THE MAN NAMED AXEL KNOX

MYSTERY MAN

He fluttered his eyes open, the light came first. It was very bright, white, and sharp as a blade. Axel Knox tried to turn his head away, but his neck felt like it was filled with cement. The loud beeping sound on his right distorted his mind as it grew faster—beep-beep-beep-beep—matching the sudden race of his heart.

The door of the room slid open.

“He’s awake,” a nurse said. She was middle-aged, with very kind eyes. She checked the monitor, then his pulse, then shone a small light into each of his eyes. Axel winced in pain. “Welcome back. You gave us quite a scare, young man.”

“Where….” His voice came out rough like gravel. He swallowed. “Where am I?”

“Bonneville General. You were brought in last night. You had cardiac arrest.” She said it flat, without trying to hide anything like she was reading a grocery list. “You’re even lucky to be alive.”

Axel tried to sit up, his arms suddenly felt wrong. Not wrong in a weak way, it felt kike something underneath his skin was humming, patiently waiting. He looked down at his forearm. A small bandage covered the injection site. Beneath it, he could have sworn he saw faint blue lines, running through his body like veins turned inside out. But when he blinked again to be sure about what he saw they were gone.

It would be abnormal to have something blue running through your body.

“How do you feel?” the nurse asked, the clipboard in hand, alongside a pen.

“I feel… alright,” he said. The lie came easy, because how could he explain the truth? He felt like his bones were charged with thousand energy of electricity. Like he could hear the sound of the fluorescent lights buzzing three feet above his head. Like his own blood was too loud in his ears.

She wrote something down. “Any nausea? Headache? Blurred vision maybe?”

“No. I’m fine.” He forced a small smile. It must have worked, because she nodded and told him the doctor would come by soon.

But he wasn't fine. He felt completely different, strange. Like someone had taken him apart and put him back together with parts of his body that didn’t quite belong. He just couldn't put the feeling into words.o

Three hours later, a doctor who looked like he was in his mid thirties with a gray mustache came in, asked the same questions, got the same answers. Axel signed discharge papers with a hand that didn't tremble but that's only because he forced it not to.

“You’re lucky someone covered your bill,” the doctor said, slipping the papers into a folder. “Anonymous donor. Paid the whole thing.”

Axel froze. “Who?”

“Said they wanted to remain anonymous. Hospital policy doesn’t let us push further.” The doctor shrugged. “You’re free to go.”

Axel walked to the hospital entrance in a daze. His legs worked fine, better than fine actually. He felt very light, almost weightless. The automatic doors slid open, and the afternoon sun hit his face. He squinted his eyes, still not used to brightness.

He never saw the van pull up.

A bag came down over his head, it felt rough and smelled of oil and old sweat. Strong arms locked around his chest from behind. He tried to fight, but something was wrong with his reactions. He was too fast, too strong, it was like his body completely had a different mind of its own, like it was fighting to be free. He nearly threw the man off before a second pair of hands grabbed his wrists.

“Don’t make a scene,” the masculine voice growled near his ear. It sounded awfully familiar. It sounded like the voice of one of the men in that alley, right before everything went black.

“Inject him and let's get the fuck out of here.”

That voice.

The van door slid open, they shoved him inside. The engine roared to life, and they drove.

Time lost meaning inside the bag. Axel counted the turns over and over again, left, right, straight for a long stretch, then another left. Twenty minutes. Forty. An hour. He had stopped counting.

The van finally slowed, the tires screeching over what sounded like gravel before it came to a stop.

Hands grabbed him again, pulling him out of the van. The air smelled different, it didn't smell or sound like the endless noisy city day in, day, it smelled more of pine and wet earth. They walked him forward, up three wooden steps, through a door that creaked.

Then they pulled the bag off his head.

He was in a large room, it had wooden floors and dark furniture. A fireplace that wasn't lit and standing in front of him, arms crossed, were the two men from the alley.

Vince Darwin was tall and lean, with a scar cutting through his left eyebrow, he had brown eyes. His partner, Leo Xanther, was shorter, thicker, with a nervous twitch in his jaw. Leo wouldn't meet Axel's eyes.

“You remember us?” Vince asked. He almost sounded proud.

Axel said nothing, but he was furious as his hands balled into fists.

“He remembers,” Leo muttered, gesturing with a nod. “Look at his face.”

“Shut up,” Vince snapped. “We’ve got bigger problems.”

A door at the far end of the room opened, and a man walked in. He was far older than Vince and Leo, he was probably maybe fifty….. he had gray hair and a face that looked like he had stopped smiling a long time ago. He wore a dark suit without a tie. His eyes were the same shade of cold blue as the liquid they’d pumped into Axel’s arm.

He looked at Vince and Leo who absolutely looked like they were dog mess on his shoes.

“You two imbeciles,” the man said quietly. His voice was calm, which made it worse. “You left a successful experiment on a public street. In an alley. With police on the way.”

Vince threw his head down, looking at the floorboards. “We panicked, alright? The cops were right there…..”

“You panicked.” The older man stepped closer, his eyes with viciousness. “You injected a subject with an untested compound worth more than both your lives, and you panicked.” He stopped inches from Vince’s face. “Do you understand what would have happened if he had died in that alley? A body. An autopsy. Questions. And eventually……..”

They both kept quiet, quivering out of fear.

The floorboards creaked as the older man turned to Axel. His expression shifted…..softened, just a fraction. He walked over slowly, like approaching a wounded animal. Axel didn’t move. He couldn’t move, they had tied his hands and legs to a chair.

“Look at you,” the man whispered. “Alive and functional. Beyond anything we predicted.” He tilted his head, studying Axel’s face. “You have your mother’s jaw, you know.”

Axel’s blood went cold instantly. “Who are you?”

The man smiled, it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“I’m the man who paid your hospital bill,” he said. “And if you listen closely to my voice, you’ll recognize it. You’ve heard it before. On old recordings. In the back of a drawer you weren’t supposed to open.”

Axel’s mind raced. Nothing made sense.

The man reached out and touched Axel’s cheek…… a gesture almost tender. “You were three when I left. You were too young to remember, but I remember you, I haven't stopped thinking about you.”

He stepped back, looked at Vince and Leo one more time.

“If you ever leave one of my experiments unattended again,” he said, “I won’t call the police. I’ll call a cleaner. Understood?”

Both men nodded quickly.

The older man turned back to Axel,with a smile that seemed too genuine on his face.

“Welcome home, son.”

Axel’s knees buckled.