Aldous had been up by six. A craving that had been gone for decades had him walk to the corner gas station for a pack of Marlboro Blacks, his brand from back in the day. He stood on the outside balcony and inhaled the carcinogenic smoke. There were rich plum tones and smoky notes. Everyone always abhorred the smell of tobacco but it delighted Aldous. Even after several years of abstinence, the smell of a cigarette still smelled more pleasant to him than a Thanksgiving meal.

The phone rang at 8:03 AM. Aldous snuffed his stoagy out in a terra cotta planter and rushed inside. He knew who it was before she spoke. 

“Aldous, I hope I didn’t wake you.” Dr. Glass’ voice cracked and wavered like she hadn’t had a wink of sleep.

“No, you’re fine. I was up.”

“Good, I know it’s the weekend but we need you here. Something happened, something strange.”

Aldous felt his heart jump a few beats per minute. “I can be there in thirty.”

Dr. Glass didn’t bother saying goodbye. Aldous heard a click over the phone as she hung hers on the receiver.

Aldous didn’t bother taking a shower. His mind skipped back and forth through anxious scenarios. He had not been told how he would get Ivan out of the lab but Aldous was as ready as he would ever be. He cringed as he sped over a speedbump and slammed the undercarriage of his Corolla. It was a Saturday so sparing a biological disaster, the lab would be relatively empty.

He sped through the streets 20 miles an hour faster than the posted speed limits. He glanced in the rear-view mirror to spot any officers of the law, but the morning streets were clear. He lit up another cancer stick and rolled down the windows. The storm had passed some time in the early morning. Wet concrete and ditches filled with mud served as evidence of the weather. The air felt crisp and clean. Evergreens and shrubbery pumped oxygen into the ecosystem.

He parked his car in his usual spot and ground the butt into the pavement. Aldous recognized Dr. Glass’ vehicle out of the half-dozen others decorating the lot. 

Dr. Glass and Sergio were leaning against his desk. Their heads were hunched together as they talked in hushed undertones. Dr. Glass perked up her head as Aldous walked into the room.

“That was quick.”

Aldous grunted in agreement. “Hit all green lights this morning.”

“Good, we need your input. Sergio, this is Dr. Aldous Turner.”

Aldous stretched out his hand for a shake. “Please, just call me Aldous. What’s been the development?”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Sergio took his hand and gave it a firm shake. Turning to Dr. Glass, he passed her the conversational lead. 

“I think you should see this for yourself. We can’t make anything of it.”

Aldous stripped his overcoat and set it on the back of his chair. “Okay, lead the way.”

They hustled through the lab and into the primate containment unit. The front cage was empty. An eerie quiet had settled over the room. It lacked the usual bustle of interns and lab assistants as they completed their tasks. Aldous instinctually turned down the hallway towards Ivan’s cage. 

“Not that way, we are going to the dissection lab,” Sergio called over his shoulder.

“You found something in the autopsy?” 

“Sort of,” Sergio pushed open a door in the back the lab and stepped into a hallway. Aldous didn’t think that he had been in this part of the building before. Each section of the building housed different areas of expertise and kept the departments fairly segregated. Sergio scanned his key card and placed his hand on the knob.

“Do you have a strong stomach?” 

Aldous scowled. “Stronger than most, I think.”

“Good.”

The smell hit him immediately. Decay and rot permeated every molecule of oxygen trapped in the 15’ by 15’ room. The chilled air gave Aldous goosebumps. A table surrounded by lamps and cables took up the back half of the room. Two bloody heaps laid limp on the stainless steel.

“Jesus, the smell,” Aldous said as he covered his nose.

“Decay starts as soon as the heart stops.”

Sergio waved him over to the table’s contents. A pool of blood had drained onto the surface and congealed into brown sludge. The two apes were cut open and thrown to the side. Their mutations had been removed and placed on steel trays. The mutated hand had abandoned its twitch and sat curled in a semi-fist.

“Why are you show-” Aldous began.

Snap! 

The movement was quick. If Aldous had blinked, he would have missed the thumb and index finger connecting. He felt a chill run down his spine. 

“It started two hours into the autopsy. I wrote it off as a muscle spasm, but I disconnected the growth from the host. It isn’t getting any signals from the brain.”

An image of Ivan as he snapped his fingers popped into his head. “So the damaged nerve is localized in the growth itself?”

Sergio nodded. “It has to be. It doesn’t make any sense, though. Snapping your fingers is a complex movement. At most, it should twitch. There’s more though.”

Dr. Glass stepped up to the table. She picked up a sterile scalpel from a nearby tray and pointed to the hand. “Look at the mutated tissue. It’s pink and it doesn’t stink. Now, look at the host. Around the edges, the tissue is starting to turn gray and brown. Decomposition is obvious, exactly as expected.”

