Future Defenders - Book 1 - Rise of the Murderers

Chapter 18 - An Old Friend

3 years ago...

The doors of the lab opened, allowing Riley to enter and make his way to his office. Dropping off some files on his desk, he grabbed his keycard and left the office. He made his way to what seemed to be empty wall and scanned his keycard on a specific area of the wall. The doorway revealed itself and he passed through and descended down the stairs it contained.

At the bottom, a tall scientist was talking to two other scientists about an experiment that would most likely be happening later on in the day. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Riley approaching him.

"Ah, Riley. I was wondering when you would arrive."

"Sorry #####, I had to help one of my friends with something on my way over."

"No problem. I still had a few things to do at the time you originally said you'd arrive. Follow me, I got something to show you."

Riley followed ###### to their office, where he began to put on some protective gear. Riley did the same, assuming that this was about that thing. Entering a room next to the office, ###### pressed a button next to the door to reveal what they were working. Sitting on a table, we're two small, cylinder containments, both containing a ball of purple energy. Riley approached it in awe, and turned back to #####.

"You actually finished them!"

"Took all night but yes, their down."

Months of research and testing had led to this. The Magic enhancers finally had a stable prototype form. These spheres of energy may look small, but they held immense power. They had the capabilities of increasing the strength of a magic user. It would be revolutionary when dealing with massive threats.

"They haven't been tested, but I was thinking around 1pm today, we test one of them." ###### mentioned. 

Riley nodded. He had cleared majority of his day so he could work on it.

"While they're both made exactly the same," ###### continued. "The one the right is more stronger than the one on the left. We'll be testing the one on the left first, and if it goes wrong, we won't use the other one. If it succeeds, we'll test the stronger one."

##### went over to the weaker energy sphere and grabbed it. He walked up to Riley and handed it to him. "I want you to take this to our testing room so we can start testing immediately when it's time." He said. "I know you just got here, but afterwards, I'll get us some lunch. Can't experiment on an empty stomach."

"Sounds like a plan." Riley responded as he walked out of the room to the testing facility. Their's was the closest from the main area, so it wasn't going to take long. As he walked through the main area, he looked to his left to see the core of the lab. It was his and ######'s greatest achievement so far. It powered up the entire lab whilst using hardly any energy. The experiment they were conducting at the moment, would go far beyond that however.

After placing the energy sphere in the testing room, Riley quickly checked the next room, which was his own personal one. Inside, a machine stood at the opposite end. It was an experiment that he had been working on in between the ones with ######. It would be capable to revive people to some capacity. He was closing in on it being finished and ready to be tested, however his main focus was the experiment with #####.

Riley met ##### at the bottom of the stairs and the two travelled to a nearby cafe in Electricity City and had some lunch. They discussed all the possible outcomes of what could happen with the experiment. ###### was only focusing on the positive outcomes.

"I can't wait for this to succeed." He gloated.

"If it succeeds. Things can still go wrong like some of the previous attempts." Riley pointed out.