Somewhere deep in the Rocky MountainsThe light fixtures along the ceiling flickered sporadically. A lone man sat at a desk in a confined office space, hunched over and focused intently on what he was writing. He appeared to be around forty, with thinning dark hair combed over his bald spot. He wore a lab coat that was worn and covered in black smudges. Behind his glasses, his eyes were unblinking and weary with exhaustion.The lights flickered again over his head, followed by a rumbling that lightly shook the desk. The man glanced up at the lights with a look of hard suspicion. The rumbling ceased as quickly as it had begun, and the only sound to be heard was a faint buzzing coming from the fixtures. The man looked over at a landline phone that was sitting on the desk. Next to it sat a digital clock which read 3:17 am. The man winced as the exhaustion crept over him at the sight of the time. Everything was silent for a moment, but as if on cue, the telephone rang with a loud and pers

The town of Meadowvale, Nebraska was the image of a small, country village. It was situated on the edge of Arthur County in the middle of a vast farmland. It was a tight knit community in which everybody knew one another, perfect as the only home Anna could remember calling her own. Despite that, as she sat in the passenger seat of her family’s Ford 150, driven by Lynn, on her way to her first day of school, it was still like stepping into a whole new world.Downtown Meadowvale was small, yet bustling. It only consisted of a handful of streets, but chief among them was Adams Street, which ran the full length of the populated town center and had a variety of markets, restaurants, and small town ma and pa businesses. Anna always liked coming down here. It was certainly a different environment than the countryside.There were only two school buildings in Meadowvale, both of which stood just beyond the far side of the town center. The first building they came to was the elementary school,

Several weeks had gone by since the first day of the new school year in Meadowvale, and Anna believed she was settling in well. Much of the stress and anxiety she brought with her that first day had been all but relieved, and her parents were proud to see her excelling so well in her classes. She struggled a little in her humanities classes, but she proved impeccable in courses such as biology and especially Algebra; in fact, she was performing so exceptionally in Algebra that she was promptly moved up to Calculus, but not even that was able to slow her down. She was learning almost as fast as her instructors could teach, and it was not long before she became something of a hero among her classmates who suffered a bit more at the subject and were constantly asking her for help. She had to admit that it was getting annoying to have the other kids approaching her the minute they did not understand something, but if there was one upside to it all, it had to be that she was in the same Ca

The events of that day were on her mind for the rest of the evening. As the sun set over the rural horizon, Anna sat in her room in front of her vanity mirror, aimlessly running a brush through her hair. She was thinking about straightening it from its usually wavy style for her date with Jason. She could not help but smile every time she thought about it, and she often wondered what made her happier: Jason asking her out or how much it bothered Tamara that he was showing an interest in her.She giggled at the thought but was distracted by what sounded like somebody pulling on the string to the attic door. Anna threw her brush down on the dresser and groaned in annoyance. “Go away, Abigail!”Just then, the attic door was pulled down and the ladder extended. Anna rolled her eyes as her unwelcome visitor began climbing up.“It’s just me, honey,” Lynn said as she appeared from below.“Oh! Sorry, Mom,” Anna replied sheepishly.Lynn walked over to sit on the end of Anna’s bed just across t

“Here we go again,” Park muttered to himself.Several weeks had gone by since Park had been summoned to the Pentagon by the government heads behind Project Machina. The only upside to being held here against his will by both the military and the CIA was the living quarters. General Melsom had provided Park with a private lab space to continue his work with the M-Gene and assist with the efforts to track down the missing assets. Since he lived, slept, and worked in the same lab, he had yet to leave for any reason, and no amount of relative luxury he was given made it seem any less like a prison sentence.If it was not for the massive digital clock suspended on the wall above the door leading out of the lab, he would never have known what time of day it was since he had not seen the sun in weeks. Right now, it read, “19:26:45,” with the seconds counting up one after another. Sometimes he would just sit in his wheelchair or lie on his cot and watch the numbers for hours, as if to convinc