by Justin Bell
********
"Son of a bitch!"
Gary Irizarry drilled his clenched fist tightly into the workout mats on the floor as he rolled over onto his stomach, for what felt like the ninetieth time in the past few hours. To his credit, Wayne Lewis was not backing off one bit, and didn't give an inch, even though his opponent fought with one less arm. It was Lewis' job to get Irizarry back in fighting shape and that meant pulling no punches. Irizarry rolled back onto this knees and propped himself up, quickly scrambling back to his feet. It was impressive at how fast and nimble he really was, considering his large bulk, and Lewis admired the man for his physique. This wasn't accidental; he was well conditioned, well trained, and experienced at this sort of thing. That's probably why this repeated defeat in a light contact sparring match drove him so crazy. By the looks of him, he probably didn't lose very many hand-to-hand competitions, and it was something he was ill suited.
"Come on, Gary. What did I tell you about your balance? Don't over-commit."
"Yeah, I hear you, Wayne. I hear you."
"You hear? but do you listen?" He gave Irizarry a cocky smirk and the larger man rolled his eyes.
"Cut that Confucius bullshit out, would ya?"
Wayne slid lightly in on the balls of his feet and whipped out his right leg, covered in a knee and shin pad, with a large foam boot over his foot. Irizarry fell back in a defensive posture and blocked the kick with the elbow pad strapped to his left arm, swatting the foot away with careless discord. Lewis followed up that kick with another swift left kick, but Irizarry expected it. He drew to his left a little, cushioning the blow on his right side, where he had no arm to block, and then slid forward, lifting his knee high and tucking his leg as tightly to his chest as he could.
With a grunt, he thrust his foot out. Inside Wayne's range of motion, he threatened to slam his instructor directly in the chest with his massive foot. However, Wayne expected this as well. He swiveled quickly on his heels, and sidestepped into Irizarry, lifting his right leg simultaneously. As he came in close to the large ex-ESU officer, he slammed his right foot down behind his knee, spun, and swept his foot, attempting to catch Irizarry off guard once again. However, this time, he was ready. Bending his knee to absorb the sweep, Gary lurched forward and slammed his left shoulder into Lewis' right collarbone, protected by a thick padded vest. He knocked him off-balance. He stumbled backwards and Gary unleashed a vicious round kick, striking him in the ribs, and then pulled his leg back and unleashed again, this time hitting up underneath the arm. Wayne winced and doubled over slightly, subconsciously compensating for the striking shot, and Irizarry took advantage, bringing his left fist around into a hammer blow against the right temple. Even though his instructor wore a padded helmet, his eyes closed with pain as he was thrown roughly to the ground, the breath coughing from his pursed lips.
"Holy?" was all that he could say for a minute.
Irizarry smirked victoriously, and then extended his left hand. Wayne grasped it, and let the large man pull him to his feet.
Once he was standing again, the instructor smiled broadly. "Hell yeah? that's how you do it, my friend."
Wayne positioned his student in the defensive posture he had been in and looked it over. "That's where the difference was, right there. You accepted the fact that you no longer had your dominant hand, and you rested on your left side, which made you more stable." He placed hands on Irizarry's shoulders and twisted him a little bit in adjustment. "Before, you still tried to find that dominant side, so it was easy to knock you off-balance. I can tell you were working at this. Now we just have to get it to come naturally, right?"
"Let's keep it up, boss," Gary replied happily.
However, his happy grin swiftly faded as someone walked in the door.
"Mr. Irizarry," he said softly.
"Yeah, Doc?" Irizarry asked, looking at him curiously.
"My name is Dr. Worthy. Would you please come with me?"
Irizarry couldn't hide the look of unease from his face. "What's this about?"
"I want to talk to you about your medical condition, son. I think it will be a healthy conversation." He smiled a bit, and Irizarry regarded him cautiously. Nonetheless, he nodded thanks to Wayne Lewis and followed the doctor out the door and into the hallway.
"Doc, you gonna tell me what's up?" he asked softly, wiping a trickle of sweat from his forehead with his single arm.
"Mr. Irizarry, we have quite a lot to talk about, but you'll forgive me if I choose to wait until we're in a more secure location."
Actually, 'Mr. Irizarry' had not intended to forgive this pompous prick. He was sure he didn't want to hear whatever this guy had to say. Nevertheless, before he could unleash those words into the air, he remembered that the quick actions of this staff had likely saved his life. And his arm had healed pretty damn quickly.
He drew in a breath and nodded slowly. "All right, Doc, lead the way."
A few moments later, they both veered into a door along the sidewall of the hallway, which slid magically into a recess, and then slid back closed behind them as they entered.
He had guessed correctly. He'd just been transported from a normal teaching hospital to full-blown top-secret laboratory, and his stomach did a sideways cartwheel. Gary Irizarry wasn't normally a God-fearing man, but he was sure the stuff going on in here was against nearly every law of God and nature. Even he had to admit, what he'd seen from William Strickland that night had been scary as fuck, but also damn impressive. However, what did it have to do with him?
The room was large. No, it was beyond large; it was huge. Like no room he had ever seen before. Wall-mounted computers ran all along the far wall with various LCD screens, charts, graphs, and pictures floating along on the backs of pixels. Along with the computers, there were metal lab tables, each with smaller workstations mounted to them, and several lab workers tapped at keyboards. There were no oversized electrodes, test tubes, beakers, or other strangeness, but he supposed this was the future of laboratory work. Like the hallway, the surfaces of the lab were smooth and clean, almost a mixture of steel, linoleum, and glass. Just looking at it made the slightly sweaty Irizarry feel like he was contaminating the entire environment.
