Chapter Six:
More than thirty people dead, all killed by one man without the use of firearms. It was being called one of the worst mass-murders in American history. The shear magnitude of death, gore, and heartless killing that had gone on in that one building was baffling the police, and the FBI were now being called in. It had been eight hours since the massacre, and Jenny and Adrian were moving upstate to an undisclosed location. The sun had just risen, and the highway was mostly empty. Much to Adrian’s relief, Jenny was sound asleep in the reclined passenger seat, with his coat wrapped around her as a blanket. After her head injury, he knew that she needed rest above all else.
This time of silence and solitude gave him time to process everything that had happened and come up with steps for his plan. Everything about their current situation had already struck him, though it had little affect, even the massacre he had left in his wake. He had already killed countless people as Logan and his cronies, his vengeance had been justified, his parents were the only ties Adrian had to his old life, and with his wealth and intelligence, he didn't have to worry about surviving. Adrian had no regrets of his actions, there was guilt in his heart that he could not eliminate. He kept on looking over to Jenny.
Had he ruined her life by taking her with him? Would her view of him change once the crimes he had committed truly sank in? She said that she would ignore every instinct and thought and do everything she could to help him achieve his plan, but that meant that there was still doubt in her heart, doubt that could resurface and shatter everything. Would she even be afraid of him? Were they going to end up going their separate ways, bitter and alone, just like Adrian had predicted before they were first intimate? Were they just going to end up like Bonnie and Clyde? Were they either going to live in hiding, split up, or die at the hands of the authorities? Or was there a chance that his plan could work, and her love and loyalty to him was as strong as she said it was?
Adrian was listening to the news on the radio with the volume set low so as not to disturb Jenny.
“According to the one who placed the call, the killer is recent trauma-survivor Adrian Ashford. Police have tried to find Ashford, but he seems to have disappeared, prompting the FBI to label him as the prime suspect and a dangerous threat to the community. At the scene, forensic investigators found two sets of footprints leading away from the scene, but the call to the police described no accomplices. However, the suspect's girlfriend, Jenny Sinclair, was reported to have gone missing as well. After surviving a car crash and being brought to the hospital, Jenny escaped, and her whereabouts are now unknown, but the FBI says that she is most likely with Adrian Ashford.
The forensic investigators are currently trying to identify the weapon used by the killer. While there are lacerations and blunt trauma found on the victims, they do not seem to have been caused by a bladed weapon or common bludgeon, and no bullet wounds or powder burns can be found. Under normal circumstances, a crime such as this would be considered low priority, as the victims are known felons and the motive is theorized to be revenge. However, due to the large number of victims, the manner in which they were killed, and the capability of the suspect, a full-scale hunt for the killer is now underway.
If anyone has any information on Adrian Ashford, please call—”
Adrian turned off the radio as Jenny began to stir. She gave a wide yawn and sat up.
“Good morning,” Adrian said.
She gave a sleepy smile and kissed him on the cheek. “Good morning,” she replied as she readjusted her seat. “So what is the plan?”
“Well for now, I think we should lay low. I want to give you plenty of time to recover, and I need time to fully organize my plan. I have some property in the next town that we can use, but it’s not quite ready for habitation. I figure we’ll use what I have there, get some new clothes and food, find a motel, and rest for a day or two.”
“That sounds perfect. I can't wait to get out of these muddy clothes.”
They stopped off in the mall of the next town to get some change of clothes, though they were longing to just drive to the nearest motel, lock themselves in a room, and go to sleep in a warm slightly-clean bed. They were parallel-parked far away from the mall and Adrian put up some false license plates he kept stashed in the car. Even if the authorities did somehow track down the car, they would have to search a much greater area to find them. Adrian was standing with Jenny in a department store, trying to keep from falling asleep on his feet. Unfortunately, the night before last had been spent working, so even he was running on fumes. Jenny was picking out clothes that would fit her, yawning after every third or fourth blouse. She was wearing a pink knitted hat to hide the bandages around her head. Beside them was a cart full of clothes they had picked out, and both of them desperately wanted to change.
Adrian gave a wide yawn and looked around to make sure that they were alone. “Do I frighten you?”
“What?”
“We haven't spoken about what happened in the warehouse. Jenny... you know I’ve killed before, but I didn’t mean for you to see me like that. Now the FBI is after me because I’ve massacred dozens of people. I don't want you to fear me or for your view of him to change. I—”
Adrian was cut off as Jenny kissed him on the lips. “How is it that you have forsaken your machine-like alter ego, but you still don't understand humans? Adrian, I don't fear you; I love you, I adore you, and I am amazed by you. My view of you has changed; you aren't just a part of my life anymore, you are now my life. Besides, the people you killed were the ones who killed my parents and I wanted vengeance as well. Adrian, I would kill for you, I would die for you, and nothing can ever change that.”
Adrian smiled and leaned back against a rack of clothes. “Nothing in this universe is perfect, humans especially. But Jenny, you are as close to perfect as reality will allow.”
“You are so sweet. All right, I got all the clothes I need,” she said, putting three blouses in the cart.
“Great, let's pay and find some motel to pass out in.”
“Sounds like plan.”
It was just after 8:00 AM when they pulled up to the Forest Motel, a small inn partially hidden by the woods along the turnpike. They climbed out of the car, carrying their bags from the mall. Hidden among them was a duffle bag full of money and Adrian’s lance and bulletproof clothes. They stepped into the motel office and rung the bell, summoning the owner.
“How can I help you kids?”
“Can we have a room for tonight?” Adrian asked.
“Ah, young love, it's always sweetest in a two-star motel. Just don't leave any used condoms around. Room 4.”
“Two stars? Don't flatter yourself,” Jenny teased as they were given a room key.
They made their way to the fourth motel room and stepped inside, both giving a sigh of relief. The room consisted of shag carpets, 70’s style wallpaper, a small TV on a bureau against the wall, a queen-sized bed, two bedside tables, a closet, and a small bathroom.
“I’m going to take a quick shower,” Jenny said as she put down her bags and walked into the bathroom.
