Anomalies

By Christopher Allen Guidry

At the turn of the century, strangely gifted humans encounter unbelievable experiencesand a scientist begins building an army of cybernetic organisms as the foundation of his planned empire.

In a world exactly like ours, a species of extraordinary humans exists. They are called Anomalies; they evolved from Gods and possess amazing gifts. For countless millennia, Anomalies and Gods have lived peacefully alongside humans. But as the twentieth century arrives, all of that is about to change.

At the turn of the century, some Anomalies have grown tired of hiding in the shadows; in response, the government, armed with knowledge of the other species, creates organizations to deal with terroristic threats the Anomalies pose.

Several decades later, Russian scientist Dimitri Gustav, building on Hitlers ideas, begins a campaign of world domination through science and technology. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, he has created numerous cybernetic organisms and genetically engineered creatures. He begins to form his own army, intent on building an empire.

Now, as a series of events begins to unravel, new enemies arise, threatening the anonymity and balance of society the government has accomplishedand possibly preparing to cause a revelation and expose a secret that has been so desperately hidden.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475939972

Christopher Allen Guidry

Christopher Allen Guidry was born in Monticello, Arkansas. He is pursuing a career in journalism and is a fan of the way of words. Christopher currently resides in Corpus Christi, Texas, where he enjoys playing guitar, skateboarding, reading, and acquiring knowledge.

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Anomalies

Christopher Allen Guidry

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Anomalies

Copyright © 2012 by Christopher Allen Guidry

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-3996-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-3997-2 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-3998-9 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012913534

iUniverse rev. date: 9/17/2012

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1: Genesis

Chapter 2: Gli Occhi Della Morte

Chapter 3: Napalm

Chapter 4: Armageddon Man

Chapter 5: The Meeting

Chapter 6: Libertine & Antilion

Chapter 7: Anomaly Black Operatives

Chapter 8: Alessandro Moretti

Chapter 9: Oh Fairest Queen of the Gods

Chapter 10: Buffalo Mountain

Chapter 11: Memories

Chapter 12: The War Begins

Chapter 13: Old Friends, New Enemies

Chapter 14: Fort Meade

Chapter 15: Yusuf Reprogrammed

Chapter 16: Charles Behringer Returns

Chapter 17: Only Time Will Tell

Chapter 18: White Tiger Army

Chapter 19: Revelation

Acknowledgments

From the bottom of my heart, I would like to thank all that has inspired me and driven me. Science and mythology, which heavily influenced me to begin writing this book. The internet for providing an endless supply of research. And the books and comic books I read as a kid. Without them, my imagination would be drier than a desert.

My grandfather, Wallace Guidry, who has made all of this and my entire life possible. He is my rock. My mother, Patricia Guidry. None of us would be able to walk this Earth without our mothers. My sister, Gabrielle Williams, who has always lent an ear when I needed it. My aunt, Keke Michelle Robinson, who has always been serious when it comes to my endeavors and hobbies. She is also a writer and has given me the willpower to let my voice be heard from a very young age. She has become my biggest inspiration in writing. To my former English teachers, especially Ms. Shook and Mrs. Manjarris, who pushed me in my writing skills and techniques and gave me everything I needed to evolve from poet to author. To my friend, Robert, who was the only friend I could talk to about Anomalies, and always listened. His advice and knowledge of science and mythology has helped me to better understand my own story. Most of all I would like to thank the author, Dean R. Koontz, who has always been a big inspiration to my literary work and imagination. Above all, he is my favorite and most compelling writer. Thank you for continuing to wow me. And, of course to poetry, which helped me to discover my love of writing.

A·nom·a·ly

n. pl. a·nom·a·lies

1. Deviation or departure from the normal or common order, form, or rule.

2. One that is peculiar, irregular, abnormal, or difficult to classify

Prologue

It started with Light and Time. Light created Life, and Time created Death. When the two offspring came into being, a cycle was also created. From there, the planets, suns, moons, dimensions, and galaxies were created. Next, the elements came into being. A realm mildly similar to our planet was the domain for a few hundred Gods.

