Helen had set up a Moroccan tent on the roof of the sanctuary for her, Ashley, Will and I to enjoy.
"Okay, favorite album?" Will asked us.
"Never mind." Ashely answered as he rose to give us some pastille.
"What? Is that personal?" he asked her.
"No, Never Mind, Nirvana!" she explained.
"Oh!" he said finally understanding.
"You?" she asked him.
"Joshua Tree obviously." He answered.
"Sgt. Pepper and Rhapsody in Blue." Helen said, giving her favorite albums.
"That's two." Will pointed out.
"Over the course of two lifetimes; Gershwin played it for me while he was writing it." Helen told us.
"And no doubt you've watch the sun come up with the Beatles." Will teased.
"No, that was me and it was only one of them." I told him and he gave me a look making me laugh lightly.
"Is there anything better than eating pastilla with your fingers?" Helen asked us.
"Doing it in Morocco." Ashley told her and I nodded.
"I miss Morocco." I sighed.
"Which, by my calculations, is still 6,000 miles from our front lawn sadly." Helen reminded us.
"I'll get the tea." Ashley said leaving the tent and going inside.
"So, what inspired this, this midnight at the oasis thing?" Will asked her.
"It's a ritual I've grown to love. It reminds me that the Bedouins had it right. They have this philosophy called "Al-Mizaan". It means never forfeiting your principles." Helen explained.
"Sadly we never do this in Morocco." I teased. "Always at home."
"Because we're always needed here." She reminded me and I smiled as Will's cell phone buzzed and he sat up looking puzzled at the display. Ashley walked back in with the tea.
"What is it?" Ashley asked him.
"Uh, it's a...it's a text message from the wife of my best friend in college. "Danny's missing. Can I help? The police are useless"." He read off.
"This friend, was he prone to trouble?" Helen asked him.
"Who Danny? No, nobody was more straight-up, more gentle." He told us before getting lost in his memories.
The next day, Will went to find his friend before meeting back with us in Helen's office.
"Henry helped me collate all the data Danny collected; witness accounts, times, dates. One particular vehicle was spotted in three different locations where these guys disappeared." Will told us.
"It was a white van." Henry narrowed down.
"Well, that narrows it down." Ashley said sarcastically.
"Just wait, a homeless dude got a license number when he saw his friend allegedly being abducted." Henry told us.
"We traced it to a stolen vehicle that was found abandoned near the estuary." Will said.
"Which means they probably know it was seen and ditched it." I told them.
"Is there anything out there?" Helen asked them.
"Nothing inhabited; just a former awning factory." Will told us.
"Can you say "Road Trip"?"
The warehouse was dark when we got there. The four of us walked inside with flashlights and guns focused on everything.
"What do you think went on here, executions?" Ashley asked noting the blood smears on the floor.
"There's a great range in age for this blood. Some of it seems months old, and others seem very fresh." Helen told us.
"If they were doing executions they wouldn't look like this." I told them as Will knelt down for a closer look at the splatters.
"Patterns tell you anything?" Ashley asked Will.
"Medium velocity impact spatter, multiple trajectories, all consistent with repeated blunt trauma." Will told us before picking something up off the floor. "Enswell."
"As in "All's well that ends well"?" Ashley asked him.
"It's a tool cut-men use to stop a fighter's eye from closing." He told her.
"Epinephrine, if used topically, it can stop bleeding." Helen told us before walking over to Will and Ashley with a vial in her hand.
"You think this was a training facility?" Ashley asked.
"Or a fight ring." Will countered.
"Not exactly Caesar's." Helen said.
"At this moment I prefer Caesar's." I said and they all gave me a look. "You knew what you were getting into."
"For bare-knuckle throw-downs this would work." Will said. We heard something and turned to it with flashlights and guns. A man walked into our light and I stopped breathing for a moment.
"My God!" Helen said in shock.
"Who are you?" he asked us.
"I'm Helen, I'm your daughter. Don't you recognize me?" she asked him.
"Come on, I know this long-lost child scam backward and forward. You gotta work on your delivery, babe." He told her and I threw him a confused look as he walked forward holding a flask in one hand.
"Your name is Gregory Magnus, and you are my father." Helen told him. "You remember Elizabeth, don't you? Your oldest friend?"
"My name, if you don't mind, is Charles L. Denton." He told us.
"If that's what you'd prefer. What are you doing here?" she asked him.
"Uh, yeah, give me a minute, okay?" Charlie told her. "I, uh…I'm just sleeping one off. You know... free drinks? My buddy got me in here."
"To what, an illegal fight?" Helen asked him.
"Alright, listen... if you're cops I want to see a badge." He told us.
"No cops here." I told him.
