I stared down at the Protohuman, prostrate on my OR’s gurney before me and it reflected my own disfigurement. It too had a face full of scar tissue and blood, its features reduced to anonymous concaves and a pair of dull eyes peering back at me from dark pits.

  Had they operated on us both one by one? Or both together in harmonious mutation?

  A blood bubble formed and burst on the edge of the Protohuman’s mouth where its lips used to be. I held out one of the painkillers I has recovered from a broken bottle in one of my supply cupboards but it wouldn’t open its mouth to take one. I hadn’t taken any either.

  I did not know what the Engineers had intended by doing what they had, though I had spent most of the three hours since I had regained consciousness analyzing going over it.

  We had come together so that our concurrent research projects could combine, that was clear, but I was still unconvinced as to the intentions of the forces that did so. In equal place in my mind was the idea that this could either have been a sabotage attempt upon me and/or my work and the idea that this was the necessary breakthrough for my creature and I to achieve mutual evolution.

  And then there was a third option—perhaps it was both.

  Like one of the Engineers had said, this was beyond any of us. This wasn’t in our control.

  Perhaps there had been a betrayal that had been partially stifled by the forces controlling the Protohuman’s development, a conflict of desires that entwined with one another and resulted in the outcome that I now stared at in the mirror. God and Nature and Man all battling with one another.

  And all over my beautiful creature.

  As I leaned over it, some of the analgesic gel dripped from my face, a small lick of pain bubbling where it had fallen from.

  I smiled, if it could still be called that, and picked up the small stack of papers laying on the instruments tray. The sheets were crumpled and water-rippled, stained with fingerprints of dried blood from when I had looked at them earlier. Most were scribbled notes but alongside them were sketches of the human face and its musculature. I had made them whilst back in the asylum and possibly in the midst of a course of shock therapy treatments and they had somehow made it into one of the many boxes of my papers that Jakobsen had brought into the lab for me.

  And had been there ever since.

  I flipped through the pages until I was about halfway through them then stopped. Before me was a tracing of a male face from a physiology textbook. The features had been etched out with variously nibbed pens and alongside it, some scribbles.

  A focal stage in our species’ evolutionary genesis will be the shedding of identity, for if each and every being is operating at the best possible levels of efficiency then there will be no need for it any more.

  And next to it.

  Individuality is an inefficiency.

  I had forgotten about the notes until soon after coming to, my reflection instantly triggering a recognition with a train of thought had been lost inside me for years. I had established the concept along with so many others during the process of my investigations, an infinite mass of tangled threads, knotted and spiked like barbed wire wrapped around a prisoner of war, and yet somehow this particular strand had emerged of its own free will.

  Except there was no free will.

  There was only the machinations of the universe.

  Or the machinations of humans.

  My collaboration with the Engineers was, I am sure, a definitive moment in the production of the Protohuman and yet I also felt certain that something else had taken place. Just as the Engineers, or the Chaos forces, or whomever, had sent me messages through the newspapers and the radio now I was being sent another message.

  A threat.

  And that threat must have come from someone who had access to obscure scribbles that had been locked away for so long that even I had forgotten about them. The notes had been confiscated and no doubt analyzed by the doctors at the asylum and then packed away with the rest of my work, stored until my release therefore it could only have been someone from the hospital—or the man who had acquired the release of myself and my work.

  We don’t need Jakobsen’s permission, the bulky Engineer had said.

  Later I sat at my workbench in near silence, the only sounds that of the radio whispering empty static like cosmic blood flow and the occasional dripping of a tap. Judas was curiously quiet around me now, contemplating me somewhat fearfully, reaching out to touch me a couple of times before retracting hurriedly. He seemed fascinated by the slow movement of blood and gel across my non-face.

  I listened to see if any more messages would assemble themselves for me but had decided that whatever process had been initiated by the previous rounds of contacts had now finished. For now, I was left to work alone again.

  I thought of the Engineers and wondered if they had returned to their own experiments, their work now accelerated as mine had been. I imagined them to be stripping the faces from many more subjects, piling up useless pieces of flesh in a plastic bucket.

  I had treated the Protohuman’s raw features several times with antiseptic gel to keep it clean, stroking the substance on and admiring its new beauty as if it were my own. And, of course, it was my own.

  The Protohuman and I were brothers and that was how it should be. Two completely different creatures moving closer and closer to the same strata of perfection.

  I would not allow anything to stop me now.

  Jakobsen’s intention must have become entangled with those of the forces directing my work and what had resulted from this conflict was a mixture of the two. The development of the Protohuman required that it lose its identity but my own disfigurement was never part of the plan. Or not part of my plan.

  And yet now that it had occurred it seemed like it was a vital part of the experiment.

  I felt incredibly calm at the realization that this betrayal—an attempt at murder, or sabotage, or perhaps just vicious assault—had become assimilated into the Protohuman project, had become a further advancement of it. It had taught me that the Protohuman and I should evolve simultaneously and it taught me that I was being watched over by something more powerful than mere jealousy or hatred or whatever it was that Jakobsen sought to betray me for.

