Project 99 (Perfect Human Book 1) Page 5

  “First of all, an introduction is necessary,” he began. “I’m Nikhil Sampath. I wanted to meet all of you for the longest time.”

  “Meet us?” Jackie asked. “You don’t even know us.”

  “I didn’t, but I do now.” He said, looking at each person in the room. “You’re Jacqueline Vargas, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, that’s me.” Jackie said. “How did you know my name?”

  “It was very easy to find you. You all live in the same area and we all have the same birthday: July 17th. I admit that I was looking up information on you after I received a mysterious letter from someone. They gave me your names. I didn’t get anything at first so I had to look you up. It makes sense now that I put it all together.”

  “What makes sense?” Crystal asked.

  “We are connected with each other in a way that no one else is. The mysterious letter that I received also came with a lot of files and there was information about you in them. I admit I have been looking at all our files as of late.” Nikhil started. “Then I tried to trace back to moments when I felt something was off. It really began when I went to the doctor one day. I had some tests done and they didn’t come out the way I expected them to. I had to run tests on myself, which wasn’t easy. That’s when I found out the truth about myself; that I wasn’t born like any normal baby. I was created on July 17th like the rest of you.”

  “Created?” Misty echoed. “I don’t think I follow you.”

  “What I mean is that we weren’t born like normal children. As hard as it is to believe, all of us were created in a lab. We were created to be perfect,” he explained. “That’s what our parents really wanted. It doesn’t matter when this happened. We were created because they wanted perfect children and they found the place to do that. It’s an institute called the Bradley Institute and they had the means to do that. So that’s why they went there.”

  “And how would you know all that?” Ash asked.

  “I’ve got your file here, Ashton.” Nikhil said, holding it up. “I know how wealthy you are. I know how bright you are as well. You don’t want to believe me, but deep down you do. You sense that there is something going on and something has always been wrong in your life. Well, you are half-right. Things aren’t what they appear to be.”

  “Okay, this is creepy that you know all our names.” He held up his hands. “I have to go back home. I promised my idiot parents that I would return by midnight.”

  Pam gave him a look. “Your idiot parents? Have some respect, child.”

  Nikhil ignored all that. “I promise I won’t take very much of your time. I have been looking for you because I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to help myself at the same time. I know you’ve all been getting messages as of late. They are the ones that brought you to me.”

  “You’re the one who sent that girl to the pharmacy?” Jackie asked.

  “Actually, she sent herself. She admitted to me that she went to find you and wanted to bring you to me,” he went on. “She wanted me to go to the arena as well, but I thought it would be better if I stayed behind. I live close by. I know you will be safer here than out there. It’s chaos right now.”

  “I’m still lost.” Ren said. “What kind of connection do we have?”

  "I know you all want an explanation. Why are we here? What do I know that no one else knows?" Nikhil began. "In all honesty, I know as much as you do. I'm finding out bits and pieces through research. A long time ago, there was a group of scientists who wanted to make a perfect human being. They wanted parents to have the opportunity to create their own child. It was designed for people who were unable to have children. This project has been going on for years. It’s had a lot of success, but it’s also had a lot of failures as well."

  “What kind of failures?” Doug asked.

  "This is everything that I've read about this project." He handed them some papers. "Some of it might have come from random websites, but they make sense. We were all carried to full term and created to look the way our parents wanted us to look. We were designed in a certain way.”

  “Designed?” Crystal asked. “Are you telling us that… someone created us in a lab or something?”

  "In a way, yes, that’s how we were created. It all started with what Dr. Chang was trying to do years ago." Nikhil said. "He wanted to create the perfect human through various experiments. However, every experiment seemed to fail on him. He worked on it for years until he finally perfected it. The problem was that he wasn't the only one trying to do this. There were other organizations trying to replicate the same formula and they wanted his help. He refused to give his secrets up so they had him killed."

  "Then what happened?" Crystal asked.

  "Well, his wife continued his research until she committed suicide a year later. At least, everyone thinks she committed suicide. Anyway, years would pass and people would forget about the Perfect Human project. All the experiments got older and began to realize they had powers. The biggest that every single experiment has is the ability to fuse with each other. If we could, we can combine and become a completely different person. At least, that’s what they were trying to do. They figured that two perfect humans could become something extraordinary. We have that ability too.”

  "How do we meld together?" Misty asked.

  "I'm trying to figure that out. The possibilities are endless because there are eight of us currently here. I can meld with one, two, three, even all of you. Apparently, our emotions are connected with each other and we share one strand of DNA that links us. I don't know how they managed it, but they did. I assume that's how we can meld together. I've never tried it before so I don't know how to do that. In all honesty, I didn't know of anyone else's existence until now."

