The Raven Gang (Noble Animals Book 1)

by Brendan Walsh

  “Then something happened to me, something that while I couldn’t understand it’s meaning at first, went on to be the foundation of all my current work.”

  “Can we get the abridged version if you don’t mind?” Johnny commented.

  If Elder was irritated, he didn’t show anything but the same smug grin he entered with.

  “I soon set my sights on what was definitely the greatest accomplishment of the 21st century thus far. I cured cancer and every other disease.”

  “What?” the gang shouted in unison.

  “What the hell do you mean you cured every illness?” Jane spoke out.

  Gary moved to the front of their cell. “Last time I checked there was still cancer, AIDS, sickle cell and all those other things.”

  “That’s a very good point, Mr. Frost. Now, let me tell you a little about it.”

  The doctor reached into his large coat pocket and dug around until he retracted his fist out. At first Patrick thought he hadn’t pulled anything out, but Elder eased his palm open to reveal a tiny square shaped object about half the size of a scrabble tile.

  “It was simple really. I used this: a small spectacular little computer chip. On it, the code for a healthy and perfect genetic system.” he held it out in his open hand so the whole gang could see it clearly. “When cleverly inserted into an infected individual, it rewrote their system back to the way it was.”

  “But not every disease is caused by a mutation.” Gary observed.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Elder continued. “It can fix any biological system to exactly the way it’s programed to, so if its programed for a healthy system, a healthy system it provides.”

  “My God!” Patrick exclaimed. “That’s how you made him.”

  “Who?” For the first time, the doctor lost his smile.

  “Edgar, the bat, that’s how you made him.”

  “That thing?” the doctor erupted in laughter, echoing loudly in the soundproof room. “You people named him? I’m sorry but that’s rich.”

  Elder stomped back over to the coffee machine, his long coat swishing behind him. He topped himself off with what little liquid was left in the pot.

  “When I realized the full potential of my work with these little God machines I knew I couldn’t just expose everything to the world. And why would I? I’ve never been about profit. I’m all about saving the world.”

  “Sounds a little counter-intuitive, don’t you think?” Gary smirked. “But why do any of this? You’ve seen what’s been happening, you’re like this hero now. How is criminalizing us making the world any better? Everything you’ve done is wrong.”

  “This never had anything to do with morality! No, this was all about imagination.” Elder spread his arms out like an eagle, attempting to make his words have some grand impact.

  Patrick crossed his arms. He was tiring of the conversation. “I think you’ve more than met that criteria by now. You sure had us questioning our own realities. But what would that actually accomplish?”

  Patrick watched Doctor Elder’s movements and listened to his speech as if he were one of his professors back at Weller. It was difficult not to. With Elder’s showmanship and vast intellect, it would not be outrageous to believe that there may not be at least some form of merit to his words. He subconsciously wanted to get out a notebook and start writing some of his lecture down.

  “The issue with people today is that no one believes in anything anymore.” the doctor resumed. “People are too preoccupied with the awful state the world is in and they accept it. They’re too stupid to realize that their own laziness is responsible.”

  Patrick banged a fist against a bar. “And you still think what you’ve done and the people you killed has improved any of that?”

  “The outcome justifies the deed’ as many people have said. What I’m doing will make everyone believe in something greater, mystery, and curiosity and passion will bloom. And it all started with Subject Zero.” Elder poked his glasses back into place and readjusted his flopping hair.

  “He was the first animal you mutated?” Johnny asked.

  “The first to survive the process.” The doctor looked at the five faces behind the bars. Their solemn faces gave away what they were thinking. “Before him we had many failures. But yet the animal we called ‘Subject Zero’ was not perfect. I wanted him to be a live drone, a genius by every human standard, but the chip didn’t take over all his mind. The version of him you all experienced was the non-activated one. The one with the long fur, teeth, and red eyes, well, that was how my work was intended. His good and evil personalities don’t know the other exists, a bit like the story of Jekyll and Hyde.”

  Gary’s face showed obvious frustration and impatience. “The chip? The whole time. You were watching us the whole time?”

  “Interestingly enough, no. Before you all came along I didn’t know how I was going to start with everything. But then Jefferson Black died, and people were upset. Everyone needed something to be up-at-arms against, something to unite them. It’s always during times of war that a civilization grows technologically. In my mind, this is no different. We predicted almost all your moves before they happened. I’ve known this moment was coming for a long time. I even activated the chip in the bat’s head when you were at the bank. That’s why he didn’t warn you that I was there. You got to hand it to me, that exploding truck made you guys look terrifying.”

  Patrick flashed back. That’s was why Edgar had looked so alarmed. He felt like a fool.

  “You keep saying ‘we’.” Slate noted. “Who the hell is ‘we’?”

  “Well surely I couldn’t have thought of everything all by myself.”

  At that moment the heavy doors once again thundered open. Upon their stop another man who was similarly dressed as Elder entered the room. He appeared to be no more than a few years younger than the doctor. He wore a brown military style beret with a similarly colored dark blue coat. Despite his age he still held a youthful pride on his face, which gave Patrick absolutely no trouble recognizing him.

