Legacy of a Mad Scientist (56 page)

The grizzled veteran had once worked as a surgical
assistant to then Dr. Dunkirk. He was now employed aboard the Angel
City Orphanage - Juvenile Detention Facility, as its coroner. It
wasn't everything he'd ever hoped for in life, but it did provide
an unending feast of delicious victims.

Franklin Gustav Morgenstern had accepted his
appetites early in life.

Several of his co-conspirators aboard the floating
orphanage were intrigued by the proposal of meeting the infamous
Dunkirk. They wished him safe travels and hoped he returned
soon.

Before Morgenstern set off, he stopped by Bobby's
room to let him know that he might have a surprise for him in a
couple of days. The light reflecting off Bobby's necklace of brass
shells made the serial killer smile.

Bobby asked Morgenstern to reaffirm his pledge, once
they found his father, they'd go after the person responsible, the
one who'd betrayed him and informed the police.

Morgenstern nodded. He was fascinated by what he'd
heard of Miss Ashley Fox. She sounded like marvelous sport, and he
was looking forward to the hunt. He didn’t inform Dr. Bergstrom
however.

Dr. Bergstrom didn’t know what to make of Bobby.
After a brief conversation; establishing that the boy had indeed
grown up just a few doors from the Fox family, Cedric kept him at a
distance. Bobby was pleasant enough, and everyone else he met
seemed enamored of him, another effect Bergstrom couldn’t quite
wrap his head around.

He was clearly Dunkirk’s son, but he had some
internal power of his own. He smelled and sounded like the
Micronix, but something was wildly off. The patterns and commands
were skewed.

Cedric was content to refrain from action until he
knew what he was dealing with. The Micronix had adapted after his
last encounter with it, and Ashley had taken the counterfeit device
from that fool Von Kalt. He feared the other shoe had yet to drop.
He intended to be anywhere but beneath it, when it finally did come
down.

Six months after he died, Doctor Andrew Fox was
awakened by a jolt of electricity. He sat up, his head and
shoulders breaking the surface of the tank. The sensation of air on
his skin and a second shot of electricity contracted the muscled of
his midsection, causing him to exhale the breathable fluid from his
lungs and take his first breath of recycled laboratory oxygen.

A third shock and he threw himself from the tank, a
puddle of blue syrup spreading beneath him. He vomited and coughed
up the blue-tinged fluids. Doctor Fox caught his breath and stood.
He wiped the thick syrup from his limbs and reached out to a nearby
stack of towels. In a few minutes he was mostly dry, if stained a
faint blueberry. He ignored the puddle he’d left, the bots would
get it soon enough.

Wrapped in towels, he walked from the tank, passing
another with a similar, recently cleansed but not-fully-faded stain
on the floor.

Fox dressed in the locker room. The clothes he’d
requested were there; simple linen pants, a long sleeved shirt and
a pair of casual loafers. He’d grown quite fond of his prison
outfit. It was rather comfortable.

He had also noticed the chill in the air and as this
was his locker, he ignored the desert apparel and opted for
something warmer. Fox exited the locker room in jeans, boots and a
heavy shirt. He’d recognized the surroundings already, the chill in
the air confirmed his suspicions every bit as much as the
snow-covered landscape outside the frosted windows.

Apparently Stanwood never made it down to Chile to
visit Wyndham. In a moment of weakness, Fox had told Stanwood
everything. He’d given up the testing site on the Isle of Man, the
fabrication site near his wife’s childhood home in Czechoslovakia
and the McMurdo annex, where he found himself at the moment. He
hadn’t lied. He’d just set out some diversions for his old
friend.

Fox knew Joe would have had the footage analyzed; he
had to give him some version of the truth, just to move things
along, or he’d probably still be out there in the desert.

He heard voices from somewhere nearby.

Fox continued down the hallway and entered the common
area. The room went silent as he entered. He saw the faces of his
friends, Ross, Croswell, King, Reid, Wolf and Becket. Dr. Te was
there, with both Anastasias, the original looked pissed, but he’d
come to expect that. Even Sabor and some of Te’s bots were
present.

