Craig exhaled loudly and ceased leaning against a table that held a wide array of TV equipment. He stood up in a full stance, seeming to ponder a wide variety of considerations and all their possible consequences. The tall, flabby teen then extended his hand to his only close friend of three years.
“Thanks, man,” Benny said as he reached to take Craig’s hand and shake it. “This means a lot. I won’t let you down.”
The young man seemed to tremble and grow pale again upon shaking hands with Benny, though.
“What’s eating you now, Craig?”
“I dunno, I was frankly a bit concerned that you would accidentally fry my hand down to the bone, or something.”
“Nah, that wouldn’t happen. Unless you gave me good reason, of course.”
“Dude, that wasn’t funny.”
Benny frowned. “I know. Sorry.”
***
“Kaiser took the suit out for a field test, and neither of you had the good sense to report this to me?” shouted a very red-faced Grant Denning, the Western New York branch manager of Osmos Exploration.
The suit-wearing executive’s high octave scolding was directed at Myron Wexler and Renee Mack. These two being the hapless lab assistants of Prof. Rutger Kaiser, the inventor—but not the owner—of the miraculous Odic-energy absorbing suit that seemed borne out of the Warp Events as surely as the metahumans who had recently begun appearing all over the world in alarming numbers.
“Sir, we didn’t know he took it out,” Renee pleaded with the frantic manner of someone who realized their much-needed job was in jeopardy of ending any second. “We were under his authority, and…” She choked.
Myron did his best to calmly finish what he felt was a very important point his colleague was about to make. “Mr. Denning, what she means is that, honestly, it wasn’t our job to keep tabs on his activities. As lab supervisor, it was his job to do that with his assistants, which was—I mean, is--us, and, and…”
“Don’t give me those excuses, you idiots!” Denning interjected with the ferocity of an angered big cat. “You are both well aware of the lab protocols, and what he did was a severe breach of one of our most important rules! Both of you are responsible for a failure of Herculean magnitude to this company!”
Myron and Renee gulped in tandem, both terrified over how they expected this lecture-cum-interrogation to culminate.
“Sir, we didn’t know the suit was taken out until we got here this morning,” Renee said, again desperately attempting to placate her infuriated boss. “We had no reason to suspect that he…”
“Shut up!” Denning howled.
He then forced himself to desist, and his face turned beat red with veins bulging like greenish-blue water tubes from every possible spot in his neck and temples. The livid executive reminded himself of his hypertension and the need to maintain at least a modicum of decorum in a professional setting, even when confronted with the peons in his midst.
“Look,” Denning continued, trying with visible effort to lower his voice and get his temper under control. “Do you happen to know when that son of a bitch checked the suit out of its containment chamber?”
Hoping to keep her boss at an even keel at all costs, Renee rushed to the empty plexi-glass containment unit and checked the log data on its sophisticated digital lock.
“5:37 AM, sir,” she stammered. “He checked it out at 5:37 AM this morning. Two hours before Myron and I punched into the lab.”
“Jesus freaking Christ,” Denning uttered through an exasperated sigh. “He’s outside the walls of this facility? With the suit? We need to call our private security force immediately and get his sorry ass back here!”
The three then turned around as the beeping sound that signaled the opening of the lab door announced Rutger Kaiser’s arrival. He was still wearing his old trench coat and trousers, a sight that made him look like nothing more than a decrepit hobo to his co-workers.
“Greetings, Mr. Denning,” the scientist said, his disposition still far too ebullient to bring him down at the generally unwelcome sight of the branch manager in his lab. “What can I do for you this fine morning?”
Kaiser’s exuberant, giddy mood was even more unsettling than his usual aloof, narcissistic demeanor to Renee and Myron. They instinctively took a step back behind Denning.
“You took the suit out on a field test, you bastard?” the irate manager asked.
