I Am Phantom

by Sean Fletcher

  I needed to make this quick. I glanced around and…

  Was I…in the right room? A plush carpet muffled my steps as I stepped past the bed—child-sized—and to the opposite wall. Trophies—baseball and hockey—filled a shelf, and there were even some community service medals mixed in. Uh-oh, we had gotten the wrong house. No way would medals for community service be within a hundred mile radius of Sykes’ house.

  “Matt, double-check the address. This is the wrong house.”

  “It’s the right one,” Matt insisted. “I have never been wrong.” I checked the next shelf, displaying intricately detailed model rockets, dozens of them. They covered the walls and hung on invisible strings from the ceiling.

  “I’m telling you, it’s not—” Then I found the pictures. Sykes looked about ten. He stood in a backyard somewhere, his front teeth spaced apart, a massive grin on his face, so much that his eyes crinkled almost shut. He held up another model rocket. This one had a first place ribbon tied to it.

  “Told you,” Matt said, no doubt seeing this through the camera on my earpiece.

  Another picture. Older Sykes, high school, maybe. He stood with his arms draped around two other guys, all smiling. It was an arresting smile, holding no malice, only innocence. His eyes were clear and bright, his posture carefree. The bottom of the picture read: High School Science Club.

  “This can’t be him,” I whispered. It couldn’t be because the man in these pictures looked normal. He looked too easy to like. Too much…like me.

  “What happened to him?”

  “Drake, we need to find out if there’s anything there that can help us. Was he there recently? Is there anything left behind?”

  It took me a moment to shake from my daze. I took another look around. It was still a child’s room, as untouched as if he had left it yesterday.

  “We’re not going to find anything here,” I said wearily. “Only what he was, not what he’s going to do.”

  My eye caught a cut out piece of newspaper lying on the bed. I picked it up. It detailed Sykes’ arrest, his transfer to Montstaff.

  Why would that be here? Who—?

  “Lucius?”

  In an instant I backed into the closest far enough that when the woman stepped into the room and turned on the light, she couldn’t see me. She didn’t call Sykes’ name again. Her eyes probed the room. Then her features fell to a horrible final resignation, as though discovering that her closest imaginary friend was nothing more than whispers and wishes in her mind.

  She pushed the rest of the way into the room. Her fingers flew over the shelves, changing and readjusting until everything must have looked perfect to her. I pressed farther back into the closet as she approached the shelf nearby and picked up one of Syke’s pictures.

  Then she put it back down and left the room. I followed her until she went into the dining room.

  I cleared my throat. “Mrs. Sykes?” She didn’t tense, didn’t turn around. She motioned to a chair at the dining room table.

  “Miss. Just Miss.”

  “I don’t mean to frighten you.” She sat at the table, facing me. If there was any surprise of who I was, it didn’t show on her young yet wrinkled face.

  “You don’t.” The dining room was crowded with knick-knacks and fragile porcelain things. It smelled of stale cigarettes and a tinge of alcohol. Like Sykes’ room, this place seemed untouched by time.

  “I’m Martha, Martha Sykes.” She leaned forward and kept her unnerving gaze on me. “And you are?”

  “Nobody important.” Martha leaned back in her chair. I heard her wrinkle something beneath the table, and a moment later popped a cough drop into her mouth.

  “You’re Phantom. I saw you on the news,” Martha said triumphantly. “Don’t think I don’t know who you are, even if you don’t have all your get-up on.”

  “And you’re Lucius Sykes’ mother,” I said.

  “I wonder,” Martha continued. “How is it you can do all those things they say you can?”

  “What things?”

  “You’re so fast and strong. You vanish without a trace. You—”

  Her eyes alit with sudden realization. She yanked her chair closer to the table so that her top half was practically splayed across the wood. “My god, they did it to you, too.”

  I didn’t like the way her eyes kept flicking to the hallway doorway behind me. Matt’s warning about Sykes being here hadn’t left. “Yes, I’m like your son. I hoped you could help me—”

  “Do you know where my boy is, Phantom? Can you bring him home?”

