I Am Aqueous

I Am Aqueous - Chapter 9

Chapter 9

The ride was long, but undisturbed and the military van carrying some specialist arrived on a military base outside Daytona. The crew dispatched from the van, two stayed a little to talk and Gun slipped out from the bottom and waited for the moment to strike. One soldier explained to the other, “Be sure you have your red card, you’ll need it to enter the lab.”
The second, who was short and fat, complained a little, “Hey! Just because it’s my first day of my promotion doesn’t mean I’m helpless!”
The first explained, “But Platanski, you are helpless. Do you have the key I asked?”
Platanski searched himself and found nothing.
The other soldier sighed and gave him a card. He explained with a very disappointed tone, “Here take mine. I don’t plan on being in the same room as that thing anyway.”
Platanski thanked him and as soon as the other soldier turned around and walked to the base entrance, Gun stuck. Gun latched onto Platanski’s neck and took control of his speech. This also made Platanski stand still in a dazed state as the speech stealing always did.
After a moment the other soldier stopped and turned to Gun and Platanski and yelled, “What are you doing? Come on!”
Gun coated Platanski’s arm and moved it for him. Gun made him touch his back and Gun spoke through him and explained, “The ride hurt my back. I’ll meet you inside, I have to stretch.”
The soldier shook his head and turned away. He said to himself, “He’s got to stop eating those donuts.”
When the soldier was out of sight and everyone else was, Gun broke his neck with such force that Platanski’s body landed behind some adjacent fuel tanks and was hidden for the moment. Gun absorbed the red card key and suspended it within himself and slithered stealthily towards the base entrance.
The four guards standing at the entrance didn’t notice Gun and if they did, the rising sun would make the liquid look like spilling oil. They should’ve done their job better, for Gun went between the four and launched two opposing comets and pierced through each temple they had. The bodies dropped silently on the sandy road. Gun squeezed though the crack under the door.
Gun immediately coiled around a passing foot and hitched a ride down the main lobby. The foot wasn’t walking to the elevator at the end of the hall, so Gun leapt to another foot going his way. Then another foot and then he caught a ride on another. Then he was close enough to the elevator that he leapt for the card reader beside the elevator. He swiped the card and then landed. The elevator opened and he crawled in. But before the doors closed, an employee had seen Gun and had sound the alarm. The siren rang at the same time as the door closed.
Gun looked at the floor buttons as bullets blasted through the doors. Gun had a hunch, so he hit the button with a picture of a test tube on it, in hopes to get to the lab. The elevator went down to the lab with some peaceful playing music. The elevator stopped and the doors opened and there were at least 30 soldiers pointing assault rifles and combat shotguns at Gun. A man screamed, “OPEN FIRE!” And the 30 men and women did.
But to no avail. Sure, Gun exploded into small fragments, but the fragments still inched forwards towards a canister which both Gun and I were so obsessed with meeting. The men fired and fired and bullets reflected off the ground and some came back and hit the soldiers. The small fragments continued to inch towards its fellow substance. The liquid oozed through and underneath all the soldiers’ feet and their heads turned to the unguarded canister. The fragments leapt from the ground and landed on the glass like a swarm of starving flies onto the most delicious death they could devour.
Gun reformed as a coiled snake, about to eat its prey and all the guns pointed, but didn’t fire, for they shook in doubt, disbelief and fear. Gun found twisted the tube and the glass shattered in half from the center of the canister. The glass splattered onto the ground, but the liquid had already come together with Gun and I and it was like an ever-lasting pain, finally put to rest.
Another version of 20 years of motionless, stillness, torturous punishment stored in that liquid came to our knowledge. More arguments with Gun and I were learned, much the same and more thoughts of Rachael, much the same were acquired. We even learned what all these scientists had learned over the past 20 years… nothing. They had only learned more questions rather than answers, questions of scientific properties I didn’t want to learn.
