Post by GWYNETH WEBB on Feb 1, 2011 23:23:27 GMT -6
There comes a crossroads in everyone’s life, where they must make a weighty decision between good and evil. Will they take what they want or merely kneel and pray for it? Will you let the façade of authority stonewall you, or will you drive a dagger into the backbone of your oppressors? All have been important questions Gwyneth Webb asked herself in life. When Isaac wanted to undermine the Lazarus project, did she just complain to her superiors? Of course not, she drove her pointy reckoning between his shoulder blades and savored the intense metallic flavor of his blood. When she saw an opening to be appointed department head, did she just gawk quietly? Absolutely not! She filled Anthony’s coffee with cyanide and nanobots that attacked his heart tissues. Overkill? Perhaps. Effective? Completely.
After all, Gwyn did get the position as head of Department: Epsilon. It was one of the largest vampire hotspots on North America and she was determined to succeed where her predecessors had failed. Over the course of a few months, Gwyn prepared her portfolio of incredible technologies to unveil at her inauguration meeting. She really didn’t need to, considering that most of the technology that FEAR used on a daily basis was her brainchild. But it was always good to assert her position of intellectually superior upon the lab slaves or “employees.” That was an amusing thought- as if anyone had rights once they joined FEAR, as if you could quit. Maybe if you were lucky they’d just wipe your mind clean and drop you somewhere in Europe, but most cases ended with genetic splicing.
Today would be just another moment in the sun for Gwyn. She was the most brilliant human being since Einstein and a radiant star amongst a lot of mud covered pebbles and she had the stuff to prove it.
Gwyn sat quietly in room 17A, a bleached white waiting room with a crimson sofa of recycled materials against the back wall. The room wasn’t much wider than the dimensions of the sofa, fitting only a coffee table and water cooler in the tiny space. All the rooms of level A were like that, small. It wasn’t really used for much other than meetings. The largest room was the conference room, which could hold about three hundred souls. Not very much considering Epsilon housed nearly nine hundred souls, not including the over one hundred test subjects locked away or contained in some kind of high level security field.
She sighed. Only an odd hundred test subjects? The woman could remember the glory days of testing. Once, a department had over four hundred forsaken and abducted subjects being processed in a month’s time. It was marvelous. Unfortunately, 99% of those tests were botched and the emergency intelligence incinerator reached full capacity for the first time since the model was in use. All that mass caused the average incineration temperature it drop nearly five hundred Kelvin, resulting in a lot of charred mass at the end of the day. Gosh, it was really disgusting watching the underlings don the HAZMAT suits and use industry strength mining lasers to separate the burnt flesh from the bottom of the chamber.
A man opened the door and released Gwyn from her reverie. “Five minutes, ma’am.” He spoke cautiously, as if the small woman sitting on the red sofa would strike him. She might.
“MA’AM!?” Gwyn cried. “Do I look ancient to you!? I’m not your hag of a mother! I’m a miss! Maybe you should call home and tell your inbred parents that little bit of information when it comes to manners! I’m a miss, do you hear me!?” She jumped up, striding over to the door. The man was wise to this cruel game and knew what would come next, so he shot back and ran off down the hallway, grunting and panting, fearing for his life. Gwyn jumped out into the hallway and screamed, shaking her fist in the air: “I’M A MISS YOU SON OF BITCH!”
When she felt that the entire corridor knew the proper pronoun to use, the woman turned around and reentered the waiting room. ‘Deep breaths.” She thought, inhaling deeply. Pushing her fabulous, slightly curled hair out of her face, she exhaled and set her molten eyes upon the Titanium briefcase carefully set on the coffee table. It was time. The screaming made her throat feel hoarse, so she stopped at the cooler for a drink. She hated these coolers. They were those awful cone cup deals that you couldn’t set down. She scoffed, downed the water and threw the cup at the small beige trashcan. The cone bounced off and rolled back in front of her, so she merely crushed it and kicked it against the wall. Gwyn picked up the heavy briefcase, admiring the integrity of the metal. Titanium’s nature already lent itself to being one of FEAR’s favorite metals, but after a few hours of various processes, not even a vampire of over three hundred years could break through it. Well they wouldn’t want to either- most metals are blessed before processing.
The woman turned to face the door, taking a moment to put her charming face on. Then, she gracefully strode out of the room and down the corridor.
The soft rumble of two hundred and ninety-nine voices filled Gwyn’s mind. The most important of her subjects, gathered in one room, to honor her. Lazarus’ silken voice softly, but authoritatively, signaled the beginning of the press conference. Dignitaries representing each department and a handful of operatives all waited patiently to greet the new head of Epsilon and see what wonders she had in store for the organization. Lazarus recalled and regurgitated the introduction paradigm he had been programmed to use.
