I Am Phantom

by Sean Fletcher

  Cody’s voice was faint. “We’re losing—connection.” A pause. “What if—there are others—down—there?” Cody said, his voice beginning to break up.

  “I know there are others waiting down there.”

  “We’re not going—sit here—watch you—die.”

  “You’re not going to,” I assured him. “But I’m not going to wait around for answers to come to me.”

  The elevator was slowing. One wall opened up to three men waiting, guns hung at their sides. Cody swore into my ear a second before the earpiece went dead.

  I hurled the box at one guard and leapt over another. The remaining two scrambled to bring up their guns. I grabbed the barrel of one of them, pulled him to me and punched him out. The other guard pulled the trigger.

  I had enough time to practically fall over. Bullets soared over me and before he could re-aim I kicked his legs out and tossed his against a wall. He slumped there and didn’t move.

  Before the gunshots had even faded off the web of pipes and concrete I had dashed down the corridor and slid into a vacant room.

  “Cody?” I tapped the earpiece. “Cody, you there?” It was dead. No alarms went of as I peeked my head out the door. The piping above my head ended just down the hallway where the lights were brighter.

  The entire place felt too small to sneak around in. Hopefully there wouldn’t be many cameras or guards or this joy ride would be over before it had even started.

  I took a deep breath and ran toward the lights. The place was eerily vacant as far as I could see down the featureless white hallways. The expansive groan of machinery to the right. Something…to the left.

  I went left. Locked steel doors punctuated white walls every so often. I had to duck by a glass chamber full of more test tubes and beakers. A couple men in lab coats were focused on mixing substances. Sykes was right, if that hadn’t been obvious to me by now. This was definitely Project Midnight.

  But what were they working on now? Still trying to perfect the serum that had changed my life forever? Or had they moved on to something more sinister?

  A scream came from behind me, before being quickly cut off. The scientists continued working as though nothing had happened. An offshoot of the main corridor took me deeper inside. Twice I had to duck around the corner to avoid some lab assistants.

  The scream had come from around here.

  The corridor ended in a circular room. Some men at the other end had pinned someone, the man who had been screaming, down while a man in a black suit and others with clipboards watched.

  The man pinned to the ground was sobbing. He wore casual clothes though they were so ripped and dirty it was hard to tell what they had once been.

  “Pl—please!” He said, partly gagging on his own tears. “I have kids!”

  “We haven’t been able to recreate all of the attributes of the original serum without patient fatality,” the scientist standing over the man said loudly, trying to speak over the crying.

  “No! You can’t—you can’t—”

  The scientist talked louder, “but we have been able to isolate each trait into a, hopefully, more survivable strain. The previous subject lasted a whole two weeks before death.”

  The man cried harder.

  “Show it, don’t sell it,” the man in the black suit said.

  Before I could understand what they were about to do, the scientist pulled out a needle and jabbed it into the man’s side. The man shrieked and began to twitch violently.

  “Stop!” I wrenched up a chair and hurled it at the guards holding the subject down. It swept both of them up and I had grabbed the subject before anyone else could move and dragged him back behind an overturned table.

  Guns went up. Three guards. Two scientists.

  And Carlyle, the man in the black suit.

  My mind whirled. Carlyle, the man who ran the Lab. Could the Lab be…

  I shook my head to clear the thought. Not now. I had to survive this first.

  I let go of the subject when he began to spasm and foam at the mouth. His eyes rolled back and his fists clenched so hard veins bulged from his forearms.

  Whatever they had injected him with was killing him.

  Carlyle stepped forward, holding a hand slightly behind him as though to waive off the guards’ guns.

  “What the hell are you supposed to be?”

  “What did you do to him?” I yelled. The subject twitched once more and fell still. I hurriedly checked his pulse. “You killed him!”

  “Another one, huh?” Carlyle glanced back at one of the men with a clipboard. “Make a note of that.”

  “What about the guy in the costume, sir?” One guard asked, gesturing towards me with his gun.

