Peripheral Visions: Riding Shotgun

"Peripheral Visions: You sense them from the corner of your eye or in the soft blur of darkest shadows. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late."

Riding Shotgun

The crowd that was chasing me thought I was a monster.

Bioengineers borrowed one-sixth of one percent of my DNA from another species. These transgenic elements were dropped – artfully, deliberately – into the human DNA of an epithelial cell and then the genetically edited cell, fooled into thinking it was a fertilized human ovum, was implanted into the womb of a surrogate mother. She gave birth to me, turned me over to the program, and accepted her money. The program, in turn, assigned me to my adoptive parents.

I've always been someone's project, or their prodigy, or their payday.

Being their monster's not so different.

So, all right, I'm not fully human. I'm very, very slightly something else. But does that make me inhuman, the way the preachers and the militias and the rioters say? I mean, I have a mother... two mothers, actually, my surrogate for hire and my adoptive mother.

Mama and Dad raised me from birth. They're like me: Transgenic humans, mostly homo sapiens sapiens with just a couple drops of something else added in. Like me, they were engineered to be sterile, so that the only way they could have a child would be through adoption... and the only way they could have a child like themselves was if the program that created them decided to proceed with a second generation, and create more of the same.

Well, those things happened. Here I am. But if that mob has its way, I won't be here for much longer.

The original idea was to create a bespoke breed of human. It was a "proof of concept" project funded by a technocrat venture capitalist named Seneschal Trimble. The rumors are that Trimble was working with the Kirsch administration, back when Kirsch was the president, before he consolidated all three branches of government under his direct control, amended the Constitution, and declared himself Leader for Life. There's another word for what Kirsch is, and it's a felony to say that word, but I'll go ahead and say it now because what more could happen?

Dictator.

Kirsch and Trimble have both been around forever, and they're both old as hell. When he first rose to power – before even my adoptive parents were born – much of the country was against him and what he stood for. Like all successful autocrats, he refused to change in the face of popular sentiment. The Electoral College and forty percent of eligible voters got him into office. Or, if you want to look at it this way, a bunch of people who either didn't vote or else cast "protest votes" for candidates without a chance of winning put him into office. Either way, once that happened it didn't take long for Kirsch to change the rest of the country to look like him. He didn't just dog whistle; he psychopath whistled, and every closet sadist in the country came running. Even people who had no idea of their innate cruel streak realized that he was offering them something addictive and gratifying. They called it freedom, but it was actually something else: Permission.

Permission to hate; permission, to harm; permission to abandon decency and reason.

Jump cut to today. Most people have fallen in line with Kirsch and his party, the Theopublicans, which is the only remaining legal political party. You can't even be apolitical these days; it's a crime not to register as a Theopublican and vote accordingly, though why anyone bothers to vote at all when nobody's allowed to run in opposition to the party's official candidates is a mystery to me. I guess back in the day, when America was a democracy, some citizens liked to say they didn't bother voting because "there's no difference between the parties." Well, they ought to see what that really means. They ought to try living in post-democracy America and see how that suits them.

The thing is, post-democracy suits a lot of people just fine. Of course, they would say that even if they hate it, because no one wants to risk prison, torture, or simple disappearance. But I truly believe a lot of the people who declare themselves fervent Kirschians mean it. They believe the propaganda about a chaotic, crime-ridden America back in the days of democracy. They believe the stories, taught by mandate in the schools, about non-white people and gay people and people of different faiths – that they were all "terrorists" or "socialists," whatever that means. People say they feel safer now than their grandparents did, back in the day. They say all is well, with Kirsch in his palace and the religious police patrolling the streets, executing anyone who demonstrates deviance. Executing anyone they even think might be a deviant. Like that woman in Sacramento who wrote a novel – they executed her and her husband, too, for letting her write it. They declared it wasn't that she wrote a novel that offended God, it was that she knew how to write at all. I guess there's something in the Bible against it.

