“I’ve told you this already... you won’t be eligible for the upgrade, Rich. It took Raide six months of running DNA model simulations to even have a reasonably high degree of confidence for me, and he’s had all of my physical data since the beginning. Even then, I had to spend that time training just so I survive the process. It’s not like I’m going to be walking into the lab, injecting myself, and then waltzing out the front door like I went in for a flu shot.” Adrian turned back to the monitor setup in the hotel room.

Currently, they were situated in a Hilton Garden Inn about twenty miles from the lab in Syracuse, New York. Per Raide’s recommendation, they’d stayed in an adjacent county, so that it was more unlikely that police came asking around for recent guests. To be on the safe side, though, Raide was also monitoring any security systems tied to any networks and would edit their contents once everything was over, including the hotel they were staying at.

“Fine, fine. I do hope that you remember to take enough samples so that you can replicate it one day though. Like hell I’m going to let the opportunity of becoming a superhuman pass me by.” Sullen, Rich spun on his heels to grab the keys to Adrian’s car and went to make sure everything was ready for this evening, a bag containing his handed down M1 carbine in the other hand.

He must be getting jittery.

Who could blame him, though? While Rich and Adrian had only flirted with the law by doing things like drinking underage and trespassing on private property, neither one had ever come even close to what they were about to do. Breaking and entering, assault, theft, arson...these were just a handful of the things they could be charged with if they were caught. If the worst case scenario happened and they had to fight their way out lethally, add on murder times the number of victims. A flutter threatened to upturn his stomach, so Adrian heaved a calming breath. Just have to remember...

Raide spoke just then from the laptop’s speakers, “High risk, high reward, right sir?”

Throwing an amused smile at the USB camera, “Ya know, it hasn’t gotten any less creepy when you do that.” Shaking his head, “Bring the itinerary to the screen, please.” Sitting down on one of the twin queen beds occupying the room, he scrutinized the schedule.

11:00 pm - Raide forces a sector restart for the area’s power grid to disable cameras able to catch evidence of their passage. Rich and Adrian move to lab facility, forcing their way inside.

11:05 pm - Rich and Adrian inside the building. Adrian engages any security and personnel. Rich follows with ranged support.

11:15 pm - City power reestablished, all security neutralized.

11:17 pm - Adrian establishes connection to facility's systems for Raide via USB/cell phone hookup to main server.

11:18 pm - Raide takes over lab’s computer/security system. Disables cameras and wipes evidence of initial conflict with security.

11:20 pm - 12:00 am - Rich moves bodies of personnel to outside of the building on the NW corner, hidden from the street, binding each to be unable to speak or move. Also places thermal blankets over them to prevent hypothermia.

11:20 pm - 12:00 am - Adrian assumes control of primary lab, locates samples, and boots up equipment.

12 am - 1:30 am - Adrian and Rich make necessary alterations to serum and duplicate it into specific groupings via direction given by Raide. All other needed components obtained prior to mission must be on person.

1:31 am - 1:40 am - Adrian straps into sensors and subject table, Rich administers serum array and Raide monitors.

1:31 am - 6:00 am - Adrian undergoes gene alterations.

1:31 am - 6:00 am - Rich stays close while Adrian undergoes change, gathering all samples into a freezer bag for transport, then placing thermite charges in key locations to achieve implosion. Raide disables fire suppression systems and alarm. Rich retrieves cell phone and usb hookup.

6:00 am - Adrian fit enough for transport. Raide forces second sector grid reboot. Both exit the premises.

6:10 am - City power reestablished.

6:15 am - Thermite charges ignite, taking out the key systems and forcing a structural collapse. Rich and Adrian 15 minutes down I-81.

Satisfied he understood all the steps and committed the list to his mental bulletin in the foyer of his mind palace, Adrian got up and posited the standard bluetooth earpiece into his left ear. Speaking out loud, “Rich, we’re checking out in here. Bring the car around.” Spending five minutes to wipe down all of the surfaces they interacted with, Adrian left the room as if it had never seen them walk through that door.

Three minutes later, he paid in cash with a smile, giving the desk girl a wink as he disappeared out into the dark, frigid New England night.

