Chapter 39: Chapter thirty-eight

Present day

 

When Andre Martin was just a little boy, he had gone camping in the woods with his father. It had been an exciting thing, just him and his dad, cooking on a campfire and having an adventure. It had moved from exciting to terrifying when young Andre, then only seven years old, had come across the wolf.

The creature had been enormous, like a dog blown out to monstrous proportions. He had been frozen with fear, just staring at the creature and its long, yellow teeth. It had passed him by, disinterested, but Andre had known, even then, that he had come face to face with a true predator, the likes of which he would probably never see again.

Years later, as Andre stood before Mr. Smythe, he realized that he was wrong.

Mr. Smythe sat in his chair like some grand demonic bullfrog. He was a huge man with weathered, wrinkled skin but eyes that pierced through Andre and turned his insides to ice.

“Report,” he wheezed, his voice sounding like it was being strained through an old coffee filter.

“Ah,” Andre said, collecting his thoughts that seemed to have fallen from his head in a mess about him. “Well, Danvers had made some really major breakthroughs before he, um, died. Anyway, he deserves most of the credit really.”

Mr. Smythe held up a hand for silence and Andre stopped short.

“I’m aware of your shortcomings,” he said. “No need to highlight them. Get to the point.”

For a moment Andre was a child before a wolf once again, silently begging for the mercy of a creature to which mercy was a foreign concept.

A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. “Um, yes sir. Anyway, using his work we were able to build a working prototype and, ah, after a few initial false-starts, we have performed a successful human trial.”

Mr. Smythe cocked his head with interest. “Good.” He pressed a button on his desk that activated his intercom and said to both Andre and whoever was on the other end of the line, “Prepare for the next phase. Immediately.”

He almost pointed out that it was far too soon for that, and that they should spend more time refining the process. To anyone else, he would have said that moving to the next phase of the plan after only one successful trial was like taking your first steps and then deciding you were ready for a marathon. But he said none of that. He knew who he was speaking to, and Kessington Smythe did not tolerate anything but complete obedience.

“Yes sir.”

Andre went to inform his team that the theoretical part of the project was over. It was time for the practical.

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