About halfway across the lab, Dr. Worthy turned slightly and addressed the man following him. "Welcome to the real brains of the operation, my friend."
Irizarry's eyes scanned the cavernous room. "Uhh? thanks." He gently stepped out of the way of a young woman who was barreling across the floor, her lab coat swinging behind her as she raced towards a computer terminal that appeared to have the unique shape of DNA strands spiraling throughout it.
"So," Irizarry started, having no desire to mince words, "is this where he was made?"
Worthy's smile faded away and a slight furrow came to his eyebrows. "Excuse me?"
"Strickland. The way he was? is this where that happened?"
The grin returned slowly to the scientist's face, but another look joined it. It was obvious he didn't bring Gary here to talk about that.
"As you probably appreciate, Mr. Irizarry, a lot of things go into the experiments we're doing here. Sometimes things work very well; sometimes, they? well, sometimes they don't. Our main job is to mitigate failures and get some positive results. What happened with Mr. Strickland was the best kind of accident someone in my line of work can be faced with."
"Accident? That didn't look like an accident."
Dr. Worthy's smile faded again. "Mr. Irizarry, as I'm sure you understand, I didn't bring you in here to discuss William Strickland. Well, not directly, anyway."
"Then how about you tell me why you brought me here?" Irizarry didn't mean to sound annoyed, but he couldn't help it. The frustration was starting to bleed through.
"Fair enough," Dr. Worthy continued. He turned around and started walking towards the back wall, and the large man followed him, growing more and more curious the deeper and deeper he walked into this facility.
"I hope you can
understand the sensitive nature of what you're about to see down here," Worthy proclaimed, looking slightly backwards. Irizarry's ears perked up. He had signed plenty of confidentiality documents with Agent Grace and the NSA, but it occurred to him that perhaps Dr. Worthy wasn't as directly affiliated with the United States government as he had once appeared.
"Of course," Gary replied.
A lone door stood in the back left corner of the laboratory, almost indistinguishable from the wall panels around it. There was no knob whatsoever, just a small scanning station and keypad, with a large sign saying 'Unauthorized Access Prohibited.' Well, I guess I'm authorized, Gary thought as the scientist scanned his I.D. and punched in a six-digit code into the keypad. Moments later, the door clicked and slid open, and the two men ventured down into the abyss.
"What you're about to see is extremely sensitive, Mr. Irizarry. Everything we've done so far, everything you witnessed at the construction site that night is because of the work we are doing right here."
"What does this have to do with me?" Irizarry asked as they walked alone down the long, dimly lit hallway. They came to a set of stairs that continued the downward trend, and minutes later, they stood before an unmarked door. Another swipe and punch of codes opened that doorway as well and they were both in another room, far less shiny and smooth as the room above, and considerably more ominous. Irizarry could hear sounds coming from a neighboring room, though he couldn't quite focus on them above the white noise generators that whirred peacefully along the floor and walls surrounding him. This room was much more like a standard laboratory, with doorways leading into glass-covered examination rooms, containment areas, and equipment that made it seem like actual experiments went on down here than the room above. Gary wasn't sure if that was a good thing.
At the end of the room, Dr. Worthy turned, standing between two of the examination rooms, and he looked Gary Irizarry right in the eye. "As I said upstairs, my boy, what you saw from Mr. Strickland was the evolution of years of work, and years of experimentation. The results we established with him will focus our efforts a hundredfold in the years to come, and will allow us to make great leaps in the world of genetics. He doesn't know it yet, but Mr. Strickland is a pioneer in this realm."
Irizarry nodded slowly. "Yeah, Doc. I get it. But look, this shit is freaking me out a little bit. Can you tell me what's going on here?"
Worthy chuckled. "Because of what we've done with Mr. Strickland, we've been able to develop protocols? and those protocols must match certain genetic markers that can accept the? well? the unique traits of our experiments." Worthy turned and walked towards another door in the corner, and the noise at the fringe of Irizarry's hearing grew louder.
"Fundamentally, all creatures on Earth have unique genetic traits, and as one might expect, these genetic traits don't always play well with others. There has to be a specific template there to accept whatever adjustments might be made." Dr. Worthy stopped at the door and peeked in the window. An echoing screech pierced the quiet hum of the noise generators and a large ape slammed up against the glass window, his teeth bared, and his mouth screaming in rage.
Worthy looked back at Irizarry. "You, sir, have that genetic template."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Gary said, taking a few steps back. "No friggin way, Doc. I saw what this shit did to Strickland. I'm not playing that game."
Worthy smiled, with more than a hint of sinister malice at the corners of his mouth. "My dear boy, as I said, Mr. Strickland was the foundation. A pioneer. We've made amazing progress in just the past month alone. So much progress, that I'm willing to make a promise to you, Mr. Irizarry."
Gary looked at the scientist, glaring him directly in the eye. "Yeah?"
Dr. Worthy stepped forward, extending his left hand, and he placed it at the stump of Irizarry's right arm.
"Mr. Irizarry. We can fix you."
The large man's glare softened and his eyes darted instinctively to the stump at his right shoulder. Then they slowly eased back towards the elderly scientist.
"I'm listening."