And I have to say, I used to feel safe, too. Kirsch has never confirmed that his government was an active partner with Trimble's company in creating the first, and then second, generation of transgenic humans, but it used to be the case that he specifically forbade any violence against transgenic people or any interference with Trimble's work. It makes sense: You're better at certain jobs if you have a little Panthera tigris tigris in you. Miners who can see in the dark. Construction workers who are three times stronger than ordinary men, and who can swing a hammer all day long without getting tired. Soldiers who are faster and fiercer than straight-up humans. Cops who can literally sniff out drugs – or smell fear on a passerby who might be carrying digital contraband.

But a few years ago, Pastor Buonasera became Kirsch's spiritual advisor. This, despite leaked videos of himself with several underage girls in a, shall we say, delicate situation. It doesn't matter: Kirsch's people put them together, and Kirsch, who has been sliding into dementia for years now, steadily fell under Buonasera's influence. Since then, I've felt less and less safe. Anyone like me has. When Kirsch made Buonasera the Kommandant of the Faith Guards, the raids and executions skyrocketed. You used to hear it all night every night: Gunfire, and shouts of "Buonasera!" The religious enforcers love to shout his name when they kill people. It means "good night" in Spanish or something.

Buonasera slowly brought Kirsch around to his way of thinking – to a lot of religious people's way of thinking: That God created human beings in a certain way, and they should not be tampered with. People with colored skin? They were obviously the work of that great saboteur, Satan. People who said they were born in the wrong body? If they were lying, they were blasphemers; if they were telling the truth they just more proof that Satan was still trying to bring our great nation down. And transgenic humans? Buonasera said people like me were the greatest sin humanity ever committed. Greater than abortion, greater than surgeons who would change men into women, greater even than social security and socialized medicine.

Buonasera's religious enforcers execute people in the streets, and Buonasera calls these killings "exorcisms." He says that bullets cast out the demons that plague us. It seems to me that what the bullets cast out are people's brains in great messy globs. It seems to me that Buonasera regards thought itself as a crime.

But who wants to hear from me? I'm the enemy now, as of three hours ago when Buonasera and Kirsch appeared on television and Kirsch said that if pure people of pure heart had a "discernment of evil" in their fellow man, then they should be permitted to exercise their freedom to protect themselves against that evil.

Buonasera said that would surely include transgenics.

Kirsch – ninety-seven, trembling, agreeable – said, "Of course." Said it live on television. And because it was TV, and because it was Kirsch who said the words, those words became gospel. Buonasera's murderous hatred gave us a new commandment.

And that's when tonight's volleys of gunfire started. The gunfire, the burning, the screams. The stomping of boots on tarmac. The excited shouting about purgation and purification and the "great reclamation" of humanity.

I've been running ever since. I'm fast, I can see in the dark and easily navigate the dilapidated parts of the city where the government has failed to maintain the streetlights, and I can hear the jackboots coming from a long way off.

But they have night vision goggles and ubiquitous security cameras and infrared-scanning aerial drones. It's been a game of cat and mouse... and I, ironically, am the mouse.

A mob had me on the run, and, fast as I am, I was getting tired. They were gaining on me. A few of them had even started taking shots at me – wild shots that missed by a mile, because the idiots firing their guns were too excited to think about how trying to aim a weapon while running doesn't really work. I heard at least one scream, so I have the satisfaction of knowing that one or more of the crowd were brought down by friendly fire.

I was running across the Amos Petty Bridge and was almost on the other side when, up ahead, I saw a blue pickup-style SUV come roaring up from a side street. I figured I was probably dead: The driver of the SUV, and the assault rifle-carrying religious enforcers riding in the truck's bed, could screech to a halt in front of me, pile out, and open fire as I ran straight toward them. In the back of my mind, I was thinking at if I were lucky I might hear a few more of the idiots behind me catching bullets, screaming as they went down, before a bullet ended my existence.

But that's not what happened. The SUV did screech to a halt in the middle of the road, but it wasn't carrying a load of armed enforcers. The driver didn't leap out, blazing gun in his hand. Instead, he rolled down his window and screamed for me to get in.

Was he planning some kind of private party? A bloodlust orgy a deux?

Or was he truly a miracle: A good Samaritan willing to step up and help?

I figured I didn't have a very appealing alternative, so I accepted his kind invitation to join him for a drive. I didn't even stop to open the door: I leapt right through the open window and into the cab.

