The Experiment (Book 3): Infectious Thinking

by Micah B. Edwards

  All right, I might be pouting a little bit. But I'm still right.

  I pace around the hospital for a bit longer, feeling sorry for myself. And what would the doc do if I turned out to be right? I bet she'd be sorry then. She'd be there, messing around with her samples, when wham! She accidentally triggers something and suddenly the old Regina's back, the stormraiser, full of fury and freshly demagnetized by yours truly. I bet she wouldn't be making funny comments about rubber boots then!

  I'm right in the middle of my soliloquy of injustice when my whole body cringes. The sensation is like an ice cream headache in every cell at once, and it's very familiar. It means my nanomachines have just reactivated, and I've just gotten new powers.

  But so far, every time I've gained powers, so has someone who wants to kill me. And one of those people just happens to be right here in the hospital, and is currently alone with an unsuspecting Dr. Simmons.

  I tear down the halls in a panic, sprinting for the doc's lab. Although I'd just been envisioning this exact scenario in a "serves her right" sort of tone, there's nothing but fear for the doc's safety in my mind right now.

  I don't even know what my new powers do yet, but I can figure that out on the go. The hatred caused by the nanos always seems to be focused on me, so if I'm there, at least I'll get the doc out of the crosshairs. If nothing else, I heal faster than normal.

  After much too long, I'm in the corridor leading to the doc's lab. Without slowing down, I shoulder the door open with a bang and dash breathlessly into the room.

  Two very surprised faces whip towards me as I startle Doc Simmons and Regina out of whatever peaceful conversation they were engaged in. Everything is fine in here. I am, as usual, an idiot.

  "Dan, what is it?" asks the doc, rising from her seat. "Is everything all right?"

  Unable to talk, I just nod. Sweat drips off of me as my adrenaline level crashes, and my vision briefly goes gray at the edges. I spy a stool and stagger over to it, slumping gratefully onto its hard surface.

  After a moment, I get my breathing slightly under control and look up. "Sorry," I gasp. "Thought...there might be...a problem. Got...new powers...Worried about you."

  The doc looks excited. "What kind of powers?"

  "Don't know," I wheeze. "Not super speed."

  - - -

  A short while later, I've done my whole check-for-powers routine – try to levitate, try to predict the future, try to move objects with my mind, and so on – and I am totally unenlightened as to the nature of the new ability. Dr. Simmons and Regina, however, are highly amused.

  "So you go through this rigmarole every time the nanos activate?" the doc asks, her mouth quirked into a smile.

  "Every morning," I admit. "I've gotten powers in my sleep before, and only noticed later. This is to help shorten the discovery process."

  "How come I haven't noticed you trying to balance on chairs at breakfast?" Regina asks, also smiling.

  "Because I do it in the privacy of my own room, and for exactly this reason! I don't need your mockery."

  "I'm not mocking! It's just – it's pretty funny, is all."

  She's not wrong. I've recorded myself before in case anything showed up on the camera that I didn't notice while I was doing it. The things I try and the faces I make are absolutely ridiculous, I freely admit. I'm still a little sore from being laughed at earlier, though, and not inclined to go along with it right now.

  The doc swabs my arm to draw blood and says, "Let me run some tests on a new sample to see if I can find anything anomalous. I wish I knew how these were activated! Or how you got them in the first place, for that matter. I already asked Regina, but you can't think of any place you two might have met before?"

  I shake my head. "Not unless she came to the museum at some point."

  Regina chimes in, "Not unless he came to the convenience store."

  We both look at the doc, who has a thoughtful expression on her face. "Hm. Both jobs with a large number of people passing through, where someone could easily pass something along anonymously. And both menial jobs, so you wouldn't be risking anyone of particular importance if the experiment went poorly. No offense."

  "None taken, Dr. Mengele," I say dryly, and the doc has the good grace to look embarrassed.

  "We could probably check the tapes for the V & R Mart," Regina offers.

  "Really? You think they've still got them?"