The divine beings were accidentally forged from the creation of Life and Death. These beings lived in this realm overlooking all the galaxies. The most beautiful of the planets was Earth. Many Gods and Goddesses regarded the planet as a plaything of beauty. From time to time, they would travel through time and space to Earth for recreation.

It was often a battleground between rivals, due to its vast, changing landscape. Some Gods would even travel there to commit acts of passion. Somehow, a Goddess got pregnant and had a baby on Earth. The different terrain changed the creature’s biological and atomic structure. It became susceptible to sickness, pain, and a purpose to one day, surrender to Death.

It also inherited God-like powers and a lust for blood, war, and power. Little did the Goddess know she was not the only one making this lethal mistake. Many of these creatures were born.

We know them as anomalies in present day. The anomalies were left on Earth to fend for themselves. After inhabiting Earth for a while, life began to conjure creatures in the sea. At the same time, the sea creatures adapted by evolving the power to walk on land, fly in the air and to either hunt or use the earth for its precious vegetation. Many of these creatures possessed abilities unique to their species, such as the sonar of a bat or a dog’s sense of smell. The energy fluctuation of the anomalies changed the evolution strain dramatically.

As this was happening, many anomalies were coming into the world. They had started a civilization. Some of the Gods used these anomalies to satisfy their lust. Some of the children of these circumstances were born without powers. These were the first humans. Both anomalies and humans were born of the image of the Gods. To discern whether Gods are humanoid or not is nearly impossible, for humans evolved from Gods.

The new world continued and the anomalies ruled with their powers. All humans were slaves to the anomalies. Then one day, a human began to fight with an anomaly and the human killed him. The human persuaded all the humans to follow him away from the anomalies, so that they may live their own lives. He was tired of being a slave to a race that could be killed as easily as he could. So they ventured to another land and the two races bloomed.

In the book of Genesis of The Holy Bible, God represents the anomalies. God telling Adam and Eve to never eat from the Tree of Knowledge represents the anomalies wanting to hide their secret of vulnerability. And the act of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil represents the Adams, who were the first human males and the Eves, the first human females, acquiring knowledge that had been forbidden by the anomalies. The snake that persuaded Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit can then be seen as the first human to kill an anomaly. Even though anomalies had Godly abilities, they were still as vulnerable as humans. The apple being one of the universal symbols of knowledge is based on this story.

It is said that the seasons were to take control of Earth, due to the unexpected sprout of life on the planet. The seasons took over and the world began to shape itself according to what Life and Death preferred for a population that was so unpredictable. Supposedly, that’s how the world began.

Early on in Earth life around 3000 B.C., the season Winter produced offspring in the image of the Gods, two sons and one daughter. The daughter was known as Aurora and the sons were December and Frostbite. December and Aurora spent much time in the Gods’ realm, but never fit in since they were born of Earth. Frostbite was a Spawn of Death and destroyed anyone who tried to belittle him or his kin. Aurora was born of ice and water. December, born of rage and snow. Frostbite, born of death and cold.

Aurora spent more time on Earth than her siblings. She had become fascinated with the anomaly races. She admired that such a weak-willed and weak-hearted race could hold almost enough power to kill a God or Goddess themselves. She found it scary, yet exciting. She began to spend much time in human form to study the people closer.

She began to wonder if an imperfect man could satisfy her lust. She did and found that they were useful after all. Later, she seduced an anomaly and became pregnant with his child. A God or Goddesses’ powers were very versatile. They could create their own anomaly vessel to look however they wanted. They all possessed many abstract gifts.

Aurora could only feel the child in her womb, when she was in her lesser form. While in her Godly state, she could feel the power manifesting within her. She left the child with the anomaly man and proceeded to find a way to produce a child whose power would rival hers. She found the right anomaly after a hundred years of searching. She knew that this child was the one, because she felt drained and weak, every time she changed into her mortal state. The baby was born a girl and named Glacia.

