Page 9 (1/2)

"I don’t know I guess it depends on what they do"

CHAPTER 21

BLUE IS THE COLOR of cold vision All things are shades of blue, infinite shades of blue

The double-wide restaurant-style freezer has a glass door The glass is torment for Chameleon

The shelves have been removed from the freezer No food is ever stored here

Froe sack The sack is prison

Prison isas bulletproof Kevlar and transparent

This transparency is the first toriant teardrop, for it is filled with fourteen gallons of water and is pendulous

Within the freezer, the terees Fahrenheit

The water in the polymeric sack is a saline solution treated with cheelation

Although the teh tiny ice particles float freely in the sack, the solution will not freeze

Cold is the third tor in the sack, Cha dream

It is not able to close its eyes to its circumstances, because they have no lids

Chameleon needs no sleep

Perpetual awareness of its powerless condition is the fourth torment

In its current circus

When not imprisoned, it breathes by virtue of a tracheal system akin to but materially different from that of insects Spiracles on the surface adhout the body

In seen And the saline fluid flowing through its tracheal tubes is oxygen-enriched

Although Chameleon looks like no insect on Earth, it rese else

The size of a large cat, Chahs just 122 pounds, Chae six-year-old child, but significantly

In torment, Chameleon waits

CHAPTER 22

IN THE SPA, the hot water churned against Victor’s body, and the bubbles of Doood

The wall phone beside the spa rang Only select Alphas had the number of this most private line

The caller-IDreported UNKNOWN

Nevertheless, he snared the handset fro"

"Erika?"

"I was afraid youhow he had found her at dinner in the living room, he chose to reer "You know better than to bother ency"

"I wouldn’t blaot me It’s been more than a day since you had sex with me I’m ancient history to you"

Her tone had a faint but unhter in the spa "What do you think you’re doing, Erika?"

"I was never loved, only used I’ "Where are you, Erika? Where are you in the house?"

"I’ How could I be?"

He would be in error if he continued to play her conversational gae what seemed to be rebellious behavior Victor answered her with silence

"My dearest master, how could I be in the house after you sent me away?"

He hadn’t sent her away He had left her, battered and bleeding, in the living room, not a day previously but mere hours earlier

She said, "How is the new one? Is she as lubricious as I was? When brutalized, does she cry as pitifully as I did?"

Victor began to see the nature of the ga, my maker, after you killed me, you had your people in the sanitation department take me to a landfill northeast of Lake Pontchartrain You ask where I ah I hope to return"

Now that she’d carried this demented charade to an unacceptable extreme, silence was not the appropriate response to her

"You are Erika Five," he said coldly, "not Erika Four And all you’ve achieved by this absurd impersonation is to ensure that Erika Six will be in your position soon"

"Frohts of passion," she said, "I remember the hard i into me, and how I bled into your mouth"

"Come to me immediately," he said, for he needed to ter, I would be there at once if I could, but it’s a long way to the Garden District from the dump"

CHAPTER 23

AS THEY REACHED the T junction where the entrance lane ally purchased 50-caliber Desert Eagle pistol frooing to be trouble--"

"I’d bet both kidneys on it"

"--then I’ the Urban Sniper ht onto West Drive

The headlights washed across the pale forht, fully-nude, high-speed dog walk

Michael said, "If we have to get out of the car, it’ll for sure be the Sniper, but not if I have to shoot fro position"

Hours earlier, they had seen Pastor Kenny Laffite, one of the New Race, breaking down psychologically and intellectually And not long after that, they were forced to deal with another of Victor’s creations who called himself Randal and whose rap was as creepy-crazy as Charles Manson channeling Jeffrey Dahmer Randal wanted to kill Carson’s brother, Arnie, and he had taken three rounds point-blank fro down

Now this weirdness