MORE TESTS! MORE!
"Serum number 54 is in progress. The test subject seems to be stable. No fatal symptoms and her vitals are stable. It has been exactly 105 days and 14 hours since our breakthrough from serum number 52. As previously recorded, serum 52 from our previous test trials caused the test subject's wounds to heal at an inhuman rate. We have come to understand that the phytochemicals, derived from plants, that we mixed in with the formula from Serum 51, acted as a stimulant to the wound's healing process." Reyna Shaw said, holding a voice recorder close to her lips.
"We have tried over the past days to perfect the time it takes to heal major wounds. So today will be the 60th test trial of Project Aja. As of recently, the best time for a simple laceration to heal is under 30 seconds. Honey get the test subject ready," she ordered her husband, placing the recorder in the pocket of her shirt close to her person.
In the past, a lot of people in high places would fight over them. They would compete in who could give them the best benefit and workspace. In the end, they chose to accept the enticing offer from the military. Since then, they had everything in the palm of their hands. They had the best equipment, the best environment, and used the best test subjects to carry out their experiments.
At that time, they almost made a breakthrough in their experiment. But they were unexpectedly exposed too early. He and the love of his life had to live in hiding for five years. They struggled in those years and have finally made a stable life.
Once again, their life's work was set in motion with only a single test subject this time. They continued their work by improvising, using scraps they stole from recycling centers and instruments from hospitals. They came so far and now they are close to accomplishing their life's work.
He moved just as his wife commanded him. Ares's small figure can be found on the ground without exception, strapped down, and lying still. After long months of undergoing agonizing experiment tests, you can discern significant changes in her stature. Although she was still ghastly thin, she had grown exceptionally tall for a girl her age.
A little 8-year-old girl who, statistically, should be at least 4-feet and 2-inches inches tall, now looks to be 5-feet and 8-inches big despite her thin figure. Even the hairs on her body turned silver like an elderly woman. The experiments are already risky enough. But using a child as a test subject has a higher probability of dying.
However, experiencing symptoms such as these was a good sign to Reyna Shaw and her husband. Because it shows that the serum was not lethal but effective. Which gives the couple a reason to further enhance its results. Andrew turned to remove the bonds on Ares's limbs and hurriedly carried her onto the tilt table.
"Strap her down! Just for assurance."
Reyna Shaw glanced at Ares's unconscious figure. The straps kept Ares's sluggish body from falling forward off the tilt table.
After securely strapping her down, Andrew walked towards the storage cabinet, placed right next to the left of the tilt table. He brought out a sheathed blade and a butane torch. The sheathed knife was a fixed-blade tactical knife with a thin sharp edge. The blade itself was almost as long as the husband's hand.
"Serum number 54 didn't cause any changes to the test subject. It is safe to say that, although there were no fatal symptoms, Serum number 54 was still a failure. We will now proceed with test trial number 60 with serum number 55. The test subject is detained and still unconscious. Begin with injecting the test subject with Serum 55," Reyna narrated to Andrew every step.
Laid out on the side tables were syringes labeled with the number of the serum. He placed the sheathed knife and butane torch on the side and went to grab one of the syringes. The husband steadily held the needle against Ares's left forearm and administered serum number 55 into her bloodstream.
"We will now wait for an hour for the serum to kick in."
Ares gratingly squirmed in pain as sweat started to form on the side of her face as time passed. Within the child's body, a storm was quietly brewing. A storm so big yet it cannot be seen by the naked eye. One by one, every single cell in her body died and was replaced with new ones. Unknowingly, her whole being was completely reconstructed in mere minutes.
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"It has been over an hour and twenty minutes since the injection of Serum 55. So far, there are no signs of any fatal symptoms and the subject stopped showing indications of discomfort, of any kind. However, the electromyography test detected a neuromuscular abnormality. The gold-lining that showed up in her brain from Serum 48 seemed to have spread out into every part of the subject's body. When we took a closer look at her veins and arteries, the gold wall looked to be more of a strand. It seems to have entangled itself in every vein and artery. How extraordinary!" The wife exclaimed.
