Chapter 11 - “Aquarium”

“My son, please sit down.” Druvy walked into his father’s office inside of their extensive mansion, trying to get a read on how much trouble he could potentially find himself in. “Stop shaking, I'm not angry.” His father said with an uncharacteristic smirk, clearly in a good mood and strangely showing it.

Druvy sat down on a large chair with a firm leather seat and a carefully detailed wood frame. His father sitting across from him, hands clasped and resting on his large black desk, with papers, books and writing materials littered about, the smell of  freshly roasted coffee filled the room. His father was dressed professionally well despite being alone in his office, without any of his company staff working nearby, other than personal housekeepers, security and chefs. He wore a designer polo shirt with long striped black slacks and dark-burgundy colored dress shoes from a foreign brand. His hair was slicked back, held together by some organic product that bound his long hair enough for it to stick together and shine all the way down to the bottom of his neck. His graying beard was long but trimmed; he had a tendency of stroking it with his hand during breaks of conversation.

Kenneth Darwinson had a carefully crafted image but it was not a false one. He exuded masculinity by letting nature dictate his style as much as it could but indulged himself in fine clothing and jewelry, establishing his status among other wealthy people in his network. It was quite the counter to Druvy’s lazy university student chic, messy hair resembling the head of a broccoli stock; an oversized shirt with at least a few unrecognizable stains;  baggy jeans with unintentional holes; gray sneakers, once white and with all the grip on the bottom. Druvy had multiple closets in his home, filled to capacity with clothes that could pay off some people’s entire debts, yet he chose his style, allowing him to fit in the best he could despite his classmate’s awareness of his familial ties.

Druvy was seldom the object of his father’s attention, it hadn’t been so for many years now. In the same way that Kenneth’s father had put him through a grueling childhood, intent on crafting a worthy heir, so did he for his own son with lackluster results. Druvy’s failure to launch with a favorable trajectory sent his father into a depressive spiral, spending many nights pounding his thoughts together to search for a reason why his son didn’t have the drive that he himself seemed to be born with. Kenneth’s sense of self-purpose arose not from hatred of his father, but from the desire to eclipse his father’s expectations and take over the business with a commanding grasp. Kenneth tried to instill the competitive spirit in Druvy but this was the age of shorter attention spans and separation from survival instincts; finding the spark among younger people required excavation.

Kenneth pressed a button on his desk and a member of the kitchen staff walked into the room and placed a beverage before Druvy; his favorite apple flavored soda, poured into a glass with several cubes of ice. He took a sip as his father began to speak.

“I thought we had already taken care of those bothersome students for you, my son.” Kenneth said. Druvy still remained silent, struggling to make eye contact with his father. “If you don’t look out for yourself, then I have to step in. Do you want me to baby you, time and time again?”

“No, that’s why I tried to talk to So. I wanted to figure things out for myself.” Druvy broke his silence.

“From what you have told us, they’ve already shown their true colors. Remember, you are a Darwinson and the target is on your back, from competitors to jealous punks at school. These kids are not your peers. You are supposed to be a cut above them.”

“That’s not true, father, I'm not you. I’m just a normal person.”

“And what makes me different? I have given you everything that was given to me and more.”

“Well I got the wrong mix of genes or something. I don’t have the same brain, just look at my grades.”

 “There are a thousand different reasons for your disappointing scores but your bloodline is not the reason why. Your grandfather built a foundation and I have grown for it and taken us to new levels. We evolve each generation. That means you are meant for something much greater than even I.”

“I don’t want to follow in your footsteps. You’re going to have to have another kid if you want to try and get what you want.”

Kenneth relaxed back into his chair and sighed. Druvy expected a fiery reaction from the rejection of his father’s will but Kenneth still remained at ease.

“As much as I have tried to keep you on a track that benefits the both of us, it appears someone else has done the work for me.” Kenneth leaned forward with his arms on the desk. “These students from this club finally awakened something inside you. You haven’t told me everything have you?” Druvy sat once again in silence. “Try and deny it all you want but thanks to Alaria, I have a better picture of what has been going with you. I thought you might have a little bit more of the situation figured out but again, nothing.”

 “You see, I once held a great secret from my father and without his knowledge, I began a different path than what was intended but let me be honest my son, I don’t think you have the tools to handle the secrets you're keeping. Despite my best efforts to raise a well disciplined young man, you have drifted into this – phase. Lazy, ignorant, unwilling to take a challenge. But now you have an opportunity. Tell me, my son, what did it feel like to have a monster birthed out of your very soul?”