Adrian turned on the bedside lamp, lowered the shades, and sat down on the bed, wincing in pain. Only with endorphins and pure will had he been able to endure the pain from his bruises, but now that he could finally lower his guard, it was all rising up. Adrian slowly pulled off his jacket and shirt, showing the fist-sized black marks that pocketed his arms and chest, plus there were plenty more on his legs. Several of them were even bleeding from being hit in the same place multiple times. Taking that barrage of bullets had been a stupid move, but he wanted to invoke fear and powerlessness in his opponents. Sometimes theatricality was one of the best weapons.
Adrian lied back on the bed, shaking all over and trying to catch his breath. His eyes bolted open and he jerked as he felt a cool wet towel pressed against the bullet wound on his shoulder. He looked up and saw Jenny, naked like him and as wet as the towel. The tender love and worry in her eyes was overpowering.
“My poor darling,” she whispered as she saw all of his bruises and wounds.
She went back to the bathroom and came out with more wet towels and a medical kit from under the sink. Climbing back onto the bed and kneeling beside him, she began gently cleaning his wounds with the wet towels, wiping away the dirt and blood. Adrian softly hummed in bliss and relaxation from the feeling of the wet towels against his injuries and Jenny's soft hands against his skin.
“Ok, I’m going to have to stitch some of these up. This will hurt,” Jenny warned, picking a needle and line of thread out of the medical kit.
“You can stitch wounds?”
“I took an extra-credit course in health class, and basic medical techniques were some of the things I was taught. But this kit doesn't come with pain killers, so this will hurt.”
Adrian placed his hand on Jenny's warm thigh. “I’ll be fine,” he said calmly.
Even with his eyes closed, he knew Jenny was blushing with a smile on her face. His hand on Jenny's thigh for mental support, Adrian was able to block out the pain as she began stitching shut the torn bruises on his body. For over an hour, she worked tirelessly, tending to his injuries. Once she was finished, she wrapped them in bandages and Adrian sat up.
“Now let me see you.”
He unfastened the bandages wrapped around her head and removed the gauze covering the gash on the side of her forehead. The gauze was bloody, but the wound seemed to be doing just fine and would be fully healed by the end of the week.
Jenny almost looked like she was sleeping while sitting up as Adrian cleaned the wound with sterilizing strips, covered it with fresh gauze, and wrapped her head with clean bandages. After Adrian checked to make sure the bandages would stay on, his hand drifted down from her forehead to her soft cheek. Jenny opened her eyes as he brushed his fingers against the side of her face.
She grasped his wrist and pressed his hand against her cheek. “Come on, you need to get some sleep.”
She pulled him to the center of the bed, and with his whole body aching, Adrian moved under the sheets and put his head down on the pillow. Jenny turned off the bedside lamp and curled up next to him, kissing his chest.
“Goodnight Adrian,” she said softly with her arm across his chest and her head on his shoulder.
“Goodnight Jenny,” he hummed as the soft bed, the warm blankets, Jenny's body pressed against his, and his exhaustion carried him into the best sleep of his life.
“So what do we know about this Adrian kid?” FBI Agent Hoffman asked, leaning back behind his desk.
On the wall above him were his awards from back when he was just a detective. He was a very large man with a thin white goatee and gray hair. His partner, Agent Mason, had just stepped in with an armful of files. He had a PhD in psychology, and he often used it to provoke his partner. He was much leaner than his partner and had dark skin.
“After what he did to those dropouts in that warehouse, he must be one twisted psychopath,” Hoffman said as Mason sat down in the chair in front of his desk.
“On the contrary, he's a certified genius. His school records say that he has an IQ of—oh, you won't believe this—he has an IQ of over 300. He even holds the world record for the highest IQ level, which basically makes him the smartest person on Earth. His teachers have commented that he prizes logic and reason above all else and has been compared to a robot countless times. He's a very wealthy inventor and his name is constantly circulating the technological industry as some sort of prodigy.”
“Oh goddammit, I hate the fucking geniuses!”
“Yeah, the geniuses are either experts at hiding or try to play games with us, and we’ve got to find him. However, if his girlfriend is in fact with him, that could work in their favor. People on the run will often make more mistakes if they are with others instead of on their own. The fact that he loves this girl should cloud his judgment, if only a little. You have those files on the girl right?”
“Jenny Sinclair? Yeah, I looked through them. As far as I know, she's just a regular teenage girl. The trauma of her parent's death must be why she decided to run away with him. Eventually she'll realize it was a mistake, leave him, and the pain of losing her will hopefully make him mess up and we'll catch him.”
“Oh, I have Adrian's school picture. Jeez, look at the mugshot on him, talk about melancholic,” Mason said, handing him the pictures. He then saw a picture on Hoffman's desk. “Is that her?”
“Yeah,” Hoffman said as he looked at Adrian’s picture.
Agent Mason looked at the picture of Jenny and chuckled. “Damn Mike, you would be out of the job if I weren't here to help you. This girl isn't normal.”
“What do you mean?”
His partner showed him the picture again. “Quite the looker, isn’t she? A girl like that is at the top of the popularity pedestal, a social goddess in the halls of high school. I know that strange couples can form, but from everything I’ve heard, these two are polar opposites of each other. Either their relationship has always been one bad day from breaking up, or these two have a much deeper relationship than they give them credit for. I don't think they'll just split up.”
It was 7:30 AM the next day at the motel, and Adrian closed the door as quietly as possible, but he could not stop Jenny from waking up. With a wide yawn and several cat-like stretches, she sat up and looked at him. “Where have you been?”
Adrian placed three bags on a nearby table and handed Jenny one of two cups of coffee. “I just needed to get a few things. We were asleep for an entire day, and I wanted to make up for lost time.”
Jenny took a drink of the coffee and grimaced. “I had always hoped that his first coffee would be sweeter.”
“Oh, that was your first coffee? Well if I had known that, I would have made sure that you didn't lose your coffee virginity so disappointingly in a cheap motel,” Adrian joked, causing Jenny to laugh.
“So what exactly shall we be doing?”
“I’ll give you a hint: before coming back here, I stopped off at the local hospital and did a little bribery to get some drugs we’ll need. I also got something that we’ll REALLY need…” Adrian said as he reached into the third bag and handed Jenny a packet of birth-control pills.
“Oh, you’re a mind-reader. This is a huge relief. But you said you got some drugs from the hospital, what kind of drugs?”
“Anesthesia, several different kinds. We’re going to need them.”
“What are we going to be doing?”
