"Hoffner," said the
suited man. "Is that a type of beer?"
"No," I replied. "No,
I don't think so..."
The man wrapped his tongue around
his gums, before giving his head a sharp nod.
"Pilsner."
The solution to his personal
conundrum seemed to satisfy the man, bookending the conversation in
his mind. His brow glistened with a thin film of sweat. His glasses
were thinly rimmed with gold, or gold effect. I looked down at my
notes. My words were drunken spiderlegs on the soft blue lined paper.
"What am I looking at here?"
he eventually asked. His eyes narrowed against the glare of the
halogen strip lights. The glass was clear, but only on our side. The
infant could only see his own reflection.
"Samual Leopold Mc-"
"Official designations only,
if you please," said the man curtly, flicking his eyes towards
me. I paused, momentarily blank. Too much coffee. I'm becoming
blinkered again.
"Subject one," I said,
having to read it off the page. Of course. How could I have
forgotten that?
"One?"
"He's unique enough to
warrant it."
"But surely-"
"We've defined a new
category."
"How old is-"
"The boy will be three this
month."
"Hoffman," said the
suited man, turning towards me fully. His shoulders pressed against
the smooth lines of his off-grey suit, "if you interrupt me once
more I'll send you back to pharmaceuticals."
I bit my lip reflexively. Don't
mention that he got your name wrong...
"Fine..." he continued -
to himself more then me - before turning back towards the observation
window.
The room beyond was a mess of
broken toys and spilled food, bodily fluids and blankets.
"It looks like a nest,"
said the man. I've already forgotten his name... Mancini? He's
Professor Kray's superior, I know that much. "There had
better be a good reason why that room hasn't been cleaned to company
standards. This is a research facility. We have standards to
maintain."
The blankets shifted as a small
hand reached out. It slipped through a miasma of rotting fruit before
grasping a red and blue plastic hammer and dragging it back into the
grimy cotton folds. The suited man's eyes fixed on the movement.
"I was led to believe that
agitation caused the effect," he said, leaning forwards until
his forehead almost touched the glass. A faint halo of condensation
began to form on its surface.
"Yes, but we've both recorded
and exhausted the effect. Did you watch the footage?"
"I watch all footage from all
departments. It's one thing to see it on screen and another to
witness it."
"Well... we have got a test
scheduled for this evening."
"Very good. I'm here now."
"Sir?"
"I'm here now," said the
man, looking back at me. His eyes widened beneath his glasses.
We looked at each other for a few
seconds.
"Perhaps we could bring it
forwards," I said slowly. Kray will have my head.
"I think that's for the
best."
I turned and scurried over to the
control panel. My white coat was stifling. My badge beat against my
breastbone with each nervous step.
"Begin," said the man,
folding his arms across his chest.
My hands flew across the various
dials. My fingers twitched with stress. Easy now, not too much...
A high pitched wail sang out. It
was loud enough on our side to cause an involuntary wince; I knew
that beyond the glass it was almost insufferable.
The mass of blankets unfurled like
a dying flower. The boy rolled out, pink and glistening. His skin
hung in rolls. His mouth was wide and toothless. We could barely hear
his wails over the siren.
"Does it take long, or
does... ah..."
The suited man's voice trailed off
as the boy flipped onto his front. Bones shifted and slipped. Skin
stretched and balloon, flowing as smoothly as water. Flesh tumbled
and rolled.
"As you can see, the skeleton
slips free almost immediately," I said, managing to keep the
nerves out of my words.
The suited man flinched as a
sudden shape pressed itself against the stretched skin that had been
the boy's back.
"The skull," I said by
way of explanation. I was gaining confidence in direct relation to
the man's increasing disgust.
Streams of blood drizzled out of
eye sockets that flapped free of their usual home. The press of
frenzied limbs within the skin dome brought to mind a soft edged
anemone.
"Stop this," said the
man in hushed tones, as if afraid he could be heard over the
cacophony.
Nerves fell back into place. I
should have warned him. The recordings do no justice to the living
sight. I shut off the wail and watched as the vigorous movement
began to slow to an undulation.
“The way it moves...” started
the suited man, before slipping a handkerchief free of his breast
pocket and holding it to his mouth. He turned away to retch. In the
room beyond, the boy's finger bones started to slip back into place
within the glove of his own flesh.
“The boy has complete control
over his body cells,” I said by way of explanation. The information
did nothing to improve the man's mood. He closed his eyes as he
pulled himself up straight. I could hear his breathing, sharp and
fast.
“It's too much,” he said
quietly. His back was both to me and the boy, who had begun to crawl
back into his makeshift bed.
“We have even begun testing on
smaller, ah... off cuts,” I said. “Professor Kray said we needed
more time but the results are already astonishing. It's as if each
cell can divine a purpose individually.”
“Divine,” repeated the man. He
turned back towards me. His skin had bled of all colour. The sweat
was no longer a film but a delta of rivulets.
