Ethan Cole - The Unlimited System

Alexander stepped closer to the chamber, eyes fixed on the figure inside. Beneath the dim light, the subject's muscles twitched faintly, and thin streams of light pulsed through the veins, tracing the path of the serum.

"You see this?" Alexander murmured, almost to himself. "This is the future."

Jermaine stood nearby, his arms crossed, gaze unreadable. "You really think these enhancements can match the real Ascendants?"

Alexander turned to face him, expression hardening. "Not match. Surpass. And you know that as well as I do, Professor."

The hum of the machines filled the silence that followed. A low, steady sound. Alive and patient.

Jermaine hesitated. "Then what's the plan? What exactly do the LaRues want with them?"

Alexander's eyes narrowed. "That part doesn't concern you. Your job is to make sure they live, and that they function when we need them."

He paused, then added with a slight tilt of his head, "But I'll give you something. A glimpse."

Jermaine said nothing. He didn't need to. The tension in his jaw and the glint in his eyes made it clear—he'd been waiting to hear this.

"They're not just experiments, Jermaine," Alexander said. "They're weapons. Our answer to the power imbalance. Every great family has their edge. This will be ours."

His voice dropped a little lower, almost amused now. "You wanted a purpose? Fine. These soldiers will be our blade. When the time comes, they'll carve a place for us in blood. We'll rise—over corpses if we must."

Jermaine's lips parted slightly, but he offered no argument. Just a nod.

"Good," Alexander said, turning toward the exit.

As he reached the doorway, he stopped.

"Keep working. We're closer than ever. That's the only reason you're still breathing."

And then he left, the sound of his footsteps fading into the pulse of machines behind him.

The door sealed behind Alexander with a hiss, leaving Jermaine alone in the cold, sterile lab. The chambers around him glowed faintly, their soft light casting long shadows across the floor. The hum of the machines was the only sound now, steady and unfeeling.

Jermaine turned toward the nearest terminal. Lines of data streamed across the screen—vital signs, serum response rates, neural feedback loops. He stared, but none of it gave him the answers he needed.

"This whole thing… is madness," he muttered under his breath. "How the hell did I end up neck-deep in this nightmare?"

His fists clenched. Then, without thinking, he slammed both hands into the wall beside the exit, the metal surface rattling from the impact.

He didn't care who saw. Surveillance cameras were everywhere. Let them watch.

A moment later, a voice crackled from the overhead intercom—calm, but laced with threat.

"Professor Jermaine. Control yourself. Or we'll act in Alexander's name."

Jermaine stood there, breathing hard, but unmoving. He didn't respond.

Instead, his gaze drifted back to the chambers, to the test subjects submerged within their glass cocoons. Lit from below, they looked almost peaceful. Almost human.

But they weren't.

The hum of the machines filled his ears again, like a dull reminder he couldn't escape. A reminder of how far he had gone—and how much further he might still fall.

And for a long moment, he didn't move at all.

Slowly, he placed his hands on the terminal, but they quaked lightly, a tell for the chaos stirring below the surface.

There was no need to check the data a second time; the numbers were branded on his brain. A mortality rate below ten percent looked good on paper, but in practice, that meant many lives had been sacrificed to achieve it and... more will follow.

Ascendants.

The word had once held a sense of wonder for him when he first learned about them, a symbol of strength and evolution. Now, it felt tainted, twisted by the means through which the LaRues sought to replicate that power.

Jermaine's task was clear, to create an injectable serum capable of turning ordinary humans into beings with abilities rivaling Ascendants.

It sounded like something from a science fiction novel, but for the past three years, it had been his grim reality.

He'd started with optimism, believing he could unlock something extraordinary without harming others. But optimism had long since given way to dread.

The serum was a cocktail of genetic manipulation, bio-enhancements, and experimental compounds derived from sources he wasn't even permitted to know about.

Each dose was meant to trigger rapid cellular regeneration, increase physical attributes, and unlock latent abilities buried deep in human DNA.