She was raised to believe that humans and anomalies were lower on the food chain than they were. They were Goddesses and they could rule the entire planet if they wanted to. Glacia grew fast since of course, she was only part human. She didn’t age slowly like the Gods and Goddesses. Once she was of age, she and her mother began wreaking havoc across the lands. Soon, they created their own country. Aurora named the vast city, Atlantis.

The world was tormented for what felt like an eternity. After many failed attempts of resistance, a young sorcerer and his band of anomalies found a way to stop the madness of Aurora and Glacia.

Only someone with the God gene in their DNA or a Syren could kill a God. The sorcerer found a spell that would seal the souls of him and his coven, along with the souls of Aurora and Glacia in an eternal tomb. They made their way to Atlantis, which was located out in the ocean.

She had seized a piece of land and held humans and anomalies captive to build her gargantuan city. Once they arrived, they found the two women in a small castle-pyramid-looking structure. They engaged in God-Anomalic nuclear war. This came to be known as The Anomalic War.

The power of the sorcerer, Bermuda, was enough to wound the almighty beings. For his final attack, he sealed the entire city at the bottom of the ocean. The recoil of the spell shook the planet and shifted the plates of the Earth. This caused Pangaea to break and spread, and the entire globe to change. This spell also forced them to sacrifice their souls to guard the eternal prison. Glacia’s soul was too mortal and was destroyed in the spell.

Aurora’s soul was split in half and half of her powers were sealed in The Bermuda Triangle. The other half was forced to reassemble itself of the ocean. Once she respawned, she poked her head above the water and looked around for the island. But it was nowhere to be found. She could see pieces of land moving through water which threw her direction off. She no longer knew where she had come from so long ago.

She couldn’t use her powers to the full potential after the banishing. She couldn’t travel to Godrealm any longer. She still possessed her shape shifting abilities. From then on, she focused on one thing. She had to have another child like Glacia. For eternity she seduced the strongest of all anomaly men, trying to have the perfect child.

In ancient Japan, around 1100 A.D., a woman who was the last of the original anomaly bloodline gave birth to twin sons. The first to be born was Toshihiro Katsaguya and the other was named Sojin Katsaguya. Their father was a shogun whose faith lay in the fact that everyone should be a warrior at one time or another. His sons trained at the dojo where boys received a rank of nobility such as samurai. Some boys were anomalies and went to the top of their classes.

The Katsaguya brothers were like nothing anyone had ever seen before. They had Godly stealth, agility, and alertness. They could bend their body into different shapes and textures. They could even blend with the night air. Toshihiro graduated onto becoming a samurai. Sojin graduated to being a ninja. They both went on to become assassins.

They joined the same clan. Sojin turned his back on them when he received a hit for a family member. Sojin went on so many suicide missions that the entire country had came to know him as Kamikaze. Soon after, all the dojos began a war with each other. This came to be known as The First Anomalic War, as the story of Atlantis became more and more of a myth. The last battle came out to be between the two brothers.

Sojin was using his twin-katanas and Toshihiro was using his naginaki. They fought till the death and killed each other simultaneously. After death, they were summoned to a place called Judgment where they were offered the chance to return to Earth with a few exceptions. They would become Syrens, which were immortal, but dead Demigods.

They would no longer be able to feel emotion. They were not allowed to return with their faces. Their powers were unlocked to the fullest ability. They would be locked at the age at which they died. Their body was still technically dead. This meant that they did not have to eat, sleep, or relieve themselves. Theses were the conditions and restrictions. They both agreed.

The younger brother took death and Syrenilization as a wake-up call. Sojin began to use his powers to help mankind. On the other hand, Toshihiro tried to utilize the advantage of already being dead. The brothers could morph their bodies and faces to resemble anyone they wanted. After a couple of centuries, Toshihiro found out that he became stronger every time he killed another Syren.

