Chapter 26

It was go-time. Ready for a fight, Isaac climbed out of his beanbag chair to greet Dr. Rousseau and his phalanx of orderlies. He tried to flex his muscles to turn into his superhero form, but his legs buckled, and his knees went weak. Isaac had nothing in reserve, no matter how hard he tried to tap into his primal nature. If this were an RPG, Isaac’s mana bar would be empty. He was defenseless.

Isaac berated himself. This must have been Dr. Rousseau’s plan from the start: to distract Isaac with the world’s biggest celebrity (Super Jesus) until Isaac reverted to his weakened form, all while Dr. Rousseau bided his time. No wonder Isaac was allowed to cruise the halls of the Twin Towers unmolested. Isaac had been so stupid. Whatever cruel fate Dr. Rousseau had in store for him was richly deserved.

How pathetic!

In the face of true star power, Isaac was no better than some rube tourist from Tulsa. He sat back down, defeated, too embarrassed to go on. An empty gurney awaited him in the hall. And you know what? It looked comfy.

“You are ready.” Dr. Rousseau said, seeing his patient all but wave the white flag in surrender. He gestured to the orderly next to him. “After I sedate the patient, you will escort him back to his room.”

Isaac watched Dr. Rousseau pull a needle from a jacket pocket with his name on it.

Announcing himself finally, Super Jesus sat up in his hammock, eyes bright, craving a sample of whatever the good doctor offered. “Oh, can daddy have a taste?”

“Silence,” Dr. Rousseau hissed at Super Jesus, who instantly lost all of his swagger power. Like a punished child, Super Jesus sat there pouting. The hammock sagged.

A Dr. Rousseau head nod set into motion three orderlies who marched over to Isaac, surrounded him, and restrained him while Dr. Rousseau readied Isaac’s shot by pulling the plunger, knocking out the air bubbles, and aiming it at his patient’s neck.

“You’ll feel a slight prick,” Dr. Rousseau predicted.

The orderlies continued to hold Isaac down, but he wasn’t fighting back. Instead, Isaac chose to use his last remaining moments of freedom to gaze outside the window of Super Jesus’s penthouse suite. It was all he had left. If he were going to spend the rest of his life inside a solitary confinement cell, chained to a typewriter, and forced to churn out screenplay after screenplay, then he was determined to soak up as much of the outside world as possible before all was truly lost.

The view did offer Isaac some peace of mind. From his vantage atop the Twin Towers, all the hustle and bustle of the L.A. basin dropped away. The lines of traffic that were once a rage-inducing nuisance were now pretty strings of red and white twinkle lights. Complementing those colors was an ambient purple glow blooming from the Staples Center in south downtown, marking yet another lengthy Lakers playoff run. Even from this distance, Isaac could practically see the smug smiles on the fans, smell the bacon-wrapped hot dogs, and hear the street vendors hawking knock-off shirseys.

What joy!

Isaac’s eyes moved to the horizon, where he became fixated on the Pacific. The sea was a perfect void that only made itself known through the absence of light and definition, its presence marked only by the boundaries of stars above it and the illuminated coastline before it. Isaac wished he could dive into that water and disappear.

To Isaac’s surprise, the ocean was willing to accommodate his daydream. It moved. The sea rose up and rolled toward him and the Twin Towers. Isaac watched as the black mass advanced, engulfing buildings and snuffing out lights until he realized the darkness wasn't the ocean but a front of thick, low-hanging clouds. It was the June Gloom. Now that it was closer, the clouds weren’t so abstract. He could see the fog’s form and that it was full of ill intent. A last twist in the mist revealed a recognizable face in the contour of the clouds, a grinning visage belonging to Tom Cruise.

The image terrified Isaac. He knew its appearance portended the end of times. It was the mark of the beast.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” whispered Dr. Rousseau to Isaac. “Why do I have to twist your arm? Coercion is such an inelegant rhetorical tool when you can come work for us out of your own volition. Join our ranks.”

“Your ranks?”

“Our ranks,” Dr. Rousseau corrected. “Admit it! What you’ve long feared about yourself is true, Isaac.”

