by Jon S. Lewis
Jackson looked around, sniffed the air.
"Choose me, Jackson. There's no other way." Thorn shivered from the cold. Snow was still blowing out of the environment chamber.
"I'll make you pay for what you've done," Jackson said.
Thorn picked up the tablet computer and tapped twice then set it down, an evil smile creeping across his lips. Jackson felt a sudden cruel pain at his wrists, at the top of his chest, his shoulders, everywhere the phage discs were on his suit. Invisible knives stabbed all the way to the bone, withdrew then stabbed again harder. Jackson felt himself change back to human and as he did so, the pain increased tenfold. He screamed in anguish and was unable to fight when Thorn grabbed him, wrapping his arms around Jackson's ribs, lifting him off the floor.
"I know a thing or two about genetic modifications," Thorn said. "Your father was little better than a high school chemistry teacher in the lab. The only thing he was good at was cleaning Petri dishes and you are not even as good as he."
The old man was preternaturally strong and squeezing the breath from Jackson's lungs, the very life from his body. Jackson was reeling from the torment and ready to give in.
"NO!" He put his hands on the old man's forehead and pushed. They slipped off Thorn's sweaty skin so Jackson punched at the old man's ears, his throat. His arms felt like rubber, but he kept pounding at Thorn's left temple. He focused on that one spot and punched as hard as he could, once, twice, as many as he could.
Thorn staggered under the blows, fell backwards a little and dragged Jackson across the top of a lab table, where the tablet computer slid off and crashed to the floor. The pains didn't stop.
The old man held on doggedly. He stumbled again under the incessant blows from his prisoner, a step backward, another. Jackson heard the crunch of the tablet's screen as it gave way under Thorn's foot.
The bone-stabbing pain was instantly gone and Jackson stopped punching. He felt the cold blowing from the chamber, smiled and changed.
Thorn tried to hold on but Jackson's yeti form was far too big. He broke away and tried to run, but Jackson reached out and grabbed his arm. Jackson flung him across the lab to crash into a bank of metal shelves. Thorn saw the yeti coming toward him, more animal than human, intent on doing harm.
Instead, he stopped and looked down at Thorn. "I want nothing to do with you," Jackson said in his guttural voice. "Stay away from my mom or I'll do worse than this." He raised his giant foot and brought it down to break Thorn's ankle the same way he'd broken the monster's.
He missed.
Thorn rolled backwards onto his shoulders, bracing his hands on the floor behind his head and brought both feet hard into Jackson's stomach. The old man whirled, getting to his feet so fast that Jackson was still bent double by the attack and unable to defend himself. He ripped the heavy granite top of a lab table from its base then swung it around smashing Jackson into the far wall of the lab.
Jackson pulled himself from the broken wall and tried to stand. The hand he used to brace himself slipped and he fell back to the floor. He grunted, exhausted, and changed back to himself. Thorn advanced through the debris, laughing.
“You’ll die just like your father, then,” Thorn said.
Thorn snarled as he got to his hands and knees. “I’ll KILL YOU!”
Jackson launched himself at Thorn, only staggering him. The old man batted him away. Every urge he had was to get up and fight, to try to kill Thorn for what he’d done to his father. The crazy tilting feeling was spreading through him again, taking him over, making him forget who he was.
Jackson closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, knotted his hands into tight fists. He could beat the old man if he could just stay in control. He needed space to work in.
Jackson crawled, stumbled to his feet and tripped toward the door. “You can’t escape,” Thorn said.
Jackson made it to the hall. He heard the old man coming for him and ran for the opposite end of the building without looking back. He heard Thorn’s footsteps behind him and pushed himself to move faster. “Just like running for distance,” he said. “Kick it, Jacks.” He tried to run.
Something hit Jackson in the back of the head, tossing him forward. Thorn was over him, throwing hard fists into his back and kidneys. He struggled forward but the old man grabbed him by the ankle and pulled back. Desperate, angry that he’d been caught, Jackson concentrated.
