AX-1

CHAPTER 9

Maxwell stared tiredly at his phone, looking up at Alex every few minutes. The air purifier in the ceiling made a consistent, irritating hum that made Maxwell ready to shut it off. The lights were turned off, and the only thing in sight was the light of his phone. Alex laid there unconscious, breathing slowly consistently. One breath suddenly and sharply inhaled to a halt, and then Alex thrashed around, his body figure only barely visible to Maxwell. Maxwell jumped in his seat, startled by the unexpected movement, his sensitivity to it caused by the lack of sleep and light. He reached towards the light switch on the wall and flipped it on, revealing a crazy-eyed Alex looking into blank space. His eyes glared with fear and resentment toward a nonexistent object in the corner of the room. Maxwell feared for his life. The hallucinations weren't supposed to start until the second night onwards, according to the previous hosts. He grabbed a gun from under his coat and shot Alex in the neck. The dart penetrated and injected its contents into Alex's bloodstream. Alex didn't seem to feel the dart and turned his head slowly toward Maxwell, his expression still glazed and unresponsive. His head tilted ever so slightly, and his eyes dotted around, seeming to detect a fast movement. His eyes and body suddenly flinched as if something had swiped at him. He retracted, pushing himself up against the wall. His hands moved and snapped towards his face, his hands clenching as if trying to grab something. Alex kept his stance low as he kept his eyes trained above him. He started slowly moving sideways to circle the unseen entity before his leg reached off of the bed making him collapse to the floor. He maneuvered up to his feet like a cat, looking savage and primitive. His movements became more slowed and sloppy as the drug took its effect. He slowly came to a halt, taking several minutes to reach a stand-still before dropping to his knees and landing face-first on the floor. Maxwell proceeded with caution around the limp body of his friend, confirming that he was unconscious. He grabbed his phone from his pocket and contacted the guards. They came in a matter of minutes, sealing Alex in a straight-jacket and carting him away into the more secure room that they had built for him. Maxwell administered some drugs that would help with Alex's hallucinations. He waited for hours before Alex came to.

"What?" Alex whispered under his breath, still dazed by the tranquilizer.

"Where am I?" he spoke in a louder tone. He was in an unfamiliar environment and felt trapped, stuck in restraints that he didn't remember getting into. He panicked. He tried to squiggle his way out, the squiggling turning into thrashing. The pain of the NC still burned and shot sharp, needle-like pains through his back, putting him in an even more aggravated state.

"Alex! Alex! Calm down! You're not in danger! Let me explain!" Maxwell shouted through the holes of the cell.

"Max, what happened? Why am I here? Why am I in this?" Alex yelled in a desperate voice, his eyes racing around and his breath uneasy.

"Because... you... were hallucinating. You weren't in your right state of mind, so I tranqed you, and that's why you're here now." Maxwell said, trying desperately to craft his words carefully.

"Why was I hallucinating?" Alex asked, a far deeper fear planting its roots.

"The crystal is growing into your central nervous system. It somehow managed to get to your brain far earlier than we had anticipated. When growing, it sends stray signals at random, which can sometimes be interpreted by the brain as a legitimate signal. It's a normal occurrence for it, from what we've seen so far. It just occurred a day or two ahead of schedule. I'm going to be honest with you, Alex, I don't know what this means. All I know is that it might not be a bad thing. I'm going to do some tests, just hang on..." Maxwell explained hastily, almost stumbling over his words. Maxwell's eyes darted around his computer screen as he gazed upon the radiometer statistics. They read normal. No radiation? Maxwell thought. The NC never stopped emitting radiation while attached to its host, so why did it stop now? Maxwell was confused, and so he went into the cell to solve the first problem that it might have been. He walked into the room carefully strolling a dull gray box on a cart behind him. He left the room with the box inside it, phasing through the wall of light that was the door. Another one of the researchers used a lever and joystick to descend a metal claw from the ceiling inside the cell as the small holes in the wall closed up using shutters. The team watched on the camera feed as the long, thin fingers gripped and lifted the lid of the box, placing it to the side. The arm was then commanded to reach inside the box and grasp the enriched uranium ingot. It held the chunk of gray metal up close to the crystal embedded in Alex's neck. The science team did not flinch when the uranium came close to Alex, though, as they were well aware that GMH's are much more resistant to radiation than the average person. It would do no permanent damage to Alex whatsoever. The crystal, sensing the strong radiation nearby, opened its exposed side into eight separate, triangled teeth, which extended using tiny, mechanical arms attached into the inner center of each triangle. The teeth moved just like animal arms, almost life-like in dexterity, speed, and flexibility. The insides of the crystal showed small, complex circuitry, which glowed in different shades of soft orange. They snatched up the ingot, and used brute strength to bend it into the opening the crystal-like teeth had revealed. It compressed the Uranium into its insides until it fit perfectly, and snapped shut, seamlessly. Alex was quiet, too afraid to move. He had begun to feel whatever the crystal was doing half-way through its feeding process. Suddenly, his mind went blank. Black. Nothing. He regained consciousness, seeing that he was still in the same room.

"I think I just passed out, what does that mean?" Alex asked.

"Yeah, I saw" Maxwell said "That's a good thing. It means your brain is now almost fully connected. A feedback interface should appear in your vision any moment now..."

"What does that mean?" Alex questioned, wondering what the hell to expect.

"You'll see." Maxwell said simply.

"Why didn't you tell me this stuff earlier?!" Alex screamed

"I thought I had much more time! I'm sorry!" Maxwell said, embarrassed at how he made such a stupid blunder. Alex stopped screaming as the anti-anxiety hormones in his blood started to kick in. A sense of calm fell over him, and he was able to think clearly again. Alex thanked the heavens for this blessing received from his new body. He sighed and waited, until it finally appeared. What seemed to be a holographic interface full of statistics popped up in his field of vision, very similar to the way a HUD works. The graphs and circle gauges were all measured in a mysterious language, which Alex was unable to read. After the initial shock, he desired to know what they meant. Suddenly, a big loading bar popped up in the center of his vision, an unknown word or number placed under it. The word scrambled, forming the English words "Downloading Local Lexicon", and one by one, the ancient markings were replaced by English. He felt a flashback of every word he ever knew, almost all at once, as well as the object, place, or meaning that represented each one of the words. It was searching his mind to learn English, and apparently in his own vocabulary. Alex was also simultaneously learning a different, unique language. It all flowed into his mind, as if he had known to speak it for years. But there was one thing that terrified him: there were new words. Words not known to man.