Invidious Betrayal

by Shea Swain

  Ian reached out with his new sense of hearing to determine how many people were in the residence. Two heartbeats echoed back, one definitely adult and the other...he wasn’t quite sure. He heard the man shooing behind the door at something that sounded like a household pet, a dog maybe.

  “Mr. Wilson. James Wilson, my name is Ian Howl. Do you know me?” There was no response for a long while, but Ian stood with his feet planted on the not so welcoming door mat. Then the locks released and the door slowly opened. The wave of relief hit him so hard that Ian had to force himself not to fall to his knees.

  With a weary smile, the familiar yet aged eyes of Dr. Marroe looked Ian up and down. “You’re important enough.” Dr. Marroe backed away, giving Ian a wave of his hand to come inside. “Are you alone, or is this a full-scale reunion?”

  “I’m alone,” Ian said, stepping inside. He didn’t miss Marroe’s sigh of relief, just as he was sure the doctor hadn’t missed his earlier. Standing aside, Ian watched Marroe close and lock the door then he followed Marroe into the home.

  “You thirsty? I have tea…or you may want something stronger if you came for answers?” Marroe said, turning the television off with the remote he lifted from the arm of a well-worn chair. He walked by Ian toward the kitchen which was located in the rear of the home.

  “Tea is fine,” Ian said, as he looked around. The inside of the place was just as tropical as the outside, but maybe even more so. The sofa was tan, but the chair and loveseat were covered with cream and brown palms. The walls were decorated with bamboo art and photo frames. The place was colorful, but nice with its island theme.

  It hadn’t been offered, but Ian took a seat on the sofa anyway.

  Marroe came into the living room with the tea. Ian took his glass and waited for Marroe to sit before he took a sip. The man he remembered wasn’t the man who sat to the side of him in a tropical chair. This man was older, grayed. His skin was loose, and his confident, intelligent demeanor was gone, replaced by that of a man who looked as if he wanted nothing to do with science let alone teach it, but the eyes were the same. The eyes held it all.

  “Why did you just open the door for me? I could be here to hurt you.”

  Marroe chuckled before placing his drink on a small stack of crossword puzzles. “If you really wanted to get in, we both know that door—or much else for that matter—wouldn’t have stopped you.”

  A weird feeling coursed through Ian and the hairs on his neck stood up. He turned his head slightly and listened intently to the sounds in the house. The faint conversation on a television sitcom and the low buzzing of a ceiling fan came from one of the back rooms, the faucet in the kitchen dripped, and there was a distinct sound of something or someone other than him or Marroe, breathing. Was that the pet he’d heard earlier?

  “Besides,” Marroe continued, “I’m seventy-three years old. I haven’t the energy to be scared of anything or anyone anymore. Not even you, Ian.” Marroe lifted his glass to his lips, giving Ian another look-over. “So, is it answers you seek, or are you the last person I’ll ever see?”

  “Answers mostly,” Ian said plainly. “I need your help.” He had a few hours before he had to return to the small airport, so if he could get some insight on his uncle’s real work over the years, then maybe he could figure out a way to get him to help Aria and call off Jasper.

  “I have answers, but not all of them. Since I get to live, I think you should meet Kermit. Come on in, Kermit,” Marroe called. A shuffle of noise drew Ian’s attention to the hallway that led to the back rooms. What he saw next wasn’t what he expected. A little macaque monkey with light brown hair scurried before moving in a blur of speed, much faster than a monkey should, across the floor. The monkey sat on the arm of the chair, next to Marroe. “This is Kermit,” Marroe said. “He’s like you.”

  “Like me?” Ian questioned. Yeah, the monkey could move like him, but was the monkey capable of… Before he could ask for clarification, Ian was stunned into silence. He watched as Kermit stretched his arm out and a banana floated from the counter top in the kitchen into the animal’s hand. “How…?” he gasped.