A God, a Demigod, or another Syren could kill a Syren. Killing other Syrens wasn’t enough for Toshihiro. He wanted to rid himself of the weakness, so he would have the wrath of a God. The power to kill Gods was what separated Gods and Demigods from all the other races out there. He thought maybe if he killed enough Syrens, he would bring forth the shred of the souls of his God and Goddess ancestors.

Sojin changed his ways after getting a second chance at life. He vowed that he would help mankind at all costs. Soon after Syrenilization, he discovered his brother’s homicidal intentions. He began a hunt to protect Humans, Anomalies and Syrens that got in his brother’s way. The sibling rivalry would go on for centuries.

Long ago, when the Earth became inhabited, some Gods would interact with Humans and Anomalies. Some would do so in a positive way and some in a deadly way. One particular God named Tyrant took pleasure in devouring others.

The tastes of their souls mildly quenched an unnamable thirst he continually suffered from. He had gone to a human’s house and grabbed him by his jugular vein and a sense of righteousness came over Tyrant and it happened.

The cold, yet warm beads of silvery, black, and yellow energy floated into his body. He had dropped the lifeless, colorless, and morbid corpse, feeling an intense, sudden, and invigorating sense of fulfillment. He had tried it on other humans, and then anomalies. He became greedy and began to try it on his fellow Gods, when he would return to his own dimension.

Soon, he was caught and sentenced to banishment from the God realm by Xalion, King of the Gods. He was stripped of his immortality and shape shifting abilities. He became an Earthling by force. He also became the first Syren. He died as a God, and was reborn as an anomaly. Life and Death automatically granted Judgment the power to put future anomalies through syrenilization. Casting a God down from their realm forced the laws of existence to acquire about the sudden change in Life and Death. The Gods were not able to strip him of his soul devouring power.

He was cursed to walk Earth for all eternity. He needed to gain enough power to become a Demigod, then a God. As a God, he hoped he would be able to travel back through Judgment to the God Realm. Once there, he would take revenge on those who had made him one of the weak, emotion-filled, and vulnerable earthlings who were only made to be his meals.

Some anomalies were actually strong enough to escape him. Many who did told stories of him to their children and grandchildren. He never stayed in one place, so his existence faded into nothing but a myth. The world that knew of him branded him the name Carnivore in a storytelling manner.

Dimitri Gustav was born in Tambov, Russia in 1909. He was a dark-haired boy with fair skin. Growing up, he was always a bit on the skinny side. He was never overweight or muscular, and not as tall as other people his age. He went through puberty a little later than other boys and always felt he was a lesser being.

He had grown up and graduated from an institute in Moscow with a degree in Physiological Biology and Mutation. After many years, he began doing recombinant DNA research. He specialized in research on anomalies after a few years in the field. By the 1400’s, the anomaly civilization chose to go into hiding to fit in with the human race, which was dominating the earth by means of power, war, and reproduction.

All stories of people with gifts became just stories from the imaginations of the humans. Only the privileged still knew of their existence. They were the basis of thousands of different mythologies. Dimitri got the opportunity and was informed of the race through a special Russian military seminar in Moscow. They were his employers at the time.

After becoming obsessed with his projects and spending too much of their money, they fired him. They told him he could either be shot, or leave the country and never come back. He chose the latter and traveled through Ukraine and Poland, before finally winding up in Germany in 1935. He applied at many institutes and began his research again, but in secret. He worked and discovered many things.

Once Adolf Hitler began his Reich, all German scientists were ordered to contribute to his cause or be charged with treason and sentenced to death. Gustav didn’t object for he valued life. He had believed he was meant to make his mark on the world all his life.

So he began a series of projects that Hitler wanted developed personally by Gustav. The fuhrer had heard of his insane, yet determined tenacity when working. He was able to succeed with two experiments. He had progressed to testing. The object of the first experiment was to combine DNA from an anomaly, an animal, and humans.

