Excelsior (17 page)

Zorribis cut him off. “And you made that design the centerpiece of the sword.”

“Right. And now it looks a lot more like the sword that’s up in the museum. So let me what you have to shoot onto the sword. I have an idea to make it a little bit more self-contained so you don’t have to use the gun. Oh, there's one more thing.”

“What's that?” Zorribis asked.

“This 'Matty' thing. Let's keep that just between us, okay?”

CHAPTER 8

The cramping in Matthew's hand came just as he finished the last pencil line in his drawing. He sat back and shook both hands, loosening up the fingers as he admired his work. The landscapes finally looked the way they should be, his vision of Denab IV so clear that the mountains could have been traced from a photograph.

Matthew squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and when he opened them, the paper had suddenly grown twice its size. He felt his eyelids getting heavy and massaged his brow with one hand, “Must have been working too hard.”

He lifted his pencil and noticed it was heavier than normal. It was a little larger, too.

“What the hell?” The pencil slipped from his grasp and fell to the floor. His next words stuck in his throat as he looked down at his feet. Any other night they were planted firmly on the floor, but tonight, they dangled with several inches of air beneath them.

Matthew grabbed the arms of his chair – which were further apart than they were before – and pushed himself off. He expected to hit the floor immediately, but an extra second of freefall caused him to yell in fear. When he hit the floor, he went limp and rolled, hoping to minimize any chance of injury.

He stood up, looked around his room and gasped. His chair towered over him, the seat ten feet away from the top of his head. The pencil he dropped was now half his size. Matthew started to hyperventilate as he began to walk out of the room, but with every turn of his head, everything around him grew taller.

He tried to yell again, but this time, no sound escaped his lips. Beads of sweat poured down Matthew’s face when he heard thundering footsteps that felt like small tremors. A looming shadow suddenly blocked out the light and he slowly looked up to see its source.

Matthew gazed upon what looked like a 20-foot-tall cut-out of Excelsior. This particular version of Denab IV's savior was a design that Matthew hadn't drawn since he first tried capturing him on paper seven years ago. Excelsior was black and white with no contouring; his yellow eyes the only color. He was a paper doll drawn by a child and just about as anatomically correct. However, this didn't make him look any less threatening or soften the fear as Matthew stared up at him.

The giant two-dimensional figure opened its mouth to speak and raised its right foot off the ground directly over Matthew's head.

Excelsior's voice boomed through the room with a mixture of authority and pity. “I… am… sorry!”

The giant foot came down. Matthew screamed.

*   *   *

The screaming echoed in the bedroom as Matthew bolted upright into a sitting position, his eyes still wide in terror. He looked around the room - all of his furniture was the correct size. He untangled his feet from the sweaty sheet and swung them over the side of the bed, taking a deep breath of relief as they easily hit the floor. Odd. The legs of his pajama pants were halfway up his calf. Matthew stood and tugged at his waistline. The beautiful abs he received remained as flat as yesterday, but somehow the pants felt as if they’d shrunk in the night. He stood and stretched.

Rip! Matthew looked down and saw his shoulder muscles bulging out of the armholes of his pajama top. He took the shirt off and rolled it into a ball and fired it into the trash basket in the corner of his room. Bulls-eye. Was it his imagination or did the distance to the corner of the room seem shorter this morning?

Matthew gave a shudder, thinking of his dream. Everything was changing, his body, his uncle, his life and most frighteningly, his identity. Today he would hold the sword of Excelsior. He wondered if any amount of instant conditioning would make him strong enough to carry it.

*   *   *

Carl sat quietly at his console, his eyes glazing over as they stayed fixed on the monitor. He seemed so spaced out that it took Melissa six finger pokes on his shoulder to get any sort of response. On the sixth poke, Carl snapped.

“Stop it!” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “How long have you been doing that?”

“Long enough to see the line of drool coming out of the corner of your mouth,” Melissa said. When Carl moved his hand to wipe his mouth and felt nothing, Melissa smiled. “Made you look.”

“So mature.”

“I'd ask if you were dreaming about me, but I already know the answer to that.”

Carl smiled back at her. “You know me so well.” He then looked back at the monitor. Everything was unchanged. “How long do I have to keep looking at that thing in the chamber?”

“Oh, you mean, Ritgen-Man?'” Melissa rolled her eyes as she exaggerated the name. “You know that Teddy is taking full credit for this regeneration miracle. If we don’t watch the monitor and contact Dr. Ritgen as soon as we see something new we’ll be Teddy’s academic bitches forever.” She hopped onto the console and crossed her legs, then looked down at Carl. “By the way, it will sound really good during your oral dissertation when you call him a thing.”

“Listen catty, I’m not stupid,” Carl responded. “So what do you think that thing is?”

“I don't know, and quite frankly, I don't care. A desiccated corpse can’t regenerate living tissue, it’s against the laws of nature. It’s obviously some sort of elaborate hoax and we’ll be the idiots who fell for it.”

Suddenly a monitor grabbed Carl’s attention. He leaned forward to get a closer look and cranked a dial to get the camera to zoom in.

“What's up?” Melissa asked.

“I don't know. I could have sworn something in the chamber was moving.”

“What do you mean, moving?”

“Just what I said. There's something in there, it looks like a spark.” As the camera zoomed in, there was a glint of light. Carl looked closer. “Do you see that? There's something glowing in there. What do you think that is?”

Melissa looked at the screen and shrugged. “Maybe it’s one of the special effects they rigged up. We both know that the technology doesn’t exist that can restore mummified remains. Obviously this is some sort of set up to make Ritgen look good and grab funding and media attention. He was talking about going on television.”

Carl snorted. “Some scientist. So let’s beat him to it and go check it out.”