  I quickly glanced over my shoulder. Nothing. Martha continued licking her cracked lips. “He’s not here?”

  “He hasn’t been here for years.”

  “What was he like before…before the way he is now? How did that happen?” When Martha heard that I didn’t know where Sykes was, she seemed to deflate. The chair creaked when she sat back in it.

  “Smart. Brilliant. Funny. My baby.” She exhaled loudly and a second later I tasted the sickly sweet peppermint of her cough drop. “Lucius loved science, that was his passion.”

  “Was he unstable as a child?”

  “Never!” Martha cried. “My Lucius was perfect! It was those horrible, horrible men that made him into what people think now. Did you know,” she bent her head down, as though telling me a secret. She wouldn’t stop licking those chapped lips of hers. “when he was working for Project Midnight—”

  “Wait, Sykes was with—”

  “—he was the one keeping them honest. My baby visited me before they destroyed him. He said there were big things happening. But they were big, bad things. Bad, bad things.”

  I had gotten fed up with her eyes venturing behind me, like a ghost stood at my back.

  “He said that Dr. Ragan, I’m sure they told you about him, the man who funded the project, was considering cutting it off. He didn’t like what was happening to it.” She had practically thrown her body on the table now. I jumped up. Martha clawed at the space in front of me, as if grasping for something I couldn’t see.

  “Tell me where my son is, Phantom. Please. You know better than anyone what he’s going through. They won’t tell me where they’re keeping him.”

  Before I had time to wonder who ‘they’ were, I heard the click of a gun behind me.

  “I held him until you got back,” Martha said. “Now give me my son. He’s all I have left.”

  “We told you we don’t have him,” the man behind me said. I turned halfway to look. Two Project Midnight agents were pointing their pistols at the back of my head. “But, just as we guessed, Phantom showed up.” The man nodded to his partner. “Relay a message that we got ‘em. About time we get out of this place.” The other man grabbed for his phone.

  “I want my son!” Martha shrieked.

  “Your kid’s as good as dead!” The man yelled back, taking his eyes off me for a millisecond. I dropped to the ground and kicked out both of their legs. Their heads hit the back wall and cabinet with a loud crack. They didn’t get up. I checked the phone. He hadn’t dialed anyone. I crushed it under my shoe.

  “Leave now, Drake,” Matt said into my ear.

  Martha was still gripping the table like her life depended on it.

  “Did they overhear us?”

  “I just want my son, Phantom, you understand that?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t care. Were they here long? Would they be able to follow me?”

  “They were the only ones. They’ve been here for a month, but you came in when they were gone. They didn’t tell anyone.”

  I glanced back at the unconscious men. “You should leave, too. Others will be here. They may kill you.”

  “But…my boy…” I stepped over the men and out the front door.

  “He’s not coming back here.”

  I stood on the porch and didn’t move for a long time. It was becoming unbearable to stay here. To stay in a place that had never changed. Holding a piece of Sykes that mayb
e once was, but no longer remained.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Story of Sykes

  “You heading back for the ni-ni-night?” Cody’s yawn covered up anything else he was going to say. “Sorry. Heading back?”

  “Go to bed, Cody. I’m going to do one last sweep.”

  “Maybe I should stay with you—”

  “It’s fine. I’m just swinging by the northern suburbs. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  It wasn’t the truth, but Cody and Matt had kind of grown used to me going off by myself in the wake of Project Midnight’s revival. Maybe they thought they were doing me a favor by giving me space I needed. And they were. I appreciated it more than they knew.

  “Don’t get yourself killed,” Cody said. “‘Night.”

  I weaved my motorcycle through the snow-cleared streets. I got it up to almost seventy, but didn’t hear anything more than a dull rumble from the engine as I tore down the road.

  I conjured up the address in my mind.

