Chapter 00 | NOT THE TIME

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“WARNING: BIOLOGICAL WEAPON WSSH012 UNCONTAINED.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS ENGAGED.

PLEASE EVACUATE ALL POSTS.

THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

ALL PERSONNEL ARE ADVISED TO PROCEED TO THE

NEAREST SAFE ZONE IMMEDIATELY.”

The sound of blaring alarms echoed throughout the facility, competing with the sound of footsteps hurriedly running towards the designated emergency exits. Seven sets of stretchers bearing children in an induced semi-coma state were pushed towards the emergency lifts. Series of commands were thrown left and right by frantic military personnel.

The chaos that ensued afterwards was enough to confuse even the most intellectual of men. Hallways were flooded with blinking red lights while lab researchers, assistants and interns pushed and pulled each other in panic towards the nearest safe zone. Bodies lay strewn on the floor, some unmoving, and some taking in their final breaths. Amidst the stampede, a hooded figure walked calmly against the flow and towards the underground chambers.

Passing by a hallway branching out to several rooms, the hooded figure stopped in front of a steel door. The panel situated on its right alternately blinked green then red. He placed his hand on the handle and pushed the sliding metal door open.

The room that greeted him was dark, just as he had left it. It was eerily silent, which he considered a good sign. He let out a breath he had unconsciously held as he stealthily made his way towards the pod at the center.

The sedatives he injected a while ago were finally taking effect and the child, barely six years of age, finally lost the will to struggle against them. He stared at the innocent pair of onyx orbs, void of all the sins committed by the people around her. Slowly but surely, the child gave up and succumbed to a deep slumber.

The hooded figure placed a hand over the square pad at one end of the berth, his fingers dancing over the blue and red buttons. Every child educated in the Academy had been taught how those colors signified life and death, respectively. Below the two was a small black button. He looked once more at the child sleeping on the pod, pushing strands of her short ebony hair behind her ear, as he whispered a small apology.

"Forgive me. I couldn't save your sister."

He took one step back as he finally pushed the black button. Not a second too soon, visible white air filled the room - a heavy mist that made the hooded figure’s breath fog up with each exhalation.

“It is done,” the hooded figure stated, the finality in his tone ringing around the steel room.

Stepping further from the pod, he made his way towards the door and was greeted by a familiar figure.

A man barely in his 50s stood unyieldingly between the hooded man and his escape route. The elder’s tired and haunted eyes, filled with years of accumulated experience, stared at the hooded figure before he shifted his attention to the activated pod. There were numerous tubes engulfing the sleeping child as a thicker white mist obscured the view completely. Was it pity he felt? Or was it relief?

The hooded figure felt the elder’s eyes turn back to him. He was never the best at reading character, but the swirl of emotions were too clear and vivid in the elder man’s eyes.

Regret, but… towards what?

Longing, for who?

Acceptance,  of what?

Betrayal, by whom? and

HOPE.

He could only bow his head to avoid the scrutinizing eyes of the old man who took his time to memorize the tall man’s features. And the young man let him. That was all he could offer.

Just as mankind had begun to believe that the world had hope, again, they were to be disappointed.  For he, who now stood between the sleeping child and the genius, was the person responsible for one of the greatest disasters to befall humankind.

“It is done,” he repeated, his words holding as much finality  and conviction as when he first said them. But his eyes still failed to look at the older man, his hands clenched tightly by his side.

There were more unspoken words between the two. Words that could never be uttered because the time was not right.

It was not time.

Everyone knew the government had only one objective - to not be left behind by the evolutionary process. But none held knowledge of the salvation mankind desperately searched for. And those that were on the verge of answering those questions were about to die, if not already dead, inside the Facility.

In the following years, the exponential increase in greediness and corruption that will ensue will all be under the pretense of a caring government for the naive majority. But in a not so distant future, humanity’s desperate search for its salvation will reach its fruition.

Humanity was doomed to decades of life hiding from their deepest and darkest fears.

But only time could tell.

For he himself knew that though in the Dark, the Light at the end of the tunnel

would bring out the Spark that would lead them to Heights no one dared to reach before.