  "Oh, I know that they do. Amir was obsessive about that. He had boxes full of memory cards, all in order."

  "And he'll let you see them?"

  "No," says Regina, and grins. "But I can take them."

  - Chapter Four -

  In my head, here's how I picture the security tape heist going down: late at night, Regina and I don all black and cruise out to the V & R Mart. Everything's dark when we get there, but we still park on a side street to avoid scrutiny. Regina pulls out a compressed-air grappling hook and fires it upwards; with a slight *clink* and a tug on the line, we're ready to start scaling the side of the wall.

  At the top, some quick work with a screwdriver opens up a vent and we crawl into the air ducts. Wriggling quietly along, we soon find ourselves looking down into the back room. Regina gestures to the laser grid on the floor. If anything interrupts those beams, the alarms will go off.

  Unscrewing the vent is harder from the inside, but a handy telescoping tool does the trick. I'm passing the cover back to Regina to get it out of the way when I hear a slight scraping noise. I whip my head back around to see that I've knocked one of the screws off the edge, and it's falling towards the laser grid below in slow motion.

  I stretch for it, but it's clearly too late for me to grab the screw. As it tumbles past my outstretched fingers, though, its progress slows, pauses and then reverses, traveling back up that crucial inch to stick to my hand. I've managed to magnetize my skin just in time.

  With the screws secured, I lower Regina down on a rope, and she swings herself over to the shelf with the tapes. She selects the card we need, slides it into an inconspicuous waist pouch, and motions for me to pull her back up.

  Minutes later, we're back at the car. Everything has been put back just as we found it, and except for the missing memory card, there's nothing to show that we were ever there. The perfect caper!

  Needless to say, that is not how it actually happens. Instead, as we leave the hospital, Regina heads into the city instead of going back to my house.

  "Where are we headed?" I ask, and she looks at me oddly.

  "To get the tapes, like you wanted."

  "Yeah, but – it's barely evening. It's not even dark yet! Won't the store be open?"

  "Yes, obviously. How else would we get in?"

  "I hadn't really thought about it," I lie.

  After parking at the convenience store, Regina empties her purse into the footwell of the car, hangs the now-empty purse from her shoulder and drops in her car keys.

  "What are you doing?" I ask.

  Regina ignores my question and says, "When we go in there, go buy some chips and a soda or something. Doesn't matter what, just so long as it takes a few minutes."

  I shrug and nod. Clearly, I am not going to be the brains behind this heist.

  Inside, the clerk looks up as the bell chimes. Regina asks, "Which way are your bathrooms?"

  The clerk points, and Regina heads off that way, nudging me as she leaves. I take this as my sign to look like a consumer, and begin wandering up and down the snack aisles. A can of Pringles feels like the right choice, so I snag one of those, burn a little more time browsing drinks, and take my selections up to the counter.

  The clerk rings me up with a minimum of conversation, and I'm swiping my credit card and starting to wonder if I should be stalling when Regina emerges from the bathroom. She walks up next to me and puts her hand around my waist.

  "You ready to go, honey?"

  I fumble my wallet back into my pocket. "Sure, um, babe."

  "Bye, thank you!" Regina calls
to the clerk, smiling brightly. As soon as we're out of sight of the store windows, though, she starts laughing.

  "What? How did it go?"

  "It went fine," she says, patting her purse. "Your improv could use some work, though. 'Sure, uh, babe,'" she mimics, dropping the pitch of her voice and assuming a goofy expression.

  "Hey! I'm sorry, I didn't know I had a role to play before you tossed it on me at the last second there!"

  "So what, you needed time to prepare your lines? It's fine, Dan, you did fine. It's just funny. Here, hold out your hands."

  We're seated in the car now, and I obligingly do as she asks. She upends her purse and a torrent of memory cards pours out, overfilling my hands and spilling into my lap.

  "Whoa, what the heck? I thought you were just going to get the one we needed!"

  "Which one is that, then? I don't know what day someone infected me with nanomachines. If I knew that, then we wouldn't need the tapes at all."

