The Experiment (Book 2): Making Friends

by Micah B. Edwards

  Instead, what I say is “Ooaaufgh!” or something similar, as my legs are violently swept out from under me. My shoulders hit the hood of the car at just about the same time as my head crashes down into the windshield, viciously starring it. The car screeches to a halt and I am hurled off of the hood and onto the sidewalk in front of it, a lesson in ragdoll physics.

  Car accident. I’ve been in a car accident, go my thoughts, catching up to the situation. The pain hits on the heels of that, my whole body clamoring for attention at once. My legs, neck and head are all making strong arguments for immediate attention, but I can also sense a long line of cuts and abrasions waiting patiently to state their own claims.

  Behind me, I hear the window of the car roll down. “Hey, Part-Time! You dead?”

  I groan and roll my head toward the speaker, only to be blinded by a car headlight. I jerk my head backwards, knocking it against the ground. Stars explode in my vision and my stomach lurches; I swallow painfully and groan again.

  “Guess not,” the speaker continues. He sounds unconcerned, even a bit jovial. “Honestly, I’d be surprised if you were. I didn’t hit you that hard.”

  “You hit me…with your car,” I say thickly. A bit obvious, perhaps, but I’m still playing catch-up.

  “I wanted to talk!” says the man, and now he definitely sounds like he has a grin on his face.

  There’s blood running into my left eye. I move my hand to wipe it away, but it’s flowing pretty heavily, and all I do is smear it around. I have the idea that if I were standing up, the blood would be running down past my eye instead of into it, so I roll over onto my stomach and start to painfully push myself off of the ground.

  The car engine revs threateningly. “Stay down, Part-Time. I’ll tell you when it’s time to get up.” The car rolls forward several inches, and I hastily put my head back down on the ground.

  “What — what do you talk,” I say, more or less coherently.

  “You ticked me off pretty badly tonight, Part-Time,” he says. There’s no smile in his voice now. “I had a plan, a simple plan. And you went and screwed it up for me.”

  “I, um,” I say into the cement. “I worked all night.”

  “Yeah, Part-Time. I remember you. That’s kinda the whole point.”

  Finally it dawns on me that this is one of the would-be robbers, and not some random crime. For once, I’ll forgive myself for being slow on the uptake; being hit by a car is a definite extenuating circumstance. Only — why does he blame me? It’s my fault, true, but he’s got no way of knowing that. I stopped them with my mind, with my power, and I never moved a muscle that they could see.

  “Don’t blame me for your bad luck,” I tell him. “You could’ve had the money for all I care. Wasn’t mine.”

  “I saw you, we all saw you!” he hisses, furious. “I don’t know what you did, but you did something! Rigged the mop bucket to blow somehow, targeted us, tricked us maybe, maybe hypnosis. One said he heard you whispering something; for all I know, you’re a wizard. All I know is that everything was going just like before and no one was going to get hurt, and then you did something and screwed it all up!”

  I puzzle over “just like before” for a minute until I realize that these guys must have been the same ones that the news was talking about, who’d robbed a couple of other small stores. The ones who’d put the cashier into the hospital.

  “No one hurt, like the gas station guy?” I say.

  He sneers. “He was gonna be a hero, just like you. Soon as we’d turned our backs, he’da gone for a gun or an alarm or something, messed things up. One hit ‘im over the head as a favor, before he could do anything stupid and get shot.”

  I’m not sure what it is about this speech — the self-righteous tone, possibly, or just the simmering hatred in it — but something about it makes me absolutely certain that when this guy is done talking, he intends to run me over. This is no warning message, no threat just to show me that he could kill me if he wanted to. If I don’t get myself out of this, I’m not leaving this street alive tonight.

  I look at my options, which are not great. I can try to keep him talking and hope that another car comes by, but it’s past midnight and this is not a busy road. I can slowly turn myself so my feet are facing the car, then hope its undercarriage isn’t low enough to hit me when it passes over. Or I can try to subtly ready myself to spring out of the way when I see the car start to move.

