Chapter 7: Dracula and Dobson


Just passed from light and into dark,
I don't regret a thing,
Not bright red wound, or bloody mark,
nor wicked serpent's sting.

My aim, I find, is clear once more; to nobility's call,
an aim from which I swear to never falter or to waver,
and though from this aim I may find that I will surely fall,
I ask for naught, though I may find a pretty lady's favor.

For from that hand of hers come blessings far beyond all cost,
her gifts to me have left me truly stunned, from head to toe,
so I insist, her generocity will not be lost!
Now, wherever she departs, there also will I go...

The verses came upon Adam in a torrent, because there wasn't much else for him to think about. It was all darkness, all around him, and he could only dimly make out a few sounds nearby, so he was alone with his thoughts, and the verses came more quickly whenever that happened.

However, the silence wasn't destined to last. Soon, Adam found his eyes opening, almost on their own, and realized that he was lying down, in a room with a lot of bright lights. He felt like he was lying on a slab of metal, but it was perfectly flat, unlike the metal he'd been in contact with recently. For a moment, he forgot all of his surroundings, however, and subconsciously continued.

"Pray take this offer, lady fair, to let me follow thee.
True faithfulness and gentleness will e'er be by your side.
No creature will dare harm you, of the land of of the sea,
if only you shall say you truly wish to be... to be..."

However, by that point, the bleariness was starting to clear from Adam's thoughts, and he sat bolt upright in one swift motion, looking around like mad, and searching for any other inhabitants of the room. It didn't take him long, unfortunately, to find one. Dobson was standing off to one side of the room, with a needle in one hand and a scalpel in the other, looking very much like a type of primitive surgeon, eager to operate. However, there was something in that eagerness that hadn't been there before. For one thing, her entire face, once so pale, seemed to have regained a bit of color. On top of that, she was starting to look more nervous than eager with every second that passed, and her first words to Adam only made it easier for him to understand why.

"Please don't stop, Adam. I want to hear the rest."

That, however, was when Adam began to scowl again, gritting his teeth together in fury over the situation he'd just been in; reciting improvised love poetry without even meaning to, to the one person in the world who he felt he loved the least. It made him want to scream out loud, and...

Just then, Adam ran one hand along his jaw in amazement. He could barely believe it, but it seemed to be in one piece again, and connected. It was a slightly different shape than before, but that just meant...

Quickly, Adam got to his feet, looking at Dobson in confusion. In a way, he thought, he really had misjudged her. He'd been so determined to see her in the way that he'd seen his father, and yet, there was a wisdom to her, which his father had lacked; a type of foresight, which almost seemed more manly than Victor Frankenstein had ever been. For a moment, Adam nearly forgot himself, and said something about it to her, but there were still too many things about her that he didn't like, and he didn't want to jump the gun with her, until he'd had a chance to talk to her about what she'd just been doing.

"I'm sorry. I can't finish the poem, but... You replaced my jaw, didn't you? Where did you get the new one?"

"Some dead comedian." Dobson just responded carelessly, "I figured it'd be best. These days, they do more jawing than anybody else."

Adam wasn't sure whether that was meant to be funny, though the favor she'd done him was just a bit endearing. However, he had at least one more question to ask her.

"What else did you find out about me?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you had me laid out on that table, and you had the opportunity to run all sorts of tests on me."

"Don't I know it? I didn't, though."

"What?" Adam asked, truly shocked by that response, "I don't understand. Why? Why wouldn't you take advantage of the opportunity? I mean, you seem like the type."

"Well, I'm not niave." Dobson replied just a moment later, straightening her spectacles, "I know if I ever took advantage of you like that, even if it was for research, I'd never see you again, and a single day's study of you wouldn't be sufficient. I need more time than that."

"You could always just tranquilize me."

"For some reason, tranquilizers don't seem to work on you. I tried them while I was performing the operation, but you didn't calm down at all."

