The Prometheus Effect

by David Fleming

  Mykl stiffened as she reached for him. She slowly rolled him to the point where he precariously balanced at the edge of the seat. Then, with a swipe of her fingers, she flicked him beyond the balance point and let him fall out of the van.

  With his hands and feet bound, there was nothing he could do to break his fall. He hit the asphalt knees first, then grunted as his left shoulder impacted, followed by his face.

  “Oops,” she said. She dragged him by his hair to a nearby light pole. Mykl had to grit his teeth to keep from crying out.

  The old bulb in the fixture above flickered like a candle in a graveyard. Mykl stared past it and up into the dark sky; there were no stars to wish upon. Rain streaked through the light to pelt his face. He asked in his mind, Is anyone out there? Only a weak flash of lightning answered him. The thunder never came.

  He blinked. Wait. That’s not lightning; it’s the beam of a headlight. But it was quite a ways off.

  Lori’s face loomed over his; she hadn’t noticed the headlights. Her steaming fetid breath wafted past nicotine-stained teeth to his nostrils. Mykl didn’t understand why, but there was something terribly familiar about all this.

  “What do you think of my toy?” Lori asked. She brandished the corkscrew in front of his eyes. “I wonder how this will feel. Should be interesting…”

  “Why do you do it, Lori?” Mykl asked. If I can keep her talking…

  She pressed the corkscrew to the base of his throat. “There are already too many kids in the world. You’re like a virus that keeps on multiplying. The media thinks I’m a monster, but to everyone else, the Angel is a savior. Every child I kill will be one less mouth for their taxes to feed, one less consumer to drain resources, and one less mind to compete for jobs. Plus, no one cares about you, and no one is going to miss you.”

  As twisted as it sounded, Mykl saw some logic in her thought process. He had wondered every so often what his impact on society was, and now he had a madwoman’s perspective on it.

  “Are things really so bad that the extermination of a few kids will make a difference?” he asked.

  “Of course not. You’d have to kill millions to change anything. But that’s not going to keep me from doing my part. And you know, what I do is nothing compared to what is being done legally in other countries. Every day they kill a hundred times the number of children I’m going to do by letting them die of starvation and disease! It’s a terrible way to die; it takes months or years. I’ll take care of business in a few hours or less. So let me ask you, Mykl: who’s the greater monster?”

  Mykl closed his eyes and willed his mind to think. His life now hung on his ability to answer her question. But the solution that came to him seemed as dark as the soul hovering over him.

  “Well?” she asked.

  He opened his eyes. “You would have to kill every child born on the planet for the next one hundred years to make a difference, and you couldn’t possibly do that—so why even try?” He hoped she would give the idea some thought before draining him with the corkscrew.

  “You’re right about that. I can’t possibly kill them all, much as I’d like to. But there’s another reason why I do this, and to be honest, it’s the most important one.” Lori paused to drag the tool down his body. Her eyes turned black. “I like to watch you little bastards squirm!”

  She thrust the corkscrew into his right leg, inches above the knee, and twisted. It made a slight pop through his pants, punctured the first layer of skin, then tore deep into muscle. Mykl screamed as pain shot from his leg to his abdomen. He clawed futilely at the harsh desert soil under his back. His legs kicked involuntarily in an effort to escape the siege on his senses. And he knew the end result of his struggling would produce the sinister signature of the Asylum Angel. Evidence of his terror would show like a snow angel in the bloodstained soil.

  Lori stared into his tear-filled eyes and began slowly twisting the corkscrew deeper, every excruciating turn taking him to new levels of agony. Then, in one swift movement, she ripped it free.

  Pain robbed Mykl’s mind of the ability to think.

  Gasping for breath, he gazed along the length of his body. For a moment in time, the world around him seemed to slow, as if the air had grown too thick. He didn’t see bits of tissue and blood spiraling down to form a fat drop at the end of a vicious instrument of torture, nor did he see the hand that held it. Through the rain, and a fate he was beginning to accept, he saw a tall figure materialize, loping lithely toward him.

