Superhero (11 page)

“Where’s everyone else?” he asked.

“This area has been quarantined due to a berridium leak.”

“Caused by you, I take it?”

She nodded. “We’re going to do some strength exercises. Please step over here.”

A lateral pull-down machine, used to work out the muscles in the back and shoulders, was the nearest machine. Heidi motioned for him to sit down.

“Please take the bar in your hands and begin the exercise.”

Jack looked up to the bar while Heidi interacted with an electronic device in her hand that resembled an iPad but was much thinner and more responsive to the quick movement of her fingers.

He reached up and grabbed the bar, bringing it down slowly to his shoulders as if he were working out.

“How does that feel?” she asked.

“Fine.”

“After each repetition please pause momentarily while I increase the weight. When it begins to get uncomfortable, let me know.”

He began doing the repetitions as she added weight. No numbers marked the weight stack so he didn’t know how much he was lifting, but it felt light.

“Okay,” she said after about twenty reps, “you can stop.”

“How much weight was that?”

She lowered the device in her hands. “About five hundred pounds.”

Jack sat stunned as she walked over to a squat rack. “Ready?”

They were in the gym at least an hour as Jack exercised and Heidi presumably took notes. His bench press a year ago had been somewhere around 215. He now benched 910 pounds before they ran out of weights to put on the bar. His squat and deadlift were the same, as they couldn’t go any higher. But Jack didn’t even feel strain. He could’ve lifted double that.

They did quick, short wind sprints. Jack would find himself on one side of the room and then push himself as hard as he could and suddenly find himself on the other. They did vertical jumps after that and had to stop because he was getting too close to hitting the ceiling, which was at least fifteen feet over their heads.

After the jumps, she handed him a bottle of water. He held her gaze and said, “What the hell did you do to me?”

“I told you, Jack. I saved your life.”

They left the gym and headed back down to the laboratory.

“I don’t think you need more than one treatment,” she said. “Your progress is extraordinary. You’re responding to it much quicker than he did.”

In the laboratory Jack sat in a chair as Heidi prepared another injection. Jack noticed that his muscles felt pumped full of blood and it almost appeared as if they’d gotten larger from just one workout.

“How did you know this stuff would wake me out of a coma?”

“We did trials on mice,” she said from somewhere behind him. “Even ones with serious trauma to the brain or spinal cord recovered. It was a guess that the same would happen in humans, but a good guess.”

“You could’ve killed me.”

She walked over and he felt the pinprick of the syringe-like machine she held in her hands. He was about to speak when fire coursed through him.

The veins in his skin popped up and every muscle in his body flexed. The tension made his jaw clench and pain radiated through his head. Unable to move his hands, his eyes glanced to Heidi with a pleading look.

“You’ll be okay,” she said. “Just try to relax.”

Muscles began to shift and loosen. A calming sensation came through his body, as if warm water slowly poured on him from above. The sensation began at the top of his head and travelled down his body to the tips of his toes. Only when his muscles relaxed and he fell to the floor, sucking in air, did he realize that his heart had stopped as well.

Coughing violently, he curled on the floor as Heidi stood above him and watched. The attack lasting no more than a few minutes, he lay on his back and stared at the ceiling.

“How do you feel?”

Surprisingly, he felt good. Energy pounded through his veins now and he hopped to his feet. He noticed that his muscles had grown again. He felt strength in his arm’s movements.

“How long does this stuff last?”

“It doesn’t ‘last,’ Jack. This is you now. It causes chromosomal changes in your DNA. You can’t reverse that.”

“So I’m going to look like a roided up bodybuilder my whole life?”

She shrugged. “It was either this or let you die in that hospital bed.”

A loud hissing came from behind them. Jack spun and looked up as the elevator rose.

“You expecting someone?”

Heidi walked next to him, watching the elevator lift. “No.”

The elevator began to come back down. Jack could see its lights through metal grating as it slowly descended and came to a stop.

Heidi whispered to him, “Don’t say anything. Let me handle this.”

