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[PROTOTYPE]: Reborn	By : ShinaRyun Category: +M through R > Prototype Series Views: 3341 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: PROTOTYPE and all derivative/associated works and titles belong to Activision, Radical Entertainment, and their affiliates. I make NO PROFIT from this writing.

Chapter List
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“Doctor Priam?”
Horst blinked and looked up from the microscope he’d been peering through, slowly turning his head towards the sound of the voice; the man he was impersonating, whose body and job he’d absorbed, had been well into his elder years when Horst had consumed him, and the arthritis in his neck made him a little sluggish. It would have seemed suspicious if he’d suddenly started moving freely after complaining regularly that he was too old to move quickly.
“Yes?” he said in Doctor Jacob Priam’s watery voice, blinking owlishly at the junior scientist who had gotten his attention; he recognized her immediately. Ms. Nicole Dorsen, the only one he shared lab space with who could become an Evolved, and one of the few that he thought might actually join their cause willingly if gently enlightened. She was holding a clipboard in her left arm and gave it a glance before pulling a slip of paper off of it and handing it out to him.
“Dr. Michaels has finished his report, sir…you wanted to see it, right?”
“Yes, yes,” Horst replied with the mild irritation that older people seemed to be able to turn on at will, slowly standing up from the stool he’d been perched upon and snatching the paper away. “Was that all, Ms. Dorsen? I distinctly remember you being given a job here, perhaps you should go see to it that it isn’t withdrawn.”
The scientist nodded sharply and quickly scurried away back to her post. Horst watched her go with just a little bit of sadness. He didn’t particularly enjoy being cruel to his underlings…he had, after all, been even lower down the totem pole when he’d been infected, and knew well the plight of the intern. Dr. Priam, however, had been in a position of relative power long enough to forget what it was like to be at the beck and call of another, and was well-known to take some joy in tormenting the juniors.
Horst sighed. He wished for a moment that he didn’t have to be there…he’d much rather be with Fritz. He closed his eyes and chuckled softly, remembering what had happened only a few hours earlier…
After racing home, the two Evolved had spent the rest of the night in what had become the center of their operations, formally known as their living room. Computer towers lined one wall, interrupted by cooling units and topped by a few flat-screen monitors and keyboards, running searches day and night across the internet for any mention of certain keywords; Heller, mutant, evolved, Mercer, claws, tendrils, etc. An old map of NYZ was posted on another wall, along with a map of the USA and a world map, all marked with tacks, pins, flags and lines of string connecting names, places and dates. Some of the marks were old, from when the Evolved had arrived and started to set up their search; others were newer, tracking Blackwatch and Gentek’s influence through the country and around the world.
Over the years, Horst and Fritz had spent countless hours staring at the monitors or checking and double-checking printed results of their search, and as the hours wore on, they both grew increasingly more sure that it would be another night of fruitless labor. As the Eastern sky began to glow with the impending red dawn, Horst had sighed and called a halt.
“Not tonight, love,” he’d grumbled, taking the summary of their search and making a few changes to the world map, rearranging a few pins and elevating a small flag slightly over Sri Lanka. It was almost pointless, but by keeping track of where they’d searched and establishing certain areas as highly unlikely, it allowed them just enough structure to prevent completely aimless searching.
Fritz had watched Horst go about the map with a bemused smile, shaking his head as he walked up behind his lover and slid thickly-muscled arms around Horst’s narrow waist, turning his head to press his cheek against Horst’s back. “We’ve still got a little while before we have to get ready for work,” he’d whispered.
Horst had chuckled as he finished setting the pins and laid the summary on top of a pile of identical papers, dropping his arms to rest his hands over Fritz’s. “That we do,” he’d murmured, not turning around, just stroking his fingers back and forth along Fritz’s wrists and arms. “Want to try to sleep? Who knows, maybe we’ll manage to actually shut down for longer than ten minutes this time, eh?”
“Mmmm…” Fritz had hummed, smiled and turned his head to kiss the back of Horst’s neck. “Had something else in mind.”