  “Fate has smiled at us.” Carlyle opened his hands in a welcoming gesture. “Gentlemen, I give to you the man we failed to catch on the train. This is Phantom.” He smiled at me. “You’re very accommodating, I’ll have you know. Here we put all this time and resources into finding you and you show up at our doorstep.”

  I checked the subject again. He really was dead. There was nothing more I could do for him.

  “I’m not here to stay,” I said.

  “I’m afraid you are,” Carlyle said, almost sadly. He gestured to the body I crouched next to. “Our latest failure to recreate what we did in you. I assume you already know about your gifts?”

  “I was normal until you messed with me,” I said. Carlyle shook his head. A few more guards ran in the door and started to circle around me.

  “And yet how little you still know. I have the honor of telling you that you are more unique than you could ever have imagined.” He waved down the guards’ guns. “Come on.” He offered a hand. “You have questions, I’m sure. We have answers.”

  How come every person that could give me answers was either evil or insane?

  “Gee, thanks, because I knew you just wanted to chat when you tried to kidnap me on the train,” I said. “You’ve really given me a lot to think about but I think I’ll pass for now.”

  “Please,” Carlyle said gently, as though speaking to a child. “Phantom, you have no idea what I’m offering. When we lost track of our other experiments and lost the data, it was a huge setback, I’ll admit. But you’re here now. You can help us.”

  “Help you do what? You can tell me what you’re doing here. What you did to him.” I pointed at the dead man on the ground. Carlyle sighed impatiently.

  “Don’t be difficult. You don’t need to know everything right now, but in time, yes. He was weak, you are strong. Now come on, we have a lot to work on.”

  “I want a cure. A cure for what you did to me.”

  For the first time Carlyle seemed genuinely surprised, like that was the most unexpected thing I could have said. “A…cure? Why on earth would you want a cure? It’s not like it’s a disease you’re stuck with. Why, look at what you can do!”

  “It’s a curse.”

  “It is whatever you make it to be. And I am trying to help you make it something glorious. You and me, together.”

  He must have thought I was as crazy as Sykes. And who knew, maybe he was right. It hadn’t been the most rational thing to trap myself here.

  “Phantom, we are wasting time—”

  An alarm went off and a red light flashed above our heads. Carlyle looked up at it as though blaming it for something. He turned to one of the guards.

  “Get that shut off and checked,” he snapped. “We have the intruder here.” The guard glanced at the readout on his wrist.

  “He didn’t trip the alarm, sir.” Carlyle dropped his hands with an exasperated sigh.

  “Then who did?”

  The screams began from down the corridor.

  Uh-oh.

  Carlyle seemed to have come to the same conclusion. Desperation filled his voice. “Let’s go, Phantom! I can offer you all the answers, I can show you your potential!”

  “Do you have a cure?” I said. At that Carlyle turned back to me instead
of focusing on the corridor.

  “What?”

  “A cure. Do you have a cure for my ‘gifts’?”

  “You must be joking. Look at what you can do. Look at what we made you into. You’re a god!”

  “Sir?” One of the guards said as something exploded in the distance, growing closer. Panicked feet came from outside. “What are our orders?” Carlyle pointed to two guards.

  “You two come with me. Everyone else get out.”

  “Sir—” More screams, closer now. Carlyle stepped to one of the walls and a secret panel slid open.

  “What about Phantom, sir?” One of the guards said.

  “We’ll get him later. If he’s survives this. Hurry up.” Carlyle vanished inside the wall and it slid shut. The remaining men stood, watching the entrance to the hallway.

  “Run!” I yelled, doing the same. I probably couldn’t go through the paneled doorway, but I had spied another door leading out. I took that.

  I glanced back before I left, just as one of the guards stepping out the other door.

  “Stop!” I yelled.

  He never stood a chance.

