Promethean

by P. S. Power

  The Child of Frankenstein: Book Two

  Promethean

  P.S. Power

  Orange Cat Publishing

  Copyright 2019

  Chapter one

  The noise was louder than anything Liam had ever encountered in his short life. A booming sound that had him thinking that bad men had broken down the door again. Likely planning to try and kill him or those he was with in the house. The place wasn’t his, or even that of his mother, of course. It belonged to Agent Tiffany Brenner. The woman that the FBI had assigned to watch him, even though he’d broken no laws at all.

  It was, he’d learned over the last days and weeks, simply that the government was trying to punish his mother for a certain crime. One that wasn’t strictly illegal at all.

  Creating him.

  They probably didn't even hate him, strictly speaking. Some of the men that had initially come for him had been violent and angry seeming. Really, the first person that he’d seen in his life, off of a screen at least, had started his introduction by screaming that if Liam moved, he’d fucking kill him. Now those words replayed in his head as he jumped to his feet, the chair behind him tipping over with a clatter. On the second event he didn’t jump at the sound, moving toward the front door of the house quickly. Smoothly, even.

  Liam had been studying that kind of thing, since his new shoes were unfamiliar to him or had been. Each day he’d gone outside to practice running since making them. They were large, formed to his huge feet perfectly, as far as the sole and shape went. There were a few rough patches where the things were trying to rub still, due to the fact that they were only the second pair of such things he’d ever tried to make. On the next build he planned to use softer material in places, to prevent that kind of thing. Not that it bothered or harmed him at all.

  He thought they looked a bit funny, given how very large his feet were compared to his height. His hands were in the same realm, of course, making him seem a bit out of balance that way. His top was a tan shift at the moment, since he needed large sleeves in order to make everything fit. Otherwise his hands wouldn’t fit through the holes.

  That meant he’d had to learn to make his own clothing, or had started in on that skillset. It shared part of his shoe making skills, as far as technique went, since he was sewing the body of the things anyway, meaning he’d only had to look up how the patterns worked. Then he’d carefully cut apart one of his hospital scrub tops, made several patterns from it and then created half a dozen tops in different colors. Some with more advanced stitching and pockets. The pants were the same. He liked having the ability to carry small objects around. It was kind of magical, having a pen with him when he needed it.

  The fall of his feet didn’t boom across the wooden floor, since his weight spread well and he made a point to shuffle slightly, in order to prevent tripping as he rushed the front door. At the same time, moving nearly as fast as he was, Brenner came down the stairs.

  She shouted, even if doing that might not have been the ideal at the moment, since they didn't know what was going on.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  He didn't know of course, so simply tugged at the door when he got there, stopping just outside of it, since the billowing smoke and freshly evacuated crater allowed even him to analyze things fairly accurately. He was young but had seen several movies with violence in them in the last month or so. One of those had shown something similar to this for him to use as an example. He called that up in his head, stepping to the side since he didn't really want to be shot by Agent Brenner, if that was at all possible.

  That kind of thing had to hurt and while it wouldn’t kill him, the initial impact of anything that did harm seemed to feel about the same to him as it would for anyone else. At least he felt other pain that way. The first moments were harsh, then it would fade away to nothing, over the course of about fifteen seconds. At least once he knew what the pain was. That could leave him at a disadvantage for a bit, so was a thing to avoid. Plus, it would make a hole in his new clothing, or could, which would be annoying.

  True to form, the agent pushed past him, a firearm sticking out in front of her. It was a semi-automatic. A medium sized one, since Brenner was a normal human woman and found that using a larger caliber hurt enough to use that it made it hard for her to be accurate with, since the things kicked and jumped when fired. Liam had never tried to even touch anything like that at all in his entire life. He was nearly seven months old, which was, if he were being judged by human standards, very youthful for that kind of thing. Most children weren’t allowed to do anything like hold a gun until they were in their mid-teens. In years, not numbers of months.

  That seemed slow to him but was actually the case. He’d looked it up, several times, just to be certain people weren’t misleading him for some reason.

  He was solidly different than a human child, already being fully grown, having been created that way, and able to learn much faster than most others, regardless of what kind of person they were. A thing that he found meant almost nothing to those around him. They clearly understood he wasn’t strictly acting in the same way that one of their babies would, of course. They weren’t stupid or foolish. They just had rules. Such as him needing to be sixteen in order to get a driver’s license.

  Looking at the scene in front of him, Liam slowly scanned the rest of the world. There was no car to have blown up, even if the smoke was still in the air. All of the pieces of the gravel driveway had already settled out of the air, since he’d moved fast, without being super human about it. He could do that, if there was a large flat area to run in. That skill, running, was new to him. A thing that he’d only tried for the first time two weeks before. He was good at it, he thought. He almost never fell down any longer, which indicated that to him. Not that work wasn’t needed still.

  There was no one there to practice such things with him, so he used the advice of running coaches he found online. There was a lot of information on it, for something that almost all humans and most of the other kinds of people, already knew how to do.