That surprised Adam a little bit, but he didn't bother to question it much. After all, it certainly wasn't the strangest of the gifts that his father had given him. What really surprised him was the remarkable consideration that Dobson had shown him during and after the procedure. She wore her feelings on her sleeve, and never seemed to lie about her intentions, but it also seemed like, for the moment, she was willing to show Adam some level of human respect, something which Victor had never done. That, he decided, changed a lot of things about their relationship, and for a moment, he was even reconsidering his decision about whether to let her run any tests on him, when she spoke to him again.

"Lord Dracula wanted to meet with you once you were all in one piece again. He says he's ready to leave for Cairo, and he wants you and Nancy to join him."

However, Adam didn't feel right just leaving it at that, for more than one reason. In the end, he knew that he had to ask at least one more question.

"Whatever happened to the Gill-man?"

Dobson didn't look terribly happy with that question, but she eventually replied calmly enough.

"We have a history, but don't worry about it. Just let me deal with him. You can do your part in the meantime."

Adam nodded slowly in reply. He would have preferred to know more, but if Dobson thought she could handle it, then he wasn't about to question her. However, he did have one last thing to say.

"Thank you."

"Hmmm?" Dobson asked, looking almost as if she had no idea why she was being thanked, but eventually, she shrugged tactlessly and replied, "Well, if you really want to thank me, you can give me a blood sample before you go. That or finish the poem."

The request had probably been meant as a joke, but after what she'd done for him, Adam felt obligated to take it seriously. Both of those were personal requests, of course, but, Adam felt, one was more personal than the other.

"If you can take your sample quickly, I won't object." Adam conceded at last, drawing an almost ecstatic smile from Dobson, as she put down the scalpel she'd been holding, so that only the needle was left in her hands.


Apparently, the very large rooms that Adam had seen when he'd first arrived in Lord Dracula's mansion were all on the first floor. A series of staircases near the edges of the house led up a good forty-seven feet, to the second level of the mansion, where everything was more normal-sized. It was almost as if Dracula had been planning for that day for years; hoping to gather them all into one place at some time in the future, and Adam was starting to wonder just why he hadn't done it sooner. Perhaps he hadn't wanted to draw attention to himself until the stakes were high enough, but then again, no one had ever accused him of being a hero. His aims were nearly always self-serving. Still, Adam knew that if Dracula ever tried to use his new army against mankind, over half of its members would walk right out the front door, and the vampire lord must have realized that too. No; his plan for them was probably a bit more complicated than that.

Once he arrived on the second level of the mansion, however, Adam started to notice something that made him feel uneasy. There were people up there; all dressed in fine clothes. Some looked like butlers, and others, like maids, but all of them seemed to be servants, and Adam almost thought that he recognized some of them. One was a black-haired woman in early middle-age, another a brown-haired man of almost exactly the same age as the woman. Then there was a young, black man with flat hair on top of his head, and so on. However, all of them had a few things in common. For one thing, not one of them spoke, and they all seemed to be dazed, as if Dracula had placed every last one of them into a trance. However, that was a worrying thought by itself. Even considering his powers, Dracula had never been able to control that many people at once, back when Adam had known him. A few, perhaps, but not all of the people he saw there. It was as if the vampire's powers had continued to increase over the last hundred years. However, Adam couldn't be sure about anything when it came to him.

Soon, he'd arrived at the door that he'd been directed to; a thick, wooden door, with a brass handle, and turning it gently, he stepped inside, to see that Dracula was in the room, just as he'd said he would be. Still, Adam never felt right talking to him, no matter how many times he did it.

"I'm pleased to see that you're whole again, Adam." Dracula remarked, putting down a book that he'd been reading as Adam Frankenstein stepped into the room, "I also heard that the Gill-man has been secured. Well done."

"I don't think he's going to help us." Adam replied, almost hoping to rain on the older monster's parade, but the vampire just waved the worry off.

"You may leave that to Dobson. She knows him better than either of us. Besides, we have more preparations to make in the meantime."

"Cairo." Adam remembered aloud, drawing another nod from Dracula.

"I will be taking Nancy and yourself." the vampire lord explained, "I thought of taking Dobson as well, but she obviously has other things to occupy herself with at present."

Adam just nodded, not sure what else to say. It almost seemed as if Dracula wasn't angry at Adam anymore, for revealing his real identity. Of course, Adam knew better than that. The anger of a vampire was not dispelled so easily. Still, Dracula continued to speak, as if he didn't have a care in the world.

