JMJ

Chapter Four

After Pleasure Island

Well, nothing exciting happened at first. There was more talking and scanning and talking again. I did not understand most of what Form was talking about. I pretended I did, but as I was nodding confidently, I was thinking how much I probably should have gone to school at least long enough to learn these stupid medical terms and whatever else the eggheads were talking about. I could swear a toilet's overflow in Spanish with the help from Arturo, but I knew not one spit of science babble in English or otherwise.

They probably told me while I was yawning earlier, but I had to find out by practice that there was a catch about my big breakfast. Before their walls against my cells and ooze cells I had been apparently unable to digest anything and they were just making sure my body was working correctly now. I had lunch and dinner too, but I was not exactly as hungry for those since at least five different scientists were going to watch my insides digest like old ladies watching a soap opera finale. At least I could go to the bathroom in peace.

But it was all going to be worth it, I kept reminding myself. Next morning they were going to give me the power they promised. We spent all day in intellectual study about the process. I guessed this was what college was like with how they lectured on and on in that smug smarty way. In the evening I stomached another blood sample and a full check up. Then they made me swallow some sort of pills before bed, but like I said, I was ready. I was more ready now than ever after such a dull and annoying day.

The next morning came. They had me lie down. Gnawing fears were hissing ghosts around my head, but I was Packman and ate them up. The geeks had the anesthesia mask ready for me. It was not ghosts but the mask hissing, but I seemed to feel the presence of spirits no matter how brave I tried to be— spirits of those they had experimented on before and died. It was all in my head. I wouldn't let myself have second thoughts about this. I didn't have to try, however, after a few seconds more with the mask nestled on my face.

I was at their mercy now, but the one thing I had not counted on was that for a phoenix to rise out of the ashes, those ashes had to be from the phoenix dying first.

#

I woke up with a spastic shiver that wracked through me with the force of being pressed between two drills. My brains felt like eggs scrambling, but slowly everything came back into focus. I felt weak again even if not oozy. I closed my dry stinging eyes and clenched my feeble teeth just barely hanging onto my gums. I shivered again less violently, but still involuntarily. It was not from cold. In fact I was sweating.

There was Dr. Form's back facing me. It looked like the back of a musk rat hunched like that or maybe an owl looking for mice on the screen instead of… whatever he was looking at. It had to do with me and my body.

With a loud and angry moan I protested it all.

Form turned to me.

"Oh! How are you feeling now, Ace?"

"Like a dead roach still twitching…" I garbled.

"It will pass," Form promised. "It's working so far."

"Why does it hurt so much if it's working?" I spat as I began to writhe.

"Your body is being transformed. Such change can be difficult, but you will recover," Form insisted. "I told you it would be difficult."

"You said nothing about pain!" I growled.

And when I said pain, I meant pain. I guess I'd been expecting something like that chemical junk food mixed with our Chemical X that one day. A sicky, yucky, stomach-twisting feeling that passed and gave way to a feeling of power. Not this. But then nothing was normal after X. I'd passed the solar system and all was unknown after Planet X, or whatever.

"I thought you understood that 'difficult' in terms of biology is always translated to 'pain'."

I tried to think of a comeback, but I shivered again. More like shriveled again. The scanning pads all over my sweating body felt like they were buzzing, but I could not tell if it was a good buzzing or a bad buzzing. Was it helping or making it worse? It was the rest of me that felt sick. I was one throbbing internal wound.

"Is it still going on now?" I croaked.

"We finished injecting the stabilizers that should have you combining into one form within the next few days."

"'Days'!?" I wailed, the tears squishing like hot jelly out of my eyes. "Do-o-o-oc!"

"Calm down, it'll only make it worse getting upset."

"I'm already upset! I'm dying here!"

"Days aren't eternity. I thought you were strong enough to handle this. It will all be worth it, I promise you."

My face felt hot. I'm sure I was flushed with whatever color my blood was now. I was choking on sobs the size of baseballs. Going from feeling like a slug drowning in glue one day, a frazzled teen the next, and now a hotdog in a microwave? It almost made the frazzled teen seem not so bad.