Horst had chuckled softly and closed his eyes before slowly turning around in Fritz’s arms, not opening them until he was fully turned around and could look straight down into Fritz’s eyes. “Something else?” he’d murmured, lifting a hand to cup underneath Fritz’s chin lightly. “Do tell, sweetheart.”
Fritz hadn’t been able to help but stare up at Horst as a tremor flew through his body; lacking any skeleton, the creeping feeling that should have traveled down his spine ran rampant throughout his frame. This was one of the things that Fritz loved about being with Horst; with a touch and a few words, his lover brought him right back to that place where he felt he could get talked into anything.
“Uh…” he had muttered, forgetting for a moment the plan he’d formed. He remembered once Horst started trailing a thumb back and forth over his lips, dipping shallowly into his mouth and brushing the tip of his tongue. He felt his cheeks heat before opening his mouth further and tilting his head down, keeping his eyes locked with Horst’s as he started to nibble and lick over his lover’s thumb, his arms tight around Horst’s waist.
“Oh,” Horst had said with a grin, chuckling softly before reaching his free hand up to cup around the back of Fritz’s head, pulling him forward slightly. “Actions speak louder than words, eh?”
Fritz had nodded and grinned, biting harder at the pad of Horst’s thumb before leaning his head away, getting Horst’s hand off his cheek before leaning forward to kiss his lips. He didn’t let the kiss linger for too long, just enough for him to part his lips and bite at Horst’s bottom lip before he’d started sinking down in front of the taller Evolved.
“You’re not making much of an argument against you being a needy little bitch,” Horst had said as lightly as he could once Fritz was on his knees, one of his hands cupping Horst’s right hip while his other hand lifted up between Horst’s legs, rubbing fingers along his inner thighs and squeezing his palm up to Horst’s balls through his jeans. He had just grinned up at his lover, holding the toothy smile in place as his hand had pressed tighter and his fingers had dug into Horst’s groin, tugging down insistently to make Horst shed his pants and bare his naked hips.
“I’m not a bitch,” Fritz had said, his head already so close to Horst’s stiffening manhood that Horst had felt his breath ghosting around the tip of his prick. That feeling had intensified as Fritz had leaned even closer, kissing his tip slowly and letting his tongue press in small strokes around his slit before pulling away and speaking again. “I’m a slut because I want this practically every time I think about you, but I’m no bitch.”
“No argument he…unf, here, sweetheart,” Horst had said as Fritz had gone back to his cock with gusto. Sitting on his lab stool, lost in thought, Horst gave a soft chuckle as he remembered the next ten minutes in the span of ten seconds; both Evolved had figured out quickly that neither really enjoyed subtlety in their sex, be it anal or oral. Horst grinned as memories of a tight ring of lips around his base and a smooth, flying tongue against his shaft dueled with a sucking throat and an eager hand just aching to help him get off, the wet sounds of Fritz’s sucks and swallows mingling with his little moans as he looked up at Horst.
Horst had done his part as well, sliding his hands into Fritz’s hair and hungrily pulling him closer, keeping his eyes locked with his lover’s right through his orgasm, shooting his release down Fritz’s throat as the ex-soldier got himself off on the taste of Horst’s semen, the blown-black look in Horst’s brown eyes, and his own hand jerking rapidly at his cock.
Afterwards they had cleaned up and taken a half hour to just cuddle on the couch, letting what little afterglow they could get help to flush out the mental zombification that a night of online searching gave them. A fast cycle through the shower and kitchen to get clean and fed before the two went to work had followed, and then…
And then I got stuck here for another fucking day, Horst thought pleasantly to himself, looking for results in a petri dish with a seven hundred dollar microscope when I could find them in a toilet bowel with a magnifying glass. He sighed to himself and shook his head, starting to turn back to the microscope’s eyepieces when he remembered the report in his hand. He really was interested in its contents, unlike ninety percent of the paperwork he had to look through during the day; Dr. Michaels was an important researcher for Project Phoenix, just a few steps down from Horst, and his work had been of great help in moving the project along. Horst scooted his stool to the side and flattened the report over a clear spot on his lab table, speed-reading the neatly-worded report.
“Signs are good,” he muttered to himself as he read, “and looking to improve further…physical recombination possible…of course it’s possible, you hatchet-faced twit,” he spat quietly, “I’ve been physically recombinating myself for ten fucking years.” He sighed and took a breath, forcing himself calm before he continued.
