IINNNNHHH!!!
IINNNNHHH!!!
A shrill sound echoed throughout the building, waking up the sleeping base.
A man rushed in.
"WHAT'S GOING ON???" A scream echoed through the room lit up by red alarm lights and state-of-the-art screens, in front of which scientists were busy at work, running around and shouting at each other...
The smell of new plastic and filter coffee hung in the air.
The person who had burst in was wearing a military uniform decorated with numerous badges showing his military achievements. His two black eyes stared intently at the many people in white coats, waiting for an answer.
"We're losing the subject, Commander Steinz..." Someone stammered in panic. In front of the observation monitor, a young doctor looked bitterly at the information in front of her.
"His vital signs are dropping..." she continued, her eyes fixed on the screen in front of her, which showed the condition of a certain subject, the subject of an experiment who was the youngest participant in the study and also the most promising, and yet...
"I see..." a voice said.
The commander stood straight, unyielding, looking unmoved, but his eyes were serious...
"No surprise there..." His voice was low, yet it still echoed throughout the room despite the loud alarms.
And in the corner of the room, an Asian man with his eyes fixed on the monitors and a stoic expression on his face spoke up.
"It may not be a bad thing," he began.
Setinz turned slowly toward him.
"What do you mean, Dr. Serizawa?" The commander looked at him calmly, straight into his eyes.
The room still glowed red in waves as the alarm spun around in a deafening noise, yet allowing a moment of silence to pass...
Dr. Serizawa approached further, passing the doctors, the commander, and even the monitors, and positioned himself near the translucent glass, where a young teenager could be seen lying on what appeared to be a stretcher. He was not sleeping peacefully; his limbs were already beginning to tremble...
He had short black hair, his former Caucasian complexion now pale, and numerous wires protruding from his skin connected him to several machines that pulsed and flashed warning lights.
Dr. Serizawa stood there for a few seconds, looking at the remnants of an experiment that had failed, a vain promise.
And with his strong accent, he simply said
"Man has no place among the Titans..."
The Commander remained silent. The doctor's reverence for the Titans was not unfamiliar to him. When everyone else saw the end of their species, he saw the beginning of a new era, a restored balance...
Without pollution, without contamination, perhaps without humans...
But if Serizawa continued to proclaim that coexistence was possible, that the Titans were not to be feared, it was just nature reclaiming its rights.
Steinz would not bet everything on this possible hope. As a good soldier, he believed that the law was made by the strongest.
"(We will see the possibility of coexistence when humans have regained their place)," the commander's eyes burned with fervor.
And the alarms continued to light up the underground laboratory in scarlet.
IINNNNHHH!!!
All the scientists, genetic experts, and the best minds of this project worked tirelessly to stabilize the patient's condition. Screams echoed through the room, and suggestions for solutions and alternatives flew left and right.
"We could cryogenically freeze him and resume this experiment years later, when science has advanced and we have more information..."
He was abruptly interrupted by the doctor, who had been speaking to the commander.
"NO!!! His cellular degeneration will continue even under cryogenic freezing..."
Another person to her left continued hastily,
"She's right, besides, we don't have any more research material. We only had one living Titan embryo sample. It's our only chance. No, we should consider gamma radiation instead..."
[Author's note: whoever gets the reference is my hero...]
Before he too was abruptly cut off
"Are you crazy? That..."
And in that scene, Commander Steinz stood motionless, oblivious to the chaos around him, his eyes fixed on the last individual...
"(So this is the end...)
Admiral Steinz wasn't listening, he wasn't listening anymore, his piercing gaze behind the glass where the last of the 5,000 soldiers had volunteered for this experimental research...
He watched the young volunteer whose body was convulsing, blood pouring from his mouth. A 16-year-old boy, despite his young age, he had been chosen for his high compatibility with kaiju blood.
His two blue eyes fixed on the face of the boy lying there dying, and he could only do the one thing he could do.
He stood up straight, crossed his feet, and raised his arm.
"Your duty ends here. Rest in peace, soldier," he whispered softly. Behind the admiral's closed face and hard eyes staring at the soldier he was saluting, a trace of bitterness was present.
This disappointment, this feeling of having betrayed the brave men who had given themselves to the unknown, was shared by everyone in the laboratory.
This experiment, whose goal was their ultimate attempt to seriously study Titan organ transplantation, genetic mutation, and the possibility of human enhancement, was now over.
It was a large-scale project, sponsored by the government and the army in collaboration with Monarch and Apex. They collected a lot of data and quickly came to the conclusion that it would not be possible for now. The idea of superhumans or humans mutated into kaiju could not even be considered for decades.
"(A time when none of us will remain...)" This stoic man showed no emotion on his face or in his eyes, but you could hear his fingers crack, see the paleness of his knuckles and the blue veins standing out as his fists were clenched so tightly...
The commander sighed and finally came back to his senses.
"ENOUGH!" His scream echoed through the observation room, and everyone fell silent.
Steinz stood tall, his arms behind his back, and took one last look at the young boy whose limbs were trembling and twisting in his observation bed, and said
"The boy has suffered enough, begin the elimination procedure..."
"WHAT? No, you can't..." The scientists immediately began to protest, but the colonel simply gave them a cold stare, silencing them all once again before leaving the room.