  "How many of us are there?" Pam asked. "Dead and alive."

  "Including us, there are twenty-two that I've counted so far." Nikhil said. "I tried calling about ten of them only to find out that those ten are dead."

  "Ten of them are dead." Crystal repeated. "That's why you found you found."

  "I found you because you were the ones living closest to me. I didn't mean to pry into your lives, but I had to know what you were up to. I needed to know that you were all safe. I feared that you might also be dead or would end up that way soon. You have to know what's going on. They're after us. They let us loose all those years ago and now they want us back." Nikhil murmured. "Okay, I know of our medical records. Doug, you had a vasectomy about twelve years ago, am I right?"

  Doug frowned. "How do you know that part? That was something that was kept between me, my doctor, and the family. I had that after we had our third child."

  "I didn't find that out." Nikhil held up the folder. "Project 99 did."

  “And who the hell is Project 99?”

  Nikhil took a deep breath. “Project 99 created us.”

  Chapter 7 – Ren

  Ren didn't know what he was supposed to expect tonight. He had gotten the same invitation that everyone else had gotten. He had no interest in robots battling each other, but it was something to do tonight. He had been working the lunch rush earlier today at the restaurant. He worked at The Golden Arrow, a well-known fusion restaurant, and was a sous chef there. Right after getting out of cooking school, he got the job over here. It was one of the best restaurants in town and he was working almost every day there. He was on his feet as he cut up vegetables, boiled things in pots, and sautéed in pans. It was a tough job, but it was something he loved doing.

  That was why he couldn't understand why this invitation was sent to him. He asked his coworkers if this was meant for them by accident. As suspected, none of them had heard about this nor were interested. In addition, the invitation was addressed to him. His boss had brought it over to him after his shift was over.

  "I didn't know you were into this type of thing, Ren." he said.

  "I'm not. That's why I thought this was mislabeled. Evidently, no one is interested in this
so I might as well go." Ren murmured. "After work, I don't have much going on. This could be fun. If it's not, then I'll go home."

  "Sounds like a plan. Great job today during the lunch rush, by the way. Everyone sent compliments to you and your crew."

  Ren blushed. "Well, I'm just doing my job. Anyway, I better clean up my station and get ready to go. I have a feeling this is going to be interesting."

  Indeed, it was very interesting. There was a note in the invitation that told him not to bring anyone else to this event. He didn't understand why that was the case, but decided to follow the instructions to the letter. Once he was cleaned up and ready, he headed down to the arena under the bridge and prepared for a night of robots beating the crap out of each other. It wasn't his scene, but he was ready to watch.

  What he didn't expect to see was someone kill themselves right in the middle of the arena. Nor did he expect to be rushed out of the arena and into this small apartment with all these other people. He didn't know any of them, but he felt comfortable all of a sudden. He couldn't understand why, but it felt like he had known them all his life. They probably could tell that he wasn't born male, unlike a lot of other people. They looked at him and know all his secrets. He figured out all their names and was able to match their faces: Doug Ruskin, Pam Turner, Nikhil Sampath, Jackie Vargas, Crystal Garrison, Ashton Blackwell, and Misty Zeng.

  “Now I’m amused.” Nikhil chuckled. “We have an Ash and a Misty here. Are either of you Pokémon fans or have watched the show? That’s two of the characters there.”

  Ash wrinkled his nose. “No. I don’t deal with that crap.”

  "Look, we can talk about that later. I'm going to need some explanations." Crystal said. "I feel like I walked right into the middle of something. I'm expected to know everything and I don't."

  "I'm going to be honest with you. I know very little about this as well." Nikhil said. "I found out only a few weeks ago. Bit by bit, I put it all together. Maybe I know more than everyone else, but I don’t know enough. I had to find you first. I had to know who you were."

  “You scare me.” Ash said. “Were you stalking us all this time?”

  “I realize it comes off creepy, but that was not my intention. I wanted to know you before I introduced myself to you. Now that I’ve found and I’ve given you some idea, I hope we can work together. I want to know what we really are.”

  "This is an interesting group of people." Doug noted. "We're of different races, ages, genders, and I have no doubt that we're different people."

  "We are different people for the most part." Nikhil agreed. "We were all raised in different environments. This was all part of the big plan."

  "What big plan?" Crystal asked.

  "It’s what Project 99 has been preparing us for. We just didn’t know about it. Now we’re here, let’s try to come up with some ideas and plans. However, I'm missing a Brenda Abernathy here." Nikhil said.

  Ren raised his hand. "Actually, it's Brendan Abernathy."

  "It says here that you are female."

  "Was female." He corrected him. "I was born physically female, yes, but I changed a few years ago. I go by Ren now. If they have my old identity on file, that may explain why they haven't been able to find me yet."