“Blah blah blah…Variant 5 beginning to show increasing responsiveness to external stimuli…partial success in reconstructing Rattus norvegicus…please attend next demonstration at earliest convenience…”
Two tables down from where Horst sat, Ms. Nicole Dorsen was busily jotting down notes about the blood culture she was studying when she was disturbed by a sudden, sharp screech. The sound made her jump, her head whipping towards its source just as she realized that it was sound made by one of the lab stools when it got shoved across the tile floor too quickly. Sure enough, one stool out of the available three was out of position, wobbling on two legs before settling onto all four with a thunk. Blinking, she stared at the empty stool for a moment, wondering why it looked like there was something missing from it before another loud noise made her jump again. This time it was the heavy wham of the lab door getting throw open and smacking against the wall, giving her a view of the tails of a white lab coat disappearing around a corner, and drawing her attention to the sound of rapid, heavy footsteps.
She frowned slightly; she recognized the hard clack-clack of the ancient shoes, but they couldn’t belong to who she was thinking of. Dr. Priam was a brilliant man and his talents extended far and wide in his field, but the man simply did not run. She quickly wrote off the disturbance and returned to her work, reminding herself that even if Priam had gained the strength in his legs to run, he’d have subsequently gotten the strength to literally kick her ass if she didn’t do her job.
Trying to move as fast as he possibly could while maintaining his cover as a limping old man, Horst honestly didn’t give a damn about Ms. Dorsen or her thoughts; he was too focused on what he’d read and what he was going to see. He felt like his brain was spinning around inside his skull, alternating between coldly logical and crazily excited, not wanting to get his hopes up…but still…
…partial success…
He swallowed thickly at the thought of success of any kind, which would be a long step in the right direction for the project if it was true. Project Phoenix was ten years in the making, the product of millions of dollars and work-hours, but more than that, Horst saw it as the only hope for the future.
His future, at least…a future for himself and Fritz, and the Evolved to follow after them.
And so, doing the fast limping shuffle that he could manage underneath his veil of secrecy, he made his way to Dr. Michaels’ lab, stopping once he got to the door to take a deep, slow breath and refresh himself as Dr. Priam, letting the old geezer’s memories surface up in his mind, feeling the mental mask of his personality rise up and paste over his own, controlled like a half-sentient puppet. His body folded slightly as he adopted the hunched posture the man had held in life, and his head sunk into his shoulder as he relaxed his neck into the least painful position, giving himself a wheezing, aged breathing cycle. Confident that he was, to anyone he encountered, the aged and cantankerous doctor, he waved his hand under the bio-scanner beside the door and hobbled inside once the portal slid open.
“Got your memo,” he said, coughing once before continuing, “so let’s see this so-called success of yours, Michaels.”
“I would hope that you had noted my accent upon partial success, Priam,” Dr. Michaels replied, turning from his desk and scratching at one bushy eyebrow with his pen, uncaringly drawing blue ink under the coarse black hairs. He was a man showing every day of the forty years he’d lived, his face lined and his hair starting to thin noticeably; broad shoulders and an ass that Horst still occasionally caught himself peeking at balanced him out as passably attractive. Or at least it would have, if not for the pair of thick goggles over his face, his prescription lenses so heavy that he’d had problems with glasses sliding off his nose in the past. The tight rubber strap holding what Horst suspected were a pair of magnifying lenses up to the doctor’s bright grey eyes was his solution, despite the fact that they made him resemble a throwback to black and white monster movies.
“Hmph,” Horst replied in a huff, approaching Michaels and waving a hand lightly. “Just show me the results, damn you, and I’ll see if they even come close to ‘partially’ successful.”
“Yes, doctor,” Michaels replied quickly, turning and leading Horst to an array of glass cases, each holding lab rats in varying concentrations. He pointed to one cage in particular, holding a single occupant. “This is the rat who I believe demonstrates partially successful results, sir.”
