Ayla and the Late Trevor James Goodkind - a Whateley Universe Tale

by Diane Castle

“Trevor James Goodkind!  You are late!”

That was Mother.  She wasn’t pleased.  Dinner was at eight, regardless.  It didn’t matter whether we were running late, or someone got hungry early, or the estate was under attack from a ravening horde of mutants.  (To be fair, the third thing has never happened, although the estate has a security force in case of problems like that.) 

No matter how busy projects were at the labs, Mother always made sure that she was home in time for a proper dinner; and she expected all of us to do likewise.  Even Father.  And since Father was Bruce Gregory Goodkind, CEO of Goodkind International, I found it interesting that he chose to adhere to Mother’s rule, even when he had important negotiations going on at headquarters.

I quietly sat down at the dinner table and picked up my napkin.  Everyone else was well into the salad course.  I ignored my brother David’s barely-suppressed look of amusement and politely explained, “I’m sorry, but I did ask David to tell you that I was feeling a bit under the weather, and that you should start without me.”  I had been feeling a tad light-headed, on and off since the afternoon before.  But a Goodkind doesn’t complain.  And it hadn’t been that serious.

I was just hoping I wasn’t coming down with something that would make my travel plans problematic.  On Sunday morning, as soon as the early church service was completed, Mother and I would be flying down to Virginia with the family’s second butler Andrews.  I was starting French Camp on Monday, and Mother would be flying down with me to make sure I was all settled in.  She couldn’t stay too long though, since she was needed at the labs early Monday morning.

My sister Connie wasn’t paying any attention to one of her younger brothers.  She was busy regaling Mother with a detailed discussion of where she was going to go shopping the next day with her friends Covina Walcutt-Scott and Terraline Barre-Church.

Father put down his fork and checked, “Are you sure, Trev?  Arkwright called me this afternoon around two, and told me that you looked somewhat faint.  Did you go to the company clinic?”

I let Tabitha put my salad plate in front of me, and then I spoke.  “No sir,” I admitted.  “I really didn’t feel that I had the time.  Mister Arkwright has been waiting for the summary reports, so I needed to get them compiled before I left for the day.  After all, I won’t be back for over a month.”

I wasn’t sure if Father would want me to put myself ahead of the projects for the division in which I was interning.  I looked around the table quickly, and it was clear from the faces that everyone else was silently voting 3-1 for ‘self’.  My older sister Connie clearly felt that way, as did my younger brother David.  Mother obviously wanted me to take care of myself, since I was her child.  My older brother Paul looked like he was pleased with my decision.  That meant a lot to me.  As a child, I had always looked up to Paul and tried to be the sibling with whom he wanted to do things.

Also, I knew that some day, Paul would be running Goodkind International, and I would be second-in-command.  Once Father retired to Chairman of the Board and named Paul as CEO, I might be the CFO or CIO for the entire company.  Someday I would probably by the CEO of Goodkind International, to Paul’s Chairman of the Board.  All that might mean more if you realize that the Goodkind family as a whole (including all businesses, real estate, and privately held stock) is worth about 750 billion dollars at Forbes Magazine’s last count.

I took a bite of the salad.  Hermione, our sous-chef, usually made the salads and desserts.  This one was a masterpiece.  The light touch of real Gorgonzola in the homemade vinaigrette perfectly set off the bite of the radicchio and the zest of the baby mustard greens.  I didn’t feel a need to undercut Paul and take over the family business, but I had decided that I was going to find a way to steal Hermione when I moved out and had my own home.  Our chef Raoul was quite good with main courses and soups, but Hermione was a genius in the making.  A true artiste.

When I had been little - well, smaller than I am now, and much younger - there would be eight of us around the family table on most nights.  But Greg and Heather were no longer living on the estate.  Greg was the oldest child at twenty-four, followed by Paul at twenty, Heather at eighteen, Connie at sixteen, myself at fourteen, and David, who was twelve but about to have his thirteenth birthday.  Father was fifty-seven, while Mother was fifty-one.

Once upon a time, my oldest brother Greg was being groomed to take over from Father.  But about six years ago, Greg had decided that he didn’t like his life, and he had walked out on us.  I didn’t know what he did, or where he went, because Father had decreed that Greg was not to be mentioned in the house again.  I really wanted to know, since Greg had been my idol when I was little.  However, a Goodkind is respectful of family.  So I reined in my curiosity and did as I was supposed to do.

But Greg’s disappearance had left a power vacuum behind.  Father, as CEO of Goodkind International, was responsible for the fortunes of all the Goodkind companies, as well as the Goodkind Research Laboratories and the rather diverse family projects.  His brother Herbert - my uncle Herb - was devoting his efforts toward good works, such as his creation of the ‘Knights of Purity’ and his funding and guidance for Humanity First! Projects.  His other brother Theodore - my uncle Theo - had chosen to focus on several private companies and projects that he could direct, rather than being under Father’s thumb as a part of Goodkind International.   So Father had immediately begun grooming my second-oldest brother Paul and the next two children in the family, Heather and Connie, to take the helm of the conglomerate.

Paul had stepped up to the plate, so to speak, and was now spending every summer working in the head offices.  That was a lot of effort for him, because he was at Yale and majoring in business.  The work meant that he couldn’t take the summer courses he wanted to take, and it meant that he couldn’t go visit his girlfriend during the summer.  He had been dating the older daughter of the Greek ambassador for almost a year, and she was back in Athens for the summer while he was stuck here in Westchester.  The only times I got to be around Paul these day were transit time and dinner time.  ‘Transit time’ was when we were both going to and from headquarters in the limo with Father, and then we were primarily discussing business.

Heather, on the other hand, had quickly decided that she wanted to be a famous model instead.  Heather never had good grades in her schools, but she wasn’t a complete idiot, like Mother’s niece Paris Hilton.  (Yes, that Paris Hilton, who spends her time doing those humiliatingly bourgeois reality shows where she demonstrates that she and her BFFs are even more clueless than they look.  You have no idea what it’s like having to sit next to her at a family dinner and then put up with her babbling for an entire meal.  At least her younger sister isn’t such an embarrassment to the entire Hilton clan.)  Still, Heather has always been the best-looking girl around, with definite supermodel looks.  She got her face from Mother, and her height from Father.  Lucky her.  At 5’10” she’s tall enough to do modeling, but not so tall that she can’t get work in Hollywood as an actress.

I had given Heather some advice on breaking into the movie business, but of course she wasn’t going to listen to one of her snotty baby brothers.  Even if I was right, as usual.  I had carefully explained that she didn’t need to wait until she reached twenty-one to get her 6.5 billion dollar inheritance; she had been impatiently waiting for that moment, so that she could buy a motion picture studio and get the roles she wanted.  But she hadn’t wanted to take my suggestion: use her available funds from her stock portfolio to buy film rights on any books she liked, so that she could produce the movie herself and play whichever role she wanted.  Being a producer was too much work for her.  I mean, she would have gotten nearly twice as much money for her inheritance if she had simply agreed to work in the family business.

Connie had demonstrated, over the course of two summers, that she simply did not have a head for business.  Math and science were real weak points for her in school, and that showed.  She was a disappointment in several departments.  The only department where she worked out was Human Resources, and she didn’t like working there.  I didn’t understand what her problem was.  It wasn’t as if she were going to be allowed to start off as a member of the board of directors.

At that point, Father had tried inserting David and me into the corporate structure, even though we were much too young to be regular interns.  David was growing up into an outgoing, virile guy like Father, and he did quite well in the Sales and Marketing department at the main offices. 

I had always been smaller, and more introverted, and smarter.  Two summers ago, I had interned in the legal department.  That had been a truly exciting summer for the division.  That was the summer of the Emil Hammond trial.  I’m sure you remember that in excruciating detail, but it was amazingly exciting seeing it from the viewpoint of the Goodkind legal department, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I belabor the point.

I missed some of the proceedings and legal machinations that summer, because I spent most of the first half of that summer at German Camp, and most of the second half of the summer at History Camp.  But it was a great summer nonetheless.

Dr. Hammond had been captured in the early spring by the Empire City Guard, who had gotten some sort of tip about Hammond’s location.  He allegedly had five mutants guarding him.  The battle between those five mutants and the Empire City Guard leveled nearly twenty blocks in Queens, and the fire department had needed three days before they were sure that all the fires were out.  Emil Hammond was wanted in the United States and four other countries on charges including kidnapping, murder, violation of civil rights, and illegal testing of pharmaceuticals.

The Goodkinds immediately put together a ‘dream team’ of attorneys to defend Hamond.  The team was led by F. Yew Baddeley, but the lead defense counsel was Johnny Dickran, while the attorney charged with rebutting prosecution evidence was the world-famous defender Alan Sugarbitz.  Based on what I saw while working in the department, the lawyers we hired ended up costing around four million dollars, while the behind-the-scenes efforts of the Goodkind legal division for the case ran about twice that.

Alan Sugarbitz brought in expert witnesses who debunked all the prosecution evidence and humiliated the public prosecutors.  The so-called evidence included fingerprints (which didn’t match those of Dr. Hammond) and DNA (which our experts said showed obvious signs of tampering).  Dickran made the eye witnesses look like a bunch of fools, particularly some of those freaky mutants who were brought in to testify.  None of the ‘eye witnesses’ of the past excesses of ‘Doctor Emil Hammond’ from years ago could identify our Dr. Hammond as the person who had operated on them or tested drugs on them.  Not only couldn’t they identify him from a photo, none of them could pick him out of a lineup of five men.  Dickran became famous for his statement to the jury: “If he can’t be picked, you can’t convict!”  Then defense lawyer Roberto Cardashio showed that the five mutant ‘bodyguards’ were in fact a hit team trying to kill Dr. Hammond, and not bodyguards at all.  The two of those five who had survived the fight with the Empire City guard even admitted it in interviews from their confinement cells.  (They were too dangerous to bring into the courtroom, of course.)

Finally, F. Yew Baddeley made a summation that was quoted by every Humanity First! Leader around the world.  I had it printed up poster size and framed on my wall in my office area.  Once Baddeley was done, everyone in the jury agreed that the problem was a bunch of mutants who cared more about themselves than about protecting the people of Queens.  Sure, there probably was some villain out there capturing mutants, but it was probably some vile mutant supervillain who was using the name ‘Emil Hammond’ to discredit a brilliant baseline researcher who was still trying his best to save humanity even though he was now in his seventies.  The Empire City Guard was lucky they didn’t get lynched after that summation.