  Sykes was a force. Like a vengeful storm he ripped through the man like paper, painting the wall behind him red. Clipboards clattered on the ground as the scientists holding them were cut down one by one. Silver flashed. Blood sprayed. The last man tried to run. Sykes casually flicked his knife at him and pinned his throat to the wall. The man gurgled something unintelligible, groping at the gaping wound in his neck. Sykes walked over and tugged the knife out of the steel and let the man crumple to the ground.

  He turned to me. His front was soaked in blood and bits of gore. Already the stench of copper filled my nose. A trail of crimson followed him as he walked, but still his face remained calm.

  “They could have been innocent!” I said. Sykes looked down at what remained of the men. Then he pointed his jagged knife at me.

  “Leave. Now. You can’t stop me. Not here. Not now.”

  I was terrified, but who knew how many people were still left in the lab. How many would he kill? Some knew what they were doing but they needed justice, not slaughter.

  I dropped into a pose. Sykes growled and, covered in blood, it made it seem like there was no humanity left in him, just killer animal instincts.

  “You fight to protect those that wronged you. Your ideals are skewed.”

  “This is murder. They deserve justice.”

  “This is justice.” The alarm wailed louder.

  I vaulted over the table, aiming a kick at his chest. At the last second I spun again, trying to catch him off guard. I kicked him back. He slid across the floor, leaving a long streak of red. He was up again, driving his knife at my throat. I grabbed his forearm and twisted it out of his grip, caught it as it fell and hurled it away into the wall.

  Something was different about Sykes. He looked lost in thought. Like he wasn’t all there. More than usual, I mean. His inhuman speed seemed dampened.

  “I’m not here for you,” Sykes said, as though reading my mind. “You’re as much a victim as I am. Leave.” He pulled his head up and in his eyes I saw complete sadness. “Please.”

  What was this? Where did this Sykes come from?

  Before I had time to think about it, Sykes had pulled out another knife and stabbed me in the side.

  It was the most intense pain I have ever felt. I kicked out and Sykes had to step back, taking the bloodied knife with him. My blood. I stumbled and Sykes kicked me in the face, throwing me back into the corridor. I groaned and rolled over. Fire lanced up my stomach.

  “Leave, Phantom!” Sykes said. “We’re done for now.”

  I clutched at the torn skin. I could tell the costume had taken a lot of the blow but I was still bleeding badly.

  I sucked in a breath, stood and faced him. Sykes had the knife balanced on his fingertips but his eyes were on me. His shirt was so soaked in blood it looked like he had just taken a swim in a bloody pool.

  I punched. His knife sheared the cuff of my costume and sparks flew as it deflected. Sykes spun under my arm and sent me sliding back again with a rib cracking kick.

  As much as I hated to leave, I needed to get out. I could already feel the blood loss slowing me down. Hopefully I had distracted Sykes enough that more people were able to escape.

  Sykes had already went through the door into the other room. I took my chance and ran. If Sykes followed me then I couldn’t hear him.

  I tried to not look at the bodies as I ran past another hallway, darkened. My feet crunch on broken glass. A few other people were moving about, running away from me. I made it back to elevator and slammed on the up button. The wall closed and the ceiling opened. The floor started to rise.

  My head was spinning. The knife wound still bled, but less since I had pressed my hand against it. My earpiece started to clear up as the elevator finally stopped and I stumbled into the warehouse. Nobody was there. There must have been a separate exit.

  “Cody?” I said into the earpiece.

  “Drake!” It was Melanie. “Drake are you okay? They just left to go after y—Cody! He’s here!” I heard pounding feet grow closer to the mic.

  “You crazy son of a bitch!” Cody roared. “You about made Matt and me run in guns blazing to save your sorry butt! What’s going on?”

  “Sykes,” I said as my only explanation. “And I’m hurt.”

  Cody’s voice softened a bit. “Hurt? How bad? You—” He paused as he checked something on the screen nearby. “Somebody called the police. There’re right on top of you! Run!”

  I tore back through the boxes and burst through the doors of the warehouse, straight into headlights. No fewer than fifteen police cars ringed the parking lot. Their flashing lights played havoc with my vision. I shielded my eyes as police Chief Ryans stepped out and hefted a megaphone.