"That's a very nasty cut, may I?" Helen asked pointing at the cut on his forehead.
"Yeah, I'll take care of it." He told her.
"You always were a stubborn man." I sighed. "Just let us help you."
"I'd like you to come back with us. I'll clean that wound, and...and we can talk." Helen offered.
"Huh, we've got nothing to talk about." He said.
"This might be a case of mistaken identity." Will said trying to offer an alternative.
"I'm not mistaken. I know my own father." Helen told him.
"Huh, piece of work, this one." Charlie said taking another drink.
"A quality I inherited." Helen told him.
Later that day, I walked into Helen's office with Will and Ashley after she'd taken blood from Charlie as well as some from the splatters we'd gotten samples from.
"Did you get anything on Danny?" Will asked her hopeful.
"Not directly, but I borrowed Charlie's cell phone. Check these photos at the fight. Now, nothing of Danny, but...look at this." She told us and we looked at it to see an abnormal that couldn't have existed.
"Oh my God, tell me that's not an abnormal." Will told her.
"Not just any abnormal." I told them causing Will and Ashley to look at me confused.
"What do you mean?" Will asked.
"Two years before my father disappeared on an expedition to Mecca, he created a number of new species. It was, in effect, the birth of genetic engineering. He kept it all in this journal, here." Helen told them opening Gregory's journal and showing the younger two.
"This species proved to be too aggressive and dangerous to continue in the world." I told them. "He had no choice but to destroy every trace of it."
"But if he destroyed it…" Ashley started asking.
"How did it survive into this century, I know." Helen finished.
"We don't even know how your father survived into this century." Will reminded her.
"Or even if he is your father." Ashley added.
"Oh it's him." I told her. "No one but Gregory knew how to create this species or could be this stubborn."
"It simply begs any semblance of credulity that a man identical to Gregory would be a spectator at a fight in which the very species of abnormal he created would be a combatant." Helen added.
"Okay, yeah, it is very, very weird." Ashley conceded.
"What does it say about these matches that an abnormal is being used?" Will asked Helen.
"I worry that your friend, Danny, may have stumbled onto something far more sinister than extreme fighting." Helen told him.
"And that he might be part of it." I added.
Helen had managed to get an address with someone who could give us a location for the fights from Charlie.
"Now the beauty of this one is that they built it so the engine sounds harmonized at freeway speed. Yeah, they don't make them like that anymore." The mechanic told us.
"But they are making something new. You're the man with the 411 on the abnormals fight club. Charlie told us." Ashley told him.
"I know cars." He told us.
"Yeah, you also know the players. And you don't want to tick off our boss." Will told him.
"Trust us on that." Ashley said.
"It's been going on a year, a year and a half. The money's huge; it moves through all the big books." The mechanic said.
"What's the betting on Danny Bradley?" I asked him.
"Oh, they don't go by names like that; "Destroyer", "Slice 'n dice", "The Re-Arranger."" He told us.
"And the next fight is where?" I asked.
"I could make a couple of calls; I'll tell you what I hear but I warn you, the buy-in is steep and it's all super-secret. Word doesn't get out 'til mid-week." He told us. I nodded and we left him back to his work.
After visiting the mechanic we made our way back into the Library to see Helen at one of the computers.
"Hey." I greeted. "Anything come back from the warehouse?"
"Everyone who bled in that ring was an abnormal." She told us.
"So Danny wasn't there." Will concluded.
"Not the Danny you remember in all likelihood." Helen told him.
"What does that mean?" Will asked her.
"His blood's been altered. They've changed him or he's changed himself; Danny's an abnormal now." She told him.
"What about the blood comparison between you and Charlie?" Ashley asked changing the subject and Helen brought up the test results.
"That's my DNA on the left and his on the right." She told us.
"Father and daughter." Will said.
"The only way that's not the man who made me who I am is if they used his DNA to create a new Gregory Magnus." Helen said smiling.
"They couldn't clone him and get the abnormals they have right now." I told her putting a hand on her shoulders. "That's Gregory alight. Buried deep inside Charlie's mind."
I joined Helen later in the day in the lab underground as she showed it to Charlie.
"Recognize this?" she asked him.
"What, "From Russia with love"?" he asked her sarcastically.
"It's the lab I built based on your designs." She told him.
"Wow, I...designed this over a hundred years ago!" he asked impressed.
"Well, not the modern equipment of course but the core concept, yes." She told him showing him his journal. "Do you remember the first time you took me into your laboratory?"
"Hey, look, I'm sorry but um...I'm not getting the antacid flashback you were hoping for."
FLASHBACK ENGLAND 1800s
I stood next to Gregory as a blonde Helen leaned over her father's desk.