Though the most disturbing thing in Gun’s mind that he had learned, was that there was a 10ml sample of us in a glass cube. Gun knew where it was and shot a new, longer reaching tentacle to retrieve what was rightfully ours. The glass was broken and another 20 years of bright microscope lights and inert chemical reactions filled out minds. If I was in control, I would have sat down to analyze and piece together some of the newly acquired information to help solve my mystery, but Gun was a man of action and I also agreed that were should escape now. I could have thought about things while Gun was in control, but I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t help, but watch the violence for I no other choice than to hear and feel it too. I couldn’t do anything as long as Gun killed people.
Gun decided to give himself some sort of form, because he was tired of the blob. With the amount of liquid we had, he was able to form us into a snake. Gun didn’t feel that his choice reflected his personality, but it was more of a proportionally different version of what he had been doing for the past day. Plus he wanted something that everyone should know how to fear.
Gun bubbled, for he didn’t know how to speak like I did, so he laughed as best he could. Then he shot out at a soldier and killed him, then like water flowing through the cracks of a downhill stream, Gun flowed like water as blood splattering and bone crunching echoes filled the room, drowning out the screams.
It was a matter of only a minute, before every human being was dead on the ground, except for one scientist. Gun spared him purposely, because he was lucky to find out where to go last time. Gun coiled around the man’s torso as well as neck and spoke through him. Gun asked, “Where is the rest of me?”
The scientist pleaded, “Don’t kill me! I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you. One is in Montreal and the other is in the new base where we covered it up as being a new gold mine strike; that one’s in Alaska. I don’t know specifically where, but people should know where it is. Ok, I told you.”
Gun complained, “They certainly spread these things apart.”
Despite filling his usefulness and feeling very afraid about his mind being controlled he spoke again to prolong his life. “Yes they do. They spread them obviously to lower the chances of you remerging. You know, us two could become partners, we could be rich!”
Gun said, “Perhaps…” His snake tail slithered up the scientist’s chest a rather uncomfortably comfortable way and he stroked his neck. “…Not.” Gun broke the scientist’s back in three different places, because of Gun’s sadistic embrace. “I already have a partner I don’t want.”
Gun then, with his newly added body mass, completely coated the man’s skin and Gun became the master and the scientist became the slave to Gun’s will. Gun had the perfect disguise now to enter the base either in Montreal or Alaska with out having to be stealthy. As well, he could leave this base undetected too.
Gun wasn’t going to waste his time, controlling that man’s body, so he went straight into action. Gun moved the scientist’s body in a very casual, unsuspicious form, which was very peculiar based on what I knew about Gun. Gun lifted the man’s arm and extended his finger to press the “up button” on the elevator. The door opened and we entered the car. We began to ascend to the ground floor and Gun started to get ready for his act.
The doors slid open and there were another 50 soldiers pointing their guns at Gun. Gun, being crafty as could be, controlled the corpse to be like a very injured and scared man. The corpse clutched his stomach and hunched over and both knees were bent, barely able to support the weight. Gun spoke through the scientist, “Don’t shoot! I’m a scientist! Aqueous is still down there.” Gun stumbled out of the elevator and crawled on the ground a little. The soldiers’ attention shifted to the elevator and stairs to try and get us, but only a few saw that the scientist was now dead.
After a few minutes of waiting on the corpse, paramedics saw the body and put us in a body bag. We were carried onto and ambulance and after a few more bodies were collected, the ambulance drove off. Then after another small passing of time, Gun left the corpse and cut through the body bag. Gun oozed from the hole he cut. A paramedic in the back noticed Gun for only a few seconds, before she got a sharpened tentacle in the face. He continued to slither along the floor and then through the mesh window and then he plopped onto the front seat of the ambulance. The two paramedics in the front stared at him and watched Gun form himself into a snake. The two paramedics both pressed the button to slide open their doors. The doors slid open in less than a second and the two paramedics were rolling along the magnetic highway at along the same time.
