by Schow, Ryan
She closed her eyes, kissed his lips, then pulled away as her heartbeat quickened. She opened her eyes to him. They feasted on his face, on the flesh of his body. They refused to blink. Everything in her, all the way down to her soul, ached to be his. To be touched by him. Taken by him. It didn’t matter who he was, what horrible atrocities he once committed, or even who he would be with strands of other people’s DNA now coursing through his veins. Arabelle needed him to survive.
She needed him.
Tearing her gaze away from him, she felt the stirring below, the syrupy wanting, the mounting heat. There was no denying it. No more suppressing the truth. And so just like that, Arabelle Diederich decided she would give herself fully to him exactly as he was, and she would never look back.
From the instruments table next to her, Arabelle took the needle containing the aqua blue colored solution Heim had prepared specially for him and prepped it. She flicked the needle, gave it the softest plunge. Satisfied, she swabbed the doctor’s arm with an alcohol soaked cotton ball, then inserted the needle and pressed the plunger all the way in.
Within moments, he began to stir. His eyelids fluttered. Then his fingers and toes twitched, the slightest movements leading to his awakening.
Ten minutes later the doctor blinked open his eyes. They were different, startling at first in their beauty, their dark emptiness, the cold chill they left inside her rapidly beating heart.
“Hello, doctor, how are you feeling?”
“Refreshed,” he said. His voice sounded young, the gravely edges now gone, like his once worn vocal chords had become hearty and renewed.
She felt the breath she was holding leave her.
Thank God.
“I am loving how you are looking now,” she said, the slightest tremor in her voice betraying her nervousness. She wondered if this was what they meant by a schoolgirl’s crush.
He reached up, slowly, and with much effort, and took her hand into his. It was surprisingly warm, and soft. “I love how these new eyes see you,” he said. “Arabelle, my queen, you are the life within me.”
“So you are okay?”
He sat up, slowly, and it visibly exhausted him. “There is something unpleasant lingering in me, in the way I feel, but already I feel stronger, more clear headed.” Catching his breath, appraising the sides of the canister, he said, “I don’t want to be in here anymore. Where is Dr. Heim? I think I need an adrenaline shot.”
“I will get shot you require,” she said.
She gave him the prescribed dosage of adrenaline and it hit him immediately. His face broke into a euphoric grin.
“Better,” he said. “Now testosterone.”
She gave him the testosterone shot. He flexed his fingers and toes. Made a fist. Already his vibrancy was returning. He was flooding with life.
“What now?” she asked.
Naked, he emerged from the canister without difficulty, walked to the bathroom and put on a robe. When he returned—his bare feet making soft padding sounds on the concrete—Arabelle asked the question again: “What now?”
Then, with the sharpest most wicked look she had ever seen, the grinning doctor said, “Where’s Alice? I want her to teach me how to set things on fire.”
3
His eyeballs trembled with an unsettling restlessness. The look in his eye pumped an unexplainable fear right through her. Arabelle watched him tear through the lab like a madman, looking for something, for anything. But what he was looking for, she didn’t know. It sure wasn’t Alice. There was something disturbing and frightening in his mania, like things inside him were breaking. Or broken.
How did this happen?
This new version of her savior, he kept asking for Dr. Heim. “Where is he?!” he would scream at Arabelle, at no one. And Alice. “Can’t she be here already!”
She was terrified to tell him Heim was taken. That she was instrumental in his abduction.
And she most certainly didn’t want to tell him his precious Abby, the spoiled American bitch, and Arabelle’s frenemy, was at the heart of this betrayal.
He stopped asking for Alice.
“What is this?” he said, holding a large, medical parcel in his hands. It was a box, the kind of couriered package blood and organs were sent in. Its flaps were open. It was empty. He turned and looked at Arabelle, who simply shrugged her shoulders.
He dropped the medical parcel, kicked it across the floor, then went to the blood sample storage area. Hanging neatly were five bags of blood that hadn’t been there before. He pulled one from its “hanger” and held it up before her.
“Who is this from?” he asked. She wasn’t giving him answers because she didn’t know. He was getting mad, frustrated. Are the two interchangeable with him? Will he spiral into rage if he doesn’t get some answers? Arabelle wondered. She should leave before he hurt her.
She had to leave.
“It’s a blood bag, angel,” he said, more calm.
“I am already knowing this,” she replied. She made her hands into fists to conceal the trembling emanating from deep inside her.
“They can’t just hang here. They have to go in cold storage! Cold STORAGE!”
She lowered her eyes, then her face, and then she hurried to where the maniac stood. One by one, quickly and efficiently, she packed the bags of blood into the standing cold storage unit. Where only hours ago she was feeling swept up in lust—certain she was in the throes of first love—now she suffered the familiarity of abuse. Her past came rushing back to her like some fresh, oily nightmare.
She fought the tears gathering behind her eyes.
When all the bags were packed in cold storage, she adjusted the refrigerator’s temperature gauge, bringing it to two degrees Celsius. When she looked up, he was standing over her with a DVD in hand.
“Is this part of it? I haven’t seen it before.”
