Even at this late hour, inside the reception hall, Tom could see countless workers in their white lab coats all around the place. It seemed like a building that never went to sleep. Regardless, this was just the reception hall and there was not really anything to see here, the real interesting stuff was inside.
Walking up to the desk, it looked like his father was speaking to the receptionist for a while, and eventually, they handed over a digital tablet to him.
“You need to read this and sign here before we can give you a temporary pass for your internship.” His father explained as he handed over the tablet.
“This… it's a contract? An NDA contract? So I can't talk about anything that I see inside with anyone else outside, is that right?'' Tom asked after quickly skimming over the pages. There were a lot of technical terms, and Tom felt like he would be here for half an hour if he was to read them all.
“You need to actually read everything written in there, Tom. Don't just click agree like you would on a computer. It’s important you understand what you are signing.” His father insisted. “I had to really pull some strings to get you in here.
“A temp intern position didn’t even exist last week, but hey, your old man knows a few people.” James said, cracking his knuckles, which just embarrassed his son.
Sitting down at the few seats at the side, Tom decided to read them all, and his mother soon came to join them. The terms essentially were very strict. It felt like he was about to learn the secrets of the world, and that this legal mumbo jumbo was there for him to prepare for the repercussions.
Now he was starting to understand why his mother and father had only been able to tell him so much. They were just following the rules that had been set out. In the end, Tom signed it. After all, if anything, this level of secrecy only got him more excited about what was hidden inside.
After returning the tablet, Tom was given a pass but no lab coat, which made him feel a little disheartened, but he understood. Walking through, Tom was expecting to see some big secrets, but instead what followed were just… hallways.
There were countless hallways of people walking past heading to where they needed to be.
“You look disappointed.” His father chuckled. “Unfortunately, we are only allowed to see what we are working on. So our projects remains a secret from each other.”
Walking through the hallways, for the first time, Tom also noticed a group of people that weren't wearing lab coats at all. In fact, the way they walked around the place, their clothing and strange hairstyle, they seemed very out of place. They looked more like gangsters he would expect to find in Slough.
‘No, that's impossible, there can't be gangsters in a place like this. Even if they owned the place, they would be in Tier-1 city, not this lab.’ Tom thought as they took a turn away from them.
Eventually, the three of them stopped outside a large oval door. His father used his pass and the door opened, allowing for Tom's eyes to lay on a magnificent, gigantic fossil in front of him. The room opened up and was placed in giant glass containers containing not just one fossil, but countless different fossils all over the place, with numerous workers around each one.
“Remember when you asked me about beasts before? You can’t imagine how nervous I got, afraid that someone had leaked some intel or spread rumour.” James explained while walking to the fossil of the beast they were working on.
It was a small one, the bones looked like that of a dog, and his mother was typing away on the computer that was placed just underneath it.
“So, is this where they make the Altered DNA? Form the beast fossils? That's so cool!” Tom commented.
“Actually, it's a little more complicated than that, Tom. You see, what I'm about to tell you is something that the public has no idea about with regard to Altered. Of course, I don’t have to tell you that all of this information is completely classified.”
His father waited until Tom nodded, and then continued with his explanation.
“You see, we can’t actually extract much at all from these Fossils. It's impossible to make Altered from the fossils. Now I know you're going to be confused for a second, so I need to hear me out.
“There is a reason why only one fossil can create one Altered, and that's because what we need to do with this fossil is bring it back to life. Now our job is to extract the bones and as much of the original beast as we can from here.
“Then, it goes onto another section of the lab. I’ve never seen it myself, but there they have something they call a ‘Nest Crystal’. From what I gather, it’s quite the special energy generator, though they make it sound like stuff out of fairy tales. I mean, can you imagine a single crystal being able to supply enough energy to run the whole world?
“Anyway, they somehow use their Nest Crystal on the fossil and as long as we have done our job properly. It brings the fossil back to life.”
It took a second for Tom to take everything in there. It sounded like some type of rumour he would have heard from the internet and if anyone else, but his father was saying these things. Were it someone else, he would have called them out for being a liar.
“So are you saying that there are still beats, there are real beasts in this world?” Tom asked.
“Well, not any natural beasts anyway. However, NIRV seems able to bring back the beast to life, though they don’t live for long. After a few tests, they should be sent to a special team. The group we’ve passed on the way here, the ones without the lab coats, are part of that.
“They then have to kill the beast, and once the beast is dead inside they seemingly have their own special crystals. Those crystals from the dead beast is what is used to gather the Altered DNA. That is how the world came to create the Altered we know today.”
Listening to everything, it seemed like Gary was onto something when he had asked his best friend if beasts still existed.
The only question now was what had prompted the green haired teenager to ask that very bizzare question in the first place?