Page 32 of Lagoon

“Here’s how it would go if any of us did,” said Harris. “First, they can’t get to us, can they? It takes money to charter a chopper down here, and nobody’s got those funds.”

“We all pool together for it,” said Luther in a soft voice. “Between us, with our salaries, how we don’t have expenses down here, we could manage it.”

“Maybe,” said Harris. “Maybe. But let’s say we get out of here, and we’re all lizardthings. We got two options. One is to be studied in labs by Anderson Scott and the other is to disappear before we get to the press and tank his stock prices.”

“He won’t kill us,” said Jonathan witheringly.

“We all signed NDAs,” said Luther. “He doesn’t need to kill us. He just buries us in lawsuits for the rest of our lives. Which we’ll apparently be living out with tails.”

“Either way,” said Harris. “We don’t contact anyone yet. Now, best case scenario, a few days pass, nothing else happens. Then, great news, we contact Scott. Yes, Nancy? Yes?”

Nancy sighed. “Fine. We’ll give it, what? A week? Five days?”

“Five days,” said Harris. “Five days, that’s all, we wait. No contact until we know what we’re dealing with. Then, once we got a handle on it, then we figure out how we’re going to leverage this to make sure that we don’t get anally rammed by Anderson Scott. That’s how it’s going to work.”

“You don’t have a gun anymore,” said Riley mildly. “Can you still order us around?”

Because while the men had all been in agony, the women had been busy. They’d taken the firearms and the ammunition and put them away, hidden. Only the three of them knew where they were.

“Sure can,” said Harris, giving her a nasty smile. “I can still punch you, lady.”

Riley’s nostrils flared. “You can’t be serious.”

“He’s the one who said we were the muscle,” said Harris, folding his arms over his chest and nodding at Jonathan.

Jonathan sighed.

“Look,” spoke up Luther, “I’m not punching women. That’s a bridge too far, sir. Come on.”

“We’re turning into lizards here, Thompson,” said Harris.

“Amphibians,” said Jonathan.

Harris turned to him witheringly. “Really, doc?”

“Lizards arereptiles,” said Jonathan.

“We seem all right,” said Riley. “We haven’t changed into anything. Whatever happened, our immune systems fought it off.”

“You think so?” said Harris, and there was real vulnerability in his tone, something that hit her hard.

She didn’t like Harris at all, but she suddenly felt sorry for him. She realized his bravado was a mask for the fear he felt. He was out of his depth with all of this. She had knowledge he didn’t have. She wanted to use that knowledge to tell them all that they were fine. This couldn’t happen. It made no sense.

But in the end, Jonathan was right. Scientific discovery was full of things happening that had never happened before. And the scientific community was wont to suppress new knowledge, because the unknown was terrifying. However, the first step for anything unknown becoming known was to accept it was real.

“It’s possible that is what happened,” said Jonathan. “I need to do tests to know more.”

“Well, do your tests then,” sneered Harris.

Jonathan shoveled some food into his mouth and then got up from the table. He chewed and swallowed. “All right, I’ll be in the lab if anyone needs me.”

“I’ll come too,” said Riley, getting up. “Whatever happened, it’s presenting differently between the women and the men. We need to see if we can quantify that.”

“Good thought,” said Jonathan. “Let’s go.”

JONATHAN WAS ALARMED. Under the microscope, his blood cells were dividing and changing at a rate that seemed to suggest some kind of mutation. It was frighteningly quick, though, and still happening in the sample he’d taken, which was now outside of his body, and he didn’t know what to make of it all.

He tried a few different things on the blood cells, and he managed to concoct something that slowed the rate of mutation, but it didn’t stop it.

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