The A.R.EX. Origin

by Angelo Facchin

“After the first test was a complete failure, I thought for a while that I could regain a semblance of control over the company and hopefully be able to steer it back to where I wanted it to go. Patrick was permanently disfigured and he’d lost over half his staff when the subject went berserk. We lost so much money, time, and people, the project couldn’t possibly survive that. I couldn’t have been more wrong.”

  “What about that incident? What happened during the test that had the subject go berserk and attack the scientists?”

  Reeves gaped at her.

  “You’re kidding. Agent Nomura, don’t you remember anything about the Mind Shifter?”

  “Of course,” Mika replied, “it’s the computer that basically created Arex as Meyers’ memories were erased.”

  “Well then, you should understand why the first test was such a disaster. I’m going to try and put you in the perspective of the subject. Imagine for a moment, that you’ve volunteered for the testing of an experimental drug. You’re strapped onto a horizontal table just loose enough for you to be able to see your body. The next thing you know, a bright light is being shown on your face, stopping you from seeing anything significant. You have no bearing as to what’s going on anymore. You feel like you’re being plugged into something, you see tubes that are connected to your arms and your head, but you don’t know where they go, or what’s being delivered inside your body. Suddenly, you start to feel strange. As your mind is registering this feeling, it’s slowly starting to change. Your sense of identity and everyone in your life are slowly, but surely, being replaced by a complete void. You become disoriented, you might even be starting to panic. You try to free yourself, but you’re strapped in too tight for that. You can’t see anything but a bright light. Suddenly, you’ve completely forgotten who you are. What are doing there? There are people there, and they’re talking, but you don’t know whether or not they’re talking to you. You don’t know who they are. You’re so dizzy and hurt so much that you’re not paying attention to what their saying. You start to think that you’re a prisoner, because you can’t move. The voices are telling you to remain calm, but you don’t want to. Who are they to tell you what to do? You want to leave. You see your body strapped in, and it’s a frightening sight. It’s changing, becoming something else. The pain you feel is excruciating. What’s happening to you? Who did this to you? There are people around you. You suspect they’ve done you harm, but you don’t know what they did. If that is you, Agent Nomura, then you’re in trouble. All of your training and experience as an FBI agent? Gone. All of your life experience and your maturity as a person? Gone. You have just been reduced to a little girl-reptile in her thirties, surrounded by very bad men in white who scare you because they hurt you. And they can hurt you again if they want to. You’re not just scared, you’re angry, too. How can these people do this to you? What gave them the right to do this? You hate them. You want to hurt them back. And you know what? They give you the perfect opportunity when they unstrap you from the table. Get back to your perspective. What do you think would happen next?”

  THAT was a powerful image. Mika was stunned to see herself in that situation five years ago. What happened next in her mind was gruesome.

  “I see it. The chaos, the destruction. I don’t think anybody would remain calm if that ever happened to them.”

  “Well, that’s about what happened, and even I had to think about this long and hard, because I wasn’t there and no one was telling me anything. The operation room was locked out and I couldn’t see the disaster area. While Patrick was recovering, I tried my best to reassume the control I had lost as C.E.O., but most of the staff had stopped listening to me and were never going to. Patrick, even in the state he was in, still had all the charisma, and I was just the guy keeping watch, the puppet, the empty suit. He kept reassuring everyone that he had learned from that disaster, and that it wasn’t going to happen again, and they believed him. There was no use in bringing up our dead co-workers. He shrugged them off as the unfortunate consequences of a failed experiment, it was sick. How would he liked to have been one of those who died? What about the families of those victims who witnessed the police blatantly lie to them about the death of their loved ones? And to add insult to injury, bury these people, never knowing the truth about their demise? I couldn’t get through to him. By the time I made that phone call, he had already forged miss Ryder’s signature. And I had already stuck with the company too long to be innocent. Besides, you never would have believed me if I told you I was your anonymous tipster, and even if you did, you would be wondering why I didn’t just tell you who I was right away.”

  “You said Sandlak “learned” from that disaster?”

  “Yes, at least, that’s what he told me. He learned to do two things when it came time to test the A.R.EX. formula on Meyers. One: the subject had to be asleep during the procedure. You may think that that should have been a given from the start, but it wasn’t that obvious because he had to know whether or not an anaesthetic would be a safe option, especially since we’re talking about a human being’s DNA being completely overhauled. That led to him testing on anaesthetised animals, something he didn’t initially want to do because he didn’t want to take the time. The second point was that the effects of the serum were permanent. There is no way to reverse them, or at least, no way that he was able to figure out. Then again, he didn’t want to put any effort into finding one anyway.”

  “So, Arex is stuck the way he is forever?”

  Reeves did a double take.

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing. Well not for him, but I’d hate to be the guy trying to frame him once he realizes that. Nobody in his right mind would want this to happen to himself. Whoever it is would have to hide himself forever or face the music. Also, I have to ask, why wait five years? Arex has already built a nice reputation for himself, so why would anybody wait so long to try and ruin it? To me, it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It has to be one of the scientists who was directly involved in the project. Someone who was devoted to Sandlak’s way of thinking. Does anybody come to mind?”

