“Of course.”
Cornelius put the cup to his lips and gulped loudly, draining it. He wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve, then gowned. “I’ve helped you to create a monster, not a superbeing…”
“No, not a monster exactly—”
“To hell with that! It’s a mindless, murdering animal.”
“Well, yes. But we can make him behave.”
Cornelius almost laughed. “Behave? Good God, Professor. It slaughtered an innocent boy in there.”
Without looking, he pointed to the dark stain on the floor of the now-empty lab. “Then it came after me and the guards—straight through that blasted window as if it wasn’t there.”
In an uncharacteristic gesture, the Professor laid a comforting hand on his colleague’s shoulder. “You must have been terrified, doctor,” he crooned sympathetically.
“You don’t know the half of it.”
Oh, but I do, the Professor silently countered, bowing his head to hide the slightest of smiles. And I’m delighted by your reaction. I can only imagine how those who confront a fully trained and conditioned Weapon X will feel! No nation, no power, could stand up against such might.
The Professor withdrew his hand. “But in the end you weren’t hurt, Doctor, so let’s not overindulge ourselves, hmm?”
Cornelius placed the cup to his lips, found it dry, and set it aside.
“Logan could have killed us all. I met his eyes for a second … filled with hate and fury But I couldn’t tell if it was some animal bloodlust, or horror at what we have done to him.”
All we’ve “done to him” is free the untamed, unchecked beast inside, thought the Professor. A beast that will soon be trained like a circus animal to perform on cue.
The Professor watched as Cornelius rose and crossed the booth, to replenish his cup from a near empty pot. “And then what happened, Doctor?” he asked encouragingly.
“Then, with his life supports torn away, Subject X went down … collapsed. Those terrible knives—”
An extraordinary adaptation, those claws, the Professor privately marveled. A dazzling evolutionary leap—
“—sunk back into his body.”
Stealthy. Lethal. The perfect weapon for Weapon X.
“And I thanked God for my good fortune.”
A pity I hadn’t thought of such an innovation first. We might have been better prepared for it…
The Professor shifted impatiently. “Well, you have survived to tell your tale. Now we should consider—”
“But the boy is dead, Professor.”
“Yes, it’s very tragic. Whatever could have possessed him to leave his booth?”
Cornelius shrugged. “I don’t know. He must have seen the danger. But still, we have to answer for it.”
The Professor frowned. “How so, Doctor?”
“Well, the police, obviously … and what about the boy’s family?”
“Surely you do not want the police involved? Asking questions? Prying into people’s lives? Your life? Why, if that happened, I’m not certain I could ensure your safety, Dr. Cornelius.”
“That hardly matters now,” Cornelius replied, surprised because he meant every word. After facing Logan’s wrath, his terror of imprisonment had evaporated.
The Professor studied his colleague, puzzled by his change of attitude. “And I thought we’d won you over, Doctor. Convinced you not to squander your scientific knowledge. Impressed you with our steadfast dedication.”
Cornelius lowered his eyes. “I’ve had enough.”
Not until I say you have. But finessing is obviously required. How very tiresome…
“Fortunately, I don’t believe police involvement will be necessary,” the Professor replied, ignoring Cornelius’s statement. “The boy’s relatives can be compensated. Secured, let us say.”
Cornelius wasn’t listening. He fumbled with his coffee, the bitter brew staining his lab coat.
To vent his impatience, the Professor swept the Plexiglas debris from the top of the computer monitor. “Doctor. I realize you must be feeling a little estranged from me just now, so perhaps it is time to induct you further into my program…”
Cornelius looked up. “Program?”
Always the soft touch, then the iron hand.
“Yes … but first I will require your explicit trust. Do I have that, Dr. Cornelius?”
The doctor’s jaw moved a second before a sound emerged. “I… I don’t know. There’s a lot—”
“That I will explain.”
He’s disoriented, the Professor observed. Looking for direction . . . leadership. Now the iron hand.
“Your trust, Doctor,” the Professor repeated. “I require it. Offer that trust and I shall accept.”
“Well,” Cornelius said in a whisper. “Okay, then, if you want… I trust you.”
The Professor licked his lips. “Thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome, sir.”
“Tell me, Doctor, are you familiar with the term Homo superior?”
Cornelius shrugged. “As in master race or something?”
“To some extent. But no … I mean mutant.” The Professor paused to reactivate the blood-flecked monitor. “Mutants aren’t human, Dr. Cornelius, they are Homo superior. Subject X is not human. He is, therefore, Homo superior. Look here—”
The Professor replayed the final moments of the status technician’s life.
“What do you see?”
Cornelius was repulsed, yet scientific curiosity compelled him to watch. “What do you think?” he said angrily. “I see a wild beast that was once a man.”
“Very well, Cornelius. I accept your assessment. Yet I see a man as ever he was, but with his subconscious stripped bare. Cut from his very soul and scored to the bone. Our friend has come into his own at last. For that we should rejoice. We are transforming him—architects of Logan’s mind, body, and soul.”
Cornelius scratched his chin, unnerved by the Professor’s thin smile “The experiment. The adamantium bonding process. Are you saying it mutated him into this infernal thing?”