“They can move. Each cell can
move, when provoked.”
“Burn it,” said the man. He
pulled his glasses from his eyes roughly and wiped his other hand
over his pallid features. Sweat rained onto the ivory tiled floor.
“I don't follow,” I said
carefully, hoping I had misheard.
“Burn it. Cleanse the room.”
“With respect, he is not an
'it'. His name is Samuel.”
“Do you think that matters?”
asked the man, reaching forward and grabbing my shoulder. He began to
knead the bone and skin together. “No one knows he's here. We paid
good money to ensure that was the case.”
“But morally speaking-”
“Moralilty?” screamed the man
incredulously. He swung his arm and gave my cheek a sharp slap. I
stumbled sideways into the glass with a dull thud. The sound caused
the blankets to stir. “This has nothing to do with morality. That
thing is repulsive. It disgusts me.”
The man bore down on me. His hands
grabbed my lapels. The crocodile clip that held my badge snapped free
and the my plastic enshrined face fluttered to the floor like a
sycamore seed.
“We are here to study the next
age of evolution, not to cavort with demons. That thing is a unholy.
Kill it.”
My mouth moved uselessly. My
thoughts froze.
“He's a boy,” I said softly.
“Kill it,” repeated the
man.
My eyes slipped towards the room.
The greatest discovery of this age, lost because of fear...
The man released me, letting me
tumble to the floor.
“You have one hour.”
The room was bare. The scent of
bleach still stung my nostrils.
“Two years of research...”
murmured Kray.
“He looked at me,” I said,
staring at the spot that had been Samuel's bed. “He looked right at
me. I don't know if he recognised me.”
The flame-thrower had been the
only tool guaranteed to rid the room of all bodily cells.
“I don't even recall if I've
ever shown him my face before.”
Kray sniffed, three times in short
order. “Enough. This has left a bad taste in my mouth.”
The lab hummed with a dull machine
heartbeat.
I carefully lined the remaining
documents up with the shredder and began feeding them into the
machine. The waste paper basket was already brimming with a
vermicelli of white entrails.
“The air is too dry in here,”
said Kray, sliding an index finger into his collar and jerking it
away from his throat. He sniffed, before giving a quick cough, as if
trying to dislodge a hair ball. “Do you have much more to do?” he
asked irritably.
“There's just the samples,” I
replied numbly, turning my back on him as I cast my eyes down upon
the Petri dishes that were lined up along the counter.
I blinked. My right eye spasmed a
little. I reached up with a knuckle and rubbed.
“Did you already dispose of
these?” I asked. If he had, it would have been the first time he'd
touched the samples since harvesting. Kray was an infirm man mired in
theory, with hands that jerked in time with his pulse, despite his
best efforts to control them.
The only answer from Kray was
another rasping cough.
The counter itself didn't appear
to have been sterilised. I placed my hand upon the surface, and
lowered myself into a crouch as I carefully began to trace a barely
visible, pink tinged line that zigzagged towards the floor.
“Hoffner,” said Kray, the word
whistling in his throat as he gasped.
I shot a glance towards him. His
hands were straining reflexively at his face, as he delved his
shaking fingers into his own mouth. I pulled myself up quickly, my
hands unintentionally sweeping the dishes onto the tiled floor, where
they clattered and span.
“Move,” I commanded firmly,
pulling his jerking fingers away from his spittle flecked lips,
before tilting his head back. My right eye began to water with effort
as I scanned his open mouth.
I caught sight of it a moment
before it slipped from view, pink and quivering, wriggling downwards
along the back of the old man's throat.
I let go of his face in shock,
stepping back.
The faded pink/red line was there,
snaking it's way up the hang-dog folds of Kray's sagging face,
snaking its way into Kray's left nostril. It was indistinct, and far
too faint to notice unless it was looked for, but its significance
warranted fluorescence.
Kray gasped, a dry, jittering wheeze. His eyes conveyed a thousand
questions, but only one emotion – desperation. His airways have
closed. His airways have been closed.
My right eye flared with a sudden needle of pain. It was so intense
that it dragged my attention from the dying man towards my own
physical plight. I staggered over to a mirrored cabinet, scattering a
trolley of surgical tools. Steel glittered as it rained upon the
tiles.
The surface misted with my breath. I wiped away the condensation in
time to see the line of hairs, crawling like caterpillars from my ear
and into my eye, following a line...
Blood began to bead at the corner of my eye, seeping from the newly
created and deepening wound.
My own words returned to sting my mind. “They
can move. Each cell can move, when provoked.”
Perhaps the mind was never in control...
Kray collapsed. His lips were lined with blue. The memory of seeing
the square of the child's flesh crawling into his lungs forced itself
back into my mind. It was somehow worse than the knowledge that the
boy's hairs were digging through my optic nerves, towards my brain...
