Doctor Frankenstein Read online

  The man in question, who needed to shave, having about two days of dark growth, cursed.

  “Fucking hell. How… How do you know who we are? Mind reading?” The words didn't seem doubtful at all.

  Liam, grinning a bit, shook his head.

  “Nothing like that. I’ve simply heard of you before and you do look a bit like Mitchel. There were some clues and I guessed a bit. Now… Were you going to get some fuel and go home or were you planning to die here today? I’d rather not harm you, for your brother’s sake. That won’t prevent me from stopping you from taking me, of course. This…” He sighed and then shook his head. “I don’t want to disparage your efforts. You tried, which is honestly important. The thing there is that you didn’t make a plan that could possibly work. You might make my next few days harder, but you can’t kidnap me successfully given the people here. Unless you have backup?” Liam would have, if it was his job to take in one of the other prometheans.

  He was assuming they were planning on taking him alive, of course. They had the nice black van for that and nothing they did with their powers should be able to do more than make him miserable for a while. Fire wasn’t his true weakness or anything, but things that destroyed individual cells, like plasma or acid, were a good way to harm him. He wasn’t letting that out though. Blowing up the gas pumps there wouldn’t be enough to stop him.

  That didn't mean he wouldn’t be left gravely injured and weakened if it happened. Also, he really didn’t want to ruin Brenner’s SUV, if at all possible. Sure, she was rich and could afford a new one. That didn't mean it wasn’t his responsibility to protect it from random elementals on the road. So, he was making an effort to bluff, to prevent that from taking place.

  Almost as if trying to help him establish his own abilities, Todd flicked his hand, sending the piece of hard material at his head. Liam simply caught it in the air, his left-hand stinging as the pressure on the thing stopped. It hadn’t come in that fast, possibly at about a hundred and fifty miles per hour. Enough to kill an adult human if they were struck in the head or possibly the chest.

  Liam wouldn’t even have had to change his shirt under the same forces. The pavement chuck wasn’t crushed, since he kind of thought that he’d be able to push it back into place, if he was careful with it. Very little came off of it as he stood there, holding the black material in his left hand.

  The Earth elemental seemed to be thinking something, the ground under them all rumbling a bit, then it stopped and he shook his head.

  “Well, crap then. I actually thought this would go better. Um, I don’t suppose that you’d be fine with us just, erm, leaving?” The man seemed tired. Exhausted from travel.

  Liam shrugged, more or less meaning that he didn’t really care about that kind of thing.

  “Could you tell me how you found me? I probably need to change what I’m doing. That could help. I really don’t want innocent people getting hurt.”

  The last woman, who when she spoke turned out to be a man, or the kind of person who once was, cleared her throat.

  “I hacked your bank and we noticed where you were stopping. This is the only place in a hundred-mile radius where you could fuel up. That’s all it was.” She smiled weakly.

  The woman was a bundled up, like they all were, except Liam. He was in a simple t-shirt, a nice black one that he’d made himself, wide leg blue jeans and a pair of nice shoes. The same ones that he’d been wearing for his whole trip, so far. He had his second pair with him, but was pleased with how well they were holding together, so far.

  He nodded, moving to put the squeegee, with it’s red handle and sponge on the back, into the bucket of blue anti-freeze window washing liquid.

  “Okay. I’ll take care of that then. Well, goodbye. It might be best if you don’t try this again. You, I don’t want to make threats, but you wouldn’t have survived a real attack on me. This wasn’t even clever. There was nothing here that would have worked. Unless you have a secret weapon in the van? If so… Well, then I suppose now would be the time to bring it out.” That could be a thing. It wasn’t as if he could see inside. A person with a rocket launcher might be able to knock him down long enough for the others to do something of note to him.

  That might not be enough to allow them to win, even given that. It could though. Again, he decided not to share that knowledge with them.

  Todd, looking a bit sad, held up his right hand. Instead of summoning a minion or cohort from the vehicle, or signaling an invisible sniper in the distance, he waved behind him.

  “Load up. Let’s… Just walk away.”

  It didn’t take them long to do, the people all climbing inside, backing away and then racing from the parking lot. It was loud enough that the clerk, a man who looked to be in his thirties or so, who had a nice mustache on his face, walked out the door, looking at the others leaving.

  Liam nodded at the taller fellow. That was what men did, when they saw each other. It wasn’t a big move.

  “I think they forgot their money. They might be back.” Which was true, if they changed their mind or if they decided to keep learning and trying to get at the fifty million that was being offered for him. Or if they needed fuel, themselves. If it was really the only place in a hundred mile circle, it could be important.

  Rather than hang around to see if that was the case, Liam waved, the other man moving back inside almost instantly, since it was very cold out. There was snow all over the place, except on the road, which had been well cared for, given the fact that the area didn’t have a high population density.

  Once he got back onto the road, he considered what would be needed. The first thing was going to be getting as much cash as he could, over the next few days. If people could hack his bank account, they could simply remove the funds from it, stranding him in the middle of nowhere. That, using cash, would also allow him to vanish after a fashion. He’d show up each time he used a cash machine, perhaps, but by moving in an unpredictable pattern after that, it should be possible to prevent people from finding him again too easily. It was always harder to hit a moving target.

