Once upon a time, in a cold and rainy metropolis in America, there was a huge, dark and dirty warehouse. Inside the ghastly structure, one room contrasted from the others.
It was a fully white and aseptic room. Unlike the foul stench that impregnated the warehouse, the air inside it was fresh and purified. Several wires interlaced on the floor forming a complex, yet organized web, connecting several computers and state-of- the-art machinery to a high-tech stand located in its center. Over it, laid a hermetically sealed glass container. In its interior, floating immobile in a reddish thick and opaque liquid, was a dead human fetus.
With no more than four months of age, the fetus had six needles, attached to the base of the container, inserted alongside its body. There were also a few wires attached to the head and torso, linked to electrocardiogram and electroencephalogram machines, both flat-lined.
Two people were operating the machinery. The first one was Doctor Weiss, a gray-haired scientist in his late sixties with an authoritarian posture and wearing thick glasses. The second one was his assistant, Adam, a young man in his early twenties, with a beak-shaped nose and a ponytail.
After a signal from Weiss, the young assistant started the experiment at the main computer.
A sequence of synthetic stimulants and hormones were injected in the fetus through three of the needles. The container temperature was gradually increased to the human body’s standard temperature of 36.5oC. The remaining needles transmitted series of alternate mild electrical shocks into the fetus’ nervous system... After a brief interval, the fetus life signs became active!
The resurrected fetus was slowly moving his unformed limbs. The tiny head turning from one way to the other, as if trying to understand the world around it.
Weiss couldn’t help wandering what fantastic revelations the fetus could disclosure about the afterlife if it were a resurrected adult instead. He was awakened from his daydreaming by his assistant’s disarray. “No! Not again!”
The old scientist could not believe it. He was so certain that his experiment would at last succeed. That the new software he developed to perfect the balance of the chemical pumping and electrical stimulation would work this time.
The tiny fetus started to twist in great pain as the experiment further deteriorated. Its tissues grew out of proportion. The life signs flat-lined again. The once humanoid shape became a small ball of red flesh which exploded through the container, spreading blood, shreds of glass and fetal tissue all over the place.
Adam sighed, upset. He would again have to clean all that mess and prepare the room for the next attempt.
Doctor Weiss, however, knew that could have been their last chance. He would have to convince his sponsors that, despite the countless failures during months of research, his experiment could still pay off. It was clear to him that the process was correct. The failure could only reside in the computer processing, which was too slow to keep up with the extremely complex millisecond changes in the fetus body.
All he needed was a faster computer.
* * *
Lisa was a beautiful twenty-year-old girl. She lived her entire life with her parents in a comfortable house in the suburbs. She went to college to study Psychology in an university near home, so she didn’t even have to move out.
Weren’t for Joshua, she would have lived a calm and uneventful life. He was a rich and spoiled youngster who, despite being the father of her child, didn’t want anything to do with both Lisa and her pregnancy.
Lisa knew she couldn’t go through it alone, so she decided to ask for help from the only person in the world she could trust. Her best friend and confidant: Her mother.
Although her father was a good man, he was sometimes a bit rigid due to the strict following of his religious doctrine. Her mother, on the other hand, was more down to earth. She understood her little girl’s feelings and needs, and at times they seemed more like sisters than mother and daughter.
When Lisa told her what happened, she was both angry and heartbroken. At first, she didn’t support her daughter’s decision, but Lisa insisted that if she had the baby it would only make things worse. She knew that her father would be devastated to know she had sex before marriage, and that added to the fact that she was pregnant could destroy their family.
Her mother was divided between her own morals and beliefs and the future of her baby. As it often happens with extremely loving mothers, she finally chose not to risk her daughter’s future and decided to go along with Lisa’s decision.
* * *
Lisa’s feelings were a jumble. Although in her mind she was convinced she was doing the right thing, her conscience was catching up with her and the guilt and remorse overcame her fears. If she wasn’t partially sedated during the procedure, she would’ve backed down at that moment, but it was too late already. The dead three-month fetus had been harvested from her womb.
Lisa was released and her mother took her home. They told Lisa’s father that she just had a cold. And so she remained secluded in her room, crying almost ceaselessly for the next couple of days. After that, Lisa had apparently returned to her normal self, but inside she was still crying, unsure if she would ever be able to forgive herself.
* * *
When Lisa checked in at the clinic, there were several papers she had to sign. Due to her mental state at that time, she didn’t read any of them and just signed whatever paper they put in front of her. Among those papers, there was an authorization releasing the fetus extracted from her for scientific purposes.