  All of these plans are terrible, but only the third one doesn’t rely on copious amounts of good luck. It still counts on me being able to use two damaged legs to leap out of the way of a car, but I figure I can probably count on adrenaline to give me a boost in there. I’ll pay for it later, but it’s still a sight better than letting the car bumper bounce my head off of the sidewalk.

  I slowly maneuver my legs into more of a tucked position while I talk. “So, you knew what the guy at the gas-mart was going to do, you know that somehow I screwed up your plans. You know a lot. Are you a mind-reader? A fortune-teller?” I jibe at him.

  “Yeah, I’ve got a fortune for you. It says that you’re about to tell me how you did all that at the restaurant tonight.”

  “Yeah? And why am I going to do that?”

  “Because I’m interested to know, Part-Time. And me being interested in this conversation is the only thing keeping you alive right now.”

  “Fine,” I tell him. “I can set fires with my mind.”

  “Wrong answer, moron.”

  The car surges forward, its engine snarling, but I’m already scrabbling at the pavement and leaping for freedom. My adrenaline spikes and my legs howl in pain as I give it everything I’ve got, throwing myself headlong into the street to escape the car.

  All of that focus and all of that intensity has a result that I really should have expected: the area around me explodes into a fireball as everything that can combust, does. The sidewalk gives off a flash of steam that singes my ankles, the asphalt slides and melts under me, and the air is suddenly filled with noxious fumes choking me.

  Body throbbing, lungs burning, I roll quickly to the side to escape the burning asphalt beneath me. From behind me, there’s a shriek, and I look back in horror to see the car engulfed in flames. Every piece of it is burning at once, and through the window a human figure is visible, screaming violently as the fire consumes his flesh. Beneath the bitter tang of metals and tar, I smell the sweet odor of seared meat, and my stomach lurches again.

  I heave a couple of times, throwing up onto the road, but the gasping breaths I take in between just cause me to suck in more toxic smoke and burnt flesh, worsening the problem. On all fours, I scramble blindly for the far side of the road. Once there, out of range of the poisonous smoke and deadly fire, I collapse and suck in as much fresh air as I can.

  The screaming from the car has already stopped, and I can’t even make out a shape in the driver’s seat through the flames. Slowly, using the wall for balance, I drag myself to my feet. I start to take out my phone to call the police, then stop. What on earth would I tell them?

  I can’t save the robber; he’s clearly already dead. I can’t tell the police anything that will actually be helpful. All I can do is draw attention to myself for no real purpose.

  Reluctantly, I slide my phone back into my pocket and, feeling guilty, limp away from the crackling inferno, wincing with every step. There’s nothing I could do, I tell myself. Nothing about this situation is good. Getting out is the right thing to do.

  My lungs still ache, my body’s in pain and I’m bleeding and burned in two dozen places, but I know that even when those fade, the sick feeling in my conscience is going to stick with me.

  Needless to say, the rest of the walk home sucks. My body throbs with every step, and because it hurts to lift my legs, I’m taking about twice as many steps as normal. I’m afraid to stop to rest because I’m pretty sure that wherever I sit down, I’m staying for the night. I have had a rollercoaster of a day, and the car is just about to
pull back into the station.

  Even knowing this, I nearly sit down for a breather anyway. I’m slumped against a wall, about to slide down to the sidewalk, when I hear sirens getting closer, and I suddenly remember exactly how much I do not want to explain my involvement in this. I lurch back to my feet, my motivation to make it home renewed.

  It’s a painful twenty minutes before I finally stumble through the front door to my house. My body is screaming “Bed bed bed!” at me, but I force myself to steer for the shower first. I’m burned, bruised, cut-up and filthy. I’ve got sweat, tears and blood all over me, tarry bits of asphalt clinging to my clothes and exposed skin, and I reek like an industrial explosion. Also, I’ve got a hacking cough that sounds like I’m two weeks into bronchitis, and I have a vague idea that steam from a hot shower might help that.

