Invisible Death

The Vanishing Act

Oliver St. Clair III looked out the bay window from his penthouse office on the top floor of the tallest building in the middle of the island.

Memories were a wonderful thing.

The sweetness of his mother's kiss, the proud gleam on his father's eye, the way his grandfather scratched his white beard and straightened his silk tie. Above all, the smile on Leslie's face when she said, "I do" on their wedding ceremony. Their joy at the news of their first child; the kid would one day be either Oliver or Olivia, born to carry on with the St. Clair dynasty name and power.

Memories were a terrible thing.

The death of his parents and the death of his grandfather, who had raised him to be his heir and successor in the pharmaceutical empire the family had built and expanded until it was a force to be reckoned with in the international scene... The diagnostic that his unborn child would not survive to see the light of day... The frantic search for medical solutions that even with the St. Clair unlimited resources would not be forthcoming, not within the confines of mainstream Science... The interview with that condescending bastard, pseudo-scientist, mad doctor, who at their time of need offered a possibility of survival for their child... It was crazy. It was playing with fire... or worse. It was tantamount to playing God. But desperate times demanded desperate measures. It was their only chance, or the child would be stillborn. And nothing could assure them Leslie would be able to conceive again. It wasn't her fault, after all. The problem was his. The malformation was inherited from his mother's side of the family.

Memories were a curse.

The most painful of all and it was vivid behind his eyelids, burning hot every time he closed them, etched in his brain never to be erased. The moment the monstrosity his baby had been turned into by that bunch of men and women, drunk with ungodly knowledge ... the moment that thing clawed its way out of Leslie's womb, tearing her to ribbons as it ripped her belly open to fall on the floor of the operating room. The freak of Nature... no, of Science... had shrieked and crawled on the pool of blood under his wife's body, horrifying all the staff present, including the older, balding man who had created it, until Oliver himself had ended its miserably short life.

Despite all his efforts to stop it, the criminal experiments and research had gone on, even flourished. The government was hell bent on funding and supporting the creation of things that could enhance its military power, not to mention the private funding coming from couples and families in their last hope to make sure either the child they'd given birth to would reach adulthood, or that it would be born at all. God forgive him, Oliver had been one of them, once.

Now, over thirty years later, Oliver St. Clair III, last scion of the clan that gave the world the cure for myriad of diseases, vaccines for many others, and that had grown to the pinnacles of the world's fortunes in the process, looked at the sea beyond the Caribbean island he had made his own, the paradise-like stronghold he had built from the sandy ground up, and once again vowed that the demonic generation Paul Breedlove and his minions had spawned would be wiped out of the face of the earth. Not one anomaly would remain. Humanity would be pure once again... and soon.

&&&

The dissertation was a bitch. And that Professor Caldwell was another! On wheels! It would do the world a lot of good if only Charlotte would scrape her fingers on the woman's hand while handing her a test and turn her ugly disposition a hundred and eighty degrees. Professor Caldwell, head of the Anthropology Department, would be friendlier, more open minded, and she would stop calling Charlotte's theories "science fiction". "The Effects of Genetic Manipulation on Future Cultural Patterns" was a worthy subject, but Charlotte Cooke might as well be writing about "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds", for all that bitch cared. The temptation of using her powers to mollify her nemesis, the grouch of the Ph.D.'s judging boards, was almost unbearable, but that had been a head clause on the contract with the Underground scholarship fund. No powers! No use of powers for one's own gain under any circumstances. And the Underground people kept tracks. They were paying for Charlotte's education, room and board, plus pocket money, but they kept tracks, yes, ma'am! And if they so much as suspected she had used her molecular personality-bending powers on anyone at the University, it would be bye-bye scholarship, bye-bye apartment, not to mention bye-bye a position as career counselor at the private school kept by AR&D for genetically enhanced children and teens. And Charlotte was running late for her appointment with Dr. Rodriguez, her therapist and teacher, without whom, she wouldn't be able to graduate. She would have to run. Maybe if she cut through the back of the Bio-Med Sciences buildings and turned to the left on Salk Boulevard, and if her crappy car would cooperate and go a little faster... And if that SUV would just pull a little to the right and let her pass ahead... Oh, bother, why was the thing stopping?