By Science Betrayed - part 2
by Phishhed

Dr. Patrick Wilson PhD. understood what was happening to him; he was a brilliant chemist and very quick minded, but that didn't help him one little bit. The world was melting. All around him the walls began to sag and run, tables full of equipment were collapsing to the floor and turning into puddles of steel and glass. He heard a strange booming echo, as if someone were beating a steel barrel in a long tunnel. It took a moment to realize it was his own heart beating.

Stunned, Patrick turned to stare about himself when he saw a nightmare rising out of the floor. A tall skeletal figure with bright shining eyes and wearing a white lab coat was standing before him.

Dr. Wanzor was still lying on the floor where Wilson had thrown him when he heard the explosion and saw a bright flash of purple light. He rolled over to see Dr. Wilson standing there staring about like a child at the county fair searching for his lost mother; firghtened, alone and seeking a familiar face.

Wilson had his right hand wrapped about the left wrist, his left hand gashed and bleeding. But as Wanzor watched, the wound began to close and the purple glow surrounding it began to fade. He struggled to his feet, and as he straightened up he looked directly into Dr. Wilson's eyes. The pupils were enlarged and still growing. Within moments they had swallowed the irises and even the whites of the eyes. As Wanzor gazed into the now pitch black orbs, Wilson began to laugh.

Patrick didn't even notice that his hand no longer hurt. He was staring at the figure before him when it occurred to him that it wasn't a skeleton but a scarecrow. Seeing the lab coat he realized that Dr. Wanzor had turned into what he always looked like, a big goofy scarecrow. This struck Patrick as funny and he began to laugh..... and laugh..... and laugh. He couldn't stop.

Dr. Wanzor was quickly becoming frightened. He began to see ghosting images of swirling colors. The room seem to ripple around him. He felt as if he were trapped in a soap bubble at the bottom of the ocean. Wanzor closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head to clear it; when he opened them again everything seemed normal.

Wilson was just standing there, cackling like a maniac. When it became apparent that he wasn't going to stop anytime soon, Wanzor rushed into his office to call General Steiner.

General Gerhard Steiner, Chief of R&D for the Department of Defense was a fanatic. His loyalties had been questioned during World War 2 because he was a first generation German-American, his Family having emigrated to the United States just before he was born. Steiner had been sent to fight in the Pacific instead of Europe, 'just in case'. The suspicions of his superiors had wounded him greatly and he was determined to prove himself at any cost. He was an American, Dammit! He would show them, show them all! Now, after all these years, he could finally prove them wrong with the success of his new project.

Project Super-Soldier: Take several highly trained soldiers, inject them with drugs to heighten the mind, expose them to Energy X and create living weapons to fight America's enemies. If a few men were lost; mutated, driven insane, or killed by the process; well... that was a price he was willing to pay.

The General needed results and he needed them now. He couldn't hide his illicit money transfers and personnel movements much longer. If he was discovered before he had produced his Super-soldiers then he would be disgraced forever; but if he could produce, if he could create a new weapon for his country, then he would be a hero. Nobody questions the methods of a hero.

Steiner was in the underground shelter/lab when the call came in. An orderly gave him the phone.

"Wanzor? Why aren't you down here? This experiment... WHAT? I'm on my way!"

Steiner threw down the phone and gathering the guards from the door, he pelted up the stairs.

Meanwhile, Patrick had begun to regain control of himself. His laughter had subsided to a few giggles, and, gasping for breath, he climbed slowly up from the floor where he had collapsed in hysteria. Once again he looked around the room.

As he surveyed his surroundings; a small part of him remembered that he had been drugged, that he was hallucinating and none of this was real.. But it didn't matter. In the corner, a white shrouded pile of equipment was muttering to itself under its sheet. A spiderweb in the corner detached itself from the wall and began crawling across the ceiling.

That's when the giant frog ran into the room.

General Steiner was red-faced and puffing when he careened into the lab. His green army uniform was damp with sweat as he stopped and looked at the young man before him. The man's eyes had become two windows into midnight. He yelled for Wanzor.

"Gribblaflert!!" The big green frog with the red face and black bushy mustache must have been gargling peanut butter. Chunky peanut butter.Wanzor ran back into the room. The frog and the scarecrow spouted gibberish at each other for a few moments. Wilson was about to start giggling again when two more frogs arrived.