The fuhrer relied on the possibility of granting the perfect humans the chance to control matter, defy physics, and conjure evolution among other things. He also wanted to unlock the full potential of the brain so that it could be used one hundred percent. More than anything, the fuhrer longed to convert his strand to that of anomalies. But he wanted to research many abilities before he decided which one to acquire. The anomaly Gustav was given to use had the ability to synthesize living molecules with his.

His blood was carefully replenished and used regularly. Gustav used the blood of other anomalies with various powers. But he began doing many secret experiments for his personal gain. Hitler was told of this and he sentenced Gustav to incarceration for conspiracy to commit treason. Gustav also received word of the plan of punishment for him.

The year was 1939. He got all the serums, which he had finally finished. He had designed them to the best of his knowledge and much reference to all of the tests he had done. He had not yet tested them on live human tissue. If he was to be locked away or killed, then all of his work would go anywhere he did. True, the fuhrer had given him all the ideas, but the breakthroughs and discoveries were his to claim.

He knew he would not be able to escape holding the large vials, so he did the only thing he could do. He got the first vial, inserted it into the syringe and injected himself. Then with briskness, he administered the other four. As he was injecting the others, he felt changes in his skin; muscles, bones, brain and he began to feel the blood that moved within his veins.

As his skin began to morph, German soldiers opened the door and shuddered at the sight of the scientist. His head appeared to be expanding away from his collarbone, his neck lengthening and retracting. His hands were morphing into claws and his mouth was stretching wide.

The soldiers opened fire and Gustav shrieked as the bullets tore at his skin. As the hale subsided, he looked at one of his wounds, only to see the bullet dissolve and the silver liquid ooze out of the wound and onto the floor. The wound closed itself as his face began morphing into various shapes of heads from the wild jungles.

He looked at the desk and grabbed the file on his other successful experiment as the soldiers opened fire again. He shrieked as he hopped over the desk with swiftness and grace, hopping out the small window afterwards. He was too big for the window and took a large piece of the laboratory’s wall. He fell six stories to the ground and was gone by the time the soldiers ran over to the exposed wall to look down.

Gustav ran and ran. Running felt so free. He had never run much in his younger days, but now it felt so inviting. He ran and ran towards the direction he figured Russia was in. He had been thinking single-mindedly after he jumped from the lab window. As he received the thought of his hometown, he had intense jolts of knowledge rack his brain.

He began to think of equations, formulas, and knowledge and awareness of nature. His mind was whirling like a cerebral tornado. He continued to travel East towards his home country. He had no problem crossing any borders. He didn’t stop until he got a whiff of the scent of Russia. A scent for a country, he thought, what is happening to me? He found an abandoned hangar; where he settled down to build his own laboratory. His body, head, and face morphed continually. His brain began to open itself around every basic topic that popped into his head.

When the thought of having his own laboratory sprung up in his head, his mind almost told him what to do and what steps to take to get the job done. When he began to think about his body, and what he was morphing into, his body started taking distinct animal forms. He had experimented with the DNA in thousands of animals, which were all combined in those five vials.

He began to practice on separating them so he could determine how many different forms he had. After two and a half weeks of diligently trying to master his transformations, he was finally able to pin it down to eight different animals. He also noticed that each form had anomalic abilities and enhanced senses. The eight are as follows: A red fox, a peregrine falcon, a snow leopard, a killer whale, a vole, a wildebeest, a ferret, and surprisingly, something closely resembling a jackrabbit. The jackrabbit had headpieces that looked more like horns than antlers, making it seem like a jackalope. They were curved forward instead of up, as if waiting to hook and kill.

The peregrine falcon had talons for hands and feet. Its wings protruded from openings in his back, where a human’s shoulder blades would be. All the forms had super-human thinking and their bodies were upright and resembled humans with the animal’s head.

