I Am Phantom (Novella): Subject Number One

by Fletcher, Sean

  Lucius didn’t flinch. The voices retreated, barely.

  This pain! This pain felt good. And it made the voices go away. For a while, anyway.

  The man gave a satisfied grunt. “Good enough for me.” The cage door squeaked as the man opened it up. “Why do I always have to get rid of the bodies,” he grumbled.

  Lucius stood. The movement was so fast that the man was still leaning over, hand outstretched, to grab him. It was as if time had stopped for everyone else, but stayed the same for him.

  The man’s eyes widened. He might have yelled something. Maybe screamed. Might have, but that was before Lucius grabbed his throat and squeezed. There was a sharp snap of bone.

  So they did twitch!

  But…Lucius easily lifted the man up and drew him closer to have a look. The man was still alive. Good. Very good.

  Still holding the man aloft in front of him, Lucius stepped out of the cage and looked around. The knife Lin had used to cut apples for Bobo sat perched nearby. How incredibly fitting.

  Lucius dropped the man. His body made a dull thud on the tile. Lucius retrieved the knife. The man hadn’t moved. How could he? His spinal cord was probably snapped.

  Lucius knelt down, gently peeled back the layers of the man’s collar. Brought the knife to his throat.

  Lucius had watched people get their throats cut in movies. In those, they made it look so easy. Slice. Dice. Done. Quick and efficient.

  But that’s not how it worked in real life. The throat was a lot tougher than he gave it credit for. It had a lot of layers. He had to saw back and forth to cut through the gristle, the man gurgling beneath him. But it was easy enough. Probably because the movies didn’t account for enhanced strength.

  He was almost done, but the second Lucius applied a little more pressure the knife cut clean through the throat, lodging itself in the tile beneath.

  Lucius stared at what he’d done.

  Oops, said the voices. Oh, well. Practice, practice, practice! Let’s find another.

  Lucius dislodged the knife and stood.

  The next was in the hallway. They had foolishly left the lights off in this corner of the lab, so the man didn’t see him before it was far too late.

  More! More! The voices cried. Lucius was more than happy to appease them. At one point, though it seemed like a lifetime ago, he would have felt horrified at what he was doing. But since last night his view of things had shifted, as if the seat his conscience occupied in his mind had been vacated. He was merely watching this entire thing play out like the spectator of a gladiatorial game rather than actually performing the deeds.

  Emotions had fled him as well. Like all the nerve endings connecting to the empathetic portion of his brain had been cauterized. Lucius understood this. He didn’t care. It was probably for the better. If he had been able to care, it wouldn’t have made any of this so easy.

  He had trouble walking at first. Every time he took a step he’d end up five feet farther than where he’d intended. Whenever he would clench his fist his knuckles would crack and the bones in his fingers shatter and have to repair themselves. Strong. Far too strong.

  But these things didn’t bother Lucius. He was alone in this section of the lab. In the other sections were unsuspecting men and women. He would get to them soon enough. In a few minutes he’d managed to get basic movement down. He’d need more practice, but that would come later.

  “Walking, walking, seems so easy now,” he hummed to himself, tossing the knife back and forth in his hands, learning their new dexterity and strength. “But I can remember when I was young, and I did not know how...”

  The hallway came out at a four-way. To the left, the lab, with all the shiny equipment and brand-new prey prime for cutting. Straight—freedom. Soon. But not just yet. There was still important work to be done.

  Which meant right was where he wanted to go. The doctors’ private offices.

  The voices had quieted down. Perhaps satiated for the time being by the prior carnage.

  They would not be quiet for long.

  But the rational part of his mind came back for a moment. It would flicker in and out like an old TV set, bounce back and forth like two children on a see saw.

  He was a monster now, yes. They had made him this way. But even monsters had a reason for being. Hearing that Carlyle had brought new people in to continue his serum had given Lucius his purpose: Destroy this project, and all those involved. Punish those who’d taken everything from him. And if anyone tried to stop him?

