S5 Episode 16: "God's Blueprint"

He was furious.

Alexandra Basil had vanished.

The vigilantes had somehow absconded with her and disabled the tracker he had embedded in the serum.

And it would only be a matter of time before…

His phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID and let out a long sigh.

*He* was checking in… again…

Dr. Mythos reached over to his phone, hesitated, then resisted the urge to ignore the call.

He answered after the fourth ring, just before it went to voice-mail.

“You took your time answering,” came the man's voice.

“I was… preoccupied…” Dr. Mythos stated.

It wasn't an outright lie at least.

“I am on my way over now. What is the progress on Sovereign level of Zeta?”

Dr. Mythos looked over his display at the mess of notes before him.

“Delayed, but in progress. It's still not stable.”

“Neither was Leviathan, but that didn't stop Basilisk from happening, now did it?”

Dr. Mythos didn't respond to that.

“I'll be on site in fifteen minutes. I'll want a full report on progress by the time I walked in the door yesterday,” the man demanded.

“Am I clear?”

Dr. Mythos hesitated a moment.

“Julius?”

“Yes, sir…”

The call ended from the other end. Dr. Mythos had to employ all of his willpower not to throw his phone across the room.

Funding or not, this man's demands were increasingly frustrating, and the doctor was getting tired of them. A plan had been slowly formulating in the background to deal with the issue, but it took getting to the final stages of Project Sovereign to do so…

He glanced at the displays of the Sovereign project details.

“One day… you'll regret everything…”

Dr. Mythos took a long breath and stood from his workstation. The man wanted reports and results… he would give them to him. He knew what a man such as this was capable of by merit of what he had already witnessed… and didn't want to be subject to those things himself, especially when he had gotten this far.

True to his word, his patron was walking through the front doors of the facility fifteen minutes after he had said as much. He arrived without his typical entourage of his aide and security guards… which could be seen as a concern in itself.

He arrived promptly in the lowest level observation room relative to the restricted security level, and Dr. Mythos was as prepared for him as he could be.

The man wasted no time as he entered the room.

“Talk to me, Julius… what do we have?”

Dr. Mythos relaxed his jaw at the less-than-formal greeting and cleared his throat.

“As before, we are on target for the deadlines, but there are still factors relating to growth scale and metabolism that are still being worked on.”

He adjusted his glasses.

“The… specimen sample you provided… is rather unique…”

“And I will remind you that there will be no questions as to its origin,” the man said.

He made this statement a bit quickly, before the words had finished coming from Dr. Mythos. This was not new, but it continued to add to Dr. Mythos’ curiosity and alarm as to the nature of said origin.

“That aside, Sovereign should be ready for trials in its incubation stages once we solve those matters.”

The sponsor read over the remaining notes, an unreadable stoicism in his countenance.

“This is good… but we need better,” he finally said.

“Double up efforts to resolve this yesterday.”

Dr. Mythos blinked at the demand.

“Sir… we are already working night and day…”

A notification sounded on the console. The man, already being there, keyed it and read the message.

“It appears you have a walk-in, Doctor…”

He stepped over so that Dr. Mythos could read the notification himself.

“What does he… why…?” Dr. Mythos began.

He looked at his visitor as if asking permission, but then continued with or without it anyway. He pressed a button on the console that opened a line to the assistant at the front desk.

“Is he still there?” he asked.

“Yes sir… he is insisting a meeting with you…” came the woman’s voice.

“He says you know him and have… need to reconcile?”

Dr. Mythos huffed at the comment.

“Tell Mr. Striker that he needs to make an appointment… I am very busy…” he started.

“Send him in.”

Dr. Mythos turned to his sponsor in surprise.

“See what he wants. He might have burned all his other bridges at this point, but he might still be of use to us in some way.”

Dr. Mythos let out a long, exasperated sigh and keyed the line again.

“Send him to the North Conference Room on Beta level… I will be there as soon as I can.”

He turned to the man in the room.

“I'll be waiting here, but I'll be listening in.”

Dr. Mythos said nothing, looking at him for a moment, and then left the room.

A short while later, Dr. Mythos had arrived at the conference room. Taking in a breath, he pushed the door open and walked inside.

The man inside was far from the John Striker he had known before. This man seemed more hollow… as if everything he had been before was stripped away from the inside out and left a somewhat recognizable shell in the shape of the former leader of the Ouroboros.

“Doctor…” Striker said in greeting.

“I have a limited amount of time, Mr. Striker… what do you want?”

“I could ask you the same question…” Striker said.

“Being that our last arrangement landed me in jail.”

“Which I also facilitated the escape from, so that was also handled. What do you want now?”

Striker looked around the room.

“Did you make the Basilisk?”

Dr. Mythos stayed silent for a while.

“I would ask why you are asking such a question, but considering you are at least *partly* knowledgeable of my work out of necessity…”

“She is rather fascinating…”

Dr. Mythos blinked.

“I presume you are here for more than mere complements of prototypes of my research,” Dr. Mythos said.

“Please cut to the chase.”

“I want what she has.”

No hesitation in his voice.

Dr. Mythos didn't hesitate either.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You are not prepared for the toll on your mind and body…” Dr. Mythos replied.

“I can see what you have done to yourself already.”

“I have nothing left!” Striker almost shouted.

“Everything I have tried to make of myself has been taken from me in one form or another!”

Dr. Mythos did not react to the outburst, but was prepared to call for security if things got out of hand.

“And what would you have me do? Give you one more thing to add to your list of attempts to remake yourself, *Minister*?”

Striker fumed, but didn't back down.

“I want you to make me better than I could ever have been.”

Dr. Mythos’ phone alerted him of a text message.

“Bring him downstairs.”

Dr. Mythos froze.

He wanted to refuse, but knew the repercussions of doing so could be dire.

He stared at his phone for a moment, then looked up at the man that was John Striker.

“If… you go through with this… there won't be any going back…”

A steely expression came across Striker's face.

“There never was.”

Dr. Mythos simply nodded and gestured for Striker to follow him.

He led him out of the conference room.

Past security.

Past laboratories.

Past areas of the facility most employees of the company never had even seen.

Into the belly of the beast… toward somewhere deeper.

Toward a future neither man fully understood.

And from the observation room, the man behind everything watched, alone. He looked over the monitor displaying the Sovereign schematics.

A faint smile came across his face.

Everything was going according to plan.