  “Mr. Patane!” Patrick and Jane cried.

  “You’re involved in this?” she asked.

  The captain finished his walk into the room, stopping right by Elder’s side. “Patrick, Jane, how long has it been, ten years? You don’t really look too much different.”

  “You know him?” Gary asked, turning to them.

  “I knew his father very well. In fact, we even collaborated on a book one time.” Patane eyed them; his pompous grin showed he relished their confusion. “We met on a book tour many years ago, and then before I knew it, we had our own book.”

  He took several steps to the bars, coming face to face with Patrick. “Let me ask you something, kid.” he continued. “Do you remember what the bulk of that book was about?”

  For just a moment Patrick had no clue what the man was talking about. Then he remembered that even though he had never read any of his father’s works of fiction, his and Patane’s book was a recommended reading in his high school. What had just been shock flustered into anger. He watched the smile on the captain’s face grow wide as he observed Patrick’s reaction.

  “No...no!. You psychopath!”

  “What? What is it? What’s it about?” Slate asked.

  “That’s right, Patrick, your father was part of us.”

  Elder stepped over. “He had a certain special interest in bats. In fact, Edgar was nearly his design. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he saw we created him. It was prominently his writing that made me realize what the world needed. It needed fantasies to come true.” The doctor’s expression grew suddenly unhappy.

  “But he was too much of a romantic, as was Jefferson Black. You should have seen that guy, he felt so bad about what he was doing to our test subjects, he sometimes read to them. I believe Poe was one of his favorite’s. That’
s probably why the bat chose to write ‘NEVERMORE’ with his blood. Good sense of humor.”

  “Don’t get us wrong.” Patane said. “We hate that we had to kill Black. But he was going to expose all of us at that party. Good thing he never got to say anything to that camera he set up. We had the exact same feelings about your fathers?”

  “What do you mean?” Gary continued.

  “We’re not thrilled, Gordon Buchanan and James Frost we’re killed in similar ways to Black.”

  Patrick turned to Gary, who was already looking at him. At that moment they both realized the truth behind both their father’s work. It wasn’t Gordon Buchanan who was responsible for James Frost’s death, but they all were, the entire organization Samuel Elder ran.

  Gary threw himself against the steel like an enraged chimp at a zoo. “I’m going to kill you!”

  Elder came forward. He was not the least bit overwhelmed. “They both had to go. We thought we could use James’s influence as a journalist in our favor, but he was excessively unpredictable. As for Gordon-” he motioned towards Patrick. “That’s a whole different story.”

  “Why?” Slate spoke out. “Why are you telling us all this? Why do we finally get to know everything?”

  “Because I finally got what I wanted.” the doctor once again reached into his cavernous coat pocket and retrieved two nearly identical items, both of which were spontaneously recognized by the whole gang.

  They were Gary and Patrick’s watches.

  Elder told them about how he had Edgar take Patrick’s during the last night back on campus, and Gary’s he retrieved while he was drugged. “Your fathers wanted you to keep these, to hide them from us, but now that we can finally put them to use, we have them again.”

  Patrick tried conditioning his rage. He backed away from the cell bars. “What could they possibly do to be so important?”

  “Spoilers much? Anyway, you wouldn’t even begin to understand.” Elder and Patane turned away and made for the door. “Tonight it all ends, the full potential of my work will be released onto the world, and I will be their savior. They will love me. I will give them hope, and purpose, and most of all: I will be the one who caught the raven gang.”

  Without another word both men steadily walked out the loud mechanical doors, leaving the gang in an angry silence.

  “What can I do for you?” the grunt asked.

  Patane was still smiling. He retracted the two objects Elder had given to him.

  “Here you go.” He gave the inferior ranked officer the two watches. “Take these two unique watches and give them to The Time Keeper if you will.”

  His seemingly simple request yielded an unpleasant expression from the officer.

  “What’s the matter?” Patane asked.

  “I...uh... nothing, sir, I’m just...well.”

  “Scared?”

  “That would be right.” he nervously muttered.

  “Aw c’mon.” the captain smiled. “There’s nothing to be scared of. He’s not that mean. He doesn’t even have teeth.”

  “Yeah but I heard he bit a guy’s arm off once.”

  “People start rumors all the time, they’re hardly ever true.”

  That seemed to calm the officer a bit. Without any more assurances Patane watched as he angled around the corner into the basement where the creature known as ‘The Time Keeper’ was chained up.

  Patane smiled to himself. “They’re hardly ever true, but that one was.”

  Detective Hunter was at a complete loss. Guajardo had already explained the whole thing to him, but it seemed once wasn’t enough.

  “Could you explain that report one more time?” he asked, cluelessness riddled across his face.

  “Very well.” the other detective said. “The forensics team found a chemical called desmoteplase in every part Doctor Black’s that was cut open. It’s a type of enzyme; you remember where I said it came from?”

  She was expecting Hunter to answer but his still expression showed that he had little intension of responding.

