Bad Jack ((Ascension: Book 1)) (10 page)

Chapter 23:
Melanie

The Doc arrived a little before two and Jack was happy for it. He was getting bored sitting in the office by himself all day long.

Billy walked them as far as the elevator and then h
urried off, probably to give the General an update or something.

The female security guard was inside
the elevator as the doors opened. She smiled to each of them as they entered. She was in civilian garb and she turned out to be cuter than Jack had expected which actually dampened his mood; she might be out of his league. She was maybe a couple years younger than he was. She had loosely curled bouncy black hair that looked like it smelled great. She was fair skinned and had a perfect, cute as a button nose. Her eyes were either green or grey and she didn’t pluck her eyebrows, a sure sign of a woman who isn’t a narcissist. Her legs were a little too muscular for his taste, but who was he to judge? They met at the most perfectly shaped butt Jack had ever seen. She had smallish breasts but Jack didn’t give two shits about a woman’s chest size, he was an ass man and she was a dream come true in that area. Plus she had that pistol strapped to her thigh; yeah, she was way too hot for him.

The
Doctor said to Jack, “I’m going to take you to see the live specimens again. These creatures need more than a precursory viewing before I show you the catalyst behind it all.”

He turned to the guard, “Melanie, I want you to keep
an open mind when you enter. I’m here if you need me and if you want to stop just say the word.”

Jack knew
then that she’d never been beyond the door she protected with her life. It saddened him knowing she risked her life for something she didn’t even understand.

He considered labeling the
Doctor a fascist but he was just so darn cute with his hunched shoulders, thick glasses, hairy ears, rotund belly and ruddy cheeks. He looked more like a kindly neighbor full of funny stories than a guy who ran a top secret government facility that used death threats to keep its people in line.

Maybe things were different in th
e subbasement where the General had no jurisdiction to issue the threats Jack had learned to accept as a built-in part of his existence.

A new guard was standing before the door to the creatu
re vault. He was a huge man. The body armor couldn’t hide the overlapping muscles. He turned out to be a jerk too. He merely glanced at the Doctor’s ID but took forever scrutinizing Jack’s and stared far too long at Melanie and not long enough at her ID for Jack’s taste. When they were permitted entry the guard put a beefy hand on Jack’s chest to stop him.

“Let me see that ID again. I haven’t seen you down here before.”

Jack looked at the Doctor for a little help but got none, so he spent another minute being scrutinized from head to toe before the guard finally relented. The asshole stared at Melanie’s ass as she passed in such an obviously obnoxious way that if Jack wasn’t so afraid of bodily harm he might have hit him in his chiseled face.

As the door shut Melanie said to the
Doctor, “I see you put Brett front and center to replace me, huh?”

The
Doctor simply nodded, not taking the bait.

She continued, “I don’t understand your decision but this is the last time I’ll mention it.”

“Thank you,” was all the Doctor offered.

Jack mumbled, “
A prick and a meat head... I thought the last guard was much nicer.”

Melanie smiled at him with such warmth he
almost melted before her eyes.

She
playfully said, “Agreed.”

As soon as the second door opened all pleasantries died off.

The warehouse was alive with intermingled noises that rose and fell in pitch and volume. None of them were of human origin. Jack hadn’t noticed that the last time he was down here. And it stunk of something that Jack couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Melanie was scared shitless right off the bat which surprised him but the
Doc must have expected as much because he reassured her that she could end this at any time. She shook her head, saying she was ok.

They
bypassed the first row of cages; Jack was grateful the Goatraffe kept its mouth shut and that the invisible thing decided to ignore them. There was no geyser from the blow hole of the white tiger and the bat-mobiles were mostly sedate.

Melanie had gotten off lucky.

They approached the cage that Jack already knew held the werewolf. Melanie grabbed his arm and shrieked. How could such a tough woman make a guy feel so macho? He was glad she was here, he felt like less of a wimp around her.

The
Doc asked her for her sidearm and she handed it over with a trembling hand. The Doctor aimed the gun at the werewolf and fired.

Jack said fuck and Melanie yelled something incoherent.

When the gun smoke cleared it was obvious the shot hadn’t affected the beast at all. It just sat on its huge ass and stared at them.

The
Doctor held the gun toward Jack and said, “Now it’s your turn.”