  Finding a cash machine took a few hours, then, after that, he drove in a different direction than he needed to go, making his way in a jagged circle. He wouldn’t be able to take out much more money that day, so marked the time, so he wouldn’t do it again for twenty-four hours. It would be obvious what he was doing to anyone who had the information, of course. That didn't mean they’d easily find him.

  The destination he was heading for was a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Montana, as it turned out, was excellent for that kind of thing. He had three more days to get to the location, since it seemed that Vincent needed to travel there as well. By going in early, Liam could sit and wait, seeing what the man had planned for him. If he wasn’t there already, doing the same thing.

  This, the run in with the group of elementals and humans meant hiding his tracks better, from then on. It wasn’t driving in a nice straight line at all, but he was still able to get to the isolated place well enough. At least that should work, if it wasn’t just a trap. Liam expected that it would be, naturally. Getting him to present himself that way, into the jaws of the trap, under his own power, was a far better plan than trying to jump him with a single handgun and some medium level magics.

  So he drove, stopped for fuel. He also managed to work out how to buy a new oil filter at an auto parts store and change that in the parking lot, without burning himself too much, along with replacing the oil. The other fluids were handled as well, including anti-freeze, which had to be added, in case his vehicle needed to sit and cool for any length of time.

  That meant, two days later, he was pulling up to the small log cabin that he’d been told to go to. It truly wasn’t large and didn’t seem to have power going to it. Looking around, watching for signs of activity told him that no one else was there yet. At least, if they were, the early morning light wasn’t enough to inform him about it. They might be inside, sleeping, of course
.

  After a long while, he simply walked over to the front door, and tried the knob. It wasn’t, as he would have guessed, locked. Inside there was nothing like electrical power, though he could see well enough using the light from the windows. Those were heavy, double glass with some kind of gas between them. Liam had never looked that kind of thing up but there was a tag left on the corner of one of them that claimed they were filled with argon. The inside, when he checked the whole thing, was as small as it had seemed it would be. The only difference was that, as soon as he walked on the smooth wooden floor, it was clear that the floor was hollow. That could be a crawl space but if so, it was designed not to show from the outside.

  Liam poked around for a long time, thinking about where a door for such a thing could be. He even went back outside, looking for a trap door or a tunnel. He found one, about a hundred meters from the cute little pioneer style dwelling. It had a metal top and was locked, probably from the inside. He could have simply ripped it open but didn't, since that seemed a bit destructive, if he was honestly visiting a being who might consider himself his brother.

  That meant going back inside, and finally, after the book shelves, which actually were full of texts, real paper books of a good variety, were shifted and emptied, then refilled, he started moving the furnishings. It was in the small kitchen, where he noticed a heavy cookstove that used wood, along with a modern refrigerator. The kind that had to be plugged in, if you wanted it to work. He moved it, just picking the empty thing up, then settling it back down, when he found it was plugged into the wall.

  There was only one plug in the whole place, so far, so that stood out. The chill box wasn’t working at the moment, however. It still had to be unplugged to get the box far enough away to uncover the trap door that was part of the floor under it. A smooth fitting wooden device that cleverly pulled up and out, into the center of the room. Doing that caused a light to switch on below. There were stout wooden stairs that led into the basement.

  A room that wasn’t the bare dirt walled thing he would have guessed, seeing the rest of the place. It was nicer than that, having thick seeming cement walls. On top of that, given the length of the hallway there, it was several times larger than the building above. Not truly vast but the little log structure up the stairs was probably four hundred square feet. It had a tiny kitchen, a front room that had a bed to the side and a bathroom that seemed to have a composting toilet that wasn’t in use and probably never had been.

  Not if a promethean lived there.

  As he poked around in the lower levels, Liam understood that this place was different than that. It wasn’t just large, but held three levels, each with thousands of feet of space. On the lowest level was a generator complex of some kind. It wasn’t running on any kind of fuel that he could determine. In fact, it seemed to have energy coming from what looked to be a two by two box. There was an electrical generator being spun up by whatever was inside the thing. The place had six of them, but only one was whirring away at the moment.

  The lights all turned on when he was in a given room, going dark behind him on leaving. On the second level were banks of computers. Very nice, powerful looking things that put his tiny laptop to shame. The whole set up looked very complex, though they weren’t magical in any way he could tell. Large and fancy but standard laptop or desktop technology. They weren’t quantum computers or anything like that. Above that there were other rooms. A real bedroom, a large hot tub and more books in a library, that also had a very large screen television in it.

  When Liam turned that on, it wasn’t playing television though. It showed a view of the outside of the cabin. Every ten seconds a new angle played for him, cycling after ten different viewpoints were presented.

  In short, the entire place was designed to do some kind of work. That or to hide in, providing entertainments and safety for a variety of people. The hot tub showed that. Liam at least, wasn’t going to climb into that kind of thing. He’d end up feeling miserable almost instantly, if he did. It wasn’t going to kill him but it wouldn’t be pleasant or fun. He’d tried that kind of thing, more than once, just using heating pads and blankets, so understood that being too warm wasn’t a great thing for him.

