FREAKS — Installment #6

Inside, they saw the most incomprehensible laboratory of wonders. Felix entered first, looking around in awe of the room. A huge metal table at least thirty feet long was packed with chemistry equipment that seemed familiar, but clearly had no normal human origin. Beakers, flasks, pasteurizers, compact centrifuges, there didn’t seem to be an item missing. And in cabinets below the table, hundreds upon hundreds of chemical bottles labeled only by chemical diagrams of their respective substances sat neatly arranged. Over on the right wall, a bank of computers displaying some kind of strange, ciphered writing chirped away as it ran huge quantum calculations that blitzed across the huge screens in seconds. Holographic interfaces combined with physical control panels lined the bottom, about three feet off the ground and a solid ten feet long.

Felix pulled out his phone and immediately began to take as many pictures as he could, documenting the artificial cavern. Though from the even, if rough, surface of the rock walls it seemed more like a bunker. Suddenly, he heard Lyev cry out in disgust. “Chyort! Felix!! You need to come see this!” Felix ran across the elevated platform with the chemical equipment, and over up a small set of stairs to another elevated platform, about ten feet higher and hexagonal in shape. When he arrived, he saw exactly what Lyev meant, and swore vigorously under his breath while doing a rapid crucifix gesture across his body. Lyev’s face was ghost white. “What kind of madman would do this?” He referred to a huge collection of tanks filled with a bluish fluid, each of which contained some kind of horribly mutated creature. Some seemed like they once resembled the animals of the earth, a squid, a bear, a strange rabbit. But others were near-eldritch abominations that evaded reasonable description. One particularly nasty beast was bipedal, and nearly seven feet tall with rear-facing second knees, thick, stubby, razor-sharp claws, bulging muscles, greenish-black skin, an elongated skull with six eyes, each pair behind the other and increasingly separated by the skull, and multiple tentacle-like appendages beneath its nostril slits and covering its unseen mouth. That creature, like all the large ones, was in a tank backed up against the railing of the platform, while the smaller creatures, as well as some miscellaneous organs, lie in jars on a table in the center.

Felix took about thirty photographs of all the things present, and then went down the stairs and away from the horrors. Lyev stumbled down the steps after, and heaved up his stomach’s contents over the upper level’s railing and onto the concrete floor below. Felix rushed to him, panicking. “You idiot! You just left evidence of us being here!”

“If whatever monster created this place can keep a fully-stocked chemical lab with equipment, quantum computers beyond human design, and make… whatever those things were… then it almost certainly knows that we are here. We must go.”

“Not until we find a weapon.”

“Are you stupid!?”

Felix never answered, as he approached the back wall. On the far right, set halfway into a corner, a set of tables and strange tools that looked almost like a workbench sat next to racks of strange devices large and small. Suspended in midair above the workbench, a familiar weapon. An old bolt-action sniper rifle, the kind of heavy, sturdy weapon issued during World War II and the Korean War. Felix ran over to it, and saw that the weapon was still completely assembled, and in remarkably good condition, neither rust nor streaks of Cosmoline visible. He looked on the bench, and found a stack of stripper clips loaded with strange ammunition. The casings were a brushed, silvery color, much like bare aluminum, while the bullets themselves were a slightly different sliver color, their tips enameled in green. He picked up a clip, and found the rounds to be surprisingly heavy. He pocketed five clips, and then gently placed his hands under the floating rifle, and slowly lifted it. After moving it only a few inches, the weight of the weapon hit him, and he struggled not to drop it. Felix closed the bolt, slung it over his shoulder, and turned to the back wall, which was lined with a variety of objects, screens, images, and other things.

Having lost most of his fear, Lyev stood at the far end of the back wall some hundred feet away. He stared at the wall, his hand on his chin. Lyev looked over to Felix and spoke in only a slightly raised voice, his words echoing enough around the bunker for Felix to hear. “Felix, you’re better than I am at physics and such. Think you can make sense of this gibberish?”

Felix walked over, and looked at the wall. A thirty-foot long by five-foot tall section was covered in a blue panel, and was utterly covered in white writing. He looked it over, and found that though ciphered, the writing definitely was organized into recognizable equations, the kinds of which one would find in a theoretical physicist’s office. He looked at several symbols, and was able to make out some of them: protons here, alpha particles there, neutrinos in this equation, photons in that one. It hardly made sense, but Felix felt that it somehow could be very important, if only the cipher’s full meaning could be uncovered. He looked at Lyev. “Do you have your phone?”

“No, I left it in the car.”