  460 Pen Plaza, northern suburbs.

  The search for Dr. Ragan, the name Martha Sykes had let slip, had finally yielded me an address after I did some snooping that would make Matt proud. He hadn’t been too hard to find, but everything I read made it sound like the man was dead. But I still had to check.

  I pulled to a stop down the street from the house I wanted. I turned off my earpiece, stashed my motorcycle in one of the yards and snuck towards number 460.

  Dr. Ragan was the one who founded Project Midnight, that much I knew. Whether he was aware of the extent it had gone, I didn’t know.

  I had to ask. And hope he had some answers.

  Despite the late hour, many houses still had lights on. Dr. Ragan’s was full dark.

  I hopped over the back gate and froze, my mask not showing anything interesting. Oak trees cast shadows over a pool, covered for the winter, and the moonlight swathed yard.

  I peeked around the corner. No dog. Hopefully there wasn’t one inside.

  I hadn’t thought about how I was going to break in. I would just try the door first. Hey, I’m not a professional crook, even though I seemed to be adding the breaking and entering skill to my repertoire of late. If the alarm went off I could be out of there in an instant.

  I left the pool behind and went to the porch. Nothing moved inside when I looked through the back door. I held my breath and tried the handle.

  It was unlocked.

  There was no alarm. Maybe it was silent. I was about to ask Matt to check the police stream but remembered they weren’t with me.

  I stepped inside and into a laundry room. The living room was through the doorway, past a washer and dryer and a pile of dirty clothes. I scooted past a litter box and stepped next to the couch in the living room. There was no light in the bedroom so I looked for where Dr. Ragan’s office might be.

  “If you’re going to stay you might as well make yourself comfortable.”

  I spun so fast my neck cricked. After a moment of hard looking I noticed a shrouded, lumpy shape in the armchair, near the entrance to the kitchen. A shadowed hand grew from the chair and reached towards the lamp next to it.

  “Do you mind? I find it easier to speak to someone when I can actually see them.”

  I didn’t answer. I hadn’t figured out what I was going to say to him.

  “All right then.” There was a click and the room flooded with light. I stepped back into the dark of the laundry room until my mask adjusted.

  “Oh, aren’t you a shy one? Not shy enough to stop you from breaking into people’s houses, though.” Once I could see better, I stepped forward into the light. Dr. Ragan didn’t say anything but I saw his wrinkly eyebrows briefly flick upwards. He looked mid-sixties. Full head of hair and glasses that hung from a fine gold chain around his neck; his ears were wrinkled like raisins.

  He took a sip from a glass of orange juice, and removed a videotape from his pocket, which he lay on the lamp stand beside him.

  “What can I help you with, Phantom?”

  “I want to know about Project Midnight.”

  “Project Midnight?” He shifted in his chair. “I’ve never heard of them.”

  “I’m not here to play games, Dr. Ragan. Sykes told me what Project Midnight did to him. And to me.” There was the surprise I was hoping for. Catch him off balance and maybe he’d tell me something.

  “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

  “One of your freaks, yes.”

  “No! One of our finest accomplishments. Well, maybe not mine so much.”

  “Your accomplishments. Who are you to Project Midnight?”

  “You could call me,” he chuckled darkly, “your creator, I guess.”

  A part of me wanted to lift this pathetic old man by his ears and scream at him that he was wrong, that I was my own person. How could he speak so casually about what he was doing to people?

  Instead, I choked out, “What do you mean?”

  “I’m Project Midnight’s founder. I funded the program through its infancy.”

  “But, why? Why would you do that?”

  Dr. Ragan seemed to deflate, as if releasing an old memory.

  “Sometimes…sometimes things that look so good at one time really are the worst.” He sighed. “I used to have a family, Phantom. I wasn’t like I am now, this lonely, bitter existence spent scurrying between the lenses of people who want me dead. I had children. Three beautiful children.” He looked out the window.

  “They died. All three of them, in an avalanche while climbing in the Himalayas. They were everything to me,” he said softly.

  “People’s kids die all the time,” I said, hating how harsh I sounded. “But those people don’t go off and fund crazy research projects. Why did you?”

