Shudder - The College Years Ch. 07

Without warning, Nevyn picked up the chair and slammed it against the wall behind him. One of the legs splintered and flew out the door into the entryway. The high back creaked and bent inwards towards the seat and hung loosely by pieces of splintered wood. Nevyn threw the ruined chair into the corner of the room. When he rejoined the group at the table, he saw Richard was on his feet in an almost comical fighting stance. His knees were slightly bent and he had one fist in front of him while his other arm remained tense at his side. Everyone else was still sitting, frozen, not breathing. Nevyn couldn't stop himself as the tirade sprang forth. "What a great idea! Let's tell everyone! Hey, I know a bunch of body hoppers! I know where they live! We can study them! It'll be great! What the fuck are all you people thinking letting this bitch know about us? And now her husband knows! The lack of judgment you two lack, I honestly can't believe it! Do you understand what you've done?"

No one said anything for several seconds. Derek sighed and looked sternly at Nevyn. "Dude, you've been by yourself for centuries, right? You've gone about this all by yourself. Where has that got you? My family wants to help and so does Bekka and so does Connie. And as far as I can tell Connie's legit. I went into her head back in the hospital and as far as I can see her motives are mainly to help us."

"What else was there?" Aubrey asked.

"Scientific fame and a key to immortality, but hey, no one's perfect. She does want to help though. And yeah, there's a chance this could bite us, but it also could be the best thing for us. I say we put it to a vote."

Nevyn suddenly wanted another chair to throw, specifically at Aubrey's face this time so it would shut Derek up. This was not a democracy. He was the person in charge. He was the reason they had a problem, yes, but he should be the one calling the shots, and absolutely no one else should be involved unless he said so. His breath was coming quick and shallow. He needed to get it together so he could reason with these morons. He slowed his breathing and released the tension from his body. He would contain the rage. He could talk them down from this. "Here's another alternative. I show you how to do what I was talking about with Lola to this woman and her husband. It's not that hard. If you're deep enough in them, the moment a shudder happens their soul is available to absorb. Their body will be nothing but empty shells and any threat will be eliminated."

Connie was horror stricken at this suggestion. She began to stand up but Derek put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Everyone else had adopted a similar expression of horror or disgust, even Bekka.

"All in favor of Connie trying to get to the bottom of this," Derek interjected.

Before Nevyn could add anything else, hands shot up. To his anger and dismay, Bekka's hand slowly extended upwards. She refused to make eye contact with him. Instead, she looked towards Lola's body that contained her best friend. Nevyn pounded a fist on the table. "This is a mistake! You're all making a mistake!"

"Maybe," Aubrey agreed. "But if so, we'll all deal with it together."

Nevyn opened his mouth to speak, realized it was pointless, and stalked out of the room. They heard his footsteps on the stairs, and a second later, everyone heard the door to his room slam shut.

"I'll...I'll talk to him," Bekka said hopefully, looking at the entryway where her boyfriend had disappeared. "I'll try to convince him that it's in his best interest to cooperate."

"Thank you, and I'm sorry," Connie apologized. "This was not how I wanted to make your acquaintance, but I felt it was necessary to ensure your secret. I promise my husband won't pose a threat, but we should go because he wants to meet you tonight. And also, part of the way I got him to come around was to suggest that there might be some...benefits for him."

Derek cocked one of Aubrey's eyebrows. "Benefits?"

Connie eyed Derek's parents. "We can talk about that later. I'll go grab that paperwork I was talking about for Nevyn and your parents, then we should go."

That night, Nevyn dreamt about Beth for the first time. It would not be the last though, and as the days and weeks passed by, he dreamt about his life with her more than anything else. Several nights he dreamt of his childhood, of the short time he had been in his own body. He recalled his loving but often distant father. He dreamt of his mother in vivid detail, seeing her face look at him with such affection, then slowly transform into an ugly visage of fear and anger. He awoke in a panic almost every night. Bekka tried to soothe him most times, offering her body to him, but he slowly began to push her away, both emotionally and physically.

With funds provided by Connie that she had procured from her position in her company and a little help from the twins, Nevyn finally moved out of the Johnson's house. He and Bekka briefly lived together in a nice apartment ten minutes away from Connie's research center. Nevyn went in for questions and testing quite a lot during the first few months they lived there. Connie drew blood almost every day and told Nevyn to give an account of every person he'd ever possessed. Nevyn had laughed ruefully at this and admitted to not remembering everyone because there were thousands. Connie told him to put down as many names as he could, and as he remembered more, to add them to the list. She told him every name, every sample, every detail was crucial, and she didn't want to miss a thing.