"I wanted to bring you along on this venture, because I'm hoping to make you understand why I'm willing to go to these lengths. After all, there's no telling what kind of power our new enemy will weild, but we know it's capable of devastating military forces."

"Any one of us could do that." Adam pointed out, recalling his own recent victory over the Gill-man, but Dracula's expression still looked very severe when he replied.

"True, but if our next recruit refuses to cooperate, the danger could be very real; even for us. On top of that, I have never met personally him before, and I know precious little about his motives or personality. All I know for certain is that he is guilty of the cold-blooded murder of over a dozen people, and has enslaved even more people than I have. It is quite plain that he respects neither the body nor the will of man, and his powers are undeniable. Were it not for the fact that my own powers have also grown greatly in recent years, I don't think I would even have considered recruiting him."

"There was one thing I wanted to ask you, with respect to that." Adam said, however, jarring the vampire out of his seeming reverie, "Those people in the hallways... your new servants... Who are they?"

Dracula looked a bit perturbed for a moment, but eventually, he just waved the question aside with a vague response, most likely not caring who they were anymore, if he ever had.

"Old enemies with weak wills or poor morals. They fell prey to my talent for hypnosis during the days when I experimented with my powers, in an attempt to refine them, not more than a decade ago. They live their lives in hypnotic trance now; borne under countless delusions of false lives, constructed from the most absurd lies, which they live out in their thoughts. In the meantime, their bodies do as I tell them. It might amuse you to hear of some of the lies that these people believed while under my power. The thought that I was more than two millenia old, the thought that one of them was descended from Van Helsing, the thought that one of them had replaced me as lord of the vampires, and so on... Transparent lies to any person in their right mind, but without a strong will and a moral heart to resist my power, men and women alike will believe anything."

That thought deeply bothered Adam Frankenstein, not merely because he'd gradually learned respect for human free will, but because he knew that Lord Dracula had no such respect at all, and probably wouldn't have hesitated to use that gruesome power on him as well, if only his will had been less powerful, or his heart less chastened by his own past sins. It was sobering to think of Dracula pulling the strings of his own life; manipulating him like a helpless puppet, totally unable to even recognize it's master's existence. Adam felt like challenging Dracula then and there, demanding that he release those people from his spell, but in reality, he knew it wouldn't do any good. Causing dissention in their group when the alien threat still hung over their heads was a recipe for disaster, but, Adam promised himself, if they ever overcame that threat, he'd do everything in his power to see those people liberated from their years-long enslavement.

"At any rate, I hear you've made a full recovery, so I hope it will not take too much longer before you're ready to leave for Cairo." Dracula continued almost carelessly, though still a bit stiffly, reflecting the upper-class tradition he'd been raised in as a child, "I am planning to leave within five minutes, and I'd like to depart from the same spot we arrived at before. Be ready."

Adam wasn't exactly accustomed to taking orders, but he wasn't chagrined by it either. Still, though he accepted Dracula's commands readily enough for the time being, he knew that he had to keep his eyes open too, and continue to watch the vampire carefully.


Barry had had mixed feelings since he'd first arrived at Dracula's base. He'd been worried at first, although surviving a very long fall had made him feel almost fearless by the time he was shown his rooms. The problem was that although being among those monsters was a refreshing experience in some ways, and even relieving, it was also a terrible sacrifice, and with Adam going on two separate missions in a row, it didn't seem likely that he'd have much time to talk with Barry about how he was feeling.

For a couple of hours, the young werewolf had prowled around the hallways of the base, looking for something to do, or somebody to talk to, who he could trust, but he certainly didn't think Dobson was personable enough, and Kong was out of the question. Dracula, like Adam Frankenstein, always seemed to be busy, and that just left Nancy, who Barry had a hard time with. It might have just been the animal instincts inside of him, but somehow, being in the presence of such a large and powerful-looking being, even if she was just an ordinary woman aside from that, made him feel a bit skittish and defensive. Besides, even before his werewolf urges had started coming out, Barry had always had a hard time talking to girls, and in a way, that was part of the problem. Still, after over two hours of waiting, and after learning that talking to Adam wasn't likely to be an option, Barry realized that he didn't really have a choice anymore. It was Nancy or nothing.

