Chapter 12

Inside of the city of Marion, there is an abandoned warehouse.  It was an old a glass factory called Ball Foster, however it went under and now it houses an evil being.  The evil is a being that has been known by all men and women that have see him as The Voice.  He is a dangerously powerful being, with an unknown past, however some claim that he is over a million years old.  Some rumors claim that he was once the ancient Egyptian King of the Gods, Amun-Re.  However, some claim that he was actually many gods of many ancient civilizations.  These rumors have been past down for eons, surpassing from generation to generation.  However, there is no factual information from the rumors or any proof that The Voice is really that old.  However everyone who has ever encountered The Voice knows his deadly intentions and his scheming demeanor.  He is very selfish and uses people for his own dark designs.  He does not care how he gets what he wants; he just wants it and wants it now.

There was a screeching sound as the door opened up to the old factory and in walked Jack Attack, also known as Jackie Baugh and her cohort, Corey Jones, or CJ Almighty.  CJ was carrying Steven’s lifeless corpse.  The Voice appeared in the middle of the big room.  He looked like a big group of atoms randomly arranged and all rotating around each other. 

“Is this Steven?” asked The Voice in a deep, dark and echoing voice.

“Yes, master,” replied Jackie.  “I will build him right away!”

“Wait,” said The Voice.  “I have some special instructions on this one.”

“But he is my creation,” she replied.  “You cannot change my art.”

“He is mine!” he screamed.  “I say what he will be like!”

With a little disappointment and shame, Jackie nodded her head. 

“Yes, my master,” she said.  “What is it you want?”

“He shall be a cyborg, however he will still have his brain.  His heart is in bad shape, so you will have to make a mechanical one and he will have no need for lungs, because his heart will be powered by his nuclear core. And around his heart will be a rubber case and a surge protector so if there is ever a discharge of electricity, it would not hurt him.  The only amount of blood he will have will be a closed system from his heart and to his brain.  His heart will make its own oxygen to make the blood oxygenated.  And that system will be protected by a hose made from titanium.  His whole endoskeleton will be made of titanium. His skin with be comprised of liquid metal that will allow him to heal, but have the same characteristics of real flesh.  Under his skin, he will have a suit of armor that folds outward.  It will also be made of Titanium.  He can fold it in or out as he pleases.”

“Is that all, master?” asked Jackie.

“Yes,” he replied.  “Now you can begin construction.”

She smiled and guided her cohort into a room where there were sharp medical instruments and mechanical devices.  It had an x-ray machine and computers that were hooked up to it.  CJ put Steven’s body onto the x-ray machine table.  He strapped his body in and pushed a button and with a hum, the conveyor pulled the corpse in.

“First I will need to look at the skeletal structure to make an exact replica,” said Jackie. “As the computers are scanning him, I need you to heat up some titanium in a cauldron and melt it down.”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied CJ.  He walked out of the room and went down to the heating room.  There was a single cauldron suspended in the air by a pole that would turn and dump the molten metal into multiple bins. Each bin was used for different body parts.  Each bin had an identical bin next to it that would fold into each other to make the castings.  One by one, they would have to tip the cauldron over and allow the molten metal to be poured into the bins and cooled to make the body part. However the head was to be made last and separately. The bins right now were housing a blank slab of heat resistant clay.  The clay would be carved by a gigantic engraver that was connected to the computers and match whatever the computer showed.  However, there was one problem, one of Steven’s arms were missing.  So, what Jackie had to do is to improvise.  She had to copy the image of Steven’s right arm and mirror it onto his left side.

“Very beautiful bone structure,” said Jackie to herself.  “He is a great specimen, and he will be a great asset to our cause.”

 Just then, in the room where CJ was at, the big cogs above him began to turn and squeak.  The arm of the engraver came down and began to engrave into the clay. It carved the individual body parts out separately.  After it was done, the furnace came on under the cauldron.  CJ quickly put a thousand pound block of titanium into the cauldron and waited for it to melt.