“…the new department head of Epsilon, Chief Geneticist: Gywneth Webb!”
Everyone did their best to seem excited, as they all knew Gwyneth wasn’t above cursing them all out should they disrespect her in someway. She took another deep breath and did her best model walk up to the podium. Setting the briefcase in place in front of her, she pressed both of her thumbs against each respective glass pad on each side of the case, above the seam. They emitted a deep indigo light for about two seconds and the punctuated the process with a cute little ping!. The case popped open and revealed a black rectangular box about seven inches long and four inches wide, a black tube of the same length and a neatly folded schematic.
Her angelic countenance peered up at the audience. “Good afternoon.” She smiled sweetly. “I could stand up here and perpetuate some kind of fallacy that I didn’t deserve this, but all of you know that I am the best for this position, and I will do a far better job than anyone before me.” Karen Stewart, the secretary to Ronald Smite (who was head of dealing with wastes from cloning studies), scoffed loudly. Anyone that knew Gwyn, including the poor man from earlier, recoiled in their seats as her eyes flicked across the room. Karen was a spinster who had criticized every move Gwyn made since December when she was transferred to Epsilon, and was under the delusion that FEAR was a democracy where she had the right to voice, or grunt, her opinion. She was wrong. Gwyn sighed, and the whole first three rows of people shrunk in their seats.
“I’m sick of you fucking shit, Karen! Lazarus, see our guest out.” A ghostly white man, comprised of a cloud of spinning particles, fabricated near Karen’s end seat. The hologram set its eyes upon the woman and the particles drew closer and then quickly returned back to their orbits, generating enough energy to shock Karen Stewart unconscious. The ceiling above her seat opened and a small cylindrical rod emerged from the darkness. It projected an orange beam that lifted her limp body up and through the opening, the aperture closing once her tacky brown shoes cleared. A quick and loud bang rang out and the room fell dead silent. Gwyn merely scanned the audience, looking several people in the eyes as she did. She simply nodded and continued with her speech.
“Now if you all would keep your opinions to yourselves, I have a department to run and would like to keep this short and sweet. So, first things first. Lazarus, slide one please.” A holographic screen flicked to life in front of the woman. Depicted by similar particles that created the man was a bullet with a glass tip, glowing a mesmerizing blue. Gwyn took one of the prototypes out of the black box, showing the crowd. “The UV bullet. Effective immediately, all field agents are required to have at least one round on their person during twilight and night hours. These beauties are designed to penetrate surfaces as strong as steel and lodge in their victims. Three seconds after becoming stationary, the internal mechanism will shatter and chemical reaction will produce an intense ultra-violet array. This, effectively, will burn vampires from the inside out. Some firearms have a better likelihood of lodging the bullet in a victim, but should the bullet detonate nearby, the radiation will still be enough to scare off any marauding undead. ” A short, approving golf clap erupted again and then sharply ceased.
“Next is the flash bomb, coming in three sizes: macro, normal and micro.” The next slide flicked on the screen, illustrating the three sizes, but the models stayed the same. They were spheres, glowing a similar blue, which appeared unthreatening. However, if it was Gwyn’s idea, it probably could level a building. “Charged with UV radiation, these devices are dangerous both to vampire and humans. The initial blast releases a virtual supernova that will blind any poor soul who looks directly into the blast. The secondary blast is napalm. It will burn everything and it won’t stop until the proper flame retardant measures are taken. Each blast is relative to the size. The macro is the size of a basketball, the normal is about a baseball and the micro is the size of a quarter. Field agents can pick up a bag of about twenty from any Lazarus Arsenal with a clearance above five hundred. There is some talk about upgrading the macro to artillery shells, should the need arise."
The third and final slide was blurry. It was a 3-D hologram that displayed various components of a gun with menacing dimensions. “While the final tech is still partly classified, I am at the liberty to announce that it will be the behemoth of our arrest arsenal. Utilizing kinetic power exerted by the agent, it can project high-energy pellets that will paralyze the nervous system for a large quantity of time. Feel free to inquire more from Lazarus if you have a clearance of over two thousand. ” Gwyn slammed the briefcase shut and the locking mechanism hummed. She gathered herself and prepared to leave before briefly asking, “Any questions?”
Noting that everyone was too scared to question her, she spun around and walked out of the room, all two hundred and some exhaling in relief.
Outfit: [X]
WC: 1835+