That's another job we're good at: Parkour. Acrobatics. Gymnast stuff. The Olympics wanted to ban the U.S. team's transgenic athletes, but they were too afraid of Kirsch, so they just stood back and bit their tongues while our guys took the gold. All of it.

It was one of those times those of us in the transgenic community felt accepted, celebrated. It was a time when we cheered, when we felt something like patriotism toward this nation that distrusts us, lies about us, and, for the most part, segregates us.

But that was also three years ago. How things have changed since then.

***

It was like a movie: The driver yelled at me to hang on, which I did as he hit the gas pedal and spun the vehicle so that it was speeding along the road, rather than heading for the embankment. People in the pursuing crowd started screaming even louder, firing their guns in a noisy fusillade. I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw some of them had stopped running and dropped to a knee in order to steady their aim. Sparks danced across the massive silhouette of that mob, a many-headed, lumpy beast waving and cursing and receding in the mirror. None of the bullets hit the truck... at least, I don't think they did. It was either a miracle or more evidence that just handing out guns to everyone in the Youth Corps when they reach the age of nine wasn't really making the country safer. Thankfully, the government – and the church it was so closely allied with – assumed it was enough to give out guns, and they didn't provide any training in how to use them. They said that was the right, and the responsibility, of parents, not the government; that, and sex education. Though, of course, any parent who told their kids not to carry the guns, or who showed acceptance for children who exhibited gender dysphoria or homosexual tendencies, was liable to be investigated by DCS for "child abuse."

Something else that never made sense: The government taking children away from their parents, but then refusing to finance any sort of welfare system to house and care for them. Those kids – like dissidents, like the homeless – just disappeared.

The truck roared. Smoke poured from its tailpipes. I realized this wasn't an electric vehicle; it ran on gasoline and oil. The driver was rich, or else he was well-connected; most likely, he was both. Trucks like this, with smoke pouring from them in black, ostentatious plumes, were a status symbol. Only the elite drove them.

But why would someone who was so obviously part of the system be saving my ass?

"Mortitz," he said, starling me. How did he know my name? "It really is you."

"Yes," I said. "Do we know each other?"

He glanced at me, started to say something. In that moment I realized who he was. The years had changed him – much more than they had changed me; another benefit of genetic engineering. After all, who needed a worker or soldier who'd grow weak and frail with time? People like me live until we die, and usually it's only a few moments, or at most a couple of days, between perfect health and cooling corpse. If it's natural causes that get us, we tend to die of aneurisms, strokes, or similar sudden and catastrophic health incidents. But it's not like we live longer than ordinary humans. If only! No, the genetic engineers never cracked that part of the code. Like the big cats our genes are borrowed from, we live shorter lives than the human average – usually around sixty years.

I'm in my forties. It had been more than two decades since I'd seen Arnold Mosely – or Def, as we'd called him in med school, short for Mos' Def. I'd been allowed to attend medical school since the Kirsch administration understood that the transgenics it was creating would need their own doctors. Too many medical workers were pushing to be allowed not to treat transgenics, pointing to nearly a hundred laws and three Supreme Court decisions that affirmed their right to deny care to anyone they disagreed with on moral, aesthetic, or religious grounds.

"Def?" I asked, before he could speak.

"Yeah," he said, turning his attention to the road again. Streetlights were few and far between in the neighborhood. He couldn't see as well as I could, but I didn't offer to drive; it's illegal for people like me to drive cars, or even to learn how.

"What are you..."

"I thought that was you," he said. "I mean, from the first glimpse, at a distance, I knew."

"But you fucking hated me back in school. Why are you – ?"

"I've had a lot of time to think," Def said, and his voice sounded grim. I could see a tension around his mouth that suggested his tone genuinely reflected his feelings.

"Okay," I said.

"I mean, you know how they let us refuse treatment to anyone we don't feel like helping," he said. "Like, so much for the old Hippocratic Oath. Some of my friends and me, we call it the 'Hypocritic Oath' these days."

Def broke off long enough to look at his rear view mirror. I twisted in my seat and peered through the back window. No one was chasing us.

"Think I can slow down?" he asked.