"We're almost there... We're so close!" The husband repeated as if he could not believe it. "We will finally have those bastards begging to take us back," he declared out loud.
"Yes, they will be DYING to take us back," she responded with a murderous gaze.
"Everything seems to be normal so we will be moving on to the next phase. Get the knife ready."
With the test subject not experiencing any violent manifestation, he moved to grab the knife from the side table and unsheathed it. Igniting the torch, he ran the flame across the edges of the blade with a deranged smile slowly growing wider and wider.
"Now let's test whether Serum 55 worked or not," he said, closing in on Ares's motionless figure. "Proceed with inflicting an inch-deep incision," she instructed her husband.
He placed the knife vertically on Ares's forearm and pressed it down with force, gliding the blade into her arm. "AAAHHHHHHH!" Ares came out of unconsciousness, wailing out in pain. An expression of agony was etched on her face. As boundless tears welled up in her eyes. The room was filled with never-ending screams but not even a single whimper could be heard from outside.
"My God!" the wife blurted.
Reyna Shaw stared at Ares's arm where the wound was, gobsmacked.
"How can this be!?" The husband had the same expression as his wife, plastered all over his face. Their gazes were unmoving from where the wound should have been but all they saw was nothing. They vigorously wiped the blood off from where the wound should have been and still, nothing was there.
NOTHING!
Reyna Shaw hurriedly moved behind the table, opening a specific software on the computer. "Dear, what are you doing?" he questioned, following her from behind.
"Look at this!" The wife pointed at the computer monitor playing the video recording of what had just happened. "If you zoom in on the laceration and slow the video down by 0.25x, you'll be able to see it. Now pay close attention to the cut, this is what the camera caught."
The video was mainly focused on Ares's forearm. It was replaying the scene of the husband holding a knife against Ares's bare skin. With the camera zoomed in, the video only showed the edge of the knife slowly penetrating the skin and the wound drawing blood. The second the knife left the epidermis layer of the skin, the couple's mouth continued to hang open, stupefied.
"It healed instantaneously," she said softly.
Despite the amount of blood pouring out from the wound, the inch-deep abrasion was caught closing at a monstrous speed. The crevice edge of the gash was swiftly joining and the wound just kind of unwounded itself.
"What the hell?" The husband exclaimed, whisperingly.
"It's a success? It's a success! By god, we finally did it!" The wife asserted out blatantly.
For a minute, they could only face each other, staring, with a look that showed their willingness to take their experiment to the next level and to create a monster that will make them a legend. A legend that everyone will worship as the one who brought them into a new era.
Months Later…
"AAAHHH! AAAHHH! AAAHHH!" Ares let out a blood-curdling scream at the top of her lungs but the sound of the saw, severing her arm, drowned her every scream. After months and months of experiments, the only thing that never changed was the sound of Ares, screaming out in agony.
"Hahahaha! MORE! MORE! We need to do more tests!" Reyna Shaw declared as she watched her husband sawing Ares's arm away. No matter how many times she had her husband cut into Ares, sever her limbs, shatter her bones, her wounds just instantly heal up like it was never there.
"AAAHHH! STOP! PLEASE! PLEASE STOP!!!" The atmosphere in the room dropped down to freezing point while the nightmarish scene played out. The walls were completely covered in plastic sheeting, and the cemented floor was dyed crimson red, while a red fluid dripped down from the tilt table that was placed in the middle of the room. On that tilt table laid Ares, short-breathed and wailing out in torment. Ares breathed haggardly, trying to stay conscious.
"Huff. Huff. Huff. Uggghhh!" Ares grunted in pain.
