The Bloodless (11 page)

              “Hey, if you say so,” Justice said. His heart rate was finally starting to fall back to normal. “I have no problems with that at all.” It was a good moment. Finally he had the little extra protection that he definitely needed since apparently there was a price on his head. Normally he doesn’t like strangers, but with what just happened he couldn’t help but actually appreciate people. It was a weird feeling, short lived, but weird. “All right, let’s get out of here,” he said to Tyler, feeling like lingering anywhere at that time would be a mistake. He gathered himself then led Tyler out through the door.

              “Well what have we here,” said a voice that was vaguely familiar to Justice. His heart skipped several beats as Justice looked around to find they were surrounded by at least six men. The face where the voice issued from was unknown to him, so why the voice sounded familiar was far beyond his understanding. This man was tall, fair skin, dark blue eyes that had an unmistakable yellow glow to them. He was a bit thin and wiry so nothing about him said “Superman strength.” The other men were varied in size but all had a mean look about them and they too exhibited yellowish glowing eyes.

              “Thought you were home free, huh?” he asked with a gratified smile on his face.

              “Kinda, yeah,” Justice responded with as much cheek as he could muster. He wasn’t even worried how the man knew his name. That was the least of his problems.

              “Almost, I will admit,” the man continued, “you gave us a bit of a scare. We didn’t expect you to have such inflated friends,” he gestured towards Tyler.

              “Who the fuck are you?”

              The man gave another chuckle and slowly started walking towards Tyler. “My friend,” he said dangerously, “I am your worst fucking nightmare.” Tyler scoffed at the thought and the man looked at his apparent henchmen who sprang into action.

              They all rushed Tyler at the same time and jumped on him. One came over to Justice and pinned him back, but he had zero intentions of fighting. He was far too tired. Tyler fought hard for a short amount of time, punching, kicking, throwing, and doing anything else he could to free himself. The six men were too much for him however and they soon overpowered him. They beat him pretty good, striking him multiple times in the head and torso in order to subdue him. At last they were able to hold him up without much struggle on his end. Two of the men held his arms and supported his weight to keep him on his feet.

              The thinner man walked up to Tyler and put his left hand around his neck, then with his right he sank a very solid fist into Tyler’s abdomen, doubling him over and ejecting blood from his mouth. He then kneeled down and looked up at Tyler, “Helping this man was a very bad choice, very bad. You see, Mendel really wants to talk to our friend here,” he said nodding his head in Justice’s direction.

              That name rang a couple bells in Justice’s head, however all he cared about was getting out of that situation alive, though it didn’t seem like that was going to happen. “Look,” he said, and the thin man looked over in his direction, “who are you and what do you want with me?”

              “You don’t remember me?” he asked. “I’m actually slightly insulted.”

              “Wha-,” Justice looked over at the man and into his eyes. There was a familiarity there, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

              “Don’t know, huh? Well if you don’t know then I’m not going to tell you,” he said in a mock offended voice.

              “Fine,” Justice said and he held up his hands, “I’ll go with you, just let him go. He has nothing to do with this.”

              The thin man stood up and walked over to Justice. He ran a hand over his brow and looked him dead in the eye, “So you just want me to let him go, no harm no foul?”

              “Yes.”

              “Just like that?”

              “Yes,” Justice said again.

              The man nodded and walked back over to Tyler. He looked at Justice and then pointed at Tyler as if to confirm his wishes. Justice nodded. He nodded. He then jammed his fore and middle fingers into Tyler’s eyes, gripped the top of his head and proceeded to tear Tyler’s head clean off his body. He did this in one fluid motion and as easy as if tearing a sheet of paper from a spiral notebook.

              “Oh god,” Justice moaned and he caught a glimpse of Tyler’s head rolling towards him as he closed his eyes.

              “Sure,” he heard the man say, “He’s free to go.” The other men laughed and Justice heard Tyler’s body collapse to the ground. He opened his eyes just in time to see the thin man come up to him and knock him out.

“Wake up!”

              Whoever was carrying Justice dropped him to the ground and walked away from him. After a moment to focus on his surroundings he wiped his nose on his shoulder. There wasn’t much in the way of surroundings this time as he found himself in a tiny shack, maybe about one hundred square feet in size. It was run down and dark, a perfect place to torture and kill someone without anyone else finding out, ever.

              “So, we finally meet,” a voice issued from a man who was apparently shrouded in darkness the whole time. Justice was too scared at that point to respond with anything coherent. The man chuckled and stepped out of the shadows. Justice didn’t know what he was expecting but it definitely wasn’t what he actually saw. This man looked quite normal. He was young, in fit condition, maybe a little more fit than average, dark black hair, and pale blue eyes that had that yellow glow around the irises. He smiled as he looked down on Justice, a sort of triumphant smile with just a smidgen of cruelty behind it.

              For a while he just stared at him, waiting, as if Justice was supposed to recognize him. After a few moments were passed in silence he turned and looked out the only window in the shack. “Of course you wouldn’t remember me,” The man said airily, “how could you?” Justice was absolutely confused. He felt like he should know him, there was something about him that was very familiar to him, but he had been having that feeling so often lately he didn’t pay attention to it anymore.

              “Let me introduce myself,” he said, turning back to look at Justice again. “I am Mendel and I’ve wanted to meet you for quite some time now, Mr. Justice. However, this isn’t the first time we’ve met, well, not like this anyway. Not with me like this, I mean to say. You were an employee of GoD Laboratories, were you not?” he asked as Justice continued to look confused. Justice slowly nodded his head. “Okay, well at least those halfwits were able to locate the right guy this time. Do you have any idea how many Justices there are around this area?” Justice shook his head. “Quite a few. Well, there are fewer now than there were, but it took us awhile to get the right one.” Mendel moved around the room so he was standing behind his captive. “You still don’t know who I am, do you?”

