Chapter 75: The first design

For several seconds, Markus heard nothing but the faint hum of the terminal.

The question remained between them.

’Why do you think you survived?’

He released the edge of the terminal and straightened, "I survived because my body adapted."

"That’s what the medical reports say," the scared man replied.

"It’s what happened."Markus said.

"Then explain why the Foundation recorded your compatibility before you were born." the man added.

Markus’s expression changed.

The second man touched the terminal again. A series of encrypted files appeared, each bearing a classification stamp that Markus had never seen before. The earliest dates preceded the establishment of the Foundation’s modern research division. Some records were older than the building itself.

He approached the screen.

The first file contained a medical profile. Most of its contents had been redacted, but several lines remained visible.

SUBJECT 003: COMPATIBILITY TESTING.

REPRODUCTIVE CELL ANALYSIS: APPROVED.

OFFSPRING VIABILITY: HIGH PRIORITY.

Markus read the lines twice, "What is this?"

"The beginning," the scar’d man said. "Not the beginning of Mark 8. The beginning of the plan that made you."

Markus turned toward him. "Choose your next words carefully."

"We have." the man added.

The second man opened another file. A chart appeared, mapping a series of biological traits against projected responses to Mark 8.

The document described genetic markers, cellular stability, and the probability of an offspring surviving exposure to the organism.

One name had been obscured but the other remained.

VICTOR CAIN.

Markus felt a cold pressure settle in his chest.

"They tested your father’s reproductive cells," the scar’d man explained. "They wanted to determine whether his biological material could produce a child capable of surviving Mark 8.

Most candidates were unsuitable. Some combinations were discarded before they could be tested further."

Markus stared at the chart, "You’re saying they wanted him to have a child."

"They wanted a particular child."

The words seemed to make the room smaller.

The second man continued. "The researchers identified a woman whose biological profile was considered compatible with your father’s.

The Foundation in which at that time was in your grandfather control arranged for them to have a child together. The decision wasn’t left to chance. Your conception was the result they were working toward."

Markus looked back at the screen.

The dates were there, the approvals, the projections....The clinical language of people who had reduced an entire human life to a series of probabilities.

He searched for a personal detail, something that might prove the documents were incomplete or fabricated. There was nothing. The records contained no tenderness, no uncertainty, and no acknowledgment that the people involved had lives beyond the experiment.

They had been treated as components and his father had been one of them.

"And the woman?" Markus asked.

"Her file was sealed separately. We don’t know what happened to her after the programme was completed."

"You expect me to believe that my entire life was arranged by a group of researchers?"

"We expect you to read the records."

Markus turned sharply. "Why show me this now?"

"Because Victor is dead, and you’re in control of the Foundation. The people who designed the programme believed the truth would remain buried as long as they kept you away from these archives."

"Who designed it?"

The scar’dman did not answer immediately.

"Your father was Subject 003. But he wasn’t the only person involved in the programme.

He was both a test subject and, later, one of the people who continued the work. Whatever you think of him, he knew what you were created for."

Markus looked down at the chart again.

He remembered Victor’s lessons. The way his father had spoken about strength, adaptation, and the limits of ordinary human life.

He remembered the approval that had been rare enough to feel valuable, and the expectations that had followed him since childhood.

’Had any of it been genuine?’ Markus pondered.

’Or had every conversation been another observation, every failure another data point, every moment of progress another result entered into a report?’

"Did he know from the beginning?" Markus asked.

"We can’t tell you what he believed when you were born," the second man replied. "We can tell you that the records show his involvement in the programme continued long after your conception."

Markus stepped away from the terminal.

His first instinct was to reject the evidence. The documents could have been forged. The two strangers could have been lying.

Even if the records were genuine, there might be another explanation buried beneath the layers of redaction.

He had spent his life believing that his choices belonged to him.

The idea that his existence had been planned by people who wanted to turn him into a vessel for Mark 8 threatened that belief at its foundation.

"Why?" he asked quietly.

Neither man spoke.

"Why create me for this?" Markus continued.

The scar’d man answered at last. "Because they believed Mark 8 would change humanity. They wanted a person who could survive it, someone whose body might tolerate what killed everyone else.

They wanted proof that the transformation could be controlled."

