Behind reinforced glass, a young man radiated with otherworldly energy. Transformed by a cosmic baptism, Mirus was no longer just a college student.
He was the future—an anomaly—from deep space.
"Well I'll be damned, looks like we got ourselves a Superhuman." Vice President Kulkin couldn't believe it.
"The meteorite may be gone…" Vice President Kulkin grinned, hands rubbing together with greedy delight like the evil businessman he was.
"But this—this is just as lucrative."
His eyes lit up as his mind raced and thought about all the potential ploys and gains that could be spun if the United States had something like him doing their bidding.
He hadn't even seen the full extent of the kid's powers but he knew…everything was about to change.
And if Kulkin had his way…Mirus would belong to the United States. Mind, body and soul.
"Oooooooh—Kulkin took a deep, seductive inhale and released as if his thoughts gave him sweet release— "the fucking countries we could topple." The thought of it was so tantalizing his eyes rolled back into his head for a moment.
A few minutes ago things looked like they were going to go to shit for the VP, and he was going to find the President's boot in his ass when he got back to the white house. The VP may be a hard ass, but the President was definitely a Motherfucker.
"This is good, dangerous, but good." The VP was very pleased with the current developments–given that he was 10m away from a walking nuclear reactor.
Dr.Levra cocked her head to the side curiously while listening to the VP talk himself, things were already complicated as they were, but what did all of this mean for everyone in this room? How would this affect them?
She was just as ecstatic as the VP because for her this felt like destiny, but If Mirus reappearing out of nowhere like this was like a scientific gift from god—what were the ramifications of being witness to such a thing?
Was the NASA center even the place to be doing this? Sod's law weighed a bit heavy on her mind at that moment.
Meanwhile inside the pod, scientists kept trying to get samples from Mirus' body while he was passed out.
It had been a whole minute since he fainted out and they still had no luck.
Cutting, pulling, poking, scraping—nothing seemed to be working.
To make matters worse, Mirus had begun to twitch, and mumble fragmented sentences in his sleep. He seemed to be—dreaming.
low-pitched, groaning sounds and deep spectral hums were all that could be heard.
The sound of black hole.
The dark expanse of space stretched on and on forever. Mirus looked down, then looked left then right—"Mirus…Where did you go?" his mother called out to him.
Then he looked up, and he was clawing at his throat trying to get his screams out.
He was burning.
Dying and being born again, baptized in the void. Over and over and over again.
Then when he thought the pain couldn't get any worse—he was a kid—playing with a toy spaceship in bed navigating it through the air, as the moon, the stars and the planets in our solar system hung from the ceiling when he heard the door open to his room and he turned to see who it was and then it was sunset.
A girl he used to know was smiling at him and he was smiling back.
They sat by an empty pool in an abandoned apartment talking when all of sudden—"ow, ow, ow, ow my neck. It really hurts."
He clutched his neck and started to tear up.
"I want to go home…" he said, then when he looked up, he found himself running down a dimly lit hallway with white walls in a hurry.
Running and running, and running until he stood before the meteorite.
His eyes twinkled looking at the otherworldly rock—its voice whispering: "What you're looking at isn't just beautiful..."
Then he looked up and he was standing in front of a burning house.
A big frown appeared on his and anger and sadness began to well up inside of him.
He felt like he couldn't control himself how he felt and began to hyperventilate. He squatted down and clutched his head, he felt like he wanted to end it all right then and there.
Then he heard a man very plainly speak to him and say, "I need answers. Or you are never going home." His eyes widened and he looked up.
He was awake.
When he came to it felt like he had just woken up at home in his own bed but he quickly remembered where he was and the situation he was in.
Only, this time—he couldn't keep his cool.
"Hey…hey…whats—what's going on? What's that noise?" Mirus was surrounded by the team of scientists when he woke up, it didn't take too long to realize they were all still trying to probe him.
HHHPH—HHHPH—HHHPH
Immediately his chest heaved. Sharp, ragged breaths tore from his lungs each one louder and harsher than the last.
"Fuck...I can't breathe…"
His breathing was fast and shallow, all sharp inhales and rasping exhales.
Click‑Click‑Click‑Click…
The steady staccato that could be heard in the room was steady no more and was louding increasing at an alarming rate.