“No!” Isaac cried.

“Yes,” Dr. Rousseau pressed. “Say it.”

“No. I can’t”

“Tell me what you are.”

“No,” Isaac’s lips trembled, “I’m gay!”

“No. You’re half-human and half-Draconis.”

“...”

“A part of you, in your subconscious, has known this about yourself. You’re a Slytherin through and through, whether I or anyone else at the Ministry of Magic graded your test results.”

“I’m a lizardman?” Isaac muttered in disbelief.

“Well, half.” Dr. Rousseau reminded him, not wanting Isaac to take more credit than what was deserved.

“So my parents….”

“Yes.” Dr. Rousseau confirmed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Dr. Rousseau straightened his glasses. “Too big a variable. Your reaction to the news couldn’t be properly predicted. It could have further fractured your psyche.”

“More so than having an alternate personality?”

“Seth was an unfortunate side effect from ramping up your capabilities too early, I admit, but I was left no choice. Zee’s unforeseen disappearance accelerated our timetable. We needed you to use your gift to find her.”

“My gift,” Isaac repeated.

“But you have so much more inside you than just writing prophetic screenplays, Isaac. If only you knew! Now, if you enter a partnership with us, I will teach you to harness your full potential. The world will be at your fingertips. But If you decline, I will be forced to forfeit you as an asset,” Dr. Rousseau let his words sink in, “so what will you choose?”

“...”

Isaac was blown away.

An explosion of light, sound, and heat erupted. Had Isaac observed the blast directly, he would have recognized it as similar in size and shape to the one that opened up the bottom of the downtown library. What he did see, however, after turning around to face the fury, were the orderlies’ bodies littered around him and a huge hole where the room’s door had been.

The blast had torn Super Jesus’s room apart. A wide crack now ran right through the middle to where an exterior wall once was. And without that line of defense, the June Gloom infiltrated the room unfettered to spread its poisonous miasma. Isaac choked on it.

Gone were the hookah pipe, the sitting circle, and most of the suite’s floor, having dropped below and crashed to the building’s lower levels. Likewise, the rug from The Big Lebowski was conspicuously absent, as there was no longer anything to tie the room together.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Isaac was afraid of heights, but if he dared to peer downward, he would have seen a several-story drop and several inmates milling below, looking dazed. All that remained from the original room was the hemp hammock. It clung to the ceiling by a single thread that somehow supported Super Jesus’s weight. The star actor dangled dangerously above the ruptured opening that was sure to produce a fatal fall if he let go of the rope or if the rope let go of the ceiling.

When the flashbang pop of the explosion subsided, Isaac’s senses were assaulted. The building’s security alarm blared in his ears, disorienting him, but it was a minor distraction compared to the scent of fire-roasted skin that filled his nostrils. Isaac saw no sign of Dr. Rousseau within the BBQ of orderlies. However, there was a pile of rubble where he once stood. Flames leaped around the room, licking the ceiling’s sprinkler heads until they burst with black water. Isaac shivered from the impromptu shower.

Lo! Isaac shielded his eyes as a being, seemingly made of pure light, emerged from the smoke and fog. He expected a Super Jesus miracle, but when the glow dimmed and his eyes adjusted, Isaac saw some of his old acquaintances, P38 and a Captain Flapjacks cat.

The cavalry had arrived, but the mountain lion looked a little worse for the wear since Isaac had seen him last in the tunnels underneath the library. The big cat’s left ear was torn and ragged, a jagged scar ran lengthwise along his body, and a couple of his whiskers were plucked, no doubt battle wounds earned from saving Isaac. The Birman rode astride P38’s back on some sort of saddle fit for a house cat.

“Help,” Isaac croaked to the cats. He reached out to them, but they passed by, pausing only long enough to give Isaac a look of surprise. Then, P38, at the direction of Captain Flapjacks’s meows, approached the giant hole in the room, the one Super Jesus was suspended over. Isaac couldn’t decipher the cats’ intentions, but he did recognize the fear in Super Jesus’s eyes when he saw them. The movie star wasn’t expecting a rescue mission. This was no Paw Patrol.