              Justice shook his head again.

              “Wow, we must’ve really done a good job then,” Mendel said putting a hand on Justice’s shoulder and squeezing. “Allow me to enlighten you. I am a bi-product of you and your colleagues’ nature raping experimentations. Not me as I am now, but my previous form. I was one of the first ‘people’ to undergo your reanimation process. Subject 05202100-103.”

              It wasn’t until that moment that Justice realized who this being in his presence was. All at once it came crashing in around him. The guy was right, he wasn’t recognizable in his current state but he remembered every subject and the number they assigned them. They assigned them all according to date, series and unit. He the first successful reanimation of their trials. Justice remembers him, however, as an elderly man who had died of natural causes. His body was frail and worn but there were no signs of disease or impending disease. He was a perfect candidate for the first series.

              During the first run of reanimations GoD scientists took people who died of old age, heart attacks, aneurisms, and anything similar that they deemed to be natural. Disease, accidents, murder, and similar “unnatural” factors were tested in a different series. 103’s body was donated by his family, a group that was really big into science. They didn’t know what the experiments were for exactly, as the scientists were as vague as possible when coercing the family to sign the release form.

              During the first series of reanimations, the families were notified only when the rejoining of the original soul was successful but that was very rare, which led to many families never learning the fate of their loved ones. The families that did see the return of their deceased were so overcome with emotion that they didn’t know how to react. Justice and his team would usually just do the surprise and take off afterwards, never communicating with the families again. They didn’t study the after effects of the process and that was the one major flaw in their experiments.

              Mendel must’ve seen the dawn of recognition in Justice’s eyes because he proceeded to say, “Ah, there it is. I figured that number would jog your memory, you science types are all the same. Or should I say, WE science types.” He did not elaborate, he just continued on, “You had a nasty habit of discarding failed experiments before you had a grasp on what was really going on. You understood the genetic and physiological aspect of what you were doing, but you didn’t care much for the psychology, did you?

              "Do you have any idea what it’s like being ripped from the afterlife and being thrown into a world of pain and agony? Going from blissful eternity to tormenting reality?” He snickered, “Of course, I don’t have to tell you all of this, do I? You know all too well for yourself,” he paused and contemplated for a moment, “or do you?” He waved a hand in the air, “Ah well, doesn’t really matter does it? Not now anyway.” He paused for a moment and walked back around to the window and looked out it again. It was almost as if he was waiting for something.

              “What do you want with me?” were the first words Justice was able to speak.

              “Oh my dear man, there is so much you do not yet know or understand,” Mendel responded, still gazing out of the window. “I want to bring you up to speed, but above all else,” he turned and looked at Justice, “I want you to pay. I want you to understand my agony and my torment.”

              “You’ve already killed my family you asshole,” he yelled at Mendel. He wasn’t sure where he was able to muster the anger from, perhaps it was the blasé attitude of a man he barely knew, or maybe Justice had had enough misery to last a lifetime. Whatever it was, it made him really angry, really quick.

              “And that’s just the beginning,” Mendel snapped back, anger flaring in his tone. “You know emotional pain, yes, but you have not yet experienced true physical pain. That’s where I come in.” He started pacing around the shack, “I am going to take you on a journey of pain you can’t even imagine. The excruciating torture you will suffer will make you bleed, it will make you cry, and it will make you wish you were dead, but you won’t be dead, you’ll be alive through it all. I’ll make sure of that.

              “But first, before any of that, I am going to fill you in on a few things. Did you ever wonder why you weren’t killed the first time you were captured? Didn’t it ever seem a bit curious that while everyone else was killed on sight, you were taken into custody?” Mendel asked as he came to a stop. Before Justice could respond, there was a dull explosion in the distance outside of the shack. Mendel didn’t react to it at all and it wasn’t clear whether he even heard it or not, but when there was a closer more audible explosion, there was no doubt he had to have heard it.

              A look of slight confusion appeared on Mendel’s face as a few more small and closer still explosions sounded off. The door to the shack was wrenched open and the thin man from the alley burst into the room. “Sir,” he said breathlessly, “we’re under attack.”

              Mendel looked at him impassively and responded, “Then do something about it Krieger.”

                            “Well, sir, we think you’d better come have a look yourself. It’s pretty serious.”

              “God dammit,” and the first sign of frustration came out of Mendel. He swept passed Justice and walked out of the shack. The man named Krieger scowled after him and the two men exited the shack.

              Justice sat there for a moment fully expecting them to swiftly deal with the disturbance and be right back in the room. But when several minutes passed and more explosions were set off, he decided to stand up and try to have a look for himself. He walked over to the window to see if there was anything to be seen, but as soon as he got to it the door burst open. He broke out in a cold sweat because he just knew he was in for some serious backlash. However, when he spun around Justice saw a sight he had never expected to see in a million years. Crist stood in the doorway, a massive gun on her waist.

              “What the…”

              “You,” she exclaimed and rushed towards him and cut the ties that bound his hands. “You’re still alive, I can’t believe it.”

              “What the fuck are you doing here?” Justice asked savagely as he massaged his wrists that were surely close to falling off. He was understandably pissed considering Crist was the whole reason he was even in captivity.

              “What does it look like?” she responded annoyed. “I’m getting you the fuck outta here.”