Vancouver, Winter Night
Frost was already sealing the lab windows from the outside.
Most of the lights were out.
At the end of the corridor,
the only glow came from the lamp on Luca's desk.
He'd stayed late. "Organizing files" was the excuse.
The real target lay elsewhere.
The server room.
One swipe of his staff badge. The door unlocked with a click.
Cold air slid into his lungs.
Rows of stainless shelving. Dust-thin file boxes.
And, in a steel drawer, the weight of an old hard drive.
White label. Three words:
NeuroGenesis – Project SP-0.
The name was enough.
He hooked it up.
The screen flooded with files—
chemical blueprints, brainwave graphs, synapse maps.
And over and over, one phrase: human neural network reconstruction.
The more he read, the quieter his heartbeat became.
This wasn't just a drug.
It was a blueprint for rebirth.
A design to push human focus past its limits,
burn memory into the brain at triple speed—
and in return, drag old instincts from the depths…
feed on them.
Luca's mouth curved, slow.
This was money.
No—this was power.
Something for the hands of the few who moved the world.
He decrypted everything, copied it to a USB.
As the progress bar crawled to the end,
he could almost hear the sound of a lock turning
after years of waiting.
The Next Morning
Coffee break.
Dr. Adrian Nam and Dr. Claire Lee stood by the counter,
white coats over work clothes, speaking low.
Luca poured himself a paper cup, took the empty seat beside them.
"Yesterday—
going through old files—
I found something," he said.
Adrian looked up.
"What file?"
"Project SP-0." Luca smiled, casual.
"This could change the world."
Claire's eyes sharpened.
"That's a therapeutic study. Nothing more, nothing less."
Luca tilted his head, swirling the coffee.
"It has too much potential to stop at therapy.
Commercialized, it could make you—both of you—billionaires."
Adrian let out a short, humorless laugh.
"We're not taking that path.
Side effects are severe.
Misuse would be dangerous."
"Danger," Luca said,
"is just another word for opportunity.
Fear the opportunity, and someone else takes it first."
Claire set her cup down, voice flat.
"Stay out of that file, Luca.
As of today, your clearance is restricted."
He kept the smile.
"Understood."
The softness in his tone didn't match the fact that
the USB was already in his pocket.
That afternoon, walking out into the cold,
it knocked lightly against the fabric with each step.
The winter wind caught his face.
Luca's smile deepened.
The board was set.