Doom Helix by James Axler

Author:James Axler
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2010-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

A RUSH OF COLD AIR against his back jarred Ryan awake. He turned and opened his eye. Krysty was sitting up. In the process she had lifted the edge of their shared bedroll, letting in the night chill. He guessed it was still four hours until dawn.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her gently.

“Can’t sleep, lover,” Krysty replied.

“Is it what J.B. said? Is that what’s worrying you? I don’t know why but a very large bug seems to have crawled up his butt.”

“Of course I’m worried,” she told him. “But thinking about crossing the nukeglass tomorrow isn’t what’s keeping me up—it’s that queen bitch, Dredda Otis Trask.”

“What about her?” Ryan asked, somewhat at a loss.

“I’ve tried to forget what she did to me at Slake City,” Krysty said. “Because she was so far out of reach, with no hope of her ever coming back, remembering how she violated me seemed pointless. But now there’s a chance—maybe even a good chance—she might have returned to Ground Zero.”

“That’s true. And it means you’ll have an opportunity to settle the score, once and for all. So what’s the problem?”

“If she’s there, I’ll make her pay for what she did to me, but it could already be too late to stop her.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She might have used the sperm she took from me, from you, to artificially inseminate her eggs,” Krysty said. “Ryan, you could have offspring you don’t know about out there somewhere on other Earths. Mebbe even on this one.”

“I do have offspring,” Ryan countered, “and he’s gone, taken from me. I think about Dean every day.”

“Still, you have to face the possibility that there could be others you know nothing about….”

“If Dredda managed to mix up some children in a jar or some such,” Ryan said, “are they really mine when I had no part in raising them?”

“I shudder to think what a she-he would do to a baby.”

“A normal child would be of no use to them,” Ryan said. “Their goal was to make more creatures like themselves, to propagate their species. Which means any kid they created would be forced to undergo the same genetic engineering as they did. So, if Dredda did make a child, and it was half-mine, would it really be human at this point?”

After a silence, Krysty shifted the subject. “I wish I could give you another son, Ryan,” she said. “I’m starting to worry because we’ve been together so long and I haven’t gotten pregnant.”

“Mebbe the Earth Mother decided it just isn’t the right time for us yet.”

“Mebbe I can’t ever have children. Mebbe it’s part of my mutation, the part you can’t see.” She touched the ends of her prehensile mutie hair, and its Medusa-like tendrils automatically curled around her fingertips.

“Right now it’s better for all concerned that you haven’t gotten pregnant,” Ryan told her. “Better if that happens after we find a safe place to settle down. If there is such a place…”

She leaned over and kissed him tenderly, then slipped back under the blanket.

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