  With deliberate intention, Lori brought the corkscrew to Mykl’s left eye. A drop of blood fell from its tip. But before it touched his eye, two things happened at once: a bolt of lightning ripped a jagged line through the sky, and the running figure leapt into flight, a muscular missile cleaving a path through the rain directly at Lori.

  A shower of sparks and a blinding flash froze the raindrops in place. The last thing Mykl saw, before painful light created blissful darkness, was the most intense pair of titanium gray eyes he had ever seen.

  CHAPTER 24

  “Bring up the infrared. It looks like that last bolt knocked out power.”

  “We might be next if one of those hits us.”

  “That boy is worth the risk. There! Heat signatures. Land as close as you can.”

  ***

  Windshield wipers swept back and forth aggressively, flinging rain off Lawrence’s windshield. His ringing ears and momentarily blurred vision had robbed him of two much-needed senses. Burned into his retinas was an image of a massive lightning bolt and a figure flying horizontally through the air.

  He blinked until the image faded. And as he drove toward the smoking light pole, his headlights illuminated a lifeless lump. He grabbed a flashlight with his left hand, stepped out of his truck, and drew his sidearm. As he advanced, the lump transformed into a small boy bound in duct tape. A thin stream of blood stained the puddle of water surrounding him.

  “Let go! I can’t breathe!” cried a woman’s voice.

  Lawrence brought up his flashlight and his weapon. He had been so focused on the boy that he hadn’t even see the woman a few yards away. A man stood behind her, holding her in a crushing embrace. He was young and muscular; she was petite and thin.

  “Help me!” she shouted at Lawrence. “He’s the Angel!”

  “Let her go, son,” Lawrence commanded. He leveled his gun at the man’s forehead. He heard the thump of helicopter blades approaching from the west, but he had no attention to spare.

  “She Angel,” the young man said simply. “No let her hurt Mykl.”

  “Let her go and we’ll figure this out.” Lawrence’s finger rested lightly on the trigger.

  The young man reluctantly released his hold on the woman. She tore herself out of his grasp. The subtle movement of her arm, as if to hide something, was not lost on Lawrence; neither were her gloved hands, vest, and oversized boots.

  A low moan escaped the boy on the ground.

  The woman took a step toward the boy. “He’s hurt. Let me help him.”

  The helicopter circled high above. An intense spotlight shined down upon them.

  “Stop!” Lawrence shouted.

  She ignored the warning and lunged at the boy. Lawrence dropped his flashlight. Before it had even hit the ground, he had drawn a precision stun gun from his left holster and fired twice. Two barbed darts slammed into the woman, one in her neck and the other in her left buttock. She fell short of the boy, incapacitated and screaming obscenities.

  Lawrence proudly wore two identical service medals on his uniform. Grandmaster marksman, right and left-handed.

  The young man who had been holding the woman extended his arms in front of him and clapped stiff-handedly. “Nice shots!”

  There was something strange about that boy. “Thanks. Now who are you?” Lawrence knelt to handcuff the screaming woman, never once releasing the flow of voltage from the stunner.

  “James. I helps Mykl now, please?”

  “Put some pressure o
n that leg wound of his, James.”

  “Yessirs.” James stumbled over to the boy—Mykl—and firmly placed his hand on the injured leg. “Myyykll?”

  Rain bombarded them in thick sheets as thunder echoed all around. The black helicopter had landed, and now sat atop a hill about fifty yards away, its glistening blades gradually slowing.

  Lawrence had secured the woman in handcuffs, but he continued to pin her to the ground with his knee as he watched three men deboard the helicopter and approach. Two were in military uniform—one of whom carried a medical bag—and the third man wore a black suit. The man in the suit walked with confidence, seemingly oblivious to the rain soaking him and his expensive shoes. When he stopped a pace away, he knelt in the mud to pick up a shiny object—Lawrence’s nametag, which had fallen off. Lawrence felt an immediate affinity to this stranger who didn’t care a lick about ruining nice clothes.

  “Yours, I believe?” the man said, offering him the nametag.