Horst looked. Calling the thing in the glass box a rat was being far more generous than he would have been. Horst would have called it exactly what it was: a barely-articulated skeleton, the bones each looking like partially-melted wax, incomplete and unformed. Tiny pink buds of highly underdeveloped muscles sprouted in places like newborn flowers. A close look at the spinal column revealed a hair-thin wisp of a spinal cord, and Horst suspected that the small puddle of pinkish jelly smeared around the inside of the ribcage was intended to be a set of lungs or a heart, or both.
Horst looked up to Michaels, his expression the living definition of unimpressed. “Explain,” he said simply.
Michaels swallowed thickly and reached up to make sure his goggles were straight on his face before speaking. “Approximately two-“
Horst lifted a hand sharply, palm towards Dr. Michael’s face in frank denial, snapping angrily. “If I wanted approximates, I’d have gotten my doctorate in astrology, you hack. Now try again, and this time use numbers like a grown-up, or I won’t let you have a toy with your lunch. When…did…you…conduct…this…experiment?”
Michaels allowed himself one second to think of all the ways his life would be better if he had pursued the college art courses his mother had favored instead of biochemistry, and then looked to his watch. “Two hours, ten minutes and…” He raised an eyebrow slightly before glancing up to his superior. “…Fifteen seconds ago, sir. Forgive me for not recording the microseconds for your records.”
“Don’t get smart with me, Michaels,” Horst snarled, “or I’ll tape your termination notice to the right fist of one of Blackwatch’s goons and have it delivered repeatedly to your testicles.”
“We killed the rat,” Michaels said quickly, feeling a pink slip start to write itself behind Dr. Priam’s watery eyes. “Then we took a DNA sample from its corpse and combined that sample with four doses of Variant 5 in a petri dish before placing the dish in this cage with two pounds of sterile meat, and waited to see if there would be any results.”
“And that’s what we’re calling this?” Horst jerked a thumb at the skeletal remains, skepticism practically dripping off his tongue.
Michaels nodded in the face of his superior’s obvious disbelief. “Sir, within ten minutes, the DNA culture grew in the dish and absorbed the flesh we provided it with, sir…we’ve seen rapid regeneration of a biologic structure from nothing but DNA.” He gave a grin, the flash of teeth looking far too small beneath his massive-looking eyes. “This is the proof we wanted, sir! This is Project Phoenix in action!”
“This is Project Phoenix as a mauled, castrated, still-born failure, Michaels,” Horst replied, practically spitting by the time he finished. Dr. Priam had been a hardline believer in absolute results or no results at all, and would have been furious with the half-formed skeleton of a rat being called any kind of success.
Behind Priam’s face, Horst was just about ready to die from ecstasy. Michaels really was right; this was what he’d been looking for, exactly the kind of results he needed to validate ten years of work, a decade spent brewing up this damned formula of viral components.
Still…Priam would have wanted more definite results, and as long as they were there, Horst saw no reason not to indulge the old man’s memory by demanding a few. He snorted and resisted the urge he felt from Priam’s memories to spit on the floor, turning away from Michaels and perching his bony ass on a lab stool, glaring at his college.
“Riddle me this, Michaels: why didn’t you try adding more meat to the box once it ran out?”
Michaels blinked, looking nothing so much like an owl in a lab coat. “More, sir?”
“Yes, Michaels, more!” Horst sighed and lifted a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. “The rat was regenerating with what you gave it; surely you thought to give it more?”
“I thought that it would be more prudent to note the experiment as it was designed, sir, instead of randomly heaping in unmeasured variables.”
“Unmeasured variables and a completed rat would have pissed me off less than knowing exactly how few measured variables resulted in a skeleton,” Horst spat before looking back to the tiny corpse, shaking his head. “Such a waste…”
Michaels blinked owlishly. “A waste? Sir, the biology department has put out several memos saying that they’re running out of room for the rats they’re breeding. One dead for an…incomplete experiment-”
“Not the rat, you jackass! Four doses of Variant 5, gone!” Horst threw his hands up into the air and heaved a sigh before extending a hand and pointing one bony finger straight at the ground, as if demanding that Michaels come before him.
“Again,” he commanded.
“Again?” Michaels replied, painfully aware that every eye in the lab was upon him.
Horst raised an eyebrow. “Did I stutter?”