  I stroked the Protohuman’s non-features, as bloody as my own.

  Jakobsen must have intercepted my messages somehow, even if he hadn’t been able to understand them. He might have been able to decipher enough to allow him to act, perhaps realizing just how far my work was coming, perhaps feeling able and ready to steal the project from me and have it completed by some other rogue hack. Or even to let it complete itself.

  I looked at Judas, curled awkwardly on the floor of his cage, one scabby arm hanging out from between the bars. He had seemed fine up until a few hours ago but now his breathing was labored, his pupils fully dilated and I thought once more of the poisoned food.

  Jakobsen had given me the supplies, along with everything else in the lab.

  And everything he had given to me, he could take away.

  Or so he thought.

  So I called him and requested that he visit me.

  And this is what happened.

  I sat at my workbench, nervously working my hands as my chemicals bubbled around me. Laid out before me was the small canvas bag that I had been given by one of the many men that come to us after Nadia had killed herself. When unrolled it revealed a set of polished scalpels and surgical instruments, the kind the travelling doctors that visited our town every so often would carry. They were all rusted now and there were several gaps where instruments had been lost or broken beyond repair. One, however, remained well-maintained. I removed it from its holder, letting the light of the Bunsen flame lick across it, then placing it next to the syringe I had looked out earlier.

  It had been Jakobsen’s machine that had answered my call the day before. I had left a brief message, relieved that I wouldn’t have to talk to the man. I had had my script written out because I had never been good at improvisation. I needed time to plan, to prepare for every eventuality. There was nothing that couldn’t be solved by the implementation of simple or extensive calculations.

  I looked up as Judas suddenly hissed from within his cage, slumped against the metal. He didn’t seem to be getting any worse the past few hours, implying the doses of poison that had been injected into my food supply had been small enough to need repeated ingestions over a long period of time. So this betrayal had been a well thought-out, planned affair meant to escape my attention.

  And as I sat there, as I had been sitting there, I began shifting around the particular variables involved in this little sum. Side to side. Positive to negative.

  Jakobsen and Dmitri, the Protohuman, blood, poison, honor and scientific integrity. And theft.

  My face itched beneath the thick layer of petroleum jelly and I mused that although I might have been moving towards the nu-evolution for now I continued to bleed like a normal, deficient man and needed help to get through the healing process. I traced a finger along the ridges where my eyebrows once were, tongued the hole that was my mouth as I listened to the crunching footsteps of someone approaching the lab through the thick layers of hard snow that had fallen. Judas began whining and got to his feet as there was a knock on the door.

  I placed the syringe and the scalpel in my lab coat pocket. Drops of sweat had formed on the back of my neck and hands. I moved slowly into the hallway and saw the outline of my visitor through the mesh that covered the small window at the top of the front door.

  “Who is it?” I stood well back as I asked, the question fully aware of all that was around me as I had been since the Engineers had opened my eyes.

  “Dziga? It’s Jakobsen. I came as quickly as I could.”

  I studied the man’s shadow through the glass, fingered the scalpel in my pocket, then began removing the locks on the door. I refrained from opening for a moment, stepping back. A second passed then the massive steel hinges creaked as Jakobsen entered the lab.

  “Dziga.”

  I stood directly in front of him as he emerged from behind the door, the bare bulbs that lit the passageway throwing a sick light across me.

  “Dziga what . . . dear God . . . ”

  The color drained from his face, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the door.

  I said nothing, just stood there.

  Let him see me. Let him see what he had done to me. I knew this was all a ploy, part of his little game. I would play along with him—for now.

  “Dziga your . . . your face. What has happened? What have you done to yourself?”

  A globule of petroleum jelly dropped from my chin and spattered against the floor. “Would you care to join me?” I asked, my words slurring slightly due to my newly-reconfigured features. I turned from him calmly before he could answer me, hands in my lab coat pockets, and strolled into the workshop. The heat from the Bunsen burners washed over me and I could almost feel it drying my skin. There was a pause then I heard Jakobsen come after me.

  He gripped his briefcase in both hands, unable to take his eyes from me.

  Did he know they were going to do this to me? Did he ask for this specifically? From his reaction, for I do not believe the man to be that good an actor, I surmised that his instructions to the Engineers, if that had been the nature of his interference as I believed it had been, were vague enough to allow them to be creative. He wasn’t even decent enough to take a personal interest in my disfigurement.

  “Thank you for coming so quickly,” I said to him, then gestured at the workbench. “Please, sit.”

  He hadn’t looked at the Protohuman yet, seemingly entranced by me. I tapped the stool beside me to encourage him.

  In the corner of the room, Judas battered the side of his cage wearily. The skin on his arm had peeled away in places where he had been scratching himself.

  “Everything is fine,” I assured Jakobsen. I was distantly beginning to enjoy this game now that I felt I had control. “Let me explain. Please, sit.”

  Jakobsen’s eyes ran all over me. “I’ll stand. If you don’t mind.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve made some tea. Would you care for some?”

  “Tea?! Dziga, what is this!?”

  I looked at him suddenly and immediately he shut up.