Once he'd made that decision, it didn't take long for Barry Hammerson to track Nancy down. After all, the base was big, but it was hard to hide a fifty-foot woman effectively, and he eventually found her in the common room, dressed in an army uniform and looking very contemplative for a colonel. She seemed to have a book between her left thumb and forefinger, and was squinting at it a little bit, as if doing her best to read the tiny print, and she was seated on one side of a deep red couch, which was just as big, proportionately, as she was. She didn't react as if she'd noticed Barry come in, but, he suspected, she was probably just being subtle. Dracula had already told him that her hearing was a great deal better than any ordinary person's, and might even have been superior to his own. Barry had a strong impulse to react in offense, as if she'd meant to ignore him, but in his mind, he knew it would have been the wrong approach, and fought that urge with all the strength he could muster as he closed the large, metal door of the common room behind himself, still marveling at his own physical strength.

For a few moments, Barry just stood there, staring at Nancy Archer's boots and hoping to be noticed, or asked what was wrong, but somehow, Nancy seemed distracted. Once again, Barry had to fight down the urge to snap at her for no reason, but he did eventually succeed in doing that, deciding that it would be best to just address her himself, and hope that she didn't blow up at him, and tempt him into responding.

"Uh... Hey, Colonel?"

The moment Barry asked that question, Nancy looked up from her book, almost snapping to attention; a testament to her background with the United States military. She seemed a little unnerved by the interruption, but she didn't look offended or upset. In fact, once she saw who'd interrupted her, she gave Barry a friendly smile, and he started to feel a little embarrassed about the way he'd been feeling recently.

"Hmmm... Hammerson, was it? Bernie Hammerson?"

"Barry." the young man replied, stifling the urge to bite her for forgetting his name.

"Barry; that's it." Nancy noticed with a pleased smile, "You're Adam's friend, right?"

Really, though, Barry had a hard time answering that question. He saw Adam as a connection to the world that still made sense; a means to harness his cruel passions, and prevent them from hurting others, and Adam clearly cared at least somewhat about him, but calling them friends might have been premature. In the end, the only reply that Barry could think to give was a haughty-sounding "if he's lucky," which he felt like kicking himself for at almost the very moment he'd said it. Still, he couldn't exactly take those words back, so he just tried to speak to her a bit more carefully a moment later.

"Um... I know it's weird, since we've never really talked before, but... um..."

Nancy did look a little upset by Barry's last reply, but it seemed like she was doing her best to keep smiling as she talked to him, and more importantly, she apparently understood his dilemma.

"You need somebody to talk to, and Adam's not around." Nancy observed sadly, "I'd love to help, but I have a mission in just a few minutes, and..."

"This... this won't take long." Barry insisted, though he was already steaming inside, "I just wanted to ask you about one thing..."

Nancy looked a bit uncomfortable with the idea, but she quickly nodded, closing the book and putting it down on one of her legs, then leaning over until her face was almost directly over Barry's, and he found himself looking straight up, which made him dizzy. Still, he didn't want to waste time climbing onto the couch, and didn't want to look weak in front of Nancy either, so instead, he decided to just hold down his nausea, and ask his question as quickly as possible.

"Well, Nancy, it's... I mean, Colonel, I'm... Look, I've had a hard time giving up... I mean... everyone, and you must have... I'm just saying we're a lot alike, okay?"

Predictably, Nancy didn't look too impressed by how Barry had phrased that, but she at least seemed to understand what he was talking about. Soon, she was starting to look a bit sad, and unfortunately, when she spoke again, her words were no comfort to Barry at all.

