I Am Phantom (Novella): Subject Number One (3 page)

CHAPTER 4

An eerie quiet had settled over the lab when
Lucius unlocked the employee entrance and rushed in, Lin right behind. The
silence was alive with menace. The computers were all dark. The overhead lights
off.

They rushed straight towards the hallway where
Bobo was kept. Lin had not said much, had not been able to say much, but she
had managed to get out that something had happened with the chimp.

Please,
Lucius
thought.
Please let it not be true. If it is, and I could
have stopped it…

The man who’d called Lin was crumpled on the
ground in the hallway, sobbing. Lin knelt and put a gentle hand on his
shoulder. He sobbed harder.

“I called Ryans’ on the way over,” Lin said to
Lucius. “He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“I need to see,” Lucius said. “I need to know.”

“Lucius, I don’t think—Lucius!” He was
already striding towards Bobo’s room. The light was on, but flickering. That
was the first thing. The second was the curled, sharp tang of something in his
nose, something his brain wouldn’t let him fathom.

It couldn’t deny it for long, though. Not when
Lucius stepped into the room. His legs nearly gave out. The doorframe acted as
a support as he slumped against it.

“Blue calms Bobo down.” How many times had he
heard Lin say that? Home comforts, creature comforts. Something to make the
chimp feel safe. She’d insisted his room be a baby blue.

It was red now. Crimson, rust-colored, dried and
cracking splash stains on the wall, deep angry pools on the floor.

Lucius stepped inside. His boots sounded like
tearing Velcro as they peeled away from the blood on the linoleum. Bobo’s cage
door was open. He looked around for signs of who had done this. And why. They
wouldn’t still be around, surely. But somebody capable of this…it made no
sense. Why kill the chimp? Like tearing up his office, what did it accomplish?

His eyes fell on an oddly shaped object on the
floor. Lucius stepped closer, trying to make it out, and the light from the
hallway fell on it. He saw with horror it was a severed human forearm and
realized it wasn’t Bobo he should have been worried about.

The end of the arm was jagged, like it had been
torn off by some inhuman strength. The strength, maybe, that they were trying
to produce with the serum.

The rest of the body—jigsaw pieces. That’s
all Lucius could compare it to.

He couldn’t vomit. He couldn’t even react. The
whole scene was so far past his senses he didn’t even know how to react.

But he wasn’t alone.

He felt the prickling on his neck. The sense
that something was watching. The sound of haggard, animal breathing.

Eyes peered at him from the dark at the back of
the cage. A bristled shadow, indistinguishable in form, hunched forward,
breathing in, and out. The breaths increased as Lucius realized three things in
rapid succession: the thing in the cage had once been Bobo; that the thing had
torn this man apart; and that there was nobody nearby who could stop it from
doing the same to him.

Except…

The screech of boots on the tile outside,
pounding towards him. The thing that had once been Bobo moved its arm. Lucius
blinked. The speed! There had been merely a flicker and now Bobo was right up
against the cage, baring his bloodied teeth at him.

Lucius took a step back and heard the crunch of
glass. He dared to look down. A syringe. Dr. Lin never let anyone take a
syringe in here. She hadn’t wanted to frighten Bobo.

Bobo bared his teeth again. He hissed, like a cobra
coiled to strike. Lucius tensed and closed his eyes. It would hopefully be over
quick.

And then a thump as someone came too fast into
the doorway and skidded a little on the blood.

Bobo screeched long and loud and Lucius’ eyes
burst open. He stumbled back.

Bobo was screaming and pounding the cage, Ryans
stood in shock at the entire scene and without thinking Lucius hurried past him
and out of the room, practically collapsing into Dr. Lin’s arms outside.

“Lucius! Why is Bobo screaming?” She peered over
his shoulder. “What—”

A pistol shot. Lucius flinched as if he’d been
the one hit. Lin went rigid. She tried to get up. To go see. Lucius held her
tight. “No. Just…no.”

The screaming started again. Another shot. And
another. Each one like a nail driven into Lucius’ forehead, until Ryans must
have exhausted his entire magazine because there was no screaming except inside
Lucius’ mind, and no sound except for the click of an empty chamber and Ryans
continuing to pull the trigger anyways.

CHAPTER
5

Ryans closed the conference room door delicately
behind him.

Lucius sat on one side of the long table they’d
been at only this morning. Might as well have been a lifetime ago. Lin sat
across from him. Lucius had found a blanket left in the break room and wrapped
it around her shivering shoulders. He wasn’t sure if she was aware he’d done
it.

She had demanded to see Bobo’s room and broken
out of Lucius’ grasp. He’d warned her, pleaded with her. She hadn’t listened.

Ryans offered Lucius a cup in one of his hands.

“Found some leftover coffee in the break room.
It’s the powdered kind, unfortunately. Little lukewarm. Best I could do.”

Lucius did not feel like taking it. He felt like
doing many things, but sitting around a conference room sipping coffee while a man’s
remains dried and crusted in another room was not one of them.

“Thanks,” he muttered, eventually accepting it
and immediately placing it on the table. He tapped his fingers. Lin rocked back
and forth.

Ryans offered her the other drink. When she
didn’t take it he placed it beside her and sat. There was a hollowness in his
eyes. He was trying not to show it, but he was shaken.

