543 days.
It had been 543 days since Aermes last left his laboratory. We knew the solitude was nothing unknown for him, yet the boy genius still found himself in a raging battle against his own sanity.
Ever since becoming aware of the potential that his path could put his family in harm's way, the fear, the uncertainty, and the doubt, began to eat away at his conscience.
“Fuck ‘em! Why should I care what happens to them?! What did they ever do for me?! We were nothing to them! Nothing!”
“You’re too smart for that…you know where this path leads. You’re not going to stop what you’re doing, and the feds know that.”
“The Feds, the NSA, the CIA, I’ll scramble their systems so bad they’ll be sent back to 1995!”
“Yeah? and then what? Yeah, you fuckin’ genius, what happens after that? You just gonna flash a smile and have it all go away? You’ll be hunted down like a dog the rest of your life.”
“Let ’em try me…it’s not like I’ve got anything to lose.”
These conversations between himself began a few months back. Even genius was not enough to conquer loneliness. But it was enough, to finish the Flight Suit. Additional flight stabilization was built into every angle of this suit. He had studied every creature that took flight and analyzed millions of movements in his simulators. He developed a fusion between nanotechnology and quantum liquid state hardening to craft a suit that was virtually indestructible. He had been fighting 4 hours a day against his second iteration of fighter droids he dubbed “the v2s”…turning his body into a deadly force itself.
He turned in for the night, the lights went out, and he prepared himself for what was to come the next day.
Standing tall with his arms by his side, he wears the completed work of art for the very first time. He feels the cool sensation of the nanobots leaving his 4 rings and coating his entire body. He checks his watch one last time and notices an insignificant detail, “it’s my birthday…”, before flying out.
As he approaches Langley, Virginia, he scans the entire complex before locating the route to the subterranean database structures. Knowing once he begins his descent, there is no coming back, he dives. While racing like a missile shot out of hell, he hears a chirping sound in his ears. His flight rings power down and he can no longer fly. He’s blinded and begins tumbling through the air. Light flashing all around him, he’s hurled down, down, down.
His body hits a soft padded mat on the floor. Dazed and confused he covers his eyes and seeks to reorient his sense of balance.
EMIDAS: Get your ass up. And fight me.