Back in the operating room, Steven’s body was taken out of the x-ray machine and she put him back onto the operating table.  She took out a scalpel and began to cut around his skull just above his eye. Blood poured out all over the table. Then she popped off the skin and out of her arm she produced a circular saw and began to cut around the skull.  Once the upper skull was completely cut around, she took the piece of skull off and exposed the brain. 

Again, she took the scalpel and made an incision down the back of his head all the way down to his neck.  She pulled down all of his facial skin downward and it was messy.  Blood poured out everywhere and his eyes popped out.  However, she did not even cringe.  She used to be a surgeon before her accident.  Just as she was about to cut open the back of his skull, she had a flashback…….

To the time of her innocence and to the time when she had the perfect life she thought back.  She was fresh out of college and into her surgeon career.  She had studied for eight long years and finally earned her masters degree in anatomy, medicine and radiology and she was ready to take life by the horns and use her skills to make a difference in people’s lives.

She was also was a dedicated wife to a wonderful man named Ryan Baugh.  He was also a surgeon at the hospital.  They first met on Jackie’s first day and hit it off almost immediately.  They frequently worked together on patients and on their down time, they talked about themselves.  Finds out they had a lot in common and shared the same passion for people. 

Suddenly, Jackie was taken back to when she got married.  She was 28 when she finally married, but while the wait was longer than what she wanted, she knew it was worth it.  As she was cutting into Steven’s skull, a tear ran down her cheek at the memory of her marriage.  She remembered when they exchanged vows and rings and their kiss.  She remembered the times they had together, raising their son, Joseph.  She was so happy and content.  She wanted nothing but that life back.

However, one day her life was changed and that day always haunted her.  In her mind, she was taken to a time when it all happened.  The fear that she felt, the pain and the thought of her life being changed, it was poisoning to her mind.  It was mid-July and she was putting a patient into the x-ray machine.  She turned on the machine, however, a panel came loose and in a sudden blast, x-ray radiation began to pulse through her body.  The pain was intense.  The machine had a governor on the device to keep it from overloading itself, however it had burnt out.

Now, she was being soaked with radiation.  To make matters worse, it caused a fire.  However, she could not get out of the room.  She needed to save the patient.  With pain and agony rushing through her body, she ran over to the patient and grabbed him and shoved him out the door.  She tried to run, however, an oxygen tank exploded and caused machinery and medical tools to fly through the air and all at once, it impaled her body.  She collapsed to the ground and passed out.

However, something happened.  Instead of bleeding outward, her body soaked up the instruments and her body was healed.  It seemed that whatever happened triggered a suppressed mutant gene to come alive.  Now, she could absorb machinery and use it.

The next thing she remembers is waking up in the recovery room surrounded by her husband and her family.  She was alright and that really stunned doctors and staff members.  They could not explain what had happened.  They tried to explain it to her family and her husband; however no medical condition was documented for this phenomenon. They just accepted it as an act of God or a miracle.

However, a few years past, with no ill effects to the incident that happened a year earlier, she was fine until she was in an accident going to work.  She was driving down Mason Street and was crossing an intersection as a truck ran the red light and plowed right into the side of her vehicle and smashed her into a parked bus.  The impact should have smashed her; however she absorbed the metals and machinery of her car and survived, however with repercussions.

Suddenly, she heard a squeal.  She looked down at her drill and found that she had cut right into Steven’s vertebrae.  She quickly turned it off and absorbed it back into her body.  She then pulled the two pieces of skull apart and cut the brain stem from the backbone and gently put the brain into the icebox.

Her flashbacks were gone, however the trip down memory lane had left her fatigued and dazed, so she sat down and took a small rest while waiting for the castings to be ready. She sighed deeply and had a feeling of emptiness.  Cold chills of the memory of her beloved husband jetted through her body.  She began to weep and a helpless sense turned into purest disgust for what she had become.  She opened up her wallet and pulled out a picture of her husband and child.  A tear ran down her cheek and landed on the picture.

