Rock Man #1: Awakening

by S.D. Higgins

Rock Man #1: Awakening

  By S.D. Higgins

  Copyright 2013

  Part One

  Bio Tek Incorporated Lab and Research Facility

  Falcone District, North Fossil Island, Raptor City

  Doctor Slade Scott studied the information scrolling across the monitor as if he didn’t already know which combination of formulas would appear there. Over the past fourteen hours he had bounced between reviewing this data and examining the creature in the next room. He’d witnessed the metamorphosis with his own eyes, but he still couldn’t believe it.

  His hands were still shaking and beads of sweat were still forming on his pale skin. This was exactly the sort of scientific breakthrough he had always dreamed of, but now he had no idea how it happened. There was no scientific reasoning that could explain what he had witnessed, and his logical mind couldn’t accept that.

  Slade could’ve easily passed for someone in his mid-sixties despite the fact that he wasn’t yet fifty. His short hair had faded from brown to mostly grey and his brow was etched with deep age lines. His clothes showed in their wrinkles that he hadn’t left the lab in three days. The lapels of his lab coat were crooked and two of his shirt buttons were undone. His tie hung at half-mast and the loose, half Windsor knot was only a stiff breeze from coming undone.

  He idly pressed a few buttons on the console and a new readout displayed. Slade knew he had perfected DNA splicing. The proof existed in any of a dozen holding cells off of the main lab. Somehow this subject had resisted though. The answer was obviously in the subject’s blood, but numerous tests had revealed nothing.

  Though he would never admit it to anyone, Slade knew that he had a tendency to ignore seemingly insignificant details. And now, here was one staring him right in the face. He read the subject’s name for the first time and couldn’t help but letting out a short chuckle. “Rockman,” he said, a smile spreading across his face. “Rock Man.”

  Three hours later

  Doctor James Givens glared as numbers flashed across the elevator’s digital display. He had a job to do-one that existed on a national level, and didn’t involve babysitting overzealous scientists. Slade Scott was a brilliant man, and no one could deny that his work produced results. But how he’d gotten those results was precisely what the FBI was currently investigating.

  And that was precisely why Givens had ordered Slade to take a mandatory vacation. Slade was supposed to be anywhere but here. If the FBI shut Bio Tek down, Givens would lose his pension. And at sixty-four, that wasn’t an option in his book. If keeping his pension meant sacking one of the company’s most brilliant scientists, he’d do it without hesitation.

  The elevator glided to a stop at the fourteenth floor, but the doors didn’t open. Givens cursed under his breath. Slade was in charge of the Raptor City division of Special Projects, which gave him a certain amount of freedom in regards to allocating resources, but locking off an entire floor was a bit excessive. Perhaps firing Slade wouldn’t be a difficult decision after all.

  Givens pulled the security keycard from the breast pocket of his dark blue suit jacket and swiped it through the reader beside the buttons. The elevator doors slid open and Givens stepped into the open lab. The room looked like the stereotypical classroom lab, with rows of flat top desks, each fixed with an assortment of computer monitors, Bunsen burners, test tubes, and beakers.

  Givens was an intimidating individual, in spite of his advanced age. He had been a lineman on his college football team and he had managed to maintain that physique. His suit jacket was perfectly tailored over his broad shoulders and solid gut. He had grey hair cropped closely to his scalp and he wore a pair of horn rimmed glasses pressed tightly against his face. The creases in his forehead gave the impression that he was a man of wisdom.

  The overhead lights were shut off, leaving the room bathed in shadow, broken by dim moonlight from the windows on the western wall and the fluorescent glow flooding in from the open door of one of the holding cells on the far wall. Givens immediately noticed that the adjacent observation room was dark. Slade’s experiments were always dangerous and often feral. Scientists were supposed to observe them from a separate room for their own safety. Givens knew that Slade was a liability, but he hadn’t expected to be presented with so much evidence within five minutes of his arrival.