  Oaks had mentioned that factor being the same for him. Also, that it wasn’t a thing that would stop or cripple him, if it ever came up. He could survive being in boiling water for hours. It wouldn’t even burn him or removed the flesh from his bones like it would for a regular human. He’d simply feel like he wanted to die, until things were made cooler again. It got worse with higher temperatures, thankfully.

  If the room were in the nineties, he didn’t love it. It was in fact, a bit miserable for him. That had happened in the summer a few times.

  In a steam room, with a hundred and fifty-degree temperatures Liam had to force himself to stay even for a few minutes. He was fine as soon as he got outside, but if he had to name what he’d felt, he figured it was much like what a person with the flu would have described. Without the runny nose or cough. He’d wanted to throw up though, even if that wasn’t a thing that was possible for him.

  Leaving the special television on, in case it would give him a warning of people arriving, he moved to the book case and read the titles there. It was, he realized, filled with texts that told the stories of many kinds of beings. More than he’d ever heard of. Including a hand-written tome that was rather large, bound in leather and claimed to be written by Warren Oaks on the spine in gold leaf.

  Pulling the green thing from the shelf, Liam settled into a comfortable chair to read it. The work was rather different than he would have thought.

  “It’s not even a rebuttal of Mary Shelley’s work. Amazing.” He sounded a bit sarcastic to his own ears. It wasn’t a thing he wanted to be, in the end, so he decided to watch that kind of thing in the future.

  Being polite was better, if it was allowed.

  The book, which had heavy paper and a feeling of some age to it, was all about how to create prometheans, including the basic process that had been used for Oaks. Then there was a careful outlining of each attempt to make a better, more perfect being. That led to a description of each of the others that existed. At least that Warren knew about in any depth. Two of them had been built by other people, over the years. One of those was, according to the description, even more ancient than he was. Possibly by over five hundred years. There was no name given for it, with the being called only O.

  Five of the others listed were, more or less, like Oaks was. There was no entry for Liam in the work. There was one for someone called Vincent, however. He was an outlier, since Oaks had tried to merge the chemical process with the building of a vampire, hoping to make a more powerful being.

  Instead, he was mildly different, but no stronger, smarter or more resilient. He did, however, have light colored skin. A soft gold, that was, if the reports were correct, rather like what an Asian person might be born with. That and brown eyes that tended to look black, instead of the yellow that Liam had going on.

  As soon as he read the book, Liam understood that he could replicate the process. There was even a trend in what created different effects. Adding in heavy metals, particularly mercury, seemed to increase the physical power of the being. Sulfur compounds aided in balance, which probably explained why Liam was more yellow than the others. His balance was fine. Really, it was good, compared to most beings. Lissette was almost normal that way for a human person. Oaks struggled with that factor a bit.

  Using raw nitrogen, in a saturating gas concentrate, seemed to increase intelligence. All of his people were far more intelligent than average. There were, according to the book, several beings that had never been hinted at to him. Some of those weren’t exactly good people, from the words written. Oaks had hinted that he’d been moody and darker as a child than was useful to him. Most of the others had that going on from the start. A few, three of them, sounded to be nearly insane, however. Brilliant in their own ways but bodies fell behind
them as they moved through the world.

  They were, in short, monsters. From what stories were told about each of the others, it seemed that most had started out that way. Angry or afraid on a level that caused them to lash out. Even Lissette, his sister, was listed as having killed many in her first years. Then, she’d run away, not wanting to be Warren’s wife. Out of all of them, Liam seemed to be the only one that was born into a world of being loved and cared for.

  Even his time with Brenner, which had seemed functional to him, rather than caring exactly, was far better than anyone in the book in front of him had been gifted with. A lot of those mistakes were down to what Warren Oaks had done.

  A thing admitted to in his own words.

  The printing was tiny and very well done, being almost like the printed word, instead of the sloppy scrawl that Liam would have expected from him. The formulae, the six variations in the work, were laid out very clearly. It was a very complex set of things that were needed. None of them took electricity, of course. That had been added to the movies since it made for a simple but impressive special effect. Mary had informed him of that part, early on.

  What she’d never done was give him the tools he needed to make others of his own kind. That there was a book that told how to do that, the one in his hands, made it very possible that others like him existed in the world as well. Possibly in hiding.

  In the back, near the end, was a second list of chemicals that had different effects. A few of them, like vampire blood, or werewolf saliva struck him as being almost magical in nature, rather than using science and chemistry to get at selective properties. Of interest, there was a discussion of exactly how proteins could be integrated to alter skin color. Also, why all of them had whites of the eye, even if their skin and iris color changed to brown. It was complex, and Liam didn't have all the knowledge he needed to understand how it all functioned, yet. Still, a lot of it made sense and he got the basic idea. It caused a specific protein to bind with the sulfur compounds through the entire body, the only effect being the creation of a simple dye that was dark brown in color.