Cho stood there for a moment. The confusion etched onto his features. His eyes darted between the display and Salvatori. Then the look on his face turned from confusion to anger, and he slapped Salvatori hard across the jaw. The old man cried out and toppled backward to the lab floor.
“You’re lying!” Cho screamed. “You’re just trying to trick me. And I won’t let you stand between me and my rightful destiny. Nothing will stand in my way!”
Salvatori could see that Cho was beyond rational thought, and nothing he could say would convince the man that what he was attempting was insane. Salvatori used the corner of one of the workstations to pull himself up and said, “Fine, Phillip. Test out your serum. I’d prefer it if you killed yourself anyway.”
Cho’s mouth curled into a snarl, and he shook with rage. “How about I kill you first?”
Salvatori watched the pistol buck in Cho’s hand and a line of flame shoot from the gun’s barrel. It took him a moment to register that Cho had just fired the weapon. It took another moment to feel the pain in his abdomen.
He suddenly felt light-headed. He touched a hand to his side. It came back smeared with red. He reached out to grab the table, but he missed and crumpled to the floor.
Cho smiled down at him. “Don’t feel bad, old friend. We can’t all live forever.”
From his place on the floor, Salvatori watched as Cho retrieved a syringe from the table. “Here’s to immortality.” Cho plunged the needle into his arm and pushed the amber-colored liquid into his body.
Cho stood absolutely still for a moment. Then he said, “I can feel it. I can feel myself changing! It’s working!” The look on the younger man’s face was euphoric at first. He laughed uncontrollably and spun round in a little circle.
But then his limbs started to shake. His arms clutched around his abdomen, and he doubled over. “No. What’s happening?”
Using the distraction to his advantage, Salvatori dragged himself across the tile floor toward the exit. At his back, Cho began to scream. There were no words that he could understand. It was a feral howl of agony spoken in the language of pain. He refused to look back. He focused on the door ahead, and within a moment, he was in the hallway.
The screaming continued within the lab along with the sounds of shattering glass and breaking equipment. The change would be slow and terrible. He pitied the man, but he had tried to warn him. Although many would say that Cho had gotten what he deserved, Salvatori knew that no man or beast should ever to have to die like that.
27.
The pain had become its world, agony extinguishing all thought and drenching its mind in chaos. It fought against the madness and searched for a way to make the pain stop. It shrieked out for help. It slammed against walls and rolled on the ground, but nothing seemed to break the hold that the agony had upon it.
Its vision came and went, giving it only scattered, incoherent glimpses of its surroundings. It could feel the eyes melting within its skull and then reforming. It would be granted a second’s worth of sight, and then the darkness came again. Then the process repeated itself over and over.
But then, through the flames, it saw something ahead. A dock. A lake. Water.
It charged blindly forward until it felt the ground disappear beneath its feet. Then the cool water washed over it, extinguishing the flames. Relief flooded its mind along with other strange emotions that it could not fully comprehend. It allowed itself to sink slowly below the waves and into the depths of the lake.
After a moment, its lungs cried out for air, but it didn’t want to leave the soothing cocoon that had rescued it from the pain. It fought against the urge to breathe for a few moments longer but then acquiesced, and its gigantic limbs clawed for the shore. It grabbed hold of one of the dock’s wooden support pillars. Talons dug into the wood, and hand over hand, it hauled itself onto the dock’s surface.
It laid there for a moment on its back. Wispy clouds shifted through a light blue sky. They masked the sun, but it could see the light from the giant star illuminating the edges of one section of the canopy.
A flash of memory shot before its eyes, and it realized why the small thing it had been had volunteered to become something more. It remembered the fire now. It remembered burning. It remembered the immense pain. But it wasn’t a memory from this life. It was from a time when its flesh didn’t grow back, a life where it had a wife and a little boy. It caught a glimpse of their faces with surprising clarity. It fought to remember their names, but the effort made the memory of their faces fade away.
It knew that they had died somehow but couldn’t recall the details. The emotions surrounding their deaths were still intact, however, especially the guilt. It realized that it was to blame for their deaths. Its flesh had been badly scarred, and it had spent a long time in some sort of hospital.