Chapter Four: Subject Number Five
Hero Jenkins --- 4/22/13
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Chapter FourFrom his vantage point on the eighty-fifth floor, they all looked like germs to him. He had watched some of the deadliest viruses known to man through a microscope as they did their work… devouring and contaminating all that they came into contact with. That’s how the rest of humanity looked to him from his window high above.
For decades he and people like him, the elite, have separated themselves from the rest of them. Marrying only with a few select families. Breeding only with the richest and most powerful… thus limiting the gene pool to only the pure. By the time he was born their forefather’s limited knowledge of the human genome had already doomed them all to a life apart from the rest of humanity. He couldn’t bring himself to call the results a handicap, but there were side effects to limiting the gene pool to the few thousand families of the elite. The most obvious were the physical abnormalities that were just now starting to show. Most prominent of those were the children that were being born with only four toes. Still the biggest abnormality was one that was not visibly obvious. It was a weakened immune system that has left them more susceptible to common diseases and infections. Infections that are carried in abundance by the masses below. He would never admit it, but one of the main reasons that his company even formed its genetic research division was to try to find a way to reintegrate his and the families like his back into the world. But the genes of the masses were like poison, ravenous in their assault on the tissue samples taken from his family. Every attempt had failed; every test subject had died a horrible painful death.Nathan Sloane was the CEO and the genius behind the rise of Sloane Industries. Yet he was born into a world with almost no ability to fight off the most common virus. A world where a cold could kill and a scratch could cost a limb. Forty of the eighty-five floors below him are dedicated to providing for him and his family. They lived in a bubble, having contact only with others who were also forced to live in bubbles… less than half a percent of the world’s population. Together they controlled 80% of the world’s wealth, but their world was limited to their towers and what other towers that were within range of the helicopters on their roofs.Nathan Sloane had never tasted alcohol, he ate meat once in his youth, but his digestive system could not tolerate it. For almost all of his life he has been on the strictest vegan diet. No sugar, no salt, no coffee or soft drinks. His food was grown hydroponically right there in the building. It had to be radiated and washed multiple times before it could reach his table. He survived on a diet of fruit, vegetables, nuts and grains.His drinking water, even the water for his shower was highly filtered and processed to a perfect PH balance on one of the floors below. The air they breathed was also highly processed with redundant filters. The interior climate was maintained at 68 degrees regardless of the weather outside. Access to the upper floors by the uninvited was strictly forbidden. A prohibition enforced by a platoon of highly trained security personnel supported by state of the art electronics. He looked out the window at the masses below knowing that he could never walk amongst them. He made decisions daily that would set the course of their lives and none of them even knew he existed. He knew little of how they lived, as a result he had less empathy than one would have for ants in an ant farm. He and those like him lived lives separated from the rest, hermetically sealed from any physical contact with the world forever. Which explained why someone like him could conceive of something like his creature because in his mind, any conceivable repercussions could never affect him.Nathan Sloane checked his watch. Though the hour was late, it was almost time for the meeting to start. He had called an emergency executive board meeting. The jackals, his executive board, were downstairs at this moment going through decontamination procedures. They would hold their meeting with all but one, him, dressed in bulky bio-quarantine suits. It had been a rough month for his company. The security at one of his facilities had been breached and one of his most promising subjects had been stolen. The first four had been dismal failures, but Number Five had been a triumph of genetic manipulation. He was the pride of the program until someone had just waltzed in and taken Number Five away from him. But tonight things were looking up. His team in Los Angeles had retrieved his monster and Number Five was already on a plane to the East coast. He had dispatched two of his most trusted operatives to destroy the facility that had built his monster. By destroying the facility and everyone in it, there would be no evidence of his crimes. So he had called this meeting to make sure that they were on the same page, but additionally to make sure that a security breach such as this would never happen again. ***The police officers and the emergency room doctor hovered just outside of Kade’s stall and talked. Randy Simmons stood by her bed. Brandiss watched him as he pretended to be oblivious to the presence of these men, though it was obvious that he hung on their every word.