"Hehe! My! What a sight!" Reyna Shaw looked down at Ares with a sinister look. Alongside her, stood her husband, wearing protective gear that prevents blood from staining his clothes. His gloved hands stained red with blood, and in it, he held a Gigli saw.
Ares as well was also soiled red. Sweat and endless tears rolled down from both sides of her face. What stood out more was not the blood splattered all over the room but the source of the blood.
In the middle of a crimson pool, a human arm laid lifeless on the floor while Ares laid on the cold metal table with a missing arm.
"Now shall we even out both sides?" The wife asked her husband, licking the seams of her lips. Ares's left arm was still intact, but the same could not be said about her right arm. The human limb that was now lying lifelessly on the floor was once unscathed just a moment ago.
Now left with only one arm, Ares could only continue to lay there inertly, not being able to fight back. "Anything you want," the husband answered, not agreeing, or disagreeing with his wife's proposal.
Although you can see Ares's unwillingness of having to go through with any more afflictions in her eyes, she just did not have the strength to continue to scream and struggle.
She was completely motionless, trying to numb out the pain and sounds, as the couple continued to her only surviving arm left. Just like that, she became an armless figure in less than half an hour.
"With our test trial results, continuous progress, we have prepared a test for the healing process of an amputated limb. It has been less than an hour and a half since the amputation of both arms of the test subject. Her blood cells are multiplying at an extraordinary rate. The amputated site of the limb has stopped bleeding and is now showing signs of the initial stage of limb regeneration."
With the progress they were making in Project Aja, the couple's scientific minds went beyond and thought about the regeneration skills of a lizard.
Just the thought of them being able to make such a breakthrough in history pushed them. Just being able to heal fast was not enough.
Why not create an antigen that could help people, especially war veterans, to reconstruct their damaged limbs?
Or to utilize it for soldiers that are on the front lines. With that thought in mind, they are on the way to creating a monster.
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"It has been exactly three hours and both amputated arms of the test subject have both been revitalized. Both arms are fully functioning, and the amputated sight only had a slight scar. With the success of Serum 65, we will now begin to enhance the serum to lessen the time range it takes to regenerate a single limb. We will end today's test trial with this."
The wife proclaimed, ending the voice recording. She walked to the side of the tilt table and pressed a button, bringing Ares's lifeless body up 70 degrees into a vertical standing position.
"I'll have her hosed down. You can go ahead and get her food."
The wife went up the stairs, leaving her husband and Ares alone together. With his wife gone, the husband's gaze was still fixated on Ares's unconscious figure. The sight of her unmoving body drenched in her own blood excited him somehow.
She wore a simple white gown that was ripped and worn out from the repetitive lacerations over the years. Her petite figure was swallowed whole by the frock while her tousled silvery hair reached past her backside. Her silver hair was one of the many side effects of experiments. It was originally a light brunette color but was now an attractive silver that cannot be compared to a full moon.
Ares, who was still so out of it due to the amount of pain she went through, was ignorant to the fact that today was just the beginning of far worse pain and suffering.
The husband averted his attention away from Ares and walked to the corner of the room where they installed an indoor water faucet. After he finished installing the faucet, the husband was again put to work to set up a drainage pipe connected to the entire house's drainage system.
He grabbed the garden hose attached to the faucet and began to douse Ares. Gallons and gallons of water coursed down Ares's body, washing away the ounce and ounce of blood residue all over Ares's defunct frame. Her bloodied, red-stained clothes were easily drenched. The heavy water mixed with blood cascaded down her body and plunged down the duct. Her blood was so easily washed away but the feeling of pain she went through this day will be engraved in her being.
A WEEK LATER...
"A few days have passed, and the time for a severed limb to regenerate has finally reached perfection. As for the results, it takes approximately one minute for a single severed limb to reconstruct and an instant for any other minor injuries to heal. Project Aja has successfully come to an end, making Serum 62 the final product of Project Aja. Now that Project Aja has come to its closing, Project Kratos is now in commence," the wife announced in the voice recorder.