The Power

PROLOGUE

The scientist anxiously nibbled on his fingernails as he sat waiting for the results of his test to finish being analyzed and printed. He looked around his compact and crowded room. His gaze lowered, settling on the papers strewn across the floor, then the high tech computer system sitting on his ornate wooden desk, and finally on the off-white printer sitting adjacent to his computer.

The scientist leaned back on his swivel-rolling chair and stared at the whitewash ceiling, praying for his life. His eyes wandered over the bumps and cracks in the ceiling, wondering how his life had come to this.

The printer screeched loudly, startling him out of his reverie and dragging him back to present. The scientist stood, stretching his stiff leg muscles, and walked over to the dilapidated printer. He grabbed the read-out from the printer and frowned. Tweaking his mustache with his spare hand, he read it again. Then it hit him.

"SHIT," he growled. After tramping across the room to his phone, he mashed the keys that would direct his call to the boss.

"Sir?"

"What is it, Finnegan?"

"I finished the data analysis." He paused.

"…Aaaand…?" said the boss.

"Well, sir, the read-outs suggest that the project may be more powerful than we anticipated."

"Wouldn't that be a good thing, Finnegan?"

"Well, technically yes, sir, but… I just have a bad feeling about this, sir. How do we know that we will have control?" The boss suddenly became angry, raising his voice over the phone.

"Why are you questioning this

now

, Finnegan? Do you know how hard I've worked to get this cleared by president? I will NOT have some scientist who is getting cold feet at the last minute ruin this project when it is so close to coming to FRUITION! Now, you, Mr. Finnegan, are going to get your ass over here and prepare the testing area for the stage one of our process."

"Y-Yes s-sir…" stammered the scientist quietly.

"And Finnegan? You keep your worries to yourself? Understand?"

"L-Loud and c-clear, sir."

"Good. I'll see you and the rest of the staff in 0200 hours."

CHAPTER ONE

The soldier walked nervously down the hall, his limp that he'd receive from his years in service to his country more pronounced now than ever. As he slowly proceeded, the soldier had time to try to look into the slightly tinted windows in the doors of the rooms than they passed. Each time he passed a door, his mind seemed to play tricks on him, telling him that weird looking wisps of smoke or rapid movements were shooting across the small windows in the door.

What do they do here?

He thought to himself.

More importantly, what did I sign up for? This place is creepy as FUCK.

The nurse who was leading him down the hallway jerked his arm, telling him to keep moving. The soldier noticed that they were almost at the end of the hall. He started to wonder if he should go through with this.

Oh god, oh god, oh god, what are they going to do to me? What was I thinking? This isn't going to help my life! It's going to KILL me!

Desperately, he thought back on the last few months of his life. His wife had left him 5 months previously, telling him that their marriage wasn't working. "John. You need help. You pity yourself with your injured leg, and I can't deal with the fact that the man who went to war was not the man who came back from it. It's not your leg that's made you different John. It's your incapability of dealing with."

He'd grown depressed and even gotten to the point where he thought about killing himself. John had grabbed the army pistol from his time in the service and put it to his head. But he hadn't been able to do it. So he'd figured out another way to kill himself. John had heard some rumors going around from his old buddies in the army that the government was up to something, so he'd called in some favors from his buddies that were still in the ranks, and found that they were quietly looking for volunteers for a dangerous experiment.

When John found out about this, he'd gathered up his courage, contacted the right people, and joined the volunteering process. Two weeks later, he'd been contacted and told that he was a perfect match for all the criteria that they were looking for. He was physically fit, mentally stable (relatively), and, most importantly, he had no one that would care if something happened to him. (He had grown up an orphan.)

The letter that had come in the mail told him that in a couple of months he would be contacted in person and brought to the facilities where the project would begin. Today was that day. A limo had pulled up out front of his house and a man in a black suit had rung his doorbell, telling John to get in the car.

It had taken them a little under 40 minutes to reach their destination, a huge warehouse with a massive wrought-iron gate guarding the entrance. The driver had pulled over and typed in a long code, something with over 10 digits in it. At this point, John thought to himself

Wow, the gov's really pulling out all the stops for this project. Wonder what it is.

They pulled through the gate onto the wide gravel driveway, the wheels making a scrunching noise the whole way. The driver then pulled into the warehouse and told John to get out of the car. John complied, stepping out of the car into the wide-open space of the warehouse.

Wait,

he thought.

Why the hell is it empty? What the fuck is going on?

He looked around, seeing nothing, until he heard someone call his name. He peered around again, trying to find who was calling his name, until…

"Mr. Davis?"

"AAAHHH!!" John whirled around to find a beautiful, petite woman in a nurse's outfit standing behind him.

"H-How…W-wh... How d-did you get there?!" John stammered.

