The Hercules Project

Chapter 3

Test Subject

The world was a blur when I opened my eyes. I felt myself drift in and out for a bit, awash in something I didn't understand. My whole body pulsed, like the light I was exposed to still flowed through me. It felt great for some reason.

When awareness came back, I suffered a momentary thrill of fear. The bed felt familiar and with good reason. For an instant, I was a little kid again, back in the hospital for yet another round of treatments to help me get better, treatments that only left me weaker and feeling worse. But there was no Abigail beside me holding my hand, no sunshiny paintings on the walls in the pediatric ward, no big screen TV or constant pain.

It didn't take long for the feeling to fade, but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth and a whole lot of old anger to process.

This room was windowless, dim and the walls gray concrete.

How original, I thought.

I tried to sit up, but changed my mind. Normally, I was weak on a good day. This felt like someone balled me up and wrung me out. I glanced to my right and the beeping monitor hovering next to me, counting out my heartbeats. The IV line in the back of my hand stung, but I was used to that. A plain gray door was closed to the rest of the world, the small glass window at the top allowing light into the room. I absently wondered if the military used any other color. A sleepy muffled snort made me jerk my head to the left.

I had the surprise of my life. My father was collapsed next to me in a hard plastic chair, head back, glasses askew. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he tried to breathe with his neck so extended, a clipboard clutched in one hand. Several sheets of paper slid free to puddle at his feet. I couldn't read them in the low light, but assumed they had something to do with me.

I didn't want to wake him just yet. There was too much for my mind to work through first. Anger rose inside, my pulse rate rising on the monitor, triggering further irritation. I couldn't even lose my temper without being betrayed somehow. It was quite obvious at that point my father conspired to experiment on me without my knowledge or consent.

Not okay at all.

I leaned over to whack him with a pillow. It wasn't much of an attack, but it was all I could manage. He started awake before I began the swing. Our eyes met and I could only imagine the frustration brimming in mine. In that moment, I saw a part of my father I never had before.

Edison Simons was afraid.

It was gone so fast I wasn't sure I'd seen it, but in my heart I knew. At least it proved to me he cared if I lived or died. Maybe. The part of me always searching for signs of just that was losing to my fury.

Dad checked the monitor feed while firing questions at me as his brain processed what he read.

"Any blurry vision?" I woke with the fuzzies, but they were gone now so I shook my head. "Stomach ache?" Again, no. He checked the monitor over my head. "Hmm... it doesn't look like you have a temperature. How about shortness of breath? Headache?"

I kept saying no, realizing I felt fine, considering the anger inside me made my blood burn so hot I should have been steaming.

"Did it work?" I didn't even try to keep the bitterness out of my voice.

He looked startled. "Did what work?"

"The HP?" I still had no idea what it meant, but figured I'd give it a go.

His eyes narrowed behind his glasses.

"How do you feel?"

"I just found out my father thinks of me as a lab rat. How am I supposed to feel?"

He was about to answer when my door swung in and the general entered. Boy, did he. I was used to my father's presence. He could be pretty intimidating for a scientist at six feet and big shouldered. It always amazed me a man like my father, so hooked on science, had once played college football. And I think it was a big part of his disappointment in me. With my crippled and debilitated body, as much as I wished I could, I'd never follow in his cleats.

The general on the other hand was a force to be reckoned with. I felt the intensity surrounding him as he stomped into the room like a loaded weapon.

"Well?" His voice was a booming echo of sound making my teeth to ache. "Did it work, Edison?"

My father turned away from me and led the general to the door. I scowled at them and tried to listen as they whispered back and forth. I caught snippets, but not much else. Words like "verify" and "weakness." I heard "soldiers" and "no change." But the most intriguing of all was the word "Hercules."

By the time they finished their conversation, I was trembling all over and sweating again, just from the effort of trying to hear them. In fact, I felt very strange. My whole body tingled, and a low headache hummed in the back of my skull. I tried to pay attention, as the general left my father and approached. He held his hand out to me and shook mine so hard I winced. The tingling increased.

"Wyatt, your father convinced me this was a good idea. I hope he was right."

I shrugged and rubbed my hands together against the pins and needles.

"Me too," I said. "I think I'm ready to know what you did to me."

Dad scowled. "This is Major General Harrison Mill. He wants to ask you a few questions, Wyatt."

"What about my questions?" Some strength returned with my anger. "I'm dragged out of school by your bully squad with no explanation beyond 'It's classified,' and then strapped into a contraption which did only you know what. I have no idea what's going on and until I get some answers I'm not saying another word."

My father continued to scowl while the general's expression hardened.

"I don't tolerate insubordination," Mill barked.

"I am not one of your soldiers. And I don't tolerate being manipulated, experimented on, and treated like a trained monkey." At least, not very well.