"And if I couldn’t survive?"Markus added

"Then the experiment would have failed." the scar’d man continued.

Markus laughed once, without amusement.

His life, reduced to a question with two possible outcomes.

’Success or failure....Survival or death. It was just a game’

He turned back to the screen. Beneath the compatibility charts was a file that had been accessed only a handful of times. Its title consisted of a date and a single word.

INCIDENT.

Markus opened it.

The document described the Mark 8 explosion.

He recognized the date immediately. The event had been recorded as a containment failure caused by an unexpected reaction within the research facility.

The official account blamed a chain of equipment malfunctions and a breakdown in emergency procedures. It had been used to explain the deaths, the infections, and the chaos that followed.

But the document on the screen told a different story.

The containment breach had been scheduled.

The evacuation protocols had been altered in advance. Certain security systems had been disabled, and specific personnel had been assigned to locations that placed them within the exposure zone.

The sequence of events had been mapped against predicted infection outcomes.

Markus scrolled down.

His hand stopped moving, one section had been highlighted in red.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: EXPOSURE OF SELECTED SUBJECTS TO MARK 8 UNDER CONTROLLED OBSERVATIONAL CONDITIONS.

SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: IDENTIFY A VIABLE HOST CAPABLE OF SUSTAINED COMPATIBILITY.

Below it was a list of subject identifiers. Some had been marked deceased, others had been classified as adapted like him.

Two entries had been marked as a survivor.

Markus read the identifier, then looked at the names attached to it.

Felix and Darius.

For a moment, the words refused to become meaningful. He knew what they said, but his mind kept trying to arrange them into something less terrible.

’The explosion had not simply been an accident.

It had been an experiment.

The deaths had not merely been consequences of a failed containment system. The researchers had predicted that people would be exposed, and they had wanted to observe what happened.

That means the Foundation had not lost control of the incident.’ he realised.

"Who authorized this?" Markus asked.

The second man looked at the screen. "The approval trail is incomplete."

"Who authorized it?"

"Some signatures belong to departments that no longer exist. Others were entered under restricted credentials. Victor’s authorization appears in several stages of the programme."

Markus shook his head. "No."

"His involvement is documented." the man added.

"No." The word came out louder this time. He struck the terminal with the heel of his hand, and the screen flickered.

"My father would never have deliberately exposed people to Mark 8 without knowing what it would do."

The scar’d man remained still, "You’re right, we don’t believe your father wanted it to happen that way because of Mr DeRouse but he sure as hell wanted to infect people."

Markus looked as though he might strike him next.

The man continued anyway. "The Foundation wanted to find a host capable of surviving the organism.

The researchers believed that a successful result would change everything. The explosion created the conditions they wanted. It forced the question of compatibility out of theory and into living bodies."

"You’re describing murder as though it were research." Markus added.

"That’s how they described it."

Markus turned away.

He walked to the far wall and placed a hand against it, trying to steady himself.

He could feel the hard surface beneath his palm, solid and unchanging. It was a small comfort, and he hated that he needed it.

The last few days returned to him in fragments, the records hidden beneath the Foundation, the subjects who had been reduced to numbers, the bodies that had crystallized, the people who had adapted in ways nobody could have predicted.

Victor standing before the great blue crystal, speaking as though he had spent his entire life waiting for Markus to understand.

Perhaps he had.

Perhaps every path Markus had taken had led him toward a truth that had been decided before he was born.

He thought of Ash’s warning.

’Don’t become so attached to an answer that you stop looking when the evidence disagrees with you.’ Markus remembered.

The evidence was disagreeing with everything he had believed.

He could destroy the records. He could order the two subjects detained and bury the entire programme beneath the Foundation’s restricted archives.

He could return to the version of his life that existed before he entered this room.

But the truth would remain. He turned back toward the terminal.

"Did Victor know that I was the intended host?"

The scar’d man answered carefully. "The records indicate that your compatibility was the purpose of the programme.

Victor participated in the research. Whether he believed he was protecting you, preparing you, or simply continuing the experiment is something we cannot establish from these files alone."

Markus stared at the words on the screen.

That distinction mattered.

He could not know whether his father had loved him. He could not know whether Victor had ever regretted what he had helped create.

The records revealed decisions and outcomes, but they could not explain every private thought behind them.