  "Okay, fine, but isn't your old boss going to notice that all of his cards are missing?"

  "Yeah, probably." She smiles. "It's probably really going to tick him off."

  "Okay, but we were just in there! He's going to see us on the camera and recognize you."

  "Sure, he would – if I hadn't also taken today's card. The camera's not recording anything now. No way to tell we were ever there."

  The perfect caper, I suppose. Though I still like my version better.

  - - -

  We spend a fruitless evening at the computer, watching recordings on fast-forward. Although the cards are all labeled by date, there's nothing mentioning who was working each night, so we just have to put them in one at a time and check. While Regina skips through the tapes looking for herself, I start my phone playing "Yakety Sax."

  "Are you helping here, or are you just clowning around?" she asks somewhat sharply.

  "I'm doing both," I say. "Not a Benny Hill fan?"

  "Could you maybe put on something less obnoxious?"

  I sift through the internet for a minute, and start playing "Flight of the Bumblebee."

  "Fine," Regina grouses. "Good enough."

  Eventually, Regina finds a night where she was on duty, and we settle in to watch at 4x speed. This means we spend only two hours watching an 8 hour shift, which is still pretty boring. Nothing obvious jumps out at either of us, and at the end of it, Regina looks at me.

  "You want to watch another one?"

  "Not really," I admit. "Maybe we'll do another one tomorrow?"

  She looks relieved. "I was hoping you'd say that. This could take a while. You going to bed?"

  "Nah, not yet. I'm gonna go watch Netflix. Want to join?"

  "What are you watching?"

  "Some terrible horror movie, probably."

  Regina makes a face. "Fine, but I reserve the right to make fun of it."

  "Well, yeah! Why do you think I'm watching it?"

  I dig up some mid-90s creature feature, Regina starts complaining basically from the opening credits, and basically it's a pretty excellent evening. I've never had a roommate before, and I've always thought that it would be obnoxious to have someone in my space, but this is showing me the good side of it.

  The next morning, I wake up itchy. Not all over, though; just my right arm. It's not red or blotchy, though. If anything, it's a bit paler than normal. I scratch it, but the sensation is muted, like I'm scratching through a shirt, and it doesn't relieve the itch. I scratch harder, and to my horror, my fingernails dig in and tear a big rent right down the middle of my forearm.

  I spring out of bed, clutching my wrist and staring at my arm, waiting for the blood to start gushing forth. It doesn't, though, and after a few second I relax my death grip and peer more closely at the injury.

  Beneath my skin appears to be another layer of skin, complete with hair and everything. In fact, now that I look at my forearm, not only is it paler than normal, it also doesn't have the quantity or color of hair I'm used to seeing. My left arm still looks normal. My right arm appears to have a thin sheath of fake skin encasing it.

  I carefully peel away the edge of the scratch. It looks unpleasantly like I'm flaying myself, but beneath is nothing but a pristine and slightly sweaty arm. I scratch it for a minute, assuaging the itch, then return my focus to the flesh gauntlet hanging half off of my arm.

  The skin is maybe a tenth of an inch thick, like a solid callus. It's much more fragile, though, as evidenced by the fact that I just tore through it by accident. Overnight, it seems to have grown to cover my right arm from my elbow up onto my hand, covering my thumb. Not only does the skin tone not match mine, but weirdly, the thumbnail that grew over mine is a different color, too. And not like a different natural shade of nail, either. It's dark green, like it's been painted.

  When I peel off the coating, it comes off in one piece, splitting along the tear I made. It's all the same consistency, including the painted thumbnail; although it looks just like a nail, it has the same rubbery consistency as the rest of the skin. I wad it up and throw it in the trash, which feels weird, but I can't think of what else I would do with it. It's not like I'm going to hang it on the fridge or anything.

  Regina's up before me and making coffee, which is another plus of having a roommate.

  "Morning!" she says, handing me a mug. I reach for it, then freeze, my hand inches from the cup.

  "What's wrong?" asks Regina.