The stress of being a human pin cushion and reliving his past put the final strain in his relationship with Bekka, and she left him after Nevyn threw a dish at her head when she had tried to defend what Connie was doing. She had screamed and yelled and briefly threatened to call the cops, but they both knew that was an empty threat given the scrutiny that could bring. In the end she had packed up her stuff and spent the night with Aubrey, who had a similar apartment a few miles away.

Instead of retreating to her hometown, Bekka stayed on with the project. She said she wasn't doing it for Nevyn, but for Derek and Aubrey. Nevyn called bullshit at this. He believed she was mainly doing it for herself. He knew that she wanted to be able to hop people in the worst way and had often thought that was the only thing she had like about him.

Connie's research facility ran a skeleton crew because of the secrecy they required. Because of this, Connie was happy to keep Bekka as a part of the team. Bekka was in charge of answering phones, and eventually as Nevyn would find out later, become their main human test subject.

As the months went by and Nevyn's presence was required less and less, he fell back into his old habits of self preservation through isolation. He continued to receive a stipend that provided him what he needed. His sex drive had greatly decreased since he had left the Johnson's, so he didn't even seek temporary sexual companionship, even though Connie said that was something that could be provided if necessary.

At the end of every month, Nevyn was given a condensed summary of Connie's research. Most of it was garbled science nonsense to him, but he did find the information on the light particle found in the DNA fascinating. It was in Nevyn's body, formerly Derek's, but it did not shine like the way it did in whichever bodies the twins were in, rather, it twinkled in and out. The twins' particles faded out over time when they left a host, eventually leaving no trace. Nancy and Richard came in a few times and it was determined Nancy had the particle, but it did not shine at all. Richard's DNA contained none of the particles, so he did not return after the initial testing. Nancy's presence was requested at least once a month.

The particle was indeed reactionary. When around other particles from different hosts, its light increased in intensity, and so did the primal urges of those hosts. Nancy discovered that with the twins and Nevyn out of her house, she was finally able to return to normal. Every time she visited the research center though, she had to be sequestered from her kids or her libido would spike.

Derek and Aubrey gave in to the urges quite often and would hook up using whatever bodies they felt they could get away with. Connie tried to set strict guidelines for this, and the twins followed them most of the time. One of those guidelines was the benefits requested by Connie's husband, Professor Charles Kendrick. Aubrey would often possess a cute young college student that Charles would pick out. She would show up at their house, pretend to be in need of some extra tutoring, and then seduce the professor.

Through it all the twins took turns inhabiting Lola's body. At most they would leave her to her own devices for two days with false implanted memories, then possess her again to keep her from remembering the truth. Derek and Aubrey wrestled with this terrible leash that tied them to Lola, but could not bring themselves to allow a more permanent solution that consisted of her either telling anyone she knew the truth, or stripping her of her soul like Nevyn suggested.

As the months drug on, Nevyn felt like the progress had slowed to a crawl. He wondered if they were now withholding information from him, or if they had hit a wall. At times he wanted to ask, but his curiosity did not win out however, as the only people he could ask he considered traitors.

Finally, after a year and a half, he was told there had been an encouraging development, and was asked to come to the research center. He drove his car, a lease that was owned by Connie's company, and parked in front of the gray, one story building. As he walked through the doors, he saw his ex behind a desk, waiting to sign him in. They did not smile and said nothing to each other. After he wrote his name, or Derek's really, he followed Bekka back through a solid black door into a center hallway that had doors on either sides. Most of them were glass and you could look right into them and see what was happening. Bekka led him to one of the last ones that you could not see into. She opened the door for him and he stepped inside, and then left, shutting the door after her.

Nevyn saw Connie and the twins, Aubrey in her body and Derek in Lola's. A surprise guest was their mother, Nancy. They were all sitting at a long conference table. They were clearly waiting for him. They appeared excited, but also nervous.

"So what are we doing today?" he started. "You need more of my blood. More tales of my sordid past? What? And why the extra company today?"

Connie ignored his questions. "Nevyn, we know it has seemed like slow going and that there hasn't been anything new happening, but that is only because I made the decision to keep you in the dark over recent developments. The time has come though, to fill you in. Have a seat."

"I'll stand, thanks."

Connie smirked. "I really think you'll want to sit down for this."

Nevyn rolled his eyes and sat down. He gestured with his hands for Connie to continue.