The wide, ugly beam on Kaiser’s face dwindled in size just a bit before he responded. “Yes, Mr. Denning, I did. And I am pleased to announce that it operates beautifully, more than even I could have hoped for! It absorbs the Odic radiations that have super-saturated the planet’s atmosphere and very quantum signature following the multiple Warp Events of the past several years.
“It can then project that energy outwards in a variety of ways, all in accordance with the wearer’s will. It’s marvelous! It was if the physical laws of the universe itself were altered to allow me to successfully invent this suit! In fact, when I first activated it, I saw strange worlds, and worlds beyond worlds! If only you would have been fortunate enough to have experienced it for yourself! It was wondrous, Mr. Denning, truly wondrous!”
Renee and Myron each took another step backwards. They weren’t in the least concerned if either Kaiser or Denning saw how much they were visibly trembling. Please, please don’t let this cause my I.B.S. to act up, Renee silently begged the universe as the first unpleasant squeezing sensations in her lower intestine became evident.
“You son of a bitch!” Denning bellowed at the still beaming Kaiser, while jutting his extended index finger in the scientist’s dumpy facial features. “Do you realize how many company policies and official protocols you breached by initiating such an unauthorized field test? Do you realize what your thoughtless actions may have cost us if anyone saw you do whatever it was you did with that suit?”
Kaiser’s wide beam faded. It was an action that cloaked his unseemly yellowing teeth but somehow extenuated his severely pocked facial skin in their place. His eyeballs looked bulbous as ever due to the modified bifocals he wore.
“Yes, I realize as much, Mr. Denning,” the squat scientist replied with just a hint of growing anger in his tone. “But I am beyond caring any longer. The power I summoned… the things I felt… when I first used the suit made me realize I no longer have to take what this world has thrown in my face for the entire span of my life. It made it clear that I can now hurl back far more than others can throw at me.
“And with that realization in mind, Mr. Denning, would you be so kind as to remove your finger from my face? As in… immediately.”
Denning did indeed remove his finger, but only so he could move his hand down to his hip and coil it into a fist. His face again turned beat red, and he began trembling with rage. He then reached down and pressed the large red button on a small signal device that was clasped onto his belt.
Myron and Renee each shared a look of extreme horror; it was as if they both just knew that after the next few moments, nothing in their world—or the entire world, for that matter—would ever be the same again. The last thing they could possibly want was to be at the epicenter of such an occurrence.
“Did you just summon security, Mr. Denning?” Kaiser asked with a vile grin and a passive aggressive tone.
“Yes, I did, Kaiser!” the manager replied. “You’re in some serious trouble now! Serious trouble!”
“Oh, really now, you pompous ass?” Kaiser retorted with another wide beam that exposed his yellowing, plaque-encrusted teeth. “Are you certain I’m the one who is facing such a serious debacle?”
Within seconds, the loud emergency override beep was heard at the sealed lab door, and two armed security guards entered the room.
“What’s the problem, Mr. Denning?” the lead guard asked.
The manager pointed at the still grinning Kaiser. “I would like both of you to demand that Prof. Kaiser tell us where he has the suit he was working on in this lab! Then
I want you both to take this son of a bitch into custody while neglecting to be gentle about it.”
Both guards put a strong hand on each of Kaiser’s shoulders. He never lost his grin, or even seemed to acknowledge the tight grips.
“Please tell us what Mr. Denning just asked, Prof. Kaiser,” the lead guard insisted firmly. “And please do not make us have to ask again.”
“Not a problem, sirs,” Kaiser said. “You see, I never removed the suit from my person after its test run this morning. It’s very compact despite the circuitry and hardware it contains. Hence, I’m still wearing it under my trench coat and trousers.”
Kaiser’s sadistic grin then seemed to intensify as he raised both of his arms and gritted his teeth as if concentrating heavily upon something. What that concentration was focused upon became obvious a mere second later as his body suddenly appeared to be enveloped in a fantastic pink luminescence. The flare swiftly intensified until nothing in the room was visible save for that trans-spectral light.
