For A Star To Fall

Chapter 12: Moral Line

Chapter 12

Bribing orphans, Jordan thought. The man he knew for most of his life, the man he had looked up to, regarded as a father figure, bribed orphans. All because he wanted to ‘save Mankind’. Dr. Valin had manipulated orphans (could he still be doing it?) just so that he could experiment on them, that much was painfully obvious from the conversation taking place between the three people in the video. Aaron and Kathy had to be confronting the younger Dr. Valin onscreen, and the information that they were casually tossing around were all news to Jordan, making him feel a little out of his depth as he scrambled to make sense of everything. Emyle probably was not having this problem at all, he knew, she was most likely used to this, from the way she acted.

Right now, Dr. Valin really seemed like an evil villain, albeit a genius one, with his super high IQ and crazy affinity for genetic engineering. The only thing that did not add up was his motive: he wanted to save the world and not destroy it, so how could he be considered the bad guy in this situation? Dr. Valin had raised a lot of good points when he had been talking to Aaron. The earth really was being destroyed by human activities, and they would all die with it if these things were not stopped. Who really was the bad guy? Jordan was dumbfounded, and turned his attention back to the laptop screen.

Aaron’s gaze hardened and he held Kathy tightly against him. “Did any of those orphaned children accept your offer?”

Dr. Valin’s smile was strangely bitter. “Of course they did. Almost all of them, really. They’re orphans, needy children. They needed the money.”

“What happened to them? Where are they now?” Kathy’s dark brown eyes were wide and her bottom lip trembled slightly as if she was a bit afraid of his answer.

“Their bodies could not handle the serum I developed without shutting down. I believe that they are all living a better life in another world now.” The expression on Dr. Valin’s face was one of bittersweet wistfulness.

“You mean they’re dead,” Aaron retorted flatly. “Where did you dispose of their bodies, David?”

“Dispose of their bodies?” Dr. Valin looked mildly reproachful as he shook his head vehemently. “That would be such a waste of organic matter. No, I used their bodies to find out what went wrong with my serum,” he shrugged. “There is nothing left for you to examine, as my experiments involved corrosion tests, and the acid used has destroyed their faces and bodies beyond recognition. Besides,” he shrugged, “I needed to know if the serum had changed their skin and muscle in any way, so I had to perform autopsies.”

Jordan felt horror rising slowly from the pit of his stomach to clog his throat. Dr. Valin’s voice was cold and clinical, though his eyes continued to burn with a passion for said experiments. Onscreen, Kathy looked as horrified as Jordan now felt, and her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. Her voice was a whisper that Jordan strained to hear when she said, “But...David, the orphans...they must have only been children. They would not have known what you wanted from them, they were too young! They are humans, David, please. Just like you and me. Why did you have to experiment on other humans? Doing this using your animals is already crossing a moral line!”

Dr. Valin’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. “My serum required modifying, so that it will be able to be fully effective on humans and thus more experiments and research with new test subjects were needed to fully complete the development process. Animal characteristics are too different from that of ours for me to accurately judge if it will be able to bond with our DNA. There is no moral line in this matter, Kathy. I am doing my best to help this world and improve the future for Homo sapiens. I am on the good side. Can’t you see that?”