Felix pulled his phone from his back pocket, and handed it to Lyev after unlocking it. “I want you to take photographs of this board.”

“What do you want me to get?”

“All of it. Everything. I don’t want a single fraction missing from any of those equations or formulas. Take panoramas if you have to.” Felix then began to examine the other major panels and sections of the back wall. Suddenly, a panel about seven feet tall and three feet wide slid back, and held on hooks was a very strange device, with some kind of spinal column with ten large, needle-like spikes spaced along its length. Tendrils came from just below the seventh segment, about a foot long and curving down some in the center. In the middle of the device, six more segmented tendrils sprouted, three to a side, and curved around the front. A last pair of tendrils came from near the bottom of the device, and curved upward in the middle. The tendrils each had three much smaller needles near the root, middle, and ends. Felix carefully approached the device, and gently took a hold of each upper extension before lifting it from the hooks. He turned it around, and saw that the back of the central column showed not only clear segments, but also had lights spaced evenly along the length. At the moment, they were a very dim, light blue. Below the seventh segment, just below the root of the first tendrils, some kind of hexagon-shaped unit was built directly into the device, with a raptor-headed ouroboros placed in the center, lit in the same fashion as the other lights on the device. Suddenly, Felix came to a stark realization. He looked it over again, and then called over Lyev. As his friend stood in front of him, he lifted up the device, the front facing him, and confirmed his suspicions. “Lyev, it’s some kind of harness, or a brace. It goes right into the spine and to the base of the skull. The extensions I’m holding go behind the shoulder, those lower ones go around the ribs, and the last go… somewhere. It has some kind of power source, too. Lyev, do you think this could…?”

Lyev didn’t need Felix to finish. “It’s better than trying nothing. But we must leave. We have more than we could have ever dreamed of, now it’s time to get out of here. You want your revenge, and I want out of here before the owners come and kill us or worse. Now move!”

The two of them took a hold of the weapon and the strange device before running as fast as they could back into the tunnel. The door closed behind them, and within five minutes, they were at the hole in the floor of the old barracks. Felix clambered out first, and Lyev tossed the strange device to him. As Felix set it down, Lyev tried to climb, but twisted his ankle and fell back down. The sound of movement from further down the tunnel drove Lyev into a panic, and he used his hands to get up on one leg, and hopped up and down until Felix could grab a hold of his arm. “I am not dying here!”

Felix, with much effort, managed to pull up Lyev, and he put his shoulder under Lyev’s arm. “I’ve got you, kid! Now grab the brace and let’s go!” They moved along, but Felix continued to feel as if whatever was coming after them was faster. He stood Lyev against a wall next to the toilets before grabbing one of the grenades that Lyev has earlier absconded with. He held it in one hand as he again supported Lyev and moved as quickly as he could across the room of empty bunks. Just as they neared the door, Felix left Lyev to limp out on his own. He turned around and pulled the pin as he held down the lever. With all his might, he chucked the grenade across the barracks and down the hallway, and by some miracle, it bounced once before it dropped inside the tunnel entrance. Felix then bolted out of the door, and heard a soft thump as it detonated in the secret tunnel. After taking a few deep breaths, he then caught up with Lyev, and the two retreated to Lyev’s car before driving off to their ultimate target.

Felix lay down on the hilltop, mostly hidden by the brushes and trees. He looked down into the neighborhood below through the scope on the rifle. To his initial surprise, the scope was far from standard or old glass, and it had an impressive, variable zoom power, as well as a strange, ciphered holographic display at the very bottom of the field of view, which he could only assume to be a rangefinder. The mil-dots and center crosshair were clearly lit in red, and everything through the scope seemed to be much brighter than it should in the middle of the night. He scanned the fronts of the houses which were angled off to his right. The other face of the houses were angled off to his left. From his vantage point, he could see quite well into every window on either face in his field of view. He finally found the right number, and patiently began to slow his breathing as he scanned all the windows.

Lyev, who looked at the house through binoculars, whispered to him. “Are you sure it’s the house?”

“Yes. Right number, right street, right town. That, along with his mugshot, was in the police report I saw.”

“You sure he’s not in the county jail?”

“Positive. He got out on bail the next evening after the crash. Son of a bitch had somebody backing him up. But they can’t save him now.”

“Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

“This bastard nearly killed me, and gave Jazz a fate worse than death. I’m vying for justice. He won’t get a felony out of it, it’s his third DUI, not fourth.”

“And if we are caught?”

