by L J K Cross
“Good morning Amanda.”
Despite the cool perfunctoriness of his greeting, Amanda’s cheeks burned as Alexander trained the full heat of his stare upon her.
“I trust you had a good nights sleep,” enquired Alexander with a knowing twinkle in his eye. Amanda ignored it, blaming her paranoia on her fitful sleep, and lied.
“Very good thank you.”
Alexander held her gaze for a fraction longer than was acceptable or comfortable. Her discomfort doubled as his searing smile widened as if to mock the transparency of her lie. Amanda broke his stare first and turned away.
When she looked up again, Alexander was stood in the centre of the room, his arms held aloft, commanding her attention.
“This is the lab I promised you,” he proclaimed, “and this is the team of professionals I have recruited to assist you in achieving your ambition. Each are the elite in their fields,” he boasted as he gestured at the fantastic four.
“Let me introduce them.”
Alexander then turned and spoke to his team of experts. His tone and demeanour changed abruptly to derisorily off hand.
“Poznakomtyes” he barked at them. Alexander pointed to the figure stood closest to him.
“Here is your trainer.”
As if to emphasise his point, Alexander jabbed him in the chest. Amanda was surprised his finger didn’t break on those rock hard peaks. The trainer was a man mountain. Everything on him was huge and made of granite. Amanda made to shake hands with him but thought better of it when she caught sight of his bone crunching paws. Alexander continued with his introductions but it didn’t appear to stretch as far as names or other such unnecessary civilities.
“You will work together the closest in the gym everyday.”
Amanda’s eyes lit up at the mere mention of the gym. Judging by how modern and state of the art the lab was, she couldn’t wait to see just how high tech her new fangled gym was, but Alexander continued in his perfunctory, business like manner. Any sign of last night’s entrancing allure had vanished. Today he ruthlessly efficient in his approach, dispassionately indifferent towards Amanda, leaving her painfully perplexed as to why.
“Here is your nutritionist. Vot!” snapped Alexander and the petite blonde woman in the lineup jumped forward almost involuntarily. There was not an inch of fat on her taut frame. She was all angular cheekbones and razor sharp shoulder blades. The only thing harsher than her skull numbing hairstyle was the severity of her stare.
“Ochen priyatno,” she barked. Amanda was unsure whether it was a warning or a welcome.
“And here is your masseuse.”
It was now Amanda’s turn to flinch as she took in the androgynous bulk at the end of line and contemplated the amount of pain it could inflict in the name of rest and recovery.
“Come, come, come!” Alexander ushered Amanda to the side of the room as if to make space for some grand revelation. In his impatience to unveil his piece de resistance it seemed that he had forgotten to introduce the fourth figure in his assembled team of professionals. He stood slightly behind the others, his eyes squinting myopically from behind thick glasses, his sparrow neck jutting painfully out of his white uniform. Amanda could see how easy it was to overlook someone so remarkably unforgettable. The second she turned to follow Alexander any recollection of him slipped from her memory.
“You will have more than enough time to become acquainted. But remember you are here to work, not to make friends.”
Amanda nearly laughed out loud as she looked at the four harbingers of gloom and thought about her chances of getting just one of them to crack a smile. She would stick to squatting 200 kilos on her back. It seemed a much easier task.
“Here. You will be needing this.”
Alexander was now brandishing a gleaming white iPad, which was just as sleek and high tech as the rest of the lab. Alexander’s perfectly manicured, pointed nail tapped the screen and Amanda felt herself compelled to lean in for a closer look.
“As you can see you will refer to this for everything. You could say it is your training bible.”
Alexander suppressed a smile and briefly smirked in Koroviev’s direction. The private joke was lost on Amanda and her eyes returned to the screen. Alexander’s bony finger continued to jab and swipe the screen as a conjurer would wave a wand to create optical illusions. Complex charts, diagrams, plans and calculations flashed on the screen.