Dr. Wanzor heard the General's roaring voice and ran to the lab. "General!" he called, "Wilson has been exposed to the formula, there's no telling what he's capable of now!"

Two armed soldiers came rushing in, rifles at the ready. General Steiner pointed at Wilson and said "Shoot that man!" Wanzor had a bad feeling that that was not a good idea.

The two new frogs were armed with gigs like the ones he used to hunt frogs with when he was a kid. only these were much, much bigger. The first frog, the one with the shiny bits across his chest, yelled again. This time it sounded like Pinocchio when he was under water. "Sh-goooglt thaggrt maggln"

The two new frogs raised their prong bladed spears and were ready to throw them. Instinctively, Patrick threw his hands out as if to ward off the blow. A bizarre thing happened then; (Patrick was rapidly becoming tired of bizarre things happening around him) a green bubbling mist shot from his outstretched hands and flew straight at the frogs.

Startled, yet trained to obey, the soldiers raised their rifles to their shoulders. The weird guy with the black eyes thrust his hands out before him and they were enveloped in a green cloud. A cloud that burned. Wanzor watched in horror as the acidic cloud engulfed the three soldiers. They began screaming in pain and a gun went off, its bullet gouging a hole in the cinderblock wall. The General collapsed to the floor hands covering his face as the guards ran screaming from the room. Wilson turned to look at him.

Patrick was dazed. He had felt something leaving his body when the green mist had appeared, streaming from his hands. Now he felt the ....energy, building again. He turned to Wanzor who now looked almost completely normal. Patrick's focused his mind; he remembered now who had done this to him. He remembered what had happened. He began to get angry.

"Wanzor! You did this! You betrayed me, corrupted my work!" Patrick's anger grew, he wanted Wanzor to know what he had done, wanted him to experience the freakish hell that reality had become for him.

He felt a warmth in his hand. He looked down and there was a blue sphere, like a bubble in his palm. Somehow, he knew that this was the way to make the man pay for his crime. He screamed "Welcome to my world, Doctor!!" and threw the sphere at Wanzor.

Dr. Wanzor only had time to cringe before the blue bubble struck him. It felt like he had been hit by a huge wave of water. As the bright liquid splashed away he felt everything change. Bright lights were blasting in his ears. He could see his screams bouncing off the walls as his tongue tried to crawl backwards down his throat

The sensations were too much for him. Wanzor squeezed his eyes shut and clamped his hands over his ears. His brain squirmed out of his skull and flew away into the darkness.

Patrick watched as Wanzor stopped screaming and turned into a slack-jawed idiot. The Doctor collapsed into a heap on the floor; saliva began to drip, then gush from his mouth. Patrick backed away from the expanding pool of slime and bumped into the table behind him. Purple fire burned into his spine and he whirled around.

On the low table before him sat a small purple metallic monster; tentacles waving and spitting purple sparks. He grabbed the thing and threw it through the glass of the window. Patrick rushed over to see the little monster fall to its death.

He looked out through the shattered glass and saw.... a metal canister trailing wires arcing through the air directly onto a car. In the instant before the explosion he could see a woman behind the wheel. A red-headed woman. Another woman who looked just like her was just getting out of the passenger side.

The car exploded in a blinding flash of purple and orange. The girl getting out of the car was thrown by the shockwave through the plate glass window of the store that they had parked in front of. Her body flailing, she crashed into a display of new color television sets. Sparks flew and electricity arced. The girl lay still.

Patrick looked at the burning vehicle. He recognized it; it was his fiancee's car.

"Noooo!!"

Believing that he had just killed his fiancée, in shock and terrible grief he leapt from the window.

As Patrick was falling the three stories to a certain death, the ground rushing and swirling up at him, he panicked. Fear rose up in him and he rose with it. Wailing his grief to the world, Patrick flew into the sky.

What Patrick did not see as he disappeared in the distance, leaving behind the scene of his betrayal and his tragedy was a shape emerging from the wreckage of a burning car. The shape of a woman aflame, burning but not consumed. Nor did he see the gleaming gun-metal blue-black hand rising out of a pile of smashed electronics.

To be continued...