I Am Phantom (Novella): Subject Number One

by Fletcher, Sean

Carlyle put the screen remote down and folded his fingers delicately together.

  “The only issue with the serum was the one of instability we talked about. That it’d break apart in the host. But as I’ve brought up before, once we integrate genetic pre-disposition into subjects, the instability will go away. As we’ve just seen.”

  Lucius burst out laughing, causing the others to jump, which only made him laugh harder. Because it was a joke. The whole thing had to be. He couldn’t imagine anyone watching what they had just watched and proposing that it had, in an odd way, been some sort of success.

  “That is rich, gentlemen, absolutely killer. You planning on opening a show in Vegas with that act?”

  “I fail to see what’s so funny,” Dr. Van said coldly.

  Lucius pounded the table in front of him and rose to his feet. He tried to keep his hands from shaking, channeling the rage he felt through them and away. “What’s so funny, Dr. Van, is that you think you, or any of us, will move an inch forward on this project. Not after this. The minute the board sees this video it’s all over.”

  “They won’t if we don’t show them,” Carlyle said.

  “I will show them,” Lucius said. “I will add what has been sorely lacking around here and do something that makes moral sense.”

  His voice faded away, replaced by Carlyle’s fingers tap-tapping on the table. “Can I speak to Dr. Sykes? Alone?”

  “But—he—” Dr. Van swiveled between the two of them. Then he threw up his hands and stood. Lin seemed to move like a ghost as she got up; a hollow waif who merely drifted out the door.

  Dr. Van met her there, putting one hand on her back and whispering something in her ear. Ryans didn’t notice as he followed them out. Lucius’ knuckles were clenched beneath the table.

  Carlyle stood and closed all the blinds to the windows facing the hallway before taking a seat across from Lucius. He started rapping his knuckles again. Lucius wished he could reach across the table and smash them.

  “I know you don’t like me,” he finally said.

  “It’s not like or dislike, it’s about the project,” Lucius said.

  “The project was shut down weeks ago,” Carlyle cut in. “No proposal necessary. No yea or nay from you or anyone else. The heads sent an evaluator in. I made sure you were off when he arrived. The man saw what we hadn’t accomplished, and shut us down.”

  He paused to let that sink in. Lucius’ mouth opened and closed. He had apparently lost the ability to use it. “But I didn’t know—”

  “Nobody did. Well, hardly anybody.”

  “Then how is this—”

  “I was in contact with some generous benefactors,” Carlyle said. “They were more than happy to take the reins. In a couple days they’ll be sending in new workers to help us bring the project to the next level. To true success.”

  Lucius slowly brought his fingers to his head. The events of the night were catching up with him, as were the revelations of what Carlyle had said. He’d been working for a new master for weeks and had no idea. All his threats of proposals and shutting them down…Carlyle had probably had a good laugh about that behind his back.

  “Lucius, listen, this isn’t the end,” Carlyle insisted. “I didn’t tell you because I was afraid you’d overreact. I wanted to have some sort of success with the serum before I broke the news, but that’s taking longer than I thought. Now that you know, I promise nothing will change with how the project’s run. We can still make this work. We can continue.”

  “No, we can’t. I’m done, Carlyle. This was my dream as much as yours, but it’s over now. We needed a wake up call and that,” he pointed to the video, “was it. I’ll find a way to get this shut down. I’ll promise you that.”

  “But what about the genetics side?” Carlyle said before Sykes could walk out the door. “I told you we’re looking into that angle. It seems promising.”

  Lucius continued shaking his head.

  “Look,” Carlyle said, on his feet now, “just because this project doesn’t meet the precious standards of the great Dr. Lucius Sykes, doesn’t mean it should be shut down. We as humans, as a species, don’t we have a right to make ourselves more able to survive? Make us better?”

  “It’s not worth the sacrifice!” Lucius said. “And it’s not just the sacrifice to get there I’m worried about. The product is unstable, and if it fell into the wrong hands…”

  “We knew the dangers all along! I will not have this stopped just because you grew a conscience! I will be remembered for this! This is everything I dreamed of. My ticket out of obscurity.”