"It will be better. Your senses are already become more acute. Listen. Can you hear outside now? You should be able to."

I paused, trying hard to control myself. Closing my eyes, I obeyed. Since I got here, I had been unable to hear anything but the lifeless lab noises around me. As I listened, I was at least distracted enough to find it interesting the sounds of cars, maybe a bird, and the wind. It was faint but definitely not my imagination. I could smell something else too besides this sterile room. Grease? Oil? My mouth dropped.

I can do this, I told myself. I can do this… it'll be worth it. You're Ace. You can do this.

Opening my eyes, I felt like I could see a little better too in the dim lighting. I could make out things in the shadows I had not been able to yesterday. It's possible I just had not been looking hard yesterday. I looked back at the scientist. He still looked the same, but I thought I could hear his breathing a little louder than yesterday, smell his cereal and coffee breakfast and bubblegum toothpaste too. I wrinkled my nose a little.

"Just relax. Try to rest. We'll continue to monitor your progress very carefully. If even the slightest thing goes wrong, we will know it and fix it immediately. The pain is normal and will pass. You're becoming all you desire. All the best things require sacrifice to achieve them. Ace will be feared again."

He had no right to say my name that way. I swallowed hard, but the anger was weak and fizzed out like a fire suffocated. I nodded weakly. Obediently. I relented to my body's need to rest, but it was a rest filled with nightmares worse in waking than in sleeping.

What I mean is, I rested, but I was not always sleeping. Memories begin to blur. After a while, my dreams were better than what was going on around me, and they were sick enough. Often, I couldn't tell the difference between my own imaginings and what was really happening. I figured always that any poke or stick or touch was real. They did that a lot. I was irritated and afraid like a tiger caught and half-sedated. I'm pretty sure once I even tried to bite somebody— maybe twice.

My brain was in a cloudy whirl, and it seemed to get worse. Sometimes I felt great— honestly, terrific! I would almost leap out of bed. Sometimes I threw up so hard I felt like I was going to throw up my intestines. I was always shaky and when I was not literally trembling for a long enough time, my body would make up for it with an earthquake.

Bright lights blinded me from above. Tables and gurneys and beds moved about below. I was submerged like in a ghost ship or dying parched in a desert. Sometimes it was hard to breathe. Sometimes I could breathe so well I almost fainted from too much oxygen. My ears popped. My chest burned. Things were drained down my throat. Needles pricked my arm into a pin cushion. I hated waking up. I would moan, and the pain would not stop. I would scream like a rabid animal, but the scientists would not go away.

I may not have been strapped down even in the worse of it, but I had no strength to even remove a scanning pad from my burning forehead much less punch a guy in the face or kick him in the gut. I was barefoot again anyway. But slowly— agonizingly slowly— through the feverish haze I could see the clarity of a surface from murky water. Lights were there— a halo to the promise of free air. You can't believe how much I worshiped the thought of free air. It didn't have to be fresh. Just free. I wanted it more than if I'd been starving for food.

Food? What was that? It was not part of my existence even if they probably were giving me nutrients somehow. I don't really want to know how, but I never felt the need to have so much as a sip of water. Just that free air above, that surface just above my head. Just there above my head, and little by little I began to think clear enough to realize that what I had agreed to do was more than stupid, more than bad, it was self-enslavement.

As darkness overtook all senses, I realized that even if Form's plan succeeded and I was truly a force beyond all the nightmares of the City of Townsville, I, as a sentient presence, would not be the one running the show. I was a lab experiment to Otto Form and his buddies. They could do anything to me. Anything! I could be strong and smart and stealthier than a ninja ghost, but I would have a collar and leash— a harness, a muzzle! A genie in a lamp. I was their genetic beast, and whatever they were doing to me was completely out of my control— Ace or no Ace.

If I ever believed in a soul before, I sure did then. In fact I could almost feel it dying within my own beating heart, and it was the kind of despair that punks choosing to be a rebel for the sake of it could only dream of having without knowing what kind of sick horror it really was when you were living it.