"I think so," I said. "And you might want to avoid the better parts of town."

"There will be fewer enforcers in good neighborhoods," he said. "And fewer vigilantes."

"And more streetlights," I said. "People will be able to see who you've got riding shotgun."

"Speaking of..." Def gestured to the window behind us – or, more to the point, the gun rack in the window. Several assault rifles were secured in the rack. "You might want to take that old saying literally."

I hesitated for a moment. I knew how to use a weapon, but in recent years a handful of extremist senators had successfully pressed to make it a crime for transgenics to possess or use firearms.

"Go ahead," Def encouraged me.

"You're not worried what they'll do to you, giving aid and comfort to someone like me?" Not just aid and comfort, I thought. A ride. A gun.

"The vigilantes and thrill killers are all headed for your part of the city," he said. "Yes, there are fewer streetlights there, but that's also where the hot-blooded folks are gonna be. The calmer, more timid folks will be home in the nicer parts of town – in their houses, battened down, and in bed, not out on the streets."

I realized he was probably right. I reached back and took one of the assault rifles off the rack.

Def had slowed down to about fifteen miles per hour. He was headed for the nicer parts of town – neighborhoods where folks like himself lived – but we were someplace quiet, and he didn't seem in a hurry to leave it behind.

"I can't believe this shit," Def said after a few moments of silence. "I guess we all could see it coming, but somehow I never thought it would arrive." He looked around, navigating a sharp left turn. Darkness stretched ahead of us, along with a pale gray thread of road that shone, dully, in the light of a quarter moon. I noticed for the first time that Def was driving with his headlights turned off.

I didn't ask the question; I chose to let it hang in the air as I looked at him.

He felt me watching, knew the question was there.

He sighed. "I was a real prick to you back in med school," he acknowledged. "I made more of a big deal about you being allowed with us... us..."

"Your word back then was 'normal folks,' " I reminded him.

"Well, I was just trying to fit in, and to stand out, all at the same time. What better way to do both than to agree with the prejudices of those around you and amplify them, get even more extreme?"

"You complained to the dean that I might maul a patient. Or eat a patient's baby."

"Lots of people were saying that about transgenics," he said.

"Lots of people still do," I told him. "But don't worry. The sight of a newborn doesn't transform me into a raging beast. I don't eat babies. Not raw, anyhow."

He laughed. "You know," he said, "your sense of humor actually did kind of win me over, even back then."

"Not that you showed it," I said. "So why are we all of a sudden such big friends that you're risking everything to save me from the mob?"

He sighed again. "Like I was saying, they let us refuse to treat people. Little boys who talk about actually being little girls on the inside, or who say things like they want to marry their best male friend when they grow up."

"I'm sure some of you do treat them," I said, "after they've been disappeared to whatever government prison they go to. I'm sure some of you docs who work for the government treat them very happily, with poisoned injections."

He glanced at me. "I don't do that shit."

"But you let it happen?" I asked him.

"I'm not a martyr. I can't stop people getting killed. I can only save myself, try to save my family."

I almost told him to stop the truck and let me out right there, but then he said: "I tried to save my niece. My nephew... my niece." He shook his head. "But I couldn't. Kirsch and his people like to claim that trans people don't exist, but..."

"But hello," I said, raising a hand.

"No, I mean transgender people. Not transgenic."

I understood, and felt a moment of shame for not having caught on to what he was saying earlier, even thought if I had actually been listening to him I would have known what he meant. But I hadn't been listening. I was full of too many confused thoughts and feelings. I hated him for what he'd done to me years earlier. But at this moment I was also grateful... grateful and puzzled.

"I'm sorry," I said, making a conscious choice to put the white noise out of my head and listen to what he was saying. I might actually get answers that way, I thought. "About your niece, I mean."

"And now this." Def pointed to our right, where, in the distance... in my part of town... massive fires glowed in the night. "After all those years of saying we needed transgenic people as a matter of national security. China had its dog-men, and Russia did too, but our cat-people would save us from them. Or at least even the odds." He glanced at me. "You know, even though transgenic doctors do exist, they won't give any TG people security clearances. So I ended up working with the military and HomeSec, and even the Treasury and the Secret Service, to make sure their transgenic guys were healthy, and treat them if they weren't."

