Me And The Crusaders

Prologue

Well, here's the first chapter of MATC, hope you like it! Trigger warning: gore ahead.

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November 2002.
BioLab Medical Research Centre.
Summerville, Indiana.

Dr. Arnold Webber stood in front of the one-way mirror of the observation room with his arms clasped behind his back, staring into the brightly-lit ward beyond. The observation room was  a small, windowless space, the air stale and recycled with a faint scent of disinfectant. Behind him, the door led out into the sterile, fluorescent-lit corridors of the lab, where the soft murmur of voices and the rustle of scrubs created a constant background hum.

At fifty-six, he stood tall and trim, with thick hair that had gone from steely-gray to completely white during the last few months and deep lines etching the skin at the corners of his eyes. He wore a crisp white lab coat over a starched white shirt and black trousers, perfectly pressed and creased. His face was pale, gaunt, with thin lips curved downwards. A deep exhaustion had settled deep into his bones, one that seemed not only physical but mental. He’d overheard the whispers, knew what the research team said about him behind his back, but he didn't think he was playing God, nor did he envision himself as some kind of mad scientist. He was simply trying to help.

The ward itself was drab white from the walls to the ceiling. A camera set up in one corner of the room watched through its singular glass eye. A man was stretched out on the narrow cot, staring up at the ceiling. His left foot jiggled restlessly. The medical chart had identified him as Michael Burns, age 26, and a medical intern at the Summerville General Hospital. He wore a combover that did nothing to hide the fact that he was going prematurely bald and thick Coke-bottle glasses. As Dr. Webber watched, the door to the ward opened and an orderly in dressed in green scrubs walked in wheeling a cart. He stopped the cart next to the cot and turned around to give Dr. Webber an unprofessional two- thumbs up. Dr Webber nodded back in turn. The lab technician turned back to his work, snapping on a pair of rubber gloves. He coaxed George onto his side andprepped a syringe, pushing air out of the plunger until a little spray of the dark green serum came squirting out of the eye of the needle.

"Beginning the last dosage," the orderly announced. George flinched a little as the needle went into his back, but otherwise showed no reaction.

As the current head research scientist of BioLab, Dr Webber had overseen countless projects, but none as personal as GENESIS. The idea for GENESIS had come to him in the 1980s, when the genetic drift was discovered. Humankind had begun to evolve and superhumans had emerged; a subset of the human population with extraordinary physical and mental abilities. No one really knew how it had happened, or why, but some studies chalked it up to exposure to high levels of ionized radiation, which was  capable of altering DNA not just in living organisms but in their offspring. Over time, the mutation had spread, resulting in a growing population of superhumans — now up to two percent of the whole world. Several geneticists had already deduced that the drastic genetic variations between regular humans and superhumans in the future could possibly render them too genetically different by far to stand any chance of interbreeding. Humanity, within a few generations, could die out entirely.

That was where Dr Webber came in. GENESIS was his brain-child — a first-of-its-kind experimental treatment that could alter the human species forever. The second phase of the trial had just begun, with twenty volunteer test subjects undergoing CRISPR-based gene-editing. Five adults received a low-dose therapy, five received mid-dose, and another five received a high-dose treatment. George was one of their last volunteers.

Pushing past the swing door connecting the two rooms, Dr Webber strolled into the ward and put a hand on Michael's shoulder. The man's face was slick with sweat, the harsh lighting throwing shadows across his face.