“As you can see,” the doctor explained, “she is in no condition to make a statement.” The officers peeked in and reluctantly nodded.The doctor and the officers talked for a few minutes and then the officers left the emergency room vowing to return when she was lucid.As soon as the doctor and the officers were gone, Brandiss saw Kade’s eyes pop open. She had been awake the whole time.“I was able to get Jeff out of their facility,” Kade said in a hushed voice. “I tried to reason with him and I know I was close to a breakthrough but for every step forward we took three steps back… he was too far gone in the procedure… he turned on me.”Kade was talking through clenched teeth. The bandage wrapped around her head was a factor, still she was being careful not to move her mouth too much and risk tearing open her stitches in her cheek. Mr. Simmons glanced around cautiously to confirm that she had not been overheard before he answered. He had a stuttered clipped way of speaking that Brandiss always found annoying.“I know… at least, I-I figured as much,” Mr. Simmons said. “If only, if only I had been there…”“It wouldn’t have made any difference, he was so strong!”“When you missed your check-in, I feared the worst.”“I’m sorry… he would freak out every time I tried to use the phone. We had to keep moving, we had to stay ahead of the men who were tracking us so we kept changing motels. We had just landed in a new place and I had left him for only a minute to go get us some food. I tried to call you, but there was no answer. I had just made it back to the motel… something had changed; I thought things were going fine. But… in the end he was too far gone… he lost it daddy. He knocked me out and when I woke up he was cutting on me… he cut my face.” Her voice started to crack. “I think he was planning to eat me.”It was quiet in the stall while Kade composed herself. After a few moments Mr. Simmons spoke again. “I’m sorry about Brandiss,” he said, “but it had been days since I had heard from you. I didn’t know where else to turn.”“Don’t worry about it dad… you did good, still it was hard seeing him again.” “How did you get away from him?”“I always kept a hypo available to use on Jeff but I never got the chance. I used it on Brandiss when he was distracted. He should be out for hours.”They continued talking but Brandiss had stopped caring. He didn’t understand what their conversation meant, but he did come away with an understanding that he had been used again and it broke his heart… again.He had to get out of there. There was a woman in the stall on the opposite side and when they wheeled away to x-ray, he saw an opportunity. Brandiss kicked the gurney startling old brown teeth awake. The old man started cursing, then he tried to get out of bed and fell flat on his face. Brandiss slipped into the vacated stall next door. While the doctors were distracted with brown teeth, Brandiss took the opportunity to slip away.***
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Chapter FourFrom his vantage point on the eighty-fifth floor, they all looked like germs to him. He had watched some of the deadliest viruses known to man through a microscope as they did their work… devouring and contaminating all that they came into contact with. That’s how the rest of humanity looked to him from his window high above.
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For decades he and people like him, the elite, have separated themselves from the rest of them. Marrying only with a few select families. Breeding only with the richest and most powerful… thus limiting the gene pool to only the pure. By the time he was born their forefather’s limited knowledge of the human genome had already doomed them all to a life apart from the rest of humanity. He couldn’t bring himself to call the results a handicap, but there were side effects to limiting the gene pool to the few thousand families of the elite. The most obvious were the physical abnormalities that were just now starting to show. Most prominent of those were the children that were being born with only four toes. Still the biggest abnormality was one that was not visibly obvious. It was a weakened immune system that has left them more susceptible to common diseases and infections. Infections that are carried in abundance by the masses below. He would never admit it, but one of the main reasons that his company even formed its genetic research division was to try to find a way to reintegrate his and the families like his back into the world. But the genes of the masses were like poison, ravenous in their assault on the tissue samples taken from his family. Every attempt had failed; every test subject had died a horrible painful death.Nathan Sloane was the CEO and the genius behind the rise of Sloane Industries. Yet he was born into a world with almost no ability to fight off the most common virus. A world where a cold could kill and a scratch could cost a limb. Forty of the eighty-five floors below him are dedicated to providing for him and his family. They lived in a bubble, having contact only with others who were also forced to live in bubbles… less than half a percent of the world’s population. Together they controlled 80% of the world’s wealth, but their world was limited to their towers and what other towers that were within range of the helicopters on their roofs.Nathan Sloane had never tasted alcohol, he ate meat once in his youth, but his digestive system could not tolerate it. For almost all of his life he has been on the strictest vegan diet. No sugar, no salt, no coffee or soft drinks. His food was grown hydroponically right there in the building. It had to be radiated and washed multiple times before it could reach his table. He survived on