But the process was far from perfect.

It was brutal. For every batch of test subjects, most of them failed to resist the serum's side effects. Their bodies collapsed under the strain due to the accelerated metabolism and hyperactive cell growth.

The violent surge of energy tore them apart from the inside out.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Jermaine took a glance at one of the chambers. He could see the figure inside clearly. She was a woman in her early thirties. Her muscles twitched and spasm slightly. The serum was coursing through her veins.

"Sorry... I've no other choice," Jermaine muttered. "I should've stopped doing this a long time ago."

Jermaine hadn't really volunteer for this. Three years ago, he was a well-respected geneticist. He worked on important developments in regenerative medicine.

In fact, his last published breakthrough had caught international attention—a synthetic stem-weave compound capable of regrowing damaged nerve tissue in under a week.

It was supposed to change trauma care forever. Hospitals, governments, even militaries reached out. But it wasn't the recognition he remembered most.

It was the silence that followed.

Then the LaRues came for him.

It started with subtle offers, grants, funding, opportunities that were too good to be true. When Jermaine refused, they revealed just how deep their reach was.

Suddenly, his reputation was under attack. Accusations of unethical experiments surfaced, his funding was revoked, and his family faced threats he dared not name.

He still remembered the night it happened.

It was just past midnight when the power went out in their home. At first, Jermaine thought it was just a blackout—until he heard the sound of the glass breaking downstairs. He rushed from his study, heart pounding, only to find masked men already in the hallway. They didn't speak. They didn't need to.

His wife screamed from the bedroom. His daughter's cries echoed. She was not even two.

Jermaine lunged forward, but they grabbed him, slammed him against the wall, and held a blade to his neck. One of them whispered in his ear, calm and icy.

"You've been chosen. Not for what you did—but for what you can still do."

He saw his wife being dragged out, her terrified eyes searching for his. He screamed for them. He begged. But the only thing he got in return was a sharp blow to the head and darkness.

When he woke, he was alone.

No phone calls. No demands. No ransom. Just a short message sent to his private inbox:

"They are safe. For now. Work well."

From that day on, he never saw his family again. Not even a picture. Only silence.

Before he could piece together how it had happened, he was in their grip, dragged into this secretive nightmare of a project.

The LaRues didn't just threaten him, they blackmailed countless others, forcing them to "volunteer" as test subjects.

People from all walks of life, disgraced professionals, debtors, the desperate, the forgotten, were brought in under false pretenses, only to meet horrifying fates.

Jermaine clenched his fists. He could still hear their screams, the ones who didn't survive the first trials. He'd begged for proper oversight, for ethical constraints, but Alexander's cold stare had been his only answer.

Jermaine rubbed his temples, exhaustion settling in. He glanced at the chamber again, watching as the woman's vitals fluctuated slightly before stabilizing.

What kind of life awaited these "successes"?

Would they become tools for the LaRues, bound to their will? Or would they burn out, consumed by the very power they'd been forced to endure?

Jermaine's lips pressed into a thin line. He didn't have the luxury of answers, only the grim task of pushing forward.

The terminal beeped, breaking his thoughts. A message appeared on the screen.

New batch ready for testing. Proceed to Lab 3.

Jermaine stared at the message, his stomach twisting. Another round. More lives to weigh against the LaRues' insatiable ambition.

He stood there for a moment longer, his mind racing with questions he dared not voice aloud.

Jermaine exhaled slowly, forcing his feet to move. The corridor outside was sterile and silent, the white walls glowing faintly under the cold fluorescent lights. Every footstep echoed louder than it should have, as if the entire facility wanted to remind him that he didn't belong here.

Lab 3 wasn't far. Just down the hall and through a reinforced door marked only by a blinking red panel.

He placed his palm against the scanner. It buzzed once, then clicked open with a hiss.