Dr. Emil Hammond was quickly acquitted by the jury, and instantly went to work for my uncle Theo at a Goodkind research lab that was secret enough to protect Dr. Hammond from mutants who might be trying to track him down and kill him.  Months after the trial was over, I did find out from Mother that Dr. Hammond had used the services of some mutant codenamed Mask to change his appearance and fingerprints several years before he was captured.  That didn’t bother me in the least.  After all, we all knew that mutants were genetic freaks who were serious threats to America, and they had to be stopped, one way or the other.

That had been the best summer, and I didn’t expect that level of excitement to repeat.  One summer ago, I had worked in the accounting department, and had done very well, even with breaks for French Camp and Computing Camp.  It hadn’t been anywhere near as exciting as my summer in the legal department, but that wasn’t the fault of the accountants in the department.  This summer, I had been working in the IT (Information Technology) department.  That had been fairly interesting, as we had several projects going that were aimed at protecting our files and our hardware from mutant attacks.  I had been collating reports from twelve separate projects for Mister Moishe Arkwright, the deputy head of the IT department, just that afternoon.

I finished my salad as Tabitha brought out the main course.  The fresh fish in Béarnaise sauce went perfectly with the haricots verts and potatoes au gratin.  It was excellent, but I made sure I had plenty of room for Hermione’s dessert.  I listened attentively as Father discussed with Paul the progress of some negotiations with several sheiks in Saudi Arabia.  Then Mother started talking with David about the plans for his thirteenth birthday party, which was only a couple weeks away.  David couldn’t resist throwing a few nasty smirks my way.

As the baby of the family, David was always a pain in my.. ahem.. side about things like birthdays and sports and physical size.  He was eighteen months younger than I was, but he had been bigger than me for probably five years.  Now he was much bigger.  Or rather, I was much smaller.

I was fourteen and six months.  I tended to stress the extra months, since I was painfully small for my age.  At my age, being 4’9” and a mere 80 pounds was just too small.  That put me down around the lowest percentiles for both male height and weight.  Father and mother had even brought in doctors several times to see if I had a medical problem, or if I need to go on a regimen of HGH to make me grow.  I was pretty sick of doctors in general after all that, so I hadn’t complained to Mother or Father that I had felt a little light-headed several times in the previous few days.

I couldn’t help being small, but my younger brother David really liked to rub it in.  He was only a year and a half younger than I was, and he was already as tall as Mother.  Like my other brothers, he was well on his way to being a strapping youth who would grow into a macho man like Father.  Father was about 6’2”, and still in very good shape for a man in his fifties.  I, on the other hand, was well on my way toward being the guy that yells out, “The plane boss, the plane!” 

David liked to call me “Mini-Me” and “Munchkin” and “Shrimpy”, and a host of other uncomplimentary names.  Of course, he was usually careful to do it when our parents were out of range. Well, I was definitely the midget of the family.  Mother was around 5’6”, and both my sisters were even taller.  Connie was only a fraction of an inch taller than Mother, but Heather was already up in supermodel territory.  Paul was about six feet, and was just about the same height as Uncle Theo and Uncle Herb.

David was really excited about his birthday party, and about moving up so he was ‘only one year younger than Shrimpy’.

“David!”  Mother didn’t allow that sort of language in public, much less at the dinner table.  “Apologize to your brother at once!”

“Mother, it’s all right.  I am a shrimp,” I calmly admitted.  It wasn’t that I was trying to protect David.  No, I was going to be quite happy to see him get in trouble in a few seconds.  For several weeks, I had been trying a new strategy: if none of his insults appeared to bother me, he might eventually give up.

Mother glared at David and snapped, “If I hear you making fun of your brother one more time, you may find yourself missing your own birthday party.  Instead, you could spend the day perhaps.. cleaning up after Emil at the labs.”

David looked like she had just punched him in the stomach.  “I’ll behave, Mother,” he said in what was almost a whimper.  It would have been utterly humiliating for all his friends to find out that he had managed to get himself grounded from his own party.  But we had visited Mother at her labs before, and we knew exactly what she was threatening.

Dr. Hammond (only Mother and Father and my uncles were allowed to call him Emil) was working on a project trying to track down a possible mutant infectious agent that might be some sort of virus or retro-virus that was affecting the human genome and interacting with what Mother called ‘the meta-gene complex’, which I knew came from some highly classified MCO research documents.  He was working with a lab full of primates, and the clean-up for two hundred primates would be horrific.  Particularly for David, who had needed to be hosed off in one of the emergency showers during our visit: he had taunted two caged chimpanzees until they had suddenly retaliated.  They flung poo all over him.  You have no idea how hard it was not to laugh out loud at that.

Mother had the kind of pull that could let us into a secure Goodkind research lab.  She was the head of research at Goodkind Laboratories, Inc.  Of course, that means that she couldn’t waste her time being a stay-at-home mom when she had crucial work to do.  Mother was overseeing several major research projects, including a project that might even find a cure for mutants.  I knew a lot about her work, since I had spent the previous spring break working at her offices, overseeing the process of reorganizing the lab files.  Mother wasn’t just a lab director.  She was also an heiress in her own right.  She was Helen Cassandra Hilton-Goodkind, M.D., Ph.D., one of the Hilton heiresses.  She and Father hadn’t started dating until she completed her Ph.D. and started work at our labs as a meta-biologist under one of the larger Ezra Tyrell Goodkind research grants.

Actually, I knew more about Mother than that.  I had always looked up to her as my personal model of overcoming adversity and pain through learning and determination.  Mother had a clinical case of mutophobia, caused by a horrible trauma from her childhood.  When she was 6, she and her older sister Elizabeth had been kidnapped by two mutant political terrorists, Maelstrom and Tearaway.  Maelstrom, among other powers, had a fear aura and manifested monsters.  Tearaway ate strips of human flesh, among other hideous traits.  The police forensic reports suggest that Tearaway ate Elizabeth alive, in front of Mother.  Mother was institutionalized for three years after she was rescued.  But she overcame all that, and became one of the biggest names in the world in mutant biology research.

So it was a foregone conclusion that she would go to work at Goodkind Research, and would catch the eye of the Goodkinds.  Father saw a kindred spirit in Mother.  After all, she was virtually the personification of the Goodkind family motto: Fortitudino per scientiam.  Strength, through study.

The Goodkind family can trace its American roots back to Colonial times, and that motto has been a part of the family since Ezra Tyrell Goodkind of Yonkers, New York was one of the most important silversmiths in Revolutionary America.  During the late 1700’s there were many American silversmiths, but the ones with the most important and long-lasting contributions were the Goodkinds, the Thurbers, and the Reveres.  Then, in the early 1800’s, Colonel Edgar Gabriel Goodkind turned one of the many upper-class American families into the wealthiest, most powerful family in America.  We’ve retained that position ever since.  Oh sure, the Walcutts have made similar claims, but in my opinion they’re a bunch of poseurs.  “We’re descended from one of the signers of the Constitution!”  Oh, big deal, I mean, who isn’t?

David forced himself to apologize to me, but he still had to leave the table before dessert.  Which was his loss, since Hermione had prepared a fruit trifle that was to die for.

After dinner, I talked with Father and Paul in the study.  They both wanted to hear about the IT projects and get a summary of departmental progress, and they knew that I would be leaving for French Camp in little more than a day and a half.

Father was concerned about the stability, because just a week ago, he’d had to get Human Resources to fire one of our Senior Programmers.  Goodkind Security had been doing a standard security check on him, and had found out that the guy was some kind of cross-dressing pervert.  For several years now, Father had been really concerned about homosexuality and woman-dressing and all that sick stuff.  I didn’t know exactly why, but I didn’t need to know.  As Father and Mother and Reverend Moss all stressed, that stuff was gross.  And people like that were not good employees, because they had a secret that could be used for extortion.

Mother dropped in to give me a quick hug and make sure that I was going to get enough rest.  She was looking forward to flying me down to French Camp after Sunday church and getting me all settled in.  She reassured me that Andrews would have everything I needed, including new sheets for the dormitory bed and some decent bathroom clogs.

By the time Father and Paul and I finished, I was feeling somewhat under the weather.  I knew I hadn’t over-eaten that night, but my stomach felt like it was filled with lead.  I practically had to drag myself to my bathroom.  It was almost as if I didn’t have the strength to hold up my own body.  I knelt in front of the toilet for several long, miserable minutes before the feeling passed.  It’s funny, but when you’re bent over a toilet, wishing that the awful feeling in your gut would go away, time slows to a crawl.  I wonder if Einstein thought of the Theory of Special Relativity while kneeling over a toilet, wondering why time had nearly come to a standstill.  I felt rotten enough that I almost rang for one of the servants.

After what felt like several hours, but was really only about ten minutes, the feeling passed.  My guts stopped feeling so heavy, and the weakness that had gripped me just vanished.  I stood up, and I felt fine.  That was odd.  I showered, keeping the sprayheads on my face and head, with the water a hair cooler than my usual preference.  I toweled off and slipped into my silk pajamas.

Since I was feeling much better, I went ahead with all my usual nightly rituals.  I used some anti-acne cream, and I used the electric toothbrush before setting it back in its recharger cradle.  I went to my dresser and changed my photo file.

The photo file was a company invention.  It was a 5”x7” brushed aluminum frame that held  a megapixel display with up to 500 photos stored in ROM, so you could choose any picture you wanted to display.  I set it to a picture of me as a six-year-old, playing outside with my idol Greg.  By the time I climbed into bed, I felt pretty much the same as always.

I didn’t realize that after this day, nothing would ever be the same.

Saturday, July 22, breakfast time

The knock on my bedroom door woke me up.  “Master Trevor, your mother would like you in the breakfast room in ten minutes.”

“Thank you, Molly,” I answered politely, even if I didn’t feel polite.  Molly was just doing her job as one of the upstairs maids, and you simply do not mistreat servants.  I wasn’t ready to get up, but I didn’t get a lot of family time during the summer.  Or during the school year, for that matter.  This was the last day I would be at home for over a month, and then I would only have a short break before I returned to Chilton.  Once I was at Chilton, I would have a long weekend home for Thanksgiving, three weeks for Winter Holidays, and two weeks for Spring Break.  That would be only five and a half weeks at the family estates until next summer.

I stretched slowly and forced myself out of bed.  I felt much better than I had last night.  But I was still tired.  I padded across the bedroom and tugged my Pierre Cardin silk pajamas down so I could go to the toilet in my private bathroom.