"You...are the most talented medical researcher I have ever known and yet you keep your most important work hidden from the world, from me. If you truly believe that I have potential, Father, please...help me achieve it." She begged him. He looked to me and I gave him a look.
"She's an adult." I reminded him. "She's ready." Gregory and I stood in front of a locked door as Helen joined us.
"Once you enter this door, you are on a path that cannot be reversed." He told her before she walked through the door and looked around in wonder.
"You told me my world would never be the same." Helen reminded him.
"Hey, no offense, but...your old man sounds like a whack job." Gregory told her.
"I loved him with all my heart, and you're remembering a little I can see it." She told him walking to a table and opening a case. She pulled out her father's tools and showed them to him.
"These were your surgical tools; in your hands, they were magic." She told him smiling.
"Is that right?" he asked her. Helen removed a wooden box from the case and showed it to him.
"This is the microscope you gave me when I was ten. You said it would give me access to an unseen world; a world you said was filled with untold wonders." Helen told him as he downed his drink.
"I need a refill." He told us.
"It's a part of you, you can't deny it; it's connecting for you." Helen told him. "You came back here for a reason Father; it can't have been by chance."
"Stop it will ya! Back off! I'm not your..." Gregory grabbed the back of his neck in obvious pain before dropping the glass he was holding.
"Father, what's wrong?" Helen asked as he leaned over in pain. Helen examined the back of his neck and saw a Y incision with something moving right under it.
We were in Henry's work station looking over the scans of Gregory's neck.
"There's an insect like creature deeply imbedded in the muscles in the base of his brain." Helen said.
"What the hell is it staring at the bug?" Henry asked.
"Can't say for certain without doing more tests; but all my instincts are telling me that this is what's controlling my father, keeping him from remembering who he really is." Helen told him.
"The moment he started remembering was when the pain started.
"You're thinking the Cabal?" Henry asked.
"These fight clubs could be their living laboratories, homeless people their guinea pigs." Helen explained before Ashley entered the room.
"Mom, Will is missing and I do not have a good feeling about this." Ashley told us.
"Have you checked the lower levels?" Helen asked her.
"Up and down, I think he might've gone to see the mechanic; there was an address jotted down in the office." Ashley explained.
"Well we've got to get out there." Henry said.
"Chances are that was just for the snatch and grab." Ashley said.
"We find out where the fight was moved, and we find Will and Danny." I told them.
"You know, the one man who's holding out on us is the one man who might know something." Ashley told us before storming out of the office and towards her grandfather. Helen and I followed her into the library where he was drinking another drink.
"Your friends at the fight ring have taken our colleague." Helen told him.
"Don't know what you're talking about." He told her.
"This is getting old, Charlie. It's obvious you know more than you're telling us." Helen told him.
"Obvious to you, maybe; even if I could lead you to those people, I'd be paying in body parts. Still one or two I'm kinda fond of." He told us.
"You know, I don't know you from Adam, but my Mom says you're her Dad and that makes you my..." Ashley paused. "My grandpa. And that gives me the right to tell you that you're one cranky, ungrateful sack."
"Hey, you be careful young lady!" Gregory told her.
"My mother worshipped you! She makes it sound like you were the smartest man in the world." Ashley told him.
"Not smart enough, apparently." Gregory said.
"Charlie! We're family okay whether you believe it or not, and what you're doing to my mom, and to Will, and to all those people, is wrong!" Ashley shouted.
"Well, we know where she got the lip." Gregory told Helen.
"Enough!" Ashley knocked the drink out of Gregory's hand and got into this face. "Okay, if you have any decency left in you, you will tell us where that fight's going down."
"Look, I can't tell you what I don't know." Gregory said.
"If Charlie's stopping Gregory from telling us, then it's time to stop Gregory from drowning." I told Helen. She nodded to me and turned to her father.
A few hours later, we had Gregory prepped for surgery.
"It's a local anesthetic only, so you should be awake for the entire procedure." Helen told him before beginning the surgery. She pulled back the flaps of skin to expose the insect. "It's deeply embedded." As Helen touched the insect with the forceps it moved and Gregory moaned in pain. "There's a rhythm to the creature's movements. If I can get it on the proper pulse point, I should be able to get the legs out individually and tie them off."
"And if you can't?" Ashley asked her.
"The hinged spurs on the pincers will propel the remnant all the way to the spinal canal, where it will paralyze and then kill. Can you hear me, Charlie?" Helen asked him.
"Yeah. You said you're going to kill me." He told her.
"The plan is not to kill you." I told him. I watched Helen close the forceps around a leg making Charlie respond in pain.
"His vitals are spiking." I told her.
"I'm having trouble." She said.
"What?" Ashley asked her.