Gun formed a crude human figure and took the controls of the vehicle. Gun seemed to know how to drive a vehicle, but the problem was that cars had changed design in the past 20 years. There was a steering wheel and some sort of gas pedal, but those were moved to the side and the whole vehicle operated on one computer interface. Gun realized the wheel he was holding didn’t even budge and that cars drove themselves in the 2020’s. He didn’t want to go back to the hospital, so he fiddled around with the very few buttons on the dashboard.
The windshield turned into a projection image of a silhouette face. It spoke in somewhat a computerized woman’s voice. It spoke to Gun, “Unidentified vehicle user, please state your identity or the authorities will be informed and this vehicle will go under complete lockdown.”
Gun wanted to lie to the computer, but he didn’t know how to talk. He slightly slipped into our consciousness and asked me, “Can you help me? I need you to return a favour.”
I got angry and asked, “What did you ever do for me?”
He replied sternly, “I was your ‘instincts,’ your voice in your head guiding you how to use some of our abilities. I helped you countless time you pathetic child, so you should look up to your elders and teach help them when they need it.”
He seemed to slip out a few clues in that speech, I pretended not to notice. I decided to help him. If his plan was to go to manual control, I would have time to think about the clues I’ve gathered and not have to worry about Gun reading my thoughts; he would be too distracted driving. I quickly explained to him, what to do and he let me take partial control of the liquid, so I could show him how it was done. He quickly caught on and shoved me out of the way.
His voice was still a whisper tone like mine, but he had a harder grip on his liquid that I did, in result his voice was a little deeper and came out a little harder and sharper than my flowing whisper. In a way his voice seemed to have the tone of a distant immigrant from Russia, but not the accent, like the ones the leader of the crime ring would have. I quickly asked him why he had an accent and he replied with great annoyance, “I put it there so others can distinguish me from the like of you!”
I huddled back in my corner and watched Gun talk to the computer. Gun explained to the computer, “I’m the new paramedic. I’m borrowing the ambulance.”
The computer stood there silent for a moment and then explained, “Does not compute. Impossible voice waves.”
Gun saw that his voice was completely impossible for a human to mimic, so Gun wasn’t regarded as a human. He asked, “So what are you going to do now?”
The computer stood still again and processed. It explained, “Impossible voice waves repeatedly processed. Apparent motherboard error. Switching to manual control for self analysis in 25 seconds.”
If Gun had an eyebrow, he would have raised it in the unlikely reason for his victory. The steering wheel shifted into a position that we were familiar with and the pedals opened up and unlocked as well. A smaller screen flipped open and displayed a GPS system. A small keypad opened up and text on the screen asked, “Where is your destination?” Gun didn’t see the harm in doing so, so he poked in the letters “Montreal” and pressed enter. The GPS screen displayed a highlighted route to Montreal and a blinking green dot, to show where Gun was. That was all that he needed, so Gun took the controls and smashed the pedal to the floor and the ambulance raced off at a few hundred kilometers per hour.
Finally, Gun was distracted and I had time to think. I first recapped on all the questions about myself thus far. Like how this all happened and why? Was this transformation a symptom to a disease? I learned that Gun had been my mysterious instincts, but who was he? Was he in control of this body first? Was he my creation? Why did my family not exist when I went to check on it? What actually happened why I first entered the city; what was that sudden shift in my position from and alley to the highway across the town? Who is Rachael, she obviously wasn’t an accountant like she said she was, but then again, she didn’t seem to content with her military job either? Who was Roger Charles and how did he know my old name? Only Rachael knew it. Are Rachael and Charles working for each other? Why were the SWAT and eventually the military, so determined to catch me? What did I do? What is this whole subconscious realm, which Gun and I shift in and out of, really about? Why can we control a certain part of someone’s brain and only the part for speech? Was I really Ozzy Belway, or was my entire life a dream?