“No, no, that’s ok.”

But the Doctor kept holding that gun out and insisting and finally Jack had to take it.

He didn
’t much like guns although he’d spent some of his youth at the firing range. He ejected the magazine, thereby reloading it and pointed it at the werewolf.

The
werewolf must have sensed this new danger even though Jack was just beginning to understand why he was asked to pull the trigger; he could affect the objects, maybe he could affect the creatures too. The werewolf whined like a scared puppy and its tail buried itself between its legs as it slowly slunk to the other end of the cage. Its eyes were so soulful and frightened it nearly broke Jack’s heart. The beast sat down and waited for the inevitable. Jack decided right then he wasn’t going to do it.

He quickly handed the gun to Melanie, “
Put that gun away. I’m not shooting anything.”

The werewolf calmed down
, eventually returning to the center of its cage, but it kept its eyes locked on Jack’s the whole time, not trusting that it was safe just yet.

The
Doctor shrugged. “No matter, I’ve seen all I needed to see. This beast reacted to a threat of violence; it never reacts. There’s something unusual about you. You can affect these things and they seem to sense it too.”

Melanie had wrapped both arms around Jack’s bicep by now and once the adrenaline and fear subsided he felt comforted by it. She must have realized what she was doing because she sheepishly said
‘sorry’ and let go of him before he could tell her that it was ok.

Once the excitement of nearly
killing a legendary werewolf died down the Doctor gave them the nickel-tour. Jack was beginning to understand that it wasn’t for his benefit but for Melanie’s. If she was to escort him around down here then she’d better get used to all this spooky stuff. Judging by the twisted, agonized looks she gave each occupant she might need more than just a precursory run-through.

As they
walked along the back set of cages there was the sound of a scuffle inside an open cage near the end of the row. As they approached to see what was up, two guards ran out and slammed the door of the cell shut behind them.

What Jack saw almost made his hair stand on end. It was another clone of him except this one was wearing the exact same clothes he had on and it was clutching a familiar red ball in its right hand.

The clone just stood there perfectly still, barely breathing. It kept staring at the floor, seemingly deep in concentration, as the breathless guards explained the situation to the Doctor.

One of the guards
breathlessly explained, “This specimen just arrived. We tried to get the ball out of its hand but it has a death grip on it. The ball’s the same as the others; Raymond must have accidentally touched it with his bare skin. He’s no longer with us. I already had someone remove his body.”

The
Doctor seemed unfazed to hear that one of his select few trusted basement employees was now dead.

“Install this cage with some
Plexiglas walls to complement the bars. The last thing we’d want is for that thing to try and chuck that ball at one of us as we go about our duties.”

The guards both nodded and left through the back of the warehouse.

The Doctor shook his head. “I’m so sorry guys but I’m going to have to reschedule the tour for tomorrow. This unexpected occurrence needs dealt with.”

He looked at the Jack c
lone and then asked the real Jack, “What do you think this means?”

Jack’s brain crashed
and rebooted like a computer fighting a virus. He blurted out, “Are you fucking kidding? If you don’t know what that is, I certainly don’t.”

Melanie laughed
out loud. “It means this basement just got a whole lot more handsome.”

To avoid going completely nuts Jack clung on to the complement
like a life preserver as they were escorted back out of the creature vault. It soothed his delirious head as only a hope inspiring complement from a beautiful woman can. Maybe she was into him? He’d make sure to explore that possibility, but not today. The day was already fucked up beyond fixing and romance would just add to the confusion. Hope was always better than reality for him anyway. Hope would get him to sleep tonight and if it didn’t, beer would do the trick.

Chapter 25
: Thinking and Drinking Alone

Melanie had remained behind with the Doctor.

Billy met him at the mouth of the elevator and walked him back to his apartment.

Jack didn’t talk because he didn’t know what to say. Billy must have picked up on his mood because he held his tongue.

He simply
said goodnight at Jack’s door and walked off.

Maybe it was because a girl might actually like him or maybe his loneliness had hit a new low but he spent the first hour in his apartment thinking about Samantha and why she’d left him.

She claimed part of it was because their relationship was stale and he was boring but when she’d told him this he laughed right in her dumbstruck face.

He remembered bits and pieces of the rant that issued from his
hysterical mouth that day.