It was the smallest bathroom on the third floor, barely twenty feet by thirty feet, but I wasn’t going to complain.  Goodkinds don’t complain and whine, they fix things.  I was planning on moving into my older brother Greg’s bedroom, even though Mother had been rather odd when I suggested it.  Greg had been my big idol when I was little, and even though he had been gone for six years, no one would tell me why he had left the family and never returned.  I wasn’t even allowed to ask about Greg.  It was as if we were in Regency England and he had been committed to Bedlam.  Still, Goodkinds are respectful of family, so I did as Father requested.

Still, I couldn’t even begin my planned move to the other end of the third floor until after French Camp.  This would be my third summer there, and I was already fluent in French.  As a fourteen-year-old with fluency, I was going to be one of the advanced students with ‘counselor’ privileges and much better accommodations.  I could hardly wait.  For the first half of the summer, I had been at European History Camp in Bern, Switzerland.  That had been sweet.  My fluency in both French and German had been particularly helpful.  Several French girls had been falling over each other to make nice with the Goodkind who could speak French.

But my move to Greg’s old room would have to be swift.  After French Camp and only a week back home, I would be off to Chilton Preparatory Academy for fall term.  I had been picked on rather a lot as one of the smallest junior high boys, but this year I was going to be in the high school.  I was hoping things would be better, or at least that my academic achievements would be regarded more highly.  As one of the valedictorians of my junior high class, I was hoping for admittance into one of the academic secret societies, like the Cranium and Ulnae Society.  That would give me more protection from the school bullies too.

A large part of the problem was my name.  No, not ‘Trevor’.  My last name.  The name Goodkind has meant wealth and power for over a century.  We’re one of the richest families in the world, right up there with the Walcutts and the Gates and the British Royals.  But ‘Goodkind’ has meant something else to many people.  For far too many people, it meant ‘mutant hater’, which wasn’t really rational.  Goodkinds don’t hate mutants, but we do understand that they’re a deadly threat to The American Way, and life as we know it.  So the Goodkind name meant ‘Humanity First!’ and my Uncle Herb’s ‘Knights of Purity’ and the Mutant Commission Office.  It meant mutant research, such as my mother and her underlings do.  But that meant that some dirtbag with some disgusting mutant relative might take the Goodkind name personally, and want to take that personal anger out on someone like me.  Not to name names, but <cough> Vaden Carruthers fit that bill.

Then the Goodkind name also meant other Goodkind children.  As I have found out to my misfortune, my older sisters Connie and Heather were the royalty of their grades in Chilton and their other schools.  Connie and Heather were both beautiful, rich, powerful.. and bitchy.  I’ve found a lot of people who hated me just because of how they were treated by Connie or Heather, or both.

That sow Tansy Walcutt, in particular, has been out to get me since about second grade.  Her parents were an important part of the Walcutt empire, so she has always had all the money she could ask for.  Unfortunately for her, money does not buy good looks or a good personality.  She’s an ugly, vicious, zit-faced, buck-toothed, hateful tub of lard.  At least she was the last time I saw her.  Apparently, not only was she as homely as a mud fence, but she had the bad taste to become a mutant a couple years ago, and her parents had to hide her away somewhere.  All I can say is ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’.  If anyone deserved to get turned into some kind of hideous mutant freak, it was that bitch.

Vaden Carruthers and his brother Phillip have been almost as bad, even if they didn’t start on me until I started at Chilton in seventh grade.  The Carruthers were old Boston money, but had the deeply disturbed attitude that the one or two mutants in their family were not a problem, but some sort of bonus.  How’s that for frightening?  Maybe they’ve been brainwashed by some esper in their family.  Maybe they’re just idiots.

Okay, okay, so my sisters probably started the whole thing with Tansy, and maybe with Vaden too.  I heard them, more than once, getting on Tansy’s case.  We used to see the Walcutts at social events, although my parents won’t even attend a gala if Darryl and Marissa Walcutt are going to be there.  Imagine the nerve of them, showing up and acting like their daughter wasn’t some sort of dangerous weirdo.  But I could guess what Connie and Heather were doing to Tubby Tansy at school, since I heard them lambasting Tansy plenty of times at parties.  It would be “Oh, hello, Tubby.. I mean Tansy.”  Then the other would tag-team, “Is there a difference?  Tubby, Tansy…  Tansy, Tubby…”  It was hard not to laugh, even if Father didn’t like that sort of behavior in public.

So the fat, ugly warthog took it out on me and David.  David rapidly grew into a big, athletic kid who could kick Tansy’s buck teeth right up her lard-laden ass if she hassled him.  So she eventually limited her torments to me, and a few other kids younger than she was.  You know, picking on those who couldn’t defend themselves against a girl two or three years older than they were.  When I was eight and she was ten, it was a nightmare.  As I learned how to use the power of the Goodkind name, it gradually dimmed to a major headache.  Man, was I glad when she went mutie and had to leave school!  I hope she’s locked away in the deepest cells in ARC or something.

While I was thinking about all that - French Camp and Chilton and bullies - I thoroughly brushed my teeth and then flossed.  I knew I had a dental checkup coming as soon as I got back from French Camp.  Then I slipped on my morning robe over the pajamas, and prepared to spend some time with Mother.  Plus, Hermione had told me she was making eggs Benedict for me this morning.  You would have had to give me the plague to keep me away from Hermione’s eggs Benedict.

I strolled down the hall toward the stairs, and I started feeling better.  I was feeling really light on my feet.  I reached the top of the stairs, and I moved to one side as Teresa came walking up the other side of the stairs carrying some flowers, which were probably going to go in the vases in Mother’s sitting room.

That’s when it happened.

I suddenly felt cold, and like I wasn’t wearing my pajamas.

Teresa dropped her flowers and let out a scream of raw terror.  She lurched away from me as she began screaming in Spanish so idiomatic that I couldn’t begin to follow it.  The words I did catch included ‘diablo’.  She stepped back away from me without thinking, but she was on the stairs, so she started to fall backward down most of a flight of stairs.

I tried to save her.  I lunged for her.  That just scared her more.  But as I caught up with her and grabbed her wrist, my hand went through her arm!  That scared the crap out of both of us.  I fell into her, but I didn’t hit her.  Instead, the impossible happened.  I fell right through her!  For a split second I couldn’t see, as my head passed right through her chest.  My head came out her back, as she screamed like I had just ripped out her ribcage.  Then I was falling down the stairs, with her falling right behind me.

It looks so easy in movies.  But falling down a flight of stairs, even carpeted stairs, hurts.  Especially if you have nothing on to protect you.  I went splat at the foot of the stairs, and a moment later, Teresa landed hard, right on top of me, smashing my face into the carpeted landing.  Teresa scrambled to her feet and ran screaming down the second floor hallway.

“Ouch.”  That wasn’t the most brilliant riposte I’ve ever said, but it was all I had at the moment.  What the hell had just happened?  Where were my clothes?  Had I really gone right through Teresa like a ghost or something?  Had I died during the night and now I was a specter?  If so, I was the most solid ghost I had ever heard imagined.  And I hurt all over, which didn’t seem very ghost-like.

“Oh my God!”  That was definitely David.  I looked up the stairs, and he was standing there holding my pajamas in his hands and looking at me with a look of raw terror on his face.  David was a pretty brave guy.  He liked playing football, and he would stand up to anybody at school.  But he was so pale he looked like he was about to faint.

I could see the expression on his face change as he figured it out.  His face went dark with fury, and he screamed at me.  “Freak!”  He bolted down the stairs and jumped past me as if I were a nest of cobras.  He sprinted down the next flight of stairs, taking them two at a time, only now he was screaming for help.  “MOTHER!  FATHER!  PAUL!  SOMEBODY!”

I couldn’t figure out what had happened.  In retrospect, it’s easy to see why.  I couldn’t let myself figure it out.  The answer was just too hideous.

I hurt all over, but I couldn’t just lay there naked.  I scrambled to get back up the stairs.  I rushed into my room, slammed the door, and ran to my dresser to pull on something.  Anything.  I yanked on some briefs and a polo shirt and a pair of summer-weight shorts, only moments before I heard the rushing in the hall outside my door.

David ran in, with Mother in tow.  He babbled out a disjointed rant about me suddenly glowing blue, and then passing right through my clothes, and then attacking the maid, and going through her like a ghost, and knocking her down the stairs.

I tried to explain, but Mother was obviously believing David, and not me.  She was getting paler by the second, and she was staring at me as if I were a werewolf or something.

I tried my best, “Mother, please, it’s not like that, something happened, I don’t know what, but I’d never attack one of the servants, and…”  As I talked, I put my arms out, begging her to understand.  Begging her to hug me and tell me it would be all right.  I took a step forward…

“NO!”  She screeched at me and backed up until she ran into the wall.  The raw fear on her face was horrifying.  She was trembling as she shrieked, “Stay away from me, you.. you.. gene scum!  Don’t touch me!”

I froze.  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  “M-mother?  Please, help me.  Please!”

She choked out, “J-just stay here.  In your room.  Don’t go anywhere.  Don’t attack anyone.  I’ll have help here as soon as I can.  Don’t hurt anyone else.  Don’t destroy anything.  Don’t…  Just don’t…”  She practically ran from the room, with David right on her heels.

Gene scum.  Freak.  Good God, they thought I was some sort of mutant!  What was wrong with them?  I turned back to the dresser, and I saw myself in the dresser mirror.

Oh.  My.  God.

I was blue.  I had this faint blue tinge all around my body, as if I were glowing with a blue light.  I put my hand down on the dresser to steady myself, and my hand passed right through my photo file and through the wood.  I hastily yanked my hand back, but I was unharmed.  The dresser was unharmed.  There wasn’t any hole in the dresser, and I knew I hadn’t been hurt.  I had passed my arm through the dresser the same way that I had passed through my pajamas and I had passed through Teresa.  But whatever I had done to the photo file was making the thing re-scan for new pictures, as if I had messed up the electronics.

I was a mutant.

I was one of those hideous, dangerous, malevolent, genetic deviants that Goodkind International and all of the Goodkind family were trying to stop.  I was a freak, just as David had said.  I had spent my whole life preparing to follow the Goodkind traditions.  Now I had met the enemy, and it was me.

My first impulse was to scream like a maniac.  My second impulse was to vomit in horror.  My third impulse was to sit on my bed and cry.  My fourth impulse was to scream some more.  I didn’t do any of those.

I stood there, watching my blue tint in the dresser mirror.  I realized that if I could pass through dressers and clothes and people, I was at risk of falling right through the floor if I wasn’t careful.  What would happen if I fell from this floor, all the way down through the basements into the earth?  Would I die down there, unable to breathe or see or escape?  And would everyone else be ecstatic to be rid of me?

