry sidearms out here but we don’t use them as a first resort out of
fear of attracting too much unwanted attention. Instead, all of us are armed with some manner
of melee weapons, mostly involving some kind of blade or bludgeon. Machetes and baseball
bats are the more prominent choices, but there are a few spears or axes, and every individual is
mandated to carry their knife. Jovani, his nerves unable to be tamed, has had his in his hand
this whole trip.
We move along through the trees slowly with the cartographers, one leisurely step at a
time to keep our merry band moving at the usual snail’s pace. My eyes and ears flick at every
crunching leaf, every snapping twig, every noise in the brush. The moments are few and far
between, and after an hour of every muscle in my body practically cramping from the tension, I
realize that the silence is the problem. It’s too quiet out here.
On my right, Freddie says just loudly enough for me to hear, “Wonder where all the
birds at…”
No sooner do the words leave his lips than a hair-raising shriek comes from my left. I
turn to see something coming right for my face, and I duck just in time to avoid being impaled
by Jovani’s knife as he falls over backwards, flailing madly in his failure to keep his balance. Out
of habit, I almost take his head off right there, my short sword aiming at him until I see the
direction he’s looking and follow his gaze to the source.
What I see stills my beating heart. It’s lying partially hidden beneath the forest floor
vegetation, or at least it was until Jovani stepped on it. The round, larvae-like shape glistens,
leaves, grass, and twigs sticking to the slimy surface of the infant as its tiny, developing limbs
wriggle helplessly. My mind flashes back to the mutant mother I saw with her wormy, newborn
in the back of the old military surplus store, and the tiny, squishy lump of flesh that had just
exited the birth canal bears an uncanny resemblance to this...thing now before me.
It’s barely moving, lying on its back and unable to walk, but its limbs are gesturing
rhythmically as if trying to move or seek refuge. The beady, white eyes are far too small for its
lumpy mound of a head, and the nose hasn’t broken through the skin yet, leaving only the
round, sucking orifice that doubles as both nose and mouth to breath, eat, and cry. And it
appears to be making an attempt to cry, but the shriek that I just heard from Jovani was also
accompanied by one from this little guy as it was unknowingly stepped on. It’s right arm is
slightly mangled and isn’t able to move as easily as the other three appendages.
“Oh, shit!” Freddie exclaims, pointing the machete from his belt at the pale, tiny being.
“It’s onea them canni-babeis! And where there’s a canni-baby, there’s a canni-babe
somewhere ‘round close!”
I shudder. “Or a Harvester…” I mutter.
Freddie looks at me and his dark face turns a few shades lighter.
 “A what?” Jovani asks, coming up with his knife held inches away from his face like a
shield.
“You don’t wanna know -- man, put down yo damn knife!” Freddie hisses at him, trying
not to raise his voice in anger. “You gon get somebody kilt!”
Jovani turns to him, about to tell him off with his knife between them, but the blade is
plucked from his timid grip by Kowizaki before he can cut himself with it.
“What is going on?” he demands, looking at Jovani, who at first can’t reply. Kowizaki
slaps him in the face and barks, “Report, heishi [soldier]!”
Jovani points at the mutant baby, which continues to twitch on the ground as Freddie
moves out from among us.
“Don’t worry ‘bout it, Boss,” he says grimly, winding up with his machete. “I got this.”
I look at Kowizaki, as does Freddie, but our commander says nothing, neither the
approval to commence with the killing nor the command to stop. Even past those arrogant,
slanty eyes, I can see him thinking this through. Plus, the look on Freddie’s face suggests he
hopes Kowizaki will tell him to stand down.
My utilitarian brain is about to preempt Kowizaki and bark at Freddie to kill it before it
brings its progenitor right to us, but my voice is caught in my throat before I can say a word.
There’s another part of my brain, the part that belongs to Ines and has a home in Ashborne,
that stops me, and I have trouble understanding why.
