"This place is of great significance to the human race and yet it's here buried vines and age"
Jace and Natalya stood in the hallway looking at the interwoven vines obstructing their path. They had separated from Light and Anan to check out the lab.
"How do you know so much about this place? What is this place?" Jace asked two questions at the same time, his expression baffled. He knew the stories about West Unity but Natalya seemed to know more about this lab than what was taught in geography class.
Natalya had her hands folded, hugging herself. She turned around to glance at him and smiled weakly.
"Legacy stuff" she replied avoiding the question.
But Jace was curious, he walked forward to stand beside her as she looked up at what seemed to be a periodic table crafted on the wall. It was 'a' periodic table not 'the' periodic table because he could not recognize most of the elements in it.
"Tell me" he urged, his tone reflecting his seriousness.
Natalya hesitated a while, stealing a glance at him, she nodded to herself and came to a decision.
"West Unity is not the true name of this place, that name was adapted to hide what was hidden here. Back then, in the old Era, it was known as New Town. It wasn't a town, it was just called so by the people living nearby when a large corporation purchased the whole stretch of land. Perhaps they were thinking it was a real estate company here to develop. It wasn't, it was West-Land Labs. They built this lab here for some secret experiment that if exposed would change the world forever. You can guess what happened" She shrugged looking around.
"Why don't we know of any of this?" Jace asked frowning, he had never heard anything about this.
"Well that's because this isn't those troupes where the land gets destroyed or a lab accident happens, West Unity is still private property as is this lab. No one knows what exactly transpired here, only that this was the origin of the 'Beginning of the End' "
Jace felt a thunderbolt strike his head and his eyes widened.
"Nat, what is the beginning of the end?" he asked, his tone low and sounding a little lost prompting Natalya to turn to him.
"That's when all life on earth started to change. It was a collective ecological mutation that was to eventually kill all life on Earth. While all life developed better physiology, it was determined that the mutation would eventually kill them. So it actually was the beginning of a good change that would lead to the end of all life and everything started right here Jace, right under our feet" Natalya sounded fascinated by her own explanation.
Jace did not have the time nor the mental capacity to dwell on the wordiness or nonsense of her explanation because he was thinking about something else.
"Do you remember what Anan said?" Jace asked.
"I don't know Jace, he said a lot of gibberish" Natalya rolled her eyes at him and returned her attention to the table on the wall.
"He said he was here at the zenith of the Beginning of the End. Annddd" he stretched.
"...that when all life ended, he never had to, and when life started anew, he never had to either. Natalya, I think Anan is..."
"From the Old Era," Natalya finished her eyes widening at the realization.
"But he said he is a hundred years old" She shook her head and protested.
"Maybe he was lying" Jace shrugged.
"Why would he? Besides, he can't lie to me" Natalya rolled her eyes again but paused this time to rub her forehead, she was starting to get a headache from all the eye-rolling she had done today.
"You don't think someone possibly older than a hundred would have discovered a way to lie when so many people are walking lie detectors?" Jace raised his brows at her.
Natalya shrugged but did not reply. They both turned quiet for a while, their eyes fixed on the periodic table but their thoughts far away.
"Natalya, if everyone died in the Old Era, how did we come to be?" Jace asked.
"Maybe this lab will have the answers" Natalya replied her eyes moving from the wall to further down the dark corridor.
As they continued to explore, they soon stumbled on a huge lab, advanced equipment lay on almost every table, things too expensive for most labs out there.
"Was technology more advanced back then?" Natalya muttered a rhetorical question.
They looked around some more and started to feel spooked. It wasn't the lab itself that scared them but traces of recent use in the equipments that were still functioning just fine.
"How can these things last a hundred years? And how are they powered?" Jace approached Natalya with a question at the back of the lab where they both stood facing the pieces of equipment on the table.
"There's a note" Natalya suddenly said and hurried towards a desk to pick it up.
"What's it?" Jace asked hurrying towards her.
"I don't know, it looks like a journal but these records seem nothing like a scientist experiment journal"
She replied, flipped a few pages, and started to read.
"Record 14: I have finally been able to isolate the Dark Matter Gene from first-generation Supers, now I just need to understand why they had to die"
"Record 17: So they didn't have to die. Although the Dark Matter Gene did have the ability to destroy matter, it reacted differently after the introduction of the GHOST Protocol. If anything, it should have preserved their lives even extending the normal life expectancy. So why did they die? And how is that cat still alive?"
"Record 22: I was unwilling to perform any experiments on the cat simply to satisfy my curiosity but it died inexplicably after accompanying me for so long. I have a test subject now at least. Why did Blossom die?"
Natalya could feel and sense the grief in that one. It baffled her how the words she was reading felt like they were already truths but she didn't dwell on that right now and simply read on.
"Record 30: Blossom's finally answered after so many years. It's anticlimactic, although he showed no signs of aging, he died of old age as his cell health deteriorated. The good thing about this is that I have been able to identify the cause of death for the first-generation Supers. After infection with the Dark Matter Gene, they were given a vaccine which instead of helping (they were fine to begin with) started to accelerate aging. More vaccines were given after to counteract this effect. This feels like either the work of a DID patient or a scheme amongst science scholars. Regardless of the case, all life was the casualty in this unprecedented scheme."
Jace and Natalya felt a chill run down their spine. Whoever wrote this journal actually believed that the death of all life in the Old Era was intentional and worse still the design of a human. Natalya felt something more, from the writings, she felt curiosity, not anger, nor a sense of righteousness, just plain curiosity.
What kind of person could not be moved to sadness or anger by the extermination of all life on Earth?
They flipped a few pages forward and continued.
"Record 73: Scarlett came to see me today, she's going out for a longer drive to see if she can find civilization. I hope she returns alright. I think Mom is dying. She is the last First Generation Super left, affected by the so-called vaccine she had lived longer than I expected, I should be grateful"
"Nat" Jace suddenly called and Natalya hurriedly closed the book before turning to him.
"I think there's a door here," he said to her in a low whisper, causing her to squint in amusement. Where they sneaking around now?