"What?" I asked. "You don't just put them down if they sprain a paw?"

"I don't blame you for thinking that," he said, shaking his head. "And maybe that's what they'd do, if it was practical. But – you do know it costs about four million to produce one transgenic person, right?"

I didn't know that. Shock ran through me.

"But Trimble doesn't care about the cost. He just wants to see what weird science he can accomplish. It's like a fetish for him. He's a freak." Def shrugged. "He funded all the early stages of the program, and now he's got the government paying for eighty, ninety percent of it, but he still supports it financially. Builds the labs. Rebuilds them, too, when anti-TG terrorists burn them down. Anyway..." He looked sidewise at me. "I've treated a lot of guys like you. And some of those guys I would really have liked if they weren't transgenic. And after a while I liked them even though they were transgenic."

He was telling me the truth; I could smell it. I could also smell another truth clinging to him. "And?" I prompted.

"And, yes, I..." He spared me another sidelong glance. "There were a couple of the guys who, they and I..."

I realized what he was saying. It wasn't news to me that Def was gay; I'd always known that. I could certainly see and smell his interest whenever someone aroused his sexual feelings, and it was always a man. Lots of men, actually. Like all people in their twenties, Def had been horny all the time back then.

But what he was telling me now was that he and at least one transgenic soldier had been lovers.

"How did you manage that?" I asked him.

"With some difficulty," he said. "Especially when things got loud, or with the one guy who... who liked biting and scratching me."

"What?" I was offended: Was he making fun?

"I'm not kidding, man. You know that sometimes the genetic work leads to..."

"Leads to behavioral peculiarities," I interrupted. "By human standards, at least. Yes, I know that. Still." Now it was my turn to shake my head.

We lapsed into silence for a moment. I reflected on Def having kept his secret all these years. I'd forgotten about him being gay until just now, to be honest. Back then, I 'd hoped he would be found out, sent to prison. He had hated me, and I had hated him back. I'd even considered outing him myself, except that to do so would draw more unwanted attention to me.

The wrong kind of attention, frankly. It would only have inflamed people's prejudices further if they started thinking about how I could hear, smell, and see the secrets their bodies gave away with every burst of pheromones, missed heartbeat, change in breathing, or dilation of an iris.

Evidently, Def had managed to keep his secret all this time, and even have some fun. It wouldn't have been hard for any gay transgenic men to know he was into them; the straight guys wouldn't dare say anything about it, for much the same reasons I never had.

The truck rolled along, its internal combustion engine purring. It was well-engineered; only one company still made fossil burners, and the boast was that the vehicles were top of the line, as well-made as any electric model. They weren't cheap.

"Nice ride," I said after a time.

"Uh," he said. "Thanks." His mind was miles away.

"Worried about tomorrow?" I asked. "Or thinking about the past?"

"What tomorrow?" he asked, and again his tone was grim.

"I'd still like to know why you're out here, helping me," I said. "Not that I'm not grateful."

He glanced over at me, then smiled tightly. "I dunno," he said. "Since Buonasera came into the picture, I've just... I've thought of you. Wondered if you're okay. I did a WorldNet search to find out if you were still in the city."

"Where would I go?" I asked. Most other states had declared themselves "transgenic free zones" in the last couple of years. Even if I'd moved away –�which I hadn't – I'd have had to move back again.

"It's just that after they expelled you, I wasn't sure about what... what happened to you," he said, his voice suddenly getting quiet.

I smelled his shame and regret.

It didn't make me want to go easy on him. "You mean, because you lied and said that I was in that group of guys playing soccer near the building where the window got broken?" I asked. "And you suggested that I was the one who kicked the ball at the window? And you said that I did it because the broken window belonged to Professor Haddock's office? And you made up a story about me threatening Professor Haddock?"

"I..."

"A story that Professor Haddock agreed to, even though there wasn't one bit of truth to it?" I continued. "Are you talking about the way I got expelled for 'vandalism' and 'threatening behavior?' That's what you mean?"

"Yes," Def said.