  "That may be the reason." Nikhil agreed. "It would explain why you're safe, but not the others. Actually, you are not the only transgendered experiment to have died. They found the others, but not you and their names were changed on the sites either."

  Ren winced. "Do you have to call us experiments? It makes me feel uneasy."

  "I'm sorry. I'm reading everything that's on the reports. They keep calling all of us experiments and specimens." He handed everyone their folders. "You can read up on the others. There isn't a whole lot though."

  "Let me get this straight." Ren began. "We are technically brothers and sisters. In a way, we have one strand of DNA that combines all of us. It doesn't matter what our race, gender, and so forth is. We are connected. We have the ability to be monsters if we wanted to be."

  "Well, I wouldn't use the term monsters, but yes. We can be something extraordinary if we combine our powers. How we combine them, I'm still trying to figure out that part. I just know that our parents, regardless of when we were born, were part of a long project called Project 99. They were trying to create the perfect human by combining DNA from every specimen they had."

  "And let me guess... we are the specimen that they had." Crystal said. "They turned us into lab rats and experimented on us and didn't tell us a thing."

  "Why am I not surprised my parents would be behind this?" Ash muttered. "I knew they didn't like me, but this is low even for them. I would never expect them to sell their kid to science. Shows how much I really knew."

  "That's the other thing; I don't want you to confront your families about this." Nikhil added. "They will try to deny and if Project 99 finds out who you're letting in on your secret, they will kill them."

  "You think I care?" Ash asked. "My family has been terrible to me. After my brother died, I ceased to exist in their eyes."

  "You say that now, honey, but you will regret it later." Pam said. "You don't want to sound callous."

  “A little too late to tell me that.” Ash crossed his arms.

  "Barring all the issues with our families, Project 99 is aware of our existence. They will want us to come back to them." Nikhil said. "They have another project planned called Project 100. The reason for this is a lot of Project 99 experiments have started dying out. Some are due to a disease they caught because of the tests. Some are due to Project 99 finding them and killing them for trying to get out of their fate. You can see all about them in those folders."

  "Are we the only Project 99 experiments left?" Jackie asked.

  "You're the only ones I've found so far that are alive." Nikhil said. "I have no doubt that there are more. I just need to look outside of this state for them. I've found some that were living outside of the country, but they were all dead. I never got a chance to talk to them."

  "So our job now is to find the other experiments before Project 99 does." Doug realized. "What do we do then? Bring them into this little group? Do we have a plan?"

  "What I did find is a video. It has the orientation that all our parents and families watched a long time ago." Nikhil held up the videotape.

  Misty frowned. "What is that?"

  "Oh, those are video tapes, honey. I can't believe you've never seen one before." Pam said. Then she turned to Nikhil. "Do you have a VCR that you can use?"

  "Amazingly enough, I do." Nikhil nodded. "I found it in the back of my house and got it set up just so you guys could watch. This one is going to shock you, because there's something at the end that you need to see." He popped the video in and turned on the TV. "Brace yourselves. If you need to leave the room, my bathroom is just down the hall and to the left."

  "Just play the tape." Crystal said, crossing her arms and getting comfortable. "I want to know everything behind this Project 99."

  They all sat back to watch as the video came on. First came a shot of some cells growing and multiplying. Then someone began to speak. "Have you ever wondered how we end up with the genes that we have? How do we determine which ones we get from our father and which we get from our mother? Do you ever wish to get rid of a certain gene that you have? Perhaps it caused you some health problem that you want to cure. Have you ever wished that you were born perfect? Well, there may be a solution to all of this."

  The video changed and a man appeared in front of them.

  "Hello there. I am Dr. Evan Chang, founder of the Perfect Human project. While this does seem like a dream come true, I assure that it is reality. Here at Bradley Institute, we have come up with a way for you to have your perfect baby. We have been working with this for the last twenty years and the results have been nothing short of spectacular. Let's check with some of our satisfied customers."

  The next shots of the video
s were of interviews with various people who were talking about how great their pregnancy had been. There were so many happy couples that had been told they were infertile and unable to have children before. Now there were couples that were beaming or already had their child. They had their perfect humans and were all advocating for how great it was. Everyone was born exactly as they should have been.

  Not everyone. Ren wanted to argue. He hadn't been born the way he wanted. He had been born in the wrong body and nobody wanted to acknowledge that. For years, he was certain that he was meant to be a male. The Perfect Human Project had fucked this one up. Somehow, they had gotten the gender of the baby wrong.

  "Come see us at the Bradley Institute where we can make sure that your baby is perfect. Just think of the possibilities that you will have. Here, we can determine just what kind of baby you want and we can give you everything you need. At the Bradley Institute_"