“I am going to be training you. I’m a wanted criminal, and if you're really going to come with me, I need to teach you to protect yourself. Things are going to get dangerous, and I won't always be around to keep you safe. For the next two weeks, I’m going to expand your mind as far as it can go. Your intelligence will skyrocket and you'll later learn my logic-based fighting style and achieve complete control over your body.”
Jenny gained an ecstatic smile on her face. “Really?”
“Yes, and trust me...” Adrian began as he wrapped his arms around her naked form. “That's not all we're going to be doing.”
The office was silent as Agents Hoffman and Mason read through Adrian and Jenny's files. They needed to memorize every scrap of information they could find if they had any hope of finding them.
“There is one thing that keeps tugging at his mind...” Hoffman said. Mason looked up at him. “The bodies in that warehouse have been searched over and over again, and they can't find any powder burns, poison, or signs that the victims were somehow weakened before they were fighting. An eighteen-year-old killed over thirty full or near full-grown men, all at peak strength and armed with guns and melee weapons. This is the kind of thing you only see in Kung Fu movies.”
“I know; I can't stop thinking about it either. As far as I’ve learned, this kid has never been to so much as a single karate lesson and brainiacs aren’t typically experienced street fighters.”
“Which makes it possible that he didn't do it. In fact, he could actually be dead. From what the Dean of Medicine said, he was told that his girlfriend was either going to die or never wake up from her coma. After the death of his parents and learning about his girlfriend, he could have easily killed himself and they just haven't found his body. We were also told his girlfriend disappeared. It's possible that she woke up, found out about her parents, found her dead boyfriend in a place she knew he would be, and decided to follow him to the grave. We could easily be looking for the wrong person.”
A man stepped into the office, holding a long cardboard box and three files. “Detectives, I have something you should take a look at...”
Hoffman took the box and opened it. “Holy shit.”
Mason looked through the files and gave the same curse. In the box was Adrian’s lance from when Logan and his cronies attacked him and Jenny, the one designed for concealment. It was supposed to be used as evidence in Logan’s trial. In the files were the medical and forensic records of Logan and his friends from when they were treated. The injuries confirmed that the lance was the cause, and the fingerprints linked it to Adrian.
“This proves it, it was Adrian. Similar weapon, similar injuries, a motive, and the same target,” Hoffman said, holding up the lance. He tried to fold it, but the hinges were locked in place. The weapon was strong enough to be used for chin-ups without the point bending or breaking.
Mason leaned back in his chair, deep in thought.
“Look at this grisly thing,” Hoffman said in amazement, “there are no serial numbers, company logos, or labels of the manufacturer. There are no signs of it being cast from molten steel but neither are there any imperfections. This thing was somehow made with the precision of a samurai sword.”
“This is bad, really bad.” Mason sighed.
“What do you mean?”
“Without any sort of fighting lessons or experience, he was able to take down dozens armed men with a single melee weapon. We aren't dealing with a normal kid on the run. Not only is he the smartest person on Earth, he may be the deadliest.”
“Basically you're saying that we're dealing with some sort of prodigy?”
“I would prefer a less provocative term. But what I’m saying is that we need to catch him soon, because we can't let someone like this run around the country, especially if he decides to strike again...”
“All right kids, that will be about twenty bucks,” the motel owner said as he put out his cigarette.
Standing in the motel office, Adrian and Jenny were about to pay for their night, but as Adrian pulled out the money, the owner looked to a TV in the corner of the room on a shelf. It was the morning news.
“Oh hold on, I want to hear this,” he said as he turned up the volume.
Adrian’s heart sank when he realized it was a story on the Warehouse Massacre.
“With the disappearance of the prime suspect and the discovery of a mass transaction from his bank accounts, the FBI has decided to release information on the supposed killer. His name is Adrian Ashford, he is eighteen years old, and he is considered armed and extremely dangerous. He is most likely traveling with his significant other, Jenny Sinclair. If anyone has any information on these two, please contact the local police,” the news anchor said as copies of the teens’ driver’s licenses and school pictures were put up on the screen.
In less than a second, the motel owner recognized them from their pictures. He turned back with his eyes wide, but before he could reach under the counter and activate the alarm, Adrian leapt over the table and grabbed him by the throat, moving as fast as lightning. Adrian slammed him against the wall and punched him in the stomach, finishing him with an elbow to the back of the skull to knock him out. Jenny stared at him with eyes as wide as the owner’s from the speed of the response.
“Come on, we have to go. It won’t be long until he wakes up and calls the police,” Adrian said as he jumped back over the counter.
Jenny ran out of the office but Adrian stopped. He gave a small smile and reached into his pocket, pulling out one of his darts. He slammed it down onto the counter, lodging the tip in the wood and leaving it standing up. He then wiped the counter with his sleeve and pressed his fingers down on the surface, leaving five perfect fingerprints. He followed Jenny out of the office and they climbed into their car, speeding off the second the engine kicked to life.
The building was essentially a small warehouse, with its only luxuries being electricity, a bathroom, running water, and a mattress on the floor. It stood on the very fringes of the town, at the end of a gated driveway leading off into the woods. Upon releasing the heavy padlock on the front door, Adrian and Jenny stepped into the large dusty room and looked around. The concrete floor was covered in wooden crates and cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes, some of which were open with brand new tools and medical equipment standing by, waiting for use.
“Ok, now before we do anything, I need you to make sure your bowels and bladder are completely empty. You have to be certain that there is absolutely nothing in your digestive system. There is a reason why I had you skip breakfast, in fact, I probably shouldn’t have even let you drink that coffee.”
Jenny looked at him with unease at the strange request. “I don’t understand, what does that have to do with my training?”
Adrian simply smiled. “Oh, you’ll see.”
Jenny and Adrian were sitting cross-legged on the mattress in the warehouse, facing each other. Standing next to the bed was an IV rack with a bag filled with a saline solution, as well as a bypass machine and a neural activity scanner for observing and recording the different waves and patterns of her brain.
“Before we can even begin your training, you must learn to use your entire brain. You know that cliché myth about people only using 10% of their brains? It’s of course false. It’s not like the majority of your brain will be pitch-black if you’re in an MRI or getting a PET scan. Instead, people use their entire brain but it’s the wiring of the brain that’s holding everyone back. Your brain is working at 100% constantly, but because of poor neural pathways, it only functions at 30% of its full potential. Humans also use only about 30% of their muscles as a way to protect themselves form overexertion, but I’ve found a way around that.