"Barry... I think things are going to be very hard for you; harder than they ever were for me. There was a period of adjustment in my case, of course, where I had to learn to cope with the fact that I'd have to leave my old life behind; all my old friends. Sally, Nick, Janie... I'd never see my next door neighbor again. That bugged me, even though all she ever did was complain about the late hours I'd get home at, and the noise my friends and I made... I'd never see my postman again. That bugged me too, even though I usually had a hangover to worry about half the times he showed up. My folks... I don't know why, but I missed them too. Still, once I'd realized that I couldn't go back to the way things used to be, it really helped. The army became my family, and I've still got some really great friends in bunker thirty-two. Leaving them behind isn't easy, but I figure once this mission's over, I can just go right back to them. You, though... Your situation's different."

Barry swallowed when he heard Nancy say that. He was pretty sure that he knew what was coming next, but fortunately, it seemed as if Nancy wasn't going to say much else about his situation, or what he was likely to face in the future. After all, she must have realized, he knew more about that than she did, and in a moment, almost those very words came out of her mouth.

"I'm sorry, Barry. I'd really like to help you, but as silly as this might sound, your problem is bigger than mine, and I don't really think I'm qualified to even comfort you about it."

For some reason, however, those words didn't really offend Barry or upset him, which was a rare phenomenon. He didn't feel much better, but he also didn't really feel worse. He wasn't really sure he'd accomplished anything by talking to Nancy, but at the very least, it had been nice to have someone to talk to, even if the whole talk had ended right where it had begun.

In just another moment, Nancy had stood up to her full height, then taking just a few seconds to place her book on a table nearby on the ground, she opened the common room door, and with a simple "bye," she left through it, her loud, booming footsteps receding down the hallway, and Barry wasn't sure what to think or feel, though he had to admit that it was still something of an improvement.


"You have some nerve, Dobson."

"Yes, I suppose I do." Dobson admitted, removing her lab coat for the first time in days, as she spoke to the Gill-man through the custom transparency that she'd designed to hold him. The tank beyond was full of water, but bubbles would occasionally rise from the bottom of it, as the micro-organisms in the tank produced enough air to support the lives of fish, or of Gill-men. It was a micro-ecosystem of her own design; far superior to any simple fish tank or aquarium of any size. Still, the Gill-man showed no signs of appreciating her hard work, and even looked like he was going to try to punch his way out a moment later, so Dobson knew she'd have to say something.

"You're a puzzle to me, and I'm eager to learn the truth about you. I've never shied away from a challenging mystery, and you're quite mysterious. Of course, I know some of what happened between you and my grandmother, but as near as I can tell, it was really you who started that. I'm not really sure why you're so upset."

"G-grandmother?" the Gill-man asked, looking very confused for just a moment, and stopping his fist before it could hit the transparency, "What are you talking about, Helen?"

"Well..." Dobson replied, "I hate to be the one to break this to you, but my name's Stephanie. Helen Dobson was my grandmother."

At that point, the Gill-man started to relax just a little, drawing both arms back away from the transparency, and then she heard his voice again, though with more of a gurgling overtone than a hissing one.

"Your hair's a different color, and the glasses are new. However, your eyes are the same as hers. Your chin is the same, your cheeks, your lips, ears... everything... I just thought you were wearing a false nose at first."

Dobson paused for a moment when the Gill-man said that. and for the first time, she almost felt a bit ashamed of what she'd done to her own appearance, but still not quite.

"The nose was my own design, and I've made invisible alterations to other parts of myself as well, for practical reasons..." Dobson admitted, but when she said that, the Gill-man seemed to calm down even more, leaning back in his tank and looking straight up, as if expecting to be able to see the clouds through the tank ceiling. At last, he said something that, even for Dobson, shed some light on the situation they were both in.

"I felt betrayed the last time I saw Helen; after what she did to me. I remember two people more than any others, and Helen was one of them. I suppose you don't know much about me at all, though."

"No." Stephanie admitted sadly, "Like I said, you're a mystery, but I really want to learn about you. I mean, I never realized you'd grown so intelligent or quick-witted, and I'm still not sure why you were mad at my grandmother."

For a moment, the Gill-man just watched Stephanie Dobson carefully, as if trying to determine whether she was telling the truth or not, but at last, he said "Alright. I'll tell you everything, but in exchange, I want you to promise that you'll release me from this tank without a struggle once I'm done with my story. No tricks, alright?"