  “You are under arrest! Down on the ground now!”

  “Sykes is inside!” I yelled. “He’s right inside! He killed—”

  “On the ground!” Another cop yelled. Guns cocked all around me.

  “Empty loading dock leading outside the compound to your right,” Cody said. “Can you make it?”

  I pressed harder on my bleeding side. “Yes.” I feigned putting my arms up—and bolted, immediately ducking behind some stacked crates as gunfire followed, cutting splinters into me.

  “There!” Cody yelled. I dove right, down into a loading bay and up the other side to a fence. I had maybe a second before the police were on me.

  I hefted myself over the fence. A bullet ricocheted near my back. I ran hard until I was forced to stop in the dark cover of a stretch of woods. My side was agony.

  “Drake, buddy, are you going to make it?”

  “Meet me at the Lab. Bring a first aid kit.”

  He hesitated, about to make sure I wasn’t going to collapse right there, I think.

  “Please, Cody,” I wheezed.

  “Right.”

  I knew it would take more than some simple first aid kit to patch me up but since I couldn’t go to the hospital…

  By now the sirens started up again but they were headed the wrong direction. I limp-jogged across the street, winding my way to the Lab. It was stupid for me to go back there just after seeing Carlyle as the leader of Project Midnight, but my thinking was that I wasn’t really thinking at the moment. There was a good chance he was still underground or had another place he could hide. Even he wouldn’t be bold enough to flee the scene of a crime and then seek refuge inside a high-profile facility on campus grounds.

  Kind of like I was doing…

  Fresh blood ran down my hand. The wound wasn’t deep but it wouldn’t stop bleeding and it would be a miracle if I could make it back to the Lab without passing out. It wasn’t too far, I knew, but my strength was fading fast.

  Melanie’s voice quavered but came through. “You still there, Drake? Should we come get you?”

  “I’ll make it,” I said. “Just make sure you are
n’t seen.” With great effort I started a lumbering jog that would have made an inebriated zombie embarrassed.

  “We’ll be there,” Melanie said. As I kept out of sight and then emerged beneath the shadow of the Lab, I heard her leave and the microphone go dead.

  Getting in to the Lab had to be one of the top ten greatest entrances of all time, for the sheer fact that I spilled minimal amounts of blood in the empty lobby as I crossed it and got into the elevator. I exited on our floor and made it to Cody and Matt’s room in the back. The Lab was completely vacant, as usual.

  My vision swam as I slid to the floor inside their room. Gingerly, my side screaming, I took off my hood and mask and let the sharp, cold air free the sweaty hair plastered to my forehead. All the lights on our floor were off; the only sound was the hum of the air conditioner and the small creaks echoing along the ceiling. The stab wound contrasted with the sting of air on the back of my throat with each ragged breath.

  What was I doing?

  Project Midnight, the same people who had destroyed my life, were still at it, probably stronger than before. If I had tried to stop them from hurting that man. If I had stepped in sooner, if I couldn’t…if…if…

  If I couldn’t stop those bad things happening then what was the point? When I thought back to the last few months I realized nothing had really changed in Queensbury. I was just a kid running around in a costume. Sykes was still free and I hadn’t come much closer to finding out about my past.

  I heard the sliding door open and a second later the lights came on. Cody’s footsteps froze in the doorway.

  “Drake….” He started. I saw him clutch the wall and take some steadying breaths.

  “I don’t look that bad,” I croaked. Surprisingly, Matt didn’t hesitate, but brought the first aid kit next to me and began dabbing the wound. Melanie entered last and she looked just as distraught as Cody.

  “This will sting,” Matt said a second before the cloth touched my cut. It hurt bad, but not as bad as the knife.

  “I’ve got high pain tolerance,” I bragged. Bull crap. I was about to pass out. My head was spinning again.

  Cody managed to pull himself from the wall and brought some water over. I drank it greedily.