“Wolfgang, I don’t know. I don’t know anything!” Her tears were really coming now, warm and big, draining down her face. “This is not my lab!”
“You’re coming with me,” he snarled. He grabbed her roughly by the arm and dragged her with him, outside the lab, down the hall.
In the break room, he set her down on the plush, leather couch, then put the DVD into the DVD player, took a seat beside her and watched the video unfold. Thinking about this new man, she couldn’t make any comparisons to the man she knew before. He might as well be someone different. Instead of saying something, she just cowered on the seat beside him, watching the DVD.
The video was filmed using a cell phone camera, and it was shot from a distance. The camera operator zoomed in on what looked to be a boy in a field. Both Arabelle and the manic doctor flinched as the camera panned slightly right. A cow was shown hovering in mid-air.
“Scheisse,” the doctor said, breathless.
“Shit,” Arabelle repeated, but in English.
“How is this possible?” the doctor asked. Just then the boy’s position changed and both hands reached for the cow. The person with the cell phone panned back to take in the entire scene. Within moments, the cow’s midsection was crushed and crumpled. A bath of blood exploded out of the beast, and then the thing was pulled in two and flung through the air in opposite directions.
“Strahlend!” the doctor shouted, clapping his hands with glee. Brilliant.
As the gore rained down on the field in a meaty wash of red, as the cell phone’s owner let out what was surely expletives in what she thought was Dutch, Arabelle reeled in horror. Putting two and two together, she realized the blood bags were from the boy. This boy who had the ability to levitate cows and rip them in half. This boy who most likely, unwillingly gave up his blood—his DNA—for Wolfgang and Heim’s science.
Wild-eyed, looking godly and psychotic, the new Wolfgang said, “If that blood is the boy’s, the things we’re going to create will change everything.” Arabelle flinched. “Do you hear me you gorgeous woman?”
“I am hearing you,” she said, doing all s
he could to mask her horror. The way she curled into a ball involuntarily, she suddenly felt like a victim to her savior.
“We need a body,” Gerhard said. “But not just any body.”
“Oh, God,” Arabelle mumbled.
“We need the right body.”
4
The next day, late that afternoon while the doctor was in the lab studying the new bags of blood Heim must have received before Abby took him, Arabelle snuck outside and called Abby’s cell phone. The girl answered right away.
“Arabelle?” Abby said.
Arabelle could barely contain the craziness brewing in her. It was like a convergence of storms, like the building of a super storm. Barely kept in check was the urge to run down the street screaming. Barely restricted were the tears ready to flood her eyes the minute the storm in her broke.
“You have to come here!” she whispered in a harried rush. “You have to kill him, too!”
“What? Who?”
“The new Wolfgang. He is insane!”
“What about Rebecca?” Abby asked, frantic. “Is she okay?”
Arabelle’s face began to shake, to turn against the sweep of a panic she could no longer hold at bay. She stood on the outside stoop of the San Francisco lab’s front door. It was overcast outside, cool. Too cold. People were staring at her, trying not to see her. A big truck drove by, its engine a dull roar. She jumped. Fought to keep it together. Her body was an un-sprung trap, a bomb primed to explode, a sane person ready to go 5150, that’s how close to the edge she was.
“The way he is looking at her is making me nervous.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you need to COME HERE RIGHT NOW!” Things inside her shifted. Started to melt. Now people walking on the sidewalk were looking at her. She was sobbing, pacing, trying to stand on legs that did not want to hold her insubstantial frame. “We have to stop him.” Then, with a crushed heart, she half cried, half whispered the words, “We have to kill him.”
“Okay, okay,” Abby said. “Just let me get my car and I’ll be over there.”
“We can’t do this alone,” she urged.
“I know,” Abby said. “I’m not alone. I have friends who can help. But we have to make sure Rebecca is safe. That’s my first priority.”
Unleashed
1
The minute the Audi moved position, an audible alert on Shelton Gotlieb’s computer pinged. He sprung out of his seat and ran for the Coffin Room. His meaty little fingers punched in the code. He had to do it twice because he was too anxious. Once inside, he headed for the box, started the procedure necessary to wake Delta 1A. He thought about amassing the team, but there was no time.
“Time to go,” he said when Delta 1A rose. Code for, complete your mission. The boy’s mouth made a creepy grin. Proof he was ready.
Within minutes, Delta 1A was dressed, armed and in the silver Chevy Cruz leaving Monarch’s compound like a bat blowing through the gates of Hell.
He had only one order: Take Savannah Van Duyn’s head.
The Beginning of the End
1
I pull the Audi to a screeching halt in front of Gerhard’s lab. There’s no way in hell I’d ever double park my car, but screw it. Time is of the essence. Before jumping from the S5, I slap on the hazards, then sprint for the lab’s front door. Georgia and Brayden roll out behind me. I race through the front door, right into the lobby.
Arabelle is waiting just inside, pacing, bawling. Heim’s blood is now a matte brown stain on the floor. Arabelle points in the direction of the lab. Hurrying down the hall, I push through the lab’s door and see a handsome man who looks to be in his early thirties standing before Rebecca’s naked, pregnant form. She floats lifelessly in the wet, pink gel.
