The White Lizard Waited Seven Years

"It's been a long day, hasn't it?" Seven years later, the white lizard had become Archon of the chimeras.

He wound his tail around me, lifted me off my feet, and pressed me for an answer, his voice cold. Once, he had been nothing but a specimen I took in and cared for.

When the lab came to haul him away, I promised him we would see each other again in one day, just to quiet him down. It was seven years before I saw him again.

Chapter 1 The day I got out of prison, I said nothing the whole drive and watched the window.

The sky was a flat gray and the winter wind came hard, carrying grit that stung anywhere it touched skin.

Seven years, and the view I used to know better than anything had turned strange on me.

Violet drove and talked the whole way. "I nearly had a heart attack when I got your call." "You have no idea how much things have changed out here." "Remember our old institute?

The chimeras run everything now. They tore the place down. Everyone above us was executed." Violet paused, a little put out. "Cordelia Ives.

Are you listening?" I came back to myself. "Sorry, Violet." She sighed. "…If only you were still with 0207." Her mouth twisted with something like regret. "Oh.

I suppose I'm supposed to say His Excellency the Archon now." Hearing that number again after all these years left me stunned for a moment. 0207 was a specimen designation.

Back then I worked at the famous Ossory Institute, doing biological research. 0207 was the first specimen I ever cultivated. A lizard chimera.

He carried a complex genome drawn from several lizard species.

He was highly intelligent and physically frail, with flaws in his emotions and his mind, but with exceptional regeneration and psychic force.

After trial upon trial, the people above me decided to scrap him. I couldn't stand by and let it happen. I intercepted his tank at the incinerator and insisted on taking him in.

For the year that followed, I tamed him my own way. His mind was still a child's then.

I named him Samson, taught him his letters, stayed beside him until he fell asleep, and held him tight whenever his power went out of control. Then something went wrong.

The institute saw how far his power had spiked and came to reclaim him by force. I had no right to refuse. The last time I saw Samson, he cried until he was a wreck.

He didn't want to leave me, so he fought them, wild and frantic, and the sedatives did nothing.

The electronic collar meant to hold his emotions down was torn open by his claws, shrieking out an alarm.

The bite guard they had forced on him was slammed flat, cracked and twisted.

Half his face and his throat had been torn down to raw meat, and the scattered scales along his cheek were soaked through with thick blood.

Dark green blood ran out across the floor until the whole room was a filthy slick. A crew of security men went at him all at once and still couldn't hold him down.

My superior watched it and ran out of patience. "…Can you get him back or not?

If you can't, just kill him." The words were barely out before every gun in the room came up and pointed at Samson. My back went cold, and the panic swept through my whole chest.

I pulled my face into something calm as fast as I could, stepped forward, and held Samson tight. "Be good, Sam," I said gently. "You go on ahead.

I'll come get you soon." Samson finally went quiet. His icegreen eyes moved, slow and dull. The black of his pupils spread until it covered most of that emerald iris.

It took him a while to get the words out. "…How… long." "One day." "…One day?" "That's right." I coaxed him through the ache in my chest. "One day." Chapter 2 I never saw Samson again after that.

The light went from green to red and the car stopped at the crosswalk. Violet's voice pulled me back into the present. "Do you have somewhere to stay?

If you don't, why not stay at my place for now?" Violet and I had gotten along since college, and after graduation we both ended up at the Ossory Institute, one after the other, which made us closer still.

I didn't turn her down, because I really did have nowhere to go. "Thank you," I said quietly. "Sorry to impose." Violet lived downtown.

It was easy to see she had done well for herself in the years since. She brought me home, walked me to a seat in the living room, and turned to make me coffee.

A twostory aquarium stood against the wall, jellyfish of every size drifting inside it, throwing gorgeous color under the lights. "You still love jellyfish as much as ever," I said.

Violet leveled the grounds with practiced hands and tugged one corner of her mouth up. "It's not really love.

I had time on my hands, so I keep them around to look at." She set the coffee down in front of me, concern in her voice. "What about you? How have these years been?

People at the institute talked for a long time after you vanished like that. Everyone said you'd sold 0207 off and gone to live the good life.

So how did you end up…" My hands closed slowly on my knees, and I gave her nothing either way. "A lot happened." She could see I didn't want to go into it.

She pressed her lips together and changed the subject. "Never mind. It's all behind you.

Let's not get into it," she said. "Starting tomorrow, do you want to come work at my company?" I hesitated. "I'm not sure I'm in any shape to…" Violet took a sip of her coffee. "I know you're not doing well right now.

But you were our star researcher back then. I trust that whatever's in front of you now is nothing you can't handle." I couldn't find an answer.

She squeezed my shoulder, generous about it. "Just try it. All right?" The next day I went in with Violet. After the chimera uprising, some industries rose and some collapsed.

Violet's company was in the first group.

Once the institute was dissolved, she moved fast, took over the resources that came loose from it, founded a new pharmaceutical company, and had built it into a leader in the field.