Druvy could only sit and ponder the meaning of his father’s statements. There were unexplainable forces interfering with his life but the worst of it all was the fact that he was either unconscious or in a hypnotic trance during most of the action. Seeing Arath’s basement was the only time he came face to face with what could be considered a monster but his father knew more than he did.

“Don’t think too hard, son, your brain will turn to mush. I think those kids in the club are more gifted than you know. It appears that they’ve found the seed inside of you,” he looked into Druvy’s eyes with his face morphing back into the sternness he was accustomed to, “one of the many that I have planted, over and over again, time and time again.”

“You did – what?”

“That monster appears to be a miracle that evaded its impending abortion. The only one out of many to finally survive in that wasteland mind of yours. I would thank those lucky fools for doing what I could not but they know more than they should now. In the end, it shouldn’t matter, but for now we must move with caution, which is why you won’t be seeing those kids ever again.”

“Father, what’s going on?” Druvy’s eyes began to swell with tears; he couldn’t handle the thought of his own body being used for producing diabolical beasts of unknown origin. “I have a right to know…,” he said through his quivering lip.

“Ah, you’re still so weak, as expected, but don’t worry, this is a happy day. I wished for you to discover this new frontier in your own way, the way I did, but you have often been unproductive so I had to gamble. Since your sixteenth birthday, I have used new scientific methods and the assistance of spiritual practitioners to develop spectral embryos attached to your spiritual energy. You may think of it like a connection between our world and theirs, with your body being the bridge. It would never work without input from both directions so the creature would slowly try to crossover and begin to assimilate in our world but that’s where you failed them. Because of your lack of spiritual awareness, they writhe and starve until they slowly dissipate into nothingness. Emotions, desires, dreams, these are the fires that supply the furnace inside of our soul. I tried again and again to find the right being that could match your wavelengths and spark the hidden senses, the way I did it many years younger than you, but each one shriveled into sparkling dust somewhere in the void. Those intrusive students somehow saved the only creature that miraculously was still resonating inside of you. Now it grows, feeding on other transdimensional beings, walking about the town and becoming one with our reality as it consumes ghosts of our dimension. We have one more task at hand my son, for if we waste this opportunity then I will never regain my gift – the very thing that separates me from all these other boring humans.”

Druvy’s mouth had fallen more agape by the second but he couldn’t conjure up any words that could move past the shock he felt at his father’s betrayal.

“I need you my son, but most of all I need that monster back inside of you so that it can grow to its full potential. It still resonates with your wavelengths, you can merge again. Then, due to our genetic bond, I will finally have a chance to undo these bindings that keep me from rising to my own potential.” Kenneth lifted up his shirt to reveal hideous scars that covered nearly all of his torsos. Several groupings of stones were lodged into his skin, with scar tissue surrounding each of them in a meaty layer.

“I – don’t want this. I don’t want any of this…” Druvy attempted to stand but his legs shook too hard for him to stand still. He wavered under the weight of his own body and finally collapsed forward, his head colliding with the desk before he reached the ground.

“My son, it felt good to finally tell someone about all of my suffering. If only your mother was still here, well she wouldn’t want to know anyways. Sad that your drink will wash away most of what you were told anyways but it’s the only way that you won’t go throwing a fit.” Kenneth picked up his son and threw him over his shoulder, walked over to the side of the room and reached into his bookcase. He tilted a few books on a particular shelf and a panel of the wall shifted to the slide to reveal the doors of an elevator. The father and son rode the elevator for nearly thirty seconds to the bottom, where the doors opened to a massive halfway with large metallic paneling covering each side. Kenneth Darwinson walked to a large door at the end of the hallway and input a code on a keypad; the doors separating to reveal a large laboratory with several scientists awaiting for his arrival by their stations. In the middle of the room was a large water tank, the size of an aquarium. It had several wires, tubes and harnesses inside, with a lustrous, full-faced helmet attached to the center tube.

“Let’s get him settled, Dr. Shovany.” Kenneth relinquished his son to the arms of the woman in charge.

“Absolutely. We have finished preparations on our end and will await your return.” The scientist said. Kenneth grabbed his phone from his pocket and keyed in a number. After a single ring, the call was answered.

“Yusuro, have you found it yet?” Kenneth asked.

“Not yet but I'm on its trail.” Yusuro responded, moving his messy black hair out of his face to look at the fading energy radiating from the footsteps of where the Kuokuok monster had been some time before.

“Good. Don’t be long.” The call ended.

Yusuro put the phone back into his jacket and placed his hands in his pockets where they belonged, both reappearing through a smokey portal thirty meters away to cover a CCTV camera scanning where he was about to walk next.