Inside, the atmosphere was different. Colder. Metallic. The faint scent of antiseptic was overpowered by the acrid sting of chemical residue and something far less sterile—sweat, fear, and blood that no amount of cleaning could erase entirely.

Two people stood by the central console.

Dr. Adrian Murells was the first to turn. Tall, thin, with a face that always looked just a little too pleased with itself. His lab coat hung open, and his glasses sat askew on his nose as if he never bothered to fix them. His eyes gleamed behind the lenses, focused and sharp like scalpels.

"Ah, Jermaine," Adrian said cheerfully, "we were wondering if you'd finally show up. You're just in time."

The woman beside him didn't speak right away. Dr. Lin Areya gave Jermaine a slight nod, her expression unreadable. She was calm, always calm, but there was a distant emptiness in her eyes now—a silent resignation that had set in months ago. She didn't look like someone who wanted to be here. She looked like someone who had accepted there was no way out.

Jermaine didn't reply. He just moved to the observation terminal and looked down into the testing chamber through the thick reinforced glass.

Thirty individuals.

Stripped, trembling, terrified.

They were lined up in rows, forced to their knees while guards moved methodically between them. Each subject was restrained by thick steel cuffs at the wrists and ankles, then lifted, one by one, and slammed into cylindrical chambers—clear tubes reinforced by black steel rings, arranged like a mechanical graveyard.

Some of them screamed. Others just stared blankly, eyes hollow with the weight of whatever hell had brought them here.

Jermaine's gut twisted. "Where did they come from?" he asked quietly, almost afraid of the answer.

Adrian chuckled. "Volunteers. Or so the paperwork says."

Jermaine looked at him sharply. "You don't believe that."

"Of course not," Adrian said, not even pretending to care. "But does it matter? They're already here. Let's make them… useful."

Guards continued their brutal routine, shoving bodies into the capsules with little care. The last man resisted—kicking, shouting, begging. A guard struck him in the gut with the butt of his rifle, folding him over before dragging him the rest of the way.

Then came the injection.

Each subject received a dose of the bronze-colored serum, held in thick vials cooled in cryo-trays. Lin handled it quietly, her hands steady as she loaded each cartridge into the injector port beside every capsule.

"Stabilizer first," she said softly.

Adrian was already typing into the terminal, his grin growing wider. "Let's see how batch three handles the revised strain. We increased the cellular bonding agent this time—should accelerate the transmutation rate. Might even fry a few brains."

Jermaine winced. "You're enjoying this too much."

Adrian didn't even deny it. "Of course I am. This is history, Professor. This is legacy. These thirty nobodies? If two survive, that's two potential weapons we didn't have yesterday."

Liquid hissed into the capsules as the injections completed. Within seconds, thick transparent fluid began to fill the chambers, submerging the subjects in what looked like a synthetic embryonic suspension. Their screams turned into muffled echoes as they thrashed against the restraints.

Heart monitors spiked.

Muscle spasms began.

Veins glowed faintly under the skin.

Jermaine pressed his palms against the glass. He hated this part. The transformation. The drowning. The madness behind it all.

"They're not weapons," he said bitterly. "They're people."

Adrian's voice dropped to a whisper, low and fascinated as he watched one subject seize violently. "Not anymore, they're not. The moment that serum hits the blood, they become something else. Something better."

"Something controllable," Lin added quietly. She didn't smile. She never did. But she didn't look away either.

Jermaine stepped back, his throat tight. "And if they all die?"

Adrian shrugged, his gaze never leaving the chamber glass. "Then we adjust and try again. That's the price of progress."

The lights dimmed slightly as the systems entered stabilization mode. Inside the capsules, the thirty test subjects floated in eerie stillness—some trembling, others unconscious, a few already bleeding from the nose or ears.

Jermaine turned away.

Adrian, however, leaned forward, resting both hands on the console like a child at the edge of a theater stage. His eyes gleamed.

"Let's find out," he whispered, "which of you get to be gods."