The blue tint faded away.  Still scared silly, I touched the top of the dresser again, and was rewarded with a thump as my hand slapped the inlaid wood and went no further.  I was safe.  For now.  Until I manifested my bizarre mutant ability again.  Or I showed another mutant ability.  What if…

I could hardly swallow as I thought about some of the mutant abilities I had read about.  What if force beams began erupting from my eyes, or everything around me caught on fire, or I exploded in a ball of radiation?  I could kill everyone in the mansion.  I could kill everyone on the entire estate!  Oh Lord, please don’t let me hurt anyone!

I sat on the bed and prayed.  I prayed for control.  I prayed to keep everyone safe.  I prayed that I would wake up and find out this was all a horrible nightmare.

As I prayed, I felt that heaviness in my guts once again.  Was this more mutant weirdness?  Did I even want to find out?  I knew the answer to that one.  No, I definitely did not.

But the heavy feeling was spreading through my whole body.  What was happening to me?  I didn’t know, but the bed started groaning.  I started sinking.  No, I wasn’t sinking through the bed, my weight was pushing down on the mattress more and more.  Afraid that I was going to break the bed, I stood up.  The floor started groaning under my weight.  Oh God, I was getting heavier!  Was this going to stop? 

I laid down flat on the floor, trying to spread my weight out so I wouldn’t crash right through the floor into the rooms below me.  The entire floor started to creak and groan.  By then I was sobbing as I prayed for help.  Was I just going to keep getting heavier and heavier until I crashed through the floors and killed myself?  Or could it be worse than that?  What if I couldn’t stop getting heavier, even after I crashed through the floors?  What if I got so heavy that even the bedrock couldn’t stop me from sinking down toward the earth’s core?  What if I got so heavy that I became like a neutron star or a black hole?  Would I destroy the planet?  Oh please God, don’t let that happen!

I have no idea how long I laid there hoping for the heaviness to fade.  A minute?  Ten minutes?  It seemed like a lifetime.  But finally the heaviness seemed to lift, and the floor stopped groaning under me.  I stood up and looked down.  It was hard not to wince when I could see my feet had left indentations in the hardwood flooring before I had lain down.

Feeling the need to wipe the panicky sweat off my face, I walked carefully over to the bathroom.  I soaked a washcloth in cold water and wiped my face.  It didn’t make me feel better.  The terror and revulsion was still knotting up inside me like an angry python.  I was a mutant.  I was a threat.  I was a danger to my whole family.  I needed help!

The faint blue tint started up again on my skin.  I could see it in the mirror.  I looked down at my hands, and I could see the blue color appearing.  I put my hand down on the marble countertop, and my hand passed right through the marble.  I yanked it back.  What if I stuck a part of my body through something solid, and my passing-through-stuff phase ended?  Would I lose that part of my body?  Would I end up horribly trapped, half inside some solid object?  I didn’t want to find out.  I didn’t want to have to find out.

So I just stood there, trying not to move, trying not to pass through any solid objects, trying not to cry, and praying desperately for that blue tint to go away.

After I don’t know how many minutes, I could see in the bathroom mirror that the blue tint was fading away.  I breathed a sigh of relief, but I knew that the relief was bound to be temporary.  There was no way of telling how long it would be before I became ‘heavy’ again, or I became, well, I suppose ‘immaterial’ was the right word.  But it felt wrong.  It seemed like there ought to be some sort of logical connection between these two modes into which I kept sliding.

Were mutant powers logical?  A lot of the classified papers from the MCO that Mother had shown me over the past three years suggested that they were.  Some of the papers suggested that these freaks were accessing energy sources that we simply didn’t understand.  Some of the more recent metaphysics papers had been referencing some papers on something called ‘pattern theory’, but I didn’t have the math or physics background to follow them.  Frankly, Mother didn’t either.  Her degrees were in medicine and biochemistry.  But that was why she hired top-notch researchers in other fields.  Non-mutant, of course.  People like Emil Hammond, or physicist Robert Westerley, who was working at one of our labs in the western U.S.  According to Father, she had been trying to hire some of the big names at DARPA, but some guy named Wiley or Reilly kept blocking her.

Then I felt that heaviness starting again.  Oh God.  I lay down on the tile and spread my body out so I wouldn’t break anything.  This time, I could feel it.  I could feel that I was growing heavier and heavier.  I lifted one arm and waved it around.  I still had as much control over my body as I had when I was normal, but I just felt a lot heavier.  Without thinking, I dropped my arm back down to the tile.

The tile shattered under my arm, as if I had hit it with twenty sledgehammers.

Oh my God!  Oh my God oh my God oh my God!  I tried to freeze.  I carefully turned my head, and my arm was undamaged, but the tile under it was smashed as if Champion had smacked it.  I lifted my arm up, and I could see the indentation I had left.  It looked like a solid titanium arm had been smashed into the tile.  At perhaps a hundred miles an hour.  Florentine tile, in my favorite colors, and it was ruined.

But my arm was undamaged.  I didn’t have a cut or a scrape or a bruise.  I didn’t even have a sore spot.  What was happening to me?!  I stared at my arm in horror and wondered if there was any way to keep from turning into.. well.. whatever I had become.  Or was I still in the middle of changing?  Would I keep changing and mutating and devolving until I was some thing that no longer bore any resemblance to Trevor Goodkind?  Until I was something that no longer bore any resemblance to humans?  It was all I could do not to burst into tears.

I tried to get to my feet without destroying everything around me.  I grabbed the edge of the tub and stood up.  The tile groaned underneath me and cracked.  Oh no.  And then I saw that I had accidentally squeezed the side of the tub too hard.  My hand had crushed the porcelain-finished steel as if it were nothing but styrofoam.  I wanted to lash out and take out some of my terror on something, but I was a lot more scared of wrecking the room if I wasn’t significantly more careful.

So I stepped into the tub and lay down there.  The tub was solid steel, and designed to hold a huge weight of water when completely full.  Maybe it could hold me.

I lay there, trying not to do anything else, while I waited for the heavy feeling to fade away.  While I waited for the inevitable.  I could see what was bound to happen, and just thinking about it made me hurt.

There was no way to fix me.  I was a mutant.  And Goodkinds did not tolerate mutants.  Mutants were terrifying and dangerous and threatening.  There was no way I would be allowed to remain anywhere around the family estates.  There was no way I would be allowed to remain a part of the family.  But I had nowhere else to go.

I was doomed.

Chapter 2 - Exodus

I heard noises in the hall, and I was feeling ‘normal’ again, so I slowly climbed out of the tub and stepped toward the bedroom.  I didn’t realize that I was soon going to be whisked away from everything I thought of as my normal life.

I could see by the clock on the mantle that I had missed lunch.  That didn’t bother me.  Eating was the last thing I felt like doing.  I was wincing at just the thought of what I might accidentally do to the silverware, or the Jacobean dining room furniture.  Or the doors, or the stairs, or just about anything in the house.

I stepped carefully into my bedroom, trying to figure out if I was really at a ‘normal’ level of whatever I was.  I didn’t feel too heavy.  I didn’t feel too light.  My steps sounded like they had a normal weight behind them.  My chest did feel itchy and kind of prickly, and my hips felt sort of sore.  I was really hoping that didn’t mean my increased weight was going to break my bones.. from the inside.  That would be supremely nasty.

The door swung open, and my Father walked in.

I pleaded, “Father!  Please, you have to help me.  You have to get me out of here, away from everybody!”

But Father hadn’t come home alone.  He was followed into my room by two armed guards in body armor and Dr. Hammond in a white lab coat.  The guards pointed their weapons at me, while the doctor edged away from me off to my right.  I was really scared by then.  One weapon was some sort of massive machine gun with a bore that looked like it would fire bullets bigger than Father’s thumb.  The other weapon was some sort of energy weapon that could probably fry me and most of the room.

Father stepped to my left and insisted, “Trevor.  Pay attention to me.”

I looked at him and started to ask what he had planned.  But his plan became fairly obvious.

“Ow!” I squealed, as something jabbed me hard in my butt.  I looked down and saw that there was a tranquilizer dart sticking out of my posterior.  “Jesus!”  I made myself pull that thing out of my rear, even as I looked around.

Dr. Hammond was holding the dart gun that had obviously launched that dart.  The guards had raised their weapons and were pointing them at me in case I did something mutant-ish.  Father was staring at me like I was something horrible and dangerous.  Something totally unrelated to him.

I sank to my knees.  “Please, you don’t have to do this, I would have done whatever you asked, I…  I need help!”

One of the guards snapped, “Just stay put.  Don’t move.  Drop the dart, and just stay there.”

I took several deep breaths, and tried not to move.  I tried not to believe what was happening.  What were they going to do to me?

I closed my eyes, and…

I was waking up.  At least, it felt like I was waking up.  I opened my eyes, praying that it had all been some horrid nightmare…

I was strapped down on a metal lab table under harsh fluorescent lights.  I was in a laboratory.  I was in one of the Goodkind Research facilities.

I tried to sit up, and I received a horrible shock in my neck.  It nearly knocked me out again.  God, that really hurt!  My whole body convulsed, and I think I just about swallowed my tongue.

As I gathered my senses afterward, I slowly realized that a massive collar was surrounding my neck and holding me against the table underneath me.  Security devices were wrapped around my wrists and biceps, pinning my arms down.  Heavy metal straps ran across my chest and waist, securing my body to the table.  More security devices at my knees and ankles held my legs in place.  Something that felt like a helmet was on the top of my head, and I could feel dozens of hard points pressing against my scalp.

“Hello?  Help?  Somebody?”  I tried again, “Anybody?”

Dr. Hammond suddenly loomed over me.  He checked his watch and said, “Ahh, interesting.  You’re not immune to chemicals, but you weren’t unconscious as long as a baseline human of your weight would be.”

“Please Dr. Hammond, you have to help me!  Don’t let me be a mutant!  I know you’ve been working on drugs to slow mutations.  Can you give me something and make me be normal again?”  He just ignored me.  “Please?”

He just looked over at someone I couldn’t see and said, “Note the time of recovery please, Royce.  Do we have enough samples yet?”

The person I couldn’t see, who I was guessing was named Royce, said, “We have the blood samples and the skin scrapings, but not the.. let’s see…  We still need samples of urine, semen, and bone marrow.”

Hammond nodded, “Excellent.  That will also give us a measure of regeneration rate.”

I choked, “W-wait a minute, bone marrow?  Won’t that hurt?”

He smiled evilly, “Why yes, I expect that it would, if you were a baseline…”

Then the unseen voice came over.  It was a nerdy guy in a labcoat, maybe in his mid-thirties.  He had a needle that had to be ten inches long.  I thought I’d faint.

