Origin Z

by Tony Hartzell

  Bio-Sure Pharmaceuticals

  The Future of Medicine

  He switched to brights and followed the curving driveway. Then he saw a flash of reflectors, barely visible where a gravel road went off to the left. He stopped the truck and looked at Rocky. “Did you see that?”

  “See what?”

  He backed up the truck and pulled onto the gravel road far enough to see the back of a parked ambulance. He looked over at Michelle and raised his eyebrows.

  “So what? It’s an ambulance. It looks abandoned.”

  “I want to check it out. I just have this feeling I should.”

  “All right, Jaxxy. Can’t hurt.”

  Jax turned off the lights. “We need to wait until our eyes adjust to the darkness.”

  They sat waiting.

  “My brother is close. I can feel it.”

  Rocky chuckled. “So that myth about twins is true?”

  Jax turned to her and smiled as he opened the door and jumped out. She shook her head and did the same.

  Jax moved up to the back of the ambulance and heard a clunk from inside. Stopping, he warned Rocky back and hopped into a ready stance with his sword. After looking around both edges of the ambulance, he grabbed the door handle on the back and pulled himself up to look inside. He spotted the soldier strapped down on the gurney.

  “Yep, this has Tin written all over it.”

  “So your brother’s name is Tin?”

  “Tinley. Tin for short.”

  “Hmm. Your parents were different sorts. God only knows what their names must have been.”

  “Werner and Gretchen.” He pointed his finger at her with a half smile on his face. “Laugh and I’ll throw you in with the chomper.”

  She muted her laugh with the back of her hand. “At least they didn’t call you Hansel and Gretel.”

  They were on the same side of gravel road he figured the company campus was on. He could see glimpses of lights when the trees shifted.

  “We need to go through here on foot.”

  “Uh, I don’t do woods at night. Sorry.”

  He smiled real big at her. “What are you scared of, ninja girl? You can just chop the fuck out of anyone or anything that is in there.”

  She looked back at him with a worried look. “Still scared shitless, but OK, hero. You lead the way. Oh. By the way, watch where you swing your Sword of Power, He-Man. I’m going to stick pretty close.”

  Jax started to wind his way through the trees with Michelle in tow, trying to look every direction at once.

  _______

  Tin and Teeny darted across the rear parking lot and ducked behind the Dumpster where Tin had rescued her less than two days ago. The smell was uncomfortable. It made her think of what she had spent those hours looking at while she waited for her partner. She still didn’t understand why she had called him first, but she just felt safe with him around.

  He looked down to see her looking at him with a half smile. “What?”

  “Nothing, big guy. Just thanks for being there.”

  “I’ll always be there for you, Teeny.”

  She smiled up at the huge man as she reached for his arm. Just then they heard the receiving door open. Peeking up over the edge of the dock, he saw two guys in scrubs come out and move over to grab a smoke and talk while sitting on the stairs. Luckily, they were facing away from them, so Tin peeked up over the dock again and saw no one inside the room where the men had come out.

  The men always stuck a piece of wood in the door to keep it open. Teeny had seen them do this when she was waiting inside the Dumpster for him to come. Luckily, they didn’t care about security.

  Tin boosted Teeny up to the dock and jumped up himself. They crept across the space between the edge and the door, keeping an eye on the two smokers. They ducked inside and hugged the wall as they moved toward the inside door.

  _______

  Johnson watched from the cover of trees as the two snuck through the open access door. After they disappeared inside, he darted across the parking lot and up to the door with inhuman speed. He risked a glance around the corner and watched them hurry through the inside door. Following them in, he smiled to himself because he knew that the fun was just about to start.

  _______

  Reed, Abraham, Michael, and two Russian men watched the monitors as Tin and Teeny eased into the hallway leading to the habitats.

  Teeny had warned Tin about the cameras, so he used his height and the fireman’s ax to push the lens of the first one to face the ceiling as they moved toward Leonidas’s habitat. Tin heard something behind them and spun to look down the hallway. Teeny turned to look behind them as well. They both stood motionless for minutes, staring down the hallway.

