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  The Omega Archives

  Erik Melendez

  The Omega Archives by Erik Melendez

  ©2019 Erik Melendez

  Cover Design by: Regina Wamba

  Editing by: Sarah Fox

  Typography by: Courtney Spencer

  This is a work of fiction. Names characters, businesses, places, events, locals, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  About the Author

  I would like to acknowledge:

  My editor Sarah for all her help in helping me write this book.

  My Marketing assistant Shayla for helping me get this book off the ground.

  Chapter One

  My name is Alex. I was born into a military super-soldier program called the Omega Project. In the late 1980’s, a group of scientists in the US conducted experiments with human cells when they made an accidental breakthrough, human genetic manipulation. By using modified gene-splicing technology, the scientists developed a serum known as the Type-1 serum that would allow them to enhance human genes. After getting approval from the U.S government, the scientists began the Omega Project. The goal of the project was to create an army of genetically engineered super soldiers to fight any conflict in the world.

  All of us were born to surrogate mothers with near perfect genes. From what I remembered, the facility was enormous. The corridors were gray and white, and dimly lit. The barracks where we slept had six rows of beds on each side of the room. The boys had one side, and the girls took the other. The facility had other rooms like a cafeteria, training rooms, and other stuff. The entire place felt cold, dreary, and stringent more like a prison than a training facility.

  Nurses took care of us, and watched over us. Our trainers wore all black shirts, pants, and boots. They had batons in case anyone of us misbehaved, which we didn’t.

  The preliminary training began at birth, which featured formative skills like walking to reading and writing, and so on. Most of it was basic training though the augment training program would begin at age seven. The day we turned three years old, our instructors came into our barracks and shouted at us to get up, hitting their batons on the bed poles. We immediately sprung up out of bed, and took our places at the end of our beds, straight, shoulders back, and chin up while our instructors continued to shout at us. Once everyone got into position, the instructors began giving us instructions while walking back and forth. We listened to his boots click as he held his baton like he was ready to hit someone.

  “You are not children. You are nothing. The only thing you are, and ever will be, is a soldier. From this day on, you will be trained to become a perfect super soldier. You will not eat, sleep, or do anything without our permission. You will respect us as well as your fellow soldiers. You will do exactly as you’re told at all times. And you will respond to us with ‘yes, sir’, ‘no, sir’, ‘yes, ma’am’, ‘no, ma’am’. Understood?” the trainer asked.

  “Yes, sir!” we all shouted in unison.

  The instructors then forced us to make our beds as fast as we could while they yelled at us. They then made us run to one end of the room, pick up our new uniforms, and then run back to the beds as fast as we could to change. The sounds of their yelling permeated the room. They then made us line up, and walked us down to the class rooms, where we would do our studies. We could mostly hear the sounds of our boots hitting the ground as we walked down the dimly lit and cold corridors of the facility.

  When we arrived, the instructors told us to stand next to a desk. We then sat down and began reading through the books they gave us with subjects varying from math to chemistry to physics. The metal desks felt like sitting on iced steel. The instructors would walk around to make sure we were reading. As one instructor approached my desk, I dug my head in, and focused on the reading. After we finished, we stood up, and they drilled us to make sure we knew everything we read; none of us missed a question. By the time we turned five years old, we could do advanced math, chemistry, and physics easily.

  All of us had enhanced learning abilities to the point where we just absorbed information. At age seven, the augment training program began, and we learned everything from basic training to advanced special warfare combat fighting. It mostly consisted of military and counter-terrorist training. We would spend hours reading books, watching training videos, and being instructed by our trainers. By age eleven, we had mastered everything the training program had to offer. In essence, we had more training than most generals and members of the Special Forces combined.

  Thanks to our enhanced learning abilities and near-perfect memory recall, we could do anything, from field-stripping a rifle to piloting a variety of vehicles from tanks to jets. We could also plan missions, do tactical sweeps, speak multiple languages fluently with perfect accents, swim, parachute, fight in seven styles of martial arts and so much more.

  When I turned twelve, the brutality of the training grew exponentially. I got tested in hand to hand combat by engaging in a series of fights. The fights would take place in a large, cold and dark gymnasium with our instructors standing in a small observation room watching our every move. We fought on a mat that covered a small portion of the gym, large enough for us to fight on. Our opponents consisted of criminals facing either life sentences or death row. We sat and watched the other augments fight and kill the criminals.

  As we watched each other kill the criminals, the more we got used to seeing people getting killed.