  Lucius shrugged to no one. Breaking the man’s neck had been fun. He wondered what else he could break on a human.

  The row of locked doctors’ office doors presented no challenge. Lucius merely went from one to the next. With an easy tug he could wrench off the handle.

  They were empty. A shame.

  Except…

  He broke the lock on the next door and pushed it open. Lin and Ryans looked up from their chairs. They froze. Then Lin’s face lit up.

  “Lucius! Oh, thank god! Carlyle, he’s—he’s gone insane!”

  “I think I have more experience in that particular area,” Lucius said, suppressing a giggle.

  The smile dripped from Lin’s face. She took a step towards him. Her eyes pored over the blood stains on his clothes. Ryans had hung back. His body was half turned towards Lucius like he expected to have to defend himself at any moment. He could see what Lin hadn’t yet.

  Oh what it would feel like to tickle their throats with his knife, eat up the fear in their faces as they died.

  “Lin,” Ryans said quietly, reaching for her hand to pull her back. “I told you what they did to him—” She tugged away.

  “Lucius, Carlyle…what did he—?”

  “Gave me a little cocktail,” Lucius said. “They got the mixture a teensy bit wrong. But don’t worry, I feel fiiine.”

  Ryans scrambled to grab Lin’s hand and edged them both around towards the door.

  Lucius kept smiling, turning with them. If he could pick one animal to be, it’d be a shark. The power, the teeth, the smell of blood. All of it seemed perfect right now. His eyes zeroed in on Ryans.

  “You,” he said. “You let them do this to me.”

  “I didn’t know what they were doing!” Ryans said. “Honest, Dr. Sykes. They pulled me in there and then—I swear, I had nothing—”

  Dr. Sykes? Yes, that’s who he had been. How had he already forgotten that?

  For a brief moment, sanity returned. Lucius clutched the sudden pain in his skull.

  Lin must have seen the conflict in his face. Suspected it was a chink in his armor.

  “Lucius, please. Let us help.” She reached for him. Lucius drew back. “I’m—I’m not—”

  “Lucius, it’s me. We can—”

  Kill them!

  The voices swarmed in.

  “Lucius!”

  Kill them!

  “Run,” he whispered while he was still able to think clearly.

  No! Kill them!

  “Please!” Lucius said. “Run!”

  Ryans didn’t need telling twice. He heaved Lin off her feet and took off down the hallway.

  The voices screamed at him. They pummeled him, made him beat his head against the wall. The pain made them stop for a moment. Just a moment, but it was a relief.

  He’d let them go. In a rage, Lucius tore up the room. Ripping apart chairs and breaking desks were fine, but it wasn’t the same. It didn’t quiet the voices. They would only be satisfied by one thing.

  He kept breaking down the office doors. In the last one he found Dr. Van.

  Lucius smiled a toothy smile. Yes, he’d definitely be a shark.

  “Don’t beg,” Lucius said when Dr. Van opened his mouth. “You and I both know it won’t help. Take pride in your work! Look what you’ve done!”

  He closed the door behind him, stepped around the quaking Dr. Van and read from the computer screen he was working on.

  “My, my, you have been busy.�
�

  Four names. Four different cities. Newborn babies. Gene maps below them. The next unwitting tests subjects; all under a folder entitled Project Midnight. Lucius peered closer. A boy named Drake Sinclair had a particularly interesting genetic makeup. Very interesting. Perhaps, one day, Lucius would pay him a visit.

  “Looks like Carlyle’s going ahead with the gene mapping.”

  Dr. Van shuddered. “Lucius…”

  Lucius stood and gently placed the tip of his knife against Dr. Van’s shoulder.

  It was just a little push into the wall, like pinning a butterfly collection.

  Dr. Van screamed long enough for Lucius to retrieve the cubed paperweight from his desk and gag him. It didn’t quite fit, so a little more pushing was required. The voices shuddered with pleasure at the sound of Dr. Van’ jaw coming unhinged.