For the first time, Markus understood why his father had always been so difficult to read.

Victor had known how to separate what he believed from what he was willing to do.

Markus had spent years mistaking that silence for certainty.

"Where are the remaining files?" he asked.

The second man gestured toward a sealed drive on the shelf. "Those contain the programme’s final assessments."

Markus took the drive and inserted it into the terminal.

A new document appeared.

COMPATIBILITY SUBJECT: MARKUS CAIN.

STATUS: ADAPTED.

OBSERVATION PERIOD: ONGOING.

The final line had been entered by hand. The subject’s long-term response remains undetermined.

Markus read it, then closed the file. They had created him to answer a question.

Even after everything that had happened, they had not known what the answer would be.

He looked at his hands. They were steady now, though his thoughts had not settled. His anger had not disappeared.

Neither had the grief left by Victor’s death. But beneath both emotions, something else was taking shape.

A possibility.

If Mark 8 had been the instrument of his creation, then it was also the reason he had survived.

The researchers had wanted to prove that a human being could endure what had destroyed so many others.

Their methods had been monstrous, but the question itself remained unanswered.

’Was humanity’s present form the final form it could ever take?

Or was Mark 8 the first indication that the limits people accepted as permanent could be surpassed?’

The two men watched him in silence.

"You believe this changes nothing?" the scar’d man asked.

Markus raised his eyes, "No," he said. "It changes everything."

He removed the drive from the terminal and placed it in his pocket.

"But it doesn’t answer the question."

"Which question?" the man asked.

Markus looked through the observation window toward the lower levels, where the enormous blue crystal lay beneath layers of reinforced glass and steel.

"Whether Mark 8 can be understood."

The second man studied him. "And if it cannot?"

"Then I will keep trying."

"And if the research kills more people?" the man questioned.

Markus did not answer immediately.

He thought of the dead, of the subjects who had never been given a choice, and of the people who would suffer if the Foundation continued its work without restraint.

He thought of his father, whose involvement had left him with a truth he could neither accept nor dismiss.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet, "Then we will have to understand the cost before we decide what comes next."

The scar’d man seemed unconvinced, "You sound like Victor."

Markus’s expression hardened, "Don’t compare me to him."

He walked toward the door, then stopped.

Behind him stood two surviving subjects who had watched the Foundation’s secrets accumulate for years.

In his pocket lay proof that his existence had been engineered, his compatibility measured before he had ever drawn breath, and the catastrophe that had changed his life planned by people who believed the outcome was worth the cost.

The knowledge should have made him abandon the work.

Instead, it had made the question impossible to ignore.

Markus left the archive and descended toward the lowest level of the Foundation.

He stopped before the reinforced chamber containing the deep-blue crystal. The structure rose beyond the glass, immense and silent, its surfaces catching the laboratory lights in a thousand shifting reflections.

He placed his palm against the viewing panel, he no longer saw an unexplained organism, but he saw the question that had shaped his life before he had been born.

Mark 8 had killed people. It had changed others. It had exposed the arrogance of researchers who believed they could control a force they barely understood.

But it had also revealed that the human body was not as immutable as humanity had believed.

Markus lowered his hand.

He would not pretend the deaths meant nothing.

He would not accept the Foundation’s old lies simply because they were easier to live with andnd he would not let the people who had engineered his existence decide what that existence meant.

If Mark 8 could change humanity, he intended to understand how.

If it could create something beyond the limits of the human body, he intended to discover what that meant.

He turned away from the crystal and looked toward the researchers gathering outside the chamber.

"Secure every surviving record," he ordered. "No files are to be destroyed. No experiment is to be concealed from me. From this moment onward, we investigate Mark 8 with everything the Foundation possesses."

A researcher hesitated. "And the programme’s original objectives?"

Markus looked once more at the blue crystal, "Those were written by people who thought they already knew the answer."

He faced the room,"We’re going to find out what Mark 8 actually is."

The researchers waited for him to continue.

Markus’s voice grew firmer, "And if it represents the next stage of human evolution, then we will not turn away simply because we’re afraid of what comes after us."

Far below the Foundation, the crystal remained motionless.

For the first time, Markus understood that the experiment had never truly ended.

It had only been waiting for him to decide what to do with it.