Separation Read Online Free Page A

Bringing out a
small packet, he extracted a tiny white pill.
    “Mint,” he said. “Throat’s still dry.” He
popped it out and dry-swallowed it, adding, “We’re checking with
our allies in Europe. If we find out anything, we’ll let you
know.”
    “Uh-huh,” said Harry, thinking hard. Ever
since he’d become one of the enhanced, he’d heard from the
scientists he’d encountered as well as their followers that a
number of transgenics still lived. Estimates ranged anywhere from
thirty-five to a hundred, and it was a given some of them had bred.
Most of them were European, young, homeless, and shunned by
society.
    Szabo’s plan had been to take the homeless
and disaffected youth and blackmail other countries into giving him
his own territory. He’d sown murder and discord over a period of
perhaps two months, and before he died he’d said at least thirty of
his own enhanced followers were still out there. “And there shall
be more. Wait and see, Goldman, there shall be more.”
    Ominous words, indeed, and when he’d said
more he’d implied a number of healthy young unenhanced would
somehow flock to his cause. They would then undergo the procedure
that would transform their bodies into something other than
human.
    To make matters worse, as if they needed to
be any worse, many of his would-be disciples were ex-prisoners. The
FBI and the various law enforcement agencies in Europe along with
Interpol had managed to keep tabs on most of them, but they
couldn’t find them all.
    Since being released from prison, they hadn’t
broken any laws, so arresting them wouldn’t have done any good. It
didn’t mean they weren’t thinking of committing crimes. However,
they also had rights, and the authorities in Europe had other
problems to worry about.
    “You did try tracking them down, didn’t you?”
Harry had posed the question to Farrell when he came by the cabin
one morning a few weeks back.
    “We tried, but it was a waste of time.”
Farrell sounded dismayed, and had proceeded to say the enhanced
transgenics, those not aligned with Szabo, decided for the most
part not to advertise their presence. “Considering the size of
Europe, not to mention the relative ease of moving from country to
country, it’s hard enough to keep track of anyone. These people are
good at hiding, and I understand why.”
    Online traces hadn’t turned up anything new,
either. And as usual, Farrell wasn’t giving them the entire
picture. The citizenry in Europe had not been as forgiving as the
people in the USA, if only by a matter of degree and not of
feeling. Harry had read the reports from various online sources,
and the happenings could only be described as appalling.
    In Italy, the enhanced had been the target of
local citizens’ groups for the longest time. So far, they’d shot at
least seven of the transgenics, proudly showing the bodies of the
people they’d killed, saying, “They presented a clear threat to the
safety of the Italian people. We are the people. They aren’t.”
    It all added up to xenophobia by mobs of the
uninformed and bigoted, nothing less and nothing more.
    Naturally, the Italian police decried the
violence, but they hadn’t done anything to stop it, and so far no
arrests had been made.
    In France’s case, while the enhanced weren’t
persecuted, at least outright, they had been shunned by most of the
populace. “We are committed to including them in society,” said
Bernhard Lambert, an official government spokesperson.
    A tall, slender man in his fifties with a
head of snow white hair and a kindly, lined face, he seemed most
sympathetic to the transgenic and human rights cause. “They are
French citizens and should therefore be accorded the same rights as
anyone else.”
    Noble words and nobly spoken, but the few
enhanced who had come forward had also been met by indifference,
and had soon disappeared into the vast forests surrounding the
countryside. The police considered them vagrants and nothing