Janice Jennings Part 2

Janice needed Lucas. He is an anomaly in the world of apostle biology. Janice has tired to figure out what exactly he is, but he fall into any one category. He is a peculiar case for her.

Lucas is neither completely organic, or completely angelic. He has the anatomy of an organic apostle, however, he can heal wounds spontaneously. Organic apostles can not do that. They are incapable of regeneration before death. They also require at least some food to survive. Lucas, from what she has seen and heard, doesn't eat.

He is also not angelic. It doesn't take that much to realize that. Angelic apostles don't have organs. They have a core. Lucas doesn't have a core, therefore, he isn't angelic.

Janice inquired what he could possibly be. She felt she often repeated the same thoughts, but that was all she could do. Apostles only come in two categories, that's what she's come to know through hundreds of examples, but Lucas single-handedly shattered that perception.

Lucas was new. He was something other than an apostle, but certainly not human. His origins were still a mystery, and she doubted he would tell her how he came to exist. Lucas isn't exactly a model example of honesty. She also couldn't figure out why he took on the appearance of a real person. A dead one at that.

Her theories ranged from there being a second rift that opened, releasing new types of apostles, to things that were completely outlandish, like Lucas being the one responsible for the rapture. Needless to say, she ruled out that second hypothesis.

Lucas' unconscious body lay in the middle of the lab. Foam still leaked from his mouth. Janice went to one side of the lab and grabbed a paper towel. She wiped his mouth and threw the towel away. She got up behind him and lifted him. She took him up the stairs to the platform, opened the door, and brought him through.

She placed him on a table. The surrounding room was like the laboratory, but it had a lot more equipment just laying around. Saws, scissors, needles, flasks, and much more. It was also much larger.

There were doors, but these weren't the usual doors locked by terminals. These were vault doors. Hundreds of pounds of solid steel, many inches thick. They were meant to keep things in, no matter the size or strength.

These rooms were cells for apostles. However, Janice didn't bother putting Lucas in one of them. She had a better idea, but she wanted to do some tests.

To confirm that Lucas could in fact regenerate his cells, she took a pair of scissors. They were very clean. She could see her face being reflected off the surface of the scissors. They were also very sharp. This was her favorite pair.

She took the scissors and brought them closer to Lucas' face. She grabbed his golden hair, and swiftly cut a large chunk of it off. She held his hair in her hands.

She examined the hair closely. She watched as the top began to slowly disappear. She could see what looked like smoke being emitted from it. Hair is so small that the flakes appear like smoke.

She could see the part where she had cut the hair start to regrow. It continued until the hair returned to the state it had been in before she had cut it. She was fascinated. It was unlike anything she had ever seen.

The table Lucas was on had wheels. She rolled him to a different side of the lab. She placed Lucas inside an X-ray machine. She wanted to see if Lucas really did have either organs or a core.

She took many images. When she inspected them, she was surprised. Lucas did in fact have organs, but none of them were functioning. The only ones that did was his heart and lungs. She was at a loss. How interesting, she thought.

She put him back on the table and put on gloves and a medical gown. She took Lucas' shirt off and wielded an incision knife. She made sure to put a mask on him to make sure he stayed asleep. She didn't mark where she wanted to cut, she just went ahead and cut through his skin and flesh. She wanted a good look inside him but she came across a thwarting problem. She couldn't cut fast enough before Lucas' body began to heal itself.

Janice wanted to try something. She stuck the knife inside of his stomach and she left it there. She didn't cut any further than that. She simply pierced his abdomen and left it there. She waited a minute before pulling it out. As soon as she did, the wound healed. The knife was completely fine.

His wounds wouldn't heal if something obstructed them. She found this to be quite interesting.

The blood on her knife flaked and disappeared. She didn't bother cleaning anything. There wasn't anything to clean anyway.

Janice collected her thoughts. She wanted to find more answers, but she ended up with more questions. None of his organs except for his heart and lungs worked. If that was the case for a regular organic apostle, not even they could live through that. Lucas had no core as far as she could see with those X-ray images. So how was he even alive? There had to be a variable she was missing. Something she hadn't found as of yet.

Something clicked within her mind. She ran back to her monitor in the other room. She checked the camera footage. She went back to when she had seen those holes in the walls open. She watched as Lucas punched the air, and a hole was put through whatever he aimed at. It was hard to see, but she saw a familiar distortion effect. She slowed down the footage and saw as Lucas punched, a gust of distorted wind would brush past him and right into the spot where the hole was opened.

She squinted her eyes and leaned in, trying to get a closer view of what was there. She could see distortions behind Lucas. This wasn't enough. She went further back in the camera footage and into his bedroom. She saw him laying down again. She slowed down the footage once again. She could see light being refracted in a certain spot of the room as she had the last time. There really was something there. She wasn't crazy.

Lucas had something following him around that gave him these powers. It was invisible to her, and she didn't know if Lucas could see it. He may be unaware of the thing that followed him.

She sped up the footage. She saw Lucas quickly turn over, and she paused the footage, slowed it down to the normal speed, and unpaused it. She zoomed in on Lucas' face. The footage was low-quality, especially when zoomed in like this, but she could clearly see him looking at something. She expanded the view to see both him and the distortion of light in the room. Lucas was looking at it.

Janice sat back. There it was. Lucas could see what was following him. He knew about this the entire time he was here.

He knew about his abilities. He knew he wasn't human. He deliberately tried to deceive both her and Stella.

Janice was done with him. She didn't put him in a cell. She didn't put him in a cage. She brought him to a regular terminal locked door, opened it, and took him in. It was a small rectangular room with monitors sitting in front of an observing window. There were monitors with camera feeds on them, observing what was through the window.

It was a large dark room with a single hanging light over a chair. On the wall behind the chair was a door. It had no terminal, it had no lock, it didn't even have a door knob. It could not be opened, at least not from the inside. The only way to open it is to twist the knob on the other side. There was a door that led to a catwalk. Janice entered with Lucas and she threw his body down to the bottom, while she went down a latter. She put him in the chair, and bound his arms to it with leathery belts built into it. One around his neck, his two arms, and two legs. The chair was nailed into the floor. He couldn't move at all. He couldn't even tip the chair over like they do in movies. Lucas has shown no extraordinary powers except for the hole punching, but that required a swift movement of his fist. With all of his limbs constrained, he couldn't even do that. He has shown no sign of considerable strength or power. He hadn't the ability to get out of the chair. It was perfect. All she had to do was wait for him to wake up.