My brain has been completely rewired, which lets me think, calculate, and solve problems countless times faster and easier than regular people. Here, I’ll show you...”
Adrian reached into a bag beside the bed and pulled out a Rubik’s Cube, sixteen squares on each side. He had bought a few of them earlier when he went out. “Now close your eyes.” Jenny did as she was told and Adrian shuffled up the puzzle. He handed it to her and she opened her eyes. “It’s been scrambled with thirty moves. After an hour, tell me if you think you’ve made progress. If not, we can stop.”
Jenny looked at him with self-doubt.
“Don’t worry, this isn’t some standardized test at school. You can do nothing wrong,” he said reassuringly.
Jenny smiled confidently, but it quickly dropped after she looked down at the cube. For an hour, she shifted the levels while biting her lip, often stopping for a minute or so to try and come up with a strategy. Keeping time in his mind, Adrian kept his eyes closed so that Jenny would not feel nervous, and at the one-hour point, he told her to stop.
“So, do you want to keep going?”
Jenny sighed. “No, I have no idea what I’m doing. I can’t figure this out.”
Adrian looked at the Rubik’s Cube and chuckled. “Actually, you weren’t half bad. You were thirteen moves away from solving it. Most people either get to the high teens or actually scramble it up even more,” Adrian said before solving it in only a few moments.
He then reached back down and revealed a new Rubik’s cube, much larger and more complex than the first, barely fitting in Adrian’s hand. Each of the four sides was split up into nine sections, each section with a different color, and while unsolved, all sides looking exactly the same. Each section was comprised of sixteen squares, making the toy look like one giant stack of smaller Rubik’s cubes.
“I invented this years ago after getting bored with regular Rubik’s cubes. I got the idea from a Sudoku puzzle. Since it has nine colors, you don’t solve it by making one side entirely red, one side entirely blue, and so on. You have to make nine perfect sections on each side. Of all my inventions, this one has the worst sales, simply because no one can solve it but me, at least without cheating and having a computer write an algorithm for it. I’m glad I was able to find a place that sold them.
Scramble this in thirty moves and I’ll show you what 100% of your brain can accomplish.”
Jenny quickly scrambled up the puzzle, making it as difficult as possible with exactly thirty moves. Adrian kept his eyes closed so that he couldn’t see what she was doing. Once she was done, Adrian opened his eyes and she handed him the cube.
“All right, it’s been a while since I used one of these things, so I’ll probably be a little out of shape.”
He studied it for the first couple seconds, memorizing every side and forming a mental copy in his brain. Once he had it memorized, he began solving it, shifting the levels as fast as if he were instead trying to scramble it. Jenny watched him wide-eyed as the puzzle quickly began take its original form, with him only stopping occasionally to contemplate for less than a second. Once it was solved, he held up the cube.
“15.3 seconds, spread out across thirty moves. Now, as you have seen, there is a colossal difference between 30% and 100%. Each percent doesn’t increase your intelligence by an actual 1/100th of your full potential; the one before it basically multiplies each percent. It’s why even at 30%, you weren’t able to just solve the Rubik’s Cube three times longer than I did. If you can learn to harness the rest of your brain, mental tasks will take only a fraction of the original time and effort, because the work will be outsourced to more areas, instead of just the parts of your brain you are currently using. I will teach you how to unlock the rest of your mind and transcend normal limitations.
However, the expansion of your mind does not equal an instant IQ boost. It will take a while for you to learn how to use the awakened areas of your brain. At first, your senses will just be enhanced, then you’ll learn how to process moments in time faster and react, and finally you’ll gain foresight, logic, and high intelligence. At the third stage, you’ll be able to plan things out fifty steps in advance, you’ll be able to see through even the most complicated situations, and you’ll be able to outsmart anyone in your path.
In order to understand what we will do, you need to understand what we are trying to replicate. Imagine the human brain as a TV, specifically an older one. Your regular thoughts are the programs, your dreams are basically that public broadcast channel that shows only a single image with elevator music, static devoid of content is if you are in a coma, and turned off is death. When you turn off an older TV, you know how the image basically collapses in on itself in flash of light? Basically, the mental state I was in after my car accident is similar to that fraction a second in which the entire screen lit up.
You always hear those stories about people who had near-death experiences, where they see a bright light and feel a sense of euphoria. Afterwards, they may come back with a new talent that they never had before. What they believe to be a look into heaven is actually the brain shutting down and every single neuron firing at once in a colossal synaptic thunderclap while drowning in chemicals. It’s like if every single power line in the country experienced a pylon-destroying power surge. In this sudden flash of brain activity, new neural pathways are allowed to form and the process of myelin production increases by a hundred fold, linking the neurons together in entirely new ways. These new super-pathways are what grant the sudden talents; they’re the brain unlocking a part of its potential.
In order to rewire my whole mind, I basically had to die in that car crash. My brain wasn’t just a TV set on a static channel; it was caught in a moment of shutdown without beginning or end, just complete neural synchronicity. It’s a miracle that I was actually able to use that accident to unlock my mind, not to mention the even greater miracle that I woke up. As you can imagine, we can’t reenact that car crash with you in my place and just hope that you can survive like I did.
In order to do this effectively and safely, we’ll use hypnotism and drugs from the pharmacy to replicate the mental affects of lethal trauma and put you between life and death. I’m going to knock you out to the point where you can no longer control your internal organs or body and your brain will think you’re dying and trigger that near-death flash. Then, before you die for real, I’ll activate the bypass machine and put you on life support, basically taking care of your body while your brain completely reshapes itself while waiting for death.
I’ll put you under for a week, with a saline solution and nutrients injected intravenously to keep you healthy. But before I do anything, I need to tell you that there is a very high probability that you could die. I need to make sure you are aware of this and I need your full consent. I’m sure this method will work, but I’ve never been able to try it on anyone,” he said, speaking the last sentence with a shaky voice.
Jenny took a deep breath. “I want to do this, I want to help you achieve your dream and I want to fulfill my potential. If there is even the slightest chance that I can play some beneficial part in your plan, then risking my life is no question. I love you, Adrian, and I would do anything for you.”