  I shed my clothes in an untidy, torn puddle in the bathroom and all but fall into the shower. I don’t have the energy to soap up or even rub the grime off with my hands; I just stand there under the spray and let the water sluice over me. If I hold very still, keeping my eyes closed and breathing slowly and deeply, I can almost tell myself that everything’s fine.

  Abruptly, my head knocks into the shower wall, and with a yelp of pain I realize that I’ve almost fallen asleep on my feet with the water running. I don’t feel a lot better, but I smell less like a car accident, and my cough does seem to have subsided.

  I step out of the shower and stagger toward my bedroom, dripping water behind me as I go. Toweling off just seems like it would require too much energy right now, and it’s not like I’m likely to get cold.

  - Chapter Nine -

  I wake up shouting, with a pounding headache and a pair of charley horses in my legs. Frantically, I try to reach my calves to massage the muscles, but the act of reaching out my arms causes the spasms to worsen, straightening my legs painfully and tangling them in the blankets. As I try to thrash free, I spill myself out of the bed and crash to the floor, hitting my head hard enough to see stars.

  A few minutes later, I’ve gotten everything more or less under control. My legs are still horribly sore, but no longer actively rebelling against me. My head is aching, which I can handle with aspirin. And my whole body feels — well, like I’ve been hit by a car. It’s not great, but I’ll live.

  I’m limping blearily through the kitchen to get the aspirin when I spy the microwave clock, which tells me it is 8:18. Almost twenty minutes after I was supposed to meet Brian at the hospital.

  I don’t even have the energy to curse myself; I just groan, grab the aspirin and some water, and go retrieve my phone from the bathroom floor, where it’s spent the night in my pants pocket. It’s cracked but not broken and fortunately has some charge left, so after a quick explanatory text to Brian and an Uber call, I gear up to face the day.

  Thirty minutes later, I’m walking into the lobby of the hospital. Brian’s waiting impatiently at the front desk, and comes striding over when he sees me.

  “Nice and punctu — geez, man, you all right?”

  “Rough night, but yeah.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve got this big yellow bruise, you know?” he says, putting his hand to the right side of his face. I reach up to touch the left side of mine, and wince. The area above my eyebrow is swollen and hot to the touch, and it feels like it radiates back under my hair. It suddenly occurs to me that I haven’t looked in a mirror since the accident, and I have no idea how bad I look.

  Brian’s clearly hoping for an explanation, but I’m not interested in talking about it where there’s any chance of being overheard. “You’ve seen me worse,” I say, aiming for nonchalance. He just stares at me for a second, then shakes his head.

  “Yeah, all right. Come on, I told Doc Simmons that you’d be here an hour ago, and she’s pissed.”

  He starts to walk away, but I don’t move. “Wait, what?”

  “You said you’d be here at 8, dude.”

  “No, not that. Who’s Doc Simmons?”

  “She did the blood tests. On the samples.”

  “I thought you were going to do those.”

  “No, man, I wouldn’t know what I’m looking for. I just told you that I’d get it tested.”

  Seeing my expression, Brian continues, “Look, can we talk about this in the elevator? We’ve seriously gotta move.”

  Reluctantly, I follow him. “So you’re just telling random people about me now?”

  “Hey, not cool!” Brian protests as we get onto the elevator. “A: I didn’t tell her anything. I said I needed tests on this blood. No names, no explanations, nothing about you. I wasn’t like, ‘Hey, I know this mutant Dan, see what makes him weird,’ you know? I have some discretion.

  “And B: she’s not some random person. I trust her. Anyway, you’ve met her. She was here when you got tagged by lightning, remember? She’s the one who worked on you afterward.”

  My brain kicks up a vague image of someone in a lab coat, tall and imposing, big dirty-blonde hair. I remember her looming a lot, but I was lying on various tables for most of the time I saw her, so that makes sense. I don’t know that I could pick her out of a lineup, but I nod anyway and say, “Sure, fine. I just didn’t know you were bringing someone else in. I mean, I trust you, but I could’ve used a heads up on this.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry. Didn’t occur to me that you thought I’d do the testing myself, or I woulda told you, you know?”