  Marroe peered at him with an amused expression. “Dear boy”—Marroe smiled—“I was there from the very beginning.” Marroe lifted his tea to his lips then placed it down on the crate-like coffee table. “Just like you, Kermit received Syn-Beta in utero. That makes you different from Vincent, who began using Syn-Beta well after he’d matured. Because your body was developing, the chemicals were able to alter your DNA, making you faster and stronger than Vincent and Jasper but also giving you some other talents.”

  “Other talents?” Ian asked. “Really?”

  Marroe nodded.

  Ian wiped his hand over his face, telling himself to relax. He’d guessed that he’d been the subject of experimentation, but hearing it and knowing that his own uncle had been giving him the chemicals made him want to do bodily harm to everyone involved. But he needed answers and this man was willing to give them to him.

  “Why?” he asked. His eyes burned with anger. His pulse raced. “How could my parents allow this? Why would my uncle do this to me?”

  The glasses of tea began to jiggle, along with several items around the living room that weren’t weighed down. Kermit moved closer to Dr. Marrow as he eyed Ian suspiciously. “You have to calm yourself if you want to hear what I know,” Marroe said, as he stroked the monkey’s head.

  Ian opened his eyes wide, noticing the shaking objects. He closed his eyes, taking several calming breaths. As suddenly as the shaking began, it ceased.

  “Your parents wanted a child that came from them, and your uncle was the only one that could give that to them. I’m not sure what you know, and since I’m not young anymore, my time is precious to me, so I’ll talk and you can listen.” Marroe raised his eyebrows and gave Ian a look that asked, ‘do you accept my terms’?

  Ian nodded.

  “Good. Vincent and I disregarded the laws of nature with our experiments and after several unsuccessful years, we were rewarded or cursed, depending on your outlook, with Syn-Beta serum. Syn-Beta was able to regenerate dying or even dead tissue. The length of time the tissue had been dead was a factor but it was not relevant to your situation. The earliest working serum was amazing. Our lab specimens with burns or diseased organs began to recover with limited side effects.

  “We needed to do human trials, but that was hard when we were doing all this in secret and I was worried about the fact that we had no idea what this serum would do to a living human being. A small percentage of the primates we’d tested showed little to no unusual side effects except for aggression. Extreme in some cases, but most of test the subjects thrived. At least that was the case the first year. We later found that all subject became dependent on the serum. Regardless of this dependency and some mild side effects after several months of positive data, I reluctantly agreed to test the serum on a human subject. Vincent insisted that we try the serum on him. You see, Vincent had been in a horrible automobile accident that left him paralyzed.”

  And you gave it to him? The look on Ian’s face was utter disbelief.

  Marroe nodded at the question Ian never asked. With a sigh, he said, “I gave it to him. Vincent was my brightest, most passionate student. He was a brilliant doctor and coworker, and we had made the discovery of a lifetime. I had to believe he had weighed the pros and cons. I had. He was a logical man. Maybe I wanted to believe that. Maybe I just wanted to help an old friend.” Marroe rubbed his brow then continued. “Needless to say, Syn-Beta worked with side effects, of course, but they were trivial to Vincent compared to what he had faced without the use of his legs. A few months or so later, your father contacted Vincent. I didn’t even know that Vincent had a brother, let alone an identical twin, but Vincent had always kept his private life private.

  “Your father wanted Vincent to help his wife get pregnant because all their efforts had been fruitless at that point. I was against it from the start, and at fir
st Vincent declined, but the accident had brought him face to face with what he lacked in life, and he wanted it desperately. You see, Vincent wanted a family. I suppose he figured he could have what he’d shunned for so many years if he helped your mother conceive and regained the friendship he and his brother once had, but lost.

  “I told him it wasn’t right. There was no telling what Syn-Beta would do to a human fetus, but Vincent being Vincent felt that this was the perfect opportunity to find out. During your mother’s second trimester, she got very ill. We determined that the fetus, that you, were taking all her nutrients. You were killing her.” Marroe paused to allow his statements to sink in and to gauge Ian’s reaction. Ian’s heart constricted at this information but he nodded to Marroe to continue. “We discovered that she, or you rather, needed Syn-Beta injections regularly just as Vincent’s body did. One dose approximately every thirty days was needed to sustain you both.”