Weak, miserable, without any kind of hope of reprieve or knowing how much time has passed— it was the kind of horror you watch in the middle of the night and laugh at with a few drinks and some cheddar popcorn, because you know it's too ridiculous to be real…

All I can say more about it is it felt like I'd been playing at being bad. I had been doing it for so long too that true diabolical evil had invited me in with open claws— the kind of evil you didn't know existed, and it had called me home like all little lost boys do in the Island of Pleasures to turn you into that half donkey, half kid you only half remember from when you were five, because you knew that kind of thing was stupid. No one can turn a kid into a donkey just because he's doing bad crap like breaking windows and stealing candy… until you find out… they can.

#

"My parents?" said Ace pulling a sucker out of his mouth when other stronger things weren't worth the effort to get. "Oh, you remember. Didn't I tell you they was spies from India or was it Indiana. Anyway! The details don't matter much. I didn't know 'em long before they lost me over Niagara Falls on some super chase with the Chinese government trying to start a bomb factory behind the falls."

#

"Oh, yeah, did you hear how my older brother and I got to into a fight when I was two and he was eight? I beat him and my parents were so freaked they sent me to the circus freak show as the 'Toddling Titan'."

#

"My parents were so rich they could afford to send me to some ivy-bound boarding school along the Tayms. Y'know in France? And the planes got mixed up in New York and I ended up in Townsville, but my parents never liked me much anyway, so's no big deal. But you can see why I have this thing about school, y'know. Gives me angry issues just thinkin' about it to this day. I was found by an escaped tiger from the city zoo, who was smart enough to take me in as her cub, but she was old. Died of ripe old age grayer than a dust bunny, but she was strong as a jack hammer 'til the very end."

#

"Dad was a lunatic. My mom had to hide me from him cuz he for some crazy reason thought I was out to get him. She put me in an old four-wheeler and sent me down the road in hopes I'd find freedom. Guess they both were kooks after all, eh?"

#

"Well, Mom was wanted in fifty-seven states. Dad in forty countries. They didn't want that kind of life for me so they couldn't raise me. Guess some of it rubbed off anyway. Ah, well!"

#

"I'm secretly the heir to the Taj Mahal, but the old lady hid all the evidence and I'm forced to make my way the way you see."

#

"My dad wanted to kill Mugsy, my little wiener dog after he tore up the coach. I ran away all across the country— me and old Mugs. Why isn't here now? Well, my friends, I lost home and family for him, but all it took was one loser at a hotdog stand to mistake old Mugs hiding between two buns to lick some dripping grease."

#

"Yeah, well, if my old man hadn't been such a coward sop mom never would've—"

All eyes were on me in a second expecting a story. I could've turned it into one. I really should have, but the suddenness of the whole thing had me stiffen up. I was only glad I had my sunglasses on. I'm sure I would've revealed how lost my nerve was.

"Well, what did your mom do?" asked Arturo.

"Did she give you too much ice cream?" asked Big Billy.

"What?" I demanded.

Grubber was smiling bug-eyed at me in this way that seemed to me that he knew I had slipped up and thought it was funny. Sometimes I wonder about him. I really do, but I stared back ready for the challenge.

"C'mon, Bosssss," hissed Snake eagerly by my side. "Don't hold us in ssssussspen—"

Smack.

Couldn't help it; it was a reflex; so sue me, I thought.

Snake gulped on his own slithering spit and collapsed into the table more like a dead fish than a snake.

Silence reigned. The guys had all eyes on me. I paused hoping my Ace would come back. Not even in my cards was there more than a seven at the moment. Not so much as a jack. The silence killed me. Mind completely blank. Not wit, no quip. I had to do something.

I stood up.

Everyone went blank, but that was only because they did not know how to deal with the emotion of the moment. A moment where their boss showed more than fear. Their unphased boss was phased.

I was the boss. I was Ace. Ace was supposed to be beyond mortal king or jack. Now I felt like a two. I hated feeling like that.