"Front pair; Doomsday wired; completely enmeshed in his peripheral nerve." Helen told us.
"And if it gets cut?" Ashley asked fearing the answer.
"So does his lifeline. Hang on, Father." Helen told him.
"I'm trying, Helen." Gregory told her.
"Welcome back Gregory." I told him. "Keep fighting this thing."
"Mom, he's in a lot of pain; can't you knock him out or something?" Ashley asked her.
"I need him conscious. Can you hear me?" Helen asked him.
"Get it out of me!" Gregory ordered.
"I need your help." She told him.
"I'm the patient, for God's sake!" he reminded her.
"You are also the most able surgeon the Royal College ever produced." She reminded him. "These last pincers are the neural tap; how do I separate them without killing you?"
"The...Norwich Giant." He told her.
"There has to be another way." I told him.
"What did he say?" Ashley asked us.
"Pituitary abnormal on a hair trigger to self-destruct; isolate the creature's neural kill switch, cut it before it can send a signal." Helen told her.
"Sounds like a plan." Ashley told us.
"Except the Norwich Giant died on the table!" I reminded Helen.
"I've exposed the peripheral nerve where it's been hijacked near the cut point." She said after a while. Helen looked to Ashley and I for reassurance. Ashley nodded and I sighed.
"Do it." I told her. Gregory reached out for someone and Ashley took his hand in hers.
"Got it." Helen told us placing the insect in a glass container.
"Genius Meat Packing..." Gregory told us.
"I'll get an address." Ashley told us.
At the warehouse I walked in with Helen to see a crowd of people surrounding fighters.
"This is your time, right? Huh, is that what you said? Is this what you want? Is this what you want?" I heard Will say, but his voice was off. "Is this what you all want?"
"Is that Will?" she asked me.
"Get up! Get up!"
"Finish him, you dumb bastard! Come on!" a man called out. I pushed the crowd aside to see Will go after Danny before Henry grabbed Will.
"Will, no!" Will threw Henry to the ground before going after him. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, it's me, Henry." Will stopped and looked at Henry as the crowd continued to cheer Will on. "Will!" Will grabbed Henry by the sides of his neck. "Will...no, no, no! This isn't you! This isn't you..." Henry placed his hand on Will's shoulders and looked him directly in the eyes, pleading with him.
"Come on! Come—" the man stopped talking as I drew my gun.
"Will, this is not you." Henry told him.
"Henry? Henry...help... help me." Will begged him as Helen moved away from me.
"Come on! Kill him! Let's go!" Ashley entered the center with both guns drawn at the men with the bigger guns.
"Stand down!" she ordered them. I saw some of the men starting to come from behind her and I shot my gun in the air.
"I believe the lady said stand down, gentlemen!" I shouted.
"Henry, help me." Will begged him.
"You're going to be okay, Will." Henry told him.
"Help me." Will asked again.
"You're going to be okay. Listen to me. First thing we gotta do is get that thing out of you. Okay?" Henry confirmed.
"Yeah. Yeah..." Will agreed. Ashley stared at Will horrified at what they'd done to him.
Days later, Helen was injecting Will once more to treat whatever they gave him.
"This is the last cycle. All signs are that your body has purged the abnormality; Danny's not far behind." Helen told him.
"I keep thinking, was that me ready to kill a friend, or was it...somebody else?" Will asked.
"We all have the impulse for violence; the true measure of a species, indeed, of a person, is in our restraint." Helen told him.
"The juice they gave you brought out the violent tendencies we bury every day." I explained to him. "They started you with a much higher does than the others so it not only brought out the violence but enhanced it."
I was walking through the hallway when I saw Gregory coming from Helen's office.
"Gregory." I said smiling at him. "Good to see you back on your feet and back in your right mind."
"Hello Elizabeth." He said and we shared a smile and a hug. When we parted we started walking towards the door. "Helen told me about what happened with Nikola."
"Nikola is a jerk now just like he was a century ago." I told him. I took a deep breath and sighed. "I was reminded of an option that I still have: divorce or killing him. I said no."
"Why's that?" he asked me and I gave him a look. "You still care for him."
"A century goes by and I still love a man who tried to kill me. Twice. He keeps sending mixed signals. He tries to kill me then stays with me all night at a request of weakness." I laughed at the thought. "I've missed you, old friend."
"Now you're changing the subject." He told me and I laughed. "You forget how well I know you."
"I forget nothing, Gregory. The downfall of living such a long life." I told him.
"Is it truly a downfall?" he asked me. "Give him time."
"I've given him a century." I reminded him.
"And he saved you." He pointed out.
"Knowing him he has an ulterior agenda." I said.
"Then why didn't he stick around?" he asked me. "Why did he just lay with you?"