Fox took a seat on one of the empty couches and
smiled.

“So, how are the kids?” he asked.

###

About the Author

John Carrick grew up in northern Illinois and spent
four years with the Marine Corps. He graduated from The Art
Institute of Los Angeles with a degree in Computer Science:
Animation and continues his education at The Gnomon School of
Visual Effects and The Taoist Institute.

The next volume in The Trials of Ash is finished,
check out TrialsofAsh.com and AlphaChannelBooks.com for…

The Legend of Ashley Fox.

August 29th 2273 - 35 years ago

The first day of eighth grade and half the class
stood huddled around Wendell Meyer, seated on an industrial table
in the science laboratory. His pants were pushed up to his thigh,
his ruined knee exposed for all.

Wendell helped himself to a handful of the blue goo
from the ten-gallon tub next to his leg. He applied it to the
mangled joint.

Near the beginning of the previous school year,
almost a year to the day, he'd been trapped in the pool's hydraulic
cover; the mechanical joint had mutilated his knee.

Wendell had spent the bulk of the school year in bed,
taking all his classes in virtual. He'd had four surgeries, and the
last set of pins had just come out last week. The doctors talked
about replacing the joint all together, but Wendell’s mother had
objected.

Wendell Meyer and Andrew Fox had been close friends
that year. After the accident, Andrew dedicated all his spare time,
and a significant amount of his family fortune, in creating and
developing the goo.

"It itches," Wendell said, as his skin devoured the
blue-tinted mixture. "Ouch!”

The knee swelled under the blue coating.

"ARGHHHH!" Wendell cried.

He lay back on the table, face knotted into a scream
he didn't dare utter at full volume, for fear of bringing a
teacher.

The boys watched as the knee repaired itself. A thick
sweat popped out on Wendell's face. The joint began to make strange
cracking and rending sounds. Wendell gulped air in tortured
gasps.

A few seconds later the knee began to shrink, the
blue tint staining the skin and bubbling from his pores. Within two
minutes, Wendell's knee was back to its natural size, albeit a bit
skinnier than the other, coated in a thick blue wrapping. The goo
had become a kind of splint, a rubber bandage, holding the bones,
tendons and ligaments in place.

Wendell swung his leg. "It works." He gestured for
Jim Croswell to pass over his crutches. Jim reached out and picked
them up but didn't hand them over.

"Fine." Wendell smiled and hopped down from the
table. He stood on his own two feet for the first time since the
accident. Smiling, he lifted and flexed the shattered knee. He
walked a few steps, staring at the blue wrapped knee, and burst
running from the room, screaming wildly.

Jim carried the crutches to the corner of the room
and leaned them up against the wall.

"Who else wants to try?" Andrew asked.

At first the kids were skeptical.

Andrew opened a drawer full of dissection tools.
"Step right up," he said and removed a tray of scalpels from the
drawer.

"It can heal anything?" Stephen asked.

"It's healed everything I've tried so far," Andrew
answered.

"Ha! What have you tried?" Joe Stanwood asked.

Andrew smiled. He held up his left hand and rolled up
the sleeve of his school button-down. His arm was covered with the
telltale blue rubber bandages.

Most of the kids looked nervous, staying well away
from the surgical blades.

"I'll go first then," Andrew said, reaching out for a
knife. He brought it down across the back of his left arm, opening
a long gash between his wrist and elbow, spilling blood onto the
counter top.

Andrew clenched his teeth and applied a smooth
coating of the blue goo. He held out his arm for the others to
watch. Almost as if it were reversing the damage done by the blade,
the goo sealed the gash. As it worked itself out of the cut, it
formed a new blue coating and a few seconds later, Andrew's arm was
good as new.

Wendell returned to the lab at full speed, catching
himself in the doorframe. "Thanks, Andrew! You're the best! They
said I was never gonna walk again!" Wendell ran off again at full
speed, his footsteps and jubilant cries trailing down the
hallway.

Andrew smiled, thrilled with Wendell's recovery.

"How's it work," Croswell asked.

"Supercharged poly-synthetic nano-stemcells. Once
exposed to living tissue, it works backwards to regenerate any
damaged or missing cells. Seems to work pretty good, so far,"
Andrew said.