The red fox’s powers were that he had a strong sense of smell. When he slashed his claws, he could fling energy from them. The peregrine falcon could fly at speeds up to 120 mph, he later found out. It could also see things that were too far of a distance for the human eye.

The snow leopard did not feel cold, so Gustav figured that he must be immune to low temperatures. He also could shoot a beam from his eyes that froze anything it touched. The killer whale allowed him to swim at high speeds and breathe underwater. The vole was able to multiply itself many times and reattach itself.

The wildebeest had super strength and a heavy set of horns on his head that he later discovered could go through steel. The ferret was super-humanly agile, very fast, and as alert as having a sixth sense. The jackalope could hop very high and very fast. His horns were also protected by armor but were not as strong as the wildebeest’s.

While he was mastering the shape shifting, he was mildly aware of the fact that he had not been able to transform into his human form in the weeks since the accident. He also later discovered that he could only speak in his human voice in the ferret, the jackalope, and the snow leopard forms. Once his newfound gifts were mostly mastered, he began to travel the country to locate different military buildings. He made sure not to forget the scent of the place where his lab would be established. He knew laboratories and other places of military affiliation, such as his old employers, were the only sites at which he would find the right parts to begin the remodeling of the hangar.

He found what he needed and finished making his lab. By messing with the power grid of Russia, he was able to get power running to the large building. Once finished, he knew he must carry on with the other project he’d salvaged from his escape: Project Decimate.

Project Decimate was another experiment thought up by Hitler himself. He wanted to find a way to build a machine but make it half man, so it would understand commands. Gustav found a way to use a serum to reanimate living human tissue with machinery fused into the DNA.

He remembered how he had succeeded with the animal serums. Hitler wanted to improve the human body’s condition. The white blood cells’ operation would speed up, making sure nothing got inside. But, if it did, then they would work extremely fast to repair the damaged tissue. He got to work gathering weapons from a couple of military army depots.

He knew that if the reanimation/assembly were to work, he would want his creation to have a good means of protecting himself. He organized the parts around the table, went to the nearest air base and observed a pilot whom he had been scouting from afar.

He knocked him unconscious, when no one was around him, then used the falcon to fly him back to his lab. There, he bound the subject to the table, inside the mass of items Gustav gathered. They included a muzzle from a tank, a couple of jet engines, an assortment of thick armor plating, a couple of machine artillery guns, two rocket launching apparatuses, two toy jet plane wings and a laser that Russian weapon scientists had recently invented.

He slipped a jet fighter pilot helmet over his head. It was the one the pilot was carrying when Gustav kidnapped him. He had to wait for the pilot to gain consciousness before proceeding to the next step. Once the subject awoke, Gustav injected him with a serum that sedated him and made him forget his memories, except for his basic ones. Once it kicked in, he injected the Decimate serum into his brain. He stepped back waiting for something to happen. Nothing did, so he went over the table and sighed, then BOOM.

A deafening explosion came from the direction the lab table was at. The table with the tools and Gustav had been flung against the wall. After an unknown amount of seconds, Gustav opened his eyes. With blurred vision, he looked at the table and saw a magnificent result.

The body’s reaction to the serum and the metal had been successful. He went over to the table to marvel at the spectacle. His face under the helmet had not changed at all. The rocket apparatuses had become his shoulders. His biceps were barely visible under the metal. His hands seemed to come out of the tubes where the barrels of the machine guns should have been.

The jet engines and the wings were under him, now part of his back. His entire lower body was covered in the armor plating. His forearms, which still held the shape of its human form, were shiny silver. His chest was now the front end of a jet, which was vertical instead of pointing out.

The tank’s muzzle ran along his spine into a socket in his lower back area, as if vertically welded to it. His eyes were still closed, but the reaction should have brought him back from his sedation. He threw water on the machine man’s face. He continued to lie there lifelessly for the next ten, twenty, thirty minutes.