The general's teeth worked over each other, making his considerable jaw jump. He appeared to do his best to keep himself under control. When he spoke again, his voice was soft.

"We need to know how you are, boy." He hovered close. Too close for my liking. I squirmed a little.

"Fine, thanks," I said. "What was that light supposed to do?"

"Feeling anything unusual?" The general's very blue eyes seemed to pierce right through me. I'd heard of eyes described that way before, but never experienced it until he pinned me down with his gaze. He also smelled of aftershave and cigars. I was disappointed by the cliché.

I considered mentioning the tingling, just to give him something. But before I could, it faded away.

"What do you classify as unusual?" I wasn't normally so cheeky, but they weren't giving me much in return.

"Just answer the general, Wyatt," my father said.

Mill scowled so deeply I thought his lips would take over the whole lower half of his face. His short mustache stuck out at me like an unhappy porcupine.

"Will you tell me what I want to know?" I directed it at Mill. He grunted something then nodded once, jaw working again.

"Fine," he said. "Just answer the damned question!"

Feeling like I won a victory in the whole sorry mess, I tried to move and see if there was anything different. From their prodding, they were expecting some big miracle, so my hopes did rise a bit, I admit. I tried to sit up, and for an instant I was sure something had changed inside me. But any strength I felt disappeared as soon as it came, leaving me wrung out all over again.

I didn't think the general's scowl could get any deeper. I was wrong. He spun on my father, face burning red. When he spoke, his voice was a contained volcano.

"No change," he said.

My father jumped to the defense. "It may be too soon to tell," he began, but the general cut him off.

"I agreed to this last test. Because you thought it was a viable option. Obviously, you were wrong." When Dad tried to interrupt, the general sighed and shook his head. His disappointment was obvious from the sudden sadness on his face. "I'm sorry, Edison. This is the end. I gave you the benefit of the doubt because of your hard work. But I think it's apparent to us all, now. The project is a failure."

The general left the room before either of us could say anything, the energy he entered with greatly diminished. I almost felt sorry for him. Despite the fact he and my father used me as a guinea pig. And I still didn't have any answers since he marched off without fulfilling his side of the bargain.

So, not so sorry, but a little.

My father, on the other hand, deflated. He looked more like me than I ever hoped to look like him in that moment. And no matter what, he was still my father.

I reached out to him. "Dad. I'm sorry it didn't work."

He didn't even look at me. He turned and left the room, abandoning me once again. My fury came rushing back. I lay there in a serious snit, wishing I had the energy to throw something more substantial than a pillow, not for the first time cursing my own body for the weakness holding me back in everything.

And to make matters worse, they both left without telling me what was going on.

I didn't notice I wasn't alone until the white coat appeared next to my bed. I looked up into bulging eyes and a retreating hairline over bad skin shiny with excess oil. The weasel-faced man's nose twitched from side to side as he smiled at me, uneven teeth gleaming in what I guessed passed for a friendly grin.

"Hello, Wyatt," he said. His voice squeaked, routed too much through his crooked nose to be pleasant.

"Hi," I said, not in the mood to be nice, but Abigail's lessons in courtesy refused to let my manners slip even under these conditions.

He started removing my IV and other electrodes as he spoke.

"I'm Dr. Uni Murd."

From the tone of his voice, he thought I'd heard of him.

"I've been working with your father for many years," he said. "Surely he's spoken of me?"

I shook my head. "My dad doesn't tell me much of anything."

"No matter," he said. I winced as he plucked the needle from my hand. "Sorry."

"It's okay," I said, even though it wasn't. I could have done a better job.

"You mustn't be disappointed," he said. "You aren't the first to be tested."

"And fail." Yeah, I was bitter. "They won't even tell me what they did to me."

"Your father has been trying to perfect this technology for years. We were so sure this time..." his voice trailed off. Then, he smiled, a creepy smile like he knew something I didn't. "Are you certain you don't feel any different? No unusual symptoms? Dizziness? Headache? Tingling?"

I started. "How...? Yeah. For a bit. How did you know?"

"It may be nothing," he said. "But then again... I'll be seeing you again, Wyatt. I'm sure of it."

"I'm not so sure, Dr. Murd," I said. "Unless my dad has any other crazy experiments he needs a subject for."

"Please." He bent so close I smelled the musty scent of old dirt permeating his clothes. "You must call me Uni."

I was about to ask him to back off when the door opened and my father entered, followed by the young soldier from the elevator. I opened my mouth to tell him about Uni's question and the tingling when Dad turned his back on me and addressed the uniform.

"Take the boy home," he said. And then, without looking at me once, my father left the room.

As the soldier bundled me up and helped me into my chair, Uni slipped out behind Dad. He offered a smile and a wink as he left. I was too wrapped up in my father's dismissal to even remotely care what Uni thought.

It was all I could do to keep my fury and the sting of old hurts to myself.

***