This dramatic surge of energy was accompanied by a deep heat effect that was felt by Denning and the two lab assistants who all stood several feet away. These effects, in turn, were accompanied by a loud sizzling noise and the ear-splitting screams of the two security guards.
When the dazzling light had spent itself, all that was visible was the still grinning but now glowing form of Kaiser, along with the burned remains of the two security officers laying at his feet. Their light body armor and firearms had melted like wax exposed to a flame, and their blackened bones and steaming internal organs were visibly hanging from their gutted forms.
Kaiser pulled the tight mask of the now incandescent blue suit over his face; its own lens openings fitted neatly over his special bifocals, as specifically designed. The external circuitry crisscrossing all over the outer frame of the suit glowed a glittering mauve-pink against the bluish radiance of the rest of the cosmic garment. Clearly, he was absorbing and emitting several different “frequencies” of the fabled Odic radiations at once.
“Impressive,” Kaiser said aloud as he examined the human remains at his feet. “The degree of bodily damage done to these guards from a close-range omni-pulse did considerably more damage than the single projected beam I inflicted upon the dog from several feet away. Just as I anticipated. Heh.”
Myron and Renee had both fallen to their knees, and the woman was by now beyond caring whether the stench of her ejected bodily wastes was noticed by the three other people in the lab. Far greater concerns now obviously occupied her mind.
The usually fearless Denning fell back against the nearest table. He struggled to maintain a degree of his famed composure, something he had practiced every day of his life. Because of the highly privileged upbringing he enjoyed, Grant Denning grew up fearing almost no one, including his flighty parents, so what he now experienced was horribly unfamiliar to his senses.
“Dear God,” the foul-tempered executive said. “Kaiser, please… please be reasonable. We can work out a deal regarding an ownership share in the suit.”
“Like most of your ilk, you only show respect to someone whom you happen to fear,” Kaiser said with disdain, as the gauntlet of his raised fist crackled with an orange-hued aura of cascading energies. “Which isn’t many when it comes to silver spoon sucking slugs like yourself.
“Normally, that odd person you fear would only be this company’s ‘esteemed’ CEO, Martin Teasil. But now it’s me. And I’ll remind you why you should fear me far more than that paper-pushing chair warmer. I’ll show you why no one will ever disparage me again! I’ll make this entire pathetic world pay for what it’s done to me for the entirety of my life!”
The incomprehensible energies channeled by the suit began flaring in concert with Kaiser’s temper as he reached towards the now quivering form of Denning. The still-luminous scientist grasped the executive’s wrist and clasped it tightly.
“For God’s sake, Kaiser, don’t do this!” was all Denning had time to scream before a coruscating wave of energy ran from the scientist’s illumined gauntlet and traveled up his former branch manager’s left arm, much like sparks dancing up a live wire conduit.
With but a moment of concentration, Kaiser caused the tracks of energy to flare until the glow fully encompassed Dennings’s limb. The smartly dressed man screamed in unimaginable agony just before falling to the ground. The cessation of the flare’s candela revealed that Dennings’s left arm was burned to ashes. Shredded tatters of his immaculate suit’s sleeve that previously covered his now non-existent limb fell slowly to the tiled lab floor like wispy lint snowflakes.
Myron and Renee screamed in concert as Denning mercifully passed out following a few seconds of his own screaming. Rising his now luminescent arms above his head in a self-worshiping manner, Kaiser released a shout that was a combination of defiance to a world that had long scorned him, and the intense elation that came with the feeling of having ascended to a higher form of life.
Determined to further display the newly acquired power granted to him by his miraculous suit, Kaiser projected a beam of orange-colored energy from his right gauntlet that completely obliterated an entire large metal table and all of its myriad contents. It ultimately smashed a five-foot hole clear through the reinforced cinderblock wall directly behind the table.
The cosmic-powered scientist then turned to his two former lab assistants. The two cowered on the floor before the superior being facing them, wrapped in each other’s arms like lovers who embraced just prior to one leaving for a long trip apart from the other.