I did have many answers and they felt like they would be answered once we merged with the rest of ourselves. I had only a few assumptions and guesses as to what the answers were to these questions. From what our second piece of liquid’s memory suggests, is that our liquid or perhaps myself as well, are not from another planet, but from Earth and from what the scientists predicted, our liquid was created by a genius, an artistic and perfectionist scientist or group of scientists. They had said that the chemical composition of my liquid, which they called, “Blue death,” had a very artificial arrangement and that was all that they could find out. Whatever or whoever created me, covered their tracks well.
Despite my mysteries and confusions, I believed Gun’s mystery to be the cloudiest, despite how many hints I’ve gotten. From what I could see, Gun is very experienced in controlling the liquid and he seems to know a lot about human nature, such as driving and speech. Perhaps he was once like me. From what our second quarter’s memory told me, was that we didn’t say too much to each other like our first quarter, but I mainly waited in anticipation for answers, while Gun seemed nervous about what the scientists could uncover. He also seemed to have his own agenda and I didn’t like his style, I would have to keep guard so I could take control when the opportunity presents itself.
I wasn’t sure about Rachael or Charles. As forthcoming as some of their dialogue and as simple as their characters were, there was something about both of them. Rachael seemed to be in the right place at the right time, all the time and of course, the mysteries about her true occupation and her sudden decision to leave. I wasn’t all that sure if I should trust her or not. Charles was a different story. I knew that there was something suspicious about him. How did he know who I really was and why did I have some sort of uncontrollable distrust for him? Wasn’t Charles just a detective? How did he get control of the SWAT? I wasn’t happy with his style, but I was glad that Gun was recollecting ourselves. Hopefully we’d find someone, who knew all the answers big and small.
Eventually, Gun had realized that I was conspiring inside of him and he dove inside and asked, “What are you doing down there?”
I answered timidly, “Nothing. I was just wondering why Rachael left.”
He sighed and complained, “You whined about that for 20 years, give it up! Focus on the task at hand!”
I agreed and remained at attention, so as not to raise suspicion. Gun drove the ambulance well, despite his background and anatomy. He occasionally drifted onto the other lane and scared the other drivers who were riding on automatic. He also ran numerous red lights, cut people off and drove way over the speed limit. A police patrol did see Gun’s reckless driving and drove alongside the ambulance to try and reason with the driver. However, the policeman soon lost his blood supply due to a severed head. Over all, the trip took five hours and we soon saw our first few signs in French.
When we entered the Montreal boundaries the GPS system made some noise and displayed a local map, rather than a North American map. The keypad emerged again and the screen asked specifically where to go. Gun poked the keys to type “military” and a few addresses were displayed. Gun cycled through the choices and one read, “Military, research.” Gun assumed this is where we were kept, so he pressed enter and the screen gave directions to the Military research facility.
A blockade and numerous UN soldiers blocked the front entrance of the base. Gun pulled the ambulance up to the gate and then quickly sunk to the vehicle’s floor. As Gun opened a hole in the floor to slip through, a soldier with a flashlight (for it was night) paced to the driver’s side and peered into the ambulance.
The soldier spoke in French and demanded, “You’ll have to turn back, we don’t have a medical crisis.” The soldier didn’t get an answer, so he looked closer in the vehicle and realized that no one was driving it. He asked with a questioned tone, “Is anyone in here?” He waved over some of his fellow troopers and he ordered, “It seems we have a glitch in this ambulance’s auto-pilot. The base is under red alert; I’m not taking any chances. Search the ambulance.”
There were three others who helped him search the ambulance. Though the search was over quickly when they noticed one too many bodies for the number of body bags in the back. After some quick autopsy and theorizing, the soldiers knew that only Aqueous could have pulled off this stunt. One soldier noticed the hole in the bottom of the floor and another noticed tracks on the dusty ground, that only a snake could make. The original soldier pulled out his radio and ordered for a base lock-down, but it was too late, Gun had already killed and smashed his way into the main lobby of the facility.