The VP pressed the mic, "Calm down Mirus, you passed out…focus on the questions I'm asking and let the doctors do their job."
Mirus' eyes kept darting around the room anxiously, he wasn't hearing the VP.
"HEY! Look at me! And only me god dammit! Don't worry about the damn doctors, they're not the ones who are gonna let you out of there."
Mirus tried to center himself and pay attention to the VP but he just couldn't, his mind was racing and his heart was beating out of his chest.
The detector spat out a nervous—Click‑Click‑Click—with each passing second, accelerating into a frantic rattle as Mirus's pulse of radiation surged.
"Fuck! Shit! What the fuck is that! Why is it making that noise?!"
Sweat beaded on his forehead, dripping into eyes clouding his vision and irritating them making them red.
"175! 175 million counts per minute Doctor! 3—Dr.Carchenko gasped, he couldn't believe what he was seeing—"300! 300 million counts per minute doctor! HOLY SHIT IT'S NOT STOPPING!"
His body started to glow multi chromatically like the Alaskan aurora lights and the temperaturing in the room began rising again.
This time, it did not stop.
"I don't know what's wrong with me! I don't know what's wrong with me! I don't know what's wrong with me! I don't know what's wrong with me!" Mirus kept repeating himself over and over again, he felt like he had genuinely had no clue. He wasn't thinking clearly.
The scintillation detectors all read—OVERLOAD— before they all started short circuiting like the rest of the electronics in the room and began smoking.
ERRR! ERRR! ERRR!
ERRR! ERRR! ERRR!
A shrill, pulsing klaxon erupted from the speakers in the lab and Red and yellow strobes flashed overhead as a robotic womanly voice barked:
"WARNING: RADIATION LEVELS CRITICAL. EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY. WARNING: RADIATION LEVELS CRITICAL."
Mirus' own heartbeat roared in his ears, louder than the alarms. The room blurred around him, shrinking to a pinpoint like head tunnel vision.
Everyone gasped and looked up.
CLANG—CLATTER!
One of the doctors holding a metal tray with medical equipment on it dropped what was in her hands. Everyone in the room turned to look at her to see what happened, only to find the young scientist bleeding from her eyes, ears and nose.
"What? What are you guys looking at? Dont you hear the ala—BWUUUAAAGGHHH!"
The young doctor hunched over and fell to the ground convulsing in pain.
"OH MY GOD, WERE GONNA DIE!" The doctor holding the scalpel shouted seeing her coworker keel over.
Then all hell broke loose in the containment pod.
One after the other all the other scientists followed suit and began throwing up and bleeding from all their orifices.
"FUCK! OH MY GOD! I'M SORRY! PLEASE MAKE IT STOP! I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME! PLEASE! I JUST WANT TO GO HOME! I DONT HAVE THE ROCK!"
Mirus began shouting hysterically, he felt as if he was going insane. Why was he being subjected to all this?
She didn't notice it until now, watching the chaos unfold around her, but it really hurt to breathe.
The temperature in the room was now at 160 degrees fahrenheit.
Every inhale she took was starting to feel like the inside of her nose was on fire.
Dr.Roznik hurriedly walked up to the glass, blood pooling in her eyes, clutching her stomach.
She put her hand to the glass,"Doctor…"
BANG! BANG! BANG!
"HELP US!" She screamed and banged on the glass hysterically.
Dr.levra gasped and put her hand over her mouth. "Oh my…"
The door to the containment pod couldn't just be opened from within, it had to be unlocked from the outside systematically.
She quickly reached over looking to press the button to release them but before she could—SMACK!
The VP swatted her hand away from the button and snapped at her angrily.
"Dont you fucking dare open that door."
"Have you lost your fucking mind Dr.Levra? Do you not see the miniature fucking meltdown happening in that fucking room? God dammit woman, Do you have a DEATH WISH?"
Dr.Levra looked at him with contempt.
This man had been flaunting his authority, talking to whoever, however he wanted the entire time. He'd been an absolute ass to her since he walked through the door and now he wasn't going to let her save her beloved and trusted colleagues when they were clearly on the verge of dying?
In her eyes this man was as despicable as they come.
"Vice president Kuklkin! They are going to die! We have to save them!"