“Not only do you have all your diet worked out right down to the very last gram but every single workout will be worked out to the last rep and charted on here. All your measurement and progress charts will be noted on here as well. In fact your entire daily schedule is detailed here and will be updated daily. Alarms have been set on here which will constantly remind you when to eat, when to take your supplements, when to train, when to rest even so that not one minute of your day will be unproductive.”
Amanda stared at the screen as she took in just how comprehensively detailed her schedule was. It was the absolute antithesis of how she was used to training and indeed how she believed training should be approached. She had always listened to her instincts when she had trained. She had always trusted her body to know the limits to which it could be pushed. But there was no instinct, no emotion, no passion in these charts and diagrams. It was all so clinical and scientific. There was no margin for error. There was no possibility to relent and take it even slightly easy. It was pure, hard and unrelenting to the point that it was inhumanly mechanical. Amanda’s heart sank and so did the lights in the room. She heard Alexander’s nail stab the iPad screen and instantly a life size human hologram appeared in the centre of the room. As it hung suspended and rotating in mid air, Amanda looked through the image to see the four detached faces totally unmoved by the spectacle of its anatomical detail. The only illumination on their faces was the ghostly reflection cast by the hologram.
“This is what I have been waiting to show you. This is what is going to help you achieve the ultimate female physique. A Philosopher’s Stone for the twenty-first century where science will take you to your evolutionary limits and unlock your true potential.”
As Alexander spoke his face lit up with a light other than the one cast by the hologram. It came from within. It came from the heat of a burning passion. The intensity of his gaze seemed to look straight through the hologram to a vision of the future, a vision that he had created. The only other person who seemed to be staring as intently at the hologram was Koroviev who as always stood at Alexander’s right hand. It was the first time Amanda had seen him show any interest or emotion in anything. It caught her off guard and so she missed the beginning of what Alexander said next.
“…edge of science and is top secret.”
Alexander pressed the screen of the iPad and the hologram became a huge floating head. Amanda realised that she was holding her breath as she watched the eerily realistic vision and waited. She half expected it to turn in their direction and speak. Instead, with another swish of his finger, Alexander zoomed in on the base of the brain.
“The pituitary gland,” proclaimed Alexander as he approached the hologram.
“But the bit we are concerned about is the anterior pituitary gland, here,” he explained. He attempted to point to the area but his finger passed straight through the image.
“Somatropic cells in the anterior pituitary gland release Growth hormone. Growth hormones, as the name suggests, stimulates growth and cell reproduction.”
Amanda inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. She had at least heard of growth hormone and so didn’t feel entirely lost with this biology lecture. Alexander continued.
“What we propose to do is extract growth hormone from your pituitary gland.”
Amanda’s insides churned at the mere thought of anything being extracted from the base of her brain.
“Your growth hormone will then be cloned in the lab by Dr Pakhomov here and reintroduced into your pituitary gland.”
So that was who he was thought
Amanda as she briefly glanced over at the diminished figure bent over a computer in the corner and then immediately forgot about him as Alexander continued.
“The benefits will be threefold. Primarily an excess of growth hormone will lead to accelerated muscle growth and an enhanced ability for muscles to repair. Secondly the growth hormone will be a hundred percent compatible with your DNA and so will be a hundred percent effective. Also it will be totally undetectable if you are drug tested.”
Alexander’s slit of a smile sliced even wider at this final point as if the totality of his deception only added to the genius of his plan.
“You will also be regularly injected with an antisera containing antibodies to prevent the release of somatostatin in the pituitary gland as this inhibits the release of growth hormone.”
Alexander paused and looked round expectantly as if to receive applause for his brilliance. Instead all he saw was hesitancy in Amanda’s eyes and incredulity in Koroviev’s, which were as wide as satellite dishes collecting every bit of data they received.
“Any questions?”
Again Alexander was met with a resounding silence although Koroviev’s mouth moved two steps ahead of his brain, which had thought better of it and remained mute.
Amanda had questions, many questions – perhaps too many questions.
Would it hurt?
Were there any side effects?