Gun was being repeatedly shot at, but nothing affected him. Gun caught a hold of someone’s neck and dragged him closer. Gun, using his newly acquired speech skills, asked the soldier where the rest of himself was being held. The soldier tried to play hero and not speak, but Gun’s patience had already worn out and Gun killed the soldier.
Gun latched onto another soldier and asked her the same question. She saw what happened to her fellow officer, so she told him, “Take the elevator to the 5th basement. But you’ll need a retinal scan to enter, then walls are Aqueous proof.”
Gun laughed and thanked her, “Thank you for everything. I’ll be taking my keys now.” Gun slithered his grip towards her eyes and took them. The soldier screamed in pain as she clutched where he eyes were and Gun carried the eyeballs to the center of his mass.
The soldiers saw Gun’s plans so they concentrated their aim on the eyes, so he wouldn’t be able to use them. But unfortunately, Gun was too slick and fluid and he slithered along the ground faster than any of them could shoot. Gun cut himself a hole in the elevator door. He put the eyes on the scanner, was confirmed and pressed the 5th basement button. But the elevators had bee shut off, in the lockdown. Gun thought of it to be an excuse to cause some more damage, so he cut a hole in the floor and fell through, dropping the eyes. Gun held the eyes tightly inside him, as he counted five elevator doors as he fell. He latched onto the 5th door and sliced open a way inside.
The room was quiet. There was nothing in the room, but the appearance of a frantic evacuation. There were papers spilled everywhere, broken lamps, unattended boiling flasks of chemicals. The room was similar to the one in Daytona, under a lot more research and a lot less security and safety precautions. Half the lights were turned off and numerous cubicle windows, smashed. Gun’s voice didn’t echo, but if it did, he would have heard it repeat ten times, the room was so silent and dead.
Gun slid across the ground a little further and saw the canister. If I were in control I would have chased after it, but Gun was still this time. He cautiously flowed closer and closer. He was now outside a familiar diameter from his goal and then magnetic-like force and sensing of the two pieces was so unbearable. But Gun stayed still.
Gun reformed himself to our normal proportions and shape, but we were only a pair of legs with no toes, a very skinny torso and a malformed head. Gun formed our true light seeing eyes at our face and stared at the canister with an unbearable feeling of withdrawal.
“Why are you waiting!” I screamed inside our heads. “What are you doing?”
Gun answered, “Little children should learn to be more patient and cautious. There is something not right here.”
Our conversation continued in our minds and I asked, “What do you mean? I see us, right in front of us!”
Gun shouted inside, “Don’t take our blessing for granted! Use your other eyes. Can’t you see them?”
I looked around in infrared, “I see nothing, but cold.”
Gun complained, “You really are useless.” He explained in anger, “Look harder! I can see them. We’re surrounded by at least twenty Special Forces.”
I began to see a slight discolouration of the heat. I asked, “I think I see them. Why don’t you just knock them out?”
Gun yelled at me further with annoyance, “Look harder! They all have heat-absorbing fabrics on, so they look the same temperatures. They are also holding a very familiar heat source. They’re all holding EPPs Emulsifying Plastic Projectiles!”
I asked with fear, “You mean those weird guns that the police were using?” I built my courage up, “I was able to dodge them, surely you can. You were even able to escape them too.”
Gun explained, “These are the best of the best. They don’t miss and we’re surrounded.”
“Just free us already!”
“I can’t! They have one of those damn traps set!”
I looked down and hard and I was vaguely able to see something, but I did see that the trap that had captured us 20 years ago, was there now, around the third canister. I had an idea of what to do and I told Gun. He grudgingly accepted my plan and executed.
