by Kipjo Ewers
“I’ve been thinking about the events of what happened during your execution and escape,” Charles said hesitantly, “and I have a theory I’d like to try on you.”
Charles pulled out a large gun like spray canister from a shopping bag labeled “Carter’s County”, to which Sophia knitted her brow not so sure she wanted to be Charles’s guinea pig.
“What is that?” she coiled back in her stool seat.
“Bear mace,” he swallowed hard, “Pleases…don’t kill me.”
“What…?,” before she could ask what the hell he’s planning, Charles immediately sprayed her in the face with a full blast of mace, instantly Sophia screamed in sheer agonizing pain, something she hadn’t felt since leaving the prison. Immediately she sprung to her feet knocking over the stool she sat on and sledgehammers half of the breakfast nook right off. Hampton dived for cover to avoid one of Sophia’s powerful swipes.
“What…the…?!” she screamed.
“Just give it a second!” Charles begged cutting her off before she dropped the F-bomb.
“Give it a second?! You stupid son of a bitch!” she roared, “In a second I’m gonna break your neck once I can…”
Instantly Sophia’s eyes began to fill up with white foam, the foam then turned into liquid form running not just from her eyes, but from her nose as well, she then drew back and hocked up a massive spit of thick yellow stuff at Hampton’s feet making him coil back disgusted. As she wiped her face with the sleeve of her jacket, she realized how quickly the pain had left her and that she could see clearly again. Without hesitation, Hampton hit her with another blast of the bear mace, aside from the irritation of getting wet this time it had no effect on her as it did before.
“You’re gonna keep going till I make you eat that right?” she said baring her teeth.
Charles quickly stopped tossing the can far away handing her a kitchen towel which she snatched from him to wipe her face, “Sorry…really sorry…but this proves my theory…you’re not a Marvel…you’re a DC.”
“What?” she asked again confused not understanding his comic book jargon.
“Fanboy reference…actually you’re kind of both since you have,” Charles got excited about to go into an explanation.
Sophia put a hand up stopping him, “Charlie…I don’t care.”
“Right”, he coughed getting back to business, “Basically your body not only makes you immune to all forms of diseases and gives you extremely hyper regenerative healing. It improves and builds defenses ensuring that you can’t be physically hurt the same way again…during the execution they put you to sleep, stopped you from breathing, then they stopped your heart…but brain activity usually continues for a couple of minutes.”
“Fighting to stay alive,” she remembered.
“This means the source of this defense mechanism making changes to your body is most likely your brain. It probably has developed some higher independent function commanding your body to build defenses when attacked; it’s the most logical theory. My guess is the Sodium thiopental knocked you out because it wasn’t an initial detrimental threat to your system. You would have probably woke up after the pancuronium bromide, but then you got hit with the potassium chloride,” he hypothesized.
“This “higher independent function” knew it was under attack and determined that a massive adrenaline rush would jumpstart your heart and lungs restoring oxygen and nutrient to the brain while it dealt with the toxins with you.” Charles went onto explain with some excitement, “I’m also guessing your cells have the ability to analyze foreign threats to your system and send data to your brain which dictates how best to handle the threat. Again, this is all theory, when you got shot up; just as if it would a virus, the cells probably analyzed the slugs still within you. This higher independent function probably determined that the best way to prevent injury like this again after your cells repaired you was to increase the density of your skin to repel bullets in the future. I wouldn’t be shocked if it took some of the properties of those slugs and just added it to your genetic code in order to do it; naturally it would have to do it to the rest of your body like your bones, muscles, and other organs for you to properly function, which is why you increased in weight…”
Sophia shot him another dirty look, Charles remembered how she almost fell out when she found out she now weighed four hundred and eighty-seven pounds due to the density increase. Superhuman or not a woman’s weight was still dangerous territory to cross.
“Which is why…you have great superhuman strength among other things”, he swallowed hard trying to let her see the brighter side while making a mental note never to bring up her weight again.
“And it kind of makes sense, physically due to exercise and nutrition we’re far more superior than our ancestors thousands of years ago…our bodies do have chemicals and properties inside of us to take us to a superhuman state…we see it every day in athletes, gifted people, and hormonal imbalances like gigantism. Your body just has the ability to do it without the negative side effects that can kill you. It also does it on a maximum level. Pain is definitely one of your triggers…I didn’t know to what magnitude so I went with bear mace just to be sure,” Charles explained with a big smile trying to find the humor in blasting his best friend with mace.