  His biggest problem wasn’t that he shambled or moved like a movie monster either. The fact was that he simply didn’t, being more supple of joint and sinew than most beings were by far. He was, if anything, more coordinated than most were. It was only that his large feet caught on things as he tried to dash through the woods behind the house. The deer trails he used for that weren’t exactly designed with him in mind. If he ever met any of the deer, he planned to ask about that, to see if they might aid him by increasing the width of their paths.

  No one was in sight at all. Glancing at the bushes to the left side of the driveway, he nodded. It was possible for a person to hide in or behind those from where he and Brenner were standing. Inside of them would be harder to manage, being that whoever did it would find themselves stabbed lightly, if they tried it. He could have gotten it done though, so figured that others might as well.

  “I’ll go and check for people. We need to assume that they will be armed.” Liam whispered the words. Not because he was hiding the fact that he was about to move, either.

  His vocal cords had grown into the sides of his throat on his creation. It had been a simple mistake or happenstance, rather than a good way to make certain he wasn’t too noisy. At least he thought his mother hadn’t done that on purpose. She’d claimed it was an accident. Then, there were other things that were a bit different about Liam than the other single promethean he’d met. Oaks. His father. Also, as strange as it sounded, the original Frankenstein’s monster from the book.

  The being that had given Mary Shelley, the author of that great work her inspiration at least. To hear the man tell the story now, the writer had taken some liberties with the tale, even though it really seemed like Oa
ks was trying to cover for the fact that the creature in the book had been kind of a whiny bitch. Brenner had said that, to Oaks directly.

  The eight-foot-tall, incredibly hard looking man with his heavy features… Had laughed at the idea. Then admitted that he might be deflecting a bit now, well over a hundred years later.

  Oaks had worked out, long before, that his skin and eyes turned brown when he ate animal protein in sufficient amounts. It also burned horribly and made his entire body ache for a day, needing to be repeated once every two months or so. Liam had tried it. His skin had turned a nice chestnut brown from it, instead of the sickly yellow that it had been before. That took him from bizarre and off-putting in looks to most people that saw him, into being merely strange. His eyes were still the same color of yellow though. For some reason, those hadn’t changed when the rest of him had.

  Why that had happened was probably down to how he’d been made, compared to Oaks and the others. All of them were at least part animal, originally. At least Liam thought that might be the case, from what little he’d been told. Most were probably made from cow bones, some pig parts and scavenged human cadavers. Liam had been built of carefully selected human parts. All of them male, even. His hands and feet weren’t truly outside of what a man could have, given that. Just at the extreme edge of it. On his five-four frame, they looked out of place. Ridiculous, in some ways.

  Not waiting for Brenner to tell him that he shouldn’t go, since they didn't know who might be out there, he ran, doing well enough on the flat and smooth driveway. The gravel crunched under his feet, as he dashed toward the site of the recent explosion. The scent of chemicals in the air stung his nose as he moved to the road first thing. Something told him to do that. What that was, he couldn’t say exactly. Some sense or warning that the threat would stem from there.

  Down the road, about two hundred feet, there was a dark blue truck. It was just far enough away that he couldn’t make out the numbers and letters on the plate. The colors were correct for the state they were in, however. He stared at the rest of the situation, even as a man in black, with a face mask on, stood up from the back of the truck, in the empty part of it, which he thought was called the bed, and pulled a rifle around. Taking aim at him.

  Liam nodded, and stepped to the side, just as a series of gunshots rang out. He kept moving, none of the bullets hitting him. Wheels squealed on pavement as the thing pulled away, however. Then, because the truck might not have been alone in it’s carrying duties, he checked up and down the street, after they left. No one else was visible at all. Quickly he ran, looking for any people that might have been hiding in the bushes, then in the woods behind the place. It was rapidly done, but still covered about a mile and a half before he got back to the house, several minutes later.

  He moved in close, doing it slowly, since Brenner was hiding behind a large planter on the front of her porch. It was made of stone, meaning it might even deflect certain types of rounds, if shooting started again. It was too small for true protection but the idea that something was better than nothing was apparent to him. A thing for him to remember as well, it seemed.

  After all, since leaving his home, two months before, he’d been in two fights, been rushed at in random attacks on three separate occasions that he’d fled from and now this. Whatever they were going to call it. Truly, it didn’t seem like a fight, strictly speaking. No one had attempted to punch or kick him, this time. He hadn’t been stabbed or cut either, which had happened in both of the other real fights.

  Liam had looked up some fighting technics because of that, since it seemed a thing that might come up for him. Really, he’d researched and tried to practice every type of unarmed fighting he could find out about. None of that information had covered what to do if your driveway was hit by an explosion. He wasn’t certain, but he thought that it might be a thing that a person needed home owner’s insurance to address.

