Mastermind, page 9
part #1 of Mastermind's Mutants Series
Ray looked deeper through the portal. He saw the vast open desert – and what looked to be a pyramid in the distance.
“Luke?” he leaned back, calling down the apartment hallway. “Luke, are you home?”
No response.
Dawn pulled herself closer to Ray, holding onto his arm.
“Luke?”
“Maybe we should’ve gone to my place,” Dawn said, trying to be funny.
“I swear we’ve entered the Twilight Zone or something.”
“Or something.”
“Luke!” he called again. “Dammit, where is he?” He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Luke.
It went straight to his voicemail.
“Um, Luke…? Where are you? You okay, buddy?”
Dawn bravely stepped closer to the portal. She looked around the edge, seeing more of the world on the other side. She raised her finger, about to poke it through.
“What are you doing?!” exclaimed Ray.
She pushed her hand all the way through the opening. “I think it’s real,” she said.
“Just stay away from it.”
“I think…” she said, looking back at Ray. “I think it might be a portal or something.”
“A portal?”
“Yeah. I acted in this really low budget sci-fi short one time. The characters used ‘trans dimensional portals’ to travel to other worlds half way across the galaxy. Only there was this evil alien race that wanted to use the portal technology to attack Earth and enslave the human race.”
“I… see.”
Dawn shrugged. “Well, you have a better idea?”
“No.”
She waved her hand through the opening, feeling around.
“You think… Luke went through it?” Ray asked.
Dawn shrugged. “Only one way to find out. You feel up for another crazy adventure tonight?”
Ray laughed. Not really. But Luke was nowhere to be found; he should’ve been home by now. Why wasn’t he answering his calls? Ray stared at the open portal. Knowing Luke, if he saw this, he couldn’t resist going in and exploring it. He sighed. “Dammit, Luke.”
Dawn walked over to Ray. She held both his hands, looked him in the eyes, and smiled like an excited little girl. “Just imagine what might be on the other side!”
“Wait,” said Ray. “Just a minute ago, you were still in shock from the whole mind control guy. And now you want to go do this?”
“You don’t?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying, I mean…” He looked at her and he looked at the portal. “How do we know it’s even safe?”
“We don’t.”
“How do we know the portal won’t close on us as soon as we walk through?”
“We don’t.”
“How do we know somebody worse than Mr. Mind Control isn’t waiting on the other side?”
“We don’t,” she said.
“Then how can you so confidently want to just walk through and see what’s on the other side?”
She nodded. He had a point. And then she placed both her hands gently on his face, looked deeply into his eyes, and kissed him. “Because,” she said, “I learned a long, long time ago that when opportunity presents itself and you feel afraid – do it, do it anyway, and do it right away.”
He gave her a curious look.
“Everything I’ve ever done worthwhile has always been scary at first.”
“But, what if something goes wrong?”
“Then you live and learn. And you grow from it.”
He looked at her carefully. She was serious. She meant it.
“There’s always something to be afraid of, if you let it,” she said. “But an opportunity to cross through a real-life portal and set foot on another world? That comes once in a lifetime. Less. I bet this is the first time anyone’s had this opportunity.”
“Yeah, but… where the hell did it come from? Why is it here in my apartment?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. But I bet the answers are on the other side…”
Ray shook his head. This was crazy. But… she was right. Luke was off work today. He didn’t have much of a social life. So he probably stayed home watching movies or playing games all day. And wherever this portal came from, if Luke was here when it happened, he almost definitely would’ve walked through it.
He sighed.
“Alright.”
She smiled with excitable enthusiasm. “Awesome!” She got up, holding his hand, leading them to the portal.
“Wait, wait. One second,” he said.
“What?”
“We need to go in prepared. I’m a business man. I like to plan for contingencies. If we get stranded on the other side or find Luke dying of heat exhaustion or something, we need to come prepared.”
“Right. Good thinking.”
“I’ve got some old camping gear in my closet. We need to bring extra water, some food, a first aid kit… Maybe change our clothes into something more fitting. It might be a little loose on you, but you can borrow some of mine.”
“Already trying to get me in your pants, eh?” she smiled.
“Well…”
She giggled. “Right, right. Got it. I’ll help you pack.”
“This way,” he said, leading her to his room.
Chapter Eight
Mastermind
The mysterious man sat in the back of a police car, hands cuffed, waiting silently and patiently for just the right moment.
There were two officers up front; one driving, obviously, and the other undoubtedly his partner. Neither were the one who shot him. He couldn’t believe it. Some son of a bitch actually shot him.
Whatever. There were more important things to think about.
Doctor Troyd finally did it. The formula worked. Only took three batches, just short of a dozen “volunteers”, and nearly a half a million dollars to make it work. But the crazy and morally-gray scientist finally came through.