***

Hot breath fogged the air as Rich and Adrian sprinted to the large laboratory looming ahead of them. The ground crunched beneath their feet, snow compacting into icy boot-sized prints 8 centimeters deep. The shadowy lane they were using to get to their destination was positioned behind a row of buildings that had few working lights. For some unresearched reason, they’d decided to have their lab facilities built in the city, so several buildings were close by. It made the last portion of their plans a bit more complicated, but Raide made adjustments in the end.

Using a small thermite charge, they melted the back door’s locking mechanism after hitting the front the security camera positioned overhead with a black paintball. Stealing into the well-lit corridor, Adrian assumed point 5 meters in front of Rich, who now had an M1 positioned to his shoulder as he stalked behind him. Adrian wore tactical pants and boots with his thick, black “energy armor” long sleeve covering his upper body, which stood out in their bright environment.

He’d made a few improvements by adding kevlar along vital areas on the inside of the fabric to protect his vitals from gunshots, but he vowed to himself to revisit the body armor at a later date because this thing was intensely uncomfortable. The end of the sleeves hooked onto the outside of a pair of Insulated gloves to ensure extended contact area and also to prevent self electrocution. Both Rich and Adrian had a beanie with a built in video, audio, and 360⁰ sensor array around it’s band for Raide to monitor their surrounds.

Raide spoke into his ear, “Remember, there are four guards on duty tonight. Most likely distribution is 3 patrolling, while one man’s the security room. Recommended course: neutralize singular element, get me plugged in and ready for when the power comes back on, then neutralize the three patrolling targets.” Adrian responded back softly in the affirmative.

Holding up a fist for Rich, Adrian crept up to the corner of a perpendicular hall and peered around to the door of the security room. Clear. Unfortunately, there were no windows into the room so they were blind. Both men rolled their feet as they glided across the hard concrete flooring, making as little sound as possible. Positioning himself next to the door and making a grabbing motion at his own face while pulling down, each pulled out a face mask from their back pocket and donned it.

Fingers up, Adrian started the countdown. 3. 2. 1. Palming the door handle, Adrian disengaged the mechanism and opened it softly a few inches. From further in, a voice rang out, “Roy is that you? You’ve got to come check out this Vine, man.”

Indicating to watch their rear, Adrian nodded and slipped into the room with frightening speed and crossed the distance to the man in the chair. The guard’s eyes betrayed terror, but before he could yell out in fear, Adrian planted a hand over his mouth and drove his other forearm into the guard’s throat, eliciting a convulsion as voltage poured into his body. A few moments later, he collapsed, sprawled in the chair.

Motioning to Rich who had backpedaled into the room cautiously, he said, “All yours.”

Eight minutes until lights on.

Thinking of something, Adrian spoke softly, “Raide, take that guard’s sound file and split it up into two segments - a hail, and then the last statement.” It only took a few seconds for the file to be altered. Rich in the meantime, went to the server room and plugged in a wireless relay stick since the phone would be needed for this next bit.

Five minutes to lights on.

A flickering candle threw blades of light that pierced into it’s surroundings, casting shadows of the three men hunkered down to a game of poker at a table. Each were grumbling about the apparent blackout and hoped for it’s swift return before it got much colder in the building. Just then, a coworker’s voice rang out from the hallway, “Roy! You’ve got to come check out this Vine, man.”

Adrian watched as a burly guard came meandering out from the room while cursing, “I swear to God, Billy... If you make me watch another one of those stupid fucking cat videos again, I’m going to shove that phone up your ass while it loops meowing sounds.”

Peering through the darkness, the guard caught a glimpse of a cellphone glowing brightly on the floor and no sign of Billy. Walking confusedly to the object, the man known as Roy never saw what hit him as Adrian stalked up behind and held the back of his hand to his exposed neck, the other hand’s fingers gripping tightly to his forehead while forcing pressure back onto his electrified armor. Another set of convulsions later and Roy slumped into Adrian’s arms who started pulling him around a corner to where Rich was waiting.

Two minutes to lights on.

