Chapter 27: We Are Scientific

Chapter 27: Chapter 27: We Are Scientific

Chapter 27: We Are Scientific

Axel Vance worked another shell into the Remington 870 and kept the muzzle trained on the towering cultist standing across the factory floor. "I’m not interested in joining your deranged little club, but I’d be perfectly happy to put you down and do the same to this Bishop you keep talking about." The tall man merely shook his head, showing none of the fear Axel expected from someone surrounded by the bodies of his fellow cultists.

"You will join us eventually," the man replied with absolute confidence. "You simply don’t understand what we can offer you yet. We can give you power that exceeds every natural limitation of the human body."

With that, the cultist reached up and slowly removed his black robe. What appeared beneath it was so extreme that even Axel found himself staring for a moment, because the man’s entire body looked engineered rather than trained. Every muscle was sharply defined without seeming bulky enough to slow him, and there was almost no visible body fat anywhere on his frame.

The cultist spread his arms as if presenting evidence in a lecture hall. "Officer Vance, you keep making the same mistake. We are not some primitive cult worshiping imaginary gods. What you see before you is the result of science."

"You’re insane," Axel replied, and pulled the trigger before the man could continue.

The shotgun blast struck him squarely in the torso. Instead of tearing through flesh as it had against the other attackers, the pellets struck his skin with a series of dull impacts and embedded only shallowly into the dense tissue beneath it. The cultist barely rocked backward, and not even a meaningful amount of blood appeared.

Axel’s expression immediately darkened. Michael Myers had been absurdly difficult to stop because he ignored damage, but this man seemed capable of resisting it before the injury even occurred. "Great. I finally found something worse."

The cultist laughed and shook his head. "Again, you misunderstand. I am not a monster." He raised both arms into an exaggerated bodybuilding pose and tightened his chest, shoulders, and back until the embedded pellets began forcing themselves out of his muscles.

Small pieces of metal clattered across the concrete.

The cultist changed poses as though he were demonstrating himself at a competition. "Dense muscle fibers, reinforced connective tissue, and a hardened outer structure capable of resisting ordinary projectiles. We achieved every improvement through experimentation."

Axel stared at him. "You’re posing in the middle of a gunfight and telling me you’re normal."

The cultist ignored the insult. "Because we value you so highly, I will explain something normally reserved for initiates. You deserve to know what you are being offered before you reject it."

Axel kept the shotgun ready but did not interrupt this time. If the idiot was willing to reveal the cult’s origins voluntarily, letting him talk was far more useful than immediately putting another shell into him. Clarice remained on the upper platform with her MP5 trained on the man while Axel listened.

"Our Bishop discovered research attributed to Victor Frankenstein," the cultist said with reverence. "Not the sanitized story the public knows, but hidden manuscripts connected to his experiments and preserved material believed to have come from his original creation." He smiled proudly. "That discovery became the foundation of everything we are today."

Axel’s eyes narrowed slightly.

The man continued, "The Bishop combined that research with occult traditions gathered from many cultures, including ritual practices our predecessors associated with Vodou and other methods of manipulating consciousness and the soul. Years of experimentation finally produced a reliable process for forcing the human body beyond the limits nature imposed upon it."

Calling murder, stolen souls, and Frankenstein research science was already absurd enough, but Axel wanted the entire explanation. "So how does this supposed process work?"

The cultist seemed delighted by the question. "First, the subject enters an altered state in which ordinary consciousness is suppressed. Under carefully prepared ritual conditions, the subject is guided into killing every surviving member of his own bloodline."

Clarice’s expression changed immediately.

Axel went still.

The cultist spoke as though explaining routine laboratory work. "Through the deaths of those sharing the same blood, the subject becomes the final vessel for the family line. We then introduce specially prepared soul fragments to reinforce the subject’s will and stabilize the awakening process."

His voice became increasingly fanatical. "Once every stage is completed, the biological restraints built into ordinary human beings begin to collapse. Strength, durability, recovery, instinct, and every hidden trait buried within the body can finally develop without restriction."

The cultist flexed his arms again. "That is evolution."

Axel and Clarice stared at him in stunned silence.

Then the pieces began connecting.

Michael Myers.

The chanting.

Laurie’s forgotten childhood.

The mysterious nanny.

Ed Gein’s resurrection.

The hidden chambers beneath the prison.

Room 1408 and its dead guests.

Axel finally understood what kind of organization they had stumbled into. These people were not randomly collecting victims or performing meaningless rituals. They had spent years using human beings as experimental material while convincing themselves that murder and soul manipulation were scientific research.

Clarice’s voice came coldly from above. "You forced people to murder their own families and called it an experiment?"

The tall man looked almost offended. "Progress has always demanded sacrifice."

That answer destroyed the last of Axel’s patience.

"You sick bastards."

He opened fire.

The Remington thundered repeatedly as Axel emptied every remaining shell into the cultist’s torso. The man simply raised his forearms to shield his face and allowed the pellets to hammer his shoulders, chest, abdomen, and legs, leaving dozens of shallow wounds without producing serious damage.