“No, Doctor. You must understand that this ‘infernal thing’ is what the patient has always been. A determinedly violent individual pummeling his way through a purposeless life.”
As the Professor watched the endless replay loop on the screen, his eyes were filled with something that resembled pity.
“Imagine such a life, Cornelius? One day distinguished from the next only by the changing patterns of bruises and blood from last night’s drunken fight. But then, inexplicably, the wounds are healed and gone before noon and his first beer …” The Professor shook his head. “How sad. Why, I doubt if he even suffered hangovers.”
The intercom buzzed.
“The diagnostic tests have been completed, Professor,” Dr. Hendry reported. “We are assessing the results now. It will be a few hours. Perhaps by noon.”
“And the subject?”
“He’s been placed in maximum security Lab Five, Level Five. A team is monitoring his activities.”
The Professor’s delicate hands tapped the keyboard and the murderous scene on the monitor shifted to a real-time image of Logan in another cell, awake and struggling against the bonds that restrained him from head to toe.
“Think of it, Dr. Cornelius,” the Professor continued. “All his years, Logan has endured this … madness. Suffering a destiny that tore at him from his guts outward. Battling a fate decreed him by nature—a curse not unlike the scourge of lycanthropy in the Middle Ages. Do you even know Logan’s history?”
“No,” Cornelius replied. “Only…”
“Only that he was kidnapped for the purposes of this highly advanced experiment, correct?”
Cornelius nodded.
“Yet that did not trouble you?”
“I… I thought he was a criminal or something. I figured that the REM machine was part of the process … to rehabilitate Logan. To make him a better man.”
The Professor threw
back his head and laughed. “You have stumbled upon the truth, Doctor, for it is my intention that Mr. Logan be fully rehabilitated.”
Cornelius could not tear his eyes away from Logan on the screen. “You were saying … his history, Professor?”
“Logan became a government agent and was ideally suited to the dangers of his activities. He had nothing to lose—not even his godforsaken life.” The Professor faced Cornelius. “You saw the Medfax yourself; Doctor. Shot several times. Stabbed and beaten in the course of duty. Recklessly seeking the honor of dying for his country. How pitifully desperate he must have become.”
On the monitor, Logan managed to free his arms. As they both watched, he began to tear at the thick cables that circled his waist.
“But now his demon is free,” said the Professor. “Released by the intervention of Project X His double identity—tormented mutant and secret spy—has been eradicated by the REM device. It’s been supplanted by the superego, and all of Logan’s primal instincts are focused and resolved. Do you understand?”
“I’m not sure I—”
“Before he became clay in our hands, it was as if Logan did not exist, anyway. He had no family. His body never aged, he carried no scars to remind him of past mistakes. Only his memories told him he was alive at all, and those memories caused him nothing but pain and endless suffering.”
The Professor moved closer. “Logan’s curse was to live on, while past friends, lovers, wives—perhaps even sons and daughters—aged and died before his eyes. Imagine such loneliness?”
“Yes…” Cornelius answered without a moment’s hesitation.
Of course you can, the Professor recalled, then continued.
“How many times must he have considered suicide? Yet even death was denied him. No wonder he sought escape in alcohol. It’s as if Logan understood that a retreat from the ego—the death of the ‘I’ and all of its memories—was his only chance at salvation.”
“Yes, I do see, Professor.”
“Of course you do, Doctor. And what you’re looking at right now is Logan stripped of ambiguity of emotion. “What you see is the most formidable tactical weapon ever conceived.”
“The knives, then, in his hands,” said Cornelius. “Pure adamantium…”
“They’re not knives, Cornelius—they’re claws! And already Logan knows how to use them.”
As they watched, Logan extended his talons and severed the last of the cables restraining him to the bunk. He sat up, claws fully extended.
“Are they asleep in that booth?” the Professor muttered as he punched the intercom. “Security!”
“Security here.”
“We need the gas now, in Lab Five.”
“We’re waiting for Dr. Hendry’s authorization…”
“You have mine,” the Professor cried. “Haste! Haste! He’s almost on his feet.”
“Copy.”
As Logan rolled off the bunk, a cyclone of yellow gas was blasted into his face from nozzles hidden in the walls, the floor, even the ceiling of the cell. Choking, he went down on his knees and clutched his heaving chest.
“Oh my God,” gasped Cornelius.
Logan’s mouth gaped, and a green bile erupted from the back of his throat. He hit the floor facedown, but twitching arms and legs quickly tossed him onto his back. Finally, Logan gagged like a beached shark. As he slipped into unconsciousness, the claws slowly retracted into his flesh.
Cornelius sank into a chair, transfixed by the image.
“A necessary action, Doctor. You saw what happened.”
“Yes … but… I mean…”
“Spit it out, man. I’m open to suggestions.”
“Can’t we treat him better than this? He’s still human, isn’t he?”
The Professor considered his words. “In some way, perhaps. But your earlier description was more apt. ‘A mindless, murdering animal,’ I believe you said.”
“Yes… I suppose so…”
“And this is why I am depending upon you, good doctor.” The Professor rested his arm on the other’s shoulder in what he imagined was a paternal gesture.
