Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Morana and whoever else had assisted her would pay a hefty price.
They’d forgotten themselves. The doctor had an army of soldiers at his command. It didn’t matter that two or three had gone rogue. There were plenty more, and they were loyal. Despite the dizziness, the reminder of his superiority boosted his strength.
He whipped his head toward the sound of something moving toward him through the woods. Something large. And it wasn’t attempting to hide its approach.
“Hello?” he said, and though he attempted a commanding tone, his voice sounded frail.
No one answered. But now there was movement to his right and his left as well.
The doctor turned and stumbled forward, falling and picking himself up off the ground. “Name yourself!” he demanded.
A growl to his left. Low laughter to his right.
Fear rose higher, and he turned once again, running this time, though slowly. Too slowly. His limbs were weighted, head foggy with whatever had been injected into him.
He tripped and then pulled himself to his feet. He ran again, weaving through the forest he’d been left in alone.
Exhaustion quickly overcame him as he huffed and stumbled and tried to pull his body forward, but it was as if he were running through molasses. He let out an enraged grunt. Who had dared do this to him?
The things behind him were crashing through the woods now, though he had the impression they were merely walking, footsteps heavy but unhurried as he struggled and sweated.
He tripped again, yelping, just as the first of them appeared through the trees, the others mere seconds behind. His monsters. His creations. They surrounded him.
“Stop now!” he ordered.
They continued forward as though they didn’t recognize him at all.
“I demand you stop now. Do you know who I am?” he screeched.
There were eight of them, no, ten. All the ones who had survived the surgeries and were still alive, except Sam and Morana. He knew who they were, each one of them. He’d named them after all—after monsters and fiends. He’d opened them up with scalpels and saws. He’d administered pharmaceuticals, both experimental and not. He’d charted and observed and compared and calculated data about their bodies and their minds. He controlled them. So why weren’t they listening? He looked from one face to the next, expressions blank. They had no emotions. He’d made sure they did not. All machine, no humanity left.
Again, they advanced, a few of them stretching their hands as they drew nearer. He shook with terror. Who knew better than he did what they were capable of?
“It was for the greater good,” he screamed. “You should be grateful to me. I made you! Stop now! Cease!”
A menacing growl. A grunt. He saw the savagery in their eyes. They meant to tear him apart with their bare hands.
“Please!” he begged. He put his palms together in the praying position, tears running down his face. But he had not taught these monsters about prayers or pleas.
A hand wrapped around his throat, squeezing, lifting him off the ground as though he weighed no more than a feather. He shuddered, a gargled cry coming from his throat as the rest of them descended.
“Make it quick,” he begged.
But they didn’t make it quick. They’d been ordered to drag it out for hours, and they were eager to oblige.
And when it was over, when their bloodlust had been satiated and the doctor was nothing but a pile of ruined flesh and broken bones, they too followed the final command they’d been given.
Chapter Forty-Six
The official story was that patient 1043, a male, and patient 1201, a female, both died on the rocky portion of shore of the Hudson River that day. The woman’s body had been recovered, though the man’s had been dragged into the water by the rising tide and likely swept into the ocean. They’d been thoroughly brainwashed, fed a lifetime of lies that led to the follow-through of that final command.
But before she’d died, patient 1201 had collected ten terabytes of classified files from Mercy Hospital for Children, working in conjunction with Tycor Labs, information that painted an appalling and gruesome picture of experimentation on the most helpless patients possible: indigent orphans. Abandoned by their parents, victimized, and horrendously abused by the state. They’d been used as science experiments to enrich others, their innocence exploited, their humanity disregarded.
Patient 1201 had forwarded the proof of the widespread corruption to media outlets both small and large, independent journalists, to the whole of Congress, among many others. Some might have ignored it or hidden the information on their own—after all, the corruption ran far deeper than anyone knew—but it had been too widely distributed for that. The genie was out of the bottle.
A genie that raised its trumpet and blasted the heinous tale of crimes against humanity.
A bevy of human rights lawyers had descended, offering their services pro bono to the remaining ADHM kids, of which there were far too few. A handful. Most had succumbed to the disease itself or more specifically the tumors it caused. Others had surely died of the medication or a diabolical mix of the two. Likely it would never be proven either way.