Sophia glared at him not finding the joke, making Charles step back a bit taking another mental note to stop putting his foot in his mouth around her.
She decided to change the subject before she hurt him, “So if I hadn’t been executed or shot.”
“You would be well…you…without your additional abilities,” was his hypothesis, “But with a very…very long lifespan…you’d probably outlive everyone on this planet...at your current stage I’d say you definitely will…I don’t even think you’ll even age at this point.”
Sophia walked over and sat down in Charles’s sofa with a blank look on her face and an unimaginable weight in her eyes. An apparent misconception that everyone would be thrilled with the prospect of living forever, not that she did not fear dying, but the possibility of living forever just was not normal. Charles somberly walked over sitting on the arm of his lounge chair to be there for his friend.
“Charlie…the only thing I can think of that can do this is a virus…but I don’t possibly see how I was infected,” she said without looking up.
Charles had a face as if he wanted to say something, he had an idea of how she was infected, but he decided not to go there, as she clearly was not in a good place.
“It’s not like you’d know,” Charles got up sitting on the arm of the sofa getting closer to her, "This isn’t the type of virus that makes you sick…you can’t get sick…you’re like a female David Dunn.”
Sophia narrowed her eyes looking up as she caught his comment, “That’s another fan boy reference?”
“Uh…yeah…point is,” Charles hesitated choosing his words carefully, “I think you’re skating over the possible origin of this entire situation…all of this leads back to one night and one obvious person that this is all about.”
Sophia bowed her head looking at her feet, knowing what Charles was leading onto, the night where everything changed for her. In her gut she knew that whatever was happening to her had to do with the sci-fi assassins who murdered her husband. That everything leading up until now had to do with something Robert knew, saw, or had.
“I was trying to avoid contacting people for help,” she sighed, “But I’m not getting anywhere at this point, clearly these people I’m looking for are military or mercenary…I need someone from that world. I think I know who to talk to, problem is I’m pretty damn sure he’s not going to want to talk to me.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Armitage and Mercer sat in the video room eating diner, while watching video footage of Sophia Dennison from almost four years ago within the bank from when she opened the joint checking account. When she withdrew money from the ATM the day after her husband’s murder, driving through the tollboot
h heading to Oklahoma, and when she checked into the hotel at the airport. On the table next to Armitage’s Big Mac were grizzly photos of the late Lieutenant Robert Matheson, reports taken from the crime scene, and a disc with video footage of Sophia’s interrogation after her arrest in Oklahoma. Mercer munched on his big salad with a sour look on his face, it was unclear if it was because he had to eat rabbit food while his partner gorged away on fast food, or that they were watching footage from a much-closed case.
“Tell me why again we’re looking at evidence from an open and shut case from four years ago?” Dustin finally indicated why he had a sour puss.
“Know thy enemy,” Mark recited.
“You start with that Sun Tzu shit, I’m gonna hit you with my big salad,” Dustin warned.
“It baffles me how you became an F.B.I agent,” Mark returned before proceeding to point out why he was going through old files and footage, “Under almost sixteen hours of on-going interrogation she couldn’t give account for withdrawing the money from the ATM, or checking into the hotel.”
Dustin dryly volleyed back, “She couldn’t give account for murdering her husband either.”
“But she did admit that her husband and her did make love that night,” Mark threw out while munching on a fry.
“Big whoop,” Dustin snorted as he mixed his big salad into the balsamic vinegar dressing, “DNA and fluid proved that, like the DNA and finger prints on the wedding knife.”
“Yes, and the video footage, and the eye witnesses,” Mark noted while driving his thought home, “But through her entire interrogation her story never changed…she kept saying she didn’t remember. All that damning evidence and her story never changed.”
To which Dustin reminded him, “Reports from the psychologist who examined her stated she could have went into a psychotic episode, a blood rage where one doesn’t remember anything.”
“But the forensics report said that she took her time killing her husband,” Mark fired back, “That it looked like she picked spots on his body to stab a total of forty-one times…that he basically died an agonizing death while bleeding out.”
“Your point?” Dustin asked believing Mark’s statement brought home that Sophia Dennison was a psychotic bitch.
“First of all she’s a neurosurgeon,” he said wagging a fry in the air pulling his thoughts together, “If this was all about money, she could have thought of a million other ways to kill him without being suspected. Why murder him in such a sadistic barbaric way knowing she would be hunted down and caught? You don’t have to be a master criminal to know this was pure amateur bullshit. This is something you do if you want to get caught…or someone is setting you up.”