Kulkin scoffed at her and shook his head.
"I don't have to do shit Doctor. This man is property of the United States Government now. What I say, fucking goes. And I say he's staying in that fucking pod with the rest of your fucking crew until I fucking say so." He said as seriously as he could, the audacity of the woman beside was constantly displaying was really getting to him.
"That is a real live threat in there god dammit, can you not see that? Who put you in charge woman? Following fucking protocal." She found his blatant sexism astonishing to say the least, Dr.Levra could only stand there and take the abuse.
This man outranked her and she had no type of leverage in this situation.
"As a matter of fact, as soon as my men arrive—Little Boy, over there is coming back with me to base— The VP chuckled and rubbed his hands together as he watched Mirus squirm—"The president is going to love this."
Only when he said that, he didn't expect Mirus to hear him. He'd been freaking out this entire time but now he was glaring daggers at the VP.
Ever since Mirus originally came to, he could hear everything around him so naturally he heard what the VP said.
"Heh." Kulkin scoffed and picked his chin up so he could look down at Mirus and hit the mic, "Bastard, what are you looking at you little shit? look at all the trouble you're causing—these people are gonna die because of you. Hell, who knows? Me, the good doctor here, and everybody in this lab are probably gonna walk away from this with space cancer. I'm going to dissect you to see what you're made of, then I'm gonna make sure our best surgeons close you right back up and give you a clean bill of health clearing you for work as the president's super lapdog."
Once again.
Mirus took in his surroundings, and craned his neck from left—to right.
Half the scientists in the room were on the floor convulsing in pain, while the other half were banging on the walls and windows begging to be let out.
Kulkin put his face to the glass and gave him a wicked smile, "How does that sound boy, are you going to behave? I promise to—make these new circumstances…surrounding your livelihood— as comfortable as possible."
It's not that Mirus was in denial, it's just that he couldn't believe it. All hell was breaking loose around him, and he was the cause of all of it? The Government was going to experiment on him and enslave him?
No that can't be...
Id rather die..
Then-he lost it.
Immediately he began struggling in earnest.
"I gotta get out of here! I got to get out here!"
He struggled as hard he could, shaking his legs and his arms and his. He was beginning to look like a rabid struggling beast, if he were a coyote he would've chewed off all his limbs to get out his restraints.
Nothing was working.
"AHHHH!"
"FUCK!"
"LET ME GOOOO!"
"AHHHH!"
The glow around his body intensified.
He looks like a bomb that was about to go off.
"Ahhhhhhhhh! I feel hot! I feel fucking hot! What the fuck!"
His head was pounding and he couldn't see straight?
"AHHHHHH! WHATS GOING ON HELP ME?!"
He shut his eyes tightly trying to deal with the pain, but every time he did he kept having visions of supernovas and a low grating hum rang loudly in his ears.
He was not going to find peace. Not now.
Maybe not ever?
When was this going to end?
I want it to end! I want to go home!
this was all he could think to himself.
The original plan to keep calm was officially out the window.
It felt like he was going to combust, there was a surplus of energy in body that needed to be released but he desperately fought to keep it inside and bottle it up further.
That only made it worse.
The temperature in the room continued to skyrocket and now the scientists in the room all started to scream in pain and claw at their skin.
"IT BURNS! AHHHH! HES COOKING US! DOCTOR! HEEEEELP!"
The VP and Dr.Levra watched from behind the glass in horror. There was nothing could do, this was completely out of there control.
"WARNING: RADIATION LEVELS CRITICAL. EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY. WARNING: RADIATION LEVELS CRITICAL."
The lab was in an uproar, the alarms were blaring, people were screaming, people were dying, the inside of the containment pod was like a super sauna and the rest of the lab was beginning to heat up as well.
Mirus was radioactive and completely unstable.
The ramifications of attempting to entrap a super human? Dr.Levra now understood all consequences surely led to death.
Plastics and electronics in the room began to catch fire and melt then sprinkles cut on in the pod to make matters worse.
Mirus couldn't take it anymore.
"LET ME GOOOOOO!"
"AHHHH!" All the scientist in the room screamed what little they could and watched on in horror as the restraints on Mirus disintegrated and his body began to levitate in the air.
They clawed at their throats trying to breathe but air in the room felt like there was fire stoking in their lungs.