When Axel’s shotgun finally clicked empty, smoke drifted from the barrel. The cultist slowly lowered his arms and turned his body from side to side, flexing until embedded pellets began dropping from his skin. Within seconds, most of the small injuries had already closed.

"Do you understand now?" he asked proudly. "Years of controlled evolution changed the density of my muscles, strengthened the fascia supporting them, and hardened the outer layers of my body. Weapons like that are little more than irritations."

He never finished the sentence.

Clarice fired from above.

A short, precise MP5 burst struck the side of the cultist’s head. His face snapped sideways under the impacts, and several rounds tore shallow channels across his cheek and temple even though they failed to penetrate deeply enough to kill him. For the first time, his attention left Axel.

That was all Axel needed.

He dropped the empty shotgun.

His right hand went to the oversized experimental handgun at his waist.

The weapon came up.

Axel aimed directly at the cultist’s abdomen and pulled the trigger.

BANG!

The blast was powerful enough to make the entire factory seem to jump. Axel’s arms absorbed the vicious recoil while the massive projectile slammed into the cultist’s abdomen and launched his enormous body backward. He flew several feet before crashing hard onto the concrete.

Axel grinned.

"That worked."

He immediately moved forward, intending to finish the fight before the man could recover.

The cultist suddenly sat up.

Axel stopped.

A massive wound had opened across the man’s abdomen, exposing torn muscle and damaged organs. Part of his intestines had spilled through the opening, and any ordinary human being would already have been collapsing from shock and blood loss.

Instead, the cultist laughed.

"I didn’t expect you to have something like that."

He looked down at his own exposed abdomen almost curiously. "Excellent. Now you can witness the greatest advantage of our evolution."

Axel watched in disgust as the man calmly gathered the exposed loops of intestine with both hands. He pushed them back inside his body piece by piece as though returning tools to a drawer. Then the edges of the wound began moving.

Muscle fibers contracted.

Fascia crawled across the opening.

Torn tissue began weaving itself together at a visible speed.

Clarice stared from the platform. "That’s impossible."

Axel had stopped using that word several days ago.

Within a disturbingly short time, the enormous abdominal wound had almost completely closed. The regenerated skin remained discolored for several seconds before gradually smoothing over, leaving the cultist’s stomach once again covered in perfectly defined muscle.

The man rubbed one hand over his restored abdomen with obvious pride. "Do you see? This is what true evolution can achieve."

Axel tightened his jaw.

The cultist looked at him with almost affectionate enthusiasm. "Before I joined the organization, I was pathetic. Skinny, weak, afraid of people, and more interested in comic books than the world outside my room."

He spread his arms.

"Now look at me."

Axel did.

He still was not impressed.

The cultist pointed toward him. "And you began with a body far superior to mine. Your strength, reflexes, endurance, and will are already extraordinary without our process."

His eyes burned with fanatic excitement. "Imagine what you could become after initiation. You could surpass me immediately."

Axel shook his head. "No thanks."

The cultist frowned.

"My life already has Hannibal Lecter, resurrected killers, haunted hotel rooms, Chief Woody, and whatever other lunatics Miami plans to throw at me next." Axel reached toward his tactical vest and added, "I don’t need to turn myself into a bodybuilding science experiment too."

The cultist’s expression finally hardened.

"So you refuse even after seeing the truth."

"Completely."

"Then I have no choice."

Axel raised an eyebrow.

The cultist lowered his stance. "The Bishop ordered us to persuade you, but I will personally bring you before him if persuasion fails."

Axel almost laughed. "You’re planning to kidnap a police officer?"

The cultist disappeared from where he stood.

Axel’s expression changed.

The man crossed the distance between them with terrifying speed and seized Axel before he could fully raise another weapon. His hands locked around Axel’s upper body with crushing force, and for an instant Axel felt as though industrial machinery had clamped down around his ribs.

The strength was overwhelming.

But Axel was no ordinary police officer anymore.

He grabbed the cultist’s arm with both hands and planted his feet firmly against the floor. Using the leverage created by the man’s grip, Axel pulled himself upward and drove both legs violently into the cultist’s face.

The kick landed cleanly.

The cultist’s head snapped backward, and his grip loosened enough for Axel to break free. Axel dropped, rolled across the concrete, and slipped behind one of the thick support pillars before his opponent could grab him again.

He immediately reached for the experimental handgun.

The single-shot weapon was empty.

Axel broke open the action and pulled another massive cartridge from his vest while listening to the cultist recover on the opposite side of the pillar. The shotgun and MP5 could barely penetrate the man’s outer defenses, and even the .50-caliber-class handgun had only bought a few seconds before his body regenerated.

Killing him through ordinary damage might not work.

Axel locked the handgun closed.

A different idea formed.

His expression slowly hardened.

On the other side of the pillar, the cultist laughed again. "Officer Vance, incredible! Your body is even stronger than I expected."

Axel heard footsteps approaching.

"Join us!" the man shouted. "Stand beside the Bishop and lead humanity into its next stage of evolution!"

Axel stepped away from the pillar.

The cultist charged.

This time, Axel did not retreat.

He lowered his center of gravity and rushed forward at the same moment.

Neither man slowed.

A second later, the two figures collided head-on.

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