Chapter 4 - Part 3

Dr. Wharton watched as the teen’s body slumped on the lobby’s couch.  He had drained the entire bottle and it still took six minutes for him to fully pass out.  They were going to need to increase the dose of the sedative again.  Dylan’s body was continuing to build up a resistance.  They would need to move quickly to make sure he stayed sedated during the testing.

“Jones?” Dr. Turner asked as he came around the corner.

“He’s in a bad mood,” Wharton answered as she watched the technicians move the unconscious teen.  “I doubt he’d leave that meeting anytime soon, no matter what.”

“Let’s get working then.”

Every good experiment needed a control.  In this case, they had needed someone unsuspecting who was most likely not a psychic.  As the years had passed since they had first started, the doctors had decided that they could not have ended up with a better subject.

Unlike the other subjects, Dylan had remained active, friendly, and his resilience and adaptability were incredible.  They had other unsuspecting test subjects, but none had progressed as far as Dylan.  He certainly had not become a psychic, but he was a fine physical specimen.

“Is that the last of the samples?” Dr. Wharton asked.

Dr. Turner looked at the syringe of blood and nodded.  “We’ll now accelerate the testing and see what the results show next month.”

“Well, all scans seem normal enough.  I don’t think a few more injections are going to change much.”

“Did you read the orders?” Turner asked.  “We’re not accelerating dosage.”

Wharton pursed her lips and glared.  “Surely that was a jest.”

“Certainly not,” a cold voice said behind her.

Whirling around, Wharton spotted the Obtainers who had silently gotten into the secure room.  Freekie, the pompous head of the Obtainers, grinned maliciously.  Wharton could not stand the man, let alone even try to understand him.  He had even picked his own code name and purposefully spelled it in a stupid manner.

Wharton opened her mouth to snap at Freekie when she noticed the other Obtainer standing behind him.  She did not know many of the Obtainers, with the exception of the head and his two commanders, so the name of the woman standing behind Freekie was lost to the doctor.  It was what the woman held that truly had Wharton’s attention.

The metal box was not terribly large, probably the size of a shoe box.  It was the type of metal that gave away everything, though.  Years of trying to understand the properties of that metal and its relation to Ghosts and Psychics made it easy to identify.

“We should probably let it out soon,” Freekie said.  “It’s starving.  Should attach itself pretty quickly.  Unless of course it’s already dead.”

“Then stop dallying,” Dr. Turner told the Obtainer.

Dutifully, Dr. Wharton followed her fellow scientist behind a screen as the box was handed off to Freekie.  The scientists snapped on their instruments and began recording data.  After checking the readings, Turner signaled to the head Obtainer.

Even with the best of equipment, all Wharton ever really saw was a dark smudge roll out of the box.  Starving or not, the creature still moved faster than the equipment could follow.  It threw itself at the scientists, but was repelled by the female Obtainer.  Freekie just laughed and waited for the Ghost to notice the unconscious boy on the table.

Though it was only a smudge, the intensity at which it hurled itself at the teenager was picked up by a sensor.  Dylan groaned a little as the dark smudge of a Ghost covered his body.  Dr. Wharton bit her lip and glanced at Turner.  The sedative should have kept the teen’s readings steady.

“Freek,” Turner snapped.  “You were supposed to grab a small leech.  This isn’t a leech.  It’s negating the sedative.”

“Oops,” Freekie said.  “Oh well.  It’s already fully attached.  It hopefully won’t kill him in a month.”

With that the Obtainer chuckled and left the room, his accomplice following him.  Dr. Turner calmed down faster than his colleague and began taking readings at a rapid pace.  Wharton finally followed suit, but made a mental note to bring up the Obtainer’s actions at the next meeting.  In the mean time, they had to finish gathering data and move the teenage boy back to the couch before the sedative wore off completely.