Two

2

Three and a half years earlier…

The voices teased him. He could feel them right on the brink of his consciousness; doing the same thing they had been doing pretty much his whole life. Chatter, strange words never heard by human ears. He had learned to ignore them. After all, genius’s all have something wrong with them right? Abraham Lincoln, one of the United States greatest presidents suffered from what these modern day doctors would call “clinical depression” and he ended slavery and steered the U.S. through one of its darkest times. And he ended up with a bullet in his head while he was watching a play, one of the main things he did to cope with his so called disease. A bullet will be a peaceful way to go compared to what this baby will do.

Randolph Anderson was the child of a German mother and an American father, one of the wonderful by-products of military men stationed overseas. His father had been a tank mechanic in the United States Air Force stationed at Ramstein AFB and had met his mother on one of his adventures to the local watering hole. Randolph didn’t know if you would call it love at first sight but whatever you call it he ended up here as a response to their action. His father did the right thing, asked his mother to marry him and eight months later Randolph was born.

Randolph was automatically an American citizen but he grew up in Germany for the next eighteen years. His last year of high school also happened to be the first year of his father’s retirement, so they moved back to Madison, Wisconsin where he had grown up. Randolph’s father had always tried to push him more towards the physical aspects of things. He tried out for football when he was in sixth grade and had suffered a concussion during the tryout. Needless to say he didn’t make the team. No, Randolph was not built for sports, but science, that was a different story.

Ever since middle school when he received a chemistry set from one of his aunt’s in the states he had been fascinated with science. And his grades showed it. His first and last year in high school in the states, he was way above all the rest of the students. Dozens of schools offered him scholarships but after all was said and done he elected to stay close to home and attended University of Wisconsin-Madison, majoring in Biochemistry. He instantly excelled in all his classes. That’s where he had met Lacey Brogans and had been introduced to a whole new side of science.

She was an extremely attractive twenty year old junior who had been a teacher’s aide in one of his classes. Randolph had instantly grabbed her attention and before he knew it they were “seeing” each other. A little while after they had started their relationship Lacey took him to one of the meetings she regularly attended out of class. They were called the Society of Khemia, which was Greek for alchemy. Not only did they follow and practice modern science but they also added alchemic practices of old. Using some aspects of the occult, divination and combining it with science. Randolph dove in head first applying all the aspects of this group to his work all through college. That’s when the voices started.

It had started off mild at first, in his room doing experiments by candlelight smooth melodic music in the background, scribbling ancient symbols into his formulas, speaking incantations over his combinations of chemicals when they had started making suggestions. He had ignored it at first simply because he thought it was nothing but they started pressing more and more getting worse. In the middle of the night while he and Lacey were sleeping he would have dreams of beings shrouded in light speaking words of wisdom to him. He started listening to them and his work showed immediate results. He graduated with honors and was offered a job at one of the country’s top private weapons manufactures.

“The future of modern warfare is in biochemistry.” The CEO of the company had told him when he offered the job, “And we want whoever is on the top in biochemistry to be working for us.” He accepted without hesitation, asking Lacey to marry him immediately. She accepted and everything seemed to be looking up for the young man. Then it all changed.

The night before they were going to move to Virginia where the company was located, Randolph was plagued by nightmares. Images of demonic creatures, fire and death came to him wave after wave when he woke up. He felt over to the left side of the bed for where Lacey was supposed to be asleep. She was not there.

“Lacey.” Randolph had called to her with no response.

Lacey is not available at the moment, the voices taunted him. Panic came over him at once. He jumped out of the bed and ran into the living room of their small one bedroom apartment. Lacey was standing in the middle of the room in a daze like state with her back to Randolph, a knife from the kitchen in her hand already stained with her blood.

“Lace, babe what are you doing?” he asked her.

She turned around slowly. She is ours, she is good as dead, and she is an obstacle in your way, the voices jeered. Several small lacerations covered her face also tracing down her arms crimson red dripped onto the floor.

“They are calling me Rand,” she spoke in a dreamlike voice, “They are calling me to them and I must go.” Yes, the voices said.