Freddie doesn’t get a chance to hear Kowizaki’s response, though, because a cry comes
from the trees behind him and he’s knocked over by a flopping, flailing blur, giving me a distinct
recollection of my compariot only moments ago. The feminine wail as she scrambles in
between all of us drowns out the shouted orders from Kowizaki, but our trained bodies react
instinctively alongside him. He kicks down, catching one of her ankles. As she falls, Freddie and
I pounce, both piling onto her and wrapping our arms around the nearest limb. I clutch her
lean, thin leg, and I’m struck by the strange sensation of clothing - she’s wearing torn, bloody
pants that would be a few sizes too big even if she wasn’t gaunt and emaciated. Her mud-
covered shirt might once have been an appealing breath of pastel blue but clearly is far from
new or fresh.
“Hey! Hey!” comes the panicked voice of Jovani. “Get off her! Get off!”
His hands grabbing at my back and shoulder, trying to loosen my grip from the female,
trigger my response, the resounding thwack of a broken nose from my instinctive elbow to his
face.
“OW! She’s not...AH! She’s not…!”
He’s trying to tell us something, but the female is still pulling against us. She’s not
nearly as strong as I thought she’d be; Freddie or I could probably hold her without one
another’s help.
“She’s not a mutie!”
“Like hell she ain’t!” Freddie yells back at Jovani. “Look at ‘er eyes!”
From my position, I can’t see them, but she shudders underneath me, and her wail
changes to sobbing. The noise jerks me back into the surreal and I loosen my grip just a little,
keeping my weight on her.
Kowizaki steps to the front so that he can look at her face, kneeling down carefully to
peer into her eyes. His face tells me all I need to know.
 “Freddie, I’m gonna let go,” I tell him. “Keep her down.”
“Yeah, alright,” he acknowledges.
I stand and come over to where Kowizaki stares, and what I see sends shivers up my
spine. Freddie and Jovani are both right...and both wrong. She’s halfway between human and
cannibal, another hapless soul stranded in a half-mutated state with her eyes mostly glazed
over, but still with that impossibly faint glimmer of intelligence.
My insides tie themselves up in knots - her long hair, matted and muddy, is a dark
brown color. It’s not Ines, but I’m unable to emotionally distinguish them from each other, and
words escape me altogether.
Freddie has her around them middle, restraining her from moving toward us. With a
sudden lurch, she almost pulls away from him, but he holds her tight. Kowizaki and I step back,
and his cautionary gesture to me stops me from stepping on the mutant infant behind us in my
deliriously shocked state. Looking back at the female, she collapses, tears continuing to streak
her dirty face as she holds out her arms in her infant’s direction like an empty basket waiting to
be filled. Through her scratchy, growl-like sobs, there’s still an identifiable voice.
“Kowizaki?” comes the call over our belt-mounted radios. He picks his up and looks
over through the trees to where Wesley and Bridger are hidden among the trees, guarded by
the rest of the security team.
“Stay on perimeter,” he tells the concerned teammate, “Keep them close. Get the
truck.”
“On it,” comes the response. From over on the far-right, I see someone (probably Joel,
judging by the thick camo jacket with the green American flag on the forearm) give a single
thumbs-up before vanishing back into the foliage. Movement away from the position lets us
know that they’re packing everything up and heading to the vehicles.
“Boss, we gotta keep ‘em quiet,” Freddie says, and we all know what he means by that.
He’s not wrong - both she and her baby are making a lot more noise than we need out here.
“No!” Jovani protests, still holding his blood-gushing nose. “We should take them with
us! We’re the rescue squad!”
“Boy, you out yo damn mind!” Freddie barks. “We ain’t bringin’ no mutie through the
walls!”
“Kowizaki, you have to tell him she’s coming with us!” Jovani says.
“Kowizaki don’t gotta do nothin’!” Freddie declares. “Shut yo damn mouth!”
“Silence,” commands Kowizaki. “Do not attract more attention here.”
He stares at the crying female for a moment more, then looks over at me. I tear my
gaze away from her and meet his eyes. He’s searching, asking me the question, and I’m unable
to answer in any meaningful way, so he has to walk me through it.
“Harvesters,” he says in his broken English pronunciation. “They come for them, yes?”
I nod, my own voice hollow in my ears as I recall that wet, nasally bellow.