Adrian sighed and nodded. “I’m going to begin the sequence of fluid injections, but do not lie down.”
Jenny nodded and Adrian plugged the IV into her arm, causing her to give a nervous shiver at the prick of the needle. He began the saline drip and plugged a syringe into the line, pressing down on the plunger and injecting the first drug.
“Now, close your eyes and clear your mind.” Jenny took another deep breath and closed her eyes. “Clear your mind of all thoughts and emotions. Imagine you are falling through darkness, and let my voice be the only thing in your mind. Let every word I speak ripple through the darkness, but let everything else fall away.”
Jenny gave another deep breath and Adrian placed his hand on the center of her chest, measuring her heart rate. The anesthesia was calming her down, but her body was woken back up with a shiver of arousal from his touch.
Adrian injected the second drug. “Calm yourself. Separate your mind from your body, forget the bed beneath you, forget my hand on your chest, forget the air against your skin, forget it all and let all of the feelings fall away. Do not fall asleep but do not wake up, set yourself on the mental precipice with only the void around you. Focus only on my voice and let everything else fall into darkness.” he murmured as he injected the third drug.
Adrian repeated this again and again, both verbally and with more injections, and over the course of a couple minutes, Jenny’s heartbeat slowly lowered as she entered a trance-like state, brought on by hypnosis and the drugs. As he had instructed, she was neither asleep nor awake; she had entered the subconscious level of her mind. Adrian took his hand off her chest and moved over to her carefully. It would be very difficult for her to wake up from this trance, but he did not want to risk ruining their progress. He sat next to her and brushed back a lock of her long blonde hair, and unlike before, she did not shiver at his touch. He then hooked up the hoses of the bypass machine up to her veins and injected the fourth drug, as well as placed electrodes on her scalp for the neural scanner to keep an eye on her brain waves.
“Keep falling, forget everything else, ignore all worries or cares. Forget about your body, forget the past, forget the future, forget me; just keep plummeting into darkness. Dive, dive as far down into your mind as possible and abandon everything else. Fall between life and death and exist on the very fringe of your own understanding. Give in to the empty darkness and cease all awareness and sentience. Abandon who you are and become one with the void.”
He wrapped his arms around her and caught her as she fell back, laying her down. She had completely relinquished all control of her body and the process had begun. Adrian activated the bypass machine and hooked up an IV bag full of chemicals, erasing the danger of her now unmoving heart and lungs but without preventing oxygen from being absorbed into her blood and moved throughout the body. Above her head, the monitor of the neural scanner was showing skyrocketing activity on all wavelengths as every neuron in her brain was firing at once and forming massive pathways and networks.
It was done, the bypass was keeping her body stable and fully oxygenated, her brain was reaping the benefits of being between life and death, her saline solution was full of nutrients to protect her health, and her condition was easily reversible. He had done it, the process was working, now all he had to do was give her mind time to recreate itself, and until he deemed it ready, there was work he had to do.
Adrian laid the strips of metal in the smelting drawer and pushed it into the kiln. The pool table-sized smelting oven had been made by him and was the hottest on the planet, able to sustain and tolerate temperatures that no other device could endure. It was made of another material of his own creation, Ignium, one that was so powerful at reflecting heat and maintaining its shape that it made the shields on space shuttles and satellites look like wet towels. He had made only a few of them and kept them hidden across the globe, for they were the only smelting ovens that could produce Demium.
The strips of metal he had inserted were all ingredients and had been measured down to the centigram for the perfect ratio in order to achieve the molecular structure and ensure the creation of the desired compound. The oven itself used a revolutionary design, blasting the metals with lasers and turning the air into plasma so as to melt the metal and keep it from forming any compounds except for Demium. There was even a piece of Demium in there, a “seed”, which would allow the metal compound to replicate over and over into crystal lattice structure. Locking the drawer into place, Adrian cranked up the heat and stepped back. Inside, the metals were all immediately fired down upon with a barrage of laser beams, each beam separated from its brethren by only a millimeter. After only a second, the metals began to liquefy and the air temperature skyrocketed, almost burning as hot as thermite.
With Jenny still held in suspension and the kiln melting the metal, Adrian had nothing left to do but wait and prepare for when he brought Jenny back. He had about a week until then, and he had to prepare for when she became fully aware, as well as create her lance. It normally took about three days of nonstop firing for enough Demium to form to create a lance, each molecule forming one by one in the stew of molten metals could even be compared to the formation of the first proteins and life forms in the primordial ooze. Until they formed that perfect Demium molecule, the atoms would float around, momentarily fusing together only to be broken back up. Once the structure was formed, the melting point of the combined metals would skyrocket and the structure would become permanent.
Pulling up a chair in front of the kiln and opening his laptop, he prepared for the long wait.
Detectives Mason and Hoffman stepped under the police tape that stretched around the perimeter of the motel. Cop cars and precautionary ambulances surrounded the building, with officers streaming out of the fourth room and the office. One of the forensic investigators walked up to them.
“I’m Detective Mason, and this is my partner Detective Hoffman, FBI,” Mason said as the two agents held up their badges.
“I’m Agent Madison,” she replied, pulling off her rubber gloves and shaking their hands.
“What do we have here?” Hoffman asked.
“The owner of this motel said that he was attacked by Adrian Ashford. Apparently, he and his girlfriend rented a room from him last night and he saw them on the news while they were paying.”
Madison led them into the motel office and Hoffman cursed, spotting the dart lodged in the counter and the five fingerprints glowing under a black light. “Oh shit, he’s gamer.”
“He’s baiting us,” Mason said as he stepped towards the counter, where pictures were being taken from all angles and evidence tags set up.
“What is the condition of the owner?” Hoffman asked.
“He’s fine, just a minor concussion. He was brought to the hospital just a few minutes before you two showed up.”
“Wait, he was alive? Were there any lacerations or stab wounds?” Hoffman asked.
“No, just some bruises. Ashford just knocked him out.”
Detective Mason stepped behind the counter and moved over to the cash register.
“Don’t bother, we already checked it. There were no signs of any money being stolen,” Madison said.
Before Hoffman or Mason could say anything, a cop stepped into the office. “We just received a call from the station: a hospital worker was arrested for selling drugs to a young man now believed to be Adrian Ashford. He confessed to selling anesthesia, saline, and IV nutrients, lots of them. The description he gave us matches the description of Ashford.”
