I Am Phantom (Novella): Subject Number One (5 page)
Read I Am Phantom (Novella): Subject Number One Online
Authors: Sean Fletcher
Tags: #Science Fiction | Superhero | Supervillain
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.
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