“No other DNA, foreign fibers, or finger prints were found at the scene or on the murder weapon,” Dustin recited the case files in a zombie like tone, “No sign of forced entry, and no footprints from another party to suspect foul play from someone else. They even checked for foreign footprints and vehicles tracks outside the premise just to be sure, which is a lot considering they had the only possible suspect in custody.”
“Then explain to me this,” Mark went back to the footage of when she walked into the bank, “The defense’s key argument at the time Dennison claimed to have opened her private checking account. Dennison keyed out at 12:05 PM for lunch and went over to the Subway for her usual six-inch Teriyaki chicken on a honey roll with Doritos Ranch Potato chips and a bottle of water. The security cameras were not working for some reason that day, but two of the food prep people and the cashier came forward to testify that she was there, not to mention she had a receipt for the transaction with the time stamped on it, which she kept in her car. She had her lunch on the front lawn of the hospital, and then punched back into the hospital with her security key card at 12:45 PM. The time stamp here on the video shows that she walked into the bank of 12:15 PM and didn’t leave till 12:38 PM.”
“Again…your point?” Dustin no longer in the mood to play Law and Order.
“She didn’t take her car with her. Cameras showed it still in its parking spot. Her bank is on the other side of town a good forty-five minutes in traffic. How did she get there and back in that short amount of time?” asked Mark knowing it was impossible for her to do.
“Uh…taxi?” returned Mercer.
“Not one cab driver in the whole of Houston could confirm that they drove her to the bank and back on that day,” Mark fired back.
Not waiting for Dustin to attempt to refute his building theory on the case, Mark pulled out a report from the Subway restaurant slapping it down in front of him, “This report says that the security cameras were checked on January 15, 2005 for maintenance. They were up to code, three weeks before this incident. Two of them were only a year old. What are the odds that all six cameras fail to record the day this woman is obviously in two places at the same time during her lunch break? On top of that, how much did they say she transferred between accounts online from her computer the night she murdered her husband?”
Dustin sighed grabbing a file to confirm, “2.9 million…”
“Dustin...Federal law states anything transferred over ten thousand dollars is a red flag,” Mark reminded him, “no one is allowed to transfer that amount of money online, even between their own accounts. You have to go into a bank to make that type of transfer. And she did this with a regular Dell laptop? She’s got a Master’s degree from Texas Southwestern for Neuroscience, not a hacking degree from the Masters of Deception. So how did she become Jonathan James in one night? And why wasn’t this office tapped?”
Dustin shrugged, “It was, but it was clear that this was a case of domestic foul play, not drugs or terrorism. As you said, she somehow managed to transfer the money between accounts in the same bank; it wasn’t wired overseas. Based on that it was a State case not Federal.”
“Dustin…this woman somehow broke through her bank’s firewall and transferred over two million dollars online with a laptop,” Mark glared back at his friend, “No one thought to bring this woman in and find out how she did it?! How big of a red flag needs to go up to know that there is something seriously friggin wrong with this whole case, and it’s not from a couple of days ago?!”
Mark summated his final point, “At the prison when she resurrected the first time she repeated over and over again that she remembered. Call me crazy, but I think she remembered what happened that night, I think she remembered who really murdered her husband.”
“Interesting theory,” Dustin finally nodded in agreement, “Which we’ll never know unless we can find her, and bring her in to ask.”
Dustin reached over to grab some of Mark’s fries when he gets his hand smacked hard, “I told you about reaching for my food, get your own.”
“You know Bethany’s got me on this damn diet because of my cholesterol,” Dustin pleaded, “I just wanted a couple.”
“Not my problem,” Mark said denying his friend while stuffing a hand full of fries in his mouth.
The telecom went off in the office stopping the conversation of stealing food as Mark tapped on the answer button, which automatically switched it to speaker mode as he munched away on his fries, “Speak.”
“Sir,” said the agent on the other end, “We’ve located Sophia Dennison.”
Those four magical words almost caused Armitage to choke on his fries as he tried to speak with a full mouth.
Dustin just wagged a finger at him, “See…God don’t like ugly.”
Mark ignored his partner’s stupid comment, “Where?” He demanded to know getting to his feet while looking for his jacket.
“She’s at Dr. Charles Hampton’s home, agents IDed her from the video footage at the Martin’s house,” returned the agent, “Apparently she’s made contact with him.”
“Is she still there?” Dustin demanded to know.