Doctor Troyd named the formula “BioGen-X.” The first batch, despite promising results from animal lab tests, proved completely ineffective. It made the volunteers sick and woozy, with some vomiting or diarrhea, and a few days later killed them with some strange kind of cancer… but beyond that, nothing. If he wanted to take over the world by making people sick, that version of the formula would’ve worked fine.
But that wasn’t his plan.
Batch #2 was a little more effective. But the results were unstable. It caused various random and unpredictable mutations, but every single volunteer died in the process.
Up until this point, the mysterious man had selected his volunteers from society’s forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Homeless men and women from Skid Row, teenage runaways, unemployed drug addicts. That sort of thing. People no one would miss. People that had already disappeared from society’s attention.
But, after the second batch of BioGen-X, he began to realize just how sensitive the formula was to the volunteer’s health and biochemical state. Everyone he had picked up so far were alcoholics and drug addicts, with traces of God-knew-what still lingering in their systems. Not to mention any possible number of random diseases and illnesses they had picked up from living on the streets, eating out of dumpsters, and having unprotected sex with questionable characters.
It was a little riskier – okay, a lot riskier – taking ordinary, healthy, hygienically-pleasing people as volunteers. But it had to be done.
And it was worth it. It worked!
He smiled. It worked.
He looked down as the bullet wound in his left shoulder. It still hurt like a bitch. They were going to pay for this. All of them. With their lives.
No, better yet, with their loyalty. He would enslave them all. The arresting police officers. The blonde girl and that black kid that escaped. All of them. He’d make them his mutants, enslave them, and control them for the rest of their unnatural and inhuman lives!
Obeying his every command. Bending to his every whim. Following every order. Living only to serve him.
“Muwahahah!” he laughed out loud.
“Hey, quiet down back there!” ordered one of the officers.
Later at the police station, the mysterious man found himself at the wrong end of an interrogation table inside a locked room.
A young woman in uniform dropped several photos in front of him. Cliché, yes, but to be expected. They were crime scene photos of that kid who died. The half-mutated failure, all because the donor blood from the dog was clearly infected.
“What the hell is going on here?” she demanded. “We can’t even ID this … man … because his fingers aren’t even human anymore! Safe to say his dental records are going to come back negative, too.”
She dropped the police file photo of Tiffany next. “Looks like she was more successful. What kind of sick, twisted—?”
“You really want to know?” he asked her, smirking.
“You’re looking at life in prison for this shit. Kidnapping, illegal and unethical human experimentation, murder… You sure you don’t want a lawyer?”
“I don’t need a lawyer,” he said calmly.
Doctor Troyd was a little less confident. He panicked. He cracked like an egg. Once they had an interpreter in the room, he told them everything.
“Please,” he signed. “I’ll cooperate!”
Unfortunately, he wasn’t much help. He merely confirmed Ray and Dawn’s story. Information they already knew. Doctor Troyd was unable to name the mysterious man. He swore he didn’t know it either! And he felt terrible about the conditions the animals were left in, and what happened to the kidnapped victims. He couldn’t control any of it. He got no special pleasure out of it. The mysterious man was powerful. And even though Doctor Troyd seemed to be immune to the mysterious man’s mind control – there were other ways of getting leverage.
“My daughter,” he signed. “Please, protect my daughter.”
The scientist told them the whole story. He used to have a prestigious job doing research at a major university, until budget cuts ended his employment less than a year away from tenure. He tried to get another job at another university, but there were hiring freezes everywhere!
Desperate to survive and provide a home for his teenage daughter, he found work doing freelance research and development for various pharmaceuticals and biotech firms.
But it wasn’t very steady, credit card bills stacked up, and he fell behind on his mortgage payments. He was two weeks away from getting kicked out onto the streets. Then the mysterious man somehow came across him – and offered him an irresistible deal.
If Doctor Troyd agreed to develop a mutagenic chemical that met certain requirements, the mysterious man promised more than just money. He promised something that money couldn’t buy.
“And what’s that?” asked the interrogator.
The translator signed it for him.
“My daughter,” the scientist signed. “She sings.”
“And he threatened to harm her if you didn’t help?”
“Yes, but,” signed Doctor Troyd, “if I helped, he promised to restore my hearing.”
His wallet and other personal items were out on the table. He reached for his wallet, opened it up, and pulled out a picture of his daughter.
She was beautiful. Maybe seventeen years old.
“She won the state competition,” he signed. “She’s flying to Vegas for the regionals next month.”
The interpreter translated all this for the interrogator.
“I just want to hear my baby girl sing. She’s all that’s left of my wife.”
Meanwhile, back in the previous interrogation room, the officer was quickly losing patience.
“Dammit!” she shouted. “Tell me what you were planning to do with these kids!”
“Tell me,” he grinned, and said to her, “what’s your favorite animal?”
And speaking of animals, Tiffany was dealing with her own private interrogation.
She at least had the sense to ask for a lawyer to be present during her questioning. It was late at night, and she had no money or matching ID, so a public servant had to be called in last minute.