“They’ll never suspect a teenager as a marksman, and furthermore, this weapon isn’t registered. Hell, it shouldn’t even exist, and neither should this freaky ammo. They’ll have no idea what kind of rifle was even used.” He then raised a finger to silence Lyev, and continued taking deep breaths, slowing his heart rate and steadying his aim. He looked inside the living room window of the house, and the man who had so utterly devastated their lives sat right there on the couch, next to a dim lamp. Flashes from the TV illuminated his face, a slack, stubble-coated, weary mess. An empty liquor bottle sat next to another half-full one, and a pill bottle lay overturned next to both. The son of a bitch just sat there, slack jawed and unfocused, oblivious to everything. Felix turned off the safety with his thumb, and settled into the stock one last time, taking a firm but relaxed hold, resting the handguard on his left arm and barely touching his finger to the trigger. As he exhaled and slowly began to squeeze, the man suddenly moved. The target bent down and pulled a shotgun from under the table. He pulled back the pump, loaded a single shell, racked the pump forward, and leaned back in the couch with the weapon in hand. Without warning, he sat up, put the barrel in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. The bright flash nearly blinded Felix through the scope, and no sound from it could be heard over the distance. When Felix’s eyes adjusted, he saw the gory mess left behind. Brains and blood coated the wall behind the couch, the blood-soaked shotgun lay on the table, where it had flown and knocked over both bottles of alcohol. The man’s head was half-gone. The eyes dangled from the wreck, since the lower sockets had been destroyed. The lower jaw hung by merely a tendon, and most of the tongue sat in the man’s lap, soaked in a puddle of blood. Felix let out a meek gasp, and exhaled sharply with a small groan of shock.

He turned the safety back on and picked up the rifle with his right hand, unfired. Lyev also stood up, and they looked at each other, unblinking and completely speechless. They simply walked to Lyev’s car and drove in silence back to Felix’s house. Vengeance seemed pointless, and after seeing what the poor bastard had done to himself, Felix was quite glad that he didn’t inflict that upon another human being, no matter how much they deserved death. The horizon began to glow slightly as they came off the highway. The dawn had nearly come, and school would too, in a couple hours. Lyev at last pulled over to the side of the road around the corner from Felix’s house. As Felix grabbed the rifle and the strange harness-like device, Lyev looked at him with weary and serious eyes. “We will never, ever speak of this. Not to anyone else, not to each other. Maybe the lab, and most certainly that spine attachment you found, but outside of that, nothing. I want to repress this to the grave.”

“I agree. See you in Art.”

Mr. Lastman stood up tall at the front of the class. Well, as tall as he could.  Though he couldn’t have been more than five foot seven, his endless well of humor and good cheer kept the students entertained at the least, failing being educated. He tried the best he could, but as in any classroom, there were some students one simply couldn’t salvage. Whatever, Felix thought, at least Jazz is back to his Teacher’s Aide job. Jasper sat in the back corner grading papers and listening to music as he occasionally looked up to take in the presentation while Felix manned the slideshow. Jasper rolled up in his wheelchair to a cabinet at the other end of the room to retrieve a red pen from one of the bins, and rolled back to Mr. Lastman’s desk. When he finished the last paper, he pulled out his earbuds and paid more attention to the slides. As Mr. Lastman began to go over Leonardo after Brunelleschi and Botticelli, Jasper rolled up beside the projector to watch. When Mr. Lastman paused between discussing sculpture and painting, Jasper added his own bit, as was his habit. “What would have been one of Leonardo’s most impressive works was his gigantic horse statue that was supposed to be a pet project for the city of Milan while he was employed by the duke. He even got the full-sized clay model done, and it weighed multiple tons. However, the French took the city and when Leonardo fled, he left behind his workshop and the clay model. The model was used as target practice for French artillerymen, and it was thought to have been completely lost forever. They wound up finding the blueprints in the mid-nineties, and made two full bronze sculptures by the turn of the millennium. One sculpture was given to the city of Milan as a gift, the other is in the US. I forget where.”