"Alright." Dobson replied, "No tricks, but I need you to promise that once you're out, you won't try to injure anyone else around here, including me, and that you'll listen to a request of mine. You can agree to my request, or not after that. Just listen to it all the way through."

The Gill-man still looked a bit suspicious, but at last, he said "Yes. That's fair," and began his story a moment later.

"For most of my life, I was no more intelligent than an average water mammal. I had some ability to make calculations, but no imagination or real awareness. I can't even really remember what my life was like back then, but that may be normal when a person grows in intelligence; they simply forget what life was like before. Humans, for example, don't remember their earliest years, when they were babies. I do recall having met Helen at least once before gaining intelligence, but I can't remember the circumstances, or what I did, or even what happened to her. It's all a blur to me."

"Anyway, my earliest memories were of a doctor named William Barton. He seemed like he wanted to help me, in certain ways. He tried to bring out my human side; coaxing my mind towards a more human intelligence, until I was less instinct-based. He also tried to take apart my scaley hide, to make me look more human as well. In fact, it almost seemed as if he was training me to be a man. However, at the last moment, Barton betrayed me, and I killed him. I don't remember all the specifics, but I believe there were at least two crimes involved, one of which was murder."

"After that, I fled to the ocean, but it didn't take long before someone tracked me down again, and sure enough, it was Helen Dobson, having earned a doctorate in biology. She was furious with me for some reason, but instead of trying to harm me physically, she carried on Barton's experiments, focusing on my developing intelligence, as she allowed my scales to grow back. At last, I had about the intelligence of a ten-year-old, and Dobson seemed satisfied with her work, releasing me back into the ocean."

"It was only once I was back in the water that I realized what a terrible thing Helen had done to me. My appearance made it impossible for me to join human society, and my intelligence made it difficult for me to accustom myself to underwater life again. I could eat fish, fight sharks, build an underwater home for myself and so on, but I didn't have a single intelligent person to share it all with; my enhanced brain craved worthy companionship, and I couldn't find it. Dobson had given me a fate worse than death; she'd given me the all-consuming craving for something that I could never possess."

"I'm not sure how long it took before I started looking for Helen again, but I was furious with her by that point, and I wanted her dead. I tore across continents, and searched cities, and I killed more than once, trying to get her to come out of hiding, but the truth is that the world is a big place, and she may not even have been hiding at all. It was possible that she just hadn't heard about what I'd been doing, until we finally met in person one last time."

"I eventually met someone who'd heard the name "Helen Dobson," and I ran across three states to reach her, but by the time I tracked her down, she'd surrounded herself with weapons, like nothing I'd ever seen before. We fought for nearly an hour, but as powerful as she'd grown, the intelligence that she'd given me allowed me to react to every move she made, and design tactics of my own, and my strength was more than a match for her weapons. Finally, she trapped me in a tank, not unlike this one, and told me that I had no reason to be angry with her, because she'd done nothing but give me a marvelous gift, but that what I'd done was unforgivable."

"Helen accused me of killing one of her dearest relatives, and injuring another, and I couldn't deny it. I just wasn't used to thinking in those terms, and when she said that she was going to kill me for what I'd done, I told her why I'd been hunting for her; that unless I could be a man, intelligence was a burden. She didn't seem to appreciate my words. She said that intelligence was the best part of life, and that I was just an ungrateful brute. I broke out of the tank just a moment later, but she managed to escape me, and I never saw her again. I have no idea what she did with the rest of her life. Despite her threats to me that day, she never made another attempt to kill me, as far as I can tell."

However, Stephanie was already starting to feel a bit sad as the Gill-man finished his tale, because she knew that the story he'd just told her had a very bittersweet ending.

"You're wrong." Stephanie Dobson replied, "Grandma never did anything else with her life after that. She spent the rest of her days researching you, and trying to develop a sure fire means of killing you. She committed herself to it; obsessed over it. Eventually, she threw everything else away. Her husband stopped loving her, her friends were afraid of her, and even her old connections in the scientific community didn't want to speak to her anymore. Even her only son refused to speak to her. She was a reclusive and tragic figure. She could have done tremendous good for the world, if she hadn't been so obsessed with you."