Aldous bent down and studied the muscle from a few inches away. “The mutation isn't rotting?”

“No,” Sergio said.

“That makes no sense! Blood is no longer being pumped into the tissue. The cellular structure should be breaking down by now.”

“That’s why we called you.”

“Is anyone else on their way?” Aldous asked.

“No, should I call the rest of the team?”

Aldous shook his head. “No, it’s not going anywhere and it will be easier to work on without a dozen people trying to poke and prod it. Have you run any tests?”

Dr. Glass shook her head. “We called you first thing.”

“Alright.” Aldous pointed at the mutated lump of flesh containing the eye. “What about the other one, any abnormalities?”

Sergio cleared his throat. “It’s not decomposing either. The eye tracks movement. Again, it shouldn’t be possible once disconnected from the brain.”

Aldous placed his palms on the table and rested his weight on them. “Okay, so here is what we are going to do. Dr. Glass, you take the eye. I want every test we have run on the sample. Every hormone, every enzyme, I even want to know every bacteria that crawling in it. 

“Sergio, have you learned anything from the rest of the autopsy?”

Sergio shook his head. “No, I haven’t even finished it yet. I contacted Dr. Glass as soon as I noticed the lack of degradation.”

“Finish the autopsy, I’ll take this.” Aldous grabbed the tray with the mutated hand. “I have some tests that I want to run. I’ll be available on the intercom. Don’t hesitate to ring me if either of you finds anything.”

Sergio flashed him a thumbs up and dragged the mutilated corpse of an ape onto the table. It squeaked against the surface. Aldous closed his eyes and looked away from the offal. Nausea stirred his stomach into a slurry. He opened the door and stepped into the hallway. A weak ventilation system did little to carry the stench from the air.

13 tissue samples were spinning on the centrifuge. The force separated blood, plasma, and muscle protein from one another. The machine had been running for the past five minutes and still had another 15to go. The clock read 1:36 PM. 

Dr. Glass had found an elevated white blood cell count as well as an abnormal amount of cortisol in the tissue. Aldous hadn’t tested the hand yet, but he had a feeling it would yield the same results. In the previous 13 tests, only one had come back positive. The mutation was practically dripping in testosterone. It made sense. With rapid cellular division, a strong fuel supply had to be abundant. 

Ivan would be getting hungry. His chart said that the morning team had given him breakfast at 9:00-am. His food was sealed in a walk-in refrigerator. Aldous grabbed a tub of the nutrition pellets and hauled it to a lab counter. The sealed container let out a hiss as he popped the lid. Aldous bit back a gag as he caught a whiff of the microbes’ gaseous waste. Aldous wasn’t hungry anymore.

He set the feed on his rolling cart and wheeled it down the hallway. The mutated hand sat perched on a mountain of ice inside of a cooler, next to Ivan’s lunch. The frozen cubes jostled and settled against the plastic container with each turn of the cart. 

As Aldous opened the door, the sounds of photophobic bugs met his ears. The light had not been fixed since his last visit. Shadows perched in the corners and watched his every move. Aldous ran a finger in between his collar and neck. The air was chilly. 

“You hungry, Ivan?”

He was met with silence. 

“Ivan, it’s time for lunch!”

Aldous held his breath and strained his ear. The tell-tale sound of breathing wafted out from the cage. He walked up to the window, keeping a chimpanzee’s arm-length away. Ivan was not immediately visible. Aldous jerked his head to the corner as movement caught his attention. Ivan was crouched. Reflective irises bobbed back and forth as he sized up his visitor.

Aldous turned and grabbed the tray of food for the ape. 

Snap! 

The cooler shifted. Aldous jumped. The tray clattered to the floor, splattering its contents onto the cement. 

Snap!

The snap came from Ivan inside the cage. The cooler twitched. Cubes of ice rattled against each other. Aldous looked through the window. Ivan stood a few inches away from the bars. His eyelids were peeled back to expose ink-black irises. The ape held up his hand to the window and snapped. The box shifted towards the cage, bumping Aldous’ hand.

He lifted the plastic lid and stared down at the dissected hand. Its thumb and index finger came together and snapped in unison with Ivan. Aldous backed away from the cart. Ivan stared him down with a glare Stalin would have envied. He didn’t speak, he didn’t move, he just snapped his fingers. 

Exiting the room, Aldous shut the door and placed his back against it. Tears of fright welled behind his glasses and dripped down his cheeks. He wiped them with the white sleeve of the lab coat. 

“Screw it,” he muttered to himself. He would come clean and tell Julie about the plan. With so many strange happenings as-of-late, she would have to believe him. 