The doors opened and several men in military uniforms stepped off. One man, older with gray hair and a beard, walked to Heidi with a smile. He glanced at Jack and whistled as if he was impressed.

“Not as big as Aggie.”

“Not as unstable either,” Heidi said. “What is it you want, Colonel Finley?”

“What is it I want? You were asked to leave, Dr. Hendricks. And yet here you are. And with an unauthorized subject no less.”

“We were just leaving.”

The colonel laughed. “This man belongs to the United States Army. You really think I’m going to let you leave? After what happened with Aggie?”

“I had nothing to do with that. If you had provided me the security I wanted—”

“You didn’t tell us how close you were to success or else I would have.” The colonel looked to Jack. “What’s your name, son?”

“Jack.”

“Well, Jack, I don’t know what the good doctor here has told you but you are certainly not free to leave. In fact, you are under arrest for unlawful trespass on military grounds.” He looked back to his men, who moved forward toward him.

“Don’t let them take you, Jack,” Heidi said frantically. “You’ll never leave if they do.”

Jack held up his hands. “Guys, I just want to go home. I have a family that doesn’t know where I am.”

“Sorry, Jack,” the colonel said. “But this is how it’s got to be.”

One of the soldiers grabbed Jack by the arm. Jack pulled away, trying to get his hand loose. Instead, the soldier was thrown forward, landing hard on the desk behind them.

Rifles went up, aimed at him. Jack felt adrenaline course through him and something rang in his head.

“SHOW THEM!”

Jack sprinted toward the soldiers in a movement that was too fast for anyone in the room to see. He disarmed the first one, spun him, and threw his body into a second. As they hit the floor, one of the soldiers fired. Jack saw the bullets coming at him. It was like they were travelling through water, waiting for his response. He leapt into the air and flew toward the soldier, ramming both legs into him. The soldier became unconscious as his sternum fractured and he was thrown across the room.

The colonel looked at his men, fury in his eyes. “There’s an entire platoon outside, boy. You will never make it out of here alive. Either one of you.”

Heidi swung with her left hand and a syringe entered the colonel’s neck. He went to grab her but his arms fell limply by his side and he collapsed onto the floor.

“Just a sedative,” Heidi said. “There’ll be more. We need to go, now.”

CHAPTER 23

Avoiding the elevator, Jack followed Heidi as she ran across the laboratory and to a locked steel door. She opened it by swiping a keycard and let him go through first. Bare cement walls and the smell of dust filled their nostrils as they ascended a staircase.

“They don’t have access to this stairwell,” she said. “I changed the codes a few weeks ago. It’ll take them hours to figure it out.”

“What I did back there. I felt like…”

“You probably didn’t realize, but I couldn’t see you. You thought the men were moving in slow motion, right? You were actually just moving much faster. Think of it as relativity on a small scale. The closer you approach the speed of light, the slower time moves.”

“I felt invincible.”

She stopped and turned to face him. “In a way, Jack, you are.” She reached up and wiped blood off Jack’s shoulder. He hadn’t noticed it before. “But in another way, you’re very human.”

Quickening their pace, Jack felt like he could jump ten stairs at a time but he held back so he could follow her. After going up five stories, she swiped her keycard on another steel door and pushed it open, revealing a parking lot.

“They don’t know we have cars in here,” she said, walking down the rows and staring at each license plate. “There’s a much larger parking lot for employees in an underground lot adjacent to the building. Only a few people know about this one.” She stopped at a Jeep. “This is ours. You drive.” She tossed Jack the keys. Jack climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. The Jeep came on instantly.

He pulled out of the stall, heading to the only exit in the lot. A ramp leading above ground. Five stories up and they were still underground, Jack thought. How many floors does this building have?

The ramp twisted and curved several times but Jack didn’t slow his pace. He increased the speed of the Jeep to over 80 mph. The curves didn’t bother him. He felt like he could almost sense them coming and adjust before they were in his field of vision. 

The ramp narrowed and the darkness began to fade. Coming out into the bright sunlight, Jack could see the facility in the rearview mirror.

