Chapter 35
James popped into existence in the chamber that once held the Lost Boys. He raised his hands upward and let out a loud scream that echoed off every wall of the chamber. Before noticing that the Boys were gone James said “My brothers, I have met our father and he has called us an abomination and a threat to our race.
He tried to end my existence and failed.” When he did not get a response he turned to see the empty chambers that once held his brothers. This enraged him more and with a single thought from his mind he crushed all twelve cylinders. James knew they did not have the ability to release themselves from the cylinders. Had the Agency reacted to his actions by relocating them to another place for disposal? Did they see his brothers as a threat they could eliminate. If that was the case he swore that they would pay with their lives.
James walked over to the control screen mounted on the far right wall of the chamber. The chamber was under constant surveillance by camera that recorded everything happening in the chamber. He could play back the last hour of recording and see what had happened to his brothers. The control screen no longer appeared as it normally did. Instead in large red letters it read “TIME TO DETONATION 3:20”. The Agency had activated a failsafe device to eliminate any evidence that this chamber ever existed after removing his brothers. James could stop it if he wanted to but he chose not to. He would let them think that they have successfully consummated their plan. He would find his brothers and free them and they would see him as a hero. He would have earned their loyalty and they would follow him.
James watched as the countdown to detonation decreased. When it got down to ten seconds he started to count down with it. When it reached one second he popped out of existence from the chamber and appeared up on the street above. The street and the buildings in the area shook when the detonation occurred. The agency would make sure that it would appear that a gas main exploded beneath the streets of Boston to cover up their handiwork. Collateral damage was no concern to them whether it is human life or property. Much like James they were in it for the power and nothing else mattered.
James walked over to the entrance of the building and the automatic doors swung open to allow him to enter. The lobby was full of activity and people, most of them agents of the Boston Police Department. James read a few of their minds and found they were responding to his earlier outing in the building. They all thought that the explosion was somehow connected to the killing spree and were trying to evacuate the building before another explosion level it to the ground. James took advantages of this line of thought and caused the air conditioning units on the roof of the building to explode by overloading their circuits. The pace for clearing the building seemed to rev up to a panic mode as the explosions echoed from the top of the building. As everyone was trying to exit the building James just stood there. No one seemed to notice him. He just stood there with that evil lunatic smile smeared across his face. They were all too busy trying to save their own skin to worry about him.
When the building was cleared James then quantum tunneled himself into Doctor Scull’s office. The doctor body had been removed but the blood splatter was still evident on the walls and floor. James examined the splatter mark on the wall and thought of it as an artwork he created in blood. He saw in it a beauty that his mind could only understand. The last agonizing minutes of a man life scattered across the wall to shape a surrealistic landscape of an unknown world. Random patterns of blood that had run down the wall appeared to him as a skyline on an alien world. Maybe it was the world that his paternal parent had come from. A world where they kill off the children if they do not meet expectations set forth by their society. The cold cruelness of this world excited James, but it also angered him to know that he would be an outcast on this world. His paternal parent had called him an abomination, and tried to terminate his existence to cleanse the gene pool of the unwanted mutation. The anger built up to a crescendo in his mind until the anger overtook him. The splatter mark and the wall it laid upon dissipated into nothing and with it went the anger that James felt.
James cleared his head of the thought of his father and the anger he felt for him. He had come here for a purpose to retrieve information that would help him in his plan. Doctor Scull was a smart man and kept private records that were unknown to the agency. He had secured them in a secret compartment built into the bookcases in his office. When James searched the doctor’s memories before killing him he found the information about the secret compartment and how to access it. All he knew of the contents is that it was something the doctor kept just in case the Agency tried to have him eliminated.