I snorted. "And you, what, worried that since there was no other medical school I'd be allowed to attend, and the best I might do, if I was lucky, would be to end up as some kind of medical assistant... you worried that I maybe killed myself? Or turned into a drug addict or something? Well, don't worry. They're cleaned up the streets, you know, and they've passed laws about what happens to drug addicts. And doctors like you... real doctors, not just guys with associate's degrees like me... real doctors get the joy of jabbing needles full of poison into people living on the street. People with mental health issues. People with disabilities. People with substance issues. People..."

"All right!" Def cried. His voice rang in the confines of the truck's cab. I felt my ears go flat in response... not that my ears actually do that. They look more or less like ordinary human ears, and while they can move a little, they don't swivel or go flat. But I can feel it happen anyway. I know that inside I have ears like those of any other cat. I know that, genetic proportions notwithstanding, inside I am more Panthera than homo...

Though I am plenty homo, too. More than I might choose, if my own essential nature were up to me.

I looked out the window.

"I'm sorry," Def said quietly, and with my human-looking tiger's ears I could hear him perfectly. Could hear him breathing, Could hear his clothes shifting as he moved and breathed. Could hear his heart beating, smell the blood under his skin, the residue of actual meat on his breath. He'd been having dinner, and eating well, when Kirsch and Buonasera's little one-act drama unleashed sudden chaos on the city.

"Yeah, don't worry about it," I told him. "It's not like you were even the worst I've had to deal with. People wanting to touch my hands and see if it's true that claws will pop out if you squeeze my fingers. People wanting to reach over and pull my lips back to get a look at my teeth." I felt myself get even angrier as I said this; I'm self-conscious about my teeth. The bioengineers keep trying to make the teeth come out right, and they never manage it. Like our eyes, which catch the light in terrifying ways, and like our skin, which is tougher than a human's skin, they haven't found the right balance between human appearance and the animal qualities they want to preserve.

"Mortiz, there's something I've gotta tell you," Def said quietly, and I smelled it on him – smelled it the way I'd smelled it all those years ago. Only this time there were no other men around. It was just him... and me.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" I exclaimed.

"You can tell?" he asked.

"I don't know why I didn't see it before!" I said. "And that's why you lied? You wanted me gone because you... you..."

"I didn't want to be attracted to you," he said.

"Right," I said. "Because they would make you like me: A freak."

"No," he said. Then: "Or, yes, I guess. I knew that no one would understand."

"Or they'd understand too well," I muttered. I thought about mentioning to him all the times supposedly straight, and definitely straight-up, humans had hit on me. Stroking my back or putting their hands on my head like I was their pet. Calling me a "good kitty," Trying to scratch me behind the ears. Once or twice I'd actually come close to biting those people – yes, more non-standard behavior the geneticists hadn't managed to edit out. Non-standard for humans, that is. In the wild, "standard" doesn't mean "human." In the wild, someone – a few someones – would have lost a hand, or an arm.

"I don't mean to be freaky," Def said. "I can't help it. I've always been..." He shrugged. "Super attracted to you. I'm sorry."

"Man, I don't care about that!" And I didn't. "But you couldn't figure out a way to deal with it that didn't wreck my goddamn life?"

"I'm sorry," he said again. Then: "Anyway, that's why I... that's why I drove to your neighborhood when it started. The... on the news they're calling it The Hunt. All at once it came crashing in on me: How wrong it was. How wrong I'd been. How you didn't deserve any of this."

"You're goddamn right I don't," I growled.

He gave me another sidelong glance – a nervous one this time, like he was afraid I was going to lunge over in a flash of claws and teeth. Then he repeated himself: "I'm sorry."

"Yeah? And that's why you're here? To soothe your conscience?" I realized I was gripping he assault rifle tightly. I put in on the floor, leaned It against the door. Def glanced at the gun quickly, nervously.

"Man, I put all of that out of my mind years ago, and you with it," I told Def. "I had to, if I was going to move on. And now I have a life I like. Or, until tonight I had a life I liked. I have no status anywhere but in my house and in my neighborhood, at the clinic where I help my people, but that's okay. I don't need more than that. But you? Sounds like you need forgiveness. Absolution. Closure."

