TA Chapter 3 Failure

  Bantu Continent, Dugavu State, Mazi City

  12th Blue, 2043. 7:02PM

  Luthor Dugavu(POV)

  Polite smiles, challenging handshakes, ingratiating attempts at starting conversations and the starry eyed people who gazed at me as if I was a celebrity. That was how the day had gone. I had had to smile, shake hands, and most of all, stay on my feet. The delegations from the other states had been manageable, after all, we were on the same level, but the others... They were a bit lower on the pyramid of power yet important enough that they had needed my personal attendance.

  Listening to someone droning on about my own accomplishments was something I didn't want to sit through ever again. The things I had invented were good, but to me, not that great. There was a far more important discovery that I was chasing after.

  Then there those that had wanted to get an edge on their competition, seeking to close deals that would give them a monopoly within their sector, or even going as far as to bring a suggestion that they be the first to be notified, or even given first dibs on any new discovery. Most of the times I loved humanity, but the more I interacted with those in top positions, the more I became disgusted with the ugly facet of humanity. They spoke of logical decisions yet beneath it all, emotions were on the steering wheel.

  I pulled down my necktie and unbuttoned the top of the shirt. I sank down onto the floor of the elevator and released a heavy tired breath. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind. Every thought was heightened to the point that they were bleeding emotions that had gathered into a tempest within me, making me feel overwhelmed. I needed to center myself yet the storm wasn't abating.

  'Should I simply go back and sleep?'

  As I closed my eyes and cleared my mind to call upon the river of sleep to wash away the chaos, I felt the vibration stop, with the elevator having reached its destination. I stood up abruptly, took off the tight black coat and slung it over my shoulders.

  The door opened to my friend Maxwell. As always, his wheat colored hair was a mess of a bird's nest. His sleep deprived eyes, behind the transparent framed glasses gazed at me with faint amusement. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his white lab coat, and judging by his posture, he must have been waiting for a while.

  "Are you going to rub it in?" I asked with a tired sigh. I really Really needed a bed.

  "Why would I do that, my dear friend. Though, I must make this clear! I don't envy you!" he said while stepping in beside me as we walked down the grey colored hallway with the long fluorescent lights above casting a somewhat subdued illumination upon the place, casting dark shadows of us.

  "Any new developments I should know about?" I asked, genuinely curious, especially about a particular project.

  "Nothing much. We haven't yet observed any changes in the subject. It seems like the organ has successfully acclimated to his body." his voice rose in pitch, clearly excited.

  "His body isn't rejecting it? That is good news! Though, we shouldn't get our hopes up." I was more inclined to keep my hopes grounded in reality. We had failed many times before after all.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  -----

  Except for the machines swirling and beeping in the background, the room was silent. My eyes naturally traveled to the person on the bed who had various tubes lodged into him. I stifled a wince at the image. Empathy was a bitch sometimes as right now, it had just made me imagine how I would feel like if the tubes had been lodged into me. And trust me, that had not been a pretty image.

  'Guys like him don't need your sympathy, Luthor.'

  I moved from the entrance to the bedside. Laying within it, was a man. His scalp was bare, though he used to have short brown hair barely an inch tall. His eyes were closed, his breathing somewhat amplified by the mask strapped to his face. He didn't have any trouble with his inhalation or exhalation, just that we had wanted to be prepared in case something went wrong.

  "Nothing has happened in the past few hours?" I asked once again, just to be sure. His cheeks were rosy, but you could never know what had happened, or was happening beneath the surface. My eyes moved to the digits jumping along the analog screens, relief leaving me as an exhale upon seeing the numbers. Numbers could be trusted as opposed to human deductions.

  "Come on! You seem even more nervous than me. And we haven't even started the most important test!" groaned Maxwell, now bending over one of the screens and tapping on the keys.

  Before I could come up with an answer to that question, the man on the bed let out a weak groan. His closed eyelids undulated until they snapped open, bringing his brown pupils into focus.

  "I-I had though of you as a good person." he said weakly after his gaze circled around everything he could see without moving his head before focusing on me.

  "I have never portrayed myself as such." I answered calmly.

  "D-Do you even care about m-morals? Ethics?" he asked, straining to utter each word.

  "Morals? Ethics?" a bark left my lips as I struggled to hold back from laughing at him. "You, with all that you've done... You're preaching morals to me?!"

  "I-I expe-cted instant d-death." he rasped.

  "You will get your death. That is a true statement. But first, you have value. You get to be a person who helps to advance humanity. Besides..." I leaned forward, fixing him with my cold gaze. "... Those girls you forced yourself onto are going to have a long traumatic life ahead of them. Why would we offer you the courtesy of instant death?"

  I pulled back and directed my attention towards Maxwell, who nodded in return. It was time for the test. The subject was stable.

  Maxwell moved and placed his hand on a nearby long handle. It was connected to a transparent tank filled with a light blue fluid. When he pulled it down, it opened a valve, letting the fluid flow through a transparent flexible pipe and into the man's stomach through a puncture wound

  I stepped back while that happened but my eyes stayed on the man, waiting for something to happen.

  We had first performed a surgery on him, replacing one of his livers with that of a beast. It had proven compatible and stable enough that there hadn't been any rejection so far, but when it came to this test, I was nervous.

  The blue fluid was concentrated dark energy. Many theories in the wild had tried to explain the reason for its hue, yet only one stood out to me. Dark energy was a higher dimensional energy, but because it had somehow degraded to a lower dimension, our eyes saw it as light blue. It was not because that was it's color, but because our cognitive ability wasn't evolved enough to glean it's true form.

  "P-Please!" the man begged, my hands clenching into fists even as I inwardly strengthened my walls of resolve. He was a criminal, a man who had raped several young girls. Two of them had even resorted to hanging themselves! Such a beast deserved this!

  I dragged my eyes from his and onto the tube punctured into his stomach, waiting as the dark energy went into the liver.

  'Let it work! Let it work! Let it work!'

  I chanted inwardly as the seconds ticked by. Even Maxwell had now come to stand beside me, his fists clenched so hard beside his body that the knuckles had turned white. Was I also in a similar state? I didn't know, nor did I want to look away a second time.

  The man's eyes widened and his skin rippled. Then his body trembled, shaking the fragile bed, before breaking out into convulsions.

  After that, there was no next. One moment he had been convulsing, and then, crimson dyed the entire room. No body parts, organs or even bone fragments. It was as if everything else had been transmuted to red.

  I raked a hand through my drenched hair, roughly pressing it into my scalp with such force that I felt pain, yet that didn't even begin to account for the frustration within.

  With a heave, I spat out phlegm mixed with blood, finding myself holding back from spilling the contents of my stomach on the floor. I gazed at the transparent tube, one among the other artificial things that had been attached to the man, having survived the explosion.

  The fluid within was evaporating the moment it made contact with the air, melding with the void as if mocking my attempts at using it.

  "We will need another test subject." said Maxwell, his voice hollow within my ears. I gave a wave before departing.

  I didn't know how I got to my room, but the moment I stepped into it I waded to my desk and gazed down at a beast figurine. It was a lifelike depiction of an orange furred tiger, a legendary beast that had been devouring humans as snacks a few decades back, before it had been slaughtered. I picked it up from the desk and hurled it all the way into the shelf at the side with such force that it shattered loudly into pieces.

  "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" a frustrated growl left my lips while one of my hands clamped my face, covering my eyes.