Michaels sighed, his body slumping slightly before he nodded and gestured to one of his interns. “Begin recording, Dwight. Project Phoenix, experiment #247-B in researching Redlight Variant 5, animal trials.”
Horst half-listened as Michaels rattled off the date, time, and the lab’s numerical designation for the rat they would be using in the experiment, letting his thoughts drift. What he’d seen so far was enough to convince him that recombination of a creature through a sample of its DNA was possible through their work, and that confirmation, however premature it might have been, was enough to put him into a minor state of shock. He had known from the beginning that he would eventually be successful in this endeavor, but it was still something of a head trip to see it brought to life.
He was brought back from his thoughts by the sudden, loud squeaking of the sacrificial rat being drawn from its box, the white-furred vermin wriggling and spinning its limbs as it was carried by its tail to a lab table. Horst had insisted that animal trials be performed on dead animals only after he’d seen an intern affectionately stroke down one rat’s back after taking a blood sample. He’d walked over and snapped the rodent’s neck, then shoved the corpse into the shaken man’s hands.
“These things are for us to dissect, not to coddle,” he had growled. “From now on, unless an experiment requires them to be alive, kill them. We’ll get more.”
His word had been made law from then on, as demonstrated by the lab assistant take the rat to a table, hefted a small hammer and delivered a single, sharp blow to the base of the thing’s skull, killing it instantly. Such power over others was what had made Priam go a little nuts; Horst could feel the memories of joy the old doctor had felt when his orders were carried out, the thoughts surfacing in response to the rat’s execution. Horst was disgusted by them, by how depraved and corrupt the old man had become when Horst had killed him; the world hadn’t lost anything worth missing.
“Taking DNA sample,” Dr. Michael’s voice made Horst blink and re-focus upon the task at hand.
“Get on with it,” he grumbled, waving a hand impatiently. Michaels nodded and set about his work, signaling for an intern to bring the rolling cooler unit which held the biomass they would be using; in this case, more than ten pounds of Gentek-produced beef.
“Sir,” the intern said hesitantly, rolling the large steel box up to the table, “Are we sure that this meat is sterile enough to use in this experiment?”
“It’s made by Gentek,” Horst said dryly. “If that doesn’t make it ‘sterile’, nothing will.”
There was a brief, quiet chorus of chuckles which stilled as Michaels jabbed a syringe into the rat’s side and extracted a few drops of blood, which he took to a DNA scanner and rapidly appropriated the rat’s gene sequence. The sequence was then imprinted upon an inert gel which mimicked chromosomal structure; the process was similar to scanning an image off of one piece of paper, and then printing it onto a separate piece. This ensured that there were no outside factors, so that as Michaels took up the vial of gel, he knew that all he held was a perfectly preserved and presented sample of rat DNA. He poured the gel into a petri dish, then lifted the small dish and walked with it to the lab’s observation and control area: a box of bulletproof glass, pneumatically sealed, temperature controlled…as perfect a place to observe chemical reactions as was possible.
“Bring me four doses of Varient 5,” Michaels called as he opened the lid of the box and set the petri dish in its center. “And bring the meat over here, we’ll need it in a second.”
Assistants hurried to do as the doctor bid, and in under a minute Michaels was handed a large syringe full of the dark blue serum known around the lab as Varient 5. Michaels wasted no time, gently squeezing it into the dish with the gel, talking as he did so.
“How much meat do we have?”
The assistant with the trolley checked. “Eleven pounds, sir.”
“Put it all in.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. That’s why we’re testing it.” Michaels sighed as he got all of the serum into the dish, pulling away. “And be quick about it.”
The assistant nodded and went in as soon as Michaels gave him room to do so, popping open the lid and starting to carefully place cold, one-pound slabs of meat onto the dish, stacking what wouldn’t fit around the main pile. He closed the lid and backed away once all eleven were inside, the seal hissing shut...and then everyone in the lab fell silent to watch.
Nothing happened at first; in fact, nothing happened for five whole minutes. No-one moved; Horst felt his eyes become tangibly dry and had to force himself to blink more than once. When something did happen, it was so small that he had to blink rapidly to see if his vision was playing tricks on him again, but there was no need; what he’d seen was actually happening.