On the right wall of the office were three bookcases which held books and other items. The bookcase on the left held only books and James reached up to the top shelf and removed the third book from the left and placed it on the doctor’s desk. He then went over to the bookcase on the right and removed the eighth book from the right on the middle shelf and placed it on top of the book he previously removed. On the middle bookcase were mostly awards and diplomas that the doctor had received during his career. James removed a plaque from the back of the middle bookcase that was from the Genetic Society of America for advancement in the field of Hereditary. He placed it on top of the books on the doctor’s desk. James lifted the two books and plaque and placed them in an open space that was on the bottom shelf of the middle bookcase. As soon as the weight of the pile was added to the shelf it sank down about an inch and James heard a click. The space on the back of the middle bookcase where the plaque had been sank back into the bookcase then slide off to the left revealing the secret compartment.
James reached in and extracted the contents of the compartment which was a black ornate wooden box. The box was about eight inches high and fourteen inches long and wide. The top of the box had a carving but James couldn’t make sense of it and there seemed to be a piece of it missing. Taking a closer look at the carving James realized it was a puzzle, the type where you move pieces around to form an image.
James examined all the pieces to the puzzle and came to the conclusion that it was an image of the DNA molecule. It didn’t take him more than 1 minute to rearrange the pieces to form the image. As soon as the last piece was moved into place a drawer on the front of the box sprung open. He slid the draw out and found three items in it. The first item was a large manila envelope containing some money in large denomination bills. He didn’t waste time counting it, money meant nothing to him. He didn’t need money to buy thing. He could just take what he wanted or needed. The second item was a vial about 10 inches long filled with a blue gelatinous liquid with a label that read 1A3249. The last item is a red leather bound journal with the gold initials C and S embossed into it.
James opens the journal and handwritten on the inside cover found the following inscription: In the event of my death or disappearance this journal should be relinquished to the
proper authorities who oversee the all applications of genetic research. What this journal holds is of the utmost importance to the advancement of the evolutional of the human genome. With this journal you will find a vial containing a genetic substance not of this world. I obtained the genetic material from a secret global agency known only to me as the Agency. I created a way to incorporate this genetic substance into the human genetic structure. The information contained in this journal is all my research data and experiment notes. I do not regret any actions that I have taken as describe in this journal for I did it for the betterment of the human race. Do not judge me on my actions but on my accomplishments. I have moved the human genome to the next step of evolution and given it the power of the gods.
Dr. Caleb Scull
James flipped through the pages of the journal scanning each page until he came to a page with his name in large letters written across the top. He read the following:
Today our first experiment came full cycle. It produced a male child with a disfigured hand that looked like a hook. Following clinical procedures I instructed the medical technician to prepare an injection to terminate the experiment that I would administer. As fate would have it my personal secretary’s voice came over the intercom in the room announcing that a member of the agency was on a teleconference line and needed to speak to me at once. I handed the syringe over to the technician and told him to continue with the termination. The teleconference last only about ten minutes and was nothing more than a check on the status of my research. Walking back to the lab I heard the technician scream and when I entered the lab I found her dead. She had administered the lethal injection into herself and not the child. In my mind I heard a small child voice say “Bad Lady” over and over. It was the child communicating with me. The genetic substance 1A3249 had achieved the results I was hoping for but it also produced a genetic defect in the child. I will keep his existence hidden from the Agency because of the defect. My report will show that the experiment was terminated. I will dispose of the technician’s body so that it appears to be a suicide. I named the child James after my father.
James heard some sounds outside in the hall and assumed that the authorities had reentered the building. They must have sent in the bomb squad to check for any other potential explosive hidden within the building. He quickly removed the pile he had placed on the shelf and the panel to the hidden compartment closed. He replaced the books and plaque to their original locations so that the room appeared as it did before. The blood splattered wall that he disintegrated would just look to be collateral damage from the explosions. He replaced all the items back into the wooden box and picked it up. The sounds he heard in the hall were getting closer to the doctor’s office and James had to act quickly. He could either eliminate whoever was out there, and that’s something that he might enjoy, or run. He chose that later and popped out of existence.