The fetus was sent to Doctor Weiss, part of a batch of fifty, all harvested from healthy women ranging from eighteen to twenty years of age. The batch arrived in the lab together with a new state-of-the-art supercomputer.
Weiss had been successful in convincing his sponsors. He knew that his moment of glory was finally coming.
Inside the sterilized lab, as the experiment was about to begin, Adam, dressed in full aseptic garments, randomly picked up one of the fetuses. It happened to be Lisa’s.
He took it to the high-tech container, connecting the proper wires of the electrocardiogram and electroencephalogram machines to the head and torso. After that, he carefully placed the fetus over the six thin needles attached to the base of the container. He then sealed the container and activated a switch, which filled it with the reddish thick liquid.
“Commence primary sequence,” Weiss ordered, eyes fixed on the monitor.
Adam took his seat in front of the brand-new supercomputer. He ran the program. The precise balance of chemical substances and electrical impulses started taking their effect on the lifeless organism.
As in many attempts before, the fetus started moving inside the dense liquid. For a moment, the alarm sign flashed on the monitor. At first, Weiss thought he had failed again, but he soon realized that the outcome would be different this time.
The fetus agitation wasn’t violent and the tissue growth was proportional at last. The new computer was succeeding in processing the changes in the fetus’ physiology!
At that very instant, miles away from there, Lisa felt a shock, as if hit by a lightning. She was in the middle of a class when she fell to the floor, twisting in pain. To the teacher and the other students, it seemed like she was having an epileptic fit. But, in fact, her mind and senses had been overtaken by bizarre images and sensations.
Lisa felt her newly-formed eyes opening to a watery opaque universe. She seemed to be immerse in some sort of liquid, surrounded by a barrier of glass, which distorted the view of the world outside it. Each cell of her body intensively aching as if she was being stretched in every direction. She looked down and saw the tiny limbs she had for arms and legs, each growing in a surreal speed. Even stranger was the realization she was occupying a MALE body.
Doctor Weiss and Adam were baffled. The accelerated growth was even faster than they could have ever predicted. In a matter of seconds, the fetus broke through the confines of the container, spreading shreds of glass and the reddish liquid over the floor.
In her catatonic mind, Lisa could see the world more clearly, in spite of the blinding lights that hurt her eyes. She could perceive the sophisticated machinery all around, with two perplexed giant men in front of her. As her new body continued to grow, the two men’s stature seemed to decrease along with the rest of the place. Then came an agonizing feeling of air deprivation in her lungs. She was suffocating.
Doctor Weiss read on the monitors, the life signs of the resurrected being starting to collapse, completely unaware that Lisa was being dragged along with it. Her bizarre connection to the altered fetus caused her own body to suffer the same organ failure it did.
“Stop the procedure!” Weiss ordered. “NOW!”
“But, if we do this, it could die...”
“If it stays connected to the machinery, it will die anyway!”
Adam didn’t have time to act. The body mass of the fetus became so large it smashed the high-tech stand, along with the six needles, in pieces. The newborn fell to the floor with a body similar in size and appearance to a gorilla.
Although Lisa stopped convulsing, the ordeal had been too much for her. She remained unconscious. Outside the classroom, the siren of an approaching ambulance could be heard.
Back in the laboratory, it was not possible to discern the creature’s features due to it being laid in fetal position, covering his head with his mighty arms, almost two times the size of a regular man’s. His skin was like a grayish leather.
The experiment resulted in something completely unexpected, something that surpassed Weiss’ wildest dreams. The creature wasn’t showing any sign of movement. Weiss wondered if the brain was damaged during the process, which considering the creature’s external deformities, seemed to be the most likely cause. He moved toward the creature.
“Be careful, doctor,” his worried assistant alerted.
Weiss disregarded Adam’s warning, certain that the strange being, in spite of his huge size and apparent physical strength, presented no danger. It was just a mass of flesh and bones, deprived of consciousness... Or so it seemed.
It all happened very fast. Lisa never knew how lucky she was for being unconscious, for it saved her from the terrible experience of witnessing, through her strange connection with the creature, the carnage that soon followed.
Her son stood up, with feline agility and speed, yelling like a vicious beast. His disproportional muscle tone covered with powerful veins and nerves; the huge arms pending close to the knees of his titanic legs; the deformed and relatively small bald head on top of the unnaturally large chest; and the face... It was a horror not even the maddest of the mad could conceive. The mouth was a lipless gash; primitive fangs instead of teeth; fully black, bug-eyed ocular globes, being the left one two times the size of the right one; small holes where there should be the nose and the ears. It was a true hellish image.