“No. I want to wait for Ritgen to come back and let him check it out. That's what he wants, anyway.”

“Well, Ritgen is my Ph.D. advisor. When he says jump, I have no choice but to ask ‘how high?’ And I know he's going to ask for full details. Come on.”

“You’re such a gullible chump, playing right into Ritgen’s hands.” Melissa said as she followed Carl.

The assistants could see their breath as they approached the chamber and peered inside. The “Ritgen-Man” looked like it had just died yesterday; what had been fossilized remains were now replaced by a body completely replenished with an intact skeleton, internal organs and flesh covered in greenish scales. Its fingertips had small, razor sharp points, and the right hand was tightly clutching something.

Melissa pointed to a gaping wound that was still visible on the shoulder and chest.

“It looks like he tried to pick a fight and got torn apart for his troubles.”

“That would explain how it died,” Carl concluded. “But what is it, where did it come from?”

“Industrial Light and Magic,” snarked Melissa.

Suddenly, Melissa noticed the glow that had caught Carl’s attention. Whatever was emitting this light was in the Ritgen-Man’s hand. Melissa pointed to the light source and looked up at Carl. “Was this what you saw?”

“Yeah, that’s it. What the hell would cause a glow like that?”

“Want to open the chamber and see?”

Carl shook his head immediately. “Oh hell no.”

“Don’t tell me you’re scared.”

“We don’t know what this is and I’ve seen enough horror films not to make the dumbass mistake and open something up that looks ‘interesting.’”

“So what do you want to do, then? Call up Ritgen and have him look at it?” Despite Melissa’s proximity to the hatch, she couldn’t hear the voice that resounded in the chamber.

“Your time has come, Danaak! Arise!”

“Absolutely,” Carl answered Melissa's question, thankful that he came to his senses regarding this...

CRASH! A million diamond-sharp slivers of glass exploded into the air as Danaak's left hand burst through the glass covering of the chamber door and grabbed Melissa by the throat. Carl stumbled back and fell over his chair.

He watched as Melissa’s “Help me!” was squeezed silent by Danaak as he tightened his grip on her neck and sat up in the chamber. Slowly, the reptilian visage turned toward Melissa and regarded her bulging stare. A sound between a hiss and growl escaped to hang inquisitively in the air. Danaak’s inhuman shriek tore through the laboratory as he flung Melissa into the wall with a sickening thud.

Carl stayed frozen on the floor where he sprawled. Dumbfounded, he saw Danaak hold up an exquisite, glittering jewel the same bitter yellow as his eyes. He pressed it against the middle of his chest and, as the jewel started to burn into his flesh, he winced in pain. After a moment, he pulled his hand away and the jewel remained embedded onto his body, its energy throwing sparks as it sealed up the gaping wounds on his chest and shoulders.

Carl gasped.

Danaak turned toward Carl, his head slightly cocked. Carl scrambled backward to regain his footing, frantic to be away from the creature and its malevolent gaze. Danaak regarded Carl’s floundering almost quizzically for a moment then turned toward the reviving Melissa, her breathing like gravel in a vacuum cleaner.

Danaak shook his head at the sound, and then his face twisted into something that resembled a smile. He looked down at his chest and placed the palm of his right hand on the jewel. A brilliant light erupted from the jewel into the palm of his hand, which he turned toward Melissa and unleashed with a blinding blast.

Melissa’s scream of agony was cut short. She looked down at her chest and saw no blood, no flesh, just a perfect circular hole of ash that grew larger with each passing second. The ash completely consumed her torso, then her arms and legs, and finally her head. Carl stood in shock and terror, as Melissa's gray ashen remains fell to the floor with a puff of smoke.

The surviving lab assistant hoisted himself over a console and raced for the door as Danaak again held his hand over the jewel. The last thing he saw was that blinding light filling the room as Danaak unleashed the force into Carl's back. Carl was knocked to the floor with a mangled shriek of anguish as he was consumed, his body burning away to nothingness.

Satisfied, Danaak stepped out of his chamber and examined the two piles of ash. Despite the resemblance, it was clear these beings were not Denarians. The jewel had made disposing of them easy, even pleasant, but he had no doubt that they would have been easy prey even without it. He looked around. The scientific equipment was crude but serviceable, certainly not as good as what his Denarian puppets could devise. Where was he? He stepped forward to study a computer screen then froze.

A sallow glow enveloped him and his face went slack. Then he spoke, his voice dripping with condescension. “My Lord. How - good to be with you again.”

*   *   *

Nocterar's eyes were immobile slits as he meditated in his quarters. It felt so rewarding to get this kind of piece and quiet, knowing that General Hodera was doing her part to spread the word that he had returned. It would only be a matter of time before all of Denab IV was returned to its state of slavery. Nocterar and the rest of the Krunation Empire could then continue the work they had begun so long ago at his master’s bidding.

While he rested his body to restore its power, Nocterar's mind reached out into the universe. The jewel was out there - somewhere. And Nocterar was certain Danaak had it.

Danaak. The Krunation emperor felt a breach in his composure at the mere thought of that ingrate. Where could he be? Nocterar sunk deeper into his meditation. There. A familiar energy stirred through his body. His mind reached out and he knew that Danaak held control over the  jewel.

“I am here, my Lord,” the jewel called to its true master. “And I have awoken your servant.”

As the voice chimed through his head, an image formed.

Nocterar could see a scaly hand not unlike his own tap into the energy of the jewel and use its power to vaporize an indigenous life form. The scene grew clouded, then vanished.

A sneer twisted Nocterar’s lips as he hissed, “Traitor.”

*   *   *

The glow that had enveloped Danaak's body faded as he was pulled with a powerful force from the lab.