Adrian stealthed up to the yawning door where the candlelight still flickered brightly. A mumble passed from one guard to another, “Roy better hurry his ass up. I’m sick of looking at this shitty hand…” Not caring if they yelled out this time, Adrian dashed into the room and planted a punch that left a sickening sound as the guard’s head whipped back and struck the wall behind him.

Turning to the other, Adrian vaulted over the table and again struck out with his forearm. Because the guard didn’t know about the shirt, he reached up and blocked the arm with his bare hands to intercept, only to feel a burning sensation snake through his body as his muscles seized up and his vision went dark.

Raide’s activation timing is really impeccable.

Casting an eye over the other unconscious guard, he spoke out loud for the bluetooth to catch it, “All security guards are down. Ready when you are, Rich.”

Right on time, the lights powered back on fully revealing the room with all the cards strewn across the table and floor. He could hear all of the systems like ventilation and cooling in the compound turning back on one-by-one, the dull thrum reminding him of the lab buildings back at Georgia Tech.

Pacing out of the break room, Adrian quickly removed his mask and went to the main lab to begin searching the storage and cabinets. Raide meanwhile had successfully hijacked the server and assumed control of the electronics in the building. Initiating his video editing tasks passively, he directed his attention to assisting Adrian in the lab identifying components for the serum. Rich also joined them after about twenty minutes and helped synthesize the separate vials for injection. They then combined the separate viral cultures into a singular serum that turned white and milky before their eyes.

An hour and ten minutes later, they finished and, just as planned, Adrian removed his shirt to lay down on the cold gurney they’d found in an adjacent lab room.

Rolling his eyes to meet Rich’s once he got comfortable as possible on the freezing platform, he said, “Remember, I more than likely will pass out during this. If anything happens while I’m out, deal with it. Raide should be able to help you. The serum has been designed as a cyclical virus that is time-released in my blood. It’s going to attack a certain type of cell based off of surface markers whereupon it will inject its DNA to override the previous cell’s genetic makeup. After that, it’ll go into an accelerated distribution and replication stage to effectively replace all of the existing cells within that category.

“I should pass through the first phase over the next four and a half hours which will include the most dangerous brain and heart regions. So be attentive and ready for whenever Raide needs you to step in - this will probably be very unpleasant for me. Then we still need to get out of Dodge afterwards, so make sure your tasks are done by then.”

Receiving a nod, he leaned back into the headrest and relaxed as Rich began hooking up an IV line and several heart and EEG brain wave sensors. A few moments later, Raide’s voice echoed into his earpiece as the first serum in the array started pumping into his veins, “Good luck, sir.”

Watching the milky white concoction thread its way through the tubing and entering his arm, Adrian felt an intense cold as his body temperature took a hit from the room temperature liquid. Almost as soon as that occurred, an electric inferno seemingly erupted within his arm. Bug-eyed and staring at his arm, he felt each beat of his heart pull the substance towards his core. Fear and determination mingled in a battle for supremacy as he tried to focus on maintaining control.

After an eternity of what was only three seconds, it reached what must have been his heart. Bursting in several different directions along the channel of his major arteries, a primordial howl forced its way past his lips as he strained against the bindings. Alarmed, Rich looked at the monitor where Raide’s face was displayed. Seeing the exchange, Adrian growled out a command, “Leave it. Keep going!” before promptly falling unconscious from the painful load.

***

Spasms wracked his friend’s body in the seconds that followed before settling down into a deathly calm. Double-checking the vitals monitor, Rich confirmed that he still had a pulse and shook his head at the abnormally high diastolic blood pressure number. He didn’t know how to read it, but his EEG readings were also all over the place. Heat radiated off of Bearcat’s bare torso in the cold room, thin tendrils lacing up and dissipating into the vents on the ceiling.

Rich couldn’t help but think that if an ancient human in their ignorance were to see exactly what he was seeing at the moment, they would probably prostrate themselves and call him a supernatural being. Rubbing his matted head and removing his mask, he began setting about collecting the assigned vials identified by Adrian before the administration of the gene therapy.

