Episode three - Stauffenberg

There is a secret research facility 320 miles away from Lucas's home. This facility is composed by three underground buildings. There's a tunnel, inside a military base 5 miles away, that gives access to these buildings. On the ground, over the buildings, there's a huge facility that the government leases to private corporations committed with low-tech activities. Right now, there's a cotton pillow factory. One of the greatest in the world, one may add.

The tunnel divides in three, each sub-tunnel leading to a different building. Access control is made in the intersection between the tunnels, both by automated systems and heavy-armed personnel. All of this belongs to a secret organization who refers to itself as "the last frontier".

Going down the leftmost tunnel, one reaches the building where Lucas was taken. This building hosts  exclusively the "Project Stauffenberg", a super-secret research team founded in the early 50s and named after Clauss Stauffenberg, the german official who became worldwide famous in his failed attempt to assassinate Hitler. He was a ultra-secret spy for the allies, a secret that is kept to this day. His responsabilities were to infiltrate a secret research facility which held Hitler's secret research team, "Verfaulte Welt".

By that time, Stauffenberg discovered one of Hitler's secrets: he was using blood transfusion from people they called "Unsterblichen" (immortals) to make super-strong soldiers.

As his report told that the germans were successful in their matters of making super soldiers a reality, the order came from the allies that he should attempt to destroy the Verfaulte Welt team, a task he succeeded in performing, but that had several consequences, exposing some of the allies spies. Stauffenberg's instructions were that if more than two third of his cell were exposed, he was then to put in practice operation "spiel vorbei", which consisted in killing the whole Hitler's top-rank officers and, if possible, Hitler himself.

Stauffenberg had no chance to killing Hitler's men, but an unique opportunity presented that lead him into the so-called failed attempt in murdering Hitler. What the story doesn't tell is that Stauffenberg would have been successfull, if Hitler himself wasn't a super soldier, in fact, the last one injected before the Verfaulte Welt team was destroyed.

The story tells that hitler left the briefing room where Stauffenberg's attempt to bomb him failed (altough the bomb did fire) and told his man: "- I'm immortal!". A few moments later, he met Mussolini, and the fact that Hitler was unharmed did put a very strong impression on Mussolini, as he later would told the world.

So, it was at least since world war two that secret organizations knew the existence of people with special physical capabilities.

When Lucas woke, he was moderately drugged and being kept in a jail cell. He immediately tried to search his body for bullet injuries, but there were none. Not even a scar. In fact, he felt stronger than before.

He attempted to touch the cell bars, but they were electrocuted and the pain was unbearable, even for Lucas.

He noticed a man in white dresses entered a room not far away. He attempted to listen to what was happening on the room, but the man closed the door behind him. Lucas was under the impression that if he tried hard enough, he could listen inside the room anyway, and so he remained focused, in silence, and concentrated on that very same room. Slowly, he become to hear some whispers, and the sound begun to get more and more like words, and finally, he could listen to a conversation. He could identify that there were at least three man on the room.

The part he could listen went more or less like this:

- I'm telling you, accordingly to our documentation, it was the first time we ever succeeded in taking one of them by force. Generally we use other means, like drugging. And I don't like the results, Dr. Jones says that the stress of the fight made him stronger. Much stronger than any one we ever seen before.
- Dr. Jones has this unproven theory that they evolve whenever they concentrate on something hard enough. I don't think that this is the case.
- Whatever happened to him, he was moderately strong when we got him at the city, but now he is at least three times stronger than subject 34, which in turn was the strongest we ever saw.
- Too bad we had to kill subject 34. But now we can proove once and for all whether Dr. Jones is wrong or not.
- I'll set the subject in order to perform some tests by tomorrow. The high comand however instructed us to collect as much blood from him as we can, and that we put him on the freezer, afterwards.
- In other words, they want us to treat him like every other subject. Which is a shame, our research could be years ahead if we could test the body and not only the blood. But orders are orders.
- Well, we can do turns on tests. I only have to freeze his body after noon.

Lucas kind of disconnected from the conversation at this point. He was in a mix of surprise, disgust and anger. He was so angry that he begun to imagining drinking their blood and then smashing then against the wall. He then reacted against this image, thinking to himself "this would not be human, and I am a man, not a monster".

Lucas realized that he would have to come up with a plan, if he was to leave that place alive. Or at least, "unfrozen". He didn't quite understand what the men meant by "to freeze him", but he was pretty sure that this would be something painful and disgusting, and that it sounded a bit like death.

He had only during that night to come up with a plan. And it would be a long night.