The scientists who remained there looked at each other before the chief scientist, Dr. Ishirō Serizawa, took one last look at the last hope of this crazy idea, which, to no one's surprise, had turned out to be a failure.
"Man cannot control the forces of nature..." he said quietly, speaking only to himself, and he too headed for the exit without looking back.
The doctor sitting near the monitor sighed, reached out toward the control panel, and gently lifted a cover in one corner that hid a red button...
And pressed it...
***
The rays of sunlight caressed the trees, filtering through the leaves and bathing the forest in a very faint yellow glow. They were accompanied by a gentle breeze that caressed the woods and the face of the young boy who was lying there, eyes closed, asleep.
Surprisingly, in this forest of wonders, there was no sound, no smell, no sign of animal life. It was an idyllic, peaceful place, a place like no other...
"HUUUH!!!"
The teenager sat up in a split second, waking up with a start, breathing frantically.
HUH!! HUH!!
His hand moved and rested on his chest where his heart was beating heavily.
"Fuhhh..." He sat there and forced himself to breathe calmly, calming his heart as he had been taught to do.
The minutes passed, and his heart returned to normal.
"Fuuhh..."
After one last sigh, he stood up, and his first reaction was
"What the...?" A forest, a huge forest stretching as far as the eye could see, trees everywhere as he looked around him.
"Hmmm..."
How had he gotten there?
"(Am I dreaming?)" He looked around suspiciously. He was indeed in the woods, a simple forest, but it was strange.
The green trees, all identical, began about a hundred meters around him. He found himself on a plain, a large expanse where there was only small, thin green grass before the massive trees took over...
And in the center of the plain, a tree...
A strange tree, its thick, light brown bark completely bare, without a single leaf, its trunk twisted like a braid, the only few leaves found at its immense summit. It must have been easily twice the size of all the other trees.
And at the foot of this strange tree, there was an opening, like a slit right in front of it, which led to a dark void where nothing could be seen.
"How did I get here?" The boy looked at the strange place.
"A dream? Am I drugged? Maybe it's the anesthesia or the medication from the operation...?" He might have been in a coma at that moment, plunged into an artificial sleep, but this forest seemed strange, real yet imaginary.
He took a few seconds, his eyes fixed on the scene and the thick brown tree that stood out from the landscape like a beacon...
And his feet moved forward...
Step by step, he approached the tree, walking, moving forward, and... he didn't know why...
He just did it...
He finally arriving in front of the tree.
He stopped just in front of the brown bark entrance, it was like a wooden door open, a passage that led into the void...
His eyes never left this empty space.
He stood there, observing, the proximity did nothing to change or help the darkness that hid behind it...
He still couldn't make anything out...
He leaned forward, strained his ears, and wait a few seconds...
He still couldn't hear anything.
'( Should I... ? )'
he turned, Behind him was a magnificent landscape of tall green trees that seemed to stretch on forever, and... in front of him, infinite darkness of absolute black...
Few second pass
And... He took a step...
**************************
The brown eyes were lost in the clear yellow liquid in the palm of his hand...
Steinz sighed, puting down his glass of scotch. He was standing in front of the wall of his office, staring into space. He now had to inform his superiors.
"(Since the first reports, the situation has been catastrophic. Most of the soldiers died in the first week...)" He was there, slumped in his chair.
"(It won't be a surprise. We may have another chance, God willing...)" He sighed.
"(But... but, for him, there was still a little hope. Despite the failure of the attempt, he might have been able to get out of it...)"
He lowered his eyes to the file on his desk, which contained everything about the last remnants of this project.
David Blake, a soldier since childhood, born in 2002, currently only 16 years old, the youngest and only child in the program, he was accepted because of his strange Kaiju compatibility, which was discovered during testing. He was the most promising and also very young. He would have made a great special forces soldier, but he insisted on being in the program.
"Tssss... what a waste..." murmured the tired man as he looked towards the corner of the room where, inside a glass barrier, there was an object, or more precisely, a piece of debris.
A simple piece of concrete, and in the small cavities of its rough, black-blue surface, between the rocky crevices, there were still traces of dried blood that had flowed abundantly on that day in 2014 in San Francisco.
The grainy piece, a remnant of a sad day, was there like a symbol, a reminder.
Never to forget, never to forget the terror of the titans...
"It looks like it's not for now, but I promise you..." The commander's words echoed in the empty office.
At that moment, his face no longer showed any signs of fatigue, his fierce, mad eyes seemed to pierce the rock.
"One day we'll make them pay..."
The commander's voice echoed, low and deep, like a warning, a threat, and a promise...
A few seconds passed in silence.
Steinz came to his senses and decided to break the news to his superior upstairs. Delaying it wasn't going to make it any easier.
Steinz stood up and picked up the phone on his desk,
When....
A huge tremor shook the entire building.
"CRAAAAAKKK..."
His desk shook violently, cracks as thick as snakes appeared on the wall and ceiling...
"CRIIICCC...CC"
"WHAT.....?????!!!!! "
But his voice was cutt of by the alarms going off, bathing once again the laboratory in red.
IINNNNHHH!!!
IINNNNHHH!!!
**********************************************
https://www.patreon.com/c/Just_a_guy__
+ 10 Chapter/ Already 20k words