My relief is a palpable thing.
“Gerhard,” I snarl. The urge to end him returns. I should have done this months ago when I had the chance.
“Savannah.”
“My name is Abby,” I bark.
“Just a little pig-pig-piggy girl in disguise,” he says in the voice of a madman in the throes of a tantrum.
“Fuck you, Nazi.”
“Always the trucker’s mouth.”
“Get away from her,” I say, stalking toward him. He turns his full body toward me, defiant. For a second, I’m moved at how attractive he is. I did not expect this, even though Arabelle said he’s in his new form. The way he’s sizing me up, is he wanting a fight? Is he dying to kill me?
My hands become fists. The thing I’m thinking is, it’s freaking on.
Behind me, I hear Georgia and Brayden enter the room. “Two more makes it a party,” he says, calmly, amusement now in his lightly accented voice.
“Who the hell is he?” Brayden asks.
“The scumbag formerly known as Dr. Wolfgang Gerhard,” I say. “And before that, the sadist and mass murderer history knows as Josef Mengele.”
“No goddamn way,” Brayden whispers.
“Hello, Brayden,” he says. “Georgia, you’re looking well.”
Georgia glances over at me with a question in her eyes, a question I refuse to answer, or explain. She doesn’t seem to understand this version of Dr. Gerhard. And me? All I want is his head on a stick.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Savannah.”
“Really,” I say, looking around for Arabelle. Didn’t she follow us in here?
“We made an intriguing discovery in science,” he says. “I have something for your better-than-perfect-body and your lovely new face. I have something more exciting than weight loss or rudimentary genetic modification.”
Okay, this surprises me.
Stops me.
“There is nothing rudimentary about what you’re doing, or what you’ve done.”
“I can make you super human,” he says, breathlessly. “I can give you…everything.”
“She’s already super human,” Brayden says.
“Indeed she is,” the doctor said. “But this…this will be so much better.”
A Less Than Nothing
1
Arabelle couldn’t stop crying. Not with her entire world coming apart. Not with so many unknowns. Who would she be without the doctor? What would she do with Alice? She was no mother. No role model. How would she work or take care of herself?
The tears started again. Alice was at home. She thought of all the ways she could kill the child. She had to die. Had to go.
The thing about Alice was she could simply die and be one less complication. The butcher knife would work just fine. She would sit the demon child down in front of the TV, and when she was fully immersed in her show, Arabelle would come behind her and pull the blade with all her might across the girl’s throat. It was cruel, and merciless.
Yet it was necessary.
Then the lab’s front door was kicked open and a thin, bald boy with a silenced gun in hand burst into the lobby where Arabelle was melting down. She startled. The bald boy lifted the gun, aimed it at her, and it made a spitting sound. She felt punched in the chest, knocked backwards off her feet. She couldn’t breathe.
And then the most horrible pain silenced her tears, nearly stopped her breathing. She fell into the wall, backwards, crashed to the floor. The boy, he just walked by, as if she never mattered. He walked by her as if her death was merely a formality, a foregone conclusion.
To this child killer, she no longer mattered. Rather, she never mattered.
In her dying state, she realized this was her life’s summation. Arabelle didn’t matter to her dead mother, not to her dead father, not to her asshole uncle. She was a nobody. A nothing. A waste of life. To those girls in Tamozhennaya Square in the Ukraine, she was not even a memory. To all the men who beat and raped her and treated her worse than a diseased dog, she was a wasted conquest at best.
A less-than-nothing.
As she lay there gasping for breath, drowning on her own bubbling blood, she considered her life and found that in her dying, crystal clear mind, she cou
ld further reduce her life’s meaning to a single word: worthless.
She was pretty then ugly, and then made beautiful; she was kept by a monster; she was made mother to a demon child and it was all so very trivial.
So very, very useless.
She puffed out her last breaths, her lungs wheezing, blood splattering out of her nose and mouth all over her white, satin blouse. And then, in her final seconds, she realized she was less than worthless. She was just a vessel used to fulfill other peoples’ unconscionable desires.
In life, it had been useful to fight this truth, to rail against it, to deny it. This kept her strong, detached, emotionless. In death, however, she came to accept this, as it was now made evidently clear.
She thought, God is cruel, the most vile of puppet masters.
We always want to be something we’re not. Grace is the act of accepting the unacceptable with your head held high, regardless of your feelings on the hereafter. The way Arabelle would die was with grace.
Her last breath left her…wanting just one more…and wanting nothing at all.
The Resurgence of Delta 1A
1
Moving swiftly toward the sounds of arguing, Delta 1A shivered with excitement. The charge running though him was not robotic, but human. Not a slave, he thought. I am my own master, he told himself. The hunger he felt was fuel in his veins. He ached to kill.
Death was life; remember to forget.
In the lab, he saw the back of a girl’s head—a brunette with a perfectly sculpted body. Flipping the pistol around, not losing stride, he cracked the girl on the back of her skull with the butt of his gun. She dropped like dead weight on the concrete floor. If she didn’t see him, she wasn’t a witness, and therefore did not need elimination.