Andrew Fox and Jim Croswell had been friends since
early childhood. Their fathers often worked together on various
government projects, Andrew and Jimmy saw each other a lot growing
up. They had always been great friends.

Both Croswell and Fox were considered top among their
peers, and neither of them took any crap from Stanwood, who bullied
everyone else. Croswell was far more athletic than Fox, so the
mantle of leadership fell to him.

"What else did you try?" Stanwood asked, nodding to
Fox’s arm.

Joe Stanwood, in his own weird way, had never fit in
with anyone. Most of the boys were scared shitless of him.

Andy and Jim seemed able to tolerate him. It seemed
to the other kids that perhaps Fox and Croswell were unaware of how
creepy Joe actually was. It was in his mannerisms, the slow way he
talked and used his hands. He was, in a word, malevolent.

Andrew removed his shirt. His body was covered with
blue rubber strips and sections. There was almost no open skin for
more than a few inches.

"Holy shit," Croswell said.

"I feel one hundred percent fine. It activates the
RNA to work overtime, fixing whatever's out of whack.”

Stanwood looked into Andrew's eyes, taunting him.
"You don't seem fine.”

Andrew began to unbuckle his pants, but several
objections and declarations of trust stopped him.

"And it gets absorbed through the skin like that?"
Stanwood asked.

"You saw it.”

"So, is it better for cuts or broken fingers?"
Stanwood inquired.

"I think, either or," Andrew replied.

"Could it grow back a whole arm, or a leg?" Joe
asked.

"I don't know, but I bet it can reattach them.”

"No way," Stanwood answered. "Brain injuries? How do
you get it in there?”

"Shit, maybe it can fix you, Joe," Croswell said.

Several of the other kids laughed.

"Fox is gonna be a millionaire. I bet it'll fix
anything," Stephen volunteered.

"It fixed Wendell's leg." Tom Becket said. "He's
happy as shit.”

Andrew realized he didn't have to answer Stanwood's
objections. The other boys were making his arguments for him. They
had witnessed the power of the goo.

Joe Stanwood raised his hands, smiling.

The guys grew quiet.

"Can you re-attach someone’s head?" Stanwood
asked.

"I don't know, but I'd love to try." Fox
answered.

The boys heard the challenge and responded with an
"Oooo.”

"Don’t cut anyone’s head off, seriously," Stanwood
replied.

"I think maybe you could re-grow a finger or
something, but it would be expensive," Andrew said. "I don’t think
I could do it with this. We’d need a thicker composition. It would
take longer.”

"How much did this cost to make all this?" Croswell
asked.

"Close to seventeen million," Andrew said in a low
voice.

"Holy shit!" Becket said. "What?”

"I said close to," Andrew countered. "I think you get
Holy Shit at twenty.”

"How close?" Joe asked.

"If you figure in all the test batches, a little
over, maybe.”

"But current medical science can already reattach
limbs for a lot less," Stanwood pointed out. "And we have lots of
ways to accelerate the healing process, so this is kind of
redundant. It's too expensive for the common people. All you did
was waste a bunch of money."

An hour later, after more than seventy healed
scrapes, cuts, abrasions, lacerations, fractures, burns and
contusions, they had exhausted their creativity and courage. They
had a reached a place where the pain endured outweighed the novelty
of having the tissue magically repaired.

Andrew took notes while the boys played. He took a
sample of blood from each volunteer, usually from whatever
instrument of violence used to create the tissue damage, never
allowing any blade to be used twice. He bagged the tools of
destruction and logged each into his notebook, along with the
damage done and how long it took the goo to repair the wound.

With one boy, Jesse Parker, total repair took an
agonizing forty seven seconds, but Jesse's wound had been rather
severe. They had attacked his leg with an electric hedge clipper.
Then they applied the goo and stopped the femoral artery from
dumping Jesse's entire blood supply on the laboratory floor. The
boys laughed and joked as they replaced chunks of meat from his
thigh.

A minute later, Jesse's leg was good as new, minus
the damage to his school pants.