  “No. Patrick never discussed his staff. Like I said, he had a lot of charisma and everyone in the company was willing to follow him to the end.”

  Mika now knew what kind of person she had to look for. She had a list of all of BIOGENCORP’s employees. The names she had highlighted in the file were the ones who were working on the A.R.EX. project. Her conversation with Reeves allowed to get a clear idea. She had to look for someone who had problems coping for the last years and had eventually gone missing. Next, would come the difficult task of finding their culprit before he struck again.

  Chapter 5

  Saturday, July 6, 10:20 p.m.

  New York City

  The streets were dimly lit. The moon’s glow was hidden behind the clouds and coloured them purple. It was a quiet and restless night, like most in New York City, and Alice Smith kept looking over her shoulder every once in a while to make sure she wasn’t being followed. It was a habit she had picked up ever since she started working at Macdonald’s, because walking home, alone, at night in New York City was never a safe option, not that she had a choice.

  Six months ago, Alice started taking Aikido lessons from Arex. That made her and her mother feel much safer in regards to her work. She had told him about her situation and he was sympathetic, though that meant he pushed her very hard to learn and improve. She was thankful to him for that.

  Alice had started working when she was 15, when her mother started to struggle to make ends meet because of an injury. With aspirations of obtaining a college degree, she decided to take a hiatus from school after obtaining her high school diploma and work full-time until she could afford at least a good portion of her studies. Besides, she wanted to help take care of her mother like she had taken care of her during most of her life. Her father had left them when Alice was only three never to come back. She felt conflicted whenever she thought about him, since
she didn’t really remember him. For some reason, probably a very good one, her mother avoided talking about him. Alice had several dreams (and nightmares) about the kind of man he was.

  Her mind tended to wander when she found herself walking alone. Her imagination would sometimes run wild. But it wasn’t her imagination that told her something reeked. It smelled like an animal had died nearby. Covering her nose and mouth, she decided to walk away from the stench, thinking it to be really bad garbage.

  It was no use. The smell seemed to be filling up the entire neighbourhood. She decided to find the source of the smell to contact the police about it. She uncovered one of her nostrils, and stopped to try and locate the stench from where she was. She realized that the smell was coming from an alleyway one block away. The problem, was that she would have to backtrack in order to get closer to it. She didn’t really want to do that, however, because that would have meant having to be alone for longer than she wanted she wanted to be, and she really wasn’t all that curious as to where the smell was coming from.

  The stench was unbearable when she got to the alleyway. Alice could barely breathe. She was sure, now, that it had to be a very big animal that might have died there. Suddenly, she spotted what looked like a reptilian tail protruding from behind a nearby dumpster. Alice reached into her purse and took out a flashlight she carried in case of emergency.

  Lighting the alleyway helped Alice avoid the garbage that littered the ground, which there was everywhere. There was a trail of garbage leading from a bag that was ripped open near the street. She got closer to the body and got more than a little scared when she saw that the tail was long, black and thin. I really hope this isn’t who I think it is.

  A feeling of dread went over her as she slowly removed the garbage bags and cardboard boxes that covered the body. Dried blood was also present, which only helped to accentuate he smell and her fears. Blood was smeared all over the dumpster in a clear spray pattern. Alice braced herself for the worse.

  Breathing heavily, she removed the box that was covering the face. Her fears were fulfilled. Arex’s body was lying sprawled on top of a pile of garbage, with blood covering his clothes. After everything he had done for her, for him to be murdered senseless like that…

  Wait a minute.

  It took a while, but Alice finally realized that the body in the alley wasn’t Arex. His skin was black overall, but the pattern on his skin was all wrong. Arex was known for his yellow lightning bolt pattern. This reptile had an orange pattern that looked like blotches of paint that were thrown on his skin. Not only that, but this reptile was shorter and scrawnier than Arex.

  The question now was: who was he? What was he doing here? Why was he a reptile? She’d heard about Arex’s creation on the news how he was transformed from Jason Meyers’ father. Who was this person before the transformation and when did it happen? Who did this to him?

  Alice heard a slight rasp, cutting off her thoughts. The reptile was still alive. Looking closely, she saw that the blood that was on his shirt was not his own. It came from something, or worse, someone else. Alice feared this reptile had killed someone, and maybe ate that person. The very thought of that was repulsing. It was best not to stick around and wait for him to wake up. She didn’t want to be next on the menu.

  Nobody was going to believe what she had just seen. How could she explain anything this bizarre to the authorities, especially since she really had no proof other than what she just saw? Besides, that other reptile had to have been a fake, an elaborate costume meant to scare people. Somehow, that theory didn’t seem to stick in her mind. Just walk away, she thought. Pretend like it never happened. Whatever you saw, it wasn’t real.

  Alice decided it was best to shrug off the vision at the alley as some sort of hallucination brought on by fatigue. After all, what were the odds of there being another reptile like Arex running around in the world without anybody knowing?

