Prologue

prologue

TWENTY-ONE YEARS AGO

Project: Blood Assassin

Subject: Five

Day: 326

Time: 20:25

The solitary confinement in the Hole and the sleep deprivation don't seem to bother Subject Five anymore. Constant bright lights and loud noises still push the Subject to react, such as videos of violence against women. The goal of this project is to take Five's weaknesses away, and the urge to protect women is a vulnerability we must suppress.

Five's mood swings are getting more severe. The Subject turns from aggressive and crass, to emotionless and uncooperative. The Subject's volatility and the radical change in personality hint to multiple identities. The belligerent alter comes out during the daily psychological trials we are inflicting on Five. We must increase those to trigger the switch and work on the alter, who's more prone to violence. Making the alter the dominant personality would help our sessions immensely.

Mithridatism isn't building up the immunity to biological toxins in the Subject as fast as we hoped. The rapidity with which the Subject metabolizes drugs is one of the reasons we chose Five for the project, but the Subject is still vulnerable to toxins.

Today, we increased Five's injection to 1 ng of Botulinum. The Subject's pain level seemed to be as high as usual, Five's screams, convulsive jolting, and uncontrollable lurching forced us to secure him to the bed to avoid him tearing the ECG machine's tubes again. After thirty seconds—ten more than last time—the Subject's heart slowed dangerously until it stopped. We used a defibrillator to revive him.

Five's immune system is learning to deal with the toxins, but at this rate, the Subject will be dead before we achieve concrete results. Reducing the toxin's doses will set us back months, and if Five flatlines, we'll have to start all over again with a new subject.

Creating an assassin immune to biological toxins and drugs is an opportunity we can't ignore.