“Do you two fools have anything to say to me, albeit in front of my face this time?” the scientist asked them with a still exuberant tone in his voice.
“Please, Prof. Kaiser. We… we didn’t do anything…” was all Myron managed to splutter forth.
“No, I’m not the much hated, much disrespected ‘Prof. Rutger Kaiser’ any longer,” the now fully deranged scientist stated bluntly. “I have transcended that wretched figure. I am now like unto a god, a veritable lord of light. Yes! I am now… Light-Lord!”
The last things Myron and Renee heard before all went black was the clanging of the emergency fire alarm as it reverberated alongside the scientist’s incessant and maniacal laughter.
Chapter 18: Something Tragic This Way Comes
Benny strolled down the usual byways of the Buffalo Historical School corridors with his mind stuck firmly upon the ginormous revelation he made to Craig scant minutes earlier.
I know telling Craig was the right thing to do. I just couldn’t lie to him anymore; he’s been my friend when practically no one else in this school wanted to be. For three years now! I can’t rely entirely on Donovan, great as he is, or the rest of the Valis staff, for support on something so big. And it’s not like I can go to my grandparents or my uncle about this. And my mother and stepfather… pfft!
It was after traipsing to the middle of the corridor where his own locker was located that Benny beheld the lovely figure of Carolyn Marsden, a fellow sophomore who was quite unlike every other girl he knew at the school. She was a fairly petite, slimly built mix of African-American and Hispanic; her flawless, mocha-colored skin and raven black shoulder-length hair highlighted this blend quite perfectly.
Benny always found her unique facial features to be exotically appealing, like his personal idea of what a girl of Egyptian royalty would be like. Beyond that, her behavior and general disposition further singled her out amongst Buffalo Historical’s female high school populace. She seemed quite “bookish” and intellectual, and not as fixated on sports—let alone the boys who played sports--nor the latest trendy fashions, or just about anything else which the “in crowd” seemed to invest a priority of their interests.
Benny didn’t know Carolyn too extensively, as she began her tenure at Buffalo Historical during the second semester of her freshman year after moving to the Queen City from Boston. Nevertheless, he had spoken to her several times during the previous semester, even
if relatively briefly, whenever he worked up the nerve to approach her. And during those fleeting conversations, never did she speak to him disparagingly, or call him anything remotely like the usual expletives and pejoratives that the rest of the student body were so fond of verbally pelting him with. Moreover, she never visibly cringed when he spoke to her, the girl seemed enamored of his social company.
Further, Carolyn seemed perfectly content to limit most of her in-school socializing with her same-aged niece Jane, along with a small clique that also appeared to have no major interest in pursuing entry into the popular crowd. This kindly little social circle hardly stood out, and the main student body harbored no dislike for them. They simply weren’t part of the upper social tier. The students at the top of the school food chain merely exchanged polite salutations with Carolyn’s group during the occasions they would interact in the hallways, or if paired together for class projects.
In other words, Benny respected Carolyn as much as he was attracted to her. The “respect” part of the equation certainly wasn’t the case with Marissa Robbins and her circle, who seemingly loathed the very oxygen molecules which sustained; and who made a point to remind the unpopular teen of this disheartening fact at every opportunity that presented itself.
Upon seeing Carolyn this particular morning, Benny suddenly found himself wondering why he never made an effort to get to know her better--besides the fact that both his self-esteem and social popularity were lower than the planet’s subterranean molten core, that is. He simply dared not approach her in that way before.
But since gaining the power and identity of Centurion, he felt pleasantly emboldened.
It’s time to make a move, Lonero. Don’t be such a wuss. Carolyn would deserve much better, and you know that. Besides, since you got caught in the Warp Event, there are few other people in the world who can give her the security that you can now. You’re practically a freaking god. And no one—mortal or otherwise--would appreciate her more than you do. Sorry Apollo and Zeus, but this one is going to be mine.
Centurion- Dark Genesis Page 21
