In the hallucination field she was put under, Jean carefully scanned the surrounding, not missing a single inch.

She didn’t know what the man did to her, but she knew one hundred percent there was no way she was actually back in this room. Most likely, it was a hallucination. She was still in that tent outside Racoon City. The man’s psychic power probably scanned her mind and sent her into a memory where she was the most vulnerable.

Logically speaking, hallucinations were put in place to either make people extremely happy or extremely sad. It should either make the victim so happy she wouldn’t want to leave the hallucination or so sad she completely went mad. Of course, making the victim forget who she truly was was even better, but her xel’naga power was more than enough to prevent that from happening. In this case, judging from the surrounding and Jean’s knowledge of what would happen, it was trying to make her mad.

Jean had no idea how to break out of this place. She tried to summon her celestial power, but nothing happened. It was as if all her powers were stripped away. She was trapped within her own brain.

Faced with no way out, Jean simply sat back and watched the event unfold. Something this powerful must have a limitation. If the man could use this ability without any concern, he wouldn’t need to psychically manipulate the Umbrella forces in Racoon City. He would be going after whatever he wanted and crushing whoever stood in his path. If she could drag this out, eventually the man would be too worn out to maintain the hallucination. If there was another choice Jean would choose that, as she didn’t find it safe to leave her physical body unattended, but she had no other choice. Luckily, there was very little thing in this dimension that could kill her xel’naga body.

Jean was in a white room. It was empty at first, but the detailed structures and furniture in the room started to pop up as time passed and the hallucination got more complete. Finally, as the changes stopped, Jean found herself in a lab. A man in a lab coat was in the room. However, instead of the normal white color, the lab coat was scarlet colored. In front of him were hundreds of concealed chambers. Jean knew from memory there was 200 of them. A computer AI controlled the entire room.

“AI.” The man in lab coat wore a pair of glasses. He seemed to be Asian, judging from his brown eyes and black hair. His voice was cold and calculating. Instead of giving his AI same fancy name, he referred to it as what it was. An Artifical Intelligence.

As soon as the man appeared, Jean knelt down with her right fist in front of her heart. It didn’t matter the man was merely a projection of her memory. It didn’t matter that Jean knew she could kill the man in less than half of a second. Every cell within her body demanded her to kneel and do everything the man orders, whatever it may lead to.

“Jacob.” The computer’s AI replied with no address. Just like its master, it referred to the man merely by his name.

“Report on the progress of the lurker experiment.”

“Affirmative. The first group, 200 subjects, have already been created. More are on the way. Among the 200, all of them have been modified according to your criteria, including sex, look, intelligence, reflexes, and pain tolerance, and so on. All of them have received memories they might need in their missions, including melee combat, ranged weapons, hacking skills, and 20 other categories. For maximum cover, the memories are put under a light seal. They will not have access to the memories immediately, but they can learn the memories quickly.”

“Are they all suitable for interdimensional travel?”

“Affirmative. The unsuitable units have been picked out before other enhancements.”

“Commence emotion wipes. I need every single one of them to be as efficient as possible. They will be facing an enemy that can hardly be defeated. They can not be made weak by something like emotion.” A sense of hatred was in his tone.

“Affirmative.”

Jean watched the conversation silently. She knew what was happening here. After all, this hallucination was constructed by contents from her own memories.

This was where her life began. Lurkers were biologically engineered. They had no family. They had no friend. All they had was a purpose. Everything about them was designed for that purpose, and the man in scarlet coat was their creator.

Normally this was the part where the biological weapons yearned to get revenge on the crazy scientist that created them, but not this case. Every lurker was programmed to obey every order from their creator. Even if the man told them to kill themselves, they would do it like it was their own decisions.

Frankly speaking, Jean didn’t really understand why the hallucination sent her here. Did it really think she would be broken after realizing she was a living weapon? She had no idea the hallucination’s mechanism got messed up. It was supposed to find a hole in the person’s mind, a vulnerable opportunity to use, but Jean’s armor was simply impenetrable. Thus the hallucination brought up a piece of memory that should inspire the most fear.

It didn’t work. The only thing it accomplished was to give Jean a chance to relive the day she was born.

In the chambers, two hundred figures shook violently as if they were in pain. The shaking continued for five minutes before simultaneously stopping. When the motion stopped, the girls weren’t who they were a few minutes before.

“Emotion wipe complete. All preparations are complete. All units are ready for the mission.”

“Bring them out.”

The chambers opened, and two hundred lurkers walked out. A mechanical arm extended down from the ceiling for every lurker and handed them a scarlet suit. They quickly put them on. The tight material showed their wearer’s slant curves. The lurkers walked into a platform in the room, forming a 10 by 20 rectangle.

All of them were female. All of them were pretty and slant. All of them had a cold look in their eyes and a blank expression on their face. Their moves were short and concise. Every action had a purpose. They were the best soldiers.

All of the lurkers wore a badge. It had three horizontal lines with a vertical line crossing through all three lines in the center. The three horizontal lines were getting shorter as it went from top to bottom. This was their symbol. One cross three. This was the symbol of the lurkers.

“Creator.” They knelt down and said simultaneously. Their voices were like canaries singing, but the coldness and emptiness lessened the attractiveness.

The man, Jacob, nodded as the lurkers stood back up. He didn’t say any encouraging word. Having created this army himself, he knew what they were capable of. Instead, he went down to the practical information.

“You will be sent into a place known as The Hub. It is created by a group that called themselves the Supreme One. You will be known as voyagers, and you will be sent across different dimensions to complete missions. Your goal is to pretend to be a normal voyager and do everything you can to gain power and influence behind the curtain. During the process, do everything you can to lay low. Don’t engage the Supreme One directly.“

“When the time comes, I will launch a signal. You will sense it, and as soon as you do, come together and take over The Hub. When the signal is given, I will destroy all seals to maximize your power and establish a psychic channel between all lurker units. Abandon your cover, obey the strongest, and execute everyone in your way.”

“There is a pocket dimension linked to your conscious. In it will be a set of lurker gadgets. They are similar to the voyager gadgets, which you will eventually see, but they are much stronger. Use them only when necessary.”

“The Hub is a dangerous place. You will be defenseless for a period of time. The information in your minds cannot be known by others, so I will be sealing off that information. As far as you will know for your first few missions, you are just an unlucky girl who got chosen by some mysterious power. The seal will automatically collapse when you hold enough power to be able to defend yourself.”

“Clear?”

“Yes, Creator.” The voices were as empty as ever.

Before Jean could see anything else, the surrounding started to crumble. The girl knew this was because the psychic, for some reason, pulled back his power. The next second, she was back in the tent.