“Shoo! Shoo!” Super Jesus called.

Prowling along the edge, P38 was doing that cat thing all cats do to calculate a long jump. He looked at Super Jesus and to the edge where he stood and back again to judge the distance, his massive paws sprinkling debris down onto the inmates below them.

“Save me! Someone! I’m too young to die!” Super Jesus whimpered, but his cry fell on deaf ears. “Save me, Tom Cruise! ¡Dios Mio!”

Eventually, P38 found a suitable spot to leap from. He stopped pacing, crouched on his haunches, and wiggled his ass to gather all his potential energy. Launch protocol initiated. 3…2…1…

But before P38 could lift off, another roar erupted from behind them, loud enough to rattle whatever glass remained in the windows. Everyone in the room turned toward the commotion to see Dr. Rousseau emerge from the mountain of debris he was caught beneath. Once free, the doctor’s eyes looked wild like he was on the verge of a rampage. It was enough to get the attention of the cats. They both arched their backs and puffed up their tails to twice their size to respond to the threat.

Looking at the paltry therapist who defied the mountain lion and the Birman, Isaac couldn’t understand their alarm until Dr. Rousseau shed his clothes and then his skin. There was more to Dr. Rousseau than what met the eye. He was transforming.

Isaac was revolted while he watched the doctor molt. Scales bubbled up to form a layer of natural armor on the Dr., and his face elongated to form jaws. He grew, too, tripling in mass to become more than a formidable opponent for the pair of cats.

Isaac should have seen this development coming, but it still came as a shock to his system. Seth had been right. They had been tools for the lizardmen this entire time. If only Isaac could summon the strength to fight, he’d spare the cats the effort and take down Dr. Rousseau, the lizardman, alone, but Isaac’s power still hadn’t returned. He was useless. The cats would have to do it without the help of a half-lizard and half-human.

With a snarl that would send a shiver down the spine of the toughest Slytherin, P38, with Captain Flapjacks still riding along, launched himself at Dr. Rousseau, now fully a lizardman. Dr. Rousseau met the cats in mid-air. They collided with a crash, and the impact of it sent a concussive blast out in all directions, a shockwave that hit Isaac and what was left of the building.

Frozen with panic, Isaac looked up to see a ceiling block the size of a compact car falling down on him. There was no time to escape, not without his superhero powers. He was dead.

Then, a force carried Isaac out of the projectile’s path. The wind left Isaac’s lungs, but it was a small price to pay for his life.

It was a miracle.

“Roomie!” was how Isaac’s savior greeted him. Isaac took Mark’s outstretched hand. “How are ya?” Unfazed by the beasts battling behind him, the muscular man lifted Isaac off the floor with ease while also doing Isaac the service of dusting him off from the dirt and debris that had collected on his shoulders.

“You came back for me!” Isaac shouted over the ruckus.

“I wanted to get Super Jesus’s autograph!” Mark admitted, showing Isaac a sharpie and his bare belly, which would be Super Jesus’s canvas.

Isaac looked over to Super Jesus, who was white-knuckling his threadbare hammock as he swayed above the open hole in the floor. However, his life-or-death situation did not deter Mark. He ambled over to the pit's edge to get as close to Super Jesus as possible. “Hi!” he shouted to his idol. “I’m Mark! Nice to meet you! Can you sign my belly?”

“No!” Isaac shouted. He watched in horror as Mark became collateral damage. Dr. Rousseau smacked P38 with his lizard tail to send the cat soaring, where he slammed into Mark, lifting the man off his feet. P38 fell to the ground, but Mark wasn’t so lucky.

While wearing the most serene smile, Mark flew through the air and out of the building, looking as if he were in a dream. It was the last Isaac saw of the Taller Figure before he was gobbled up by the June Gloom for good. Fortunately for Isaac, the sounds of the continued fight between Dr. Rousseau and the cats meant he didn’t have to hear the inevitable thud to follow Mark’s disappearance.

Finally, Captain Flapjacks had enough playing around with his food. Isaac saw the cat ready to use what Isaac suspected to be his Cat Power. The Birman’s eyes began to glow with bioluminescence, an unholy quality familiar to any cat owner. Once the eyes reached the brightest shade of Birman Blue, a color to match the laser at the Annenberg Space for Photography, Captain Flapjacks trained them on Dr. Rousseau.