Doctor Weiss was terrified during the one last second he lived before the creature smashed his head with his grotesque hands. It was like a regular man breaking an egg.
Adam raced to the exit. The monstrous behemoth jumped over the wrecked machinery in one single bound, but the young man was faster, hermetically shutting the steel door behind him just in time.
Adam leaned on the door trying to catch his breath. But, as he felt the first exploding thump of the creature hitting it, his heart almost came out through his mouth. As the clobbering became stronger, he knew that not even that reinforced door would hold it much longer, so he ran out of there as fast as he could.
* * *
Lisa awoke in a hospital bed. The first thing she saw were her parents sitting beside her. “What happened?”
“You passed out in school, sweetheart,” her father explained in a caring tone.
Lisa looked through the window and realized the sun had been set. Her confusion turned into apprehension. “What -- Why?”
“It was nothing to worry about, honey.”
Her mother took her hand. “The doctor said it should be an anxiety attack.”
“Which reminds me, I was supposed to call him the minute you were awake. I’ll be right back,” her father said, before leaving.
Lisa was puzzled. “An anxiety attack?” Being a Psychology student, she knew what that was... It made no sense to her.
“The doctor told us it was probably caused by the coming midterms,” her mother remembered.
“Did you tell him about my pregnancy?”
“I didn’t have to.”
Lisa acknowledged. Her father returned with the doctor, who had with him the results of her medical exams. “Just as I expected, the results show nothing unusual with Lisa.” Her mother was relieved.
“Hi, Lisa, I’m Doctor Jones. Tell me, what is the last thing you remember?” the physician kindly asked her.
“I remember being in class... and, all of a sudden, I felt dizzy... Then I woke up here,” she answered. “I also remember having some dream...”
Her father was curious. “What about, honey?”
“I don’t know... It was weird.”
“It’s quite normal to have strange dreams in such situations,” the doctor intervened. “I’ll tell you what, I will prescribe you a light tranquilizer, just to lower your tension. And I want you back here in a couple of days so we can make sure everything’s all right, okay?”
Lisa and her parents thanked him.
* * *
On the way back home, Lisa barely spoke. She didn’t want to alarm her parents, but she was having difficulty trying to concentrate. She felt her mind strangely tired for someone who spent the better part of the day lying over a bed.
At first, she thought it was the work of some medication they gave her at the hospital, but somehow she knew it was something else. Not to mention the feeling she had that there was something out there watching her, lurking in the shadows. Something that made her feel a bitter taste in her mouth.
* * *
Back at home, Lisa barely touched her dinner. Her tiredness increased so much that she went straight to bed, falling asleep practically as her head hit the pillow.
Under the comfy sheets, Lisa’s calm sleep was disturbed by a dream, a very bad dream... or so she thought. She was seeing through someone else’s eyes. Someone... or something... very tall that was heading towards the house from the backyard.
Lights coming from the kitchen caught the intruder’s attention. Lisa’s mother was just about done washing the plates while her father was wrapping the trash bag to take it outside. Lisa could then feel the intense hate the intruder felt towards her parents... a murderous hate.
Lisa woke up scared. Her eyes opened, finding herself back in her room. But, to her horror, the images she witnessed in her dream were still with her, superimposed over her regular vision.
Not only her sight was affected, but also all of her senses. In the complete silence of her room, she could hear through the intruder’s ears the sounds of her mother putting away the dinnerware in the kitchen. The backdoor opening, startling both Lisa and the intruder. It was her father going out with the trash, unaware of the grotesque creature that started to race towards him.
Taken by despair, Lisa ran out of her room, down the stairs to warn her father. However, before she could reach the lower floor, she was frozen by the image of the intruder’s long sharp claw-like hands ripping her father’s chest open. She could hear his screams with both her ears and the murderer’s.
Without even thinking, her worried mother raced outside to help her husband, only to be hit with a mighty blow by the intruder, which threw her back inside the kitchen, barely conscious over the table. The beast entered through the backdoor and ripped her chest as he did Lisa’s father, shredding her to pieces.
With tears running down her face, Lisa proceeded down the stairs, hoping against hope all that had been just a sick nightmare, and that she would find her parents safe and sound. As she reached the kitchen, and saw the dreadful carnage, she broke down in shock. “Mommy...” she murmured to the woman’s remains, spread throughout the place.
Through the eyes of the creature, Lisa realized he was lurking outside, hidden in the bushes. She could not understand what made him stop, why he didn’t finish the job and kill her too... But these questions soon fade away.