Only a minute later however, the sound of a door opening caused Rich to freeze his movement as he reached into a low cabinet. The sound of clacking heels echoed over the floor. A woman. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck. What do I do!? He heard a gasp reverberate out and suddenly his eyes alighted on his M1. Not pausing to look in her direction, he dove for the firearm only 3 feet away and raised it to his shoulder as he rose from his knees.

Dammit all! She’s seen his face, I can’t let her leave here alive. Fuck, why did this have to happen! Lining his shot up to the forehead of a now very frightened and haggard woman, he silently pleaded with the woman to understand. A breath passed before he suddenly squeezed the trigger, a gaseous crack thundering throughout the small room.

He quietly dragged his body across the room and looked at the unfortunate woman framed against a background of red, her expression permanently frozen in a look of pure surprise and terror. Brain matter and skull fragments speckled the walls in a meter diameter beyond where she had been standing.

Leaning heavily against one of the workbenches, Rich zoned out into nothingness. There were no thoughts of why she was there when they’d thought the building was empty. There wasn’t even grief though he was sure that would come later. He was just there, disbelief trying to force his mind into not accepting the macabre reality in front of him. It was only half an hour later that he came out of his shock and was able to move.

Gingerly stepping around the droplets of red that stained the tiled floor, he moved to collect some more samples, his eyes fearfully drifting over every once in awhile to glimpse that unforgettable truth.

He had taken a life.

***

A mixture of silence and warmth assaulted Adrian as he slipped into unconsciousness, like he was submerging his head beneath a pool’s surface on a warm Summer day. Feeling the previous pressure and pain removed, he opened his eyes again to reveal a massive gymnasium that reminded him of his college’s basketball court area. There were no bleachers or courts - only white walls and skylights decorated the enormous rectangular room. Attempting to peer out the windows revealed that the exterior atmosphere was too bright to gaze upon.

Completing a single 360⁰ spin as he scrutinized his surroundings, he was greeted by an otherworldly sight. There, hovering nearly a meter off the ground, was a floating orb of red. Drawing closer, he skimmed it with his fingers and smelled the warm substance that now wet his fingertips. Iron tugged at his nostrils. This is... blood. Is it mine? Completing the thought caused a reaction in the sphere. The previously perfect, smooth exterior undulated and separated into a thousand rivers that flowed effortlessly through the air towards the nearest wall, each assuming the form of a dancing double helix. A single thought resounded in his mind as he watched the scene. Beautiful.

Stopping just short of the unyielding wall, the blood formed itself into a floating container that resembled a giant paint can, complete with bloody brushes and ladder that shimmered at the teasing of the room’s air current. Stepping up to the strange eisel, he gazed at the wall and was bombarded with a wave of compulsion. Taking up the utensils, he began to feverishly paint a mural on the wall with his own blood.

Hour after hour slipped by like this, only it was impossible to tell the exact time as he realized that time flowed differently here much like a dream. Neither fatigue nor thirst assaulted him. Finally drawing to completion, his confused circadian rhythm gave him a rough approximation of two weeks time having passed by.

Backpedaling about 10 meters, he stared at what he had wrought. When he first started, he only felt this one dominant thought: create your passion. Driven by the vortex of compulsion, he began painting his family, an unknown shadow of a woman, and scattering the elements of all his hopes and dreams into a collection of everything he wanted to build and everything that he wanted to destroy. What met him was a whirling maelstrom of destruction and life. Trailing his eyes along the planned chronological approximation of his mind’s account, he was assailed with a sense of sad satisfaction.

The knowledge and visualization of what he had to do was so heavy. The sheer enormity of the world’s issues threatened to crush Adrian’s spirit. Remembering his friends, family, and people like them, he steeled his heart and resolved to take up the mantle. Against all of the greed and abuse. Against all the corruption and misappropriation that threatened to choke society. For their sake. Because who would stand up for them otherwise? It had been made evident over the last several decades that the common man had no more advocates.

Striding up to the wall while filled with an unknown hint of inspiration, Adrian lifted his left hand and pressed it against the bloodstained mural. Taking his right now, he did the same thing, but slowly removed it and curled his blood-coated fingers into a fist over his heart. The mural that he had worked so hard to create suddenly began to liquify and run down the wall, pulled into some mysterious gravity that rotated around Adrian’s feet.

