It has been a VERY long time since I updated this and I am so sorry. I've been incredibly busy during the last few months with work and graduating from high school. Here's a shorter chapter for you. I'll try to keep this fanfic more active going forward. Thank you to all who have been reading thus far. Love ya :D

Chapter 4

The Mad Doctor

September 14, 1968, Satuday

"I think zes is eet…" The young boy muttered from his desk, fingers saturated with blood. His father shouldn't have shown him Frankenstein in a frivolous attempt to strengthen his English skills. The boy was already a bit of an outcast due to his gangly frame, accent, and coke-bottle glasses. But his recent and intensive fascination with death had turned him into a complete and utter pariah. Not to say the young boy had no friends at all, Tavish wasn't far from him and the two shared a love of work, Tavish's physical and the boy's mental, They teamed up to exterminate a basement of rats a week back. One of those rats had graciously volunteered to be one of the boy's test subjects. Its slightly mangled corpse was splayed out on the boy's desk, its scalp laid neatly aside, providing access to its tiny rodent brain, currently with a copper wire stuck deep within the grey matter.

"Now, if zee movie was more zan just fiction, zee brain should be restimulated with zee electricity…" He muttered to himself as he grabbed a freshly plucked battery from the TV remote…3…2…1-

"Hey, Fritz! What's going on!?" Jane and Tavish had waltzed into the boy's room, briefcase in hand and grins firmly glued to their faces.

"What are you DUMMKOPFS doing?!" He shouted as he flung a nearby blanket over his science experiment.

"Look what we got!" Jane smiled as he tossed the briefcase over to the boy, landing next to his shoes. The snarl on his face quickly dissipated into a sly smile.

"Ohh zat ess exciting!" The boy had been pining for the briefcase just as much as his compadres. "Do we know how to open it?"

"Well no…But if anyone can crack it open it's you!"

"Who did you get zees from anyway?"

"We repossessed it from a boy named Jeremy Elberton." Like a cougar waiting to strike, the well-dressed boy came out of nowhere. Twirling a pencil between his fingers. "We caught him on his walk home from school…"

"I am sorry but, who are you? I did not see you come in…"

The well-dressed boy outstretched his hand, "I go to Gray's, you wouldn't know me, but I have an interest in this briefcase as do you." He said with a sly smile.

"My apologiez, but zat does not answer my question?!" The bespeckled boy was growing more and more distressed by the second, not helping was Tavish poking his one good eye under the blanket before letting out a shocked yelp.

"What the bloodeh 'ell is that?!"

"GET OUT FROM ZERE!" The bespeckled boy rushed over and shooed his friend away.

"GENTLEMEN! PLEASE! A second of your time." The well-dressed boy sternly bellowed.

"We are all here for the same thing, to figure out how to open this briefcase, We do not know the combination and we do not know who to ask, however, this also means our enemies don't know what's inside the briefcase or how to open it. Now! We need to figure out how to open it and find out what's inside."

Jane was the first to step up with his idea, "It's nuclear codes! Meant to nuke those reds back to the stone age!" The boy started to chuckle.

"Moneh!" Tavish shouted out, "It's gotta be a whole lotta moneh!"

"Vhatever it is…we need to find a place to stash it so Jeremy and hees friends won't find it and scoop eet up."

"Agreed…there is one place…just outside of town."

"Ya don't mean that place? Do ya?"

The well-dressed boy meant that place exactly, a place avoided by every child in Teufort. Stories were told about that place, ghost stories. Some say that it was a science experiment gone wrong, MANNCO pulling some sort of failed experiment in time dilation. Time moved slowly within some sort of zone while the rest of the drooling desert folk continued upon their day, oh yes. The well-dressed boy figured it would be perfect.

"Yes Tavish, I mean-"

September 15, 1968, Sunday

"2FORT? Oh, you've gotta be kiddin' me!" Jeremy shouted out loud from the tree branches.

"Shuddap, You'll reveal our spot!" Mundy jabbed him in the ribs without removing his eye from his airgun's scope.

The four boys had made their way down to 2FORT from Mundy's house. Figuring out where the rest would stash the briefcase wasn't rocket science. Going to one of their houses was too much of a gambit on their part. The boys could just go to their house and tell the respective parent/parents about how their "Precious little boy" stole what was rightfully theirs. No, it had to be somewhere weird, perhaps haunted. Mikhail had just rejoined Dell on the ground after stashing the bikes behind some bushes before asking Dell the question that had been circling in his mind for the past few days.

"Where did briefcase come from?"

Dell replied without looking up from his binoculars, "It fell off a truck."

"What?" Mikhail let off a slight chuckle.

"Nah, I'm serious. You've heard of MANNCO yeah?"

Heavy recalled the name from the comic ad he saw, "Saxton Hale?"

"Yeah, that's the one. It fell off the back of some MANNCO truck that sped past the front of the school a month or so back I assume. We didn't find the briefcase 'till two weeks ago, me and a boy named Ludwig…speak of the devil…"

It had taken the better part of an hour to finally spot their briefcase amongst the dust and old cracked concrete.

"No way…They've got that lunatic on their side…Jeezus."

"Oh and deres dat freak who knocked my teeth out!" Jeremy whispered to Mundy. "Ohh I'm gonna love taking 'em back…"

"Ok, I count Tavish, Jane, Ludwig, and that fancy kid…four on four…"

Dell clutched his slingshot, "Ok, in and out, oh and Jeremy."

"Yeah?"

"When you're gonna shoot, shoot, don't talk." He said in a tough voice.