Hammond said, “Let’s try the thigh bone, fairly high up.  That should be extremely painful for a baseline.”

“Oh no!  Oh please, for God’s sake, please d..AAAAAAAAGGGHHHHH!!”

You hear that the human body will quit on you when you’re in too much pain, and you’ll just faint.  I’ve got bad news for you.  That’s a big fat lie.

I think I screamed until I writhed so much that the shock collar went off.  I think that finally knocked me out.

I came to again.  My leg really hurt.  Hammond and his lab assistant were standing there with watches.

The assistant said, “I do believe you were correct, sir.  The bleeding’s already stopped.”

Hammond said, “We’ll keep track of the healing rate.  So far, it doesn’t seem particularly impressive.”

“Yes sir.  Are you ready for the other samples?”

Hammond nodded, and pulled on a pair of heavy rubber gloves.

Oh no, the other samples!  That was a urine sample and a sperm sample, and that meant that he’d have to…

“OOOWWWWW!!”  I screeched in terrified pain as he grabbed my penis and rammed some kind of catheter down it!  “For God’s sake stop!  Oh please st.. OOWWWW!  AAAGGHH!”

It felt like he was ripping the inside of my penis apart.  He didn’t stop shoving that tube into me until there was a small burst of urine into the tube.  He handed the sample off and moved onto the next step.  He picked up a metal pole that was about an inch thick and a foot long, with a big rubber handle at one end.

He casually explained, “This technique was actually developed for getting sperm samples from dangerous mammals.  Elephants, lions, hippos…  It works quite well on gene scum like yourself.”

“Wh-what do you..  AAAGGHH!”

I screamed at the pain.  He just rammed that metal rod right up my ass!  And as I sobbed at the searing pain, he shifted his grip to the rubber handle and…

“AAAAAAAGGHHH!!!”  The electrical shock was so brutal that I just convulsed helplessly.  The pain was overwhelming.  As I writhed, the neck collar shocked me some more.  And some more.  Finally, my body had all the current it could take, and my brain went offline…

I came to once again…

“Fascinating.  Simply fascinating.”  Hammond’s voice made me cringe in fear.

“Do you think this explains the reported effects?”

“Some of them.  I believe it’s obvious what the mutant is doing, but the possible range of effects is simply not clear.  We’ll want test box 4, I believe.  The deviant can change its density enough to pass through solids, but I suspect that it won’t be able to pass through a level six force field.”

I pleaded, “Please stop.  Please, I’ll do whatever you want.  Just stop hurting me!”

Hammond coldly replied, “Oh, don’t worry, you’ll do whatever I want.  In time.”

What the hell did that mean?  Was he going to keep torturing me until I cracked, like in spy movies?  Or did he have something even worse in mind for me?

Hammond and his assistant were both standing much farther back this time.  And I realized that I had passed through something solid while I was being shocked, or while I was unconscious.  The catheter was still in me.  Some sort of tube was painfully rammed into my rectum as well.  But my right arm was free.  I had passed through both cuffs.  And my right ankle was free.  I could feel it.  Every time I moved my right leg the hole they had punched in my thigh ached horribly, but I could feel that my ankle was loose.

Which meant that I could escape, if I could make my powers kick in deliberately.

I started concentrating as hard as I could, trying to remember every thought, every emotion, every stimulus that might be connected with my turning immaterial.  I tried so hard that I broke out in a sweat, but I couldn’t make myself get to that ‘feeling light’ stage.

While I was trying to make myself get immaterial, I was scrabbling with my free hand at each of the devices holding me down.  But they were all massive clamps with locking systems too complex for me to get open without a key, at minimum.  Some of them I couldn’t even figure out where the keyhole was, or how they clamped shut.

I tried more concentration.  I knew I didn’t have much time.  I was sure that if I took too long, Doctor Psycho over there and his sidekick Igor would slap me into a prison that I couldn’t pass through.  I had heard them planning on it.

I gritted my teeth until my jaws ached.  I couldn’t get that feeling.  I couldn’t stop the frightened tears streaming down my cheeks.

I tried going the other way.  If I couldn’t get immaterial, maybe I could get heavier.  Maybe I could do something with that.  Maybe if I was heavy enough, the shock collar wouldn’t hurt me so much.  I focused on that icky feeling when my stomach seemed to be turning to lead.  I concentrated until I thought my head would explode.

And I felt it.  My stomach and guts got heavier.  My body felt different.  I kept concentrating, until my guts felt like lead.

I gave it my best try.  I grabbed one of the straps across my torso and pulled as hard as I could.  It broke off from the lock with a loud snap.  I felt a sharp pain across both my pectorals, but I kept going.

But the snap was heard.  Hammond said, “Are you getting readings on this?”

The other guy, Royce, replied, “Definitely.  Its weight rose from approximately ninety pounds and leveled out at roughly 850 pounds.  It demonstrated strength at a definite Level 2.”

“Try the shock collar.”

“Yes sir.”

I screeched, “No!”  I grabbed that collar and did my best to rip it off.  But I couldn’t budge it.  The shock hit me like a whack on the funny bone with a hammer.  “OOWW!  Damnit, that hurt!”

I realized that my new, heavier state…  850 pounds?  Jesus!  My new state had just given me enough protection from that shock collar.  Before, the thing had knocked me silly.  Now it just hurt.

I ripped the metal strap off my waist, and started struggling with the clamp around my left wrist.  I had a feeling that it was going to take me both hands, at the very least, to rip this shock collar off the table and get free.

Unless I could intimidate my captors.  Which was certainly worth a try.  I growled,  “Holy electrocution, Batman!  I think you’d better find a new toy, Hammond.  Or else LET ME OUT OF HERE!  I’m not kidding around.  I’m going to pull these Tinkertoys off, and then you’d better be out of my sight.  Got it?”

Hammond sounded completely unimpressed.  Well, he sounded a little different.  As if he were behind some sort of sound-dampening barrier.  “I understand completely, mutant.  And I already have a new toy.”

I struggled with the wrist restraint until it began to tear free.  But I was feeling weird.  Heavy, but light-headed.  I knew I had to get my wrist free, but I was having trouble remembering what I had learned about the table restraints.  I couldn’t seem to come up with another plan, either.  The room began spinning, and I couldn’t figure out if it was some weird gadget that Hammond was using on me, or if my powers were doing something else freaky.

I got the wrist restraint loose, but everything went black before I could pull off the arm restraint…

I was waking up.  At least, it felt like I was waking up.  But my head hurt, and I had a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach, and there was a yucky organic-chemical taste in my mouth.  I opened my eyes, praying that it had all been some horrid nightmare.

I was hanging upright, suspended by things clamped about my hands and feet.  It took me a few minutes to realize that I had been sedated somehow.  Perhaps some sort of anesthetic gas.  I couldn’t move my hands or feet.  I looked up, and saw that my arms were spread so my hands were about two feet apart.  My hands were inside two gray spheres that were floating in mid-air as they dangled on the ends of what looked like heavy electrical cables.  I looked down and saw that my legs were also spread, and my feet were also in similar big gray spheres.

What, was Hammond a big fan of “The Incredibles”?

Maybe he was.  I had been dressed in a tight gray spandex bodysuit that covered me completely, except for my face and perhaps the parts of me inside those confinement spheres.  Hundreds of thin wires ran from the bodysuit in all directions.  I could see that several dozen of them led to a set of medical monitors on a metal cart in front of me.  A few hundred led to a set of monitors behind me.  I couldn’t twist my neck enough to see what was going on back there.  About fifty wires led from my scalp to a set of monitors off to my right.  Arrays of wires were centered over each of my pectorals, with so much monitoring gear in there that my chest seemed to bulge out slightly on both sides.  Heart and lung monitors?  There had to be more to the connections than that.  I could see that my privates were dangling out, covered in their own spandex material, with that catheter still in me, and several dozen more wires running from my privates to more monitors.  What, did Hammond have some kind of weird thing for male parts?

Dr. Hammond walked in front of me and smiled.  It was the kind of smile you see on Tom’s face when he has Jerry helplessly trapped in a corner.  He said, “You’re showing some interesting abilities.  But I think you can improve with time.  I believe that I can help with that.”

A shudder ran through me.  Oh God, he couldn’t mean what I thought he meant!

He nodded to his assistant, and the guy bent over a control panel.  Suddenly the confinement spheres began to hum.  They began to vibrate.  And then they began to move away from each other.

I screamed in agony as the spheres began pulling me apart.  I tried as hard as I could to go heavy, and in a matter of seconds I could feel the change inside me.

I began to sink lower.  I began to feel like I was strong enough to resist the pull of these freaky gadgets.  I pulled as hard as I could, and managed to bend my arms enough to pull the spheres several inches toward my head.

The assistant said, “You were right, sir.  Its weight has jumped to 1130 pounds, and its strength has just moved up to Level Three.”

“Good.  Increase the strain.”

Oh crap!  He wouldn’t!

Oh, who was I kidding?  This was Emil Hammond.  Of course he would.

The strain on my arms and legs increased, until it was pulling me apart again.  I concentrated as hard as I could, but the pull was slowly overcoming my best efforts.

“Weight up to 1260.  Strength nearly at Level Four.”

I focused as hard as I could, but the pain in my limbs was agonizing.  I was really afraid they were going to let me be ripped to pieces.

I was talking to myself by then.  “Come on, Trev!  Concentrate!  Try harder!  Don’t let this bastard win!”

“Weight at 1340 pounds.  Strength solidly at Level Four.”

And then the pull of the spheres overwhelmed me, and I screamed at the searing pain.

I was waking up.  Again.  I opened my eyes.  I no longer had any doubt that I was in a horrific nightmare.  It just wasn’t the kind of nightmare from which you can wake up.  It was the kind of real-life nightmare during which you die horribly.

I was sitting on a clear plastic floor, wedged into a clear plastic box about the size of a phone booth.  I was in a different spandex bodysuit.  This one was silver, with metallic disks all over it.  It covered me completely, except for my face.  Even my hands and feet and scalp were covered.  It was like being stuck in a drysuit, except this seemed about half an inch thick all over.  I touched one of the metal disks on the outside of the suit, and I felt a similar metal disk pressing against my skin on the inside of the suit.  So this was probably a high-tech version of the wired suit I was in before.

This suit had some extra unwanted features, including a catheter up my penis and some sort of excretion tube rammed up my butt.  Both connected to opaque tubes that ran through holes in the clear floor, and down past a huge array of what looked like magnetic coils.