"With the help of Derek, Aubrey, and Bekka, we have learned a lot this last year and a half. We've learned that an unknown element is attached to every bit of DNA inside your current body, as well as Aubrey's and whatever body Derek or Aubrey hop into, as well as Nancy here."

Nevyn sighed. "Yeah, this much I know."

"Well, we're fairly certain we're going to be able to safely replicate the events that will lead to a human soul transfer."

"What?" Nevyn asked.

"We're going to make it so that someone can hop bodies," Aubrey answered.

"Exactly," Connie agreed.

"So you've found a way to replicate it?" Nevyn asked, trying not to sound too excited.

"Sort of, and only with people that have this element already in their DNA."

"Okay, you lost me."

"Whatever this element is, it can only be passed on with any permanence genetically."

Nevyn laughed. "Yeah, I figured as much by reading the monthly reports. Who knew I had stumbled across a family of potential body hoppers." He kept smiling as he joked, "Hey, maybe we're all related." And with that statement, the others at the table began to fidget uncomfortably. No one would look at Nevyn in the eye except Connie. She shoved a folder that had been in front of her over to Nevyn. He didn't open it, didn't even acknowledge it as he took in their reactions.

Connie began to speak as the others looked down at the table. "The first several months I put a primary focus on the biological components of this phenomenon. We have experimented with the element that exists inside all of you at length and learned that it is triggered by a combination of an electrical charge, and the body's fight or flight response. Simply put, when an electrical stimulus is provided, if the body believes it is in peril, the soul can choose to leave through whatever means necessary in order to survive. The electrical stimulus needn't actually be life threatening, not even close actually, but merely focused on the correct area for the body to think it is."

Nevyn nodded slowly. "So, you just need to shock me and Derek and I'll get my power back?"

"I don't think so," Connie answered carefully. "At least not yet. You see, and this is my hypothesis with the data available to me, when Derek was hit with lightning as a child, his soul chose not to invade his sister's body. In that instance though, I believe the light particle was awakened in him, which kept you from being able to hop him, but he could not hop because his soul was fused somehow with his body because he had not hopped when he had the choice. You could hop his mother and sister, even though they had this particle, but it was not active in them."

Nevyn was growing impatient. "I'm sorry, you know about the process, but you can't reverse it? Why the hell not?"

"You wanted to be in Derek during the time you..." she gave a sidelong glance at Nancy, "as his mom were engaged in coitus with Derek. In the detailed account given by each of you, you said you wanted to become him more than anything, and in the moment of climax, he desperately wanted to not be there. This all happened at the same time as a shudder, which I believe created a surge in the particles in Derek and his mother, allowing for whatever fusion that kept Derek from hopping to be nullified. In essence, it took three body hoppers to create this event. Having examined Derek's particles now, I am convinced your soul's fusion with his body is greater than before, and would require a much higher dosage of electricity."

Nevyn shrugged his shoulders. "Whatever, I can take it. Let's go."

"It would most likely be lethal, Nevyn. Either you or the person you were hopping into, or both, would most likely die."

"So then, what are we talking about? You said you could transfer a soul? Why am I here?"

The others began shifting in their seats again as Connie continued. "We have arranged a very experiment where we try to transfer Nancy's soul. I am very confident it will be successful, and if it is, we will have made another step towards understanding this and eventually finding a way for Derek to get his body back."

Nevyn said nothing for a few seconds as his mind whirred. There was a question that needed asking because they had not provided a proper answer. They had dangled an unknown factor in all this, a detail to be picked at, but then Connie had distracted him by squashing his hopes. Nevyn asked the question as he focused on the folder for the first time. "How is it they have this particle? You said it was passed down genetically."

Connie's face tightened and she motioned to the folder in front of him. "There are several pages of names in that folder." Nevyn opened it and began pouring over them as Connie kept on. "As I said for the first several months, I only studied the particle itself and how it exists within your bodies. For the last few months however, I branched out and studied other facets that might be at play. I examined your list of former hosts, Nevyn. There was a lot of names to cover. I was impressed by the amount of celebrities and powerful people you have been. At the same time, I went back through the Johnson's family tree, focusing heavily on Nancy's side of the family for obvious reasons. She could only remember names back to a great grandparent, so I had to dig up the rest. I compared all those names over the past two centuries to the ones on your list, and I found a match."

Nevyn's eyes widened as he found names circled in red on his list of hosts, and the same names circled on Nancy's list of ancestors. Nevyn's throat went dry as Connie's next words hit him hard.

"I think you may be the one who passed on the element that resides in this family. What can you tell me about the names I've circled on both lists, Ned and Bethany Briar?"

To be continued...