  Ian’s mind spun. His child was killing Aria like he’d suspected. “She needs Syn-Beta,” Ian said under his breath. “But I don’t take any injections.” He frowned.

  “You don’t anymore.” Marroe smiled. “While the world cringed at stem cell research, we kept working on Syn-Beta to make it better, improve it. Syn-Beta2 was developed.” Marroe took a sip of tea and gave Ian a critical once-over. After a brief pause he continued. “The new serum, Syn-Beta2, was what Vincent tested on Jasper, an old high school friend of his who had been injured in the Middle East while he was in the military. It made Jasper stronger, and faster than Vincent. I would like to say it affected his mental state; it may have a little, but I suspect he was already a psycho-sociopath.”

  “Is that what you gave me that day you came to me in the hospital?”

  Marroe laughed. “Come on, Ian. You’re smarter than this. You’re the source of Syn-Beta2. You are Syn-Beta2. Your DNA was used to create that second serum. Repeat intake is still needed, and some of the side effects are still present, but the time between injections was lengthened to three to four months based on certain factors.”

  Ian’s mind was reeling, but he was focused on his goal, his reasons for coming here in the first place. “I need this Syn-Beta2 serum.”

  “You don’t understand, Ian. I will never do what we did to you to any other living soul. I’m not like Vincent. The serums should have been destroyed, and that’s what I thought I’d done that day I set fire to the lab. I thought I’d destroyed everything in the explosion, but I underestimated Vincent. He had another lab, HowlTech, and I had no knowledge of it.” Marroe shrugged. “Granted, you and Kermit are two amazing leaps in genetic science and the only two successful births. No other embryos survived, but I will not be a party to anything similar. Imagine a world full of people like Jasper. No one should wield that kind of power, Ian. I worried for weeks before blowing up that lab, wondering if I should give you a way to find me, deciding only hours before I did. I told you about James Wilson and my desire to go to Texas knowing that you were exceptionally gifted.

  “I knew you would figure it out. And when I saw on the news some years later that you were critically ill, again I struggled with the decision to save you. The fact that you had no choice in what we did to you, that you were the only child who survived, and that in you I saw so much more than I’d ever saw in Vincent, I really didn’t think on it too long. You see, I had continued to work on Syn-Beta and 2, having taken samples with me after I faked my death. I was able to stabilize Syn-Beta2, so that no more injections are needed. Syn-Gen is what I injected in you that day at the hospital.” Marroe sat forward. “It stabilized you. Their dependency is the only thing leashing Jasper or any others that Vincent has transformed. I’ll not make the mistake of giving Vincent the key to fully release his creations into this world. I’m done playing God, Ian.”

  Ian had moved forward during the doctor’s explanation and was now staring the man directly in the eyes. “I’m not here for Vincent. I’m here because of a beautiful young woman who carries my child. She’s dying.”

  A look of shock and disbelief twisted the old man’s face before he lowered his head and said a string of curses—some Ian had never even heard before. When Marroe glanced up, he looked more relaxed.

  “Are you sure she carries your child?” When Ian nodded Marroe continued. “So Vincent didn’t send you?”

  Ian told Marroe everything, leaving out some of the details like he had when he told Poppa Morel his and Aria’s story. He made sure to tell Marroe about his new ‘abilities’ that had made their appearance only in the past few months. When he was finished, Kermit lay on his chest sleeping as Ian rubbed the monkey’s back.

  Marroe said nothing in response to what Ian had told him. He just got to his feet and said, “We never imagined any of you could reproduce. All tests showed that you weren’t able to.” Marroe seemed to get lost in his thoughts for a moment. “I need some information about her, and some blood.”

  “I have a cooler in the car with a sample of her blood and a copy of her medical file.”

  Marroe waved his hand frantically. “Then get it, boy. We have work to do.”

  Ian went outside and retrieved the bag, rushing back inside and handing it to Dr. Marroe. There still were a few things he didn’t understand. “But why now? Why am I all of a sudden able to do these things? I’m twenty-one years old and I never had this speed before the last few months.” He motioned to his body. “If I wanted to, I can hear your neighbors clearly, three house away. I can move faster than any animal, and you know about the telekinesis. Why now?”