  Lucius nearly relented. For a long time this had been his hope as well. But he’d seen the darker side, and it could never be undone. He heaved a heavy sigh. “No. I’m sorry.”

  And before Carlyle could speak he pushed his way out the door.

  CHAPTER 6

  Lucius’ mind was a tornado of thoughts. He hadn’t been in his apartment two minutes before he began pacing, covering the pathetic living space in a few short strides, turning, and covering it again.

  If the people he’d thought were in charge weren’t running the project, then who was? And more importantly, how many others in the lab had known? How many others couldn’t he trust?

  Ryans? Lin? He couldn’t believe she would keep this from him. She would have told him if something that monumental had come up. She wouldn’t have left him in the dark.

  Would she?

  The more Lucius came up with ideas, the more he paced, and the more he paced the more his anger grew. How dare they hide this from him! This project had been his brain child for years, since he was fifteen and knew little about the complexities of man, but much about what he wanted to help him accomplish: to make him a god. To break free of the natural constraints put upon him at birth.

  Only when Dr. Ragan had approached him with funding after seeing his plans did the first glimmer of making it a reality emerge.

  And they gave that dream to someone else.

  Lucius forced himself to stop and collapse in one of the plush chairs near the window. He hadn’t turned on the lights. He found the deep night outside fittingly reflective of his dark mood.

  Great, and now he was becoming overly dramatic.

  Lucius sighed again and let out a few more breaths. He would fix this. He’d fixed many things. This would be no different.

  And then he’d make sure Carlyle, Van, and any others involved were held responsible.

  But not Lin. Hopefully not Lin.

  His phone on the kitchen table went off.

  Lucius watched it buzz. Watched it eventually stop. A missed call. Probably from his mother.

  He ignored it.

  The phone buzzed again. Once. A text.

  She was persistent, wasn’t she? And when had his mother learned to text?

  Another buzz. And another.

  Lucius heaved himself out of the chair. One missed call. Seven texts. All from Lin.

  Lucius’ fingers hesitated as he tapped them open. She might still be at the lab. He hadn’t checked on her after leaving Carlyle. What was so important that she needed to get a hold of him so desperately?

  The texts were all the same.

  Something’s wrong. Come back. They’re here.

  For just a moment, Lucius did nothing. What should he do? Call the police? No, their project was top secret. The police couldn’t be let in.

  He wouldn’t learn anything standing here. Lucius swept up his keys and rushed out.

  CHAPTER 7

  Lucius sensed something was wrong the second he stepped back into the darkened lab. None of the main lights worked. He could only see thanks to the dim glow of the conference rooms on the other side of the production floor. The entire place was a cold, dead thing. Vacant. Hollow. Sick.

  Lucius tried the lights again. Still nothing. He had stayed late many nights to work and the lights had never just shut off.

  Lucius took a step forward. Why did it feel like stepping into a min
efield? And where was Lin? She should have been waiting for him.

  Another step. Static rose on his arms. The sense of an imminent threat. Lucius quelled it. This was the lab. His territory. Nothing bad had ever happened here.

  Well, until today.

  He sucked in a deep breath and strode confidently across the room. There. Nothing to it. He took another breath of relief just as a fist emerged from the darkness and slammed into his stomach.

  At first, Lucius was so shocked he merely gaped silently.

  Two more punches to his face brought him to his knees. Throbbing. Burning. Choking. The man standing over him let out a deep chuckle.

  “These scientists, I tell you,” he said to another man, grinning like a jackal, “if they just had half as much muscle as they supposedly have brains then they wouldn’t be so easy to break.” The man gently pressed one shoe against Lucius’ forehead and pushed him over onto his back. Lucius coughed again, trying to get air.

  “This one ain’t that smart, though.”

  The other man nudged a chin at Lucius. “Let’s grab ‘n bag. Double time. Shift just got started and we got a lot to do.”