  I lifted the jug I had filled with herbal tea and poured it into a beaker then held it up for him. He took it from me somewhat dreamily, making sure not to touch my hand and I began to realize how this simple alteration of my outward self had completely altered me entirely in his eyes. What was I now, to him? What had he meant me to become when he ordered the Engineers to operate on me?

  I was truly a creature of science.

  “Drink it,” I told him.

  He stared down at the beaker, seemed to consider the liquid inside it.

  “Go on.”

  He shot me a look and then put the beaker back down on the bench as quickly as his enforced calmness would allow. He wasn’t expecting this confrontation, wasn’t expecting me to have figured out what he was up to. But I’m no puppet.

  He thinks he could just come here to gloat?!

  “Dziga, I’m worried about you. I think maybe . . . ”

  Of course he wouldn’t drink the tea. He was proving to me that he knew every foodstuff in the lab was tainted. I shook my hand at him. “There is no reason to worry. The experiment is coming along beautifully.”

  “It’s not the experiment that concerns me.”

  “Really. Then perhaps you would do well to cease interfering.”

  “Interfering? I don’t understand.”

  “The Engineers.”

  He looked at me blankly. “What . . . Engineers?” he stuttered.

  I remained silent.

  “I spoke to your brother, Dziga. He is very concerned for you.”

  I smiled inwardly. “How so?”

  “I think I was wrong to bring you here. I don’t think you were ready.”

  I felt anger rise inside me. Not only was he trying to undermine my experiment but he was also planning to put me back in the hole he took me from. I could see it so clearly now, the depth of his betrayal. He has been using me all this time, removing me from the asylum purely to begin the development of the Protohuman so that he could steal it from me when it was near completion.

  I was indebted to no one. He had tricked me.

  “So that is your plan? Not to kill me but to force me back into the asylum?”

  “Kill you? Dziga, I would never . . . ”

  “Of course not, not yourself.” I smiled, waved the air as if to clear this line of thought. Take my time. “I’ve had a small breakthrough in my work,” I said, watching steam rise from the tea. “Would you like me to tell you about it?”

  Jakobsen was shaking his head, his features creased in mock-sorrow. “Dziga, please—don’t you see that the project isn’t what matters to me? I brought you here so you could get better. Perhaps I did the wrong thing.”

  “No, no, Mr. Jakobsen, don’t diminish what we are accomplishing here. I think my work was exactly why you brought me here. Tell me, have you got others ready to finish the project once I am out of the way?”

  His fingers flexed around the briefcase handle. He flinched as Judas suddenly screeched for one quick moment. I was aware of how the petroleum jelly would give the illusion of my face squirming wetly on top of my skull.

  “This is the face of your betrayal,” I told him.

  “What betrayal? Dziga, please . . . ”

  He stepped forwards and I retreated equally from the desk, ready to see the glint of a knife or perhaps even a pistol. His plan was falling apart, he knew now that he wouldn’t be able to convince me to go back to that place, no matter how scared he might make me.

  “So are you ready to finish the job yourself? Are you willing to get your hands dirty with my blood?”

  “Your blood? Dziga, this is all wrong. Please, let me help you.”

  He dropped the briefcase and started towards me but before he could draw his weapon I had drawn mine. I threw myself at him without a thought for what I was doing, both of us tumbling backwards and crashing into a stack of culture plates overgrown with spores. As we hit the ground I thrust the syringe into the soft flesh at the back of his neck. Blood sprayed at me in one quick gush and he cried out. I grabbed him by the hair as he arched upwards, then slammed his face back down to the hard flooring.

  “Dziga . . . !”

  Spoken through crushed teeth and spittle.

  “You will never take the Protohuman away from me!” I shouted at him, slamming his head down again.

  Judas began screeching in his cage, rattling around in excitement, the supporting pole crashing to the ground. Did he smell the blood? Could he taste my violence?

  I slammed Jakobsen’s face into the floor again, my rage mutating into something more beautiful just as I and the Protohuman were too. Judas shrieked, his cries accompanied by the creaking metal of his cage, as it swung freely and Jakobsen struggled as if in slow motion beneath as I twisted the syringe in his neck. He coughed blood at the broken shards of the culture plates.

  “Dziga, please . . . ”

  There was an almighty crash and Judas went silent but I didn’t look back, just kept slamming Jakobsen’s collapsing head into the concrete. His blood flew in bright strands through the air each time I pulled his head back for another strike. He wriggled and almost got loose, pulling away enough for the syringe to be pulled from my grip, wedged in his neck. I sat back, letting him crawl out of his own bodily fluids and reached calmly into my pocket for the scalpel.

  I put the blade to his neck then looked up as I glimpsed something out of the corner of my eye. Judas was sitting on the floor, free of the cage he had torn from its holding in the ceiling, and was lurking behind one of the benches, notably perplexed by his freedom. His weary, milky eyes watched me in return as I took Jakobsen’s hair in my hands and exposed his neck, placed the blade against it.

  “Welcome to freedom, Judas,” I said, then drew the scalpel across my betrayer’s throat.

 

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