  After not seeing anything, Teeny tapped his back. “Come on. Nothing is there.”

  They turned and moved on down the hallway.

  Johnson slid out of the shadow where he had been hiding with his shadow armor. He easily jumped up to redirect the camera Tin had pushed with his ax. He looked up at it and heard Reed in his earpiece.

  “Stay far enough behind them, soldier. We want them to rescue their cohorts and get to our battleground before we attack.”

  He gave the thumbs-up and turned to continue down the hallway.

  The first habitat they came upon was where Leonidas still resided. Tin continued to move past until Teeny grabbed his shirt to make him stop. She was staring into the habitat with a horrified look on her face. Tin looked in to see Leonidas slumped in the corner. His arms and legs were all jagged, as if they had been broken and left to heal at weird angles. When he looked up at them, the face of the chimp was barely recognizable. His eyes, ears, nose, and mouth were shaped like a plastic surgeon’s nightmare. The chimp rolled from his sitting position to his feet and shuffled over to where Teeny was pressing her hands to the window. Tears streamed down her face at the sight of the tortured ape. Leonidas reached up with his crooked arm and touched the glass where Teeny’s hand was pressed. She put her other hand to her mouth to hold back a sob.

  Tin gently touched her shoulder. “We have to move on.”

  She looked at him and then back at Leo. “Leonard is going to pay for this, Tin.”

  “I agree. But we’ll have to deal with that when we are able. We have to get O’Reilly and Laudner right now.”

  She looked back at the chimp and moved away from the glass, sliding her hand along as they continued down the hall. Leonidas moved with them as far as he could, hooting loudly and genuflecting toward Teeny as much as his twisted body would let him. She took one last look and let Tin pull her down the hall toward where they thought their friends were likely being held.

  Tin pushed up another camera as they approached a lighted habitat. Moving up, he peeked around the edge of the window to look.

  Laudner was sitting on a bed, cross-legged and eyes closed in a meditative position. Tin tapped his ax lightly on the glass and got no reaction. He tapped harder. Laudner’s eyes popped open, and he immediately shook his head as if there were bees inside. It took a few seconds for him to spot where the tap had come from and a few more seconds before he recognized who was tapping. He started to unwrap his legs to get off the bed, but Tin waved for him to stop and moved his index finger to his lips to indicate to him to wait and keep quiet.

  Laudner eased back down onto the bed and calmed himself, turning his eyes but not his head toward Tin. The lieutenant used combat sign language to tell him that he would let O’Reilly know they were there and return to get him out. Laudner gave a slight nod of his head and returned to his meditative position.

  Marty hadn’t been in to give them their injections since yesterday, so he had a blasting headache and was having a very hard time keeping his thoughts straight.

  They moved up to the next habitat and peered in to see O’Reilly already up to
the glass and looking back at them. He smiled but immediately grabbed his head as if there was unbearable pain.

  “Open the door, Tin. I need to give him an injection as soon as possible.”

  He moved over to the door and swung his ax to break the lock that had been put there. They moved in, and Tin grabbed O’Reilly’s arms while Teeny stabbed him with the syringe and squeezed in the vaccine.

  He didn’t struggle but held his hands to his head with his eyes shut for another thirty seconds before opening them and showing some recognition of the situation. He nodded to Tin and then looked at Teeny to give her a half smile and a wink.

  Teeny rolled her eyes and moved back out the door to go help Laudner.

  Tin looked at his friend and shook his head. “Dickhead.”

  O’Reilly was smiling, though he was obviously in pain.

  They moved back to where Laudner was and broke the lock off his door. Teeny moved in and held up the syringe for him to see. He pulled up his shirt to expose his belly as he did when Marty gave injections. “Marty has been giving us injections that help. He said we have rabies.”

  Teeny stabbed his belly. “You do. This should help.”