Gustav mentally prepared to accept it as a failure. He knew the chances were slim of the experiment being a success. He began to think about what could have gone wrong and soon it came to him what the vessel was missing. If he were truly to be half man, half machine, he would need two brains and two hearts. He instantly knew what he had to do. He flew back to the nearest military base once again. There he slaughtered all the security that stood in his way. He went to the heart of the technology unit. There, he carefully removed the motherboard and the microchip of the super-computer.

He flew back to his lab and set the motherboard atop the subject’s chest. He looked for some sort of port around his head, but couldn’t find one. He started to think about where else he could place it, and many ideas popped into his mind. One idea was interesting to him. He went over to the pilot, grabbed his chin, and pulled his mouth open. He gently placed the microchip on his tongue, so it would not fall down his throat. It dissolved on his tongue briskly and Gustav emitted a cry of disappointment. Then abruptly, his tongue started glowing.

The light ran up through his face and head and down to his chest and through his limbs. It continued to flow through his body until his entire corpus was glowing an electric blue. After a few seconds of being lit up, the pilot opened his eyes.

His pupils were glowing the same color. He sat up, looking around wide-eyed, and his body’s lights diminished as his eyes came to rest on Gustav. The mother board was no longer on his chest. He stammered, who…who…

Gustav finished his sentence, Who am I? You may call me Father. Gustav began to think about what he would call the creature. He was sure that would be the next question the subject thought of. Once the project had been completed, Hitler wanted to name the creature The Decimator.

Remembering the fact that he was a pilot to begin with, he found the perfect fix. The creature stammered again, who…am…I? Gustav replied, You are The Aviator He repeated his name after Gustav said it, The Aviator. He said, Where am I? Gustav replied, You are at home, my son. Gustav had grown up with parents who expected greatness from him.

They had forgotten to love; they only remembered to care about him. The Aviator was the first being he found himself able to care about in a long time. He gave him the nickname Yusuf, which had been the name of Gustav’s grandfather, whom he loved more than his own parents. Gustav had been in his ferret form when interacting with Yusuf, because the ferret was closest to his human form and seemed the smartest form.

Gustav and Yusuf became familiar with each other’s powers. Yusuf became aware of the many forms that Gustav could summon. Gustav helped Yusuf to master his body’s weaponry. It took Yusuf a little over four months to get a hold on his abilities. The Aviator was a sight to be seen.

He could morph his hands into machine guns, with infinite ammo, at will. His shoulders shot rockets, which seemed to reload themselves once they were shot. Gustav would shoot him with a leftover RPG that he had stolen long ago. Yusuf’s armor was not susceptible to the deadly weapon.

He took the blast with no feeling of pain and no scratches on his armor. He could use the turbines and wings on his back for aerial movement. He could fly at speeds faster than Gustav’s falcon. Last, but not least, he was able to bring the tank muzzle down to fit over his shoulder. The ammunition for the muzzle was the recently invented laser he’d stole from the scientists.

The blast had enough power to wipe out a small town. Yusuf’s body was a complex concept. If you felt his neck, you could feel a heartbeat. If you cut what little skin he had left, it would open. Then it would repair itself the way a machine repairs itself in a few seconds.

The two creatures developed a father-son relationship. The one thing that had forced Gustav to continually work on the Decimate project was that he had not found a way to strip the vessel of its emotions, once the experiment was done. Hitler had wanted a machine man that would take orders without question and to be able to kill Jews without any remorse.

Due to the recent struggles in Gustav’s life, he had taught Yusuf that being different was better than being a human. He told him about the savagery of human nature. Gustav had learned to accept his difference and forgot his former human burdens. Humans had caused him all the grief and depression in his life.

Before he’d become the multi-animal creature, he had found happiness researching anomalies and everything about them. Hitler, another human had ruined everything for him. But on that fateful day, he was born again. He rejoiced of his new self periodically. Yusuf and Gustav had come to loathe humans all together. Gustav had taught him that they were way more important than humans. He only needed his armor and weapons for protection.

