EXODUS

— by Jeff Karamales

Chapter 5
Into the Fire
 

Doctor Lesko made one more personal check of the research chamber and nodded in satisfaction that the equipment and materials she’d need were ready, though her mouth maintained its grim frown. It was the look that she always wore when she was, as she put it, ‘getting into the groove’. Everything was ready and she had the full rundown of Group 1’s vital statistics, up-to-date multi-dimensional imaging and the prospect of beginning her modified version of the McEwen DNA treatment process.While anxious to begin, the scientist had some concern over two subjects that had prosthetic devices, but the ones that truly interested her were as ready and healthy as she could ask for. And the first one that would help Emily Lesko achieve the greatness she knew she deserved would be Wyatt Renner.

She looked up as two of the mercenaries Andre Bolivar had hired escorted the man into the lab and waited for further orders. They were prepared for trouble and had their preferred weapons of Kriss Vector submachine guns on tactical shoulder rigs, the .45 caliber weapons almost custom made for the sometimes claustrophobic tunnels of the bunker complex. The Jannissaries LTD. muscle also carried pistols and a variety of stunners and nonlethal weaponry they could employ to keep the subjects for Lasko’s experiments properly compliant. Emily was more than confident that they could handle any emergency should they be needed, but the woman refused to let the officer that led the paramilitary group know her feelings.

“Good morning, Wyatt,” Emily told the man as the mercenaries stepped back. “How are you feeling today?”

It always caused a feeling of dread within the young man whenever Lesko acted friendly. In fact, it was the same feeling of cautious trepidation that Wyatt felt whenever he’d encountered a shark or rattlesnake, and he knew that the woman before him was not only unpredictable, but completely dangerous. “I’m doing all right,” he answered as simply as possible, hoping that this was just another of the woman’s odd moments where she liked to chat him up about inconsequential things before reminding him that his life was in her hands and then releasing him to go about his routine.

“I think that your talk with the others of your group have helped,” Emily told him as she slipped a blood pressure cuff over his wrist and tapped the icon on the screen that would automatically inflate it and send the data directly to her electronic slate. “It especially looks as if things are going well with Miss Valance. Would you like me to schedule some private time with her? It might do you some good. Perhaps relieve some of the tension that I know young men your age are prone to?”

“No, thank you,” Wyatt answered quietly, feeling the same hot anger that he always did when the woman tried to steer him into a liaison with Julie. “She’s attractive, but she really isn’t my type.”

Doctor Lesko shrugged indifferently until her slate chimed with Wyatt’s readings. Not only had it taken his blood pressure, but the pulse oximeter measured the oxygen absorption rate of the man’s blood. She smiled that the numbers were all at the prime end of the spectrum for a healthy twenty-seven year old male. “These are very good numbers, Wyatt. I think we’re ready to begin the whole reason that you’re here for. Get on the table, face down and we can start.”

Wyatt turned his head around so quickly his neck vertebrae popped loudly, his eyes widening as he saw the apparatus for the first time. The padded table looked disturbingly like the table that he’d been strapped to for his bogus execution, complete with restraints, though where his head was supposed to go was a padded ring similar to the face rest of a massage table. His horror caused enough of a delay that before he could react the two guards were upon him and, using restraining techniques and brute strength, forced Wyatt onto the table while a pair of medical technicians began to secure the restraints. His protestations were unheeded and ignored and Wyatt, once all of the restraints were secured, including one that forced his head tight against the padded ring, found that he was completely immobilized and no matter how hard he strained, he could only move a fraction of an inch at the price of cutting the straps and bands painfully into his flesh.

“Be quiet now, Wyatt,” Lesko told the man coolly. “If you thrash around you risk paralysis as I will be giving you an injection into your spine. If you twitch, I might nick the spinal cord and that would be very bad for you, wouldn’t it. I’d still get the results I want, but eventually you’d be useless to me afterwards.”

“Why?” the man growled as he saw the ends of Lesko’s shoes just past the edge of the padded ring his face was forced against. “Why are you doing this?” Wyatt all but screamed, the icy fear that he should have felt prior to his execution manifesting and filling him with a dread that caused his blood to run cold.

“Why?” Emily repeated followed by a humorless chuckle. “I suppose the most honest answer I can give is because I can.”

 The servo powered pivot for the bed was activated and Wyatt felt it tilting up. While not fully erect, there was enough of an angle that he could look at the woman as she pulled a roller chair forward with her foot and clasped her hands together while she regarded the man with a smile.