  “Yep, thanks. Damned thing’s always popping off this new jacket. Drop it in my breast pocket if you would.”

  The man did so. “I’d offer to shake your hand, Mr. Hansen, but you seem to have them full at the moment.” The suited man directed the medical technician to check on Mykl.

  Lawrence gave a wary smile and yanked the woman to her feet. She sulked, sullen and defeated. “Who are you and why are you here?” he asked the suited man.

  “Jack Grey, Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Jack presented his credentials. “We recently solved the latest cipher of the Asylum Angel. This is the place where he—she,” Jack pointed to the handcuffed woman, “intended to commit her atrocity. But it looks like you beat us here—fortunately. Nice shooting, by the way. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Jack beamed with genuine admiration.

  “All it takes is dedication and practice.” Lawrence returned the smile. “Well, what happens now? Are you taking custody of this demon?”

  “No. I’ve notified the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department to rendezvous with us. They should be here in about twenty minutes to take her off your hands. We will, however, be taking the boy to get some medical attention.”

  “What about the other one?”

  They looked over to where James anxiously observed the medic attending to Mykl. He sat on his bottom, hugging his knees to his chest and rocking back and forth rhythmically. Concern clouded his face, and he softly called out the boy’s name over and over.

  “I’ll be taking him too,” Jack said.

  “All right, I’m going to secure this beast to my truck until Metro gets here.”

  Lawrence’s prisoner made a frantic attempt to tear herself from his grasp, but succeeded in achieving only a half a second of freedom before Lawrence reapplied power to the silver darts still embedded in her flesh.

  “Listen here, missy, there’s another twenty minutes worth of charge in this, and I have two extra batteries. I’d be more than happy to drain them all on you, but I’ll leave that up to you. Choose carefully, because it’s likely the last choice you will ever get in this life.”

  The woman launched a curse at Lawrence’s manhood.

  “That’s the spirit,” he replied.

  Lawrence handcuffed her to the heavy-duty bumper of his truck. Unable to dodge the rain, or her fate, she slumped to the ground.

  ***

  Mykl’s head buzzed like it was full of honeybees, and his body tingled all over. Where did all these people come from?

  A man in a park service uniform held a jacket over him as a makeshift umbrella, although the rain seemed to be letting up. Mykl’s tape bindings were being cut by a man in military attire wearing pilot’s wings. The medic tending him ripped his pants to expose his leg. “Ow!” he cried out.

  The medic looked up apologetically. “Sorry about that. I need to get this wound cleaned so it doesn’t get infected. It looks to be a simple soft tissue injury. You’re going to need a tetanus shot though.”

  “A shot?”

  “What’s the matter?” The medic furrowed his brow at Mykl.

  “I hate shots.”

  A man in a soaking wet suit knelt next to Mykl and chuckled before saying matter-of-factly, “Oh, come on. You were abducted by the Asylum Angel, stabbed in the leg with a corkscrew, knocked unconscious by step voltage from a lightning strike, and who knows what else? Can a simple injection with a short sterile needle be all that bad?”

  “Okay, you made your point. I still don’t have to like it.” Mykl pouted in pure five-year-old fashion.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m thirsty, my leg hurts, and I have to pee. Who are you?”

  “My name is Jack.” He extended a hand.

  Mykl’s mind was now regaining some of its normal clarity and suspiciousness. However, it lacked the ability to filter his dry wit. He put his hand in Jack’s and asked, “Like Jack the Ripper?”

  Mykl saw the pilot’s eyes dart to Jack. Jack paused, then said, “Yes. As a matter of fact, my friends call me Rip. Pleased to meet you…?”

  “Mykl. That’s James, my dorm mate from the asylum.” He pointed to James, who was tying knots in his shoelaces. “He saved me. Though I have absolutely no idea how he got here. James? How did you get here?”

  “Taxis,” he said without looking up from his laces.

  “Taxis?” But before he could interrogate his friend further, three black SUVs with dark tinted windows pulled in behind the park service truck. Mykl didn’t need to look at the official plates to identify them as government vehicles, for they so perfectly fit the stereotype seen in so many bad movies. The men exiting them were so unremarkable that they would be invisible the moment they stepped into a crowd. Only the raptor-like way they scanned their surroundings set them apart.