"You can't pin the blame for that on me." the Gill-man remarked, though he actually did sound as if the news about Helen's fate had made him feel a bit sad. However, at that point, Stephanie genuinely smiled; a wild-eyed smile, that seemed to even worry her guest.

"Blame you?" Dobson asked, grinning from ear to ear, "Why would I want to blame you? If it wasn't for you, I'd probably just be some no-name, poverty-stricken, art school student. Grandma's obsession may have destroyed her, but it did me a world of good."

As usual, the Gill-man's fish-like expression was almost completely unreadable, but he seemed as if he was either disgusted or elated by what Dobson had just said, so she continued.

"When I was eight, I was really into art, and I wanted to be a painter. My dad really supported me, but he died falling off a ladder, and I wound up being cared for by my only other living relative."

"Helen." the Gill-man observed, releasing a few more bubbles into the tank as he spoke, and drawing a confirming nod from Doctor Dobson.

"The very first evening that I spent in her house, she hooked me up to a machine, and studied the structure of my brain." Stephanie explained, still grinning broadly as she explained her past, "I was a little scared at first, but more curious than worried, and when grandma was done, she told me that there was no way I could ever be a painter, and that I should give up on it immediately."

"At first, I didn't want to accept what grandma had said, but the more time passed, the more I started to realize that she'd been right. I couldn't seem to handle a brush properly, and the paints all mixed together into a mess whenever I tried to paint anything. I tried sketching one or two things later on, and I had a lot more luck with that, but I just couldn't see a future for myself as a sketch artist. Eventually, I gave in, and when I was ten, I asked grandma to help me figure out what to do with my life."

"Grandma taught me everything she knew after that; all about the human brain, about the way the body worked; about biology and cybernetics; all the secrets of science that she'd learned, and about the history of other great, eccentric scientists who'd come before her; Nikola Tesla, Victor Frankenstein, Jack Griffin, Henry Jekyll, Andre Delambre... All of them uncovered fantastic secrets of science and biology, and yet, almost all of those secrets seemed to be lost. She told me that it was a great shame, because if only those discoveries could all be gathered, whoever managed to acquire them all would be one of the most powerful people in the world. From the day she told me that, I knew what my purpose in life was."

"Once I'd learned everything that grandma had to teach me, I spent years chasing after those lost secrets of science, and it took me a while, but I managed to find them. I even found some of the original notes on the various formulas and discoveries that they'd each made. They were all brilliant men, and yet somehow, I knew that I could take their sciences further than they ever had; I could make them work in ways that they'd never even considered. I was eighteen when I made that evaluation, and since then, I've managed to accomplish quite a bit. I still have a lot more research to do on some readings a got recently from a Mr. Torrance, who seemed to be a psychic, but right now, it's... Well, you probably don't care about my research projects. I'll let you out now."

Soon, Dobson had moved over to a dial on the other side of the room, and started turning it slowly. As she did so, there was the sound of some kind of mechanical device within the walls, clanking away, and soon, the water started draining out of the tank, and the transparency began to lower, giving the Gill-man his chance to climb out of that transparent prison. For a moment, it looked like he was struggling with the urge to strangle Dobson, in spite of his promise to not harm her, but fortunately, he won that struggle, and even managed to keep his other promise as well.

"Now, what was your request?" the Gill-man asked, still looking very upset with Dobson. However, he did, at least, seem to be listening to her, so she made the request that she'd been asked to make.

"Recently, something happened to the world's electricity, and we think that an alien power is probably at fault." Dobson explained, "If we're right about this, then they'll come to Earth very soon, and try to destroy us all with powerful weapons. Since you've proven, in the past, that your body is a stronger weapon than most tanks, I think you'd be a big help against this threat. We've been gathering gifted and powerful people from all over the world, to try to assemble some kind of defense against them, and... Well, if these aliens come here, they might destroy the entire planet. That would be just as bad for you as for the rest of us."

The Gill-man looked suspicious as he listened to Dobson's request, but he also seemed to be taking it seriously, and soon, he opened his mouth again, and in that hissing voice of his, he responded to her...