I checked the back of the suit and found what appeared to be a zipper that had been sealed shut.  I looked around and saw dangling from the ceiling a tube that had a clamp closure like the mouthpiece of a scuba tank.  The tube was clear, and I could see it was filled with a thick, opaque, chocolate-brown liquid.

I did a mental check of my body.  The spot on my right thigh still hurt, but not as much as I was expecting.  I mean, they had shoved a giant needle right into my bone just a few hours ago.  I should have still been in real agony.  But I felt like I might even be able to stand and walk around on that leg.  Well, except for the fact that I was trapped in a cell about the size of a phone booth.

My joints still hurt from whatever those confinement spheres had done to me while they were trying to pull me apart.  My arm and legs and hips ached, like the bones had been whacked with hammers.  I hurt where those catheters had been rammed into me.  And my chest hurt too.  Was that where I had nailed myself when I was tearing that metal strap loose?

I struggled to my feet and saw that the clear sides of the box were surrounded by more of those heavy mag coils.

Dr. Hammond’s voice came through a speaker in the ceiling of the box.  “The tube above you has a nutritive liquid that you will take for meals.  Your excreta have already been addressed.  You will comply with additional testing.”

It dawned on me that I was sealed in this suit, and I was sealed inside the box.  He might leave me in this thing until I died.

Or until I escaped.

Right about the time I figured that out, the ceiling began to descend.  There was a mild hum from above the clear plastic square over my head.  I could see a massive cylinder that could be a hydraulic ram for all I knew.  I put my hands up and pressed upward against the ceiling.

For all the good it did, I might as well have been pushing against Mount Everest.  The ceiling kept descending.  I concentrated as hard as I could, until I went heavy once more.  And I pushed back.

At first I thought I was getting somewhere.  The ceiling stopped, and even started moving upward.  Then it stopped.  I pushed as hard as I could, but I couldn’t budge it anymore.  And it began descending again.

It was moving much, much slower.  I was having to press against it with everything I could muster.  But it was slowly moving downward.  I strained for all I was worth.  It wasn’t enough.  The ceiling kept getting lower and lower.  In a matter of minutes, I was on my knees, pressing desperately to keep the ceiling off my face.  I just couldn’t stop it!

I shifted the weight onto my right shoulder, and I punched the ceiling with my left hand, as hard as I could.  It should have broken my hand, but it didn’t.  Instead, the ceiling deformed for a moment before returning to its normal appearance.  So I hit it again.  And again.  I pounded at the corners where it touched the walls.  I punched at the center, directly under the hydraulics.

The ceiling sank lower, until I was nearly on my butt and the ceiling was pressing against my face.  I was sobbing with the effort I was making, but nothing was good enough.  Was that old nutball just going to squash me like a tomato in a juicer?

Just when I was afraid the thing was going to break my neck, it stopped.  It whirred and retracted to its normal position.  The feeding tube dropped down, and Hammond’s voice ordered me to eat.

I put the tube in my mouth and drank.  It tasted somewhat like a chocolate shake.  Not very high-tech, if it was just a diet supplement shake like what they advertised in newspapers.  I drank as much as I could, until my stomach felt full.

Hammond’s voice announced, “We will resume in the morning.”

The magnetic coils around the box began to sizzle with energy, and a massive force field sprang up all around the box.  Other than the noise of the force field, the room became as silent as the grave.

I waited.  I counted seconds in my head, just as we used to do when we played hide-and-go-seek as kids.  “One Mississippi.  Two Mississippi…”  I counted to 3600.  After about an hour, I was fairly sure I was alone.  I doubted that I was unsupervised, though.  There were probably hidden cameras monitoring my every move.  And the suit probably had a thousand monitors built into it.

So I decided to try going toward a different goal.  Going ‘hard’ seemed inappropriate, since the opposite of ‘hard’ is usually ‘soft’.  ‘Heavy’ and ‘light’ seemed to describe my abilities better.  ‘Dense’ seemed technically correct, but the best antonym I could find was ‘penetrable’, and that was awkward at best.  That just led me back to ‘light’.  So I would go with ‘heavy’ and ‘light’.  For some reason, that decision seemed really important to me.

I tried to go light.  I focused on that feeling of light-headedness, and the sickly feeling in my stomach.  That didn’t seem to do it for me.  I stood there and tried everything I could think of.

I have no idea how long I worked at it, before I got to that feeling of being light on my feet.  I focused on that.  I concentrated so hard that my head began to hurt.  So I gave up.

And I dropped half a foot to the bottom of the box.

Holy crow!  I had done it!  I had managed to get so light that I was floating in the air!  Maybe it was that force field around me that helped me get airborne, but I had done it!

I went back to work, and I managed to find that place where I felt light on my feet.  I practiced again and again.  I was getting that blue tinge on the exterior of the bodysuit, so I was pretty sure it was getting as immaterial as I was.  I practiced until I could ‘go light’ just by thinking about it.

Then I worked on going light and floating.  I didn’t know if it was the field generators around me that were letting me float, or if this was something I could do without them, but I could do it if I concentrated hard enough.  Once I went light, I had to focus on staying immaterial and also moving upward.

It seemed like it took hours of practice before I could float upward at will.  But once I had that down, I started working on direction.  Up.  Down.  Sideways.  After a while, I was floating in a circle: up, sideways, down, sideways, up, sideways...

And I had a headache like you wouldn’t believe.  It was a throbbing pain between my eyes and moving back across my crown, nearly to the back of my skull.  But it didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as most of the things I had lived through since I woke up in the lab.

I stopped and checked out the food tube.  I couldn’t believe that I was already hungry again, but maybe I was burning off a lot of calories doing this heavy-and-light thing.  It had more chocolate shake in it, and I drank until my stomach was full again.

I thought I was ready for the next step.  I went light, and I tried to walk through the clear plastic box.

As soon as I got my palm partway through the wall of the box, I was hit with an electric shock through my catheters that had me screaming helplessly, until everything went black.

I hurt all over.  Especially my penis and my butthole, which hurt like I had been burned from the inside out.  My arms and legs and hips really hurt, but in a different way.  They ached like someone had pulled my limbs apart and reassembled them with a power drill.  I hurt way too much to be asleep.

I was slumped in the bottom of the box, wedged uncomfortably at the base because of the way I had collapsed the night before.  Was that the night before?  Was this the next morning?

Dr. Hammond’s voice was echoing over and over in my little prison, “Get up.  Get up.  Get up NOW!  Get up.”

Hammond was back, so maybe it was the next morning.  I had no way of telling.  I struggled to my feet.  I was ordered to take some more food, so I did.  I couldn’t believe how hungry I felt.  I just drank out of that mouthpiece until it felt like my stomach was almost full enough to burst.

But I wasn’t paying enough attention while I was eating.  A sharp stab in my butt told me that.  I whirled around in time to see the business end of a hypodermic needle on the end of a mechanical waldo, as it vanished through one of the holes in the floor.

“You bastard!” I yelled.

Hammond’s voice came back, sounding sarcastic and entertained.  “But you asked me to give you something to make your mutation stop, didn’t you?”

“Can you do that?” I asked.  I couldn’t keep the desperation out of my voice.  I’m sure I sounded utterly pathetic.

“Probably not,” he replied.  “But we’ll try this.  It’s the newest version of my MCE Suppressant.  Version MCES-45.  It’s in alpha-test mode, but I think it’s worth trying.”

Alpha-test?  That bastard.  Of course he thought it was worth trying out on me.  It wasn’t his body that would pay the price. 

I stood there, waiting helplessly to see if the drug would help me.  I was afraid that it wouldn’t help, but would kill me instead.  I couldn’t judge time except by counting ‘one Mississippi two Mississippi’ in my head, but I think it was about an hour before I noticed the first effects of the drug.

I started feeling hot all over.  Feverish.  After a while, I began shivering as it suddenly felt like the room had dropped to about freezing.  But I was in a thick drysuit.  Which meant that I was running a hell of a fever.  Not that Hammond would care, unless I died before his experiments got completed.

I sank to my knees, curled up in a ball, and tried not to freeze to death.  Even though I was pretty sure I was just overheated, it still felt like I was freezing.

After a while, the freezing sensations left, and I felt way too hot again.  But I couldn’t get the thick bodysuit off.  All I could do was kneel there and sweat like a pig.

Before too much longer, my joints began aching a lot more.  I was just aching all over, like I had the worst case of flu ever.  Things got blurry, and I had trouble focusing my eyes.

After some unknown amount of time, Hammond started yelling at me again.  I could hear just fine, but I was feeling so rotten that I was having trouble concentrating on what he was saying.  I eventually figured it out.  He wanted me to drink some more dinner.  The mouthpiece sank down and smacked me in the face.  I drank and drank and drank, until the mouthpiece was pulled away.

I could hear Hammond talking with Royce.  I guess they hadn’t bothered to turn off the microphone, since I was busy being a useless lump of shivering misery.  Or someone had just forgotten to turn it off.

“This is really interesting, sir.  Look at the readings from the spectrometer.”

“Hmm.  Perhaps this will give us some new insight into the process.”

“How long do you think the MCES-45 will affect it?”

“We can only make some rough approximations.  It is still mutating, and the MCES-45 is experimental.  But I expect it will be incapacitated for another three hours, minimum.”

I just lay there and prayed I wouldn’t have to go through three more hours of this stuff…

Some time later - I really have no idea how long it was - I heard Hammond talk some more.  “Royce, I believe that is our esteemed visitors.  Please usher them in promptly, and be as courteous as possible.”

Royce asked, “Is that who I think it is?”

“Yes indeed.  It is our benefactors, coming to check on our little bit of gene filth.”

I waited helplessly for a while, until I heard more voices.

“Mister and Mrs. Goodkind!  What an unexpected pleasure!  And Mister Goodkind.”

“Just Paul please, Emil.  Mister Goodkind is still my father.”  It was Paul!  Paul was here!  He’d get me out of this hellhole!

Father boomed, “That’s my boy.  Modest to the end…  So, Emil…”

Mother sounded terrified as she interrupted, “I-is that thing in there really Trevor?”

Hammond calmly said, “Definitely.  We have the DNA scans you had performed when Trevor was in utero, and matching DNA scans from the internists who looked at Trevor’s growth deficiency.  I’ve examined the DNA scans from all of those.  That gave me his DNA at ages six, nine, and twelve also.  As recently as age twelve, only two years ago, his DNA was normal.  Baseline.  No portion of the meta-gene complexes we have isolated from mutants.”

Father pushed, “So how could that.. that monster be Trevor?”