It made Cornelius’s skin crawl.
Cornelius closed his eyes to banish the image on the screen, only to find Logan’s face seared into his brain like an afterimage, as if he’d stared at the sun too long.
“In truth, Subject X is not so very different than your amazing nanochips,” murmured the Professor. “He was created for a specific purpose. Now he must be restructured. Trained. Then programmed.’
Cornelius opened his eyes. Logan scented to stare up at him through the screen.
“You can do all of this,” uttered the Professor. Manipulation of the mindless. Dr. Cornelius. It is your calling.”
9
Revelations
Carol Hines traced the curved adamantium blade with her left hand.
Magnificent.
In her mind, this was an unprecedented achievement.
The Professor had created an entirely new biological defense mechanism within the subject organism through the use of technology—totally bypassing the vagaries of the natural selection process. Amazing.
She shifted her wide green eyes to a second X-ray, this one taken laterally. It revealed a mysterious knot of muscle and cartilage in the forearm that held the claws in place. The muscle also served as a sheath when the blades were not in use.
Amazing architecture.
The claws appeared both lethal and efficient. To Carol, this configuration alone was a testament to what could be achieved when total discipline and a single vision were imposed on a scientific community in unison.
A true triumph of the will.
Like a patron of the arts, she moved from image to image, studying each of more than a hundred X-rays and ultrasounds wallpapering the medical conference center.
Behind her, more personnel began to file into the room, answering the Professor’s summons, as she had, to attend this emergency meeting.
Carol Hines paused as a particular image caught her eye—an electron microscopic photograph of the surface of the subject’s unbreakable steel claw.
No sword-maker in ancient Japan could have forged so perfect a blade.
At a magnification of more than one hundred thousand times, not a flaw, not a ripple could be found in the sleek, glassy surface. And the subject’s claws were twice as dense as tempered steel.
Virtually indestructible, thanks to the adamantium alloy…
A resin replica of the subject’s blade configuration had been cast while he was unconscious. It now hung from surgical wire in the center of the wall display.
Carol Hines couldn’t resist the urge to touch one shaft of the three long, slightly curved blades, to imagine the cold-cast resin’s dull edges were really a steel alloy and sharper than a razor.
I had my doubts about the Professor, Carol admitted to herself, especially after he seemed to freeze in panic during the bonding process. But it’s obvious he truly had a vision of what Subject X was to become. And that vision has come to pass.
“Pretty remarkable development, eh, Ms. Hines?”
She turned to find Dr. MacKenzie, the staff psychiatrist, standing at her side.
“I never imagined such a thing was possible,” she replied, awe in her voice.
“If I were a Freudian, I could make much hay out of this particular configuration,” MacKenzie chuckled as he rubbed the side of his red beard. His face was florid, his shock of red hair uncombed. The doctor had obviously been up much of the night, along with everyone else. But the lack of sleep hadn’t affected his jovial nature.
Carol Hines offered MacKenzie a reserved smile. “What is your discipline, doctor? Which psychological theory do you expound?”
“In my golden youth, I was a student of Alfred Adler—a fact you probably could have deduced yourself.”
“That seems intended as a very witty remark. I’m sorry; but I don’t understand the reference.”
“Well, Ms. Hines,
Adler believed that the sense of inferiority rather than the sex drive is the fundamental motivating force in human nature. Feelings of inferiority; conscious or unconscious, combined with defense mechanisms are often the cause of all psychopathological behavior, in Adler’s opinion.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“Since you arrived with that magic machine of yours, my services as staff psychiatrist are no longer deemed important. Hence my own feelings of inferiority;”
“I’m sorry; but—” Ms. Hines began again.
MacKenzie threw up his hands. “No, no, please don’t apologize. You misunderstand me. I readily surrender to your expertise, Ms. Hines, and truly hope that you assume all of my responsibilities in the very near future. To be frank, I’ve had my fill of the Professor. And of Project X.”
After MacKenzie’s impromptu admission, they stood in silence for a moment, viewing the images as others moved around them.
“Any idea why this meeting’s been called?” MacKenzie asked when they were more or less alone.
“I was about to ask you the same question,” she replied. “Perhaps it might have something to do with the violent incident last night in Lab Two.”
“Possibly…”
MacKenzie sounded doubtful. In her heart, Carol Hines harbored doubts as well. Something was in the air. A whiff of change that she had sniffed before. She sensed the same tension, the same confused feeling she’d experienced at NASA after the last space shuttle accident—a feeling of chaos, mingled with the knowledge that certain individuals had lost power and prestige within the organization while others had gained it.
The difficulty for me, she recalled, was trying to figure out whose star was on the ascent, and whose was falling like space junk.
Institutional chaos and ambiguity eroded one’s sense of purpose, fostered doubts, diminished productivity.
No one is immune. Not even a scientist like my father—his doubts led to alcohol abuse and worse.
Carol believed in focusing on the task, not the politics swirling around it. Better a worker bee than a queen. Better to keep ones head down than get it chopped off—like my father’s, when a drug he developed failed to pass Federal Drug Administration approval.
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