“Interesting, very interesting. Did you find anything in the motel room?” Mason asked as he looked over the list in the officer’s hands.
“Just some empty Dunkin Donuts coffee cups and bloody gauze and bandages. The medical kit in the room was almost completely empty.”
“So we can be sure that they are both injured, but that doesn’t explain why he got that stuff from the hospital. Painkillers I can understand, but anesthesia, saline, and IV nutrients? What the hell are those two doing? How many Dunkin Donuts are there near this motel?” Hoffman asked.
“Just one, and a second one on the other side of town,” Madison answered.
“Can you get us the surveillance tapes of all the stores between this motel and the nearest Dunkin Donuts? If they bought anything else, we might get a clue as to what they are doing.”
Madison nodded and stepped outside while talking on her radio.
“A public encounter, no deaths, not even any real injuries, and no money stolen,” Mason said, taking the same stance as Hoffman. “But on the other hand, we’re dealing with a mass-murderer who has brought more death and destruction than Jason Voorhees, and he left one of his weapons and five perfect fingerprints just to tease us. We’re dealing with a psychopath with morals.”
“Well remember what we read on his file? His teachers said that he prided logic and reason above all else, and only did what was necessary. Maybe he didn’t kill that man because he didn’t have to,” Hoffman suggested.
“But that doesn’t make sense. He’s trying to bait us, but leaving a witness alive raises his chances of being caught. Could it be that maybe he’s guilty about his crimes and part of him wants to be caught?”
“I doubt that he would regret his vengeance. Let’s look at this another way: he leaves bait but no new victims. He obviously wants attention, but not attention from a new crime. He just wants to keep the trail hot.”
“Which means that the chances of him killing again are low, but he’ll still want us to focus on him. That means that while he did kill all those people, it was for vengeance, and it doesn’t make him a serial killer. He wants attention and he wants to be known, but not as a serial killer. But if that’s true, then it’s quite possible that we’re not the true targets in his search for attention. This is bait for us, but we could be the real bait. He could be using us as bait for someone else’s attention.”
Wearing a heat-resistant suit with full tinted facemask, Adrian turned off the kiln and pulled out the drawer of the smelting oven. He looked down into long pool of molten metal, growing brighter than fire itself. Amongst the gold-shaded liquid, specks of silver could be seen, the growing seeds of Demium. He pushed the drawer back in and reactivated the laser shower. It had been six hours and the development was going along quite well.
While waiting, Adrian had checked popular news and email sites, scanning for any story that had a picture of he or Jenny. More than half of all of the stories were about the massacre, but with its uniqueness, he was not surprised. Murder on this scale of brutality and numbers by one man was unheard of. So far, every article just repeated the facts of the one before it.
“We have only one piece of footage. A young man resembling Adrian Ashford entered a hobby shop near the Dunkin Donuts and purchased some Rubik’s Cubes and board games. That’s all we have,” Agent Madison said, handing a folder of security camera screenshots to Hoffman and Mason at the local police department.
“Rubik’s Cubes and board games? What the hell are they doing?” Hoffman muttered, looking over the pictures. Mason examined the receipt from the store, listing off everything that had been bought.
“Rubik’s Cubes, chess game, solitaire game, mahjong game, Go game, etc. These are all brain and puzzle games. Could this just be some entertainment for him, some quirk of his, something that geniuses just like to keep around?”
“Puzzle games, anesthesia, IV nutrients… We’re missing something, some key variable that links them together. Whether it is something he bought or something he knows, we need to find it if we are to have any chance of figuring out what he’s up to. Madison, could you please expand the search to all stores in and around this town?” Hoffman asked.
Madison nodded and stepped out of the room.
Back in his full heat suit and with a pair of Ignium tongs, Adrian dumped out the block of Demium onto a stone table, letting it cool momentarily. The block was about as long as a pool cue and as thick as his arm, but it wasn’t nearly ready to turned into a lance. The metal was still full of impurities, compounds and elements that hadn’t joined together to create Demium and were instead held in suspension. With the block glowing white-hot and practically melting through the stone table, Adrian worked quickly to activate his band saw-sized automatic hammer and his industrial cutting torch, used to bore through the thickest armor plating ever made. The former had been outfitted with Ignium surfaces, since anything that the Demium touched while hot was normally melted, and the latter was only powerful enough to keep the Demium hot, by no means could it melt it.
Holding the block in place, he cranked up the automatic hammer to its top speed and began pummeling the Demium with the weighted head. Moving faster than a jackhammer, the Ignium head crashed down onto the Demium over and over again, sending chips of impurities flying off the surface. He ran the entire block underneath the hammer, twisting it over and over while occasionally running it through the jet of high-pressure fire from the cutting torch to heat it back up to the point of being malleable. He put the block back under the hammer, knocking off as many chips of non-Demium as he could. He then brought both ends under the hammer for an extended time, slightly flattening them.
After another bath of fire, he brought the block over to a specially made lathe, built for this one and only purpose. The motor had been retrofitted to move slower and with far more torque, while the brace on the opposite end remained stationary. He locked in the white-hot bar and activated the lathe, twisting the bar while spraying it with high-pressure flames. With each rotation of the metal, more chips and specks of impurities from the interior were exposed and flicked off.
Upon the completion of the metal’s winding, he brought it back to the automatic hammer and continued smashing out the impurities. For fourteen hours he repeated this process over and over, stopping only to eat or drink, go to the bathroom, or switch out fuel tanks for the cutting torch. This was the same process he had to go through to create all his lances, and this certainly wouldn’t be the last time. With the moon high in the sky and the sunrise due in a few hours, Adrian lowered the block of Demium into a tub of water and waited through the created cloud of steam.
Once the bubbles stopped, he reached in with his bare hand and pulled out the block. Now that it had been hardened, the Demium was in its final form: it was harder than diamond but would never crack, crumble, or bend. A needle of this metal could support his full weight and the formation of the molecules produced a nearly-unbreakable crystal lattice structure that would resist oxidation. It could only be melted with a heat source on par with an atomic bomb or high-power laser. The only metal that could surpass it was a truly perfect one. There was only one final step.