  "Your nails are painted green," I say.

  Regina is somewhat nonplussed by this revelation.

  "Yeah," she says. "They've been green. It's called nail polish. Some reason that concerns you?"

  I hold out my right arm, which of course looks perfectly normal at this point. "It, ah – your hand. I grew one over my hand."

  Faced with this explanation, Regina quite reasonably says, "What?"

  I squinch my face and wave vaguely at her, retreating to my room. I return with the skin I shed earlier and offer the grisly ribbon to Regina. She shies away.

  "What is that? I'm not touching it."

  "No, look! It grew on my arm last night. It's you, I think." I uncrumple the skin and lay it on the table, pointing to the thumb in particular. Regina hesitantly places her arm next to it.

  The skin tone is an exact match, and the thumbnail is the precise shade of green that Regina's wearing. What's more, there's even a slight chip out of the top of her nail that's been mirrored in the skin I grew. There's no question about it: this is a copy of Regina's arm.

  "Why did you grow a fake version of my arm?" asks Regina in disgust, proving that there are some questions about it after all.

  "I don't know! I didn't do it on purpose. I woke up and it was there."

  "So if you'd slept longer, you would have woken up looking entirely like me? How would that even work? You're like six feet tall."

  "Why are you acting like I know the answers to this? I have no idea! This just showed up. I don't know what it is, how it works or what I'm supposed to do with it."

  "Yeah? I mean, when I got my rain affinity, I could feel it. I knew that the weather wanted to touch me. I didn't know everything about it at first, so I had to feel my way around a bit, but I had the general idea." Regina looks wistful, as she usually does when talking about having been able to control the weather.

  "I've been getting a raw deal, then. Mine have always been a surprise when they first show up, and then it's a matter of bumbling around until I figure out how to activate them again."

  "Maybe you need to be more in tune with yourself. You should try some meditation or yoga."

  I snort.

  "I'm serious!" Regina says earnestly. "Come on, I can teach you some basics. What else did you have planned today anyway?"

  "Not yoga."

  "Well, not yoga can wait. We're doing yoga first."

  "First we are doing coffee. Then we'll see about yoga."

  Regina knows she's won, but manages to keep from smirking at me while I drink my coffee as slowly as possi
ble. By the time I reach the end of the cup, I'm reluctantly ready to face my fate.

  "Come on, let's go downstairs," Regina says, taking me by the hand to lead me there. I cast one last glance back at the coffee pot, still half-full on the warmer, as I exit the room.

  At Regina's direction, I move the couch aside and stand in something called mountain pose, which involves standing straight up. So far, yoga is easy.

  Regina starts to ramble on about how I should be feeling the energy of my body flowing, and in fairness, I give it a shot. The first thing that I feel, though, is my stomach rumbling, which makes me think about how I haven't had breakfast, and that's pretty much where my train of thought stops.

  I spend the rest of the yoga session thinking about omelettes and home fries, while Regina tells me to get into increasingly weirdly-named poses and then bends in ways that I'm pretty sure are physically impossible for me. Seriously, she puts her forehead on her ankles at one point. If I'm doing that, I'm not relaxed. I have a spinal fracture. Call Brian, because I am not getting up from that on my own.

  We're sitting in child pose, which contrary to the name does not involve running wildly around, when Regina says, "And that's it! Do you feel more in tune with your body?"

  I don't know about "in tune," but a lot of the stretches really were fairly relaxing, and even if I wasn't doing them exactly right, I'd say that I do feel pretty good. Also hungry, though, so I say, "Sure. Hey, you want to go get some breakfast?"

  Regina laughs. "In a bit, maybe. First get into corpse pose."

  "That does not sound healthy."

  "It means lie on your back!"

  "Then why not just say that?" I grumble, rolling onto my back.

  "Because it doesn't just mean that, but I realized ten minutes ago that you weren't listening to anything I was saying, so I'm not going to go into all of the detail with you."

  She's got me there. But I'm in corpse pose now, and corpses don't apologize, so I say nothing.