Dean felt lucky that he had run into one of the founders of NIRV. Through his research, he had found that there were three individuals who had founded the corporation and brought it to what it was today, and now he was with one of them.
On top of that, out of the three founders, this one in particular was a researcher, the man who was said to have discovered how to create an Altered from beast fossils in the first place.
Dean had great confidence in this man but was wary of such a person who showed next to no fear when around him.
Following him, the two had gotten into an elevator and continued their silence. They reached the 8th floor, which was just under the 9th at the very top. It wasn’t a particularly tall building and far wider in the first place.
What Dean did notice was that a pass was needed to press the buttons on the elevator, so his plan of forcing himself in and trying to figure things out himself would have been quite difficult.
When the door opened, Dean was quite surprised to see that they had entered a giant lab. There were several large tables with equipment that looked to be in the middle of being built or half-built.
At the back of the room, Dean could even see large liquid chambers that were empty, but he imagined at one point in time there would be humans floating inside.
Then, as he continued walking around, there was even a large fossil of a beast propped up against the wall. The strangest thing of all, though, was that there was no one there.
“Such a big lab, but where is everyone?” Dean asked.
“Oh, so you speak. I was waiting for you to tell me why you had come here and was being polite, yet you didn’t say a single word,” Rickle said. “But to answer your question first, there is no one here because no one is allowed here. This is my own personal lab where I work on my own theories and productions.”
“Then, when I know things will work, I will push them through the company.”
Dean wanted to ask if that was even legal. From the sound of things, it seemed Rickle was a mad scientist who might have been doing unethical research and then making it seem like his results were more ethical.
In a way, though, that was the perfect type of person he needed, someone with no morals.
Eventually, Rickle sat in a swivel chair office seat and kicked one over to where Dean was. It slid across the floor until Dean caught it with his hand, and the two were now seated opposite each other.
Looking to the side, Rickle then picked up a coffee that had to have been sitting there for a while, maybe even a day old, yet started to sip it as he looked at the man.
“Please go on, what would an Altered want a researcher so desperately for? And I’m also curious why an Altered like you isn’t on our file?” Rickle asked.
Now Dean was slightly nervous. Rickle raised his hand, and an electronic hand holding onto a tablet was seen in the air. Rickle snapped it from above and started to scroll down a list of people’s faces along with information that Dean didn’t quite understand.
“We have a list of every type of Altered we have created and who we have sold to. We also have access to information from our competitors. There’s always someone willing to sell something for a price.”
“Yet you don’t appear on that list at all. At least my facial recognition software hasn’t matched you with anyone in our database.”
Dean lingered his eyes, and only just now he was noticing the cameras everywhere. A researcher oozing with confidence was a first for him, and why would he even tell him all of this in the first place?
“I didn’t want to become an Altered,” Dean answered. “It was something that was forced upon me, so that might answer your reason as to why I’m not on your files. I don’t really want to go into too much detail, but I think you should at least know this much because it’s related to my request.”
“I no longer wish to be an Altered. I came here looking for a solution, so I came to the best of the best, hoping that you could help me get rid of my Altered form.”
While Dean was talking, Rickle had been typing away on the tablet in his hand, but when Dean had finished making his request, his fingers stopped, and he placed the tablet on the table to the side.
“Now that is a very interesting request,” Rickle said. “Many come looking for me, asking for me to turn them into Altered. NIRV is all about making the human race into something else.”
“Even when one has become an Altered, many return asking me to make them stronger, to turn them less into a human. But this is a first, asking for me to reverse the changes. After all, if one doesn’t wish to use the Altered part of their body, they can simply just not transform and reap the benefits of being a superior human being.”
Rickle paused as if he was waiting for an answer from Dean, but Dean didn’t reply, because he had no answer, just his head sunken into his chest.
“Alright, it’s interesting enough for me to progress, so I agree to do this for you, but I do have some conditions. And I’m telling you now, unless you accept my conditions, I won’t help you out. And I truly believe that I might be the only person in the world who can help you out,” Rickle said with a smile.
——