Taken by an irrational fury, she took the biggest knife she could find and went outside. She didn’t care how monstrous or strong the creature was. All traces of the calm and somewhat fragile Lisa were gone. All she wanted was to bury the knife deep inside his body and shred it open, while staring deep into his eyes as the last sparkle of life abandons his hideous body... just as he had done with her parents.
Lisa stood by the backdoor, ready to attack the creature, which due to their mental connection, could not hide for her. As she held the knife tighter, just about to run towards him, the images vanished from her mind. What happened? Where did he go? Lisa got her answers in the worst possible way, for as the images returned she could see herself from above.
She looked up and found a demonic silhouette, hanging on to the wall outside her bedroom. The dreadful sight terrified her. Her fiery rage was replaced with uncontrollable fear. As the frightful creature jumped over her, Lisa’s world turned all black.
* * *
Lisa awoke with a bright light on her face. Two paramedics were leaning over her. One of them was testing her pupils reactions with a tiny flashlight. “How are you feeling?” she asked the puzzled Lisa.
Lisa’s mind was a jumble. She noticed there were half a dozen police officers in the backyard and a few detectives investigating around. She didn’t understand what was going on for she had no recollection of her ordeal. That until she saw her father’s body being placed inside a body bag. Everything came back. The female paramedic pushed on her. “Miss, can you tell me your name?”
“I’m Lisa... Lisa Cook.”
“Miss Cook, are you experiencing any pain?”
“My face... it hurts.”
“Your face is bruised a little, but it’s nothing serious. We’ll take you to the hospital just to make sure everything’s all right.”
A gray-haired, obese detective approached them. “I need to ask her a few questions first.”
“All right, detective, but please make it quick,” the female paramedic said.
“I’m detective Giannini. First, let me tell you that I’m very sorry for your loss.” Lisa acknowledged, still pretty shook up.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Giannini asked.
Lisa searched carefully for the right words. She was afraid that if she said the truth they would no doubt think she was crazy. “I was sleeping when I heard screams. I raced down to see what happened, and then I saw... I saw...” Lisa burst into tears. The memory of the scene was too much for her.
“Did you see who did it?”
“Just a glimpse...” she replied sobbing, trying to get a grip of herself. “He jumped over me... when I came outside. All I could see was... that he was very big... over seven feet... After that all I remember is blackness.”
“Are you sure you didn’t see his face?”
Lisa shook her head.
The female paramedic stepped in.
“Detective, the ambulance is ready.”
“All right,” Giannini said. “Miss, I’ll check with you later to see if you remember anything else. Rest assured we’ll catch this bastard.”
“Thank you, detective,” Lisa said as she was taken inside the ambulance.
* * *
It was past midnight when the ambulance was half-way to the hospital. Lisa was lying silently on the gurney. She thought she would finally have the time to try to make some sense out of all that’s happened... She was wrong.
First, there was the dire that stroke her like a lightning. Right after, came the images: Visions of large distances being rapidly surpassed in single leaps. And then, from high above, she saw the ambulance she was in. The gruesome creature, that had slain her parents, had found her! One more jump and, through his eyes, she could see the ambulance coming closer and closer.
“Oh, my God! This can’t be!” Lisa was despaired. The female paramedic accompanying her was appalled. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
There was no time for an answer. A heavy thumb sounded on the top. The impact was so strong that made the driver loose control of the ambulance. It crashed into a lamppost.
* * *
As Lisa recovered her senses, she realized the ambulance was upside down. Both paramedics were dead. She noticed a streak of blood running down her forehead. Although pretty shook up, she gathered all her strength to pull herself out of the vehicle.
She crawled a few meters away from it. In her shared vision, she could see herself from behind, kneeled down, pale and with several scratches and bruises all over her body. She turned around to face her stalker.
This time, the streetlights allowed her to take a good look at the hideous monster that crawled from behind the ambulance. It was an horrendous deformed mass, badly wounded on the accident he caused. Exposed fractured bones, deep bloody cuts, bruises, and scratches all over his body. It was a miracle that anything that injured could still be alive. Then, to Lisa’s awe, the creature’s wounds began to heal on their own. Bones mending, cuts closing, all in one exceedingly accelerated pace.
It was a bizarre spectacle that mesmerized the few bystanders who witnessed the accident. Lisa, however, wasn’t fascinated at all. She was terrified.
She ran out of there as fast as she could, without looking back, hoping the creature’s healing process would last long enough to allow her to escape.
A few seconds later, the creature stood up, almost fully recovered. To the amazement of everyone present, he jumped to the roof of a ten-story building nearby in a single leap, disappearing into the night.
