Guinea Pig (24 page)

“We didn't know if you would wake up.”

She was a good woman he realised. Strong in her faith and in her compassion. But she talked too much. He didn't want to talk just then – not that he could with his throat full of tubes. He didn't want to listen either. He just wanted to drift away. To sleep and hopefully let his body heal. Though he knew that even healing would not be without consequences. Because when he healed old cells were thrown away and new cells replaced them. But his new cells would not be human. They would be comprised of whatever he was becoming. That was the way this thing worked. And the more damage he had to heal the faster that transformation would be.

Still as she worked, wiping away the sweat and dirt and blood covering him, cooling him down and chatting away, he found he didn't care. Not any more. He just wanted the pain and the fear to go away. He wanted this thing to end. The sooner it did the sooner he would be free. It didn't matter if he was still William Simons when that happened. It didn't matter if he lived or died.

It only mattered that it ended.

Chapter Twenty Seven.

It was late and everyone was exhausted. Then again maybe it was early. Elijah had lost track of time. All he really knew was that it was dark outside.

Doctor Millen was asleep, slumped over one of the work stations. He'd got as far as he could studying the latest scans until somewhere along the way he’d collapsed. Elijah hadn't wanted to wake him. The doctor needed his sleep. Especially after the beating he'd taken. Even several days later the bruising was just starting to come out. The new man, Doctor Foulkes seemed to be doing a good job of watching the patient's vitals and administering food and drugs as he needed to. He seemed to be a good man and a surprisingly unflappable one. A Catholic priest as well as a trauma surgeon, it seemed he had seen it all before.  So when he'd walked in and seen his patient for the first time it hadn't appeared to phase him. Not even a little. Anyone else would be gasping in shock at seeing William for the first time. He'd just taken it all in his stride, read the notes, and started work without so much as a comment.

Nurse Etta was asleep as well, though at least she'd found a cot to collapse into. It was the civilised thing to do. On the other hand she did snore a little, a surprising thing in such a small, proper woman, and sometimes she kept the others awake. Meanwhile Nurse Jones was watching the patient, doing all the routine things nurses were supposed to do with their patients, even if this patient was anything but routine.

The technician James was still wide awake as well. He seemed to be able to sustain himself on strong black coffee which he drank by the bucket load. He was busy typing away at the computer in the next room, doing whatever it was that he did. Elijah was unclear on what exactly that was except that the others seemed to think it was important. He was aware though that the man had an unusual past. He had come to the faith from a place of guilt. A former hacker he had unwittingly caused the deaths of several people through his skills. It seemed that when he had considered that the people had a right to know he had failed to realise that not everyone would be so happy to have their private medical details released. Three people had committed suicide as a result of his hack of the national health database. The fact that he was only fifteen at the time and had never intended to cause any harm, had kept him from serving a lengthy prison sentence. But the sentence he served in his soul was another matter.

Meanwhile Elijah was sitting and thinking, and occasionally muttering a silent prayer as he wondered what to do.

Everything was going wrong. And it hadn't been right to begin with.

Adams had made a clean getaway, something Elijah was certain could only have happened because he had been paid by the government. They had been betrayed. The bishop he suspected had the same thought.

Because of that they'd taken the unusual step of clearing their medical suite of anyone they couldn't trust. The soldiers were happy with that. So were their bosses, probably because the samples had been taken and so they had nothing more they needed from Mr. Simons. Now for them at least it was only about containment. Keeping the original subject in captivity, and hoping he would recover just in case they needed some more of his DNA, while making sure no one else ever found out. They weren't worried about the ongoing crisis because they'd never believed that William had had anything to do with it. The whole thing for them was about research.

Nearly three days had passed since the assault and their bedside vigil continued. William Simons was improving. He shouldn't be, but he was. Nurse Etta had said he'd woken several times and looked around before falling back to sleep. An MRI had revealed that the holes in his bones were healing far more quickly than they should, and his vital signs were improving. His heart beats were steady and strong. His temperature was down. And his weight loss seemed to have stopped. Though a hundred and ten pounds for a six feet two tall man was shockingly light. In fact a BMI of less than fifteen was considered emaciated. And that was before you considered that some of that weight, probably ten to twenty pounds, was wings.

Of course they were still only stumps, but they were growing. Growing faster than before. Now they were a good six inches long and the underlying bony structure could clearly be seen in the scans. It could be felt with your fingers. Curious, Elijah had done just that when they'd prepared him for the scan, lifting him on to the platform. And he'd felt the huge bone running from the top of his shoulder blade. It was like a girder slowly growing longer.

They moved too. The muscles and nerves were starting to work, and so when he'd touched it he'd felt the stump flinch a little. Just like an arm or a leg. That had been profoundly shocking. Until then they had seemed like growths. Just odd almost plastic add ons that could have come from a special effects workshop. But when they'd moved under his hand that had changed somehow. They had become real.

All of that of course meant that the time left before he reached his final form – whatever form that might be – was shrinking fast. Angel, nephilim or something else – they would know what he was becoming in perhaps only a couple more weeks. And as his physical transformation continued, so did his mental one. Elijah was starting to wonder if he was actually going to wake up when this finally ended. Or if he did whether he'd still be William Simons. The EEG was showing highly irregular brain activity. Patterns never before seen. In fact James had said that the patterns didn't correspond to anything they knew. He might already have slipped beyond normal consciousness. And then what did they do? After all it was beginning to look as though his body would continue even if his mind was gone. His flesh simply refused to die.