  Each man took an arm. Lucius didn’t even put up a fight. Half of him was in shock, the other half, too much pain.

  The men dragged him towards the conference room. Lucius dreaded to see who was on the other side, though he already knew, even before Carlyle’s ugly face came into view.

  “Carlyle!” He gasped. “What is this? What do you think you’re doing?”

  If Carlyle was conflicted at all about what was happening, he didn’t show it. His eyes were as flat and cold as an icy lake. He merely stepped aside and let the men finish pulling Lucius inside. Ryans was in the corner behind him. He looked as shocked as Lucius felt.

  “Dr. Sykes?”

  In one fluid motion, Carlyle removed a syringe from his pocket.

  “Dr. Sykes has graciously offered himself as a test for our latest serum. It just rolled off the assembly line tonight, with some help from our new friends.” Carlyle nodded to the men holding Lucius. “There are a lot of them, now. Men with real vision. Men who aren’t afraid to take big risks to see results.”

  “No!” Lucius screamed, trying to break free and lunge for Carlyle’s throat. “You can’t do this to me! I was your partner!”

  “Don’t delude yourself, Lucius. We were never partners. You were only in my way.”

  Ryans rushed forward, but one of the men holding Lucius pulled a gun and casually leveled it at his heart. He shook his head, grinning.

  “I wouldn’t do that, pretty boy.”

  In that moment’s hesitation, Carlyle plunged the needle into Lucius’ neck.

  “Don’t worry, Lucius. I’m sure we fixed whatever issue was in the serum we gave that dirty chimp. At least I hope so.”

  Lucius screamed as lava flowed into his veins. The hot press like a branding iron behind his eyes. Everyone in the room watched him. Expectant. Hungry. Fearful.

  A minute passed. Lucius waited for the end to come. Maybe it would be quick and merciful. Maybe he wouldn’t go out in agony like the chimp had.

  After another minute came and went with no change, Carlyle grew frustrated.

  “Go throw him in the cage. Lock this one,” he thumbed to Ryans, “with the woman. Then get the rest of the men in here. We have a lot to discuss. New orders to implement.”

  “What—what did you do with Lin?” Lucius wheezed. The air had suddenly grown heavy in his lungs. His tongue was a lead weight.

  “Nothing. Yet,” Carlyle said. “But that can change if I don’t like the results I see with you. Make us proud, Dr. Sykes. Serve your purpose.”

  Lucius was growing weaker. He could only hang limp as he was dragged out.

  CHAPTER 8

  They hadn’t even cleaned up the blood.

  Lucius sat curled in a corner of Bobo’s cage. The chimp’s rigid corpse lay right beside him, still frozen in death from when Ryans had shot him.

  Despair had ebbed and flowed over him like the tide, but so far he had kept it at bay. He wasn’t dead. Yet. Lin was okay. For now. And he was alive. Also for now.

  There was no telling how long any of that would last. Other than feeling tired, he hadn’t felt anything else. The initial sting of the serum pulsing through his veins was gone. The iron press behind his eyes had faded to a dull throb. He lay on his side, wincing as his cheek met the dried blood on the cold floor.

  He slept

  * * *

  Lucius woke up screaming.

  He was on fire. Every inch of him burned like hot pokers had been stabbed into his flesh and twisted over and over again.

  He leapt up, beating at himself, trying to put out the burning but it wouldn’t stop. It only made it worse.

  One flailing arm slammed into the collection of wood Bobo had used to recline on, fastened to the back of the cage. It was two hundred pounds of branches cobbled together that Lin had insisted Bobo have for calm and relaxation. It’d taken three men to move it into its current place.

  It shattered like glass when Lucius hit it.

  Lucius stood there in the dark, panting as the last of the splinters fell to the floor. He didn’t hear footsteps in the hall outside. Nobody was coming to check to see if he was okay. And for the first time since he’d been in this nightmare, he was okay with that.

  He turned his hand over. He wiggled his fingers to see if any of them were broken. His pinky finger was bent at an odd angle where it had run into the solid wood.

