Bakersfield, New Mexico. A city close to the border with Mexico. To the north of the city was officially designated the US Weapons test facility, Bakersfield. However, the three-building facility built onto a plateau was the headquarters of Sector 13, a highly classified branch of the government tasked with matters that were designated extraterrestrial or ethereal of origin.

At the center of the three buildings was a large helicopter pad, with soldiers and ground crew awaiting the arrival of the incoming chopper. Once it touched down, the entire pad began descending into the underground bunker below. Dan Wilson, the director of Sector 13, leaped from the canopy before it even reached the pad stopped in the hanger.

Still on his phone, Wilson brushed away the soldier saluting him, taking a tablet offered to him by a man in a suit. ".... Yeah, ok. Just get me that report! Shake em down if you have to!" He sighed, hanging up his phone before checking the tablet. Despite not looking where he was going, he navigated the metal halls of Sector 13 out of muscle memory. He reached the large control room, a circular room that was dominated by a large monitor displaying a map of the country.

"Director!"

"At ease," He approached Coronel Williams who saluted his approach. "Anything new?" Wilson asked him.

"Apart from that town, na." Williams shook his head, keeping his gaze on the large monitor. "Weird thing is, we get sudden spikes of ethereal energy before they vanish. Particularly around the city."

"You think it's the phantoms?"

Williams didn't respond, but his expression told Wilson what he needed. The 'phantoms' was all they had to go on. While on the monitor for ethereal readings, a majority of the locations they get the sudden spike or operating on rumors that seemed to collate to a case for action, someone ends up beating them to the punch. Even with the resources available, Sector 13 had no leads on the group, thus dubbing them 'phantoms.'

The only place they had seemed to have beaten them to the punch was indeed the town of Little Wood, a location that was under surveillance following a devastating fire 10 years ago.

"Little wood, New York... Seems to be quite the hot spot nowadays. Surprised the Phantoms haven't made a move in that town."

"Probably just beat them to the punch. Wish they could make a move though, means we can find out just who these phantoms are," Wilson approached a woman sitting at a console, "Need ya to pull up a profile and background of Allisa Alice Reed."

"Yes director,"

"Reed.... Isn't that the name of the police chief of that town?" Williams asked.

"That's the one," Wilson nodded with a grin holding out his tablet. "Did a bit of background research." Williams took the tablet. "During the summer period plus a month back, Herbert Reed's daughter has had two unexplained disappearances. By that, I mean she vanished completely. No cellphone or credit card charges, even Internet access.

"I also took her readings today and her ethereal ratings of the charts. My gut tells me there's more to that girl than meets the eye."

"Director! I heard you were back!"

Professor Demiras, the head of ethereal research approached them, waving at Wilson, and a man who always seemed to make him nervous.

"Perfect timing. We have finished the analysis of the creatures we extracted from the crater."

Wilson looked to Williams. While saying nothing, Williams simply nodded.

"About damn time, that was over a month." He said to Demiras as they walked out of the command center.

"Ah si. My apologies. It took much longer than expected to analyze the specimens and artifacts. Frankly, we have never had such perfect specimens before."

"Don't see how a few Frankensteins could hold you guys in the lab up."

"Well... truth is, we still haven't been able to find all the answers. Even with some of those artifacts, very difficult."

The elevator took them to the second level where the research center was located. Unlike the first floor, which was full of security personnel, the second level was full of people in lab coats, which almost blended into the completely white.

"Uh... lab 7."

Demeras lead Wilson through the maze complex into a large room with large cylinder tanks dominating the room. Inside were the remains of creatures discovered in the crater at Little Wood some in better shape than others. Nonetheless, the display of something that clearly wasn't human was unnerving to Wilson.

"Let's start with the specimens." Demeras led Wilson to one of the tubes, which contained a creature with three limbs (one missing along with the entire left leg) with metal claws for hands.

"Now, you refer to them as Frankenstein monsters. That's actually a very close assessment. What you see here is quite literally an amalgamation of limbs and organs from different sources fused together into the beings you see before you, with various other augmentations."

"Holy shit..." Wilson approached the tube basking in the monstrosity. Up close, it looked far uglier, repulsive. Yet, there was no fighting this wave of excitement.

"They seemed to range in their construction. For example," Demeras directed Wilson to another tube that contained something that could be human if not for the odious patchwork and scars across the body. Its right arm was missing, white skin flaking from what looked like burn marks, and a large gash was present on its chest. "As you can see, this one is more human in appearance. Where we found this, we discovered five other bodies; one clearly human, though her body was crushed. Of the ones like this, we found a being with a mask grafted to its face," He pointed to the one he meant, "and that one," then to a large human figure with what looked like a sword grafted to his right arm, "and," then to a more human-looking woman.

"And? Could they move like Frankenstein?"

"Uh... not now. But they still emit an ethereal reading- especially these four- So the hypothesis is that they were indeed capable of movement."

"Did you work out how? Don't tell me it's lightning striking,"

"No no," Demeras led Wilson away from the tubes "that would make it easier to explain," to a table of various artifacts, the most predominant being a large cracked slab with a strange circle among the broken pieces.

"Now, this is what we could recover from the crater. As you'd expect, very few artifacts remained intact, almost a miracle we could scrounge together enough of the fragments to create a reconstruction." Demeras nervously handed Wilson a document. On it was a symbol of a star within a circle with two layers, eldritch writings along the rim and smaller circles at the five points of the star.