Slowly at first, the pile of meat shivered and shifted, the main stack eventually falling over into a messy pile which quickly revealed what was going on. The bottommost brick of beef was being split apart, flesh melting and changing color, drawing down into the dish, the bits of it that touched other pieces of beef gluing together. As the meat drew into the dish, it reshaped itself, slowly but surely starting to create a tiny spine and skull around a growing brain and spinal cord, hipbones protruding from the pinkish ooze and turning clean white, ribs beginning to grow like tree branches. As more meat was absorbed, more got glued together, until all eleven pounds formed into one sticky, melting mass of flesh that slowly got pulled closer and closer to the growing body.
The forming skeleton quickly grew too large for the dish, extending out of it and slowly rolling off it’s side to grow on the observation box’s floor; Horst drew closer as he watched the skeleton fully form, organs and muscles slowly slithering out of the muck to get packed into and around the bone framework.
It was like watching some macabre house get erected right before his eyes, his heart pounding faster and faster as he willed the thing in the box to fully form.
“C’mon,” he muttered under his breath. “C’mon…daddy needs a new rodent, c’mon…”
The reformation was slow, but continuous, as though demonstrating its’ reward for their patient work. The skeleton grew and finalized, giving the observers a view of perfectly formed rat bones before the growing muscles and organs covered the skeletal structures in rippling pink sheets. Tiny red blood vessels snaked in and out of the muscles, leading back to a miniscule heart that Horst caught a glimpse of before lungs paced around it and muscles formed over the rat’s ribcage. He tilted his head and felt his eyes widen as he saw nerves branching off into the body before extending down through the rat’s tail; he saw grey brain tissue form behind its’ eye sockets before little pink eyes filled them and blocked his view.
Amazing…ten years and ten minutes to grow a rat in a jar…un-fucking-believable.
Horst took note of the rate at which the rat consumed the provided flesh, pondering to himself as the rat grew even more defined, skin and fur sprouting across its body, whiskers poking out from its snout. It had taken eleven pounds of meat to make a creature that had barely weighed two at its time of death, and a fairly simple creature at that.
It’s going to take more…exponentially more…to bring Alex back…hmmm…
He was torn from his thoughts when he saw the last of the provided flesh disappear into the growing body; even eleven pounds didn’t look like it had been enough, the rat’s tail showing a distinct lack of any muscle density, the left side of its face notably more sunken than the right…and to top it all off, the thing wasn’t moving a single hair in the box. The lab team just stared at it for a minute, as if expecting it to do something, before Horst rolled his eyes and stood up.
“It’s still dead,” he said over his shoulder as he turned away and started walking to the lab’s data console, pulling a flash drive from a pocket. “Begin resuscitation if you want to.”
“Uhh…sir?” Michaels asked, confused as he turned from the box, slowly approaching Horst as the Evolved plugged the drive into the console and rapidly downloaded a copy of the Varient V formula onto it. “Wouldn’t it be more of a success if we really did bring the rat back to life?”
“Possibly,” Horst muttered in Priam’s voice, unplugging the drive and pocketing it as soon as the copy was complete, turning away and heading for the door. “Drop me another memo if you manage it, Michaels.”
“You don’t want to watch?!”
“Michaels, pretend for just a moment that I’ve better things to do with my day than watch you give mouth-to-mouth to the dead clone of a lab rat. Now stop pretending,” Horst called as he shoved open the lab’s door and walked out. He was gone the second the doors shut, tearing through the hall to the nearest set of stairs and throwing open the door before vaulting over the railing and taking the straight drop down the otherwise empty stairwell to ground level, a ten-story free fall which he softened by expelling a burst of aerosolized biomass just before he landed, keeping himself from cratering the floor. He was grabbing his phone out of his pocket even as he shifted his apperance from Dr. Priam to the inconspicuous apperance of a janitor; disguised, he pushed open the stairwell doors and started walking quickly through the lobby of the Gentek complex, his fingers reaching for Fritz’s speed-dial so that Horst could give his partner the good news.
The phone went off in Horst’s hand before he could touch the keypad; it was Fritz.
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[PROTOTYPE]: Reborn