  O’Reilly moved closer. “It does a little, but doesn’t take long until the headache and confusion returns.”

  Teeny looked up at him, then toward Tin. “It worked fine on you. It must have something to do with your enhanced immune system. It could be killing the vaccine before it has time to create antibodies.”

  He nodded his head toward the door. “Uh, we need to get the hell out of here before Reed discovers us.”

  They all moved out into the hallway and started to move back the way they had come. When they came to Leonidas’s habitat, Teeny looked at Tin with pleading eyes.

  He rolled his eyes but moved up and broke the lock on the door.

  She moved in and eased up to the chimp. He stood and held out his hand toward her. She grabbed it, and they both moved back out into the hallway to join the others.

  “Let’s go, boys. What are you waiting for?”

  Tin gave her a sideways smile and started moving again. Leonidas moved faster than expected in his broken state. They must have been still giving him the enhancement drugs.

  As they moved along, Teeny glanced up at one of the cameras that they had redirected. It was pointed down again. “Hey, Tin. Wasn’t that one of the cameras that we pointed at the ceiling?”

  “Uh, yes. Shit!” Tin looked back at the others. “Looks like we fight our way out.”

  He hefted his ax and continued toward the back door where they had come in just twenty minutes before. When they rounded the last corner to the door that led to the dock, a soldier in shadow armor emerged from the shadows. They pulled up short, with Tin lifting the ax into a fighting position. The soldier pulled off the form-fitting helmet to reveal that he was Johnson. He smiled and nodded at Tin and then turned and assumed a fighting position. This was going to be ugly. There was no way O’Reilly or Laudner could help him in the tight space. Johnson was definitely getting the enhancement drugs, so he could probably pound Tin into a bloody heap.

  Tin heard Leonidas behind him. “Ooo, ooo.”

  He risked a glance back to see Leonidas pushing Teeny toward another hallway.

  She shook her head. “No Leo!”

  He pushed her again and turned to grab Tin and push him that way too.

  Johnson saw the scene and laughed. “What the fuck, Lieutenant. You gonna let a monkey fight for you?”

  Tin looked at Johnson before he turned and followed the others into the other hallway.

  “Not a monkey, shit stain. He’s an ape. And he’s a hell of a lot more loyal than you are.”

  Before he rounded the corner, he saw the chimp leap with incredible speed, using handholds along the hallway to zigzag toward the black-armor-clad soldier.

  Tin moved up to take the lead again. Reaching the only other door, he looked back at the others before he eased it open a crack to look in. He could tell that it was the large room that Leonard had been using as a pathology lab. He couldn’t see any of the tables from the angle of the opening, so he opened the door a little more to stick his head in.

  There were two tables in the middle of the room, stood on end. Bloodied men were strapped down to those tables. The lights above them were the only ones shining down—as if whoever had set them up wanted it to be the focal point.

  He stepped into the room. O’Reilly and Laudner moved in and fanned out to either side of him. Teeny stepped in behind them.

  At first both of the men looked dead, but after the door clunked shut, one of the men lifted his head toward them. His body shook as if he was sobbing, but his face was so disfigured that you couldn’t tell whether he was crying or laughing. He cried out a muffled word then. “Theenyy!”

  Teeny screamed, “Marty?”

  She tried to push between Tin and Laudner to get to him, but they held her back. That was when Leonard stepped out from behind the tables, dressed in his bloody lab coat and wearing an evil look on his face. “Do you like my works of art, Dr. Lisandro?”

  Teeny screamed. “Fuck you! You evil prick!”

  Then she sobbed. “Oh my God! Marty, I’m so sorry.”

  Leonard teased her by using a squeaky fake woman’s voice. “Oh, Marty, you flaming faggot, I love you even though you like dick as much as I do.”

  Tears were streaming down her face as she kept trying to get to her friend.

  “Wun Theeny, wun.”

  Leonard punched him hard in the abdomen, and he vomited bloody fluid onto the floor.

