by Chase Erwin
“You’ve been testing this life-reviving material on your double,” he continued, advancing on me. As he stepped forward, I stepped back. “We lost the life of our second-best medical associate because of your unapproved test.”
Professor Routledge was an underling to me, but still one of The Raven’s eldest confederates. I had allowed him to perform extra tests of cruelty upon Abel, but with the understanding he could only bring him to the brink of death. Compound N could not revive the dead but was 100% effective up until the subject’s last breath.
Against my wishes, the professor had subjected Abel to one of his most gruesome tests – live vivisection. He put a saw to Abel’s spine with the intention of watching how his myriad of powers worked on his muscular and skeletal systems.
Abel, in an unexpected surge of uncontrolled power, wound up electrocuting the professor and turning him into a charred, wasted mass.
I had a choice: save the professor or save my pet. I saved my pet, using Compound N.
I hadn’t been specifically withholding the compound from The Raven, but I knew it was a powerful piece of science; something with the power to create virtually indestructible armies.
But even with all this power in my hands, I was debating letting this one go straight to The Raven.
“What was the first lesson I taught you back at that warehouse?” The Raven quizzed me.
“This world is filled with people who will take advantage and hurt… so why not be the one who has the upper hand at all times?”
“You’ve committed a mortal sin against me,” The Raven said, raising both arms in my direction. “The Raven is not to be usurped. The Raven always has the upper hand!”
With those words he let forth a tremendous pulse of electrical energy directed at me. It blew me clear across the room and into a brick wall, knocking the wind out of me.
From below, I could hear Abel running across the room and gripping onto Antareus, making his chains jangle. “I’m so sorry,” he cried. “I’m so sorry…”
The Raven yanked me up by the hair, slamming my face against the glass of the viewing window. “You’re missing the show,” he hissed.
“What is this?” Antareus asked again.
“I don’t know, I don’t know, but…” Abel wrapped his arms around Antareus. “I’m sorry! I was wrong. I was so wrong…”
I thought it was Antareus that said all this in the wagon after we were abducted. But then it became clear. I had never been abducted. It was the only way my mind could reconcile the horrible violence about to occur to my brother.
“I’m sorry, but I was wrong,” I said, grimacing as I tried to use the force of my body to push against The Raven, only to find myself hobbled with a broken leg. “We grew apart, yes, but that was the fault of both of us. I still love my brother.” I looked down at the floor, a feeling of incredulity at my own words turning to shame.
“I was wrong too,” Antareus said, to Abel, his words barely audible to us in the booth above them. “You’ll always be my family.”
“I knew it,” sneered the Raven. “Even after all these months, years teaching you everything I know, you still had a shred of humanity left in you! Even after tearing yourself apart to shed that pathetic creature down there, it didn’t rid you of the cancer that is your soul.
“Fortunately, I saw this coming,” he continued, crossing to the door we had entered from. “That’s why I’ve been grooming your replacement.”
“Replacement…” I said.
I watched over the scene with a pit sinking in my stomach. I can’t believe I had let my anger at the world build to this point.
“Replacement,” said Khaz’Nashan, stepping forward and kneeling to the ground towards me. “Someone who has much more potential to offer our gracious leader.”
He lifted his left paw and extended his claws. They began glowing an eerie green. Before I had a chance to react, he slashed me across the neck.
Within seconds, the paralyzing effect of the poison took hold. My mouth opened and froze in that position.
“Take him down,” said the Raven.
The Felinial obeyed, dragging me painfully by the hair.
Moments later I was tossed into the pit of the testing area. Antareus and the other Abel stared at me, mouths agape.
“Wh-what is this?” Antareus whispered. “Great Mother in heaven…”
“Recombine them,” The Raven’s voice echoed off the walls.
“Recombine…?” Antareus looked at Abel, then at me. He seemed like he was about to faint.
Khaz’Nashan coolly brushed a lock of his orange head fur to one side and took out two syringes filled with a purple liquid. Crossing first to Abel, he injected the contents of one syringe into his neck.
Abel crumpled to the floor and began to mutate into a silver, jelly-like puddle. I watched, unable to move, as Khaz’Nashan walked up to me, grinning all the while, and roughly jabbed the needle of the second syringe into one of my open wounds.
The searing pain of the liquid spreading through my bloodstream was enough to make me wish for death. But instead, like my counterpart, all I could do was turn into liquid.
Like magnets, the two puddles began to inch toward each other and swirl around in two vortexes until the masses became one. The liquid form then seemed to boil and the color changed from silver to purple and back again to silver.
My body reformed, lifeless, at the feet of my brother.
“Wake him up and take the brothers down to the Interrogation chamber,” the Felinial ordered the guards. He took out a bulbous vial containing a bright, bubbling, green liquid.
“It’s time for Anaterus Mondragon to make a very important decision,” he added with a gruesome laugh.
Before I could see what happened next, my vision became blurred with a bright blue light. It felt as if I was being yanked from behind. I felt wind rush around me, wind which blew the scene of my memory like dust across a field.
This is it, I told myself, the moment of truth.
