After Prometheus

We know what happened to Prometheus Labs. Their downfall, the end of the conglomerate that once ruled the industry of paratechnology, but what happened afterward?

This is the story of one of the single surviving facilities of the incident that wiped out Prometheus, and their story of survival, journey, and retribution.


SPA PROTOCOL INITIATED. ALL ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL, PLEASE REPORT TO SECTOR-8 IMMEDIATELY.

The emergency lights and sirens blared in the cold, desolate room. Sarah stepped out of her cryogenic pod and onto the metallic floor, confused. She nearly fell down, seemingly having to get used to using her legs again. She shivered in her hospital gown as she adjusted herself and stood back up.

The room was small, clean and institutional, it contained a personnel locker on the right with a bench. Sarah turned around and saw what the rest of the room was largely occupied by. The cryogenic pod took up the entirety of the back wall with components, tubes, and electrical wiring. It looked old, but not outdated.

Sarah walked over to the locker, on the floor was a note that appeared to have fallen from a piece of tape on the locker. She sat down on the bench and picked the note up. "PUT ME ON" it read. She opened the locker, inside were a set of clothes with a jacket and shoes.

"Where am I?" She asked herself, looking around the room. She couldn't remember anything besides her name. The last thing she recalled was rushing to pack her bags. But she couldn't remember why. "Was I abducted?" She thought, looking at her own reflection in the smooth metal.

helix-spiral-jordan-hayes-sarah-jordan.jpg

SPA PROTOCOL INITIATED. ALL ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL, PLEASE REPORT TO SECTOR-8 IMMEDIATELY

The announcement blared again. Pulling her out of her trance. If she wanted answers, she would have to get them herself. She quickly got dressed, the clothes appearing to fit her perfectly.

Sarah walked over to the door, unsure of how to open it. It definitely wasn't motion activated. "Open." She said, with no response from the door. She looked down, noticing a small scar on her right wrist. Figuring it wasn't a far-fetched idea, she swiped her wrist in front of the door's sensor on the right. It opened, slowly, as if it was an airlock. The door closed behind her as she ran into the empty hallway.

The square hallway was whiter and more brightly lit than the room, however it seemed to be operating on the same yellow emergency lighting. There were arrows running along the top of the walls, directing Sarah's path as she ran through the facility.

After twenty minutes of running, she arrived at a large freight-like elevator. Entering, the elevator immediately closed and began to move. She stepped back at the sudden movement, the floor beneath her moving quickly downwards as her stomach dropped. Rapidly, the elevator descended deeper into the facility.

SPA PROTOCOL INITIATED. ALL ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL, PLEASE REPORT TO SECTOR-8 IMMEDIATELY.

The doors opened. The hallway was similar to the first one, but it lacked the aesthetic features. The same institutional white, lit by blaring red lights pointing down the hall. Sarah ran quickly but cautiously. She ran around the corner and found a large set of steel doors, the word "SPA" next to it. Considering her options, she swiped open the doors that took up the entire width of the hallway and slowly stepped in.

As the doors closed behind her, Sarah felt around in the pitch darkness for a light switch or something. Suddenly a hand covered her mouth. "Get her legs!" a voice shot out in the dark. "Hel-" Sarah's voice was cut off by the hand. She was thrown to the ground and pinned as rope was tied around her wrists. She was pulled back up and put on her knees, unable to move as the lights nearly blinded her. She blinked rapidly as her eyes adjusted. "There." The man in front of her said. He had short, black hair and looked ex-military and in his mid-to-late twenties. Next to him was an Asian man, around the same age, holding a knife. Standing behind them was a woman and a man who appeared to be in charge. They all appeared to be in the prime

"Who are you?" The one in charge asked. "I-I don't know. My name is Sarah, I woke up in some type of cryogenic chamber. All I did was follow the arrows. I don't know why I'm here." She began to tear up. "Who are you people?"

"We woke up the same way you did, we don't know why we're here." The military man said, cutting Sarah free as she stood up.

She looked around as she finally had a good look at the room. The sealed blast doors were behind her, they were in some type of auditorium or seminar room. The room was in better lighting than the rest of the facility, and Sarah was relieved to not hear the blaring alarm and announcements for once. Rows of seating lined the left side of the room, with a large, white, and active white screen from a projector on the right.