Another bright flash of light ripped through what was left of the room. It sent a huge surge of electricity through Isaac’s body and knocked him out before he could witness the end of the battle. The last thing he saw before losing consciousness was the three combatants locked in a tussle where the cats seemed to have gained an advantage, but only by a literal whisker.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

When Isaac awoke, he had no sense of how much time had passed, but the room was quiet aside from the fire alarm. There was no movement. Even Super Jesus’s hammock was still, its single string holding firm to the ceiling. But Super Jesus was gone. P38 was gone. Captain Flapjacks was gone. And Dr. Rousseau was gone.

Isaac tried to make sense of the scene, but there was more chaos than clues. How was he supposed to tell the difference between cat, human, and lizardman blood? When Isaac got to his feet, he walked around and touched the various blood stains, but they all felt cold, so that wasn’t much help. Unfortunately, they all tasted the same, too.

Fresh out of ideas, Isaac felt lost. He was scared. It wasn’t the heaps of bodies surrounding him that spooked Isaac, but how stone still everything was. He expected police and firemen to be swarming the building, but he was on his own, and so were the inmates of the Twin Towers. There wasn’t even a TMZ reporter investigating, but Isaac did suppose they were on the wrong side of the LA river to attract their interest. It was as if the entire city was collectively averting its eyes. Did no one care about the welfare of the retarded? Ahem! Isaac excused himself. Did no one care about the welfare of the neurodivergent?

Finally, a sound other than the fire alarm!

A small whimper escaped from somewhere underneath the wreckage. Isaac moved toward the sound and began to dig, doing his best to locate the source. After lifting and sifting through the debris, he overturned what was left of one of Super Jesus’s surfboards to discover an injured Captain Flapjacks. Isaac examined the cat and found him limp and his breath shallow. Chunks of fur were missing, and what was left was matted with blood. Captain Flapjacks wasn’t conscious. The sound Isaac heard was a wheeze.

This cat needed to be saved!

But should Isaac save the cat? What if he didn’t? What if he let the cat die? There was an argument to snuff out Captain Flapjacks, like how little Elliot was supposed to do E.T. before the script’s rewrite. After his discussion with Dr. Rousseau, Isaac didn’t know friend from foe. If he were a lizardman, then perhaps he should ally with his own kind against the cats. He wasn’t a race traitor, was he?

…

He was! Isaac was a race traitor! Scooping up the cat to fulfill his destiny of saving the cat and thus the world, Isaac headed for the giant hole in the wall that now served as a door. He ran through the halls with Captain Flapjacks cradled in his arms, doing his best not to jostle the poor thing. Despite everything, Isaac was elated. He was saving the cat at long last!

All around him was evidence that P38 and Dr. Rousseau’s battle had spilled into the rest of the Twin Towers facility. There were cracked tiles, mountain lion-shaped dents in the drywall, and two long streaks of scorch marks that looked, to Isaac, like the etchings of some sort of laser beams that ran the length from floor to ceiling.

The titanic brawl must have disrupted the complex’s cell locks because Isaac had to dodge free-range, shell-shocked patients as he escaped. Inmates wandered around in circles, lost, and those that weren’t had become tripping hazards. Isaac quickened his pace.

Behind him, he could hear an uproar as the next wave of orderlies, guards, and administrators were dispatched to try and get a handle on the situation. Yelps and shrieks rang out next from the patients who were less than entirely submissive to their whims. Isaac was thankful for their sacrifice as they provided an additional speedbump between him and his pursuers. The only thing that could divert Isaac’s attention from his getaway was someone whispering his name from behind a darkened corner of the main hall. It was a woman’s voice. He followed the siren’s call.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” Liz told him, and he felt the same way. Isaac barely recognized her. She looked terrible, not sexy or love-interest material at all. Shadows haunted her eyes, and, aside from their respective registration numbers, she was wearing the exact same patient-provided outfit as Isaac. “Save me!” she cried.