  “From vampire bats, John. When they bite their prey the enzyme thins the animal’s blood to make it flow easier so it can drink.” she illustrated the ‘drink’ with an unnecessary gesture. “Looks like I was right when I said there was much more to this case. Looks like we’ve entered the realm of the supernatural.”

  “So you’re saying you actually think that guy was killed by a vampire?” the detective laughed.

  “I’m not saying anything, John.” she responded irritably. “I’m just telling you what the evidence says. If it was an actual bat, it must’ve been enormous considering the concentration of the enzyme that was found.”

  Hunter’s empty expression had become one of amusement. It was vivid to Guajardo that however creeped out he might have been at first, was now shadowed by humor.

  “Well, I guess that would account for the massive amount of blood that was missing from the body, but beyond that, how seriously should we be taking this. The citizens wouldn’t like what their tax dollars are having us do.” At that moment his office phone began to ring. Their conversation was about to be over. “This’ll just be a moment.” he assured Guajardo, giving her a quick wave.

  Hunter extended the phone to his ear giving the other line the usual professional hello. Whoever was on the other side of the phone said something that darkened his face. Guajardo could barely make out an intermittent buzz from the tiny speaker. For the few heavy minutes both detectives were silent; Hunter never uttered any word to the other party. Once the feint noise cleared from the phone. The detective placed it gently back onto the receiver.

  “Who was that one the phone? What did they tell you?”

  Hunter sighed solemnly. “Do you have dinner plans?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Cancel them. We’ll eat on the plane. We’ve got a flight to catch.”

  It was impossible to tell what time of day it was, considering they had no view of the outside world. As far as Patrick, the drugs had knocked them all out for days, or only a few hours. The final troubling question was probably the most despairing: where were they? It was safe to assume the gang had not been taken out of California, but still it was impossible to say.

  All five members of the now captive raven gang sat disgruntled against the cold prison walls. The dramatic speech by Elder and Patane was still fresh in their minds. Patrick’s psyche was in some mental purgatory between absolute shock and almost indifference. Finding out that his father’s close friend had something to do with Gary’s and his own father’s murders should have sent a violent chill down his cortex. But it didn’t. Considering all the reality questioning the group had done since Doctor Black’s death, surreal things didn’t surprise them nearly as much.

  And they were finally close to knowing everything.

  Focusing back on the silence among everyone, Patrick wanted to converse, since his own mind if left alone could get very dark very fast. “Is it bad that I agree with so much that they said?” he asked, looking over his shoulder to everyone.

  “It’s not like they didn’t make any sense.” his cousin chimed in, indicating that she was still awake. “And that’s the scary part. Neither of them seem insane at all.”

  In the far corner of the cell Gary rose to his feet and nervously tapped a palm along the steel bars. “That is probably the hardest thing to consider when facing an enemy. I think when it comes down to it every moral or metaphysical mind throughout the centuries have basically been spreading the same message, though the means to realize the ultimate goal is where conflict arises.”

  “Take it down a notch there, Sun Tzu.” Slate commented only slightly above a murmur. His raccoon-like eyes showing how tired he was. Patrick couldn’t blame him. It was impossible to just comfortably rest when you knew that the world’s stakes are high.

  A few more nois
eless moments went by before the heavy shifting of gears was heard again. It screeched from deep behind the other side of the walls. Someone was coming inside.

  “Oh this is nice. Who’s coming to talk to us now?” Johnny whined, as if unhappily watching the loss of a baseball team.

  “Probably Dr. Horrible coming back to taunt us again.” Patrick said.

  A hulking snap from the other side of the wall along with the heavy footfalls indicated more than once person was heading their way. The front doors started and completed the same ritual as it did when Elder came in, and the people approaching were now fully visible. There were three of them, neatly dressed in some semi-fantasy military garbs. It was a solid, hazy shade of dark purple from collar to cuffs. Decorated along the sleeves and leggings were various symbols that Patrick didn’t recognize, save for the bright neon patch on the top right shoulder: an inverted double helix structure which he immediately recognized from his biology classes as DNA.

  “What do you three want?” Gary demanded.

  His question didn’t earn any attention from them. They all just stared routinely forward, as they were trained to do.

  “We’ve been ordered to escort you five to the battle zone now.” the young man on the right said robotically. “Where the future of science will determine your fate.”

  Jane rose up next to Gary, ready to reply. “No way! We’re not going anywhere unless you tell us where we are.” Ironically Patrick now felt that their cell was rather cozy as compared to what Elder’s grunts had in mind.

  The soldier in the middle, the one who had not yet spoken, motioned over to a small switch behind the coffee maker and the doors began to gurgle as the bottom half of the bars sank into the the ground while the top part followed the same way. With a secure industrial click, they were free from their metal cage. The three soldiers came forward, weapons drawn from their hips. They didn’t want to waste any time.

  Patrick and the gang jittered back a few steps beside the wall. “We’re not going anywhere!” he shouted with a sudden blaze of courage. For the first time the soldier’s eyes were inquisitive, and human.