“Yes.”
He searches me for a few moments more, then sighs and turns toward the infant. The
female panics and cries out, Freddie digging his heels into the moist earth to hold her back.
With one hand, she reaches out as far as she can, and I almost lose my lunch when her lips form
the word.
 “...plees…” It comes out scratchy and with all the effort she has; she brings it up from
the deepest part of what is still her. It comes crashing through the wall of her own mutated
brain, her prison that will soon close the last window and lock her in the bloody dark forever,
and it hits me in the chest harder than any physical blow. In her whited-out eyes is the same
hollow despair I saw in the eyes of the girl lying on the bed in her underwear waiting to die.
I can’t turn around, only listen as Kowizaki leans over and lifts the infant from the
ground. Freddie and Jovani watch him with stunned looks to see him gently cradling the ugly,
alien-like baby. The female, holding her breath in unexpected hope, is frozen in her kneeling
plea. Kowizaki approaches her, a stern look ordering Freddie to back up and let the woman go.
It takes him a second, but he does so in disbelief; he wants to speak out, but his sense gets the
better of him, and he watches Kowizaki hand the infant back to its grateful mother. She
clutches it to her breast, folding over and touching her forehead to its wet, malformed face.
The cries from both drain away.
Freddie cusses under his breath, but Jovani breathes a sigh of relief.
“I was afraid you’d kill them,” he says.
Kowizaki, standing just to the side of the mutant pair, narrows his narrow eyes at his
subordinate, and Jovani tries to placate him as he plants his feet.
“I think you did the right th--”
In the blink of an eye, the Samurai’s blade is pulled from its sheath, the draw and the cut
made in a single motion practiced for decades. Jovani is just as shocked as the rest of us, but
even more so when he sees that he is not the target. The glint of light on the surface of the
sword is instantaneous, and the sound of it passing through both mother and child makes us
blink so that we almost miss it. Even as he does it, I scream at myself inside. Everything about
it is so correct - there is neither cry nor suffering, neither hatred nor cruelty; they die together,
comforted by one another’s touch. The cannibals will have no trail to follow back to us,
Harvester or not. Problem solved. It’s all so right - and yet it could not be more wrong.
Freddie and Jovani are speechless. Kowizaki flicks the blood off the sword, flips it up,
wipes both sides on the fabric patch on his sleeve, then sheaths his blade before discarding the
bloodied sleeve flap on top of the remains. He reaches to his belt and pulls up his radio.
“We are coming. Start the engines. This forest is a no-go zone for two weeks.”
“Yes, sir,” comes Joel’s reply.
Kowizaki takes two steps in that direction, the three of us don’t move to follow, all for
our own separate reasons. He turns curtly, snapping his fingers in the other’s faces.
“We move. Now!”
Freddie and Jovani shake themselves out of it, and Kowizaki steps over to me. I can’t
take my eyes off him.
“I’m coming,” I tell him, and it comes out in a tone I didn’t intend at all. He hears it and
doesn’t say anything more to me, either during the walk back to the truck or on the ride back to
Ashborne. I don’t realize until I’m crossing the threshold to the house that he didn’t give us a
single order for the rest of the day; in fact, he didn’t speak to any of us at all.
We all went home two hours early that evening.

--------------------
 There’s no smoke coming up from the tiny chimney when I make my way back to the
house. I have to remind myself that I wasn’t supposed to be home for a couple more hours, so
the meal that should be in progress hasn’t started yet. In fact, I bet none of our guests will be
here. Good - I need a bit to decompress before things get going. Hopefully, I can set today
aside long enough to enjoy the evening with the gang (do we have one of those now? That
could be cool).
That thought is dispelled when I step up to the door and hear intense whispers just
inside. It’s Ines’s voice, and another woman, who I realize just a moment later is Natalia. There
are words I can’t quite distinguish, but then a mention of Dr. Levi. One of the two says, “He
knows,” or “He’s always known”, or something approximating that, and then that same voice
mentions something “happening to me”, and nearly breaks down. I can’t tell which one it is,
but then the other one shushes them both and there’s silence for a few seconds.