  Givens walked in silence to the observation room beside the open holding cell. The various digital monitors each displayed vast amounts of formulas and data, but Givens ignored these. The lights had turned on automatically when he entered the room and he immediately moved across to the long two-way mirror that looked in on the holding cell. Below the window, a desk had been built into the wall, fixed with a microphone and an array of controls. He leaned over the desk with both palms flat on either side of the microphone.

  Givens watched the younger scientist through the two-inch thick safety glass. Slade was hunched over a clipboard, holding his pen at the ready. The expression on the younger man’s face was both intent and eager. A smile spread across Givens’s face as he imagined the shock that he was about to give Slade. He pushed the microphone’s transmit button with his thumb. “Doctor Scott,” he boomed, allowing every ounce of his frustration to his already baritone voice. His words, however, caught in his throat mid-sentence.

  Slade’s head whipped around to look at the two-way mirror, even though he couldn’t see into the observation room. The clipboard clattered against the floor. For a moment, Givens recognized the same expression on Slade’s face that he had seen years ago when he would catch his son doing something that he knew he wasn’t supposed to do. Almost immediately, the guilt was washed away from Slade’s face. But Givens’s attention had been drawn elsewhere.

  At the sound of Givens’s voice and the dropping of the clipboard, the figure on the observation table had twitched violently against the thick leather straps holding its arms and legs. “What the hell is that?” The words escaped Givens’s mouth as an involuntary reflex, and he didn’t even realize that his thumb was still on the transmit button until he saw the smile spread wide against Slade’s face.

  In an instant, Slade seemed to change into a different person. His back went rigid and his expression seemed more sincere. Givens had witnessed this transformation before. It was as if the younger scientist’s socially awkward demeanor would simply melt away when he was given the opportunity to present his work. The transformation was so complete that Givens was often surprised that Slade’s clothes didn’t somehow unwrinkled themselves.

  Slade turned deliberately to look at the creature strapped to the make shift bed, before turning back to look at the two-way mirror. Despite the fact that he couldn’t see him, it seemed as though Slade was making eye contact with Givens through the glass. “This sir,” Slade answered through his smile, “is a breakthrough.”

  Givens cocked his head and was immediately grateful that he couldn’t be seen. Even with the change of demeanor that Givens was already familiar with, Slade was not prone to fits of theatrics. Perhaps it was simply that he’d been caught in the lab at this late hour, but Givens recognized that there was something making Slade act out of character. “I’ll be right there.”

  Givens stepped out of the observation room as Slade was adjusting his lab coat in the holding cell. Despite his excitement over what he’d seen in the other room, Givens tried to remind himself why he was here. If nothing else, Slade needed a stern reprimand and a reminder to stay low until the federal investigation had reached a positive conclusion. And now Givens also needed to find out what had Slade out of sorts.

  As Givens rounded the corner to enter the holding cell, Slade met him at the door. “Doctor Givens, I hadn’t expected you here. I understand you�
�ve been quite busy in New York,” the younger scientist said, extending his hand in greeting.

  “I’ve been extremely busy, Doctor Scott.” Givens gripped Slade’s hand and squeezed it once, hard enough to make Slade flinch. He would keep this display of dominance formal and resist the urge to push past Slade so that he could see up close whatever it was Slade was working on. “And I understand you were instructed to take some time off.”

  Slade’s smile faltered. “Well, yes sir – “

  “Then please explain to me how that translates into you logging over seventy hours straight lab time?” Givens boomed, cutting off Slade’s stammering.

  The younger scientist’s attentions seemed to have been drawn to Givens’s feet. He shifted his weight back and forth between his own legs. “My work – “

  “Your work?” Givens snapped, cutting Slade short again. “Your work is precisely why you were instructed to take time off. Do you realize what I’ve been dealing with for the last month?”