"Looks like Satan worship,"

"Uh... again, that might be close. Though not completely relating to Diablo. We cross-referenced it to other pentagram and devil worship. The star you see is not inverted, and... these circles are actually representations of the sefirot tree."

".... Meaning."

"Meaning," Demeras nodded to the closest tube, "what created these things is a mix of alchemy, science...." Then prodded the picture, "and true eldritch arts. Not magic or spirits like some of the other cases your team has contended with. But delve into the true immaterial."

The professor's words lingered. Wilson would not pretend to understand what the man had said; frankly, he had always questioned the man's sanity. But if it was true, then the creatures they had.....

"And all of them are dead, right? I'm not gonna wake up to find that spider monkey over there chewing on my brains?"

At that moment, Wilson saw a flash in the professor's tired eyes. "Actually... one is still alive."

The professor led Wilson out of lab 7, not making eye contact for the whole journey until they reached Lab 9. Demeras opened the door which required his pass and a four-digit code. After a short corridor, they reached the foyer of the lab. Unlike Lab 7, Lab nine was smaller with a single console and desk and a window that was covered by a blast door. There was only one occupant, Dr. Ursula, sitting casually at the desk with a book in one hand and a mug in the other. She barely noticed the arrival of the professor and Wilson.

"Doctor,"

Only when Demeras greeted her did she glance upwards to the two men. "Oh, director," She greeted casually. The Doctor was not known to respect authority at all. "Here to see Lilly?"

"Lilly?"

Putting down her mug and book on the table, Ursula stretched as she kicked the ground, moving her revolving chair along to the console, slamming her hand on a button. The blast door slowly opened. The connecting room was barren besides a single tube. Inside, Wilson couldn't help but gasp.

In the middle of the blue liquid, connected to electrodes and a breathing mask, dressed in a white rubber suit was a little girl with short, bleach white hair.

"Director, meet Lilly," Ursula said, indicating at the girl.

"As you can see, unlike the other specimens, we found Lilly completely intact. Seem's the woman we found was protecting her from the rubble." Demeras said to the director.

"And it's alive?"

"'She!'" Ursula snapped. "And yes, she's very much alive." Pointing over her shoulder to a monitor showing life signs. "Her heart's beating, she's breathing normally, blood pressure's normal, brain activity; a living breathing girl."

"Yes though in a comatose state, however," Demeras directed Wilson to the console. When there he pulled out a tablet. "She has various stitches across her entire body," he showed an image of her belly, which had three visible stitches and what looked like a terrible wound on her left side. "As per Dr. Ursula's request, that's all I can show- It was her that demanded we clothe her before placing her in ethereal life support- but we've determined that a lot of her body has foreign organs implanted into her, yet," jabbing his large finger to the wound, "that wound was far worse before we took that picture. After that," he flipped through, showing the image of the gash though much smaller, "and an hour," the final image showed the wound had completely gone, with only the surgical stitches remaining.

"They healed?" Wilson ended up asking out loud.

"Si. We experimented with this by removing a small part of her flesh from her arm. A small piece, mind you. In an hour it had completely healed with no scarring.

"Also, her ethereal levels far exceed that of none measurements; even that recent one you took pales in comparison to Lilly. Frankly, we've never had a specimen quite like the little one. She could advance the ethereal research division by several years, it's honestly exiting the possibilities open to us.

"Our hypothesis is that the creatures in lab 7 were only prototypes. Lilly seems to have been the ultimate creation; the ultimate weapon."

Willson looked back at the girl floating within the blue liquid. "So how long until it's usable? What's stopping you from conducting tests right now? Think you fella's have plenty of resources."

"Well, for one, she is," Ursula, said, walking back over to the table and grabbing her mug. "To proceed we need to establish a baseline for her abilities. We are getting some readings," she tapped on her console, "and they all point to her capable of emitting supernatural abilities. However, readings are just that. We need to establish some kind of baseline before we commence any such tests and experiments.

"In short," Ursula downed her entire mug in one gulp, swallowing while pointing to Lilly, "we need her to wake up."

"Ok... then just wake her up," Wilson demanded.

"She's comatose, not sleeping. It's not a matter of gently rocking her awake."

"Listen darlin. We need results. The unseen threats are only growing larger by the day and we are the country's wall against them. If this thing-"

"That thing is a girl,"

"She's a Frankenstein like all those other freaks-"

"Frankenstein was the creator, not the monster-!"

"Whatever!" Wilson jabbed a finger to Ursula, "We have spent millions of taxpayer dollars for your little science projects because we need them in the fight against those things that lurk under people's beds. That thing is a valuable resource, something that you say push your research to-"

"Director," Demeras finally spoke up. "We are perfectly aware of our purpose. While not ideal, we can extract valuable data from the other specimens. However, when it comes to Lilly, we have to be careful.

"As we've explained, she is the only specimen found alive, and even that is a mystery to itself. There is a risk that tampering with her physical state by introducing drugs or employing other means could cause damage, even death. I'm sorry, but we can't take the risk. She's too valuable. Only when she awakes can we proceed."

The tension in the room was broken by Wilson's phone ringing. The caller ID was Cpt. Brice. With a resigned look, he jabbed a finger at the professor. "Get to work, and inform us the minute it- not 'her,' 'IT'- wakes up."

Without waiting to hear back from the two scientists, Wilson walked out of the lab, answering his phone. It was just another day in Sector 13; and from the news, his subordinate had just told him, it was a good day.