"How long has it been like that?" Sarah asked. The others looked at the Asian man. "I was the first here, and it was like that when I arrived." He said. "Well we might as well introduce ourselves." The non-military man said. "My name is Alan." "Hitachi." The Asian man said after. "Peter." The man with the buzz cut said, crossing his arms. "Julie." The older woman said. "Sarah." She responded, shaking their hands.

"Any idea why we're here or where we are?" Julie asked. "None. I know as much as you do. I can't even remember my last name." Sarah said. "I may have an idea." Hitachi said, stepping forward as the group came into a loose circle. "This place, this.. facility. It has to be underground, right? This large, bare of people, underground. Someone brought us here. For a reason." He said. "Yeah I believe we've already established that." Peter said impatiently. "Let's just find a way out of here." Sarah said.

"Guys, over here." Alan said, "I found something." In the wall where he was standing appeared to be a type of scanner in the wall, previously cloaked by darkness but now emitting small blue light. "It's a retinal scanner." He said as the others joined him. "What does it do?" Julie asked. "The device scans your eye for a unique DNA code, it's a type of advanced bio security. Similar to what we all seem to have implanted in our arms." Hitachi said, holding up his arm, a similar scar to what Sarah had. "What does it open?" Peter asked. "I think we're about to find out." Alan said as he pressed his face close to the scanner, and a blue light scanned his eyes.

WELCOME. 3. 1/5 DETECTED.

Alan looked around, as to expect a door or something to happen, as did the others. Their hopes were met with the same melancholic silence as before. "Let me try." Sarah said, stepping forward and pressing her eye against the blue light.

WELCOME. 1. 2/5 DETECTED.

"2/5?" Julie said, counting. "There are five of us here. It's counting us." "What about the numbers?" Peter asked. "It must be how it's identifying us. Keeping track of who is who." Julie responded. "We'd best get on with it then. I think I speak for all of us when I say I want to know what's being that door." Hitachi said, scanning his eye.

Like clockwork, the remaining members of the group stepped forward and scanned their eye. They all noted their designations which went as follows:

1-Sarah
2-Peter
3-Alan
4-Julie
5-Hitachi

WELCOME. 2. 5/5 DETECTED. SPA PROTOCOL CONFIRMED. STARTUP PROTOCOLS INITIATED. PLEASE STEP FORWARD.

The scanner rang out its final words as the walls surrounding it opened up to reveal two doors. Both leading into the same room. The group stepped forward. Inside was a moderately sized room, a large, square meeting table took up most of the room in the middle. Across from the table was a large, blacked out the window at the end of the room taking up a majority of the wall. There were also five dark blue, leather seats surrounding the table evenly.

The group entered with caution, once they were all inside, the doors behind them sealed abruptly. ¨No!¨ Peter yelled, banging on the door in an attempt to get the doors opened. ¨We were trapped once, I won´t let us get trapped again!¨

"Good afternoon, everyone." A voice suddenly echoed. The group turned around and saw a holographic screen had come down over the window. On it was an older man, dressed formally, but with frizzled white hair.

"WHY ARE WE HERE?" Julie yelled. "Wait." Alan said. "Let's see what he has to say."
"I understand you are all very confused. Please, have a seat." The man said. Immediately thereafter, the chairs were bathed in a light blue circle from underneath, highlighting them and the small gold plate on the back of each of them. Previously invisible before, in the light, clear lettering was visible. The chairs were numbered for each group member's individual designation.

With hesitation, the group sat at the table. Sarah being designated at the beginning of the table and the numbers following on either side equally.

"Before we start off, I would like to state that my name is Dr. Cullen, and I am the Head of Research and Development at this facility. I am also a recording. By the time this has been played, I am long dead. Unfortunately, likely the rest of Prometheus as well."

The group sat confused and speechless, some just holding their head in their hands.

