The Restoration Project

Prologue - The Scientist

"Are you even listening, Ernst?" asked the man sitting on the other side of the table. He wore a navy blue suit with a pale yellow shirt and checkered tie. It would be dashing if not for the fraying around the cuffs and odd pull in the fabric of the jacket. A gold watch glittered on his wrist, matching the chain around his neck, with the minute and second hands frozen in place. A showpiece. Two men flanked him, wearing black tactical gear and carrying automatic MP5 assault rifles. They were over-compensating, really.

"Yes, yes, I heard you," The Scientist responded, shifting his weight in the hard plastic chair. It took everything he had not to lean across the table and punch The Suit in the face. Or slap him, more likely. The Scientist thought he made it clear he did not like the name Ernst anymore. That was his name from before. 

"Then do you care to explain what the fuck happened?" The Suit clasped his hands over his considerable gut, studying The Scientist. The gesture reminded The Scientist of when he was sent to the Principal's office in high school for breaking a beaker or arguing with a teacher or tossing a gummy bear into potassium chlorate, sticking it beneath a smoke alarm, and adding a drop of sulfuric acid. Back then he was a little shit and deserved it.

"It was a dark and stormy night—"

"—Cut the bullshit."

The Scientist enjoyed getting under the skin of the Suits in New Philadelphia. Partly because they thought they were better than everyone else, mainly because they preferred to call themselves The Collective. Stupid name. It was, however, a rare treat to interact with one of them—they often avoided The Scientist. Partly because of his unorthodox methods, mainly because of his part in the development of the Command Protocol. Why the development of the Command Protocol was viewed as anything less than a scientific breakthrough was beyond The Scientist. Overpopulation was becoming a huge concern and they had to find some way to stop it. The Command Protocol didn't work out as expected, but it certainly got the job done. The fact that The Collective didn't see the value in that was only further proof of how small-minded they are.

Still, he knew better than to bite the hand that feeds.

"Last night we were conducting a test to observe the effects of ultraviolet frequencies on a Baldie." Sort of.

"I am not interested in why you were testing it, but rather what happened to the test subject," The Suit said, annoyed at having to explain this.

"Yeah. Sure. So we were testing the frequencies on subject B251, a young boy exhibiting the symptoms associated with a Nanobot infusion. Rapid healing. Decrease in body fat. Loss of hearing and hair. During the incubation period, we kept him in isolation in the basement of the Theatre of the Living Arts—the one on South Street. There's so much iron and concrete in the building that no signal penetrates the walls. That is to say he was pretty starved by the time we transferred him to the lab," The Scientist explained.

"We know what you were doing. We want to know how the boy escaped." A vein in The Suit's neck throbbed with impatience.

"Through the door." The Scientist's reply received a heavy sigh. He continued, "Approximately fifteen minutes after exposure to the ultraviolet frequencies—see, that's why you needed to know that bit—Subject B251 began to convulse and foam at the mouth. The frequency we tested was not a source of power, but rather a source of agitation. As we approached the subject he flung himself out of the chair, knocked over my assistant, and disappeared out the door. We believe he found an access tunnel and escaped the facility." That wasn't exactly how it happened. The purpose of the experiment wasn't to test the effects of UV light—that was common knowledge—it was to test the effectiveness of The Scientist's new protocol.