Had tests been carried out and if so how conclusive, how comprehensive had they been?
But as usual when she was in Alexander’s presence she found it difficult to speak up. Just one look from the burning black coals firing in his eyes defied her to question his wisdom and his authority. Amanda though didn’t need to voice her doubts. Alexander’s strangely powerful intuition had already perceived the questions that ran unrestrained through her mind.
“It is merely utilising the true knowledge of science to enable you to maximise your natural potential to its fullest. It would be a sin to lack courage and squander this opportunity to fulfil your most burning ambition.”
Alexander radiated intense resolve. The hologram image glitched, spluttered and staggered, then disappeared. As the bright beseeching lights of the lab came back on everyone blinked and squinted as if still disbelieving of what they had just seen.
Amanda blinked twice as hard as she saw Dr Pakhomov approaching. Surely the needle he was brandishing was also some kind of enlarged hologram. But as her eyes adjusted to the light and he came nearer she saw that it was no optical illusion. He silently gestured for her to take a seat. Amanda sat and steeled herself. Only with unswerving resolve and fortitude would she attain her dreams she told herself. Alexander had urged her to have the courage to seize this opportunity. She daren’t defy him. In fact she felt an irrepressible need to please him, obey him even. Yet as Amanda felt the paralysing piercing of flesh spread from the nape of her neck so did a sense of panic and confusion. Her gaze fixed on Alexander and Koroviev who stood over her, overseeing. Mystifyingly it was Koroviev, rather than Alexander, who seemed the most transfixed. As the needle plunged deeper his eyes narrowed and his hands twitched restlessly by his side. Amanda couldn’t fathom whether he rejoiced or recoiled with her pain. It was obvious he wanted to grab the needle from Pakhomov’s shaky grasp but was he intent on ensuring or preventing the procedure from being successful? With regret Amanda realized that as more and more was revealed to her, the more uncertain she became. If knowledge was truth then the truth was far from enlightening but rather was confusedly stupefying.
CHAPTER 19
Amanda felt her legs give out from under her and collapsed. Overcome with exhaustion and the numbing pain radiating from her shoulders, pulsating and spreading with each nerve twitching spasm, Amanda slouched on the sofa and stared absentmindedly out of the window. The attention-grabbing panorama went unnoticed as Amanda’s arms hung lifeless, paralysed at her side, her head barely able to remain upright even though it was supported against the sofa. She merely lay slumped, listening to the frantic pounding of her heartbeat ricocheting in her head and praying that it would soon return to normal. That she would soon begin to feel human again.
It had been one hell of a day – hard, intense, demanding, both physically and mentally. There had been her first training session in her brand new state of the art gym. Amanda thought she had died and gone to heaven when she caught sight of row upon row of gleaming machine. Little did she know that in the hands of her new trainer they would become brutal instruments of torture. Within minutes under his sadistic supervision the benches were soaked in sweat. Cries of anguish and pain that escaped from the chamber from time to time betrayed the grueling punishment within. Each rep was accompanied by increasingly fraught grunting and shaking of the head. If Amanda had had the energy she would have pleaded for leniency but her only thoughts were of the burning in her muscles. Looking at her shoulders in the mirror they looked red, swollen, pumped and stretched to near bursting and still the weight continued to be piled on. Crucifixion would have been preferable and much less torturous on her shoulders.
“Do zavtra,” smirked her trainer as she staggered out of the gym. Even if Amanda had understood what he had said, she wouldn’t have been able to reply. Her mouth just hung open, gasping, gulping in air to her oxygen-starved muscles. She was fairly sure though that he wasn’t praising her performance in the gym. During the workout, as Amanda’s muscles had become more fatigued, his commands became more urgent, more impatient, more aggressive. By the final sets he had been inches from her face, his face as bright red and strained as hers, spit spraying her face as he screamed in her ear.
“Yeshyo raz.”
“Vyshe! Vyshe!”
“Adin, dva, tree.”