“Hello?” Ines calls. She knows someone is at the door.
Trying to appear casual, I open the door and enter.
“Hey, it’s me,” I announce.
Ines looks extremely surprised and a bit alarmed.
“What are you doing home?” she wants to know.
Before I can tell her the truth, my voice catches in my throat seeing her long, auburn
hair. Natalia’s face in the kitchen brings me back.
“I...we...he sent us home early,” I tell them. “...rough day…”
Ines wants to ask more, but I avert my eyes and head toward the bedroom.
“I’m gonna change and shower. I’ll try to stay out of your way while you work.”
“Okay,” she murmurs, almost certainly wondering how much of their conversation I
overheard before I came inside. The door closes loudly so that they think I’m not listening, but I
keep my hand on the knob so that I can keep it cracked open just enough to hear them talk
while I change out of my armor and coat as quietly as I can.
One of the two sighs loudly (sounds like Ines), and then Natalia asks her, “Does he
know?”
No verbal response from Ines, so Natalia asks, “How much?”
“He knows what...what it is…” Ines tells her. “I have not told him about you.”
Natalia scoffs. “He cut me loose from the nest. Hell, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for
him.”
“That is...amazing…” Ines says under her breath. “And I cannot believe I never knew.”
“We never talked about it before now,” Natalia points out. “At least now I know I’m not
in this alone. So Matt knows what happened to you happened to me, too. If he’s smart, he’s
put the pieces together.”
More silence from Ines, and Natalia asks, “Does he know about what Dr. Levi is--”
“No!” Ines cuts her off, shushing her. “Do not tell him! I do not think anyone knows
about that. We probably are not meant to know about it for each other.”
“But, Ines…” Natalia says, getting choked up. “I don’t want to...I can’t just sit back and
let it happen. To you or to me. Vili would never be the same, and God knows what Matt would
do. He’s a ticking time bomb -- your words, not mine.”
“That is why you will not tell him!” Ines demands. “I cannot let him...I will not let him
see me like that.”
 “So what do we do?” Natalia asks, sounding like she’s asked that several times already
today. “What are you going to do?”
Ines begins very assuredly, but falters partway through. “I am going to...I...I am going to
do my best.”
“That’s not a plan. Maybe we should tell Matt before it gets out of control so he can
help us make a real plan.”
“Will you tell Vili?” Ines counters.
“Not if I don’t have to,” Natalia answers.
“Then do not expect me to do anything different.”
Quickly, I exit the bedroom and enter the kitchen.
“What’s different?” I ask them. They stare at me, frozen in the moment, both eyeing
one another before either says something wrong.
“Nothing,” Ines replies eventually. “We were just talking about how to do the meal
tonight.”
“Need any help?”
“No, we got it,” Natalia tells me, moving to the stove and refrigerator area of the
kitchen, which I now see is far too small for all five of us tonight.
“Do we have any more chairs?”
“Adam is bringing some,” Ines says. “I was thinking we could take the table outside.”
“Where to?”
“I do not know, just the front is fine,” she sighs.
“I’ll move it now,” I say, but she stops me.
“No, we need it for ingredients,” she protests. “We do not have any real counter
space.”
“Well, can I help with--?”
“No, you are not even supposed to be home,” Ines snaps, and Natalia shoots me a
sideways look to see how I’ll react.
“Uh...ok…” I say, a little dumbfounded.
The two ladies work in silence for a moment and I stand there awkwardly.
“So…” I manage. “Did either of you go to see Doctor Levi today?”
Again, they freeze, although less tensely this time, less like they’re trying to decide what
to say and more like they’re sifting through a thousand thoughts and feelings.
“I did,” Natalia speaks up.
“How’d it go?” I press. “Any complications?”
“No,” she says with flawless falsity. “He gave me something for my back pain.”
“You got meds?” I gasp, also feigning superbly. “Man, if only we had them at home like
we used to. I could use a few aspirin for my headaches after missions.”
“The good ol’ days, for sure…” Natalia nods.
Ines says nothing. She knows I don’t get headaches.