“We've got news.”

The double doors were flung open and the bishop walked in unexpectedly, flanked by his aides and simply blurted out his announcement to all of them as if they should have been there simply waiting there to hear it. But they weren't. They were too tired. Neither Nurse Etta nor Doctor Millen even woke up. The others barely looked around.

“Bishop Benenson?” Elijah responded since no one else seemed to be interested in what the bishop might have to say. And he was only trying to be polite.

“There's been another sink hole. A private military hospital in northern California that no one seems to know much about. But what they do know is that there was no warning at all. According to the witnesses one moment the hospital was there, the next there was a loud bang and it fell into a gigantic crater.”

Elijah buried his head in his hands. More death and pain – when would it end? But it still didn't make sense to him. “Northern California? That can't be anything to do with William. It's too far away.”

“No?” The bishop looked at him strangely, almost pityingly, as if he was wondering why he was so slow. “My guess would be that that's where the stolen samples were taken to. And that someone tried to inject the angelic DNA into a subject.”

He was right of course. Elijah instantly realised that. It was also more proof that the government had broken its vow. That they were in fact responsible for sending “Doctor Adams” in to steal the samples. And that far from listening to the church's warnings they had immediately done exactly what they had been told not to do. Given that Elijah also knew what their next step would be.

“The government's going to send the soldiers in.”

Of course they would. They'd resisted the urge so far because they'd never really believed that the series of catastrophes that had befallen the land had had anything to do with Mr. Simons. They'd thought he was just a simple but amazing freak. A scientific wonder that could be invaluable. But now they suddenly had proof of what the church had been saying all along. Now they would have to act.

“I know.” The bishop bowed his head a little, perhaps in sorrow. “But I don't know what we can do about it. Or what we should.”

It was the latter that upset him Elijah guessed. Not knowing where the church's duty lay in the matter. Should they defend William Simons? He was after all a man. An innocent. And it seemed that no matter how he suffered he was determined to survive. Elijah could think of no other way to explain the fact that he wasn't dead long since. That will to live had to be respected. As did the right to life of all people.

But at the same time he was an abomination, a creature that could not be allowed to walk the Earth. One whose kind had last walked the world thousands of years ago before they had been swept from it by the great flood. Perhaps they were the reason for the flood? It seemed that the world was trying to cleanse itself of him just as it had the others. The only difference now was that instead of water it was using fire, ice, lightning and occasionally just swallowing people up. To add to the misery, more people would die the longer he lived as the world continued to try to cleanse itself of him.

And then of course there was the practical problem. There were soldiers with guns all around them. Priests didn't usually do too well against soldiers.

But none of that mattered when he finally knew the answer to the bishop's questions. “We are people of faith. Christians. We follow the teachings of our Lord. We give shelter to the homeless, succour to those in need. And we do not count the cost. William Simons is in need. In the end it is that simple.”

“And if he is a nephilim? If he should bring about the end of the world by his very existence?”

“He is still our brother and he is still in need. We will do as we have been commanded and we will leave the rest to God. That is our faith.” And why he wondered, had it taken him so long to realise that simple fact.

“I agree.”

But even as he said it Bishop Benenson hung his head as if in shame. Shame because he hadn't understood this before? Or shame because he feared that his actions would endanger many others? Elijah didn't know and he didn't want to ask.

“So how do we stop the soldiers from coming in?”

And that was the major problem. Sooner or later the soldiers would come back inside, and they would be armed. They would call William an enemy of some sort and they would kill him. Now that this other hospital had collapsed into a sink hole it was only a matter of time. And there was no way they could stop them. Worse, even if they somehow barricaded the surgical suite off from the outside, the soldiers had already laid charges. They could bring the remains of the hospital down on top of them all. And when the next catastrophe hit they probably would.

“I think we move him, fast. To somewhere where there aren't a lot of people.” It was the only answer. But how they did it when the only way out was heavily guarded was another question entirely.

“Well since we can't go out the front we need to start thinking about the back.” But how they could do that when it was nothing but a huge pile of rubble he didn't know.

“Or we could try the basement.” Nurse Jones suddenly spoke up, surprising them both. But maybe it was a welcome surprise. Maybe she had an idea. They both turned to her in hope.

“The surgical elevator, it runs down to the underground ambulance bay as well as up to the ruined stories, and it has an emergency power supply. The ambulance bay connects to the underground car park. And the exit to the car park is on the far side of the building. There are no soldiers back there.”

Of course there were no soldiers back there Elijah realised; the back half of the hospital had collapsed. Which meant they would still be trapped down there. But still it was an interesting idea, and it would have been perfect if not for that last little problem. But maybe they could do something about that, depending on how deep the rubble there was.

“And how -?”

“I did some of my training as a student nurse here.”

“Okay, give me a torch and tell me where to go.” Elijah made the decision immediately, knowing that it was the only chance they had and that it would have to be him that did the exploring. Everyone else had work to do. And maybe it would be a chance to prove that even a priest, someone regarded by many in this twenty first century as obsolete and nearly useless, could be useful.