“Why didn’t they have someone guarding this exit?” he asked.

“I told you, they don’t know about it. We’re more than half a mile from the facility.”

“They can see it from the air.”

She shrugged. “They’re not in the air.”

Jack swerved the Jeep, narrowly avoiding a series of scattered rocks before heading in the direction of a dirt road. Though he was in a covered Jeep with the air conditioning turned up full blast, he felt the heat acutely, penetrating his skin and his eyes, and he realized he had never felt heat like this. But it wasn’t painful or even uncomfortable. It was simply there.

“Are you hot?” he said.

“No, I’m fine. Why?”

“No reason.”

After long stretches of empty road, broken only by the occasional semi-truck, they reached the small town of Lublock. No more than a gas station and a motel, the town had a sign that read, WELCOME TO BEAUTIFUL LUBLOCK.

The gas station had no customers as they pulled to the fuel pumps. Heidi stepped out and swiped her credit card on the pump as Jack put the nozzle into the Jeep. The smell of gasoline overpowered him. He felt weak and stared at the little waves coming off the nozzle as the fuel pumped into the Jeep. The waves were distorting the reality around them, like some sort of relativity explosion, gravity pulling on everything and twisting it to its whim.

“You okay?” Heidi said.

“Fine.”

“You look like I lost you there for a second. What were you looking at?”

“The gas. And the pump and the cement and the fumes…everything looks different.”

“Different how?”

“More detailed. The colors are brighter and it’s like I’m looking at everything with a telescope. I can see everything up close.”

“Your ocular nerves are enhanced. So is your occipital lobe. What does it feel like? To see the world like that?”

“Like everything’s interesting and worthy of attention.”

She appeared sad and paused a long moment. “I wish I could be there with you.”

Jack went inside to use the bathroom. On his way out, he grabbed a bottle of water and a sandwich and realized he didn’t have any money. He put them back and went outside. Heidi was leaning against the car, staring off into space.

“Are you hungry?” she said, sensing what he was about to ask.

“Starving.”

“There’s a little truck stop ahead. The food’s not bad.”

The truck stop was another gas station with a diner attached. White with blue trim, the building looked like something out of the 1950s. Waitresses came out and took orders from people that still sat in their cars. A large menu hung over entrance. It consisted of nothing more than burgers, fries, and drinks.

Ordering from their car, Jack got a double cheeseburger with chili fries while Heidi settled for a Diet Coke and a small fry. When the waitress had left, Jack looked out the window to an elderly couple parked nearby. They were eating quietly without speaking to each other. Each knew that they had approached the end of their lives and there wasn’t much left to say anymore.

“I never asked what you do,” Heidi said. “Or started any other small talk to get to know you. Where’d you go to school?”

Jack looked at her in amazement. “I took on a squad of Army Rangers without breaking a sweat today and you want to talk about where I went to high school?”

“This is a weird situation for both of us. I’m just trying to lighten it.”

They were silent a long while, each looking out their own windows.

“West Haven,” Jack said.

“Excuse me?”

“I went to West Haven High.”

“Where was that?”

“San Diego. It was a little school, meant for suburban kids that were lucky enough to be born into families that kept them out of the gangs.”

She paused. “You’re right. This is ridiculous.”

He smiled at her. “Tell me about what’s happening to me.”

“Your chromosomes are changing. You are in a very literal sense becoming a new type of human. Agamemnon thinks it’s a new species. You’re becoming something else, Jack, and I’m not sure I can tell you exactly what that is.”

CHAPTER 24

Thirteen hours of driving took its toll on Heidi but Jack felt as fresh as he had when they started. Something about being back in California excited him. He was looking forward to seeing Nicole, and as he thought of her the thought of Autumn burst into his mind, and then the image of his legs crushed into the cold floor of a bank.

Jack glanced over and saw Heidi asleep. The lights of Los Angeles glimmered before them like sparkling gems as he came off an exit near the condo he had recently bought. From there, it was only another twenty minutes until he had parked next to his Viper.