13. The OTHER SIDE
“Well, well, young Abel,” said a voice much like mine, but deeper… and filled with malice. “We meet again.”
I slowly turned around, facing my exact double, and at the same time, finally facing the truth.
I was Dr. Kane all along.
“Your lover and his doctor friend are waiting for that body down there to awaken,” Kane said. “But only one of us can fill that body. Only one of us will survive.”
My jaw set. I thought of all the pain and suffering he caused – not mine… but that of so many others. Innocents. So much death at Kane’s hands.
“I… will… end you,” I growled.
Kane laughed; a slow, deliberate, taunting laugh.
“I’d like to see you try,” he replied.
I raised my fist and slammed it towards Kane—but a sharp bounce blocked the blow a mere hair from his face. He laughed as a glass-like forcefield wobbled in response to the impact.
Kane tried blasting me with every bolt of energy, tried leeching my lifeforce with every spell he—I—remembered. I countered with every parry, every ray, every dodge I could muster. While his attacks made their way to me, every shot I made bounced off the forcefield.
“You’ll never be free of me,” Kane teased. “I’m a part of you. Forever.”
It was then I remembered Mial’s words to me before he replaced the last missing volume of my life’s story: “You’ll come through the other side alright.”
The other side…
Of course!
“With every day that passes,” I growled, “I will erase your legacy. I can’t bring back every person that you killed, but I will make amends for it.
“I will rid this world of every twisted concoction you and the Ravens produced, and I will obliterate any creature you created in the name of evil!”
Kane gave me another mocking smirk.
“You dullard,” he chortled. “You still don’t get it, do you? Do you think y
ou were the first? You weren’t even the fifth! There will always be a Dr. Kane to help do the master’s bidding. The Raven already has his new Dr. Kane in power!”
My mind raced through the recently-revived memories, causing my vision of myself as Kane to blur.
The Felinial. At the Raven’s side as we watched Antereus be dragged into the arena. Dragging me afterward. Injecting me with the fluid that made the two versions of me liquefy and recombine.
“That’s right,” Kane grinned. “Whenever one Kane disappears, another is christened. As long as The Raven is in power, as long as the Covenant reigns, there will always be a Dr. Kane! Vy’kallai Nachtremord! Long live Nevermore!”
With that, the face of Dr. Kane began to transpose itself. His facial skin began to develop orange fur, and his ears slid from the sides, like a human, to the top of the head and developed points like those of a Felinial.
Khaz’Nashan smirked at me and gave me a wink.
Running with all my might, I took a leap towards the forcefield. I had no idea what I might feel upon impact, or if I would even actually make contact with Kane’s body
Thousands of glass-like shards flew around me as I broke through and tackled Kane to the ground. I felt the shards hit my back, and I felt a cold, yet pulsing body underneath me.
All that Kane—Khaz’Nashan—did was laugh. A hearty, entertained laugh.
✽ ✽ ✽
My body shook violently as I awoke back on the operating table in the medical center. I tried to launch myself upright, but I was belted and shackled to the table. I gasped like I had just come up from the ocean depths.
The surgeon stood directly in front of me, holding a scythe, which was pointed at me, its tip glowing red.
“Friend or foe?” Akir bellowed. “Speak now or face the blade.”
“Wh-what?” My chest was pounding. My brain was buzzing. I was in a total state of confusion.
“State your name, now!
“Abel… Abel…. it’s me. It’s Abel.”
“Thank the gods!” Ricken burst through the double doors of the operating room and threw his arms over me. I tried hugging him back, only to remember I was still bound to the table.
“Get me out of these belts,” I begged. “Please, Ricken – take me home!”
“Not so fast,” said Akir, still wielding her scythe as she approached. She gently began unfastening the belts around my ankles. “We still have a few points of aftercare to discuss.”
“Aftercare?” Ricken ran a hand through my hair absently as he repeated the word. It felt warm and comforting, and full of love.
“Yes. Aftercare.” Akir fussed with a stubborn buckle, working her way to my middle. “These memories we have unlocked are very fresh, and very painful. Like all major surgeries, there must be a recovery period. No strenuous work, no stressful situations. I wouldn’t even perform perfunctory mathematics if you can at all avoid it, at least for two weeks.”
She looked into my eyes, as if trying to see through to the brain itself. “From what your love tells me, this other persona you had was like a cancer, trying to eat away at your psyche. You fought through and came out as yourself. But like any cancer there is a risk of regrowth. The less you can think about Kane, the better during this recovery period.”
Easier said than done, I thought to myself.
14. Repurcussions
I had yet to tell the group what had happened during my “surgery.” Ricken had to practically carry me home the night before. I was nearly insensible between sobs and gasps for air. The others knew it was best for me to get some rest.
They didn’t press me for information the following morning, bless them, and I spent most of the midmorning hours wondering how I could ever explain to them what really happened, who I really was. I was seated behind the bar once again, prevented from doing my usual job – with the added humiliation of Fame having to feed me the food Ricken cooked for me, because I had no strength to do either for myself.
And the real exercise was trying not to think about… him.
I began to wonder if even thinking his name would cause me harm. Best not to chance it, I reasoned.
