Ann Marie's Asylum (Master and Apprentice Book 1) by Christopher Rankin Read Free Book Online Page B

flow of water inside. There was a complex looking instrument rack next to the thing. Ann Marie puzzled over some of the odd buttons, switches and indicators. Temperature, salinity, oxygen content, and pH were all being monitored.
    One big, bright red button, marked: Stop Sequence , got her attention. She called out again for Dade Harkenrider. There was no answer. Something was telling her to press the red button. She tapped it and at first, nothing happened.
    Then the massive black cylinder started to turn transparent.
    Ann Marie almost fell backward when she saw Dade Harkenrider’s nearly naked body suspended in the middle of the thing. His eyes were closed and he looked like a preserved brain floating in formaldehyde. He had to have been dead, she thought. However, as she took a step closer to the tank, she could see his chest rising and falling. He was breathing the liquid somehow. He was alive in there.
    Dozens of postage-stamp-sized sensor pads were stuck to his floating body. Tiny wires connected them to what looked like a set of black underwear. His arms and shoulders were thicker and stronger than she would have ever imagined. His body looked built to destroy. Not even the tiniest muscle fiber from his toes to his ears had been left unmagnified. Harkenrider’s entire body looked like a device engineered for war. She got closer to the tank and stared at his face. With his eyes closed, his face still had the haunted quality that she saw before.
    She was hit with a strange urge to reach out and touch the wall of the tank. When she did, she felt how warm the thing was. It was perfect body temperature, ninety-eight or ninety-nine.
    Dade Harkenrider suddenly opened his eyes.
    She dropped her hand and took a step back. She felt a rush of warmth and panic. He was staring right at her.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, backing up from the tank. “I didn’t know what I was doing when I came up here. I’m so sorry.” Harkenrider just floated, staring back at her with a dreamy, drugged quality. “I just wanted to say thank you for the car. That’s all. I didn’t mean to interrupt your experiment , or whatever this is. I won’t tell anyone what I saw. Just please don’t fire me. I didn’t mean to be nosy.” He wasn’t responding at all and she quickly realized that he couldn’t hear her from behind the thick acrylic.
    The automated lid on the top of the tank started to open. Still somewhat dazed, Dade floated to the top and tried to pull himself out. His limbs seemed only barely under his command. He looked like a man that had just come out of deep anesthesia.
    Ann Marie climbed to the top of the adjacent ladder and tried to help him out of the liquid. Under the layer of warm, slippery fluid, she could feel his muscles tremble as he tried to pull himself out. He started to gag and his body jerked like he was about to vomit. She grabbed his hand and helped him down the ladder.
    He was naked except for the sensors, wires and the black harness that connected everything and covered his pelvis. Clear liquid poured from his mouth as his lungs pushed out the breathing fluid. He coughed and wheezed while he acclimated to life on land. With his legs shaky and his balance off, he staggered to the other side of the lab. He nearly collapsed on one of the tables. That particular table looked like it had been constructed for that specific purpose. It was as though the process was somehow routine.
    She stood over him and noticed a thick, very old-looking scar on his chest. It was right at his heart. It looked as though he had been through serious surgery. After all the strange things she had seen in the last few minutes, the scar on his chest was somehow in the foreground of her mind.
    “What happened?” she asked, reaching out like she was going to touch him. “What’s this scar?”
    “What are you doing up here?” He asked with his hair dripping. He seemed to be coming to his senses and tried to pull himself up. His balance was