The conference room door burst open again.
Carlyle and Dr. Van walked in.

“You!” Lucius snarled, leaping up and jabbing a
finger at Dr. Van.

Dr. Van turned to Carlyle with an
‘
I told you so
’
expression.
“Knew he’d blame me.”

“You request testing on the chimp and when I
threaten to shut us down this happens? You bet I’m blaming you!”

Carlyle held up one hand and waved it up and
down as if trying to fan Lucius back into his seat. “Easy, Lucius. Dr. Van
obviously didn’t do this.” He held up a CD. “I have the security footage right
here. Why don’t we all calmly take our seats and have a look.”

He was pale. He must have seen the footage already.
Good
, Lucius thought.
Let him understand
. He
needed
to
understand the full weight of what they were now dealing with.

Carlyle stepped to the head of the table. After
a minute, the soundless security footage came to life on screen. Bobo’s room
snapped into focus. Lucius and Lin were there. It was just before they’d left.

Dr. Van scowled with disapproval when Lin fed
Bobo the apple. After a moment, Lucius and Lin left. Lin flicked off the
lights. Bobo remained in his cage in the dark, munching on the apple.

They didn’t have to wait long before the lights
snapped on again. The man who had passed Lucius in the hallway stepped into the
room.

Lucius let his face fall into his hands. He had
known it would be him, just as he had known he should have stopped the man when
he’d first seen him. And yet he’d done nothing, and look what had become of it.

The man opened the cage and beckoned Bobo over
with an apple.

“That’s not one of ours,” Dr. Van said.

Carlyle nodded. “That’s what I was going to
say.” He turned to Ryans. “Any idea who that is?”

“No, sir. Not a clue.”

Bobo approached the man holding the apple. The
man let him take it. Bobo finished it off and the man produced another. He
looked around, seemed satisfied he was alone. Bobo approached the outstretched
hand with the apple, closer this time.

The barest hint of a needle tip glinted from his
right pocket. The man plunged the syringe into Bobo’s neck and pressed the
plunger down.

Bobo screamed silently at the camera and fled to
the back of the cage. The man quickly stepped out, but didn’t close the door.
He merely stood there. Watching.

Nothing happened at first. Then Bobo slumped
back, as though exhausted. Then he began to rock. His hands began to shake.
Finally he keeled over, dead. Lin let out a garbled sob.

The man simply watched.

Lucius didn’t tear his eyes from the screen. He
knew the truly awful part was coming.

The man re-entered the cage. He bent down and
looked at the chimp, tilted his head back, pulled back his eyelids. Once he was
satisfied Bobo was truly dead, he scooted closer and reached under to roll him
over.

That was the last thing he ever did.

It was as if a jolt of electricity surged
through the chimp. One lanky arm rose, gripped the wrist of the arm that had
touched him, and wrenched it off.

If the video had audio, Lucius was sure the man
would have been screaming.

Lucius looked away as the slaughter continued.
He fixed his gaze on Carlyle. The man was impassive. His eyes drank in the
scene before him, but not with disgust or revulsion, but with amazement.

Carlyle shut the video off. He swiveled around
in his chair. He cleared his throat, but seemed to have trouble forming the
words.

“Barring getting blamed for something I did not
do,” Dr. Van said, glaring at Lucius, “I think it’s clear we had a lone wolf
acting out corporate sabotage. An outlier. Someone with a clear agenda to put
our project under.”

“You have got to be joking,” Sykes said.

“Excuse me?”

Lucius practically shook with anger. The emotion
had come up a lot lately, and it terrified him. He’d practiced keeping it in
check, ever since he’d been a boy and lost his temper around Tamison Smith. The
other boy’s arm had never healed right, though Lucius had gotten off with a
warning.

The anger was back now. And it terrified him.

“This was not some random person walking in from
the street. This doesn’t just happen. Somebody planned this. Somebody went
ahead with it regardless of the consequences, and look what happened.”

A silence ensued. Ryans stepped forward from
where he’d been standing. “Sir, I’d like to know what
did
happen.
I don’t deal with…whatever that was, everyday.”

Lin let out another quiet sob. Lucius wished to
reach across the table and comfort her. The others did nothing.

“What you saw was a culmination of our tests,”
Carlyle said. “That chimp was stronger and faster than any being has ever
been.”

“It wouldn’t die,” Ryans said. “My first
bullet…it just healed over it. He didn’t even flinch. Like it just tickled
him.”

“That would be the healing factor we put in,”
Dr. Van said. His eyes glittered with triumph when he looked to Carlyle. “That
part did work, after all.”

 
Carlyle put the screen remote down and
folded his fingers delicately together.

“The only issue with the serum was the one of
instability we talked about. That it’d break apart in the host. But as I’ve
brought up before, once we integrate genetic pre-disposition into subjects, the
instability will go away. As we’ve just seen.”

Lucius burst out laughing, causing the others to
jump, which only made him laugh harder. Because it was a joke. The whole thing
had to be. He couldn’t imagine anyone watching what they had just watched and
proposing that it had, in an odd way, been some sort of success.

“That is rich, gentlemen, absolutely killer. You
planning on opening a show in Vegas with that act?”