"No, I – "

"Don't even try to say more. I don't care. I'm not in the business of forgiving. And I don't hold a grudge, either."

"You don't?"

"Hell, no. Life's too short. Especially when you don't live as long as other people. And even with you helping me out, I'm not likely to make it too much longer. Things changed tonight. It's not like they are just gonna change back. Not with Buonasera on the rise, and Kirsch so out of it."

"I was thinking... I mean, I thought that if I found you, I have a ... a man cave kinda space, really, in my garage. It's pretty well renovated. There's even a private bathroom. You could maybe..."

"What? Live in your house with you? Be your exotic pet? Fulfill those fantasies from all those years ago?"

Def glanced at me again and this time there was something different in his face – not just pain or grimness, but hope.

I shuddered. "Stop the truck," I said.

"What?"

"Let me out. Stop the truck."

"Wait a minute, now. I'm sorry if I said something that – "

"Hey, Def, you deaf? I said stop the motherfucking truck!"

He stopped.

I rested a hand on the lever that would open the door. I stopped myself and focused on calming down. A moment later I realized I was rubbing my own chin and cheek – a self-soothing habit, and a relic of my genetic forebears. I forced myself to stop.

Def was watching me, looking worried. For myself? Or for him?

He definitely looked scared for himself when I took hold of the assault rifle and turned toward him. Then I twisted around and placed the weapon back on the gun rack.

"Moritz, don't do this. It's too dangerous out there. Stay. Let me help you."

"You wanted to save my ass?" I said to him. "You saved – thanks. And now I'm gonna have to go it alone."

"But why?"

"Because I don't need some ghost from the past with a savior complex haunting me," I said.

"At least come back with me and stay for a few days, until things quiet down a little. I've heard there's this thing... there's something they call 'sanctuary cities'..."

"Oh, what, part of the anti-Kirsch resistance? Those motherfuckers better re-tool pretty damn quick, because after tonight it's Buonasera who's calling the shots. If it wasn't already. Only, now it'll be much more in the open."

"But where will you go? The city's gone crazy. People are like animals, they smell blood..."

He saw how I was glaring at him.

"That's not a slur on you," he said. "People are animals."

"That's an insult to animals," I said. "Including me. Except I'm mostly human, too. It's just, you all don't see me that way. You don't see the 99.4% humanity of me. You see the tiny fraction of me that's borrowed from tigers, and that's what you zero in on with all this crap about transgenics being man eaters, or having no impulse control, or even... even this fantasy you all seem to have that we're savages in bed." I glared at him some more.

"I didn't think about you like that," he said. "Not consciously, anyway. I don't know, I just... felt attracted to you. Your human qualities. Your smarts, your... your wit."

"My pretty eyes? My unusual hair? You know, most red-headed straight-up humans are gone, now they have those 'genetic correction' laws. I mean, no one wants be around somebody with Neanderthal genes. Gotta clean that shit up. Right? But transgenic people, they can have red hair and yellow eyes. That's a different story. That's a different animal. That's a different breed of cat."

"Will you stop it?" Def cried, half angry and half fearful. "I really am, honestly, trying to help."

"I know you are," I said, more quietly now. "But I can take care of myself."

"It didn't look like it back there."

I tried the door. I wouldn't open; he had the locks engaged. "Let me out."

Def stared at me, trying to think of what to say.

I didn't want to hear it. "I said let me out."

Def finally, reluctantly released the lock. I pulled the lever. The door opened. I thought about saying thank you – after all, he had put himself at risk for me. And he had saved my life, however brief a reprieve that was likely to be.

And I thought about saying goodbye.

And I thought about telling him that, back in the day, I'd felt something for him, too, and that was what made his lies and cruelty hurt so much more.

It was that last thought that cancelled everything out, left me wordless, left me without gratitude or any sense that I owed him anything in this world.

I slammed the SUV's door shut behind me and walked into the darkness without looking back.

Next week Season Seven comes to a close with a tale about a village of survivors. They made it through the wars and the famines and the droughts; but will they survive once the well of their common humanity is poisoned, yet again, with calculated lies and unreasoning hate? Lift a toast to these survivors, and have a sip of "Apsinth."