Then one night while Yusuf slept, something happened. Gustav was sitting with his eyes closed, thinking very contently. He had only thought of the human faultiness on the spur of the moment. He had become clear-headed as he was telling his machine son the morals without stories.

That was the clearest thought he had himself ever since that escape from Hitler nine months ago. They had lived nicely in those months. Gustav was the only one who required nourishment. He had stolen a large freezer, which he had carried from two towns away with the strength of the wildebeest. He had the freezer stocked with many meats and vegetables.

When he thought of his newfound diet, he remembered that most animals were either carnivores or omnivores. He figured if he ate only meat and vegetables, then the strength of all his forms would never deplete. Yusuf did not require any form of nourishment whatsoever.

That was another thing that Hitler had envisioned. He wanted The Decimator to be human so that if a malfunction occurred, he would be able to destroy it easier. This required the vessel to need no fuel, no food, no use for the bathroom, and virtually no vulnerability.

But it was Gustav who’d discovered all these things. Yusuf only had to sleep for almost four hours for every three days that he was awake. His body acted like a rechargeable battery while he slept. Yusuf could see places around the world by coordinates, something that Gustav had not been responsible for.

He was planning to fly to America soon to the land of which he had heard in countless stories growing up in Russia. The citizens, who were envious, spoke of the land of opportunity. He had felt so clear-headed at that moment that his never-resting brain had slowed itself to the speed he remembered using as a human. As this happened, he began to feel his skin change. He opened his eyes to the sight of his fur morphing into human tissue.

He panicked and tried to turn back into the ferret. It didn’t work and he looked at Yusuf, sleeping with his open electric blue eyes recharging. He thought of how he’d never been able to turn back to his human form. He had lost touch with his humanity and had taught Yusuf to hate humans. What would he think when he woke up and saw him standing there in a human body?

Gustav did the only thing he thought he could do and left. He walked naked in the cold until he came to a house. The owners let him in asking what had happened. He told them he’d been attacked and stripped of his clothes. While in their washroom, he noted his reflection in the small mirror.

He had always been short and a bit skinny growing up. But the man staring back at him was tall and muscular; He was toned and looked exactly the age he’d been when he fled Germany, in his mid-thirties. A black thin beard covered his cheeks, mouth, chin, and neck. His skin was still fair, but held more color than the last time he had looked at himself in the mirror. He put on the clothes that the nice family had given him. He thanked them after receiving a cup of hot cocoa. He left before they could question him more on the night’s events. He walked to the nearest tracks and hopped on a moving train.

He was awoken in another country by another hitcher. He asked the poor man where they were and he told him they were in England. This was fine because he had taken three years of English while in college in Russia. He knew he would be able to fit in until he could regress to his animal forms. Then, he would fly back to the lab using the falcon and the scent of the fox. For the time being, he would have to make the best of it.

When Yusuf awoke he called out to his father only to find that he was nowhere to be seen. He thought over and over why he would leave. The only place they had ever talked about going was America. He located the coordinates with his mainframe and wondered if he should wait a little longer. He waited five hours before finally saying goodbye to his hangar of a home. Then he took off, flying away from the snow-covered building.

Farther and farther, passing over an ocean, he finally reached some of the coordinates he had calibrated. He flew around wondering where to look for his father first. While flying around, he was confronted by three jets. Their voice seemed to come out of their planes. This made Yusuf think that they were creatures just like him.

They told him to identify himself, come down, or be shot down. Gustav had taught him only a little English and Yusuf could not understand the machine men. He started to move his arms around to use his hands to communicate with them. As he started moving his hands, fighter jets opened fire. When Yusuf saw a missile coming toward him, he also opened fire.

He shot a rocket from his shoulder at the nearest one. Its engine exploded and the pilot ejected himself. Yusuf saw this and remembered