No, thought Amanda to herself, he wasn’t capable of praise, only punishment.
At least her training session had managed to distract her and stop her dwelling too much on what had taken place earlier in the lab. It wasn’t that the injections, all three of them, had been particularly painful. Neither had she been particularly humiliated by having to strip in front of everyone in order to be weighed and measured. After all, standing around in next to nothing in freezing cold gyms being pinched, poked and prodded was part and parcel of being a body builder. Rather it was the nagging doubts as to whether she was doing the right thing that lingered, weighing heavily on her conscience. But as always when faced with difficulties or a tough decision, a hard training session had helped focus her mind. The rush of endorphins flying through her body, the clanking of the weights being loaded onto the bar, the thrill of seeing every sinew strain and stretch as you tried to shift the weight inevitably brought about euphoric clarity. Amanda never failed to come away feeling anything but optimistic and energised. Any trace of uncertainty was wiped clean away. Alexander was right. She needed to have faith. She needed to have courage. As he had said that first night they met, “Cowardice is the most terrible of vices.”
Amanda jumped upon hearing movement close behind her. Yet even as the feeling of startled urgency raced through her, she still struggled to lift her heavy head off the sofa. In a slow, delicate movement she turned to find Koroviev walking towards her. Her exercise depleted mind prevented her seeing the knife at first. It was only the chance glint of a random skylight reflected in the polished blade that slashed through her daze. It then took a few more drawn out seconds before she saw he was carrying her meal, her eighth and penultimate of the day, on a plate in the other hand. Breathing a huge sigh of relief she took the plate from him with just a nod of the head and then heard him retreat, just as stealthily, out of the room. Everything about Koroviev’s demeanour discouraged conversation, not just the fact that he very rarely spoke himself.
Laboriously working her way through her plate of grilled chicken, her jaw aching from the repetitiveness of chewing, Amanda wondered why she had been so jumpy. Was it down to the fact that it had been such a demanding day? It couldn’t be that surely. It wasn’t as if training hard, pushing her
body to its limits was new to her. Was it Koroviev? It was true that there was something about him, something that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, that unnerved her. Throughout the day he had been constantly by her side, supervising her workout, bringing her meals and even ensuring she was not disturbed when it was time to rest. His officious punctuality meant that Amanda had no need for the regular alarms that had been set on her iPad. Koroviev’s reliability meant he was always one step ahead in ensuring her strict schedule was adhered to. His unfaltering presence ensured that she would not stray from the path.
The same couldn’t be said for Alexander though. She had not seen nor heard from him since their appointment in the lab that morning and even then he had been strangely aloof. It was as if once he had worked his magic, he then just disappeared into thin air. Amanda was under the impression that he wanted nothing to distract her from her purpose – not even him. He too was willing to sacrifice in order that she fulfill her dreams, Amanda told herself with hesitant conviction. Maybe then that was the reason she was so on edge. Maybe her heightened sense of loneliness and isolation was playing tricks on her mind. Maybe then she should thank God for Koroviev. At least he was there. At least he provided some form of human contact, as cold and withdrawn as it was.
Not for the first time since Amanda had been ensconced in this reclusive retreat had her thoughts wistfully drifted to Steve. No matter how hard she tried she couldn’t stop herself from wondering. Wondering where he was? Wondering whether he was thinking about her? Wondering if he was missing her as much as she was missing him? Her exhaustion now turned those wonderings into overpowering wants and needs. She wanted him there. She needed his love and support. It had always been unquestionable, unshakeable or so she had thought.
Amanda’s inner battle between her heart and her head drained the last dregs of energy she had. She flopped back onto the sofa, letting her head sink down into the cushions, hoping they would help muffle the nagging doubts that played out like a stuck recording in her head. She had to be strong, she told herself. She had to believe she had made the right decision and carry it through with conviction if she was to succeed. She had to! Seeking a distraction, Amanda picked up the copy of The Master and Margarita that Alexander had given her. It always seemed to be to hand, its words ready to give solace and guidance.