Chapter 107: Seth’s First Experiment

As Doug spoke, Axel Vance noticed a subtle change in the dogs lying around the living room. Their attention sharpened almost simultaneously, and several pairs of eyes settled on him with an awareness that felt far beyond normal animal instinct. In that moment, Axel understood that the cult’s greatest surveillance advantage had effectively changed hands.

He looked at Doug and then at the dogs surrounding his wheelchair. “This house has plenty of empty rooms. Which one do you want?” Doug glanced down at his useless legs before looking toward the Husky and German Shepherd beside him. “Something on the first floor would be best. Moving around is difficult, and I’d rather stay close to them.”

Axel nodded because the arrangement made sense. A first-floor room would be easier for Doug to enter and leave, while also allowing the dogs to move freely around him if something happened. He guided the wheelchair down the wide hallway as the Husky and German Shepherd stayed close on either side.

The dogs quietly adjusted themselves whenever Doug’s chair drifted toward a wall or doorway, helping guide him without needing any verbal command. Axel watched them work and realized their connection went far beyond simple communication. They were not merely Doug’s eyes and ears; in many ways, they had become extensions of his own body.

Axel stopped outside one of the larger rooms and pushed the door open. “How about this one?” The bedroom was mostly empty except for an old bed and wardrobe, but it had plenty of space for a wheelchair and a huge floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the rear garden.

Doug moved toward the glass and remained there for several seconds. The garden was little more than a shadow beneath the night sky, but daylight would flood the room once morning came. Some color finally returned to his pale face as he murmured, “This is perfect. It has a window.”

He seemed to realize how much emotion had slipped into his voice and quietly explained, “Before they took me, I was living in that abandoned factory where the dogs first brought you. I scratched the address onto the wall there before I was captured, hoping one day someone might find it.” Axel finally understood why the help message had been hidden in that particular building.

He did not offer hollow words of sympathy and simply rested one hand briefly on Doug’s shoulder. “From now on, this is your home. The only problem is that none of us can claim to be much of a cook.” Doug gave a faint laugh and replied, “That’s still an improvement. For a while, I survived on whatever food the dogs managed to bring me.”

After getting Doug settled, Axel left him with the animals and headed toward the basement. The moment he opened the door, a low electrical hum reached him from below, followed by the occasional clatter of tools. Dr. Seth Brundle was already completely absorbed in whatever he had been building.

Seth stood hunched over a large workbench, his hair disordered and his eyes bloodshot from hours without proper rest. In front of him sat a crude experimental machine made from the surplus equipment they had purchased earlier that day. Two transparent chambers stood several feet apart, linked by improvised hardware and a tangle of old electronic components.

Axel stopped beside the bench and stared at the contraption. “You’re not about to tell me that thing is already a telepod.” Seth jerked hard enough to nearly drop the tool in his hand, then turned and immediately brightened when he realized who had entered.

“You came at exactly the right time,” Seth said, pointing proudly toward the machine. “And no, it isn’t a real telepod yet. This is just a prototype so I can test whether the ideas in my head actually work outside my head.”

Axel studied Seth’s exhausted face. “Have you been down here since we got back?” Seth answered as though the question itself were ridiculous. “Of course. When an idea finally becomes clear, you don’t stop because you’re tired.”

He gestured toward the used equipment surrounding the workbench. “Most of what we bought today is old, but enough of the important pieces still function for basic testing. The problem is that transmitting matter and reconstructing it correctly are two completely different challenges.” Seth started slipping into increasingly technical explanations until Axel raised a hand.

“Short version.”

Seth stopped.

Then he picked up a banana from the workbench.

“Fine. I’ll show you.”

He opened one of the transparent chambers, placed the banana inside, and closed it again. “This isn’t a complete teleportation system, but if the basic concept works, the object should disappear here and reappear there.” Axel crossed his arms and waited.

Seth activated the prototype.

The machine emitted a rising hum as several old components flashed and sparked. The banana inside the first chamber dissolved into a burst of light, vanished from view, and moments later another flash filled the second chamber.

When the light faded, a banana rested inside.

Axel stared at it.

From the outside, it looked completely normal.

Seth turned toward him with both hands spread like a stage magician presenting his final trick. “Well?” Axel opened the second chamber, picked up the banana, and examined its shape, color, and weight. “Looks pretty good to me.”

Seth’s triumphant expression immediately collapsed. “Look closer.” Axel frowned and tried to peel the banana, but his fingernail slid across the skin without producing the normal tear.

The peel felt wrong.

Soft, but strangely rubbery.

Axel gripped the fruit and snapped it in half.

His expression froze.

There was no recognizable boundary between peel and flesh inside.

Instead, the cross-section revealed one uniform mass with the consistency of mashed fruit mixed into rubber. The outside still looked exactly like a banana, but everything inside had been blended into a single indistinguishable substance.

Axel stared at it for several seconds.

Then a memory from his previous life surfaced.

The Fly.

A failed teleportation process that could preserve the appearance of something while catastrophically scrambling the biological information underneath was exactly the kind of nightmare associated with Seth Brundle’s experiments. Looking at the ruined banana in his hand, Axel felt as though he were holding the plant version of the disaster he remembered from that story.

Seth pointed at the broken fruit with visible frustration. “That is the problem. The prototype can reproduce the overall shape correctly, but the internal organization is completely wrong.”

He ran both hands through his hair. “It takes everything that makes up the banana, mixes it together, and then rebuilds the correct outer form without understanding what belongs where inside. From a distance, perfect banana; up close, complete biological nonsense.”

Axel placed the ruined fruit back on the workbench. “So it works and doesn’t work at the same time.” Seth gave him an irritated look before turning back toward the machine.

“I need more experiments and a lot more adjustments before it can reconstruct matter properly.” He stared at the crude prototype as though personally offended by its failure. “Right now, it’s like mixing coffee and milk together and then demanding the machine separate them back into two perfectly pure liquids afterward.”

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