Mr. Lastman smiled and piped up in his cheery voice. “Yes, that’s right. Come to think of it, I think I read an article on it some years ago, but I had forgotten. Excellent point. Might make it extra credit… anyways, Leonardo is quite possibly known to most of you because of his painting career. I can guarantee that you have seen…”

Felix tuned out as Mr. Lastman continued his lecture. He looked over to Jasper and saw not the intrigued and excited boy he once knew, but only a broken and exhausted man. Eight weeks since the accident, and Jasper had been able to acquire a wheelchair and learn to get around rather well in it. However, his good fortunes ended there. From the dark circles under his eyes, persistent irritability, and high consumption of coffee and Red Bull, he had clearly developed insomnia. Unable to drive, he also became extremely reclusive, even when invited to others’ parties or other events. About the only person who continued to see him regularly was Catalina, and she didn’t say much about him to others. Jasper had even stopped playing Halo with the old gang, and would simply eat lunch in some classroom or another as he tried desperately to stay on top of his workload, despite having been completely exempted from three weeks of assignments that he had missed during recovery. He insisted on finishing every assignment he possibly could, exempted or not. But perhaps the most troubling part of the past couple months was the painkillers. Jasper had been hooked up with painkillers throughout his recovery stay in the hospital, and he had been sent home with a huge bottle of pills. The doctors had foolishly prescribed four or more pills per day as necessary, and for the first week, Jasper actually followed the instructions. When he realized what the pills really were, a prescription-named form of oxycodone, he then realized the trouble he was in. He slowed his intake drastically, but the withdrawal pains combined with his broken back were too much, and he relapsed no less than twice. Felix and the others helped him as much as they could, but it was really up to Jasper in the end. Felix recalled him saying that ‘Every day I take a pill is a day I lose.’

Eventually, Mr. Lastman allowed working time at the end of class for the students, and assigned tasks to Felix and Jasper. Felix went to hang up some paintings in the hallway, and Jasper rolled to the sink, put in his earbuds, and silently began to clean the paint brushes. Felix wanted Jasper to just be happy again, but it seemed that happiness was lost to him. Eventually, the bell rang, and Felix, along with Jasper, moved on with their day. A couple periods passed, and lunch finally came. As Felix walked out to meet up with Catalina for lunch, he noticed Jasper ahead of him in the snow and ice. He struggled to keep moving properly, and as he slid onto the downslope of the wheelchair ramp, he spun around a couple times before skidding sideways despite his brakes, and fell over sideways. Felix ran over to help him, and took a hold of his arm. Jasper snarled and thrashed his arm. Jasper used his arms to turn himself around and sit up. He pulled his contorted legs back into line with his body, and righted his chair by himself. When Felix reached for him again, he swung out at Felix in rage.

“Leave me alone, dammit! Let me have the dignity of doing this on my own! I don’t need you or anyone else to help me.”

Felix then stood back with his glasses slightly down the bridge of his nose and his arms crossed, putting on a stone-cold poker face. Jasper struggled to get his torso over his legs, and then pushed his legs under himself so that he was stomach-down, and crawled using only his arms to the front of the precarious wheelchair. He scrambled with his arms a bit on the ice, and then put one hand on the seat as he tried to push himself up. But with no legs to support him, all the force just went sideways, and the chair rolled away, causing Jasper to fall hard on the ice. He tried again when the chair rolled back, but used both hands. That time, the chair shot away from him, and not only did he take another hard fall on his already battered body, but the chair flipped over and slid all the way down the ramp, leaving Jasper stranded. Without a word, Felix walked over, picked up the wheelchair, carried it back to Jasper, and picked up Jasper to put him back in his chair. Jasper looked up at Felix. “Thanks.”

Jasper’s cheeks turned beet-red with shame, and he rolled off back inside the building, to go eat lunch by himself again. Felix shook his head and walked over to the parking lot, where he got in the back seat of Catalina’s car. Lyev soon joined him, shaking a few snowflakes from the top of his head. Daphne already sat in the front seat. Once everyone was buckled up, Cat then began to drive to the cheesesteak shop. As she drove, Felix struck up a conversation. “There’s no way that Jasper can keep living like this. There’s some rigorous therapies that could be used, but my mother knows them, helped develop them. She told me it’s too expensive for anyone to afford.”

“So what do you suppose?” Catalina asked, looking at him in the rearview.

“We find a way to make money. Fast. Big time.”

“Any ideas on how we could do that, exactly? It’s not like we can just walk into the gas station and win the Powerball.” Daphne chided.

“I’ll have to think about it.”

They ate lunch, bantered their way through the hour, and resumed their day at school. The snow began to fall, faster, harder, and larger flakes. The chill seemed to penetrate into every classroom, but maybe it was just Felix’s nerves. After Physics class, he walked up to his professor, one of the few people he trusted for real advice.

“Doctor Carr, can I ask you for help with something?”

The professor rested his hands on the table at the front of the class and looked at him. With an only slightly smug and quite curious expression, he raised a hand to Felix. “Go ahead, Felix.”

“Do you know of any way to make money fast? Something that a young guy like me could do.”