  Being quiet, since it was his only option, he called out, his hands well away from his body, so that Brenner wouldn’t get too confused. It was twilight out, that just having started to fall while he was outside. It was the first time he’d been outside when that happened, though he’d watched it a few times through the window. The experience was different when he was immersed in it. The sounds were closer as well as quieter that night, however. The birds and animals that normally lent a slight air of music to the world had fallen silent and stayed that way, for instance.

  Probably left in fear from the explosion, rather than understanding that it was part of an attack. It was cold out, being winter, if without snow on the ground yet. He’d been told that was unusual, though not unheard of.

  “Brenner? I think everyone is gone. I checked the bushes and woods. There was a blue truck with local plates and a man with a black mask over his face that shot at me. You heard that?”

  She nodded, standing up, her side-arm pointed at the driveway, ready to come up at a moment’s notice.

  “Amazingly enough, I did. I called in back up. Local police. Plus, Sanchez is getting some of the guys to come in. This is… Different. I’ve had people try to fire bomb me before but no one has ever gone in for something like this. That was a real blast, not some kid with a pipe bomb. Then, shooting at you indicates that pretty well.”

  She seemed calmer than she had been, if a bit worried still. As if her eyes didn’t want to rest, searching the world constantly. She stood there, doing that for several minutes until she heard sirens in the distance, then she nodded and put her handgun away. Sliding it into the holster that she wore on the right side of her back, hidden under her loose shirt.

  Patting it, she winked at him. It wasn’t meant to indicate she wanted to do adult things with him, just that she was attempting to get his attention on a specific point. The move was considered playful for that, though it worked well enough in the moment.

  “We don’t want weapons to be out when the boys in blue arrive. On something like this they’ll be high strung to start with. They’ll also be human, so…” She didn’t say what she was thinking, though he understood it without extra help.

  Some people, about one in five in his experience, so far, was left feeling angry or upset, even fearful to the level of true terror, in his presence. They had to get within thirty or forty feet of him and the closer they got, the worse the feelings would be for them. Oaks figured that it was psychic in nature. The other theory was that it might be a chemical response. Some kind of pheromone that did the trick. Bathing didn’t help blunt it at all, though oddly enough, having normal looking skin did, a bit.

  Since he’d suffered through a day and a night of burning torment to change his looks that way from yellow to brown, people had tended to avoid him, instead of simply foaming at the mouth and coming at him swinging their fists or weapons that had been picked up. That didn't mean they all loved him now, just that he wasn’t the instantly identifiable target of their wrath and hatred any longer.

  Unfortunately, he wasn’t being gifted with the pretty brown eyes that some had going on in life. His yellow ones were odd, which some people noticed. Brenner felt they were striking, instead of scary looking. She wasn’t alone, from what people had told him. Then, a few had also said they thought he was slightly into the creeptastic zone. Well, one person had. Darrel, the vampire. Liam thought that he was teasing, even if he actually believed what he’d said.

  The trick for the evening was that Liam needed to be away from the police, physically, by the time they got there. Hiding in the woods wouldn’t work well, either, since they’d probably want to search them, just in case any attackers were left. Going into the house didn’t seem a great plan, since they’d ask if someone was there and he didn't know if Tiffany was allowed to lie to fellow government thugs. That name, thug, came from an ancient Indian cult of murderers. Now it simply meant a brutal and sometimes evil man.

  That worked for the police and most government agents, in his experience. Sometimes they were better than that.

 
Standing right there on the porch of his home would either be fine, or just possibly end with him being shot several times and arrested, since the police did that when they tried to kill you for no reason. That information had been online for all to see, though many in the comments sections seemed to think that anyone shot by police was instantly guilty. Regardless of what the facts said about the matter. That wouldn’t be happening in his case, if one or more of them were triggered into aggression against him.

  He paused for too long, the men pulling up in four cars, with two bodies in each before he could escape. What he did instead was move to the side, still in front of the house. Making himself easily seen in the blue and red flashing lights. Those were oddly pretty, he decided. They lit up the world with a certain air of festivity. The sirens, thankfully, had been shut off down the road by a bit. Approximately a quarter mile away.

  Given that two of the cars nearly got stuck in the pit that had been blasted out by the explosion, they all stopped well away from himself or Brenner. She called out, as soon as they climbed out, weapons drawn. Her voice was calm sounding.

  “I’m FBI. Agent Tiffany Brenner. To the left is my son, Liam Brenner. He has a speech problem, so can only whisper to communicate.” Why she was telling them that, or lying about his name, he didn't know. It did probably mean that she was allowed to lie to other parts of the government, if she needed. They didn't know about the supernatural, not officially, so it made some sense that her department would have provisions in regards to that kind of thing. “He’s on a special drug treatment for that which can cause some people around him to feel dizzy, upset or fearful. You might want to step back from him if it starts to hit you that way.”

  Liam nodded, even if, to his knowledge and study of medicine, there was nothing like that even remotely possible, much less that actually existed. The man in charge, or at least who was in front, moved in, pointing his side arm toward the Earth.