When he arrived, he stopped dead in his tracks, and stared at the girl in disbelief for several long seconds, before snapping himself out of it. “Okay,” he said. He was a young man, well dressed in his suit and tie, carrying a briefcase. Barely old enough to have just graduated from law school. “This is…” he said, seemingly at a loss for words. Suddenly he lit up with excitement. “…going to re-write the law books! I’m going to be famous! Wahoo!” He actually jumped for joy into the air, briefcase in hand, suit and tie and all.
“Counselor,” said one of the two officers present in the room.
“Yes, right, of course. I’m sorry.” He eagerly sat down next to Tiffany. He leaned over to her. “We’ll have your case tied up in court for years while the politicians, legislature, and religious interests debate over the definition of ‘person’.”
She gave him a strange look.
“Oh, no offense. I’m just saying – the law only applies to humans.”
“Oh,” she said with a smile. She started to flap her tail excitedly. She was neither human nor animal. She was something new. Something special. She liked being a cat person more and more with each passing second.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the police station, the arresting officer worked closely with one of the detectives. They stared at a computer screen currently trying to match the finger prints.
“Still nothing? How long does this usually take?”
“No matches in the national database. I’ve extended the search to partnering nations. Could take a while. But if he had a criminal record in the States, we would’ve found something by now.”
“What about his plates?” The officer checked his notepad. “Black 2011 BMW 550i sedan, license plate M-A-S-T-R-M-N-D. What’s the DMV record say?”
“Blank.”
“What?”
“There’s a record for it, but all the fields are blank. It’s like someone went in and erased everything.”
The officer sighed. “Think he’s some kind of hacker?”
“Sure, why not? Mind control, turning college kids into mutant monsters, computer hacker too… Might as well call him a ‘super villain’ and save the paperwork.”
“That’s not funny.”
“What about his personal belongings? Any leads there?”
The officer had everything in a small box beside him. “There’s not much. Car keys, cell phone, wallet with a few hundred dollars cash and no IDs or credit cards, Doctor Troyd’s business card… And whatever the hell this is.”
He held up a small pink crystal that gave off a faint glow.
“Precious gem of some kind?”
“Maybe.”
“Alright, we’ll have to go with that. There’s gotta be a paper trail somewhere. Find every gem dealer in the area and see if any of them recognize this guy. I seriously doubt he picked this up at the local mall. And while we’re at it, let’s check any museums or exhibits that reported any thefts recently.”
The mysterious man was anything but cooperative. He almost acted as if this whole scenario amused him. He was confident, he was cocky, and he couldn’t care less what they said to him.
Life in prison? Doubtful.
Death row? Improbable.
Finding out his real name? Even less so.
He told them nothing. He gave them nothing. He just taunted and mocked them, every step of the way. Strangely, though, he never once used his mind control powers. He could have. He had plenty of opportunities. But no, for now, he just played along.
He was up to something.
He was about to make his move.
Finally frustrated with him, they threw him in a holding cell with a handful of other random criminals. Car thieves, bank robbers, drug dealers. The random scum of the day, caught by the ever-vigilant Los Angeles Police Department.
They were an intimidating and frightening crowd, to be sure. And the mysterious man, in his well-dressed expensive suit, looked dangerously out of place inside the same metal cage.
But he wasn’t scared.
Nope, not one bit. Okay, maybe a tiny bit, but he didn’t let it show. “Gentleman,” he approached the leering crowd. There were a couple females in the group too, one of which was so butch, she could’ve easily been mistaken as a man. “And ladies,” he added, with some disgust. “I have a proposition for you…”
“Wait a second, we got something,” said the detective. The computer apparently found a match in one of the international databases.
The arresting officer took a closer look.
“No, this can’t be right,” said the detective.
“What?”
“Look at the file photo.”
It was a man – but the similarities stopped there. The person in the picture was easily 70 years old, if not older. Thinning, gray hair, he did not age well.
“You sure it’s a match?”
“Prints match. And the face recognition software says there’s a 92.7% match based on the eyes, nose, and facial structure. This is our guy.”
“It can’t be. You saw the guy I brought in. He’s what – in his 30s? Maybe we’re looking at his father.”
“With the same finger prints?”
“Oh. Right.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” said the detective. “There must be a mistake. This can’t be our guy.”
“You think he hacked this file, too? Linked his prints to some random old guy?”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t put it past him,” said the detective. He read the file report. “Says here this man is named William Gates.”
“Bill Gates? As in Microsoft?” remarked the officer. “He’s totally playing us.”
“No,” said the detective, reading the rest of the file. “Says here he was born in Amesbury, England in 1938. No police record until about five years ago, when he was arrested for stealing some artifact from the British Museum in London.”
“Okay, so our perp found someone with similar facial features and linked his own prints to him, in case he ever got caught. We’re still at square one.”
