“I’m not dizzy anymore; I just feel super tired all of a sudden. I guess my evolution is more complex than we realized, ‘cause I’ve never done that before,” She looked to her brothers.
“I wish we had time to explore this new skill. Who knows, maybe it could help us fight Williams on a whole different battlefield?” Alik thought out loud.
“Maybe we can use it,” Margo said thoughtfully. “God gives us gifts and expects us to use them. Try to reach out to Williams, Meg—just as you did with Creed. Try to take away that anger you sense in him.” Margo was kneeling beside her daughter, looking intently into her eyes.
“I’ll try, but please don’t get your hopes up. I really don’t even know what I’m doing,” Meg shrugged apologetically.
Her mother nodded. “It’s okay, Meg. Just try. The worse that could happen is nothing, right?”
Meg closed her eyes, focused her energies once again to seek the venom flying through the sky toward them. He was easy enough to find. She reached out with her heart, as she had done moments ago with Creed, and tried to toss it over the blackened poison of Williams’ soul.
Chapter 3 A Demon with Wings
Dr. Kenneth Williams sat in his plush, navy leather recliner on his personal jet en route to the Hawaiian Islands. His fourteen soldiers, his Perficio Res, as he liked to call them, were barely able to control themselves enough to stay seated. The physician he brought with them had given the soldiers sedatives, enough to knock out a buffalo, but it had only taken the edge off their violent, erratic, beautiful behavior. Dr. Williams smiled a bloody-gummed smile.
“Sir?” The physician was trying to get his attention now.
“What is it, Dr. Chaunders?”
“Sir, I apologize for interrupting, but I’m concerned that the,” the sniveling little man hesitated, “soldiers are getting too restless and will need additional help managing these confines during the rest of the flight.” He looked back at the metahumans nervously. One was cracking his knuckles repeatedly; three were scratching as if they had ants crawling on their skin. Two more were mumbling to themselves while a couple others were gnawing on their lips making them bloody. The rest had taken to throwing eight-inch knives repeatedly at the galley wall, making some sport of it. It was a very disturbing sight.
“They do not need additional sedatives, doctor,” Williams spat. “I want them sharp and battle-ready once we’re on the ground. They have a job to do.”
“Y-yes, sir. Of course, you’re right.” The small doctor shuffled back to his seat, the furthest away from the demented metahumans as he could possibly sit, and kicked himself the umpteenth time for accepting the position at the Facility. He rubbed the greasy bridge of his nose under his glasses and thought back to the day he excitedly accepted the promotion of head research scientist for Dr. Kenneth Williams. He couldn’t have said no to all those zeros, but he wished to God he had. Now he was stuck. He was in too deep, and he knew it. Williams would just as soon see him dead as let him resign.
Dr. Chaunders use to wonder what it would feel like to dose himself with the Infinite II serum he handled on a daily basis. Looking at Dr. Williams, he was excruciatingly glad he never did. Glancing nervously to Dr. Williams, Chaunders grimaced. The sixty-year-old doctor looked like his head got caught in a meat grinder—the white shirt of his collar under his standard three-piece suit was stained red. One of his ears looked to be hanging by a flap of skin. His eyes leaked blood indiscriminately, and every one of his teeth had fallen out.
Good grief, Chaunders thought. Dosing myself with the Infinite II serum would have been more like a fate worse than death. Then his eyes darted back to the metahumans, twice exposed, as they cheered loudly at some grotesque thing one of them was doing to his own finger. Hell, this was all a fate worse than death, he groaned.
Sniveling little weasel, Dr. Williams mused at his physician. He chuckled to himself at the fear he smelled reeking off the man. It was a rancid mixture of sweat and urine and stung his raw nose with deliciousness.
That’s when he felt it.
Not it, her.
He felt her probing.
She was stretching into him. Searching.
He cringed at the purity of her spirit as it touched his blackened soul.
He could almost smell her scent Strawberries and something else…lilies? Yes, she smelled of fresh strawberries and Star Gazer Lilies.
The scent made Williams’ bloodied skin crawl, but he held still.
He wanted her to feel welcomed into his cancerous heart.
He wanted to infect her.
Ensnare her.
His beautiful little M57.
He wanted his daughter back.
Chapter 4 The Demon’s Abyss