Jacques Valmont#383
Series: Unknown.
Subject: Jacques Valmont
Status: High priority anomaly
Notes: External authorities informed. Presence requested (Patient #379 deployed). Do not initiate forced retrieval. Observe for pre-trigger manifestations; civilian contact has been briefed for observational support. Subject must remain unaware of her involvement.
Additional Notes: Patient inbound. Scheduled for extraction. Prepare restraints.
The door clicks,and I shove my record into my pocket, shut the tin, and place it back into the cabinet before swinging it shut?—
Just as the door opens to reveal a middle-aged balding man in a white longcoat, flanked by the four nurses who brought me in.
I stare at him from the corner like a trapped mongrel.
“Good morning, Jacques,” he says, his accent indistinctly French, as if he’d been born there but spent most of his life among different tongues.
Red clouds my vision, and I don’t even give them a chance. I bolt for the door—for him—but before I can wrapmy hands around his windpipe, two of the nurses have me under the arms.
They lift me backward—off the floor when I start to fight—and into the patients’ chair, where leather and metal restraints await me. It takes them all of five seconds to secure my wrists, thighs, and ankles, as if they’ve done this before, with subjects much bigger or stronger than I. There’s some give at my torso and shoulders, so I twist, and I beg, and threaten, and snap my teeth at them.
I’m beyond tears. I want to tear his jugular out, slowly. Sinew by sinew.
The doctor only seems more pleased the more violent I grow.
“Hello, Monsieur Jacques,” he sings, patting my head and keeping his weathered hands and wrists away from my mouth. His tone is unsettlingly pleasant. Familiar, even. He reaches into a drawer behind me and rummages through what sounds like metal, but I’m angled away and can’t see. “I, am your uncle Beecham. Aloysius Ermengarde Beecham the Third. Long time no see.”
“I’ve never seen you a day in my life.”
He tilts his head in consideration. “True. I am a very good friend of your grandfather, though. Or, was. I’m sorry about his untimely demise. We fought alongside each other during the wars. I last visited him shortly before he succumbed to his illness, just after you were born. Told me to get the hell out of his manor after what I did to your father.” A pensive smile ghosts his lips. “I couldn’t imagine why. He was the very one who volunteered Etienne to become one of my first subjects.”
How could this be? This man looked to be about my father’s age, maybe a few years his senior. “What did you do to him?” I’m drooling in my anger, right on the verge ofpissing myself.
“Etienne? That depends.” His tone remains infuriatingly clinical. “Which time? When I tried to convert him? Or, when I had him terminated?”
Convert him to what? What was a V-Series? Why did he need to die?
A multitude of questions slam into me, but the only one that filters through is the one that tumbles out. “Did Annie know?”
He returns his gaze to me, and I’m suddenly afraid I’ve made a mistake in mentioning her. Despite what his notes might reveal, an unmistakable streak of rage overcomes me at the recognition in his eyes.
“Ah, Annie. You met the Tans, did you?”
“Je vais t'arracher les yeux et te les enfoncer dans la gorge.” I speak to him in a language he well understands. “Answer me, you sick bastard!”
“There we are.” Beecham stops rummaging. He scoots back with a large pair of rusted forceps in-hand.
I am effortlessly ignored as I shout for my release—for help, for God. For Annie.
The nurses stand in an eerie line around us, staring straight ahead, until Beecham mutters something to the nearest one. They swarm around me; one of them slams my head back to the chair and keeps it there, while the others lift the mechanical device attached to the side.
All the while, Beecham circles me with a notepad he’s drawn out of his chest pocket, checking my pupils, my fingernails. He reaches down and palpates my abdomen. Without warning, his hand goes towards my mouth, which I instinctively lunge for, teeth bared in my blinding panic.
“Good,” is the only word he mutters, yanking his fingers just in time. He scribbles more onto his notepad, muttering to himself. “Reflexes. Stamina. Everything I expected Etienne to become. The serum was already in you, shaping you.Changing you through your inheritance of blood. I didn’t think it could be passed down this way.” He regards me in reverence. “Your body is extremely receptive. We’ve never seen it before. This is exactly what I wanted.”
“Thinkwhatcould be passed down this way?” No answer, still. I muster the will to coherently bellow the last thing on my mind. “I am a private inspector here on business. Alma Wharncliffe. You did the same to her as you did to my father. To everyone in those files, didn’t you?”