“Do you know that since we, as in humans, began to colonize other worlds the attrition rate has been almost ninety percent?” Lesko shook her head. “Humans just aren’t made for the rigors of extraterrestrial colonization, it seems. I plan on changing that. I will make people better. Do you understand, Wyatt? I can make people better! Oliver McEwen didn’t think that I was seeing the reason he developed his procedure. He was right. I saw it for its true potential! I can change people, enhance them, combine them with DNA from other terrestrial lifeforms to make something that is superior to run of the mill homo sapiens!

“And you, my dear Wyatt, will be the first of a new people! A new species that will show the world that we can claim those worlds that wait for us! You will show everyone that I was right!”

The woman was all but ranting, but there was the light of undeniable conviction in her eyes, an almost religious fervor that animated the woman in a way that was terrifying to Wyatt. He thrashed and fought the restraints as best he could, wishing with all his being that his execution hadn’t been a ruse and that he’d died instead of being under the power of the person that now regarded him with a maniacal intensity.

“Now tell me, Wyatt, do you like cats?” Emily Lesko asked in a change of conversational direction that confused the man.

“Wha…what? Cats?”

“Cats,” Lesko repeated with a nod. “I’ve always liked cats. Independent, good problem solvers. They don’t need the constant care that dogs do. They aren’t co-dependant, can go from domestic to feral and back in a matter of days. They’re survivors, highly adaptable. Do you like them?”

“I…I suppose,” Wyatt answered, off balance from the way the woman went from ranting to inquisitive and more than convinced of the woman’s lack of sanity.

“Good!” Lesko enthused. “I’m glad to hear you say that. You see,” the woman continued as she triggered the servo that lowered the table back into the horizontal position, “I’m going to use what I helped create to join your genetic uniqueness with that of a feline. It’ll hurt a little, and it takes a while for the process to run its course…nine months to be precise. I’ve always found that rather amusing. The same amount of time that it takes a child to develop in the womb. But then, that’s essentially what you’ll be. A child…” Emily said as she touched the back of Wyatt’s head in an almost affectionate manner. “The first of a new species that combines all the best traits of human and animal.My child. My…well, you’ll be like myson.”

The shadows playing on the pale, concrete floor was all that Wyatt could see and his eyes grew wide as the overhead lamps showed some kind of mechanical arm swinging into place over  his head a moment before a mechanical vice latched onto his neck, the device holding him with enough force that he couldn’t help the grunt of pain that erupted from his throat.

When the needle pierced the juncture between the second and third cervical vertebrae, Wyatt screamed with the worst pain he’d ever endured. Terrible pain like a white hot rod burned into his neck before shooting down his back and into his head. The pressure was tremendous and only increased as the floor under his face dotted with the tears that fell from his tightly shut eyes. 

*** 

“Personal Journal, entry twelve,” Lesko began as she lifted the cup of Earl Grey from her desk and leaned back in her chair, her mouth twitching into a partial smile as the aroma of black tea and bergamot tickled her nose. “Group one has received their injections with the modified serum. Now that I know it doesn’t require the loss of an entire animal to begin the transformation process we can proceed at a much faster pace. If only I’ known that back in Geneva when I began the experiments for Bolivar we wouldn’t have suffered the setbacks that we did. Of course, learning that the process takes so long and it only works if the serum is injected into the menial fluids surrounding the brain and spinal cord would have also helped.

“We originally thought that the injections of combined genetic material and goetezine would work with intravenous application, much like Oliver’s treatments for cancer. Then again, Oliver’s procedure was to rectify tumors and other cancerous growths in relatively small areas. Here we’re rewriting the subject’s entire DNA and altering the body bit by bit, and the serum wasn’t staying in the body long enough as the blood of any given person is essentially replaced every six to eight weeks; not long enough to initiate the full saturation that is needed. The menial fluid, that wonderful cerebral-spinal soup, is the key. When I realized that the serum would stay in a subject for years using that injection point it opened the door to what I’m doing now. That was the trick, wasn’t it?

“With the serum being injected into the spine I was able to avoid the issues of partial transformation that we were seeing with intravenous treatments. By doing this I learned that only one injection was necessary, not the almost daily treatments I had been trying. If only I’d know that when I first began. Ah, well, I suppose that’s why there’s always a benefit to having a good supply of test subjects.