“Gotta stay in control,” he said to himself as he grew scales for a third time and twisted loose of Thorn’s grasp. Orange and black in the dim light of the hallway, Jackson stood ready to fight again. Thorn grinned.
“Come on, then,” the old man said.
They collided with terrible ferocity, tearing at each other. Jackson used his lizard-like claws to rip at Thorn’s suit, looking for the man underneath. He hissed at his foe.
A flurry of fists, elbows and feet hit Jackson seemingly everywhere at once. Jackson heard the old man shout something that sounded primal: a victory cry. Thorn, almost feral, caught him in the throat with a roundhouse kick.
Jackson skidded across the floor and through a closed door. He shook the stars from his head and looked to his left. The animal part of him was receding and his human mind saw a chance. He was in a janitorial closet and there was a canister stamped with at least three warnings and skull and crossbones. He grabbed it....and next to it another chemical that really shouldn't have been stored so closely together. His dad would be proud, Jackson thought as he stood to face the old man.
The remains of the door were ripped from its hinges. Thorn’s face was twisted with hate and rage when he reached for Jackson.
Jackson squeezed the two canisters as hard as he could and sprayed a jet of chemicals at Thorn’s face. The old man screamed and retreated as the two chemicals combined in an explosive mix.
Thorn was writhing in agony on the floor. His tattered suit slipped over him like a sickly second skin. Underneath Jackson could see long scars on Thorn’s ribs with badly sewn stitches splitting open with an awful POPPOPPOP as they broke. A tentacle slid free and reached for Jackson.
Thorn rolled onto his back, clutching at his face with what looked like a spiky lobster claw where his right hand should have been. His left eye bulged from its socket and resembled a fly’s. His breathing sounded like a gurgling drain. Jackson said, “What are you?”
His vision blurred by the chemical, Thorn threw all he had into a desperate blow with the lobster claw and missed.
Seeing his advantage, Jackson punched Thorn’s bug eye as hard as he could. As the old man yowled with an inhuman voice, Jackson grabbed the flailing tentacle and yanked hard. He pulled Thorn into the air then whipped around like a discus thrower and let go to send him crashing hard into the far wall.
Jackson staggered, grabbed his side and winced at the pain in his ribs. Cracked during the fight and aggravated by throwing the old man, his ribs shot fire through his torso.
The old man looked like a patchwork action figure, lying against the wall. He saw the look of pure hate on Thorn’s face but was horrified by the way the man’s jaw seemed to hang like a piece of meat on a hook. That didn’t stop Jackson from jumping to land squarely on the spiky lobster claw with all his weight. The claw shattered under the force and Thorn screamed in his inhuman voice again.
There was fear in Thorn’s human eye now, but something else crossed the old man’s face. Jackson recognized a will to survive as the chemicals Jackson dumped on Thorn burned more and more of Thorn's skin away.
Jackson fell over, unbalanced by Thorn pulling his arm back suddenly. He cracked his head hard on the floor and as Jackson reached out to grab the old man, Thorn scrambled away.
Through a haze of pain, Jackson saw Thorn look around and cry out in frustration and pain. The patchwork man, still burning from the chemicals, turned around twice, raging, before running from the lab without a backward glance.
Groggy, Jackson changed back to himself and stumbled toward his father’s lab.
&
nbsp; *
He moved through the yellow police tape that marked the lab as a murder scene. Moving like a shadow he made his way to the office that adjoined the lab. He kicked the door in and entered the office, making for the bookshelf.
There, in the center, was another copy of the same book he'd seen in Thorn's office: The Evolution Revolution, Climate Change and Humanity's Next Steps by Dr. Benjamin Savage. He took it down and opened it. Inside, the pages had been carved to make a snug fit for three portable USB drives and a handful of phage discs.