  “That was almost clever of you, sabotaging my office,” Lucius said. “Thought you might scare me? Make me more open to falling in line with our change of ownership once Carlyle broke the news? After all, what better way to draw me to our new masters than with the promise of bolstered protection from things like that?”

  Lucius heaved a dramatic sigh, as if he was almost regretful. “But it didn’t quite play out like that, did it?” He glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Oh, well. Sorry, but I’ve got other appointments. First you, then this lab, then Carlyle.” Lucius ticked each off on his fingers. “Yes, that sounds about right. Behold your glorious creation and his new purpose!”

  Dr. Van whimpered.

  Lucius grinned. “Isn’t this fun?”

  It was a good thing they were at the end of the hallway. Even with a paperweight in his mouth, the man had quite the scream.

  * * *

  Lucius wiped the blood off his knife and closed Dr. Van’s door behind him. There was no reason to get the messy bits anywhere but the office.

  And now…he began walking towards the lab, towards everyone else. Alarms had started going off. Ryans’ doing, probably. Lucius would make him pay for that.

  He was what he was. No going back. He would find the others Carlyle planned to inject. He would destroy this place. He’d hunt down any remnants of what had once been his project.

  The alarms blared louder. Lucius Sykes grinned.

  Let the fun begin.

  The voices tittered and squeaked.

  END

  Lucius Sykes returns as Phantom’s greatest foe in I Am Phantom.

  Read ahead for a preview…

  Drake Sinclair is a freak. There’s no other explanation for his superhuman speed, strength, and fighting prowess that makes him feared by his peers. But going to college in North Carolina promises a fresh start; a new place with new people, and maybe, just maybe, a chance to discover the origin of his abilities...

  Until the psychopath arrives.

  The notorious serial killer, Lucius Sykes, is physically enhanced like Drake: stronger, faster, smarter than any human. He is the original survivor of the illegal tests done to both of them by Project Midnight; a project that will stop at nothing to capture Drake and complete their experiments.

  Trapped between Sykes’ murderous frenzy against guilty and innocents alike, and the brutality of Project Midnight, Drake realizes his own superhuman abilities are the only things that can stop them both. He takes to the streets as Phantom, a vigilante straddling the blurred lines of good and evil. Hounded by the chief of police, his morality tested by the sickness and hate he fights everyday, and split between stopping Sykes and seeking answers from him, Phantom must find out who the real evil is before everything he’s come to love goes to ruin.

  Chapter One

  In Which I Screw Up

  My day really began the moment the men shot at me.

  To set the record straight, it wasn’t my usual idea of fun.

  I crouched lower in the thick underbrush, blending in as much as I could in the black hoodie I’d worn to ward off the April chill of South Dakota. I could just imagine how the headlines would read: Local Boy, Drake Sinclair, Killed by Poachers With Lucky Aim.

  Not the kind of ending I’d hoped for. Not that I contemplated my end too much.

  The first poacher who’d fired at me swore as he tripped over another branch. He shook his leg to free his camo jeans and angrily pulled his jacket as it snagged on a limb. The small clump of thick trees surrounding us may have only been a windbreak, but it was still treacherous underfoot. Especially if you didn’t know where you were going. And were an idiot.

  “I swear I saw something,” he said. “Really, I did.”

  The second poacher growled. “You didn’t see nothing! Just a bird or rabbit. Probably didn’t hit it anyway.”

  No, he did not hit me. But there was an oak tree a few yards back that was nursing two slugs and some deep resentment. I breathed out as the poachers passed, then stopped, afraid they’d see my breath. Then I realized that was stupid.

  It was six thirty am. I had been out on my morning run and it was very dark. That’s probably what the poachers were thinking (not too much, trust me) when they’d come out. Dark enough to poach without being caught, but too dark to see what they were shooting at; mainly, me.

  Brilliant!

  By now the poachers had moved far enough away to allow me to move. I easily leapt into the tree next to me and landed silently on one of the sturdier limbs to watch them.

  They had been smart (kind of) to come to the backwoods of Dale Janson’s land. He owned so much, the back two hundred acres were almost never checked. ‘Perfect mischief ground’ my dad called it. Mischief ground.