#

I could almost feel a bray of a donkey in my throat instead of a normal human cry, but it was more of a cough once it erupted. My normal voice box backed up the cough. I was gasping for that breath with more greed than any candy, game, or money I'd ever stolen. I was lying there like a shipwrecked pirate after a storm left to lie on the soft sand.

Really, I think I would have liked a sandy beach and waves over what I got. The little beeps and the constant breath of the vents was awful. I hated those vents. They were so dead. So mind-numbing, so unchanging, and those little beeps were so spastic, so relentless, so…

I shook violently and breathed in again. My breath was slowing. My heart beat slowed and calmed. My head was no longer throbbing, and my brain no longer in a blender. Even with the noises, the dry throat, the awful taste in my mouth and the tremor in my limbs, well… I was still. No longer on the tossing sea even if I was a beached whale.

I could hear a song. What was it? It was in my head. One I heard before but only laughed at. What were the words? "All those voices are calling from far away?" or "they stab it with their steely knives". Well, I had felt like a beast surrounded by hungry cannibalistic maniacs for some time now passing the salt and caviar over their live meal.

But at the moment? I felt strangely lonely. After all those hands hovering and voices coldly muttering like I was a messed-up casserole on a cooking show, you'd think I'd be happy to be alone, but I felt a cold spike through me like I was suddenly the only one who survived an apocalyptic nuclear blast.

I opened my eyes.

Double vision first but quickly I corrected my eyes. I was staring at an overhead lamp that was not on— staring right in to the filament. All light came from the winking rainbow twinkles surrounding the sleep-mode screens, except two screens apparently monitoring my progress or maybe lack of it.

The simple shape of my body was on one of them, but I didn't understand what it meant. Numbers, weird flashing letters changed sporadically like a math game on the fritz. But for once I really was alone. No ham lady, no pole spider, and definitely no cheerful nerdy Dr. Form or any of their kindergarten snack time pals.

"I'm all alone…" I breathed.

I felt another chill from the solitary voice that did not so much as echo in a single corner, but it was more like thrill now than the fear of being alone. Anything was possible after so long of a time being in someone else's hands. I was standing at my dad's front door for the first time again, leaving without saying goodbye into the unknown tomorrow that was mine. All mine! Free will stormed my thoughts so that I was immobilized with the possibilities.

Stupid. There was only two things really I could do. Stay here and gape like a fish until the nerds came back from their coffee break or…

I looked down at my body, which was a little hard to do because I was lying so flat, but I could see my sickly-colored chest. My breathing, my thumping, my ribs flexing. I can't say I was bare-chested, because I was so covered in little suction cups that I was like a gingerbread house covered in peppermints and gumdrops. They all had licorice wires winding straight up into the computers like the Christmas lights hanging round the frosted windows with care to light the way for Santa Clause.

Yeah, I was feeling a little Christmas spirit despite the more Halloween state of things.

I blinked out of my stupor between visions of sugar plums and nightmare morbidity and forced myself to think straight on.

Time to open those presents.

I closed my eyes, touched one of the disks on my chest tenderly. I could feel the buzz in my fingers as it continued through to my chest. Were they monitoring me or running something into me. It was freaky to think that I didn't really know just like I didn't really know anything about what they were doing to me.

How could I have been so stupid to listen to these whack-jobs!? I should have left when I was feeling good and not given into nostalgia for a past I could never get back. What was I, an old man already? I was still Ace with or without Chemical X. I had been Ace before the green and I could be Ace after.

With full determination I wrenched the disk out of place.

I winced. I tried to hold it in with eyes watering and teeth clenched. But I recoiled.

"Ngh!" I squealed from the pain.

But it had not been an impossible feat. I went about the other disks far more ginger-like. Carefully, one by one, I removed them all from all over my body, but I always kept an eye on the door. Any minute they could come in. Every second I expected it. Every sound from that direction made me jump a little or at least twitch my eyes. I began to feel the sweat pouring from my forehead through my limp-mop hair, but I did not stop the delicate procedure until I was done.

I paused.