a diet of fruit, vegetables, nuts and grains.His drinking water, even the water for his shower was highly filtered and processed to a perfect PH balance on one of the floors below. The air they breathed was also highly processed with redundant filters. The interior climate was maintained at 68 degrees regardless of the weather outside. Access to the upper floors by the uninvited was strictly forbidden. A prohibition enforced by a platoon of highly trained security personnel supported by state of the art electronics. He looked out the window at the masses below knowing that he could never walk amongst them. He made decisions daily that would set the course of their lives and none of them even knew he existed. He knew little of how they lived, as a result he had less empathy than one would have for ants in an ant farm. He and those like him lived lives separated from the rest, hermetically sealed from any physical contact with the world forever. Which explained why someone like him could conceive of something like his creature because in his mind, any conceivable repercussions could never affect him.Nathan Sloane checked his watch. Though the hour was late, it was almost time for the meeting to start. He had called an emergency executive board meeting. The jackals, his executive board, were downstairs at this moment going through decontamination procedures. They would hold their meeting with all but one, him, dressed in bulky bio-quarantine suits. It had been a rough month for his company. The security at one of his facilities had been breached and one of his most promising subjects had been stolen. The first four had been dismal failures, but Number Five had been a triumph of genetic manipulation. He was the pride of the program until someone had just waltzed in and taken Number Five away from him. But tonight things were looking up. His team in Los Angeles had retrieved his monster and Number Five was already on a plane to the East coast. He had dispatched two of his most trusted operatives to destroy the facility that had built his monster. By destroying the facility and everyone in it, there would be no evidence of his crimes. So he had called this meeting to make sure that they were on the same page, but additionally to make sure that a security breach such as this would never happen again. ***The police officers and the emergency room doctor hovered just outside of Kade’s stall and talked. Randy Simmons stood by her bed. Brandiss watched him as he pretended to be oblivious to the presence of these men, though it was obvious that he hung on their every word.“As you can see,” the doctor explained, “she is in no condition to make a statement.” The officers peeked in and reluctantly nodded.The doctor and the officers talked for a few minutes and then the officers left the emergency room vowing to return when she was lucid.As soon as the doctor and the officers were gone, Brandiss saw Kade’s eyes pop open. She had been awake the whole time.“I was able to get Jeff out of their facility,” Kade said in a hushed voice. “I tried to reason with him and I know I was close to a breakthrough but for every step forward we took three steps back… he was too far gone in the procedure… he turned on me.”Kade was talking through clenched teeth. The bandage wrapped around her head was a factor, still she was being careful not to move her mouth too much and risk tearing open her stitches in her cheek. Mr. Simmons glanced around cautiously to confirm that she had not been overheard before he answered. He had a stuttered clipped way of speaking that Brandiss always found annoying.“I know… at least, I-I figured as much,” Mr. Simmons said. “If only, if only I had been there…”“It wouldn’t have made any difference, he was so strong!”“When you missed your check-in, I feared the worst.”“I’m sorry… he would freak out every time I tried to use the phone. We had to keep moving, we had to stay ahead of the men who were tracking us so we kept changing motels. We had just landed in a new place and I had left him for only a minute to go get us some food. I tried to call you, but there was no answer. I had just made it back to the motel… something had changed; I thought things were going fine. But… in the end he was too far gone… he lost it daddy. He knocked me out and when I woke up he was cutting on me… he cut my face.” Her voice started to crack. “I think he was planning to eat me.”It was quiet in the stall while Kade composed herself. After a few moments Mr. Simmons spoke again. “I’m sorry about Brandiss,” he said, “but it had been days since I had heard from you. I didn’t know where else to turn.”“Don’t worry about it dad… you did good, still it was hard seeing him again.” “How did you get away from him?”“I always kept a hypo available to use on Jeff but I never got the chance. I used it on Brandiss when he was distracted. He should be out for hours.”They continued talking but Brandiss had stopped caring. He didn’t understand what their conversation meant, but he did come away with an understanding that he had been used again and it broke his heart… again.He had to get out of there. There was a woman in the stall on the opposite side and when they wheeled away to x-ray, he saw an opportunity. Brandiss kicked the gurney startling old brown teeth awake. The old man started cursing, then he tried to get out of bed and fell flat on his face. Brandiss slipped into the vacated stall next door. While the doctors were distracted with brown teeth, Brandiss took the opportunity to slip away.***
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