  The park service man, Lawrence, lifted his chin to the SUVs and asked Jack, “They with you?”

  “Yes. They’ll be providing transportation for me, the boy, and his friend.”

  “You’re not flying out on the bird?” Lawrence stared wistfully at the sleek helicopter on the hill.

  “No. Company policy prohibits children on the aircraft, and I would freeze in these wet clothes.” Jack grinned. “Here, please take my card. If there’s anything I can ever do for you, don’t hesitate to contact me. And I may be interested in offering you a job sometime in the future.” Jack offered the card, along with a handshake.

  “A job, huh?” Lawrence accepted the card and returned the handshake. “I’m getting a bit too close to retirement to be switching careers, but one never knows. Thanks.”

  Jack turned back to Mykl. “Well, Mykl. Are you ready to get out of here?”

  “No, I still have to pee. James, pull me up.” James helped him up and accompanied him as he hobbled behind a dead oleander bush. “No peeking!” he said to James.

  “Ha ha. James no peeker.” James turned his back on Mykl to give him privacy. “Man in green shirt saves you too. He shoots Lori with zaps gun.”

  “Really? I’m sorry I missed that. I was too busy playing lightning rod. I’ll definitely have to thank him for showing her what it’s like.” Having finished, he shuffled back to James. “So, how did you find me here?” he asked.

  “Long stories. Tells other times,” James replied cryptically.

  “Indeed you will.” Mykl stared up at his friend with narrowed eyes. “Right now, let’s find out who this guy is and where they want to take us. This might be our ticket out of the Box, so…” Mykl backhanded James in the stomach. “Leave your freakin’ laces alone! We don’t want to blow this.”

  “Yes, Myyykll.” James adopted a remorseful expression and assisted Mykl back to the adults.

  “James go see pretty hecalopter,” he said.

  “Okay, just don’t break it or they might make us walk home.”

  Mykl shook his head in wonder as he watched James amble clumsily over the rocky ground to the helicopter. The lightning bolt had wiped Mykl’s memory of James’s agility and his heroic dive
, but he retained a vague recollection that James had somehow done something to save him.

  Mykl started to shiver. Lawrence knelt and wrapped him in his jacket. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “I am now, thanks to you and James.” Mykl extended his small hand to Lawrence from inside the opening of the jacket. Lawrence’s huge paw of a hand swallowed Mykl’s like a warm wet mitten.

  “I was just doing my job. I’m sorry I couldn’t have gotten here a few minutes sooner to prevent that witch from hurting you.”

  “Please, don’t let her get away!” Mykl shuddered.

  “Of that you can be assured.” He ruffled Mykl’s hair and told him to keep the jacket before going to have a word with the helicopter pilot.

  Mykl eyed Jack warily. “You look like you have something on your mind,” Jack said.

  “Who are you?” Mykl demanded. “My mom told me never to accept rides from strangers.”

  “Your mom was a stripper who barely spent any time with you.”

  Jack may as well have slapped Mykl.

  But before he could reply, Jack added, “I didn’t say it to be mean; it’s a recorded fact. I know everything in your record, and I now suspect that some of it isn’t quite true.” Mykl schooled his face to kitten-eyed innocence. “I’m also the one who designed the test you aced last night. At least, before Lori interrupted it.”

  Mykl stared at his feet and muttered, “Oops.”

  “You could have saved all of us a lot of trouble if you had submitted the solution to that cipher.”

  “Sorry, I was scared. And Lori shut down my computer.” Mykl side-eyed Jack with a crooked smile and asked sarcastically, “Well, I guess you’re not a stranger then. So, where are you going to take us?”

  “Back to the asylum,” Jack replied.

  Disappointment washed over Mykl. He looked over his shoulder at the Las Vegas glow reflecting off low-hanging clouds to the west. When he was minutes away from death, he had wished he could go back to living in the Box. Now he dreaded it. Be careful what you wish for, he thought.