I changed my train of thought to the vampire. Ricken had been preparing the party for a potential standoff against a vampire. And the warning about the vampire didn’t come until after my amulet exploded. I knew there was a connection – call it instinct or call it memory. If it was packed in the amulet, and the amulet belonged to me, then I must have had something to do with the vampire back in the labs at Nevermore… but what?
And were there more of his kind lurking about? What did I potentially unleash upon the world?
While I had all my memories back, there were still parts that were fuzzy. I remembered concepts, but defined shapes eluded me. Akir said those would sharpen over time.
My head began to painfully pound in time with my pulse. Stop this, I warned myself. Doctor’s orders. Stop… thinking… about it.
I decided to get more sleep. My eyes closed, and when I opened them again, it was late at night.
There had been no dream, no nightmare. No Kane. For the first time in my recently-recovered memory, I had been blessed with a restful sleep.
The door to my chamber was closed, but the lights of the hallway were still blazing. Turning to it, I saw a pair of shadows a foot or two apart.
“I need to talk to you all,” said a voice behind the door. “It’s time I told you everything I know about Abel.”
Ricken.
Quietly, I climbed out of bed and walked to the door and placed my ear against it.
“Is he alright?” It was Irek.
“He will be,” Ricken replied. “But there are things we must discuss. Before he regains his strength, I need to know what his future with this group will be.”
I pulled my head back. This sounded as if Ricken was warning them about something. I waited about five minutes, until I stopped seeing and hearing footsteps past my door.
I had to hear what Ricken had to say. And I couldn’t be seen. There were a few ways to do that, but only one that I could sustain for long periods.
Closing my eyes, I thought about rivers, lakes and streams. A warm, bubbling sensation washed over me, and a moment later, I was looking upward from the floor.
As a puddle of liquid, I had the ability to slide under doors and move about without making my presence known. All I had to do was think about the path ahead of me and my metamorphosed body would go in that direction.
I slipped down the stairway from our second-story sleeping quarters to the tavern directly below. Making sure not to disturb and of the lighter objects in the way, I crept behind the bar. From the corner, I could see the group gathered at a far table, with Ricken standing at the head.
“There’s no way to soften this news,” Ricken said. “But I must tell you now that Abel learned during his procedure that he was indeed Dr. Kane.”
I could hear a few disappointed sighs and tsk-tsks from the group.
“I have to stress, he is Abel. Now and from here on out.”
“How are you certain of that?” Taryn asked. Their hands were clasped before them.
“Because,” Ricken began, “Abel told me shortly afterward that a new Dr. Kane has replaced him. It was just a moniker, you see – The Raven designates a ‘Dr. Kane’ as his top researcher and the one responsible for developing and running their experiments.
“He’s expressed nothing but sorrow for what he’s done,” he continued. “And that leads me to the next part… I have a file.” He held up a leather-bound folder. “The Daggers of Allach kept a thorough file on crimes committed by The Ravens that were connected directly to Abel. It’s only right to let you know what he did that affected some of you specifically.”
He looked at Beltrin. “The Ravens learned you were selling makeshift potions to give folks temporary powers,” Ricken said. “Abel, as Dr. Kane, ordered henchmen to attack you and steal the formula.”
The dragonkin’s mou
th hung open. Clearly in shock, he shook his head, then put both of his silver hands over his mouth, the tips of his fingers tented against the tip of his nose.
“Caeden… the raid on your family’s group a few years back? That was one of his first ‘assignments.’” Ricken sighed. “He was known to have told the attackers to leave no survivors, and when they came back and he learned they had failed their mission… he had them killed instead.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Caeden said. “Our Abel?”
Ricken nodded. “Basically, every interaction you or your family members had with The Ravens during the time Abel was ‘missing’ and the time I pulled him from Nevermore, was at the behest of him… as Kane,” he stressed.
As the conversation continued, I learned that every member of the party had indeed either lost a family member or an acquaintance in some way, due to my need of subjects for testing. With each detail Ricken revealed to them, the more disgusted with myself I became.
Taryn sighed and pushed their wheelchair back from the table. Realizing they were heading in a direction that could lead them to see me, I slid behind the bar entirely and reformed into my human form, sitting bow-legged under the prep sink. I listened to the rest of the conversation.
“What do you expect us to do with this information?” Taryn asked. “This is tantamount to treason, you know. Any other freelancer group would kill the traitor outright.”
I bit my lip. Would they really do that to me?
“I understand, but you must understand I will not allow that to happen,” Ricken said. I heard a chair scrape against the floor and assumed Ricken was seating himself. “You must understand that Abel was not in his right mind. The Raven was taking advantage of Abel’s anger and confusion and influencing him into becoming as ruthless as he did.”
“We may have to banish him,” Irek said. “What do you guys think?”
It was all I needed to hear. There was no way the Winds of Andusk would allow me, Dr. Kane or not, to remain with them, knowing what they knew then. I turned back into a puddle and willed my liquid self to go down the drain under the sink. Knowing the plumbing system built throughout the keep, it was easy to guide myself back to the bathroom of my quarters. I had a quick shower and got back into bed before Ricken came back upstairs.