Eternal Beasts

A Matrix Moment

'The book,' he darkly mused, briefly contemplating taking hold of the heavy tome and ripping it apart from cover to cover. The urge passed and he dropped back down onto the floor.

"Fate and destiny, hey?" he growled out loud, wincing at some lingering pain. "Was it my fate to find you, get zapped by floating balls of light out of some sci-fi movie then dream my way through a thorough ass beating?" He blinked and rubbed at his face, which felt as fatigued as the rest of him. What the hell had he gotten himself into, agreeing to the mysterious stranger's request for help?

Yet, despite his anger and frustration, Jared still felt good about the decision, still felt like it was the right thing for him to do. Buoyed by that reconfirmation, he worked himself to a sitting position against his bed. And in doing so, he noticed the amount of light pouring in the window. Damn, was it morning? He felt a cold chill rush through him when his eyes swung to the clock radio to confirm and found it reading 8:47 am. He only had thirteen minutes to make it to his biochemistry final and it was halfway across campus.

Levering himself laboriously to his feet, Jared jerked open his small closet door and pulled out a clean sweat shirt. It hurriedly replaced the one he was wearing then, after a quick look in the mirror to run his fingers through unkempt hair, he grabbed his book bag and staggered to the door. With a last pause to look hard at the book sitting innocuously on the desk, he shut the door behind him and ran down the hallway towards the elevator. As he ran, his mind continued to work on the night's experiences.

So consumed was he by them, they still dominated his thoughts as he flipped open his test booklet ten minutes later after a hard run through the cool morning air to find a seat just before the professor called time to begin. Struggling to concentrate on his test paper, Jared felt fat drops of perspiration ooze off his forehead to drop onto the desk, narrowly missing his paper several times. His hand shook as he tried to will his pen into action. 'Damn it, this isn't working,' he finally decided nearly an hour after the test's start to find him still on the first page. If he didn't do something soon, he wasn't going to finish.

It was as he put pen point back to his answer booklet for perhaps the hundredth time that Jared felt it: a seeping cold that gnawed like acid into his very bones. Jerking so violently it spilled his papers onto the floor, Jared looked wildly around. Just what the hell was that??

- The enemy has found you, - the stranger's voice quietly answered inside his head. Barely fighting off another violent jerk of surprise, with his neighbors already giving him strange looks, he hunkered low over the desk.

"What ...what does that mean?" he whispered hoarsely. The voice was quick with its reply.

- That means we have to get you out of there before they kill you, - it tightly hissed. Without warning a cool, soothing wave began to work its way through Jared's tense body, calming and relaxing him. At the same time he felt his hand begin to move. Slowly at first, as if testing its ability and skill, then more quickly, his hand moved without his will across the page. He could only stare with stunned eyes as his hand sketched, diagrammed and wrote all without conscious control, systematically answering the questions on his paper.

He watched with bated breath as it smoothly sketched out the Krebs Cycle, filling in the various metabolic stages perfectly, the information to do so pulled directly from his memory. Once it was finished, his hand went on to the next question and the next, until the last was being worked through.

And then it was finished. Smoothly it worked with Jared's other hand, also under outside control, to put away his things into his pack before standing. Jared's body then picked up the test paper and the answer booklet, made its way to the front of the test hall and, with a nod to the professor who looked up expectantly at his approach, handed it to him. It went on to sign the attendance sheet with a perfect copy of his signature before proceeding to the room's exit to carry Jared outside.