  Chapter 6

  Monday, July 8, 10:02 a.m.

  New York Society Library, New York City

  Jason had made it a hobby to read anything and everything he could get his hands on, but his favourite genre by far, were the adventure novels. The New York Society Library had an awesome selection.

  His personal tastes included J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings books, several Dungeons and Dragons related novels, basically everything that related to fantasy settings. It was a passion for him to read about these fictional worlds and be immersed in them for what felt like hours on end.

  Every month or so, Jason would come to the library and borrow a couple of books. There, he had met Tom Smith, the curator of the American Museum of National History, who had seen recognized him from the papers. Mr. Smith was researching ancient South American civilizations and the common ties that bound them together.

  Mr. Smith had given Jason advice about reading the more complicated stories. Jason’s biggest problem with his reading was that he would reach a certain point when he would completely lose track of the story because he would forget an important detail or he would read for over an hour, only he wouldn’t be able to keep what he had just read in his mind. He was taught to take notes of the important plot points while he read, so he could always consult them if he needed to.

  Arex had decided to tag along with him this time because he wanted to get into reading, cutting into time he spent watching TV. Jason realized that Arex shared his passion for reading when he borrowed The Fellowship of the Ring from him and returned it three days later.

  Jason wanted to read The Silmarillion, another book by J.R.R. Tolkien. What he had heard about the book was very vague. All he knew was that it was supposed to flush out the setting of The Lord of the Rings a lot better.

  Arex followed Jason around as he gave him a tour of the library.

  “See? There are the murder and mystery, science-fiction is next to the fantasy novels. The biography section is…kind of alone. Not everybody in that section who has a biography is necessarily a good person. Did you know Adolf Hitler has a famous book?”

  “Really? I thought that guy was an evil dictator.”

  “That’s what most people think. But it’s also one of the reasons why people want to read his book.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Let’s just say that if Patrick Sandlak wrote a biography before he died, people would read it. People want to know why people who did bad things did what they did. We read those books to know what motivates people who go against the common good and what goes on in their point of view.”

  “You can call me biased, but I really couldn’t care less what Hitler or Sandlak had to say when they were alive.”

  “What about you? Would you write or have your own biography written?”

  “I don’t think anybody would want to listen… or rather read about my life.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” said a voice behind them.

  They both turned around to see Tom Smith coming up.

  “I would be interested in whatever your biography would contain. We are simply naturally curious.”

  “Arex, this is Tom Smith,” said Jason, “He’s the one who taught me about taking notes.”

  “Nice to meet you,” said Arex.

  The two men shook hands.

  “I couldn’t help but noticing that you were showing your father around the library.”

  Jason smiled.

  “Actually, Mr. Smith, Arex isn’t my father.”

  “I’m what’s left of him.”

  Jason could tell Mr. Smith was amazed at the casual nature of that statement. It was hard not to smile.

  “It was hard at first, but I eventually got used to it.”

  “It must be strange to be here alone with him, knowing he lives while your father is no longer alive.”

  “We’re friends. I can’t blame Arex for the fact that he exists, that would be stupid. Besides, he’s way different from my dad. Arex is kind of a kid like me.”

  It wa
s a common gag between them that Arex’s mental maturity lagged far behind his 33-year old body.

  “So, anyway, how is your research going, Mr. Smith?”

  Mr. Smith was actually somewhat in his own world, daydreaming. It took a while before he woke up and answered:

  “Oh…it’s, uh… going well. Actually, I think I’m just about ready to write my thesis. I should have it ready in about a month from now.”

  “That’s great. I can’t wait to read it.”

  The duo soon left the library. Arex decided to treat Jason to Burger King before dropping Jason off at home. On their way back, however, they were accosted by a homeless man. The man had been begging for change, but as soon as he saw them, ran up to Arex.

  “Give it back!”

  “What?”

  “You…you stole my money. I saw you when I woke up.”

  “I didn’t take your money.”

  “Don’t try and weasel your way out of this. I saw you with my own eyes. I will report you to the police, you can count on it! Do you hear me people?! I will expose this thing for what he truly is, and that’s a thief!”

  By now, a crowd had started to form. Jason could tell that these people were really interested in the scandalous nature of that man’s accusations.

  “You were here less than half an hour ago,” said the homeless man, “you stole ten dollars from me, and that’s all I had.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Jason, “We were in the library half an hour ago. Besides, we never pass by here.”

  “So, we’re defending him, are we? Looks like this freak has a partner in crime. Life gave you everything, but that’s never enough, is it?”

  Arex put his hand in front of the man’s face, stopping him dead. He took out his wallet and gave the man a twenty dollar bill.

  “Take the subway to New Lots, and walk on Chambers to Manhattan and you’ll find the FBI field office there. Let me write this down for you.”

  Arex took a pen and notebook from his jacket and quickly scribbled down the address. He then handed it to the stranger who looked bewildered. Jason smiled as the man stammered to try and find his words.