  Marroe smiled, shaking his head. “There could be a number of reasons why your abilities hadn’t manifested until now, so we can’t really know what triggered it. Though, I suspect that it’s emotional. With Kermit, he’s had his abilities since mating age, so I’m guessing puberty is the trigger though he cannot reproduce. It’s when your emotions are all over the place. Jasper’s and Vincent’s abilities were present almost immediately.

  “Jasper has always been a bit of a loose cannon and Vincent, who is usually as stoic as a rock, was experiencing some pretty intense emotions after his automobile accident. With you, and this is pure conjecture, there were some deciding factors. You weren’t raised as a normal child; you were raised to carry yourself like an adult. Your family frowned upon any show of emotional responses from you, so you learned to suppress your emotions. With no outlet, your abilities laid dormant.

  “This girl, the sudden and intense way she makes you feel may be the catalyst. You said you felt something for her immediately. You coupled with her and when she was threatened, your feelings for her may have rebooted your system, sort to speak.

  Jasper stabbed the needle into his muscular thigh, injecting himself with the serum that maintained his life, the serum that had saved his life. He didn’t flinch anymore, hadn’t flinched in years even though the Syn-Beta2 serum absorbed into his muscles and organs like acid burning through his veins. He placed the syringe back into the leather case he carried with him, then put the case on the passenger seat of the truck. He hoisted his pants back over his thighs, pushed his hips up, pulled his jeans the rest of the way and buttoned them.

  A low beep alerted him that a call was coming in. Jasper hit the answer button before he heard the relaxed voice through his speakers.

  “Did you find them?”

  Vincent sounded nonchalant as always, leaving the stress to the fuckers that did the heavy lifting. But Jasper had no complaints. He liked doing the heavy lifting.

  “Did you know that Noemi had changed her name before she entered college?” If you could hear someone smiling, Jasper would bet money Vincent was right now.

  “Go on,” Vincent urged.

  A loud eighteen-wheeler swooshed by, rocking his truck that was pulled off on the roadside. Jasper didn’t continue until the large semi was well on its way. “I had a contact of mine do more digging, thinking we could have missed something. We did. Her name was Noemi Morel and it seems Ian and his little girlf
riend has been cozying up to her family here in small-town Iowa.”

  Vincent said nothing at first, but Jasper knew his mind was quickly processing the information as well as the implications. “Tell me you killed her, have Ian, and didn’t go all First Blood on the family and the town.” Jasper let loose a hearty laugh. He didn’t laugh often, so when he did, it was refreshing. “Jas, man, tell me you restrained yourself.”

  “To be honest, I hadn’t planned on it. Those two had me skating around the damn country looking for them, but I like this quaint little town. The women find me intriguing and the food is hearty.”

  “So,” Vincent sounded impatient, “do you have him?”

  Jasper looked over at the hospital on the other side of the expressway. He’d followed one of the Morel women there a few hours ago and that’s when he’d found out the girl was pregnant and very sick. “Ian’s not here. He left the girl but they expect him back by tomorrow.”

  Vincent was probably smiling again.

  “Good, good. Kill the girl now. She’s a loose end I can’t afford. There’s no telling what else Sal discussed in front of her. I suspect that she hasn’t told her father much if anything at all. He doesn’t seem the type to sit on information, but now that we have her they need to be disposed of as well. I don’t want to take any chances if Ian is as strong as you say he is. Grab him tomorrow and get back here ASAP.”

  Jasper said nothing as he looked into his rearview mirror. Goddamn trucks, he cursed as another big rig rolled by, shaking his damn truck again. “We have another game changer, Vin. The girl is pregnant.”

  He expected Vincent would be shocked, but not shocked into a long silence. Vincent spoke after a minute or so. “And the baby is Ian’s?”

  “Sal was a fuck-up, but he always made sure he and his guys didn’t leave DNA in a body unless he’d been ordered to. Besides, she’s ill—very ill according to her chart. I think she needs the serum like you told me Ian’s mother did.”