It went something like:

'
When I met you I had a motorcycle and cool friends, a badass wardrobe and I rode all over the country any chance I got. Then you came along, made me sell the bike when we were hard up for cash, mocked me for wearing Harley gear since I didn’t have the bike anymore and now you say I’m boring? You made me boring. You told me my friends were all shitheads so I started seeing less and less of them until now they don’t even call anymore. They used to call me
Mad Jack
in college. You replaced that with
Jacob Sweetie
even though you know I fucking hate being called that. But yeah, I guess it’s all my fault.”

Jack felt a little childish afterward but what could he do, just let her put all the blame on him when she was the one cheating and ending
the relationship?

It was a bad breakup and ever since then Jack distrusted women
in general. He knew it wasn’t a healthy attitude or even fair but it was all about self preservation. If you don’t let them in they can’t walk out, was his newfound motto.

But he decided, those days are over starting now. Melanie was a catch and he’d be damned if he missed an opportunity to get to know her because he was too cowardly to give it a fair chance.

With these final thoughts Jack realized he was daydreaming; all Melanie had said was that he was handsome. That in no way meant she was in to him or would even give him a chance. Shit, she might even have a boyfriend on the outside and was just doing a little harmless flirting with a coworker. Maybe she called everyone handsome? He shook all these thoughts from his weary, battle scarred mind. He was thinking like a love struck teenager, he was just as confused as one too.

He grabbed two bottles of beer out of the fridge with the knowledge that the second one would still be ice cold when he got to it.

He ordered another movie off pay-per-view and let the manufactured fantasy world of the movie smother out the actual fantasy world of his life.

By the time the movie was over he was drunk and yawning. He went to bed feeling lightheaded and peaceful.

A little after midnight he woke up sweating from the recurring dream. He was glad he hadn’t pissed the bed this time. Well, maybe a little, but nothing a wash cloth couldn’t take care of.

The dream
had followed him from his teenage years, laying in wait, pretending it had been defeated. It had finally decided to resurface.

But he knew just how to put it to rest; he had to find a hypnotist.

Chapter 26: Day Five

“Absolutely not,” barked the General. “You think, with all the knowledge about our research that your head’s filled with, that I would even consider letting a damn hypnotist go poking around in there.”

Jack was saying, “That’s not how it works
,” when the General said with finality, “Not a chance. You deal with your bad dreams the way we all do; you shut up, ignore them and go about your day. If they start to cause insomnia we can use pills to take care of that.”

Jack left the General’s office a little deflated
.

Billy said
sheepishly, “Sounds like you guys are getting along swimmingly.”

“I guess he makes a good point once in a while.”

“A good point about what?”

Jack sighed.
“No offense but it’s personal. I’d rather not talk about it.”

Billy didn’t seem to mind
his evasiveness. He was probably just glad he didn’t hate him anymore.

Jack figured he could half ass his
biography and then get to work on the artifacts. He sat at his desk and started typing:

After graduate school I was in for a reality check. Job hunting didn’t go as planned. I guess I wasn’t surprised by how it turned out. There was always a part of me that understood that good things could be taken from me at will by some sort of hateful unseen force. It happened with my family and it happened with Nick, it even happened to my high school popularity. I always lost no matter how far ahead I got.

It turned out that the ticket I got for pissing outside a bar
way back when I was eighteen years old had followed me into adulthood and it spelled doom for any kind of career that might require me to pass a background check.

I guess it’s not ok to assault a cop with urine.

I felt the injustice of it profoundly. It was just one night of drinking and acting stupid, yet it ruined my chances for a real career. It was a familiar injustice but I have to admit I didn’t see that one coming.

I tried to have the ticket
expunged from my record but that shit’s just not as easy as you might think. It didn’t matter one bit to the judge that that simple ticket had ruined my future. I heard that judge died of an overdose of painkillers last year and I’m a little ashamed to admit that I thought he deserved it and I hoped it was agonizing, although since it was a painkiller OD it was probably bliss.

Maybe I shouldn’t have written that last part.

You have to understand that I had spent the past eight years in college laying the groundwork for a good life and it turned out that it was a wasted effort because that judge was apathetic to my plight. It would have taken several precious minutes out of his day to help me out and he just couldn’t spare the time.