Aldous wiped his face and turned down the corridor. Relief coursed through his veins and settled his fried nerves. He rounded the corner and winced. His back ached, more than any back should. He leaned up against the wall and closed his eyes. He balled his hands into fists to distract himself from the pain. Sweat lined his skin and sucked the cotton shirt to his forearms and chest. 

He didn’t want to live with the pain. No, he couldn’t live with the pain. He sighed and ran his hands over his face. He had already negotiated his ticket to youth. That was what mattered. He couldn’t get bogged down by the weirdness of it all. No, he would keep this discovery to himself. 

He had only taken a step toward the chimpanzee containment unit before an alarm blared over the PA system. Aldous ducked and winced as the decibel level climbed higher than his ears were able to handle. He plunged his fingers into his ear canals and grimaced as they were met with a wall of gooey wax. 

The lack of spraying sprinklers ruled out the possibility of the fire alarm. In a bio-med lab, there are several different alarms that could go off. Aldous wasn’t positive, but he had a hunch he knew which one it was.

The door to Ivan’s room was smashed against the wall. Three fist-sized dents were smattered across the aluminum. Aldous halted outside the door. The cage was swung open. The mutated hand grasped the handle as it dangled in a death grip. The interior of the cage was empty except for this morning’s dinner tray. Primate footprints tracked through the spilled nutrition pellets.

His breath caught in his throat. He clutched at his collar and unclipped the first button. Dr. Glass and Sergio rounded the corner and came to a stop. Sergio rested his hands on his knees and both panted in air. 

“What's going…?” Dr. Glass asked. She looked down at the trail of prints leaving the room. 

Aldous pointed at the dangling hand. As if on cue, the appendage uncurled its fingers and fell to the floor. “I don’t understand how this happened. I was out of the room for two seconds.”

Sergio used a shaky hand to lift his cell phone from his pocket. “I’m calling animal control, we have an ape on the loose.”

“We’re going to need the tranq guns,” Dr. Glass chimed. She shot a frightened look Aldous’ way. “Don’t corner him, understand? A chimpanzee has the strength of five grown men and he’s probably scared.”

“That makes two of us,” Sergio muttered.

“Come on,” Dr. Glass encouraged as she stepped outside the room. The trail of chimp chow veered to the left and disappeared around the corner. The tranq guns were in the main lab. They turned the opposite direction of the tracks and headed towards their destination.

Sergio talked into his cellphone. He cupped the receiver to his ear and hushed warnings about Ivan to the animal control. “He is a medical test subject. It is imperative that he is brought down non-violently. Do you understand?”

Dr. Glass leaned in and whispered. “The hand set him free?”

Aldous nodded. His breathing was labored. He shuffled his aching feet in front of the other. “I know, it shouldn’t be possible but you saw it yourself.”

“Did you see it happen?”

“No,” Aldous took a deep breath. “The hand and Ivan were linked somehow. He and the hand were snapping their fingers in unison. That’s why I wasn’t in the room, I was coming to get you.”

“They’re linked? That’s not possible! They were never connected. You should have used the intercom.”

“I know!” Aldous exclaimed. “But, that’s what happened. I have no reason to lie.”

Dr. Glass shot a concerned look at Aldous and shook her head. “Let’s just focus on getting Ivan back in the cage. We can worry about whatever is going on after that.” 

Sergio hung up his cellphone. “They are on their way. ETA is eight minutes.”

They rounded the corner and entered the main lab. Computer screens displayed picturesque screensavers and the countertops were arranged in an organized manner. The only sign that anything was amiss was the orange and red flashing lights. Dr. Glass pulled a chair up to a computer and started to clack away at the keys. The blaring alarm cut itself off. The lack of sound left a vacuum that pecked at his ears. 

“I can’t turn off the lights from here but Ivan should remain relatively calm without the alarm screeching at him.”

“Relatively,” Aldous scoffed. 

“Have you got any better ideas?”

Aldous pulled his key-ring from his pocket and walked to a cabinet at the far end of the room. “We have about seven minutes before animal control gets to the building and sets up a perimeter.” He unlocked the cabinet and pulled a tranq gun from the top shelf. “There’s nothing but an inch thick door between the populace and an agitated chimpanzee. Ivan is smart, extremely smart. He’s going to try and escape if he hasn’t already. This is my project and I’m not going to let anyone or anything get hurt by my ape. I’m going after him.”

“That’s reckless, you could get hurt. Remember when you climbed in his cage?” Dr. Glass pointed out.

Aldous walked to the hallway entrance. Three spare darts were mounted to the tool’s stock. “Better me than an innocent bystander. Get to the security office and see if he’s in the camera’s view. Get me on the intercom. If that doesn't work, call my cell. Be careful.”