"You don't actually know what Prometheus is, my apologies. Prometheus Laboratories Incorporated is the current leading conglomerate in medicine, technology, and defense. We are the largest and most powerful corporation in the world. Rivaled only by- well, we'll get to that. Apart from leading in the civilian and military industry, we are also a major player in another industry, that of the anomalous. Paratech, to be exact. A pistol that can fire a hole into a wall, a sword that can only hurt ghosts, glasses that allow you to never have to blink. But to understand what we do, you need to understand why we do it."

Several images appeared on the screen. Some of them of natural disasters, others of men walking while on fire, others of people being gunned down by snow men.

"Oh my god." Sarah said as everyone looked in shock, the tears streaming down her face as images came faster and faster, more and more bloody and brutal.

Suddenly they stopped and the screen returned to Dr. Cullen. "That is a fraction of what the community we work with deals with. Their job is to stop monsters, our job is partially to do the same. But in our own way. We research, develop, create. We create the tools necessary to stop those snowmen and to stop the man that can walk through walls. The Global Occult Coalition needed a gun that could kill God, and we made it for them. The SCP Foundation needed a group of people that were both man and machine that could do their bidding, and we gave it to them. Prometheus was not a god, and it was that which allowed him to keep the gods at bay!"

"Excuse me." Dr. Cullen said, adjusting himself. "I didn't mean to get carried away. To put it simply, the paratech industry, the other world, needs a reliable supplier. That is the job we fill, while also perusing our own endeavors and the advancement of technology that they don't have the time to look for beyond their own problems."

"That endeavor, that craving for the future, for a better humanity, backfired on us. That is why you are here, why this recording is playing. We played God and paid the price. SPA stands for "Strategic. Personnel. Allocation." SPA. It's a fail safe, so to speak. In the event of a cataclysmic event occurring within Prometheus Labs, leading to it's destruction, SPA, you, this facility, and this recording, were put in place with the simple objective of surviving."

"This may also come as a slight shock to you, but maybe not so given everything you're being told.. To put it plainly, you're clones. You were cloned some time ago from the original Prometheus Board of Directors. You were developed for years. Some of you may have special abilities or traits, I'll let you get into that later. Being the leading engineers in a field that humanity isn't supposed to have for centuries does have it's perks. Specifically regarding the engineering of the human body.."

"Moving on, the original board knew of this, they planned for it. Once we're done here you'll be released to your quarters where everything will be explained in greater detail by your equal counterparts. The base is this, Prometheus has fallen, why, hopefully you will find out, will it again? Now that, is up to you."

A holographic 3D model came up on the screen of the facility. "This facility is known as "The Ark". It is located far North in areas of the Arctic Circle. Officially it is a weather testing facility. Unofficially, it is one of the largest military and research bases on the planet. The facility extends approximately 9.6 kilometers into the Earth, and another 40.2 kilometers underneath the ice shelf. A majority of the horizontal distance, being for transportation tunnels."

The group had come to a better state now, most of them looking at the situation objectively and coming to the realization of their purpose.

"Using the vast amount of space available, this facility is capable of supporting any and all developmental, research, and military operations. With enough capacity to fully provide quarters and enough food to sustain two-thousand research personnel, three-thousand security personnel, and one-thousand administrative personnel for approximately two hundred years without any outside resupply, and while operating at full capacity."

"Half of each number of these personnel have been provided already, and pre-determined orders have been provided to arrange the facility to begin full operations regarding research and administration immediately, defense personnel have been put on standby with exception to site security operatives."

The room suddenly lit up much brighter. "Your quarters are down two levels, I would advise heading there and reconvening tomorrow after you've had some time to think things over." The holographic screen turned off quickly, leaving the large window which was now able to be seen through. The group got up and ran to it, staring in shock at the massive hallway hundreds of meters wide, even more so in height. Lining the walls were brightly lit blue pods similar to the ones that Sarah woke up in. They watched as automatic cranes began to pull down designated pods, releasing the individuals inside who were directed to another compartment. Slowly but surely, their research, security, and administrative personnel all woke up, ready for whatever was waiting for them.

The group looked at each other, realizing that they had a long day ahead of them, continuing into each day after that.

With a look of determination, Sarah said "Board meeting adjourned. Reconvene tomorrow at 0700 hours. We have work to do." And with that, they exited, one by one. Their new places, responsibilities, and plans in mind.