He did a double take, took a couple steps back, and crossed his arms back and forth in a sort of ‘oh Hell no’ expression. “Whoah! Whoah whoah whoah whoah! Hold up! I’m not going to cook meth with you. Come back to me when I get lung cancer and we’ll talk.”

“I’m not talking about drugs, Doctor! I only want to do legal things. Jasper has been… I’ll just say catastrophically and aggressively depressed since he was paralyzed. There’s special therapies, but they’re horribly expensive. Since you have decades of experience more than me, I was wondering if you knew of any way that I could make some serious cash quickly.”

“Look, kid. I respect you, but I’m going to have to be real with you. Your friend Jasper is screwed. Life happens, and it sucks balls. Believe me, I’ve been through hard knocks since before you were even thought of. He’s going to have to come to terms with his paraplegia. Unless you became a top-tier rapper making six figures a show or a top-tier motorsport driver with forty sponsors overnight, you’re not making that kind of money any time soon.”

“Yeah… not like I could drive racecars… Anyways, see you in January, Doctor.”

“Take care, kid. And Felix? Don’t light anybody on fire or something. It would come back on me since I taught you chemistry, and I’m not facing an inquiry.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“So why, exactly, did you call me here? It’s not Halo night.” Catalina said as she sat down in a chair in Felix’s loft.

Felix sat down on the couch, and synchronized his TV to display what his tablet displayed. He manipulated the camera feeds and websites as he spoke, demonstrating and punctuating everything he said. “I figured out how we can make serious dough in one good shot. However, it involves breaking at least four traffic regulations and committing one, maybe two felonies.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Which is why I brought you in. I can’t risk Daphne getting in trouble, and Lyev is sketch as fuck as is. I trust you to help me.” He then pulled up a side-by-side of his father’s dealership and an advanced GT race-built hypercar. “This is an experimental Huayra that never actually got used for any of the GT races it was supposed to. Funding ran dry, and my family in Italy running the company decided that it was best just to focus on the next generation of high-exclusivity hypercars instead of chasing an empty motorsport dream. Top speed of two hundred and twenty, zero to sixty in two point two seconds. It was sent here for a test run on some tracks in the southwest US, where it performed remarkably well, even at Laguna Seca.” He switched to an event page online. “There’s a Christmas Eve GT special in downtown Denver next week. The streets will be cordoned off for a three-lap race around the whole downtown area. It’s huge. Since it’s only three laps, we should be able to do it on one tank of 95-octane petrol. We can sign up right now, then break into the select stock vault at the dealership the night before. Then, we can have the car back in the vault and both of us out of race attire in time for dinner and Midnight Mass. I was taught to drive by my father and by a former Formula One driver. I can do this, we just need to work together, and I need you to be my rep on the radio looking at all the video feeds.”

He spoke so fast that Catalina hardly had any time to react, or to even change her facial expression. She soaked it in for a minute, and shook her head. “This is so stupid. You’re suggesting that we commit grand theft of a motor vehicle, participate against PROFESSIONAL racers, and then use the theoretical money to pay for therapy for Jazz. Am I missing the part where Santa Claus comes in and joins the race, too?” She stood up and paced around the room a few times. “This is literally the most insane thing you’ve ever said. I’m not sure what’s more unsettling: that you’re desperate enough to have come up with that plan, or that it could actually work.” She turned to him and grabbed onto his shoulders. “You can’t do this. It’s too risky. I want Jazz to be happy, too, but this is not the way.”

“Then how do we save him!?” Felix stood up and looked her right in the eyes. “You’ve seen how he’s falling apart at the seams! He can’t survive like this. Some people do alright with being paralyzed. But movement was Jasper’s life. Everything he did was about getting up and having fun. We went hiking, running, exploring. And it was ripped from him! I’m afraid of when he finally breaks, Cat!”

Her eyes glistened with restrained tears. “He is broken, Felix! You think I don’t see it!? I’m the only one who can make him happy, even for a moment. But the second he stops laughing, or that he thinks I’m not looking, he goes back to being a grim, exhausted person who just can’t keep going. I’m more worried about him than you could possibly imagine, Felix. Don’t you dare lecture me!” She turned away for a moment and wiped her eyes. “If you actually try it, I’m not helping. There must be a better way. There’s always a plan, Felix. Even if we don’t know it. So before you go off on a half-cocked plan for no reason, think about how Jazz would react if you landed in prison for years over an attempt to get money to fix him. Your attempts to help him are what got him crippled. Just learn to stop while you’re ahead, dammit.”

And with that, she walked off on the verge of tears and out of the house. Felix stood there, stone still and awestruck. To say his faith was challenged would have been an understatement.