During The Angel Experiment, Chapters 1-45.
Four long, despicable years; that's how long Robert Drake had waited. Waited while Jeb poured lies into the heads of his prized subjects. Waited while Max's composure and cool sense of humor degraded to paranoia and sarcasm. Waited while his beautiful Angel was subjected to the humiliation of a typical girl her age, her abilities completely unrealized.
True, he was able to watch, but for scientists, especially a geneticist, it is never enough just to watch. Robert craved interaction, even writing a letter would have satisfied him for weeks, but the best he could do was sit and observe.
And now? Now that was about to change.
He was already in a far greater position of control than he had been four years ago. Two years previously Jeb had returned from the Hybrids to find that Ari, of his own desire (or so it seemed to everyone) had become an Eraser. Robert had noticed that the process had been painful. It had, after all, been Engels's fault, as she was the one who had designed that part of the process. Far inferior to his own Erasers, created to be so from birth.
Speaking of inferior, Robert has successfully replaced Dr. Harris as the administrator of the school's Hybrids department. Ter Borcht may have been locked up, but his perfection of The Voice had caught the attention of The Director, not Anne, but Dr. Janssen at Itexicon Headquarters.
So the instant the four years were up, which is to say at four AM exactly, Robert had snapped the lights on in the Eraser barracks, had pulled Ari aside and stated firmly, "I want Angel back, understand?"
Ari, impossibly tall, stretched out, and partially morphed asked, "And Max?"
"Angel first. Max will follow, and then you'll have plenty of time to disembowel her as you prefer."
It hadn't taken Ari's team long, Robert had seen to it that they'd received adequate training, and apparently the flock had been unprepared; out to pick strawberries, Ari commented. Angel had been knocked out along the way; Robert had the Eraser responsible quietly euthanized.
Once he'd heard that she'd arrived and was active, Robert had flown—almost as if he was an avian-human hybrid—off to the observation room. He collected himself, practiced the method he'd developed to block Angel's mind-reading abilities, and stepped over to the window.
And there she'd been, just as he'd seen her over the video monitors, so many times before. She had of course gotten taller since the last time he'd seen her with his own eyes, she even had a full head of blonde hair.
"…I wasn't sure I believed it," one of the scientists in the room stated, "Are you saying this is Subject Eleven? This little girl?"
Darn right it is, Robert had thought to himself. He knew that we'd earned some amount of scorn from many of the lower staff members, due to his obsession with Angel, but he didn't mind. She'd show them all someday.
Yet, even though Angel was now in the same building as him, Robert couldn't quite muster the nerve to go up to her and speak to her again. He had been awake the whole night, worrying about what he'd say, how she'd react. Would she accept him back as her ad-hoc father? Would she even listen to him after all the lies she'd been told?
In the end he decided to begin with a temporary solution, one that would guarantee him contact with her, even if she was relocated.
The next day he procured a mixture of the retroviruses needed to give Angel a Voice. He wasn't sure when he would use it, but he knew that he had to at some point.
Accompanied by another scientist, one who didn't quite understand Angel as he did, Robert walked into the room in which Angel was held. He had to be careful around this scientist, it was a new recruit, and the last thing he needed was to be promoting a lack of security vigillence, especially since the rest of Batchelder's flock was still out there.
The poor girl, they'd installed a shunt in her hand, namely for taking blood, but it would work just as well as an injection location. After the assistant opened the dog crate, Robert knelt down to get a better look. In response, Angel squeezed herself toward the very back of the crate. It seemed that Jeb's lies had indeed been effective.
Still not willing to say anything he reached in, hoping to take her hand, when he noticed a bright read mark across her face. He turned and asked the other scientist, "What happened to it?"
"It bit Reilly earlier," the scientist said, "He hit it."
Robert let his frustration boil over for a moment. Stupid Reilly, he thought to himself, Guy should work in a car wash. If he wrecks this specimen, I'll kill him!
"Doesn't he realize how unique this subject is?" Robert spat, then feeling himself about to go off on one of his rants quickly added, "I mean, this is Subject Eleven. Does he know how long we've been—" a brief pause as he quickly reconsidered his words, "looking for it? You tell Reilly not to damage the merchandise."
He reached in again, now both embarrassed and frustrated. He'd made himself look just like anyone else around here. What was the term the hybrids used? Whitecoat? Just like any other whitecoat.
Angel looked at him with those deep blue eyes of hers. He could see in those eyes that she was too occupied with her own pain to take note of anything he could try to say to comfort her. Maybe she recognized something in his face though, as slowly she stretched her hand out towards him. "That's it," Robert muttered, trying to keep his voice soft, it was the first time he'd directly addressed Angel in four years. He pulled out a needle and test tube; he had after all told the director that he wanted a blood sample. "This won't hurt," he almost pleaded, "Honest."
Angel looked away. He couldn't blame her in the slightest—he'd hated having blood-work done as a child. He noticed though that the other…whitecoat was also looking down at his clipboard.
After removing the blood-work needle, Robert pulled out a hypodermic needle that contained the retrovirus that produced the Voice. He slipped this needle into the shunt. Angel didn't look; as far as she knew, it was just another needle.
By the time his assistant looked up, Robert had pocketed both needles. Angel hadn't turned around the whole time, and in fact retreated promptly back into the dog crate. At the moment, he was the only person aware that Angel had a Voice.
"That's okay, that's perfectly okay."
Robert paced back and forth in the corridors, it felt like Jeb had been in there with Angel for hours. Due to the fact that he now outranked Jeb, Robert had been very insistent with his instructions: The birdkids were to be told that the test was over, especially Angel. Even if the rest of the flock were allowed to escape again, it was imperative that Angel remained with them.
He waited as the door opened and Jeb joined him in the corridor. Dr. Batchelder had changed after discovering what had happened to Ari, he was quieter, seemed to speak in more riddles.
"And?" Robert asked.
"I've done everything I can," Jeb replied, starting up the hall, his pace slow.
"Did she believe you?"
"Would you believe me if I told you that everything you could remember had simply been a test?" Jeb shook his head and walked quietly off.
Robert thought this over as he stood in front of the door to room where his little girl sat. Angel would be difficult to convince, but Robert knew that her safety, her future depended upon convincing her. He would only get one shot.
Robert drake made one last nervous swallow and pushed open the door.
This section contains dialogue pulled from The Angel Experiment by James Patterson, specifically chapters 13, 27, and 45.