  Slade didn’t answer and Givens knew he’d won this battle. “We’re granted some leniency thanks to our military contracts,” Givens said, explaining what Slade already knew. “But if the FBI decides that we’ve crossed the wrong line with any of our experiments they’ll shut Bio Tek down and you and I will be lucky if we don’t get tossed in prison. You got that?”

  Slade nodded slowly. “Yes sir,” he mumbled.

  It was Givens turn to smile. “That being said, show me what was so important that you were willing to risk both of our careers for it.”

  Slade’s smile returned and his back straightened again. “As you are aware, we have been contracted to develop a procedure for genetically enhancing our military personnel for use in man to man combat.”

  “I’ve already seen it, Slade,” Givens said, his impatience pouring into his voice. “Let me get a closer look.”

  “Of course, Doctor Givens,” Slade answered. Both doctors could have easily walked abreast into the holding cell, but Slade stepped aside and gestured Givens in. Slade studied Givens’s face as he approached the table. Givens’s eyes were unwavering, his jaw slightly slack.

  He moved to the edge of the table, starring down at the figure lying there, but he still couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “What is this?”

  Slade looked at the figure on the table and then back at Givens, whose eyes were still locked on the creature. “I’ve managed to alter this subject’s physiology so that he is composed entirely of stone.”

  Givens pushed his glasses back against his face and looked at the entire length of the creature. The form was massive, at least seven feet long, and looked like an exquisitely detailed statue of an adult man carved from smooth, dark grey stone. “You did this to a human test subject?”

  He turned to look at Slade. This was the question that could make or break the federal investigations currently taking place. Still, given the extent of this breakthrough, Givens was already beginning to think that the benefits might outweigh the risks. But Slade shouldn’t know that at this point, so Givens drilled into Slade with his eyes.

  Slade couldn’t maintain eye contact and he was looking at the lower corner of the room when he answered. “I used a clone of an original subject.”

  Givens nodded for a moment, forcing a disapproving look on his face. “A human clone?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  This was too good to be true. Bio Tek’s government mandate did not authorize direct human testing. But human cloning had been authorized on the highest levels and if this creature had been created using a clone, then Slade hadn’t exceeded their mandate. “That is the best news I’ve heard all evening.” Givens turned back to examine the creature. “What do you call it?”

  “I call him Rock Man,” Slade answered with a curl of his lips.

  Givens choked. “You’re kidding me, right?” he asked, laughing. Then he realized who he was speaking to. “Of course you aren’t kidding. But it does seem a bit unoriginal, don’t you think?”

  Slade’s hands fiddled nervously in front of him and he was grateful that Givens’s attention was focused solely on the creature. “It seemed appropriate. Initial density tests suggest that – “

  “It doesn’t seem to be breathing,” Givens noted, talking over Slade in his excitement. He had squatted down so that he was eye level with Rock Man’s chest. The motionless creature had a slender, yet muscular figure, as if the man had been a swimmer.

  “Well no, Doctor Givens,” Slade said, “I don’t think he needs to breathe at all. As I was saying, the initial density tests suggest that the transformation was complete.”

  Givens stood back up and turned back to Slade. “What do you mean, complete?” Agitation was creeping back into his voice.

  “Lungs, heart, brain,” Slade said as if he were checking off items on a grocery list. “It appears that he is solid stone.”

  “So, all you’ve got here is a lump of useless rock,” Givens scoffed.

  Slade immediately shook his head. “No, Rock Man is alive.”

  “He doesn’t have a brain, a central nervous system,” came Givens’s retort. “How can it possibly alive?”

  “How can flesh turn to stone? We’re already dealing with the impossible here, sir.”

  “You don’t know how it happened?” Givens shot back.

  Slade cursed his slip up. “I know how it happened,” he stammered. “It’s just that I still don’t understand the why.”

  “Explain.” There was more than a hint of hostility in Givens’s voice.