“Just look at these PCR outputs from our mutant in there.  See these massive strings of matches?  This is definitely Trevor’s DNA, but with a meta-gene complex spliced in, after the fact.  Somehow, at some point in the last two years, he was infected with something, perhaps a retrovirus, and that unknown something has altered all of his DNA.  This may be the very evidence of the ‘ribonucleic heterotrophy infectious agent’ that I have been searching for.”

Paul wondered, “Infectious agent?”

Hammond answered, “Perhaps ‘infectious agent’ is the wrong term.  Still it serves as a convenient catch phrase for expressing that something transmissible may be altering baseline DNA to introduce these Meta-gene Complexes, or else these MC’s are being caused by something else and some sort of transmissible agent is activating them.”

Father sounded utterly terrified as he asked, “Could the rest of us catch this from.. from that thing in there?”

Hammond sounded puzzled as he said, “Apparently not.  We’ve been taking samples and studying them.  There are no abnormal bacteria, viruses, retroviruses, cells, chemicals, proteins, or even identifiable prions that I can find.  I don’t know how the boy was contaminated in the first place.”

Mother insisted in a panicked tone, “Still, we’ll have the entire estate checked out completely.  We can’t stay there until we know it’s safe!”

Paul said, “You’ve been sending him to boarding schools and summer camps for as long as I can remember.  He could have been exposed to anything at any one of those places.”

Mother suddenly gasped in terror, “Connie!”

Father choked, “And David…  Not to mention Heather.”

Hammond said, “I believe that only David is at risk.  The rest of the family is most likely too old for mutant manifestation.  People older than Trevor who have the meta-gene complexes have ridiculously low probabilities of manifesting.  There are only a couple documented cases in all of history, and all of them have dramatic, near-fatal trigger events.”

Royce added, “Although, there are occasional hysterical accounts of middle-aged baselines suddenly manifesting mutant traits and regressing to teenagers of the opposite gender.”

Hammond scoffed, “Nonsense.  Those are nothing but fillers for the National Enquirer, and cheesy internet fiction, and the like.”

Father insisted, “Still, everyone on the estates, and everyone in the companies, will need to get a DNA scan done again.”

Paul added, “Maybe that’ll show us how Trev got infected.”

Father said, “Or how Trevor’s infection has been spread in the company.”

Hammond replied, “It may not be possible to determine transmission vectors.  We may never know who gave it to who.”

As I lay there shivering and aching, it dawned on me that I needed to do something.  I whimpered, “Momma?  I feel bad.  I need help.  Please momma?”

Mother gasped, “Oh my God, it’s conscious!  Is it dangerous to us?”

“Momma, please, they keep hurting me, and I just wanna be me again, why can’t I be normal again?  Please momma, please?”

Hammond calmed her down, “There’s nothing to worry about, Helen.  It’s not contagious, and it can’t get out.  And it’s functionally incapacitated right now anyway.  The MCES-45 doesn’t seem to be having any effect on the mutation, other than making the mutant feel quite sick.”

Father asked, “Then could this be used as an anti-mutant control chemical?”

Hammond replied, “I am afraid not.  It has to be injected.  It will affect baselines much worse than it affects mutants.  It is unlikely to affect all types of mutants.  And our monitoring results suggest that once the mutation has run its course, the MCES-45 will have little if any effect.”

Father thought out loud, “So it might be useful as a control system for new mutant children who are manifesting in dangerous ways around normals.  Perhaps using a syringe dart in an air-powered rifle as a delivery system.”

Hammond sounded impressed.  “I hadn’t thought of that.  We’ll contact the MCO and see if they’re interested in purchasing MCES-45 for some field trials.  They do have to deal with this kind of problem on a regular basis.”

“Paul!  Father!  Mother!  Please, somebody help me!  Please!”

Mother whimpered, “Emil, would you turn off that speaker?  I can’t bear hearing that thing a second longer!”

“Mother?  Father?  Paul?  Somebody?  DON’T LEAVE ME HERE!!!”

I screamed for help until my throat was raw.  No one came.  No one answered.  Because no one cared.  My own family despised me.  I knelt there, shivering and aching, and I wept for a long, long time.

The effects of the MCES-45 lasted for hours longer.  Hammond made me drink a meal maybe three more times before I finally began feeling better.  My best guess was that I had to endure that stuff for about another six hours.

I knew I was feeling better when I realized that I could concentrate again.  Had the conversation between Hammond and my family even been real?  I was terrified that it was.  It seemed too focused and too precise to be delirium.  And I remembered it too well.  I wished I could forget the raw terror in my mother’s voice.  God!  That just made me feel like I wanted to die!

The aches didn’t fully fade.  My arms and legs and hips were still achy.  And the spandex suit felt like it had shrunk.  Did I have toxic sweat now too?  Great.  What a swell superpower.  My sweat could ruin synthetics.  Or was this part of the experiments?  Maybe the suit just shrank until the victim inside either ripped it open or it crushed the icky little mutant into raspberry jam.

The achy feeling was still there, but the fever and chills were gone.  The overall misery was gone.  I bumped my chest as I stood up, and I found out that my pecs were still really tender.  Damn, that hurt!  Had I ripped my chest open when I ripped that metal band off my torso?  Wait, that was just yesterday, wasn’t it?  I wasn’t really sure, but I thought it was.

Which meant this was Sunday.  Mother and Father and Paul had come to the labs on a Sunday to see what Hammond had found out about me.  About the thing that had once been a family member.  That had to mean something.  I just wished I knew whether it meant something good or something bad.  I was afraid that it meant something really, really bad.

Some time around early evening, after Hammond made me drink another meal, he and Royce told me that they were going to close up for the night.  I figured it had to be some kind of trap.  But I didn’t see that I had a lot of options.  I decided I would try going heavy this time.  Going light had left me open for a hideous electrical shock right up the old gazoo.  Only a creepy old weirdo like Hammond would think of such a perverted thing in the first place.  But it had hurt!

So this time, I would try going heavy and see if I could hammer my way out.  Maybe I could go heavy enough that the electrical shocks wouldn’t stop me.  I told myself that I could take it.  I told myself that I had handled the shock collar when I had gone heavy the day before, and that I had gotten tougher since then. 

Unfortunately, there was only one way to find out, and it would probably hurt.  A lot.

I stood still in my prison and counted, like the night before.  This time, I counted up to ‘3600 Mississippi’ twice.  That ought to be about two hours.  I didn’t think waiting the extra hour would help, but it couldn’t hurt.  And I wouldn’t know until I got out of the cell whether the extra time was worth anything.  Maybe some watcher would give up and go home.  Who knew?

I took a deep breath and concentrated.  I went heavy.  As heavy as I could manage.  Then I punched the plastic wall in front of me as hard as I could.

It didn’t hurt my hand, but it didn’t shatter the plastic either.  I hit that damn wall again and again, as hard as I could, and the most I was able to do was to make the thing deform for a few seconds.

Okay, there was more than one way to skin a.. a…  Well, the thing I wanted to skin right about then was a creepy old scientist.  Although the idea of actually flaying the skin off of someone made me feel nauseous. 

I needed to go light to bust out of this cage.  But I needed to avoid those hideous electrical shocks.  Which I couldn’t do if I went light.

I thought it over for a long time before I figured it out.  In retrospect, it was obvious; but hindsight is always 20-20.

I went heavy first.  I reached down and grabbed the catheter with both hands, squeezed hard, and pulled.  It ripped with a sparking sizzle that made me jump.

Holy crow, inside the catheter were three wires and some kind of thin cable.  What the heck had that old pervert put up inside me?

I didn’t have time to sit and figure it out.  I needed to move onto step two before Hammond’s monitor systems figured out something to do to me.

I grabbed the excretion tube that was stuck up my ass.  Okay, same as before.  Stay heavy.  Two hand grip, squeeze hard, yank it apart.

It separated as easily as if I was pulling on a piece of candy.  Inside the tube were a tiny tube, a wire, a thin cable, and some really stinky brown stuff I didn’t want to handle.  I dropped the remains of that tube through the hole in the floor.

Okay, I was still stuck with two gross tubes stuck up inside me.  I was going to have to live with stuff dripping out of me until I could remedy that problem, but in the meantime I didn’t have to worry about hideous shocks getting sent up my wang.  I hoped.

I started with what had worked last night.  I went light.  I concentrated, and I passed right through the plastic wall of my cell.

I managed to move about an inch through the wall, when I hit the force field.  It felt like I had just walked into an electric fence.  An electric fence designed to stop elephants.

There was a sizzling explosion of energy, and I tried to scream at the pain that burst across my entire front, from my face down to my feet.  I don’t know if I actually managed to scream or not, as that’s the last thing I remembered.

I slowly came to.  Oh man, did I hurt!  I felt like someone had beaten my front half with a burning two-by-four.  My face hurt, and my chest, and my stomach, and my privates, and my knees…  Everywhere that had come in contact with that damn force field.  Especially my privates and my face.  And my pecs hurt a lot too.  I wondered if I had a serious chest injury bandaged up, underneath the padded bodysuit that was still covering me from head to toe.

I opened my eyes, and I saw that the clear plastic wall was right in front of my face, only inches away.  What?

I was lying on my back.  I was pretty sure of that.  I started to lift my arm up, and it whacked against the side of the cell.  And against the wall in front of me.

I wiggled my toes, and I could tap against the bottom side.  Okay, I was lying on my back.  And then it hit me.

Oh God!  I was in a coffin! 

I was lying in a tiny clear-plastic box that was no bigger than a child’s coffin.  The wall in front of me was the upper side, and it was only an inch or two above my nose.  The sides were touching my arms.  The bottom was an inch or two below my feet.  If I stretched my neck upward, I could feel my hair brushing against the top side.

I’m not particularly claustrophobic, but this was way too much.  I went heavy and did my best to push the top wall off me.  No matter how hard I pressed, the most I could do was to make the plastic deform a bit.  When I stopped applying my maximum force, the plastic would just stop being bent out of shape, and would return to its normal flatness.

This plastic prison had black reinforcing material around the small holes in the plastic, and in strips all over the walls.  I tried attacking the strips too, but they didn’t seem to be weak points.  So I tried attacking everything that wasn’t near a strip.  I didn’t have any luck there, either.

Even if I could get rid of the plastic coffin, I was still hemmed in on all sides by those force field generators.  They were so close to me that I could constantly hear the hum from the things.  There was a high-pitched component to the hum that was like fingernails screeching down a blackboard.  But I couldn’t get away from those force fields, and I couldn’t make the sound stop.  I couldn’t even get my arms up to stick my fingers in my ears.