The slow accumulation began wrapping around his legs and worked upwards until a current of blood covered every inch below his neck in a rotating cocoon. Centimeter by centimeter, the last vestiges of blood separated itself from the wall and flowed up his body, completing the still revolving tide. As the last rays of light were blocked out from his sight by the maroon cascade, he felt himself slip into a gentle shaking motion.

Snapping his eyes open, he found himself back in the lab being gently nudged on the shoulder by Rich who was staring at him with a dead and fearful gaze. Why does he look like that? He tried to think, but what resulted was a wave of pain and a blinding array of colors. Everything was pulsing in his vision, rapidly alternating between hues of blue and red that threatened to make him throw up from the motion. Blinking his tired eyelids, his voice croaked out as he held pressure to his head, “How long has it been?”

A hint of confusion passed over Rich’s face as he answered, “It’s been 4 hours and 15 minutes. It’s currently 5:45 am…” Hesitating for a split second, he continued. “I woke you up a bit early to make sure you could move on your own, but there’s also… ah, forget that, what’s wrong with your eyes?”

“Huh?” Groaning as he peeled his now unrestrained body off the chair, Adrian heaved a tremulous breath and sat up, testing his strength for a moment before gingerly stepping onto the icy cold floor. Everything felt like jelly within his body, like he’d been turned into mush on the inside except for this unimaginably powerful heartbeat that thrummed in his chest with vigor. There was this incredible increase in his cognitive perception and thinking ability as well, but the rest of his body seemed to still be warring over the changes. He knew there were a few more cycles to go through, but this dissonance between mind and body was disorienting.

Placing a stabilizing hand on the edge of the his chair, he carefully walked to the workbench that led towards the cold storage unit. It was then that he saw it. Brain matter and a limp, cold figure of a woman prone and unmoving in death. He raised his gaze to meet Rich’s in a moment of confusion.

What drew his attention mentally wasn’t the fact that he was seeing a dead body in front of him, but that he felt nothing over it. He could infer what happened easily. No, Adrian was concerned because he could still feel those chemical reactions firing off in his brain like normal to create the appropriate emotional response, but it was like everything that had the capacity to emotionally cripple him in a moment had been muffled. He blinked in confusion. It was there, he could see the body, he knew how he would have reacted before the procedure, but it was all cut off from him.

He was like the body, cold and ultimately uncaring in the face of death.

Wearily looking back towards his friend who was still terrified over the anticipated reaction from Adrian about the girl’s death, what he did was not berate him or flip out. He just quietly sent an understanding nod towards Rich’s fearful face, hoping that it played at least a small part in absolving him of that crime. Feeling this newfound coldness that gripped his moral heart, he suddenly realized that he’d be able to shoulder this sin. In fact, he could shoulder so much more.

Stumbling over to the glass cold storage door, he turned off the interior lights and was met by an exhausted face. What kicked his mind into overdrive though were the orbs sitting in his eye sockets. The iris’ were currently doing a dance between an electric blue and a blood maroon. Pulses of electricity radiated and arced outwards from his pupils, seemingly unable to choose between the two colors that raged against each other.

When Adrian began to revisit the memory of the blood mural, remembering all those feelings with vivid detail, his eyes expunged the blue and drowned in maroon. Suppressing the memory had the opposite effect. Shaking his head and forcing himself to table the strange events and realizations he’d just experienced, his eyes stabilized into a color that reminded him of blue plasma, albeit slightly darker, but holding just the tiniest perceptible pulse that flitted back and forth over his irises.

Turning to Rich, he pantingly said, “I’ve only got about 30 minutes of mobility before the second phase hits. Are the samples collected? Are the charges set and timed?” Receiving a nod, he checked his earpiece with a shaking hand and spoke to Raide, “Go ahead and begin the second grid restart. We’re blowing this joint early.”

A few minutes later with samples in hand, Adrian limped with Rich’s help out into a darkened city, disappearing into a new snow flurry that had just started in the early hours of dawn. Thirty minutes later, a small shockwave rippled through the quiet street after one of its buildings suddenly combusted and folded in on itself.