User:PadreRomero/Ashera

This story is part of the Malton Chronicles. This story is fan-made, and is not officially part of any background history for Urban Dead.

(A Tragedy in 3 Acts)

Dramatis Personae

Artaxerxes

A teenager

Nathan Wild

A Thief

Ryan Kyndrid

A hero

Timothy Greed

A Villian

Sam Cork

A Doctor

Padre Romero

A Priest

Mira Hart

A Harlot

Prolouge

A year before the outbreak, two technicians who weren’t being paid enough worked frantically in a cloth-lined cubicle in the basement of the Sealy building, to finish a project they didn’t know enough about. One was a girl with a flair for the creative, with long violet hair and a thin violent smile. The other was David Klellan, whose life was changed that day, when a man carrying a black briefcase, who was being paid far more, and knew far too much, showed up in their office.

“I got the latest reports from Topleaf,” he said, his face lighting up like a child’s behind his horn-rimmed glasses, “They’re making incredible progress down there…I wish I could tell you guys about some of this stuff, it’s really quite mind blowing”.

“Greed,” the girl said, “You get too excited about this stuff, what are you here for.”

“Skin samples”, Greed giggled. David had met Timothy Greed once before, at a conference when he was first given clearance to some of Necrotech’s trade secrets. Then, as now, he found his cheerful demeanor off-putting, far too slapstick and unprofessional for a company like Necrotech. Greed most likely adopted it as a defense mechanism. Word got out about what Necrotech was REALLY doing at some of the more cutting edge facilities like Topleaf, Blackmore, and Nix, you probably couldn’t do things like that to fellow humans without wearing a smile.

“Well, I’ll deliver my report to you fellows while I’m here,” Greed explained, while slicing a tiny bit of skin from the cuticles at the base of the girls nails. “Company policy dictated that we all be inoculated with a form of the Ashera strain when we started Zeta Processing...”

“I’m well aware” the girl said passively, “The officials assured us that the side effects would be minimal…”

“For a given value of minimal,” Greed said, “Ashera is at present, largely a success, 66% of cases are showing a significantly more effective immune system, faster recovery time after traumatic accidents, even a fuller head of hair.”

“And the other 33%?” Klellan asked.

“Die within 8 months, some kind of encephalopathy,” Greed said, his voice as nonchalant as ever.

David began sweating, he quickly checked the quote of the day calendar on his desk, and looked with horror at the spot on his wrist where he’d been injected, two months ago.

“So in six months…” He began,

“One of us will likely be dying an incredibly painful death,” Greed said happily, “Anyone care to put money down on who?”