Exceptional

Chapter 1: Project X

“You do know, I’ll kill you if we get caught,” Em whispers.

“Yeah, yeah. We’ve got a mission to complete,” I whisper back. It’s pitch black out, and the guards are patrolling the area. Fortunately, there are plenty of trees to sneak through. This will be easy enough. Besides, we’ve been trained to escape worse. I motion for Em to check our surroundings. He quickly scans, then nods to me. We proceed as planned.

The guard makes his round near us, and once he’s within grasp we swiftly leave our cover. Before he realizes it, we’ve already snapped his neck. “Quickly!” I snap. We pull him back into the trees. Both of us are starving, and his appeal is too great to resist. I see Em’s body language mirroring my own. Without words, a knife is pulled, slicing him open. My mouth is salivating, and both of us have our first meal in days. Sarge would be impressed. The guard has a canteen on his waist, and we chugged the water desperately.

“Ready?” I ask. Em nods, and we check the rest of the perimeter. The people inside of it speak a language I don’t recognize at all. Not that it really makes any difference. Our objective is simple: get in, kill all personnel, hack their computer systems, destroy the evidence, and get out. If we couldn’t accomplish a clean escape and got caught, it was up to us to make sure neither of us were caught alive. Sarge makes it a point to never let us forget that.

Up ahead at the facility’s entrance, there are five security guards. Em gives me a look saying, “What now?” I point up, and we begin climbing. Once we’re in the trees, we use darts to sedate them and hop down. No blood, no mess. We swap clothing with the guards. Then we move the bodies off to the side and deal with them. I use my watch to pull out a map for the objective’s location. We proceed, and it’s easy getting rid of the men inside of the building. “Seems like this company’s security wasn’t so important to them.” I mutter. Em stays on the lookout, though I doubt we missed anything. For such irrelevant security measures, what could be so important to send us out here? I start the process of hacking into their system. Within two minutes I’m in, and again, this feels way too easy.

“Yo, Maze, update me,” Em says.

“I’m already in. All of this seems too easy, Em. Something is wrong with this mission, man. I’m telling you, I’ve got a real bad feeling about this,” I say quickly. “Maze, you’re too paranoid. We’re professionals, it’s what we do,” he says.

As I’m going through files to eliminate, something catches my eye. A file under the name ‘Project X’. Could this be what’s so important? I open it and look through the file. It’s filled with science reports on patients. Dr. Josette was lead, and there’s thousands of videos. I click the first one.

Dr. Josette is on the screen, and she takes a step back. There is a man strapped onto a hospital bed, and the time stamp says 01/22/1998. “This is Patient Zero in Project X. Patient Zero has the genetic mutation MAOA. According to the evaluations from his personal life and observers, Patient Zero has displayed fascinating behavior. Observers have described Patient Zero as impulsive, aggressive, and violent. Patient Zero is a thirty two year old white male from Illinois. He’s believed to have murdered twelve women. All of these women are different ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds. None of our experts seem to be able to recognize any motive he has for this behavior. These women only have two things in common: gender, and method of execution. The objective of Project X’s is to discover whether this behavior is the result of nature, or nurture. We hope to better understand the mind of those with the MAOA mutation to see how it can be utilized to improve society. Now, let’s begin.”