Read Evolver: Apex Predator for Free Online Page B

thought as he stood to face the old man.
    The remains of the door were ripped from its hinges. Thorn’s face was twisted with hate and rage when he reached for Jackson.
    Jackson squeezed the two canisters as hard as he could and sprayed a jet of chemicals at Thorn’s face. The old man screamed and retreated as the two chemicals combined in an explosive mix.
    Thorn was writhing in agony on the floor. His tattered suit slipped over him like a sickly second skin. Underneath Jackson could see long scars on Thorn’s ribs with badly sewn stitches splitting open with an awful POPPOPPOP as they broke. A tentacle slid free and reached for Jackson.
    Thorn rolled onto his back, clutching at his face with what looked like a spiky lobster claw where his right hand should have been. His left eye bulged from its socket and resembled a fly’s. His breathing sounded like a gurgling drain. Jackson said, “What are you?”
    His vision blurred by the chemical, Thorn threw all he had into a desperate blow with the lobster claw and missed.
    Seeing his advantage, Jackson punched Thorn’s bug eye as hard as he could. As the old man yowled with an inhuman voice, Jackson grabbed the flailing tentacle and yanked hard. He pulled Thorn into the air then whipped around like a discus thrower and let go to send him crashing hard into the far wall.
    Jackson staggered, grabbed his side and winced at the pain in his ribs. Cracked during the fight and aggravated by throwing the old man, his ribs shot fire through his torso.
    The old man looked like a patchwork action figure, lying against the wall. He saw the look of pure hate on Thorn’s face but was horrified by the way the man’s jaw seemed to hang like a piece of meat on a hook. That didn’t stop Jackson from jumping to land squarely on the spiky lobster claw with all his weight. The claw shattered under the force and Thorn screamed in his inhuman voice again.
    There was fear in Thorn’s human eye now, but something else crossed the old man’s face. Jackson recognized a will to survive as the chemicals Jackson dumped on Thorn burned more and more of Thorn's skin away.
    Jackson fell over, unbalanced by Thorn pulling his arm back suddenly. He cracked his head hard on the floor and as Jackson reached out to grab the old man, Thorn scrambled away.
    Through a haze of pain, Jackson saw Thorn look around and cry out in frustration and pain. The patchwork man, still burning from the chemicals, turned around twice, raging, before running from the lab without a backward glance.
    Groggy, Jackson changed back to himself and stumbled toward his father’s lab.
     
    *
     
    He moved through the yellow police tape that marked the lab as a murder scene. Moving like a shadow he made his way to the office that adjoined the lab. He kicked the door in and entered the office, making for the bookshelf.
    There, in the center, was another copy of the same book he'd seen in Thorn's office: The Evolution Revolution, Climate Change and Humanity's Next Steps by Dr. Benjamin Savage. He took it down and opened it. Inside, the pages had been carved to make a snug fit for three portable USB drives and a handful of phage discs.
    Jackson was shaking from the adrenaline. He couldn't feel the bruises and lacerations from the fight, or the cracked ribs, as he removed everything from the book and put it back on the shelf. He picked up a picture from his father's, desk. He remembered Family Day at a Kansas City baseball game. He was twelve in the picture and his parents were happy and smiling.
    "I wish you could have trusted me," he said.
    He took the picture with him, tucking it into a pocket of an EnviroTech jacket. Knowing it was a lame disguise though better than nothing, he ran back through the lab, into the hall and toward the loading dock.
     
    *
     
    Jackson snuck off the campus without incident. He'd found a ball cap at the dock and pulled it down over his eyes then made his way across the long parking lot and through the stand