Walking across the warehouse, he approached a machine that was covered in a dusty cloth. Pulling the sheet away, he let the fluorescent lights of the warehouse shine down upon one of his most useful machines: a laser-lathe. As the name suggested, it was essentially a regular lathe but with a vertical laser ark in place of a blade, as a laser was the only thing that could cut through Demium. The laser was the size of a stage light with a protruding handle and held up on a track so that it could move either left or right, with the track itself capable of moving forwards or backwards to the control the depths of cuts on whatever was in the lathe. An added bonus was that with a laser taking the place of a blade, the lathe could also be used for cutting like a table saw, and it had a built in computer for carving the smallest of details.
Locking the block in place in the two braces at the end with half of the block protruding the long way, he turned on the lathe and activated the laser. Up above the block on the track, the laser moved into position like the inscriber of a computer printer and fired down a beam of focused light into a receiver, creating an invisible line that could cut through just about anything it touched.
Knowing that every piece of Demium was priceless and that he would probably be needing more darts in the future, Adrian initially held off using the computer and manned the laser himself, cutting off thick strips of metal near what would be the needle-sharp tip to be recycled. After which, he let the computer take over, having long since programmed the design for his trademark lances. With precision that not even he could match, the laser slowly moved across the surface of the spinning bar of Demium, shaping it with a perfectly-level incline from base to point, as well as carving in grooves for a handle.
Within minutes, the lance was completed and a true work of art. Even if one were to argue the unfair advantage of modern machinery, no critic could deny that the lance in Adrian’s hand was the most well-crafted close-combat weapon in human history. It could handle a chop from a broadsword without receiving a scratch, be hit with an armor-piercing pullet but be free of any dents, and go tip to edge against the greatest katana and split it like a lightning bolt through a tree. It was a true masterpiece.
Raising the lance, Adrian plunged it straight down into the floor, shattering the concrete as if it were packed dirt and drilling a small hole into the surface. Dislodging the weapon, he examined the undamaged tip and smiled in satisfaction. Every surface and material, no matter how strong, was filled with miniscule defects and weak points. These weak points were normally too small to affect the integrity and strength of the materials, but easy target for Adrian’s weapons. Even if he couldn’t see them himself, the needle tip of this lance was fine enough to strike those points, causing the target to essentially buckle like liquid with little force. With just his weight behind it, Adrian had once drilled through the side of a tank during a firefight in Pakistan and killed the driver.
The lance complete, he made several darts from the Demium scraps, as well as several dozen from simple carbon steel and other metals. With how precious Demium was and the fact that he used them as long-range weapons, he needed plenty of expendable spares for when he was in a situation in which he could not retrieve a dart once it was thrown. After completing his work, Adrian gave a sigh of relief and accomplishment.
With the sun beginning to rise, he walked into the warehouse bathroom, washed up in the sink, and changed into some fresh clothes. His weapons completed and his body aching, he walked over to the mattress on the floor, where Jenny was still suspended in near-death state, completely stable and safe. With a tired smile on his face, he lifted up the thin blanket of the bed and lied down beside Jenny, quickly drifting to sleep with his arm wrapped around her.
Adrian kneeled by Jenny’s bed with a syringe in his hand, filled with epinephrine. The time had come, a week had passed and now it was time for Jenny to wake up, as well as see if this purely theoretical process would even work. He had already slowly weaned Jenny off the drugs, now it was time to give her a full jumpstart. Unplugging her from the bypass, he inserted the needle and gave her a small dose of epinephrine, just enough to get her heart racing and fully awaken her from her coma.
Jenny’s eyes bolted open and she arched her back while taking a loud and desperate breath, as if she had just narrowly avoided drowning. Looking around wildly, her body began to twitch and jerk as her mind discovered all of her senses all over again. Everything from her sense of touch to her sense of smell felt ten times sharper, when in reality, they were as sharp as they had only been, it was merely the amount of sensory information that was actually being processed that had changed. In her mind, all the sounds that would normally be interpreted as inaudible background noise was now like having front-row seats at a symphony orchestra. Her mind was better interpreting the light passing through her eyes, letting her see every line and imperfection in the ceiling above. She could still taste the toothpaste in her mouth from when Adrian had her thoroughly brush her teeth before putting her under, as well as any food particles she had missed. She could smell everything in the room, from the oil, dust, and even the rat droppings in the walls. Her sense of touch was now so potent that she could measure the humidity in the air, as well as the temperature. Even more, she could feel every single weave and thread in her clothes and the sheets of her bed, as if every single cell was a tiny nerve ending.
“Welcome to the transcended realm,” Adrian said proudly but softly.
For several seconds, Jenny was silent as she tried to come up with something to say, but she was too distracted by everything around her to think of anything. As well as her senses being heightened, her mind felt like the world’s largest supercomputer, taking in information and processing it with greater speeds than ever in her life. Her mind was moving so fast, she was able to recount her entire life in a single second, down to the smallest details, as well as understand everything that had ever confused her.
Jenny sat up and wrapped her arms around him, holding on for dear life as if she were trying to learn how to walk. He could tell that this new experience was frightening her. With her senses energized and her mind bouncing around in the new space, she was desperate to get a hold of something stable, like a seasick person focusing on the horizon.
“It’s ok, Jenny, take a deep breath and relax. Just breathe,” he whispered in her ear.
Jenny took a very shaky breath, almost as if she were crying.
“That’s right, just become accustomed to everything. Keep breathing and let everything come back gradually.”
Jenny continued taking deep breaths, and once she had relaxed, he laid her back down.
“Oh my god, Adrian... Is this... is this really how you see the world?” she gasped with disbelief, barely able to speak.
“Basically. This is how everything looks through his eyes. Listen to me: in a minute or two, you’re going to start getting a headache. It will feel like your stomach is inside your head and you’re starving. Your brain will literally be hungry for content and information beyond just sensory information; it will want data and knowledge. Listen to this as long as you want. As for food, this is all I’m comfortable letting you eat after a weak of being on death’s door,” Adrian said, holding up a bag full of everything from yogurt to mashed potatoes and a pair of headphones leading to his laptop. As Jenny nervously put the headphones on, Adrian activated the recording.