“The true breakthrough was Petra Vogl. She was the first to fully undergo the revision process that I envisioned years ago as I sat in that wretched lab in Edinburgh, stroking Oliver’s damned ego. It was exciting, though, discovering the almost unbelievable power that goetezine held. It was obvious to me that we were only tapping a fraction of the true potential. With the revision of the body I saw more than just curing cancer. I saw the means of curing so much more! And I saw the means of fixing all of the problems that plague humans.

“Animals are so much more…pure in their intentions. There’s no guile, no duplicity. They are driven by need…the need to eat, the need to mate, the need to survive. And now I’m taking that and adding the higher human drives. Curiosity, the quest for knowledge, higher thinking. And now these cast offs, the hated and despised, they will be become something so much more than human, more than animal. They will be the ultimate blending of the best predators this world has to offer. The ones that run on four legs and two!

“And it will be my creations…my children that conquer the stars! They will be the saviors of this world and my legacy that will continue long after I am dead and gone!” 

*** 

Wyatt lay on his thin bunk, resting on his side as he faced the concrete wall, fighting the urge to curl into a ball with what had been done to him and the others. He understood the feeling of violation that the victims of some of the more heinous crimes felt. He had been forced into something against his will, and as his fingers gingerly probed the bruises on the left side of his neck before touching the bandage on his neck, the feelings of violation, as if he’d been raped, were replaced with an anger that surpassed the rage when he found what had been done to his mother.

There was no doubt in his mind that Lesko was insane. What frightened him the most was that she said she’d given him, and the other prisoners, something that would change them, make them cat-like. He knew of the McEwen Process, everyone that could read or watch a TV knew what that was, and that it worked. Could the woman really have been one of the people that helped develop it? And could she really turn them into things that were as much animal as they were human?

It was enough to make Wyatt want to throw up if Lesko was telling the truth.

The sound of someone clearing their throat made him reluctantly roll over only to find Julie Valance standing at his open cell door. Her face was blotched, clear evidence that she’d been crying, and with her short hair it was easy to see the bruises she had on her neck as well. When she’d been brought back to the Group 1 chamber, her first reaction had been to stride up to Wyatt and hit him for all she was worth with a right cross to the man’s chin. “You should’ve warned us!” the auburn haired hellion hissed vehemently. She then turned and stormed off to her cell, glaring at Wyatt for almost half an hour before he turned away from her to face the wall.

Now she waited for the young man to acknowledge her. Julie’s mouth quirked slightly and she dropped her eyes as Wyatt sat up and patted the edge of his bunk, inviting her in to his personal space. She sat down but maintained almost eight inches of space between them and put her clasped hands between her knees. Wyatt almost jumped when after several moments of silence the girl slid closer and leaned against his shoulder.

“Do you really think we’ll…you know…become what she’s saying. Cat...cat-people?”

Wyatt turned his head, the muscles protesting from the earlier abuse they’d suffered, to see Julie staring at the floor with wide, haunted eyes. “I don’t know,” he replied softly. “I’ve seen some of the pictures that were on her computer and recording files. Lesko’s nuts, but I think she can do it.”

Suddenly embarrassed by her contact with the man and demonstrating the need for a little comfort, Julie sat up and straightened her back, her chin lifting to its normal, defiant angle as the self-assured smirk that had become second nature to her reasserted itself. She pulled away and stood, Wyatt admiring the way her belted one-piece conformed to her hips and waist, though smart enough after a little over a week of talking to the woman to keep her from seeing his appreciation. “You might want to go talk to Perry. What that woman did to us has got the big lump seriously messed up. I know he’s not the brightest crayon in the box, but he’s not stupid. I think this has really tweaked his noodle and he could use a friend.”

Wyatt nodded. “I can talk to him,” he agreed, feeling both irritated that the large man had formed such a strong attachment to him and Julie, but also feeling protective of him as well. He wasn’t sure why, but it seemed that everyone in the Group was looking to him for leadership, following his lead, even the would-be goodfella, Gino. Wyatt wasn’t sure if he was the best choice for the others to follow. At the moment his primary concern was seeing this through to the end, hopefully escaping the nightmare he and the others found themselves in, and, a more recent development, killing Doctor Emily Lesko.

— NEXT CHAPTER —

Unless otherwise noted, all material © Ted R. Blasingame. All rights reserved.