Emmett sat in front of a mirror, applying makeup on her face. Suddenly, she heard the voice of bubbles inside water. She kept the lipstick aside and turned back. She felt as if she had accidently stretched a nerve. She could feel her veins getting tangled inside her neck.

Her face turned pale as the blood circulation stopped. The floor before her turned into water and Gotham swam out from it. She had legs. She stepped on the water and walked towards Emmett. Emmett looked into her eyes as her face turned paler.

"Surprised to see me?" She looked at Emmett and pressed her hand on her cold face. Sea green cracks appeared all over her face and neck. Her lips turned grey. Emmett couldn't move an inch. She could feel all her organs churning and wrapping around each other.

"Our bodies and a human's body are full of water--Maybe that's what makes killing you so easy." She smiled.

"What do you want from me?" She asked.
"Take me to the rest of us."
"What are you planning now?"
She smirked, "Just do as I say."

Slaine looked through the files, but they were probably supposed to be as volumes--There were five volumes in total, he could only find four. He didn't know where the first one was. He looked for it among all other reports and newspaper printouts but it was not there. Maybe someone else took it.

So, he decided to start reading the second one titled 'The Beginning'. It was his own handwriting--His E resembled the number three--That was his signature style of writing ever since he learned how to write. So, he knew it was his handwriting-- Just clearer and more appealing.

He sat on the chair behind the table and began reading.

"May 19th, 2295" It read.
"May 19th, isn't that my birthday?" Slaine said to himself.

"I started this project for mere selfish reasons. I had no intentions of embellishing any favours on the human race. I had a team of ten curious young college students, who decided to dedicate their lives to this project. We collected the samples from the sources I mentioned before. Blood sample A was different from blood sample B--Even morphologically. B had this greenish red colour. There was another pigment besides haemoglobin-- We called it Antela Cc, giving it its green colour. The phenotypes of the infected remained nearly constant but there was a slight change in the progeny genotype. We produced asexual offsprings for several generations to produce homozygosity.

The X- Chromosome was missing in almost all progenies-- Leaving us with 45 of them-- A case of monosomy. Normal humans cells have 46 chromosomes or it was classified as the Turner's syndrome.

Due to such chromosomal aberrations, male progenies couldn't survive; hence why the first homozygous population was females. But sexual reproduction was required to see variations of characteristics.

This was a challenging part. Another problem was-- The life. The life span was one week-- As blood type B caused internal haemorrhage indirectly. The body's immune system would treat that blood as an antigen and attack its own cells. We lost all the three hundred progenies within nine days.

It was devastating. But I wasn't ready to accept defeat.

It was time to start over again. Me and my team first investigated the expressed sequence tags this time. The alignment of sequences was tiresome, but with the help of UV laser technology, we achieved it.

It took away five years of my life and due to such harsh radiations, many of my colleagues lost their lives. I, myself, paid a huge cost-- My body developed a severe mutational defect wherein my iris lost its pigment, leaving to a light shade of pink and I developed rashes all over my back. Surprisingly, my vision became stronger.

On August 12, 2301, we produced the first male progeny. Though, I wouldn't call it a success since it wasn't entirely male. We did manage to insert in a Y- Chromosome but the body automatically created an X chromosome--to pair with that Y chromosome, leaving a karyotype of 47 chromosomes. The individual suffered from gynaecomastia. It was sterile and hence futile to the research.

So, I decided to replace one X chromosome with a Y chromosome. But this time, the body did not create a pair. We ended up with the karyotype of 45 again. Y (YO) : fatal in utero.

I decided to read some papers from the past. I came across the research work of Johan G. Eriksson, Eero Kajantie and David J.P. Barker from the American journal of human biology.

It clearly stated that boys live dangerously in the womb.

The growth of every human fetus is constrained by the limited capacity of the mother and placenta to deliver nutrients to it. At birth, boys tend to be longer than girls at any placental weight. Boy's placentas may therefore be more efficient than girls, but may have less reserve capacity. Boys' greater dependence on their mothers' diets may enable them to capitalize on an improving food supply, but it makes them vulnerable to food shortages. The ultimate manifestation of their dangerous strategies may be that men have higher blood pressures and shorter lives than women.

Pregnancies are more likely to have bad outcomes if the baby is a boy. Boys grow faster than girls from an early stage of gestation, even from before implantation, and this makes them more vulnerable if their nutrition is compromised. More newborn boys than girls have retarded growth and placental abnormalities and more of them die during the perinatal period.

I think I knew where we were lacking. So, I decided to change the nutrition medium and with the help of in vitro fertilisation, we prepared a progeny. A healthy male progeny at last!"

It was the end of the second volume. There were three more. Slaine kept in aside and opened the third volume, called 'The success'

"We couldn't increase their lifespan. Martha, my colleague, suggested we keep on trying but repeating the same work won't make a difference, doing the same work differently would.

I sat down to look at all the papers I had prepared by then. I realised something-- Why in the world were we working on the chromosomes when we could simply uncoil them and work on their roots? Sounded simple-- But it wasn't.

The DNA is so long-- It would take ten years to study it. It had been seventy years since this project started. I could add ten more if at all there was a chance that it would work. By then, half of my team was either dead or retired. I on the other hand-- Hadn't aged a day.

The study didn't help much since the human DNA and the recombinant DNA had hardly any similarities left."

"What is he making?" Slaine said to himself, "X-DROIDS? Didn't someone else make those though?"

"You don't even know"

"Oh Asselyum, I've been such a fool. This guy is dangerous-- He is fooling us all. And you're included."

-To be continued

Ben 
5500 Rebellion