All week, Adrian had been collecting information online converting it to an audio file. Educational texts on physics, politics, mathematics, biology, chemistry, engineering, history, psychology, language, and even philosophy had been gathered and converted into a single track, played at high speeds. As a whistle-like stream garbled words played in her ear, Jenny began ripping open the containers of food and eating ravenously, using her fingers in place of any particular utensil. Watching her, Adrian couldn’t help but laugh.
“Now as I said before, this isn't an IQ boost quite yet; your senses are better processed and your brain has been activated. It will take a while for you to actually learn how to use your awakened mind. Your training hasn't even started yet, this trance just made training actually possible. Now that you've awakened the rest of your mind, you now have potential, and now the real training can begin,” said Adrian as the recording came to an end, two days later.
“I just can't believe it, I can’t even describe what I’m feeling. It’s almost like a migraine that feels really good,” she whispered, just staring at the ceiling.
Adrian chuckled. “I guess that would be a good description. Come on, let's stretch our legs and go get something to eat. You and I have been cooped up in this warehouse way too long.”
The sun was setting and there were only a few cars out on the road as the two lovers walked along the edge of the woods towards town, a couple miles from the warehouse. Adrian watched with a smile as Jenny would constantly dart her head in different directions, like a cat trying to catch the dot of a laser pointer. With her cleared senses, she was sampling every taste, smell, sound, sight, and feeling, almost as if she were experiencing them through a new body.
“All right Jenny, now for a test. For every car that passes by us, I want you to take all of the numbers on their license plate, multiply them by each other, and then add it to the sum of the next plate. But don't try and cheat, I’ll be counting them too.”
Jenny smiled and she and Adrian began working the calculations as they walked down the street, enjoying the evening and the cool fresh air. They finally picked a restaurant, and just before they stepped inside, Jenny whispered in his ear, “1274895.”
Adrian smiled and whispered in hers, “Close, but it was actually 1274863.”
Jenny scowled at the tease but regained her smile as they stepped inside and were given a booth.
“So how do you like the new world?”
“It's unbelievable. I knew that you saw the world differently, but I can't believe how high you were above everyone else,” she said with amazement before a waitress came and took their order.
“Well, since we were so late in our training, you’ve lost some of your potential. I imagine that your IQ will be about twenty or thirty points below mine, but don’t be disappointed. In one day, you have surpassed all geniuses in terms of mental prowess. Be proud of yourself, for you have become more than human.”
Jenny blushed from the compliment and smiled as two cokes were brought out, later followed by their dinner: a cooked salmon for her and pork tenderloin for him.
“Perfect, I’m starving,” Jenny said, savoring the smells emanating from the plates.
“Now, while we eat, I’m going to show you two great abilities that comes with it: enhanced memory and senses. When I say memory, I don't just mean mental memory, I also mean muscle memory. Muscle memory is the body's ability to adapt to things that you do over and over again, allowing you to do them easier and more efficiently. But it also works with your senses, letting you memorize the physical aspects of the things you touch, like weight, viscosity, temperature, and how rough or smooth it is. By becoming enlightened, you have the ability to remember memories more clearly, including muscle memory.
Think back to science class, when we were taught the metric system. Remember when we were each given a weight that was exactly one gram? Remember that weight, think back to how it felt in your hand.”
Jenny closed her eyes for several seconds, pressing down on her palm with her fingers to simulate the weight of a single gram.
Adrian reached out with his fork and skewered a piece of salmon from her plate, holding it up. “Now take a bite, but don't swallow.”
Jenny smiled and seductively pulled the salmon off his fork with her tongue. Adrian chuckled. “You just couldn't help yourself, could you?”
Jenny just replied with a wink.
“Now that you have familiarized yourself with the weight of one gram, how much would you say that piece of salmon weighed?”
Jenny chewed for a few seconds before saying, “5.7 grams?”
Adrian raised his eyebrows in surprise, not expecting her to come that close on her first try. “That's absolutely correct.”
“But how did you know how much it weighed when you were...” she said, trailing off as she looked at the fork in his hand. “You knew the weight of the fork?”
“A habit of mine is to weigh whatever I touch. I knew the weight of the fork the second I picked it up, and I just subtracted it from the combined weight of it and the piece of salmon. Now here is something a little trickier. Using the piece you just ate as a control, create a weight-to-mass ratio in your mind of the salmon and try to figure out how much it weighs just by the sight of it.”
Adrian picked up another piece and held it up to Jenny. She stared at the piece for a few seconds, analyzing every thread of tissue and trying to come up with it's total mass, then comparing it to the piece she had just eaten.
“0.37 grams per square centimeter?”
“0.38 actually, but you were incredibly close for your first try,” Adrian said before eating the piece.
He picked up the saltshaker and sprinkled some on his pork tenderloin. As he began chewing on a piece, he handed her the saltshaker. “Very few people would be able to calculate the weight of those pieces if they had been holding it in one hand and a one-gram weight in another, let alone comparing it to memory. You were able to because your sensory perception has been enhanced. With your entire mental potential awakened, more electrical impulses are traveling through your nerves, allowing your mind to better process what you are feeling.
Just by touching it with your palm, count the number of holes on the top of that salt shaker.”
He continued eating and watched as Jenny pressed down on the saltshaker with her palm, trying to count the holes on the top. “Eighty one?”
“Bingo,” he congratulated as he pushed his empty plate to the side.
“All right, now let me eat, I’m starving!” she snapped, but with a smile.
He chuckled and leaned back, sitting silently as Jenny filled her stomach. He didn't have to wait long; she really was starving. It was like watching a snow blower being pushed through a fresh layer of powder. He wasn't surprised, she hadn’t eaten solid foods in more than a week and her body was now burning through its calorie reserves at an enhanced speed in order to power her newly awakened brain. She was finished in less than sixty seconds and gave a very unladylike belch.
“Happy?”
“Very,” she hummed in bliss.
“Do you want desert?”
“No, I’m exhausted. I’ve barely done anything but lie in bed, but my whole body is tired.”
“Well we left after you completed a mental marathon. How about we pay the bill, maybe pick something up on the way to the motel, and fall asleep while watching a movie?”
Jenny gained a look of tender love and peace on her face. “That would be perfect.”
They stepped out of the grocery store with Adrian’s arm around Jenny and both of them holding a plastic bag. Jenny had two small tubs of ice cream in hers and Adrian was carrying food for tomorrow morning in his. The night was warm and they wante