  Slade’s eyes jumped quickly from Givens to the creature and back again. “It moves, sir. Minor twitches, but without any identifiable muscle mass, it’s amazing.” Slade was speaking quickly, unable to contain his excitement. “The creature responds to both light and audio triggers. I have no doubt that Rock Man is in fact alive.”

  Givens turned around and regarded the creature again. “What good is it to us if it can’t move?” He leaned over the creature, examining its face.

  Suddenly, the creature blinked. Given’s stomach dropped and he leapt backwards reflexively, the sole of his wing tip slipping on the smooth floor. He would have fallen if Slade hadn’t been close enough to catch him. “Are you okay, sir?” He asked, a hint of amusement thinly veiled in his voice.

  “I’m fine!” Givens grumbled in response, pulling away from Slade. He tugged at his jacket with both hands, pulling it tight against his shoulders. “Find out how to recreate the process so that it’s of some kind of use to us.”

  “Absolutely, sir,” Slade stammered.

  “And it had better be fast, Slade.”

  “I’ll get it done.” He sounded confident, despite the fact that he was certain Givens was asking for the impossible.

  “Good,” Givens responded flatly before turning his attention back to the creature strapped to the observation table. It seemed as if the creature’s eyes were following him, but Givens was sure it was his imagination. “And when you’re done, I want this useless heap destroyed.”

  Slade’s jaw dropped. “But, sir,” he stammered, “we can’t.”

  “You can and you will, Slade.” Givens glared down at the creature, locking eyes with it. “It’s a clone that can’t even move. If there are any thoughts in its head, which I seriously doubt, you’ll be putting it out of its misery.”

  Slade opened his mouth to protest, but he never got the chance. In a single, unbelievably fast movement, Rock Man ripped his arm free of the leather restraints and back handed Givens, as if he were swatting a fly. Givens had no time to react and took the full force of the blow in his sternum. He could feel his ribs crack as he was thrown backward into Slade.

  The two scientists landed in a heap against the far wall, with Givens sprawled across Slade’s legs. Givens’s eyes were closed and his gaping mouth had become a fountain of blood. Slade sat there, staring helplessly as Rock Man pulled the rest of his limbs free of the restraints with apparent ease. Slade knew that the stone Rock Man
was formed from was solid, but it moved as freely as flesh.

  The floor shuttered when the creature leapt from the table and Slade suddenly felt as if his sins were about to come down upon him as he lay there helpless. However, as he looked up at Rock Man’s face, he didn’t see an expression of hatred or contempt. Instead, the look with which the creature regarded him reminded Slade of a confused child.

  Slade began to wonder what impact he might have had on the creature. He was already convinced he hadn’t had a direct impact on Rock Man’s current physical condition. But he had never considered what impacts his experiments might have had on the creature’s mental state. There was no recognition in Rock Man’s eyes as he looked down at Slade.

  For several moments, the creature and its would be creator stared at each other. Givens’s body had gone limp, but Slade didn’t dare move for fear of enticing Rock Man’s rage. Finally, Rock Man turned and sprinted out the observation room’s large open door. Just a few seconds later, Slade heard the sound of shattering glass from the open lab.

  Slade sat there until his legs had gone numb, waiting for Rock Man to return, straining his ears for sounds of movement in the next room. It felt as though hours had past when Slade’s quivering arms rolled Givens’s lifeless body off of his legs. A pool of blood had formed at Slade’s knees where it had dripped from Givens’s mouth, and Slade’s hand slipped as he was pushing himself to his feet.

  He decided not to trust his legs to carry him, and crawled on his hands and knees to the observation room’s door. After wiping his bloodied hand clean on his jacket, he used the door frame to pull himself to his feet. He still couldn’t stand completely under his own power, so he leaned against the wall as he examined the open lab. The creature was gone, with the only evidence of him having gone through the lab being the large hole in the plate glass window on the western wall.

  Slowly, Slade limped to the window and looked down. Fourteen stories below, a crater had been left in the parking lot, but Rock man was nowhere in sight.