2 Chapter 2

"Azriel, I know you have much hope for this project but you know that it is not giving results!" shouted a man wearing a lab coat and glasses.

"We have been doing trials for months and the only thing it produces are more monsters! As if we don't already have them! Every single experiment ended up in catastrophic failure. Every single subject mutated into...into even more grotesque monsters!" continued the man with a look of fury and disgust on his face.

"I'm ending this project! You are to discontinue your experiments and focus your attention on project gestalt! This.Is.Final! Understood?" shouted the man. He and the person named Azriel stood facing each other, glaring at one another for a while until finally, Azriel conceded.

"....Fine! I will help with the project but I am NOT going to separate my soul from my body!" replied Azriel.

"Suit yourself," came a short snort from the other man as he turned around and left the room.

*pssh*

The door to Azriel's lab closed as he glared at the leaving figure and now the door. Finally, he stopped and let out a heavy sigh, and slumped into the chair in front of his work table which was filled with microscopes and other lab equipment.

"I don't understand, the virus should be the solution to WCS as it would rewrite the genetics of a living being down to their last cells and improve them. Make them superior. Super strength, super speed, and total immunity to any other diseases, which should be the solution to WCS in theory. But why did it mutate the subjects into grotesque monsters while still containing the improvements? The incompatibility with the DNA of the subjects is one thing but then what would it be compatible with? We tried every living being including human subjects but none worked." mused Azriel as he looked at the latest sample of one of the subjects through the microscope.

The blacklight virus, a virus synthesized by Azriel and his colleagues from an ancient super virus found in a deep layer of permafrost in the north pole. The super virus was still alive even after thousands of years of dormancy and it was highly infectious. It has shown to be able to adapt and evolve itself after being subjected to various stimuli but it was a slow process.

Azriel and his team managed to quicken this process but at the cost of turning the subjects it was administered to grotesque monsters. Lab rats grew twice their size with elongated nails and teeth. So were the guinea pigs. Dogs and other larger mammals shed their fur and hair to be replaced by bulging muscles with lipless mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth and elongated hands with claws.

Humans, on the other hand, became mutated zombie-like creatures with either an arm or both mutating into sharp bone spikes. All of them required multiple military personnel with machine guns and even rocket launchers to put them down when the containment units failed. Even then, some don't stay down for long and had to be burned until ash to put them down for good. All the involved soldiers were quarantined for months in fear of another outbreak.

Azriel was the only person left to continue the project after his colleagues left one after the other because of the failures and the results. Being turned into salt is much better than mutating into a zombie-like monster and start infecting others into more of them. This was where project gestalt came in. At first, Azriel's project was seen as having a lot of potential in fighting against WCS and the monsters that it brought. But the results were so terrible that the mortality rate was rated at 99.99%. Furthermore, not only does it kill the person but also turned them into monsters that would do everything they can to infect other non-infected.

White Chlorination Syndrome or WCS, turns the infected into salt or worse, into a monster. It was brought about by the Maso, an extradimensional chemical element brought into the world by the 'Giant' and 'Dragon', of the Giant. The Giant and the dragon just popped into existence one day as the latter fought the former. Both were defeated at the same time fighting each other. It was then that Maso started to spread in the world and WCS came into being from the 'corrupt' Maso of the Giant.

Project Gestalt was the next solution the higher-up came up with. Somehow, researchers, with the use of Maso from the Dragon, managed to separate the soul from the body, proving that souls do exist. The project was that the souls of the humans were to be separated from their bodies and put into a dormant state until WCS is gone and after it was gone they would be put back into artificially created bodies using the original's genes as the original would be contaminated with the WCS. Their souls and bodies were to be watched after and maintained by androids.

Due to technical developments made between 2026 and 2032 as a result of the necessity to treat and eradicate WCS and its monsters as well as the discovery of the new energy source from the Maso, mankind was able to develop artificial intelligence that is indistinguishable from human intellect. It was only possible due to the combination of all the geniuses and researchers humanity has. The androids were, of course, programmed to protect humanity at all costs almost to fanatical levels.

Azriel was one of their creators as he was well versed with technology and genetics. He assisted in creating their bodies to be an exact replica of human anatomy. After all, they were going to be taking care of humans so it's only natural that they look like humans.

Coming out of his musings, Azriel looked up from his microscope to check what time it was.

"*sigh* it's already 10 pm, I should take an hour or two to rest and then back to figuring out why this stupid virus is not cooperating." (Azriel)

Azriel got up from his chair and walked toward his bed located in the corner of the lab just beside the bookshelves. He saw the holographic calendar on the wall as he walked by and thought,

'Hm, today is February 3rd, 2032 huh, my birthday is just next month on the same day. But I suppose that unlike when I was younger, I won't be celebrating it. No time to, with everyone turning to salt or a monster one after the other. I need to finish the project as fast as I can. I still have hope that it would be the best solution for humanity's survival.' his thoughts stopped at this for a moment and continued with a chuckle and a deprecating smile 'or downfall.'

As soon as he reached his bed, he threw himself on it and buried his face in the pillow letting out another sigh. He set up an alarm to wake him up in 2 hours and not long after, he fell asleep.

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It has been a week and during this time he helped other researchers finalize the project gestalt while secretly trying to continue his project 'Blacklight'. Only wealthy, upper-class individuals who could afford it were preferred and able to participate in the gestalt process once it was made public due to the process' high costs. As for regular people, they were a low priority on the list and would only be available after some time, and even then, most might not be able to get the process done to them.

Azriel, knowing this, was all the more determined to finish his project as when he does, all he needed to do was to inject the virus into the body and it would do the rest. Replicating the virus is easy and cost-efficient since the virus would multiply on its own if it was introduced to a living non-infected tissue.

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March 3rd, 2032

Nearly all the rich and affluent people have done the process of removing their souls from their bodies and are put into dormancy. The casualties are still on the rise as WCS claims more and more people every day.

Azriel finally got a breakthrough in his project 'Blacklight'. His DNA seems to be resilient and unique and was quite compatible with the virus. Why he didn't think of using his own DNA in the first place? He was afraid of the sample growing into a mutated version of him and that kept him from using it until he was out of ideas and decided to just try it.

He made himself a homemade flamethrower to incinerate the sample if it even twitches a bit. But his worries were for naught as the virus bonded itself into his tissue without changing anything major. He would need to make a much more detailed examination to see if anything else changed.