  Dr. Ragan looked bemusedly over at me.

  “Impatience. Perhaps they added that to the next batch of serums. My children, my everything, were dead, Phantom. Something I don’t think you can quite understand unless you have kids of your own, which I doubt. I was overcome with grief. And all I kept thinking was maybe if they were just a little stronger, a little bit faster, and durable. My boy managed to dig his way out, but froze to death before he could find help, they told me. Imagine, if you will, if he were more like you.”

  He got up and walked over to a bookshelf. I jumped up. Dr. Ragan glanced at me and chuckled.

  “You’re tense. The police aren’t coming. Project Midnight doesn’t care about me and Sykes thinks I’m dead. You have nothing to worry about here.”

  “Not that I don’t trust you, but I don’t trust you.”

  “Fair enough.” He returned to the bookshelf and began running his fingers down the spine.

  “In my grief my vision was limited, but in time I came to realize that others could use that kind of gift, the gift of super human abilities. Firemen, police, any kind of dangerous jobs. We would regulate it, of course. Only those with special clearance or need would be given the serum.”

  “That doesn’t even sound good in theory,” I said. “The regulation would fail.”

  “Many things sound good in theory. I’m sure we had thought there was a way we’d make it work. But that wasn’t what was important. I was already working on a very successful gene project and was able to focus my talents on what we dubbed Project Midnight.”

  He found what he was looking for, pulled a book from the shelf, opened it and removed a disc. He returned to his seat.

  “The tests in animals were…unsuccessful. We were trying to make the skills you have, but not nearly as high a level. It was unstable from the beginning. I thought I had it under control.”

  “Famous last words. You could fill a book with people who thought that.”

  “Indeed, many books. The side effects were too dangerous to even think about human trials. I shut it down.”

  “You shut down Project Midnight?”

  Dr. Ragan nodded. “I thought I did.” He waved the disc and got up to put it in the DVD player. “I wa
s wrong.” The T.V. came to life, showing a recording of a familiar looking place. It was the lab Sykes had taken me to when he first told me of Project Midnight.

  Sykes was in the video. He looked normal, like in the pictures I had seen at his house. He was sitting across the table from Carlyle and the two seemed to be in an argument.

  “It won’t work, Carlyle,” Sykes was saying, jabbing his finger onto a stack of manila folders in front of him. Behind him, I saw the giant screens of the underground laboratory and hundreds of men and women walking between stations.

  “Ragan shut us down weeks ago, and I still believed in this project but you have to accept that the potential for a dangerous outcome is too great.”

  “What is Sykes doing there?” I said, still in shock. Dr. Ragan looked quizzically at me.

  “Doing there? He and Dr. Carlyle were to two head scientists on the team. They helped create the serum.”

  “You don’t get it,” Carlyle said. “We’re so close. And we’ve got more bids from the Department of Defense. They’re willing to overlook certain technicalities if we give them first rights to the final product.”

  “Which we won’t have,” Sykes emphasized. “Don’t kid yourself. You saw what happened to the chimp we used.”

  Carlyle suddenly looked a little sick. “A minor glitch. We can work around that.”

  Sykes stood up and grabbed his notebooks. “No, we can’t. I’m done, Carlyle. This was my dream as much as yours, but it’s over. I’m closing us down tomorrow.”

  “But what about the genetics team?” Carlyle said before Sykes could walk out the door. “We haven’t tried that angle.” Sykes continued shaking his head.

  “Look,” Carlyle was on his feet now, “just because this project doesn’t meet the precious standards of the great Dr. Lucius Sykes doesn’t mean it should be shut down. We as humans, as a species, don’t we have a right to make ourselves more able to survive? We have that adaptation.”

  “It’s not worth the sacrifice!” Sykes said. “And it’s not just the sacrifice to get there that I’m worried about. This product is unstable and if it fell into the wrong hands…” He tried to walk away but Carlyle was fuming now.