“Why?” she asked.  “Why did this happen?  I love you so much, please come back to me!”

The tears flowed like a waterfall down her cheek and the agony was intense to the point that she had to literally stab herself with a needle and put herself to sleep with some drugs.

A few hours later, CJ walked into the room.  Jackie looked up from her slumber and realized that the Titanium was finally done.  She quickly jumped up from her seat.

“Is it done?” she asked, knowing very well that the answer was going to be yes.

“Yes, ma’am, CJ was able to melt down Titanium for you,” replied CJ. 

Jackie quickly ran into the out of the room and down the hall to the other room where the cauldron was.  Inside was the melted down red titanium.  CJ turned off the furnace.  He pushed a button and one by one, the series of castings folded in on each other and molten titanium was poured into a hole at the top.  Once it was filled it, CJ put it to the side and he continued the process over again.  The process all together lasted about an hour.  Once they were done, he put them off to the side and waited for them to cool.

In the next room, Jackie heated up several pieces of titanium to their malleable form.  Once they were red hot, she took one out, one by one by a set of tongs and she beat them into the desired shape and fashioned them together to make the top of the skull, however leaving the back of it exposed to insert the brain.

Then, she began to make the jaw and making it precisely to what the x-ray described.  When that was done, she cooled the half-made skull into water and cooled it off. 

Soon after, she began to build the robotic eyes.  This was somewhat difficult because everything had to be made to perfection if he was to see correctly.  The eyes were to be made from a special, fire retardant glass laced with an extremely thin piece of titanium.  She fused the eyes into the sockets and on the ends of the eyes were wires that went into the skull to interface with the brain.

Soon after, she began construction on the heart.  It wasn’t anything special, but it was just a pump with two tubes: one going to the brain and one going away from the brain, and at the end of the tubes were small tubes that were going to connect to the small vessels inside of the brain.  First, she fashioned what looked like a small pool pump and welded them to the two titanium pipes.  It wasn’t really much work, the part was already assembled for her, and all she had to do is fuse it to the two pipes.  Next, she had to fashion a rubber seal around the whole system.  It went around the heart and around all the pipes even the small vessels at the end of the pipes.  It was a little frustrating and it consisted of a few grunts and groans, however she was able to get it done.

She looked at her piece and smiled.  She loved the look of the heart.  She put it down on the table and began construction on the core.  It consisted of two hydrogen fuels cells.  There was also a power box on it to convert the radiation energy to electrical impulses so that he could move.  The box would connect with Steven’s whole body and help move all of his parts.

After it was done, she got up and walked into the room where CJ was at and found out that all the metal had finally been done.  She quickly opened up all the castings and began to shave off any excess slag and began to put the pieces together.  It took a long time, but once the body, save for the head was complete, she had to fashion together hydraulic machines to move his body parts and connect them to the body to act like joints.

After she was done with that, she had to do the wiring.  She wired all the hydraulic devices to the core.  There were also a series that connected to a main an air pump on the back to run the hydraulic parts.  There were even wires to connect to the brain.  Each body part had its own pipe and it all went to that one machine.  She looked at her creation thus far and was extremely pleased with what she had done and she quickly got the head and interfaced it with the brain and patched up the back of the skull and fashioned it onto the body and connected all the vessels into the brain. 

“This is the moment of truth,” she said as she made the last connection: the brain to the core.  Once she connected them, Steven’s eyes light up a bright red.  He tried to get up, however before he could; she stabbed a needle into a one way hole into his heart and injected some sleeping medication.  Quickly, he fell asleep.

Quickly, she fashioned and interfaced the liquid metal onto his skeletal system.  Now, his skin was apart of his body and it felt completely natural.  His face became apparent and all of his body structures and parts were correctly aligned.  She danced with glee and quickly got him dressed.

She ran out of the room and back to where the Voice was.

“My master!” she yelled.  “He is finished!”

“Good, job, my apprentice,” he said with glee.  “Where is he?”

“Asleep,” she replied.  “He will be up soon.”