  “It’s cool,” I tell him. We exit the elevator and Brian leads me through a short maze of hallways to a door that looks identical to the others we’ve passed. He knocks and immediately sticks his head inside. “Doc? Got ‘im.”

  “It’s about time,” an annoyed voice calls back, presumably belonging to Dr. Simmons. I hear the sound of a chair being pushed back as she continues, “Well? Bring him in, Brian.”

  Brian grins sheepishly at me and motions me to follow him inside. I enter the room and discover that I was wrong about my recollection: I could absolutely have picked Doc Simmons out of a lineup. She has a presence about her, an air of easy command that makes her instantly identifiable. And despite being an inch or so shorter than me, she does indeed loom. I’m not sure how she manages it from below me, but it’s the only way to describe her posture.

  “Dr. Simmons,” she says, shaking my hand.

  “Hi. Uh, Dan,” I say.

  She looks me over critically. “Brian hasn’t told me anything about the blood samples. Is your bruising a result of what’s in your blood?”

  “Ah, no. That was, um, an accident. The blood is — um, he hasn’t told you anything?”

  Brian shoots me an ‘I told you so’ expression over the doctor’s shoulder.

  “I believe what he told me was that there was ‘something, like, weird’ about it,” she says, making air quotes with her fingers. A gleam comes into her eye. “He’s certainly right about that!”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “Better if I show you, I think. What do you know about blood?”

  “Nothing. Well, red blood cells, white blood cells, keeps the body going.”

  “Okay,” Doc Simmons says, putting a slide under a microscope and gesturing for me to look. I peer through the eyepiece to see what appears to be a mass of squishy bricks.

  “That’s a normal blood sample at a thousand times magnification,” Simmons says. “Red blood cells, some white blood cells. I’m showing you for comparison.”

  Suddenly, the image disappears in a blur, leaving me staring into a bright white light. I pull my head back to find that Doc Simmons has whisked the slide away from the microscope and is fitting another one in its place.

  “This is yours. Tell me what you see,” she directs.

  It’s the same squishy bricks again, but this time, small black dots are interspersed throughout. They’re not arranged regularly, exactly, but something in their placement makes me feel like there’s a pattern I’m not seeing.

  “Is this an infection?” I ask, looking up from the microsc
ope. The doctor shakes her head.

  “Not exactly. Yes, it’s foreign material, but it’s not bacteria or a virus. Look again. Watch the black dots carefully for a minute.”

  I study the slide, not certain what I’m meant to be looking for. I let my eyes drift aimlessly from one dot to another for a while, when suddenly, I see one of them move. It’s a subtle motion, but as I stare at that dot, I see it repeat. It’s a slight shift in shape, a sign of life in an otherwise frozen tableau.

  “It moved!” I exclaim, and Doc Simmons says, “Exactly! And these samples are days old. It’s got staying power.”

  “But what is it?” I ask her, and the doctor hesitates.

  “Are you a fan of science fiction, Don?” she asks.

  “Dan, but sure. Why?”

  “There’s a pattern to the movements. The foreign objects move in sync with each other. I think –” She hesitates again, longer this time, then sighs, sounding both uncertain and excited. “I think it’s a machine. Nanomachines.”

  I give Doc Simmons a skeptical look. “You think my blood is full of tiny robots.”

  Her return look accuses me of being willfully stupid. “Not like you’d understand them, no. I think it’s more of a distributed network, piggybacking on your body’s existing systems to set up an interfaced communication structure.”

  My skeptical look continues, and she adds, “Admittedly, I’m making this up as I go along, but it fits what I can observe and assume. From the structured placement and the responsive reactions, it’s clear that these…” She clearly wants to say ‘nanomachines’ again, but refrains. “…foreign bodies are in communication, probably directly with each other but possibly with an external source.”

  I may not get cold anymore, but that idea still gives me a shudder. I know that my abilities aren’t normal, obviously, and I’ve even concluded that they were a test of sorts. But somehow I’ve never solidified those ideas into the logical conclusion that she’s just stated: that someone else is controlling things inside my body.