  As he watched, it bent back into place on its own and immediately stopped hurting. Lucius gawked. Ryans’ voice came from the back of his mind.

  My first bullet…it just healed over it.

  That would be the healing factor.

  Shards of wood were scattered across the floor, tinkling when Lucius shuffled them out of the way.

  He was strong now. Extremely strong. Almost…super human strong.

  And then his stomach lurched and Lucius collapsed as a convulsion ripped through it. Darkness took him in seconds.

  * * *

  This time Lucius woke up to the voices.

  Soft and loud, male, female, smooth, rough, playful, deadly. They screamed at him from the corners of the room, shouted from the quiet center of his mind, begging, pleading, demanding, threatening.

  “Stop!” Lucius screamed. The voices swelled in him. “I said stop!” He slammed against the metal bars of the cage to make them stop. Again. Again. But still they laughed at him. Chuckled. Crooned. Promised.

  Lucius stopped banging his head. For a moment there was only the steady drip, drip of the blood coming from the gash in his skull, before it closed up. The voices had promised him something. Promised him what?

  Power. Power and revenge. And all he had to do was listen to them.

  Still clutching his head, Lucius turned to look at the wooden branches he’d busted. He remembered the strength he’d used to bust it into splinters. More power than that. More power than any man. And all of it for him.

  Yes, the voices crooned.

  His project. His body. His world. It had been taken. Stolen.

  Yes, the voices agreed.

  They would help him stop it. Stop all of them. Forever.

  His hands began to shake. He stuffed them beneath his armpits and clamped down, trying to make them stop.

  Two men were at the doorway. Lucius hadn’t heard them approach. That wasn’t surprising considering the voices had started shouting at him again. Some of them were awfully insistent.

  One of the men shined his flashlight on Lucius’ face.

  “He going crazy?” one man asked.

  “Looks like it,” the man with the light said.

  “Geez…where’d all that wood come from?” the other one said. “You think he—”

  “That ape did it.”

  “You sure? I could have sworn the cage was clean—”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. What, you think some wimp scientist could
do that?”

  “Eh…I don’t know. Should we tell Carlyle? I don’t want to be here if he gets those crazy powers like that monkey.”

  “He won’t. And Carlyle’s gone, remember? Flew out an hour ago.”

  The flashlight beam dropped to the floor. “This one’s a dead man. Those other two locked in the office’ll be soon too.”

  “I’d like a chance with the pretty one, first.”

  “Well, let’s make her useful before we make her bleed. See if she’ll help our men with finding where everything is. Get the scientists set up at their stations.”

  “Right.” One of them hurried off.

  The voices cried for Lucius to follow. They were curious to kill. Curious to know how it would feel. Would the men twitch when they died? Would they bleed a lot?

  His hands had stopped shaking, but his fingers itched to find out. He’d always had a curious mind. He was, above all, a scientist.

  The last man spat at Lucius’ feet and closed the door. The darkness came again, and with it, more voices. They crawled from the walls, dangled from the ceiling, buzzed like flies inside his brain.

  And they brought the anger with them.

  As a boy, Lucius had hurt Tamison Smith. Badly.

  Since then he’d always kept his anger in check. Like a caged lion it had prowled around at the edges of his mind, waiting to break free. Now the voices had the key. Now they unlocked the cage. They let the lion out.

  Tamison Smith’s arm had never healed the same.

  Lucius would make sure those who’d done this to him never healed at all.

  CHAPTER 9

  When he was ready, Lucius banged on the cage. He screamed. He beat his fists on the floor.

  And then he lay on the ground, splayed like he was dead, and waited.

  One minute, two minutes.

  The room door opened.

  “You dead yet—oh. Yeah, guess you are.” Lucius heard the man step into the room. Heard his feet shuffle uncertainly towards him.

  “Crap, crap, uh…” There was the click as a holster was unclipped, followed by a loud bang and searing pain as a bullet went into his upper back, just missing his spine.