So I took some entry level positions as a
team lead or as a supervisor and bounced from one terrible opportunity to the next. I don’t think I’ve ever held a job for more than six months before it just makes me sick to my stomach and I feel the urge to run away. And that’s exactly what I’ve always done; leave one shitty job for a different shitty job hoping that the new one won’t completely suck.

I daydream
ed about getting noticed by a think tank that required my specific skill set or a hospital willing to overlook my ‘pissing on a cop’ transgression. But they were fantasies that would never come to fruition. Only a desperate man can indulge in such desperate fantasies.

Eight fucking years of higher learning all gone to waste; I should have expected as much.

Jack entered the log and sighed heavily.

Although this new job wasn’t exactly perfect it was precisely the type of thing he’d always secretly hoped for. He’d often indulged in the fantasy that one day he’d be discovered or sought out for something better. And here he was, the main character of the weirdest show on earth. Then the nagging doubts kicked in. What if this was too good to be true? What if it was an elaborate hoax or it turned out to be illegal? What if it all just evaporated like all of his hopes and dreams seemed to do. He’d do whatever it took to hold on to it. He had to this time. At twenty nine his window of opportunity was shrinking fast.

He let Billy escort him to the cafeteria for a quick bite
of breakfast. The aromas wafting down the corridors grew more delicious the closer they got. He grabbed a bagel and a fistful of bacon. Billy ate an English muffin in one almighty bite.

Jack noticed, not for the first time, that this amazing cafeteria
full of sumptuous delicacies was nearly empty. On a whim he sat beside a woman in a white coat. She was in her fifties. She looked as though she hadn’t slept in days. She tried to smile at him but her mouth just twitched awkwardly.

“I’m Jack. I’m new here. What do you do?”

She didn’t introduce herself or shake his hand.

“I weigh things, terrible evil things.”

Her eyes darted to the right and Jack noticed her security detail standing against the wall, watching.

She continued at a whisper, “I do water displacement and photograph objects from another universe and if that bastard over there could hear me
talking about it he’d probably put a bullet in my brain.”

Jack recognized the exhaustion and
he knew better than to engage her in conversation but he’d come this far already.

“I don’t know if they’re from another dimension. Why do you think that?”

She snorted derisively and said, “Have you touched any of them? Where would you say they came from? I’m a scientist so it behooves me to suggest they came from hell; that’s why I have to keep telling myself they aren’t from this universe because if I ever let it sink in that they were manufactured by Satan himself I’d go bonkers.”

Jack sat back in his chair reflexively. The woman was unhinged but she made a good point he hadn’t considered. Of course
, as an atheist he had to dismiss her explanation out of hand, but what if?

He
smirked at his own childishness. Even devout Christians knew hell didn’t exist. Hell was invented to trick people into joining the church and giving over their paychecks as a cash advance for a better afterlife.

He would have explained all of this to her but he was afraid to continue the discussion.

Her eyes darted about wildly, finally fixing upon her escort.

She whispered, “I’ve seen him kill me in my dreams. He smiles at me and tells me he’s here for my protection but he’s killed me over twenty times in the dream
world. After what I’ve seen here, I think I trust my dreams more than I trust reality. There’s a bullet in that gun of his that I’ve felt going through my skull over and over. I’ve seen awful things and they all start right here in this building.”

She
suddenly stood, knocking her chair over in the process and screamed, “You’re all doomed,” even though there were only four of them in the cafeteria.

Jack took the opportunity to get the fuck out of t
here. He was a psychology major but this woman needed sleep and medication and real therapy.

Billy was snickering as they passed
her bashful escort. The guy whispered, “I’m so sorry. I’ve recommended they give her some leave but they say she’s almost done with her research anyway. I hope she gets some real rest when she’s finished. She deserves better than this.”

Jack nodded knowingly
but Billy whispered to the man, “Plus you never know if she’s going to try and off you before you get the chance to off her.”

The guard smiled but there was fear behind it.

The woman’s explanation about the hellish origins of the artifacts was absurd but he hoped he’d find out later today where they really came from. An image flashed across his mind of Satan, his scaly flesh being licked by flames, evil in his eyes, painstakingly sewing a cute little teddy bear just so he could send it to earth to scare the pants off that poor woman. She’d really lose her marbles if she ever saw the otherworldly creatures caged down below.