Jackson was shaking from the adrenaline. He couldn't feel the bruises and lacerations from the fight, or the cracked ribs, as he removed everything from the book and put it back on the shelf. He picked up a picture from his father's, desk. He remembered Family Day at a Kansas City baseball game. He was twelve in the picture and his parents were happy and smiling.
"I wish you could have trusted me," he said.
He took the picture with him, tucking it into a pocket of an EnviroTech jacket. Knowing it was a lame disguise though better than nothing, he ran back through the lab, into the hall and toward the loading dock.
*
Jackson snuck off the campus without incident. He'd found a ball cap at the dock and pulled it down over his eyes then made his way across the long parking lot and through the stand of trees that marked the back of the EnviroTech property. A half mile further on and he was at the edge of the park and ride lot, already dotted with cars. The sun was just coming up.
Lost in thought, he didn't notice one back out of its space until it almost hit him. He nearly jumped out of his skin when he realized it was there.
The car stopped and the passenger window rolled down. "Let's go," Laurie said.
He sat next to her but kept one leg on the ground outside and held out a handful of phage discs. "These are the discs you put in the suit in Thorn's lab," he said. "Any idea what's on these or how they work? I found some more in dad's office."
She shook her head.
"Know who might?"
"Dr. Aladeen," she said. "I don't know where he might be, though."
"We need to find him," Jackson said and dropped the discs on the ground. "Roll forward."
He watched the rear wheel crush the pieces of plastic. He closed his door and looked forward.
They drove off into the rising sun and left everything they knew behind them.
EPILOGUE
The bear was indifferent, sluggish, nearly ready to den for the winter as it made its way down to the babbling stream. There was some rocks, scree actually, that slid away as it walked, but that didn't affect the bear or change his intentions. The mountains had made their final push to the sky long, long ago, before the great spirit of legend was in charge of things and bears had been a part of this country ever since. This bear knew none of that, nor did he care. All he was interested in was a drink before a long slumber.
The other animals of the area made way for the bear, sensing his torpor. The rule of prey was to first avoid all predators, even those who were basically sleepwalking.
It was a straight ridge that led the bear to the trail that went down to the stream on this side. Most of the woodland creatures at the base of the mountain knew the bear, most of them stayed on the far side of the stream in case he came hungry. There was almost never any bloodshed at the stream, as though there were an unspoken agreement between predator and prey.
The bear dipped his snout in the cold stream and lapped at the water. He drank a deep draught without noticing the man on the opposite bank. It had seen humans before, even charged at them when they had invaded his territory. This human wasn't moving, was, in fact, staring at the bear, studying it. The bear took a step out into the rushing water and roared.
It sounded lazy, even to the bear, not at all fearsome. It took another step into the stream and gave a stronger accounting of itself, a bigger roar. The human didn't move.
Instead, the human did something the bear had never seen before. It grew fur like a bear, its scent changed to something much more bear like, it was colored like a bear. When it stood, it was taller than the bear in the stream, its roar was deafening and the sleepy bear decided the human wasn't worth the trouble, took another drink from the stream and then turned to make its way back up the bank on its side.
Jackson watched the bear go and felt a little bad about it. He changed back to himself and looked at his hand. He brought it up to his nose and sniffed then ducked his head to his armpit. He whiffed of bear. It wasn't as bad as the yeti scent, but it wasn't good, either. He waded out into the stream and lay down, let the current wash him clean.
Laurie would be anxious to get on with today's testing if he didn't hurry up. She'd been a real friend through all of this and he had told her so often over the last few weeks on the run. His mother had taken everything pretty well when he'd called to explain, but she wanted him to go to the police to clear his name. She yelled at him over the phone when he said he couldn't and tried to reassure her that he was doing the right thing. Eventually she listened and he hung up knowing that even though she was angry with him, she knew he was alive if not exactly her little boy any more.
He was something else: a new apex predator the like of which the planet had never seen; a single organism with the ability to adapt and learn as environments changed around him. If he was anything, Jackson Savage was an evolver.
The End.