All I could do was keep trying to go heavy enough to bust out of the damn box.  No matter how hard I concentrated, or how much I tried to get heavier, I just could not break out!  I couldn’t break the plastic.  I couldn’t press hard enough to push the thing apart.  I even tried pushing at the corners, trying to see if I could make the box distort and maybe fail along some edge.  Nothing worked.  And even if I broke the box, I couldn’t get through those force fields.

After a while, the sounds came back on.  I could hear Hammond talking to what sounded like an entire lab full of chatty researchers.  Oh wait, this was Monday, right?  He had probably been on a skeleton staff over the weekend, and now he had the entire lab full of researchers eager to experiment on freakish mutants.  Great.

The food mouthpiece was slowly lowered through what looked like a weird opening in the force field, and then through a small opening in the box.  It stopped when it was about an inch above my mouth.  At that point, Hammond ordered me to eat.  By then I was starving, so I cooperated.  It was the usual thick chocolate shake stuff.  It wasn’t haute cuisine, but at least he wasn’t torturing my tastebuds too.  I drank shake stuff until I was full.

As soon as the mouthpiece started to retract, I went back to my efforts.  I went heavy and tried to break open the plastic at several of the reinforced holes in the box.  I kept trying until I was exhausted.  I didn’t know what else to do, so I just lay still and tried to ignore the evil scratchiness in the hum of the field generators.  Maybe I just needed to get my strength back, and then I could attack the plastic walls of my cell once more.  So I lay there for a while until I felt less exhausted.

Once again, Hammond ordered me around.  “You have shown that you can change your density until you are immaterial.  Do so.  Or you will not be fed again until you do.”

Oh yeah, he had threatened me with forcing me to do whatever he wanted.  Maybe this was where he started showing me who was boss around here.

I tried to figure out where he was going to go with this bit.  I could hardly move, and I certainly wasn’t going to pass through the plastic walls again.  Not with that force field cranked up to ‘extra-screechy’ and pressing against the walls of my little tomb.  I had been knocked unconscious by his force fields enough times already.

I was ready for some more food, so I figured I would cooperate.  This time.  Maybe, if Hammond thought I was easily manipulated by the promise of food, he would make a mistake.

So I went light.  Which proved to be a major mistake on my part.

Suddenly, the box popped open in a square over my chest, and I felt something similar happen behind me.  So that’s what those black ‘reinforcing strips’ were for.

Before I could even think about moving, a huge I-beam dropped straight down, past the field generators, through the opening, through me, and out the back side of the box!

I mean, this was a real I-beam.  Tons of solid construction steel.  As wide as my whole chest.  A massive steel framework from my armpits to below my diaphragm.

I heard a loud clunk above me, and then one below me.

Hammond’s voice came back.  “We have locked this beam in place both above and below you.  It will remain in place regardless of your behavior.  I recommend that you do not return to your normal density.”

“Wait!  You can’t leave this in me!” I yelped.

“Oh, but we can.  I wish to see how long you can maintain this state, and what the interactions are when you and a solid object have to occupy the same physical space.”

And it dawned on me.  This was going to kill me.  Hammond was done with his testing, and he was going to perform this last test until I died horribly.  Probably on DVD, so he could sell it to his creepy mutant-hating friends.

“No!  No, please!  For God’s sake!”  I begged.  I wept.  I did everything I could think of, but no one was going to help me.

I struggled, but I couldn’t get out of the small box without hitting those force fields.  I couldn’t pass through the force fields that pressed tightly against the box.  If I hit those force fields, they might knock me unconscious again, and then I’d go back to normal density, and the I-beam would kill me.  I couldn’t move to the side, or up, or down.  I was stuck there with that mammoth steel I-beam rammed right through my torso.

As long as I was completely immaterial, I was safe.  But I couldn’t stay that way forever!  I knew that I had to maintain my concentration, but how long could I do that?  An hour?  Two hours?  How could anyone maintain this level of concentration for more than several hours?

I knew that as soon as the blue tint faded and I became solid again, the beam though my chest would kill me.  I couldn’t understand how I could keep breathing when there was a huge metal beam through my chest!  But I was breathing, and my blood seemed to be circulating.  I could feel my heart pounding frantically with fear.  Even though there was a steel beam right through where my heart had to be.

Hammond and his crazy helpers obviously didn’t care if it killed me.. or did something even worse.  It was like being trapped in the movie “Saw” and knowing that just dying would be the easiest thing that could happen to me.

All I could do was lie there, and concentrate, and try not to burst into tears.  After maybe two and a half hours of raw terror, my blue tint began to fade.  I focused as hard as I could.  I managed to slow the fading.  But I couldn’t keep the tint from continuing to fade.  I yelled for help.

And…  I felt it.  There was a tingle everywhere the steel beam cut through me.  I began sobbing for help.

The tingle slowly grew stronger, until it became an itch.  An itch that ran all the way through my body.  By then I was screaming for help.

The itch grew worse and worse, until it became a stinging feeling everywhere the beam passed through me.  At first, it was like a bite from an ant, and then it grew to a bee sting.  It kept getting worse and worse.  Soon, it felt like I had been stung by a thousand hornets.  The agonizing stinging sensations just got worse, and the stinging pain was all through my torso, everywhere the beam was.  I knew I was going to die.  I was about to be murdered by a man with whom I had once shaken hands.  I was about to be killed by a man working at the direction of my own family.

I finally had to face the horrible facts.  I finally had to admit to myself that mutants were not the only menace out there.  That what made you a menace was not being a mutant, but choosing to do evil to others.  I was going to die, finally knowing the truth.  Not that it was going to do me a heck of a lot of good when I went to Hell for the things I had helped Goodkind International do.

My body slowly got heavier and more solid, and I waited to die.  To die horribly, with a steel beam lanced through my chest.  I took a deep breath as the stinging sensation grew to a burning agony everywhere the beam was rammed through me.  And then…

It stopped.  The blue tint was gone.  The pain was gone.  I felt solid again.  And I could feel the steel beam pressing against my front and back every time I inhaled.  I looked down, and I could see where the beam was sheared off.  The edges of the beam had a mirror-like smoothness, and the edges had a contour that matched the skintight bodysuit.

I was okay.  I was okay!  Astonishingly, the part of the beam that had been inside me was.. gone.  It was just gone.  I had disintegrated it, or shoved it into another dimension, or something.  I was pretty sure I hadn’t eaten it, but other than that, I didn’t have any idea of what I had just done.

But now I knew something more.  If I went light and went through something and changed my density back to normal, I wouldn’t die.  It might hurt me a lot, but it wouldn’t kill me.  And it would destroy whatever I was passing through.

The only problem was that I couldn’t go light and pass through one of these heavy-duty force fields.  I couldn’t even try, unless I wanted to experience some major pain and then get knocked unconscious.  Or worse.

I just felt exhausted.  Sleepy and dazed and in dire need of a nap.  And…

Damn that Hammond!  Right about the time I figured out that I had been gassed again, I passed out.

Oh man.  I was waking up again, and I felt like shit.  Oh man, I was really getting to hate being gassed.  I had a headache, and my stomach was roiling.

On the other hand, I was out of that evil little coffin, and back in my plastic phone booth, even if I was still surrounded by force fields.  I was in a new bodysuit which was slightly more padded all over, but without those catheters.  I figured that Hammond knew he could no longer keep me wired up through the catheters unless I was willing to leave them in place.  Which wasn’t going to happen again in his lifetime.  Still, I had to wonder if the padding was designed to conceal something important, like enough air-lithium batteries to knock me unconscious the next time I tried anything.

I ate a full meal of more chocolate supplement, and I planned.  I stalled until it was time to eat again, and I wolfed down another liquid meal.  Man, was I hungry!  Was I just burning off calories, or was something else going on?

Okay, I’m suspicious.  So sue me.  You would be too, if you were trapped in a high-tech torture chamber while Doctor Nutbar and his staff experimented on you.

Once I was ready, I moved quickly.  I put my back against the back side of my prison, and I went light again.  I pushed my back just through the back wall, and I went solid as quickly as I could.  Damn!  That really hurt!  But it hurt a lot less when I was getting denser quickly instead of really slowly.

I turned around and looked at the damage.  There was a hole in the plastic that I could climb through.  It was as wide as my body in the bodysuit, and it stretched from my neck down to the bottom of my butt.

Now, all I had to do was get through that force field.  Which was probably going to be harder.

I went as heavy as I could.  Then I put my palms through the gaping hole and pushed against the force field.  At first, it was like pushing against a giant wall of jello.  But it quickly stopped yielding when I was about three inches in. 

I put my feet against the opposite wall of my prison, and I pushed with all my might against the field.  It gave a little more.  Maybe half an inch.  Not enough.  I pushed with everything I had, and I couldn’t budge it.  I couldn’t push any farther into the field.  Damn that Hammond!

I pulled back from the force field, took a deep breath, and punched the field as hard as I could.  It was like punching an elephant.  There was some give, then an abrupt stop, and then it hit back with a blinding flash.

I blinked.  I was crumpled on the floor of my prison, holding my aching hand.  My hand felt like I had run over it with a truck.  Damn, that hurt!

And I felt weird.  I felt like I had been stunned so hard that I was dizzy.  I had a really hard time getting back to my feet, and then I felt like I would keel over at any second.  I felt dazed and confused.

I felt like I had.. the last time I had been gassed.

No!  I struggled to push against the force field.  I tried to hit it really hard, but I wobbled and fell to my knees.  I watched helplessly as the tiny cell spun, and went dark…

I woke up.  I wasn’t in the box anymore.  Or the coffin.  I wasn’t in any kind of plastic box.

I was lying on a heavy foam pad in a regular-sized room.  The room had concrete slab walls, no windows, and a metal door with a thick metal frame.  There were cameras mounted in two of the corners just short of the ceiling.  Was this a security cell or something?

I slowly sat up, feeling the wretched effects of being gassed once again.  My head and stomach felt rotten.  My arms and legs and hips still felt like I had been pulled apart a couple days ago.

On the upside, my right thigh no longer felt like someone had recently punched a huge hole right into my thighbone.  And I wasn’t trapped in a plastic coffin inside a hellish force field.

I was in a new bodysuit.  This one was a two-tone gray, with a darker gray in a diamond shape over my chest, and another dark-gray diamond over my abdomen.  This one looked like it was a wetsuit, except that it felt like it was maybe an inch thick all over.  The bodysuit came up to my neck, and didn’t cover my hands or feet.  Instead, wetsuit slippers were on my feet.  They had zippers on the insides and they came up just past my ankles.