"You cannot do this, Dr. Westcott--you'll die!"

"You cannot do this, Dr. Westcott--you'll die!" The voice of my Chief Safety Officer, Melvin Perkins, echoed through the test chamber like a kid at the bottom of a well. It didn't matter. I didn't care. It could have been the sound of a thousand cannons booming at once and it wouldn't have mattered a whit. Come hell or high-water, the Oklo-Gamma Reactor Extractor, or O.G.R.E., would become operational today.

Klaxons began their electronic bleating and I could feel the tremors beneath the soles of my Xtremis Suit (XS-Mark1) as the transmission sequences began deep in the bowels of Devil's Peak. I shot icy glances towards Subcommander Ralph Warren and Colonel Marshall Mēkhos. "Gentlemen, you are relieved of duty. I suggest you get scarce now, or prepare to potentially get dead." I put as much of my authority into my words as possible. Technically, I could not order these guys around. I wasn't military, but they were assigned to support me since Project SHIFT had first began, and had done so faithfully. I could only hope they would do so now...I simply could not have the death of my two counterparts on my conscience, with all that I'd already done.

Ralph was not about to let this fly. He looked up from the screen he'd been monitoring, disbelief etched across his features. I noticed that his ever-present shadow and assistant, Franklin Geist, sat beside him. Perfect - make that three deaths on my conscience.

"What in God's Name are you thinking, Graham? You've activated the Infuser and turned off--" Ralph was halfway across the room and headed my way when the automatic safety controls--which I'd previously overridden--gave up the ghost and the meter-thick steel door sealed all of us in with our plodding doom. Marshall, who'd narrowly missed slipping under the door, began cursing and wailing like a madman, pounding on the impenetrable portal.

"It doesn't matter, Ralph", I said dully, making sure all of the diodes and receptors on my XS-Mark1 where active, "It's all about to be over for all of us..." I began, stepping into the Infusion Chamber that we'd all been working on for seven years.

The lights in the room dimmed and the only light was from the extraction chromatographor that was drifting down from the cavernous ceiling on hydraulic arms. It was a softly glowing vat of liquid chemical and radioactive death.

"...or, it will be the beginning of a whole new form of life." I finished. Complete darkness, radiation, chemical energy, and electricity, flooded the room while quantum computers, hydraulics, and mechanical agents went to work.

We all screamed.

Art Source: "Future Science" (c)/by Zatransis
Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

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