Lisa wandered without direction. How could this thing, after brutally killing her parents, allow her to go unharmed? And then be following her, even hurting himself to do so? What could he possibly want from her?
* * *
The sun rose, taking away the darkness of the night. But not the one inside Lisa’s mind.
Lisa spent the whole day hiding in dark alleys, or any other place she could find away from prying eyes. She was strangely uneasy... as if she was being attracted to something... or to some place.
By the end of the day, her feet were callous, her legs tired and painful, almost as painful as her empty stomach. That’s when she found a building she had never seen before, but that seemed oddly familiar to her: A dirty and abandoned warehouse.
The entrance door was unlocked. Lisa entered the strange and sinister place feeling a bizarre mix of fear and deja vu. Not knowing exactly why, she took the corridor to her left.
Lisa ended up in front of a thick metallic door, smashed and laid on the floor. As she stepped into the room, she felt her heart tightening.
She found the wrecked machinery inside the lab. There was a large dry stain on the floor. As she got down to check it out, she heard an eerie voice coming from behind her. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
Lisa stood up in a jump. She turned around and found Adam aiming a gun at her. She remembered his face from the moment of the creature’s birth. “Hey... I know you!”
Adam was sure he had never seen that girl before. “I won’t ask again,” the frightened young man said, his finger almost pulling the trigger.
She realized he was even more terrified than she was. “My name is Lisa, and I actually don’t know what I’m doing here,” she told him nervously. “I think I know this place... from a dream.”
“ A dream?”
“Yes. Only it wasn’t exactly a dream.”
Adam was intrigued. “You’re not making any sense.”
“I saw it on my mind. Someone -- some THING killing a man. Right here in this place,” she said, looking back at the stain on the floor.
Adam was petrified. How could this girl know what happened? He put the gun down, realizing there was more to Lisa than met the eye. “That stain... is blood.”
“Then, someone really did die here.”
“Yes. It was Doctor Weiss... My boss,” Adam revealed. “I was assisting him in a scientific experiment.”
“What kind of experiment?”
“I’m sorry. It’s classified.”
Lisa got angry. “Cut the crap! I know what that thing is! I’ve seen him! He killed my parents and is now after me. Not to mention that we are connected somehow.”
“Connected?!” he asked, even more intrigued.
“There are times I can see what he sees; feel what he feels.”
“What?!” Adam thought for a second. “What’s your last name?”
“What does it have to do with anything?”
“What is it, dammit?” he insisted.
“Cook,” she replied, startled with his reaction.
“Lisa Cook...” he got as pale as a sheet of paper. “Oh, my God!”
“What?”
Adam leaned his back on the wall, allowing his body to slide down, until he sat still on the cold floor. “What the hell is this all about?” she demanded.
He couldn’t hold back anymore. “We were working on an effective way of resuscitating dead organisms,” he said. “For that, we were using dead human fetuses harvested in abortion clinics.”
Lisa was completely baffled. “Why fetuses?”
“You see, the major problem of resuscitating a corpse is the brain. When it’s deprived of oxygen, even for a few minutes, it suffers irreparable damage. But the nervous system of a fetus is still in formation. Its cells have a highly reproductive capacity, which constitutes the perfect material for our experiment.”
Lisa almost couldn’t believe her ears. The story seemed taken from an old B- movie. “The experiment didn’t work at all on the previous subjects, but on the last one it worked TOO well,” Adam said. “It not only regained life, but also grew in size beyond human proportions. It killed Doctor Weiss viciously... I was lucky to escape.”
“That’s all fine and dandy, but what the hell do I have to do with all this?”
“Lisa, your dead fetus was the last subject,” he revealed.
“Then, that thing...”
“That’s right. That creature IS your fetus.”
To his awe, Lisa remained unaltered by what he thought would be a shocking revelation. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“No. I -- I knew it,” she said. “Somehow, I just knew it... That’s why he hasn’t killed me... He knows I’m his mother.”
“It seems that both you and the creature have formed some kind of psychic bond,” Adam figured.
“Yes, he is inside my mind,” she agreed. “I can feel his fear, his anger...”
“Anger?” Adam was puzzled. “With what?”
“With me,” she answered, with profound sadness. “He hates me for having him harvested from my body. He thinks that I abandoned him, denied him life itself,” she lowered her head with a tear running down her face. “And he’s right...”
“So it is after you,” Adam realized.
“HE! ...Don’t call him it,” Lisa corrected the young man. “But how can he possibly know who I am, where I live...”
“No doubt through you,” he said. “If there is a bond between the two of you, it probably works both ways. And its -- sorry -- HIS knowledge of the world is in fact yours.”