"Come this way please." She said calmly, completely ignoring John's confused look.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Please, sir, just come this way." She said, gesturing to an elevator that John was sure had not been there thirty seconds ago. John just gaped. The nurse grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the elevator, slowly so as not to pull John off his balance. John was led like a sheep, too stunned to move on his own. The nurse had into the elevator, which had taken them down for what felt like years. It was when the doors slowly slid open, that John finally noticed how gorgeous the nurse actually was. She had long brown hair, drawn up into a bun that looked elegantly beautiful in combination with her outfit. She stood just under six feet tall, and was slim in all the right places. On top of that, her ample cleavage stood out from her chest and practically called out to John. The nurse noticed John watching her bosom as she walked, and began to swing her hips a little extra just for his benefit. He

was

going to be used in a dangerous experiment, and she felt sympathetic.

As they approached the end of the hallway, a huge set of double doors that looked like they swung outward appeared. The nurse burst through dragging John into the most cliché laboratory he had ever seen. The floor of the room was tiled and well polished so that it gleamed brilliant white. Lining the walls were tons of equipment and computer monitors that blinked crazily. From the ceiling hung four dangling lights that gave off just enough illumination to see around the room. Above was an observation deck with a glass window from which two people were watching. The most prominent aspect of the room, however, was the chair sitting at the center. It was made of a shiny metal and the arms and legs of the chair had manacles. Covering the entire chair were dozens and dozens of electrodes. Most were attached near the head of the chair, but there were some covering the back, the arms and the legs of the chair.

"Please, take a seat, Mr. Davis." The nurse gestured towards the gleaming metal chair.

"You want me to sit in THAT thing?" John exclaimed.

"Yes, and if it makes you feel any better, the manacles are there for your own good." John grumbled but slowly made his way over to menacing chair. John yelped because almost the instant he sat down, the manacles clamped down on his wrists and legs. From the shadows stepped a scientist in a white lab coat, holding a clipboard with seemingly thousands of papers held in it. He walked over and began to attach the electrodes onto various places on his body with the help of the amazingly beautiful nurse.

"Is anyone going to tell me how this is going to work?" John asked.

"You probably don't want to know." The scientist replied with grimace. John groaned. Once they finished attaching every electrode, the scientist and the nurse stepped back and looked at their handiwork.

"I think he's set." The scientist then waved to the two people standing in the observation deck. One, a man in a green suit with various medals and ribbons pinned to his uniform, gave him a thumbs-up. The nurse walked over to what looked like a control panel and placed her hand an enormous switch, the kind you see on a circuit breaker. She looked directly at John and asked,

"Are you ready? This will be like nothing you have experienced."

"Fuck, just get it over with!" John was beginning to realize that he didn't quite want to die as much as he thought he did. The nurse flipped the switch and a bunch of lights and screens flashed on, each one presumably giving the scientist and the nurse information about how the test was proceeding. At first John just felt a slight tingling from all the electrodes hooked to his body. But as the time passed, the tingling became more intense, turning into a buzz. Then he began to feel little shocks all over his body. He yelped as they began to feel more painful. Finally, everything coalesced into an overall pain, all over his body, and John heard screaming. John realized that the person screaming was he.

Suddenly, he felt his hands begin to burn. The feeling was unbearable, and there was nothing he could do about it. Imagine someone sticking your hands into lava, and then multiply that feeling by ten and you may have an idea for what this felt like. The feeling began to move up his arms, slowly, painfully slowly, so slowly John didn't even realize it until it was halfway up his arms. It began to accelerate, moving into his shoulders and down his spinal cord. John was no longer screaming his voice had become so hoarse. All that escaped his lips was a light wheeze that couldn't be heard over the shaking of his limbs.

Ten minutes had passed, and John wanted to slip away into unconsciousness. But the fire was too much; it was keeping him alive, holding him in the now. After the fire consumed his spine, it moved upwards. As it neared his neck, John knew that it was now heading for his brain. However, he was numb to the pain at this point. It was only a tickle now. John felt it approach. It felt to him as if someone was trailing fingers towards the back of his head.

Just do it already. Finish me off, why don't you.

And then the fire reached his brain.

John roared in pain, his hoarse voice now re-invigorated by a feeling that was thousands of times worse than what had come before. He began to seizure. His arms and legs flailed wildly, barely restrained by the clamps. His vision swam. His body felt hot one second, cold the next.

"MAKE IT END!!!" John yelled. The nurse and the scientist dove to the floor as one control panel after another exploded, bursting into a billowing hot ball of flame.

"AAAHHHHHHHHH!!" John screamed. And then it stopped. The control panel with the gigantic switch finally exploded, putting an end to the energy that had been flowing into John up until that point. He passed out. The scientist got up off the floor first.

"Is he alive?" The scientist checked his pulse. "Oh… my… God… I… I can't believe it. He's… alive…" The nurse looked at the scientist.

"So then it was a success? The project really worked?"

"I-I believe so… ha… haha…. HAHAHA! It worked!" The scientist looked up at the observation deck. Over the loud speakers came the voice of the boss.

"I take it that your maniacal giggling means it worked, eh Finnegan?"

"Well, sir, he's alive. We have yet to find out if the procedure did what we wanted it to, but… I have no reason to suspect that it hasn't."

"Very well then. Take Mr. Davis somewhere he can be fixed up." Aside to the man standing next to him, he said, "You'll be happy to know that our project was successful, Mr. President."

"Yes, it does appear that that's the case… I just hope that's a good thing…"