The brighter his body glowed—the hotter it became—the more colorful his body hued—the more radioactive he became.
"I SAID- LET -ME—everyone in the containment pods eyes bulged out there head and their bodies began to seize—
"GO!"
And he lit up like a radioactive lighthouse.
POP!
SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!
The upper halves of all the scientists in the room just exploded. The heat and radiation Mirus was emitting cooked them like hard boiled eggs fresh out of a microwave.
For a moment—Meat chunks, bones and blood rained down upon Mirus in the room like a bloody baptism. All the blood and guts that touched him instantly disintegrated and turned into vapor as he levitated in the air.
The water from the sprinklers dousing out the fire and pelting Mirus turned the containment pod into a steam room. The scalding hot radioactive steam cooked whatever and whoever was left in the room.
From the outside the VP and the Doctor no longer could see what was going on inside the pod. All they saw was an ominous multichromatic glow in the middle of the room.
"Dr.Roznik…" Dr.Levra began to tear up and slammed her fist down on the control console—"THIS IS YOUR FAULT VICE PRESIDENT! WE COULD HAVE GOTTEN THEM OUT THERE!" She shouted furiously looking up at the VP.
"Now look at them them!…" her anger turned to grief and she began to sob. She couldn't even wipe her tears from within the hazmat suit.
"KEEP YOUR GOD DAMN MOUTH SHUT WOMAN AND GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER!"
It was now his turn to slam his fist on the console and look angrily at the Doctor. "Your colleagues died serving their country! You should be PROUD OF THEM! OF THEIR SACRIFICE! WHEN THEN THEIR FAMILIES LAY THEM TO REST THEY'LL FINALLY HAVE SOMETHING TO PROUD BESIDES THEIR GOD DAMN FUCKING SCIENCE DEGREES!"
Dr.Levra's face contorted in shock and disgust. This man... before her... was truly unbelievable.
Insufferable really.
"THEIR SACRIFICE?!"
SMACK!
The Doctor slapped him across the face, the hazmat suit took the brunt of it though.
Not that it would've hurt much.
"YOU KILLED THEM!" She started hitting and kicking him with tears in her eyes.
The good doctor snapped and completely lost her composure.
"LISTEN I—she socked him in the face before he could finish his sentence then he angrily grabbed both of her wrists—"STOP I DONT WANT TO HAVE TO HU—she headbutt him and kept kicking him furiously. She was not letting up and she had an angry look in her eyes—"YOU KILLED THE—he let go of one her wrist and grabbed her throat with his right hand.
"UGHH! UGHH!"
She gasped for air and reached for his hand. Clawing at it, hitting it. Desperately trying to rip his hand away from her throat, but he was too strong for her.
"YOU—he gave her an uppercut straight to her midsection—"DUMB—and another one—"UGHH!—once again she gasped for air and coughed up blood. Before she couldn't get air in, now all her air was taken out—STUPID—he spit in her face—"BITCH—then he threw to the floor and kicked her stomach further assaulting her mid section.
"UGHH! UGHH! UGHH! UGHH!"
"You should always listen to the big boss Ya'know? If you know what's good for you."
Even Virginia jumped in and gave her two cents. It was astonishing really, the things women will say to each other given the chance.
Dr.Levra coughed and writhed in pain on the floor as she gasped for air.
Kulkin then looked up at the clock to check the time.
"Any second now..."
THUMP—THUMP—THUMP—THUMP!
heavy, sharp, synchronized thudding could be heard hitting the floor in the background.
Belts, guns, and armor shifting slightly could be heard rattling as they moved in through the door.
"TO THE RIGHT!"
"MOVE!" "MOVE!" "MOVE!"
"THE VICE PRESIDENT SHOULD BE IN THIS ROOM, SECURE HIM AND THE DOCTOR!"
"THEN SECURE THE SUBJECT!"
"GAS MASKS ON!"
"CLEAR!"
"GO! GO! GO!"
All of a sudden from behind the sounds of boots, radios, military commands could be heard entering the room.
The Calvary had arrived.
"BOYS! Welcome, the party's just getting started!"
Vice President Kulkin kicked the good doctor one more time, dusted his clothes off and turned out with a great smile on his face and open arms.