  Tin pushed Teeny back and started to move toward the scene with his ax in an offensive posture. Laudner and O’Reilly automatically moved to flank the man standing in front of the two tables.

  “Wait. You think we would make it this easy?”

  The three stopped momentarily as Leonard turned his face up to the windows of the office that looked down on the floor.

  “You are going to help us show off our new Spartan Team.”

  They looked up at the windows to see a light come on behind Reed, Abraham, Michael, and two men they had never seen before.

  Tin looked back down at Leonard, who gave him a slight head nod bow with his hands flourishing, as if he had just performed a magic trick.

  All three men then realized that Leonard wasn’t the real threat and moved to surround Teeny. Facing outward to the rest of the room, each assumed a fight-readiness stance, Tin brandishing his ax and Teeny with her bat behind them.

  Leonard chuckled as two black-armored men seemed to materialize out of the shadowed corners of the room.

  They saw movement in the upper room and looked up at Reed bending forward to flip on the intercom. “So nice to see you again, Dr. Lisandro.”

  He smiled a greasy smile when Teeny gave him an enthusiastic middle finger.

  “Ahh, feisty as ever, I see! I am happy to have you witness the culmination of your life’s work?”

  She looked down at the two men strapped to the tables before screwing up her face in anger and looking back up at him.

  He feigned a surprised look. “Oh no, not them. They’re just a fun project for Dr. Leonard. He does like working on humans much better than animals, though he did enjoy his Leonidas project too.”

  He chuckled when Teeny spat on the floor.

  Abraham turned to him. “Is all of this really necessary? Let’s just get the demonstration started.”

  “Patience, Abraham. So, Dr. Lisandro, I think we will keep you alive and awake to witness Dr. Leonard work on his next projects.”

  He laughed with the comment and looked at each of the soldiers surrounding her as he rubbed his hands together.

  She screamed and reared back with the bat and flung it spinning right at Leonard. Leonard got a surprised look on his f
ace and ducked—unnecessarily, as Marquardt was a blur of movement picking the bat out of the air before it reached him. His visor was up so that they all could see the smug look on his face as he spun the bat from hand to hand and around his back in a blur of motion.

  Tin looked up at the windows to see everyone smiling now. Then he looked back at Teeny. “I’m thinking that could have been used a little more effectively.”

  She got a sheepish look on her face. “Knee-jerk reaction. I have a bit of a temper, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “Well, if he hits me with that, you are going to get that spanking that I promised.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he could see O’Reilly smile at that comment.

  Teeny looked at him then with a disgusted expression. “Oh, grow up, O’Reilly.”

  Then Laudner said under his breath, “Uncomfortable.”

  They all looked at him.

  “What, you really think this is the time to be talking about spankings?”

  He pointed at the two soldiers and Leonard, who were actually stopped and following the conversation. They all turned to look back at Leonard. The three men snapped out of their trances and the new Spartan soldiers assumed fighting stances and moved in opposite directions to flank the team.

  Leonard turned to the door behind him, but Reed spoke up on the intercom. “No. You are the flag that they must capture, Dr. Leonard.”

  He looked up. “I didn’t agree to that.”

  Reed gave him a serious look. “You are agreeing to it now.”

  Leonard looked back and forth between Tin’s team and Reed several times before ducking behind the tables. “You heard that. You are supposed to be protecting me at all costs.”

  Marquardt smiled at him. “That isn’t what I heard.”

  Reed leaned forward again. “Toss Teeny back her bat, soldier.”

  Marquardt looked up at him for a moment and shrugged. He reared back and flung it spinning toward Teeny.

  Tin’s ax shot out and only by pure luck misdirected the bat by a fraction of an inch. Teeny didn’t even have time to duck as the bat whirred past her head close enough to hit the hair and clip her ear on the right side. The bat hit the wall behind them and clanged to the floor. Teeny looked at where the bat landed. When she turned back around, Tin was growling and rushing Marquardt, who had a smug look on his face.