I half-expected an alarm to go off, but nothing happened, except the image of my body on the screen going blank and all numbers and letters faded out. Everything else continued as before. The vent, the lights, the twinkling-toe beeps. I wondered if the whole thing was fake.

With a shake of my head and small growl, I pulled myself into a full sitting position.

The dizzy wave was like a horde of locusts blinding me for a few seconds. I outlasted it like a house in a storm. Then I was up again, picking up the damage. My legs were Twizzlers as I threw them over the side. I held my breath for the scuba dive. Then I stopped.

I could hear something.

Voices.

My senses were still way sharper than they used to be. I could hear mumbling from the vent. I could smell their expensive coffee and cheap creamers coming through too, and for the first time in ages, I felt my stomach growl from real hunger.

Not now, Ace!

I could not quite make out what they were saying, but I was going to find out. I slipped off the table. I almost fell flat on my face when my feet suddenly had command— or no command— of the rest of me, but I caught myself. Carefully I straightened myself and heaved with relief to see my boots in front of a drawer. Opening it, I found all my clothes, plus a new pair of shades. They had been counting on me leaving in one piece after all. Well, too bad. I was not taking any more of this crap.

I felt better than when I had entered this place and that would have to do until I got somewhere to think the rest of this through. I was dressed and ready to go. Then I looked up at the ceiling near the vent. I smiled.

Funny how schools and hospitals had something else in common besides artificial sterility and creepy staff. They liked those movable tiles that made it easy for fixit guys to get up into the wiring. Well, it also made for good getaways. I knew that from experience and I didn't feel envious anymore of Arturo's height to get through vents.

It took more effort than I liked to climb back onto the table I'd been lying on. I thought of trashing the place to get a little revenge on the creeps, but that would have to wait too. I pushed up the tile, and stiff though I was, that good old adrenaline was on my side again. I fumbled a little, but soon was scurrying up into the ceiling like a rat.

The humming was louder and blocked most of the sounds from the computers below. There were new sounds of scuttling, and I knew they had to be some kind of bugs. I could smell something like dead beetles hidden in the must and hot plastic wires, but I could hear the voices better too, and my focus was for that before anything else.

I moved slowly, careful not to make a wrong move where I'd fall through a tile or to make too much noise that someone might hear. I didn't know where I was really going. It was soon pretty dark, but my new eyes caught every shard of light caught on any glinting surface from the tiniest holes in the tiles. Then I reached a spot where I could finally make sense of the words, even if I couldn't make sense of what those words all meant. If talk had a jackpot, I was had struck true just then and there.

"—with animal test subjects." The emotionless Ham Lady.

"But the subject in question used up most of it. Otherwise we would have." I knew that to be Form, and I could picture him shake his head in almost innocently sad manner. "It will take time to develop more of S."

"The focal significance is spent already in the current project, however. There is almost no point in continuing it." The sinister Pole Spider.

These three must have been the leaders of the rogue geeks.

Ugh! I could not get over the idea of them touching me. Even inside me! What had they put inside me again?

But I had to wait.

The next part was mumbled more than before by someone I didn't know as well. "—already was interested in Chemical S."

"Without the ability to amalgamate these potent chemicals, I don't think there will be much more that can be obtained from the current operation," insisted Spider. "Everyone must accept setbacks."

"But then what about the subject?" asked Form so sincerely concerned that I wanted to punch his face in.

"We'll continue to the end for the results as Pr. Ex desired," said Ham Lady like the voice of the dead and not the living-dead either, just completely devoid of anything like a robot.

"It's a shame really," sighed Form.

C'mon, c'mon, what!? I thought impatiently; I was beginning to tremble.

"He will be the most beautiful monster in physical prowess and finesse," Form said as if he had heard my prompting. "But his mind remaining intact is what we aimed for. There is no reason to hope that now. As the monster emerges, his mind will disintegrate just like most of the rest of what makes him genetically human, and our beast will be as mindless as the wind— almost untamable to anyone after that happens. It truly is a shame."

I didn't hear a few things after that. My brain had a total freeze.