Warslave

Prologue

The files were incomplete. The tech crew had warned her about that, yet still she had insisted on listening to them, hoping to find some information, if only a few crumbs, that could point out what had gone wrong, something the Bureau had missed.

They had dug through training facilities, old labs and even two ruined cities. The ruined voice recordings were all they had gotten their hands on. Their enemies covered their tracks well. Too well, as everyone was keen to remind her. Almost as if they had informants within the Bureau.

She got far more than she had bargained for when she started listening to the voice logs.

"Year 1. Day 1. I suppose I should start with introductions... not that anyone will listen to this, of course, but I can at least keep up the pretence... God, Vincent is going to kill me when he finds this...Name's George. George Able, researcher for Swordpoint. No, that's not right, not anymore. I guess we all work for GenTech now, or whatever they're going to call it once they settle on the how and what of the project.Why am I starting a voice log about a secret project that, if leaked, is definitely going to get me killed? Because I need to get this off my chest of course. The shit going down here is horrific, even if it is nece-"

The static broke off the voice, signifying lost bits of information.

"So why'd they pick up the project again? Well, because Aurora and her cronies at the Bureau are cutting into national autonomy. Superheroes are nice and all, but when they start calling the shots, people start getting anxious and-."

More static.

"- can't think of a single country not providing funding for it. We've all the money we could possibly need, but only two successful prototypes, neither of which are new. Subject 1 has seen more years than anyone else in this lab, and rumour its first test run was in 1916. No witnesses of course, no way anyone is allowing any information to leak-"

"-23 hasn't lived much shorter. Test runs on the beaches of Normandy, if reports are to be believed, but when the Manhattan Project started, they shut down Swordpoint's projects. No point in our work if there's a nuclear bomb available, that was the prevailing opinion at the time. They were right, of course, but we never really recovered from-"

"So why not trust their precious bombs against the Bureau? Simple, because they tried. Tried and failed, like we keep on failing. Aurora did not even seem to have a scratch, and whispers are going around that only magic could do anything to really harm her. Heh, don't let Vincent hear that. He hates mag-"

"Marc, you sneaky little shit, I know you're listening in on my diary. If you tell Vincent, or anyone else for that matter, I'm going to feed you to the-"

"Year 1. Day 237. Nothing. Subject 1 and 23 remain in stasis, as they are not up to the required specifications. Sooner or later, we are going to have to produce results, and I fear we will have nothing to present. It's too early to lose hope, but-"

"-saw him, the traitor. Fucking hell, for all his talk of trusting in science, Vincent was talking to witches. Fucking witches. Don't even know what they told him, but he must be desperate. We all know this will amount to nothing."

"Year 2. Day 124. I take it all back. Subject 47 is everything we were promised and more. So much more. A careless lab worker dropped the subject due to... circumstances. I won't go into that, it's not important.