He slowly arched over top the canister and placed his other end at the opposite side. He then slowly coated the almost non-existent laser dome around the trap, which I had seen. The laser dome seemed to be the trip wire, which was pretty sneaky, because it was 20 years since their first prototype. Then after feeling the alloy of laser light and small copper molecules, which made up the laser dome, Gun was able to shift his molecules around the passing light and molecules. So by now, Gun was a sphere of his own and was now letting, what looked to be a water droplet, slowly drip down to the canister. The drop detached from Gun and landed silently on the canister lid. The newly made division of Gun’s control, drilled a sharp tentacle into the canister and free our fellow liquid prisoner. Gun now could control the liquid from the canister and latched it and the original droplet to the sphere. Slowly, but carefully Gun had successfully rescued our third quarter of liquid and didn’t set off the trap.
The Special Forces opened fire. Gun had reformed us, to our normal form without any tail or antennae. He leapt into the air from his very still and rigid position. Gun was hit by, but not caught by an EPP, and landed with a few spins along the floor. The flying EPPs had activated the trap and the laser dome went from being a trip wire to the actual dome, transformed into some sort of strong material. Gun leapt on top of the dome, dodging EPPs and then leapt through the ceiling.
He reformed himself, again, our normal self, but without the tail or tentacles. He saw that the ceiling was rather high and was made of a very strong metal. If he managed to jump that high and cling on, he would have to scratch away at the metal for a few minutes at least. So Gun searched for an alternative. He saw a lot of screaming scientists and officer workers, but he was now too big to coat a person and walk out of the facility. I reminded him about his ability to travel through the grains of rock under the earth and he accepted my plan again, grudgingly.
Soldiers with EPPs appeared from the reactivated elevators and from adjacent rooms. They fired and Gun ran. Gun ran towards the far wall with as much acceleration as he could. Gun dove at the wall, made of concrete, and broke a hole in it. He dug a little more and kicked off the EPPs that hit him from behind and soon Gun was swimming with slight difficulty, through the earth.
The earth was very tightly packed, with all the heavy buildings of metal and concrete above, so streaming through the dirt was almost as hard as going through the glass of the canister, with the lack of air. But since we didn’t tire, Gun shifted through the dirt and eventually struck a large pipe. Gun struggled to open it with the lack of air, but got himself through and was absorbed in the flow of rushing water. We traveled down the pipe for a while, trying to keep our liquid together and not get lost in the branched of the pipe system. Soon we saw outside and we were hurled out of the pipe and then into a large swimming pool, with many people in it.
We had came out of a fountain and landed inside a public swimming pool. People screamed and swam out of the pool. All the people in the pool were late teenagers and naked, for they were swimming in the pool at what seemed to be an “Adult” time slot. Gun rose from the water and spread the width of his feet along the surface so he floated; he stood on the water. He walked along the surface and gazed at the few remaining people, who were too scared to swim away.
One man, holding his scared date, asked in fear and curiosity, “Are you Aqueous? I read about you in history class.”
Gun locked eye to eye with him and then gently dipped his leg into the water more, narrowing and merging his foot into his leg.
The man stuttered, he was so scared, but he talked for the sake of begging for forgiveness, “Hey, please now, I don’t want any trouble. You scared everyone off, but I’m here. I… I’m a fan. I researched you from whatever source I could find. You’re a celebrity in my mind!”
The man’s time was almost done. Gun had been slithering a tentacle his way. Instead of filling our liquid with air to extend our appendage, I saw that using water was much more effective, because it was almost the same colour as the water, so it was stealthy. As well, water seemed to feel, more welcome, more compatible, and slicker than air ever could. We didn’t have to worry about gravity pulling down on it or about making the appendages too long and getting weak, because water didn’t seem to let that happen. So Gun burst a water-coloured tentacle from behind the man and coiled it around his neck. The woman let go in fear and the man was hurled out of the pool and onto the deck.
Gun, before running out of the facility, shouted to the man, “Fan’s live.”
Gun ran out, on to the street a saw a store with a very large working compass. Gun saw the sun rising to his left and saw that the compass’s east was in the same direction. To get to Alaska, he would need to head Northwest, across the whole country. Gun looked at the compass again and ran full speed in the direction Alaska would be.