  That’s why I was here. It was the only place I could be…me.

  I mapped an imaginary course through the trees in front of me, judged my moves, and jumped, leaping from tree to tree, so quiet I didn’t even rustle a leaf. I eyed one on my right and went for it, clearing the twenty-foot gap with ease.

  Some called it Parkour. Free running, finding the most efficient way to move, envisioning new ways to use space. Fun, I called it.

  Time to put the practice into play.

  The poachers were just ahead of me. No doubt they were looking for the tons of deer that loved the fields of clover Dale Janson owned. I’d outrun a herd of them on the ten-mile run from my house to here.

  “Man, you sure we won’t get caught?” Tubby poacher asked. He leveled his Remington, like it would keep him safe. The skinny one laughed.

  “You scared? ‘Fraid old man Dale’s gonna catch you?” His boots crunched leaves. “Or you frightened of the spooks ‘round here? Oooh! Demons! Phantoms!”

  “Stop that!”

  “Nah, you stop being a baby. And trigger happy. We shoot off too much, somebody’s gonna come lookin’.”

  Their shapes stood out to me in the near darkness. Time to make my move.

  I hit the ground and rolled, then took off towards them. I rushed the fat one, my feet flying over the ground, coming within a foot from him and yanking on the tail of his shirt before jumping back.

  “Gah!” He yelped. “What was that?”

  “Watch where you point that thing! Watch it!”

  I charged them again. The skinny one must have sensed something coming his way, because he swung his shotgun around and fired right at me.

  Pssh. Lucky guess.

  I twisted in midair, contorting my body so the slug buzzed harmlessly past and cracked! into the tree behind me. I grabbed the hood of his hunting jacket and tugged it hard over his eyes and shoved him into the fat one.

  “Run,” I whispered.

  I didn’t know men could scream that high.

  “Go! Go!” The skinny one shoved his friend forward and together they stumbled, tumbled and tripped their way back the way they had come. I stood there and tried to keep from laughing too loudly.

  When they were gone I checked behind me at the horizon, which had begun to turn a light pink. I usually liked to stay out longer. With the end of my high school senior year coming up, I had a lot to think abo
ut, and no easy answers. There were still classes to worry about, and I needed to decide what college I was going to for my psychology major. If I was going at all.

  But I couldn’t hang around here. If those two goons caught sight of a black-hoodied kid running out of a forest they thought was haunted, well…that’d be an awkward meet ‘n greet.

  So I started running back home.

  South Dakota, to me, is split into two categories: not boring, and boring.

  Unfortunately, I’d been born in the boring part. Don’t get me wrong, it’s beautiful country, lush and green in the springtime, and the sky sometimes seems like it can go on forever and ever. But this time of year the landscape was struggling to get back some color, with spots of clover and forbs sprouting up and dotting the sides of the roads. What was left of the grass after winter was valiantly trying to break through to the surface. The land was flat, flatter and flattest, and if you found one of the few hills around, you could see for miles.

  My feet churned under me, the cold air refreshing in my lungs. In four minutes I had cleared Dale’s boundary at the three-mile mark. Six miles I was nearing my hometown, Maize, South Dakota (Yeah, Maize. Seriously) and hearing the hourly bell toll, and by nine miles I had to slow down, so if people saw me, they wouldn’t see a kid running faster than was humanly possible.

  I should probably explain: I’m not normal.

  When I was fourteen…things started happening. And I don’t mean puberty, geez. No, something far stranger. And having gone through puberty that’s saying a lot.

  One day I woke up and my world had changed. My vision was sharper, colors more vibrant than they’d ever been before. Walking had almost become difficult because my muscles were so strong. I could leap farther, jump higher, move heavy objects that normal humans would find impossible. And my speed…that’s what had scared people the most. It must have been unnerving seeing only a blur and then having me appear by their side. By the time I learned to keep that in check it was too late, and some of the kids in Maize had already grown suspicious.