The technology had turned over in seven years and the lab equipment had all been upgraded.

I spent a long time working through it carefully, and when I looked up again it was evening. I gathered my things and rode the escalator down.

Just then a group of people came in through the front doors of the building, backlit. I recognized one of them, and my feet stopped without my meaning them to.

Far off at the edge of the sky, a tangerine sun was going down without a sound.

The light came slanting through the clean glass and lay across the stairs and the floor, so beautiful it didn't feel real. Seven years, and Samson's face had barely changed at all.

He wore a black uniform I didn't know. The white hair that used to fall to his waist had been cut short, and it hung loose over part of his brow.

Ringlike bands sat at the base of his long fingers. Every line of him was sharp and straight.

I stopped where the escalator let me out on the second floor and looked at him across a hundred feet of open air.

Beside me, my coworkers were talking. "…Isn't that His Excellency the Archon? What's he doing here?" "He's been paying a lot of attention to the new drug.

He's probably here to check on our progress." "I hear the Archon has a terrible temper. R&D is going to be here all night…" Someone was leading Samson toward the elevators.

He moved quickly and was across the lobby in no time. Chapter 3 Right before the elevator doors closed, he suddenly raised his head and looked my way. A glance, nothing more.

Only half a second later, he looked away. From that day on I kept dreaming about the past, about Samson. It had been a long time since those dreams came.

Sometimes we were walking in the woods together, sunlight coming down through broadleaf trees so thick they blotted out the sky, falling in patches on the deep drifts of dead leaves and pressing hot against my eyelids.

Sometimes he was learning to write, the dip pen laying my name down in bright, wet strokes.

Sometimes we were resting, and he had shifted back into his huge lizard form, that long white tail curled around my arm like a spoiled child claiming what was his, his forehead against me, his breathing even in sleep.

Sometimes it was the day we were separated, and his face was pale and soaked with rain and blood. Every time I woke up, it took me a long while to come back.

Life kept moving along, steady enough. Once the new job settled, I moved out of Violet's place and rented a small apartment not far from the company.

I went in and came home, ate alone and slept alone. Then, two months later, Violet stopped me on my way out. "Cora, are you free? There's a dinner.

Come with me." I nodded and said yes. The dinner Violet meant was a business dinner, the kind where the point is meeting people and keeping investors happy.

I was there as technical staff and wasn't expected to do anything in particular.

She got me in the door, then left to find someone to talk business with and told me to look around on my own. I picked up a glass of wine and sat down by myself in a corner.

The champagnecolored marble floor was polished bright enough to see your face in, and the chandeliers under the vaulted ceiling spent every bit of light they had.

A fountain not far off looked like something out of a dream, the water running gold under the lights. Out in the middle of the floor, chimeras and humans were dancing.

I couldn't remember the last time I had been anywhere like this. The wine went down my throat, faintly bitter, and then I heard a few low sounds of surprise nearby.

I looked up without thinking. The room around me had gone quiet. All I could hear were boot heels crossing the floor. Then I saw a figure I knew. Pale, beautiful face.

Icegreen eyes. Thin, hard, pearlwhite scales along his jaw. Samson. I hadn't expected him at this party.

Tonight he was in formal dress that had clearly cost a fortune, and he moved through it all with room to spare. Nothing left of the awkward, unfinished creature he had been.

I watched him, and I couldn't look away. As if he felt something, his eyes turned toward me all at once. I dropped my head fast.

When I looked up again, Samson had already gone into the crowd, and the room had settled back into its calm hum of small talk. There were a lot of people here.

He couldn't have seen me. I let out a breath. Violet came back around then.

She nudged me with her elbow and asked, meaning something by it, "Not going to go say hello?" I hesitated. "I'd rather not." "He's our client now," Violet said. "For work's sake alone, you should be dealing with him… assuming it doesn't bother you, of course." "Next time," I said. "I'm not ready." "Fine." She tipped her glass a little, not pushing it, and turned back to her rounds.

I was about to sit down again when another voice stopped me. "Excuse me… are you Dr. Ives?" I turned and saw a man whose face I half recognized.

Chapter 4 He lit up when he saw me. "It really is you… it has been far too long." I asked, at a loss, "And you are…" He handed me a card right away. "We met at an academic forum seven years ago." I took it, and a faint impression came back to me. "Of course.

It's been a long time," I said with a smile. "What a coincidence." The words weren't out of my mouth before a broad shadow settled over my back.

At some point the room had gone dead silent, and every face was turned toward the space behind me. A bad feeling rose in me.

The music out on the dance floor was still going, sweet and unhurried. I turned, and ran straight into a pair of emerald eyes.

Half of Samson's face was lost in shadow, and his icegreen eyes burned faintly out of it. "It is quite a coincidence." He looked at me, and his pupils drew down into dangerous vertical slits. "Sorry," he said, smiling. "I hope I'm not interrupting." Everything I knew about him told me Samson was angry