She brought the knife up to her throat. Randolph rushed to stop her, ignoring the voices screaming at him reaching for the knife but he was a fraction of a second too late. She dragged the blade across her neck severing her jugular artery falling to the floor as blood sprayed across the room. That was ten years ago. Randolph had still taken the job after he had buried Lacey and said his condolences never looking back, and never loving another woman. He devoted all his time to work. The voices be damned. He had turned his back on their advice on that frightful night and they did not like it. And now here he was stuck.

Randolph had been working on this particular project for the majority of his time with the company and the bosses were getting impatient they wanted results. He had delivered on various other small projects, for one example he had developed synthetic h2o. Overnight he had solved the world’s water crisis and still they whined. But this also was very important, he had several different formulas and equations working at once on his computer and time after time he came up empty handed.

That’s because you need us, the voices reasoned, we have the missing piece to your puzzle.

“Shut up.” Randolph said aloud. He was all alone in his private office. He had no need for assistants or aides and all that help nonsense. Help was for the weak, “I don’t need your help.”

The voices laughed. That’s what they all say and sooner or later they all come back crawling on their knees.

CRASH! Randolph jumped out of his chair.

“Gosh Jimmy!” Randolph yelled at the caged monkey behind him, “You are going to be the death of me.”

Back to the computer screen he went when something caught his eye. That wasn’t there a second ago, he thought to himself. He started to sweat, all the figures in the equation made sense the computer was showing no inconsistencies the problem was he didn’t put it in there. And he knew that it shouldn’t be right, the two figures that had been added were opposites and could not be used in the same equation, normally that is.

It will work, the voices told him, trust us. Randolph stared at the screen. He had tried so hard to put his old practices away in the corner of his mind and now after all this time at the most important time in his career it was beginning to crawl back in. He relaxed in his seat with his fingers on the keys.

“Okay,” he said “but this is the last time.”

You have to let us in. You know the words.

Strange ancient words began coming off Randolph’s lips his fingers became a blur on the keyboard as they begin imputing strange number, letter, and chemical combinations that were unknown to most men. It seemed like hours when he finally snapped out of his trance his left index finger trembling over the enter key.

Do it.

Randolph pressed the button. The room came alive as his instructions came to life automatically mixing the formulas and chemicals that had been put into the computer and then it stopped. Randolph grabbed a sample and put it under his microscope. They seemed innocent enough, at least when they were alone.

“Let us see how you work under pressure.” Randolph spoke to the Petri dish. “Let’s go Jimmy.”

Randolph pushed a button and the back of Jimmy’s cage opened. The monkey walked through it to a small chamber that had been built for experimentation. Randolph took a sample of the new life form he had created and placed it into the feeder, as he liked to call it, and walked over to his computer and activated the little buggers.

“Sorry Jimbo, nothing personal.” Randolph said to the monkey.

A green mist started filling the chamber. Randolph kept watching the monitors that were attached to the outside that kept track of the monkey’s vitals. Jimmy just sat still and then suddenly he started convulsing spinning around in circles blood was pouring from his eyes and ears. And then he was dead. Randolph stood amazed at what he had seen. Years of work had paid off and it was all because of the voices which were now continently absent. He said a silent thank you to whatever power had just made him very rich. He walked over to his computer and looked at the stats.

So the chemical attaches itself to the targets nervous system and then travels through the blood stream at an alarming rate and starts attacking all the vital organs. Lungs, liver, and heart in no particular order were totally devoured by the little living enzymes he had created. When their work was finished they stay in the blood stream ready and hopefully jump to the next target and so on. The ultimate weapon and he already had the formula for the antidote processing in his head. Six months and I will have it in canisters on the way to California for human testing. Death row inmates made the perfect guinea pigs and the company he worked for owned a private prison in California just for that purpose in mind.

Randolph walked over to his desk, sat down in his chair and opened one of the drawers revealing a very rare Chardonnay from Napa valley he had been saving for just this special occasion. Phone calls be damned, he thought to himself, this is my moment and I am going to enjoy it. As he popped the cork and drank straight from the bottle he couldn’t help but be proud of himself. In fact all memories of the strange voices had all but mysteriously vanished as he once again toasted himself for his achievement. Little did he know that his greatest achievement would put Homo sapiens on the endangered species list and a fight for survival was closer than anyone could ever imagine.