  When it was my turn to fight for the first time, I fought a tall, muscular and super aggressive opponent. I walked onto the pad shaking and felt as if the whole world watched my every step. My instructors were watching me like a hawk, the other augments sitting in the bleachers. When we stepped onto the floor, one of my trainers shouted, “Get him!” And the fight began.

  He came in with a punch but I dodged it and kicked him in his kneecap, breaking it and knocking him onto the ground. I killed him by breaking his neck as the instructors screamed at me to finish him. After I killed my opponent, I stood over his body with my bloody fist clenched, breathing heavily. As sweat dripped down my head, I felt the adrenaline soar through my body.

  We became so good that most of us could take on several opponents at the same time and still win. Some days we were forced to do hand to hand combat drills for hours, and sometimes days, without rest or food. I must have fought and killed at least twenty people in one week. One day, I had to fight ten guys at once all bigger and stronger than me. The fight must have gone on for at least half an hour, with my instructors constantly shouting at me. I couldn’t stop. I had to keep moving and keep fighting. I moved so fast and hit so hard that I felt unstoppable. After thirty minutes of fighting, I killed all ten of them.

  Another day, we were forced to do obstacle course traini
ng. The course got so cold that my face went numb, it had just enough lighting to see a few feet in front of us, and dirt made up the ground. They must have brought dirt in from outside in order to keep the facility concealed. The training consisted of navigating through various obstacles from rope climbing to crawling through tubes and other obstacles that we may encounter in combat. We got into position at the beginning of the course.

  The instructors gave us the go ahead, and we began to move through the course. They kept us on our toes by setting of bombs, and shooting mounted machine guns at us to create chaos around us. My heart pounded so hard that I thought that it would burst. I ran as fast as I could. We had to focus and keep moving. I make it through first, and everyone else made it eventually. When we reached the end of the course, our clothes were covered in mud and sweat.

  We also started our torture survival training. While we were asleep, our instructors covered our faces with bags and dragged us out. We had to endure everything from interrogation, verbal abuse, and other physical torture such as water boarding. We went through this for several days to break us down and build us up to become stronger. I felt almost no pain. I couldn’t tell if my body grew more resistant or if I just learned to turn off pain. After the torture training ended, I felt much different from when I went in. When I woke up from the alarm, I got up out of bed and looked around the room, keeping an eye out for attackers as well, just as the other kids were.

  We also had to go through a various physical training course, which ranged from lifting two 200-pound logs over our heads, to running laps with one hundred pounds on our back with ankle weights. The physical training would have easily killed even the healthiest humans in peak physical condition, but our bodies were five times stronger, and we barely broke a sweat.

  I felt like all of the energy had been sucked out of my body. I would be dehydrated and starving, but I learned to ignore the pain and keep pressing on. For our drown-proof training, our hands and legs were tied together, and we had to do a six-mile swim with ankle weights. The water was freezing cold, at least negative twenty degrees Celsius. We sometimes had to carry a 300-pound raft into and out of the water. Sometimes, we would have to stand in the water for hours while holding the raft over our heads with the trainers pouring ice into the water. That training lasted the whole year, and we barely got any rest or food.

  I guess the training was just the beginning to shape us into killing machines with more to come.

  One day when I was thirteen, we walked down a corridor in unison as usual with our instructors walking with us. As we walked down the hall, an alarm went off, followed by gunfire going off in the distance. Our instructors told us to stand still and to not move. As one of the instructors walked further down the corridor to check the corridor, we saw a nurse at the other end of the corridor running from someone. She stopped at the wall. She breathed heavily. All of a sudden gunfire erupted, blood spattered from her body, and she collapsed. I felt as if my gut exploded, and my jaw dropped as I saw her lifeless body hit the ground.

  “All of you get out of here!” the instructor shouted as he pulled out his gun.

  The instructor walked down the corridor only to get shot, while the other instructor told us to move. We heard more gunfire go off in the direction we were heading. I saw a ventilation shaft nearby. I took the cover off, crawled inside, and closed the cover. I tried to see outside through the vent cover to get an idea of what went on. Then I saw two guys dressed in black trench coats and black helmets, armed with assault rifles, walking by.

  “We spotted the children heading west. In pursuit,” one of them said on their radio.

  I crawled out of an exhaust vent opening up into a nearby field and ran. I kept running and running until I tripped over a stump. I got back up, and the pain went away pretty quickly. I stopped deep in the woods to make a campsite and spent the night there. I was well trained in survival skills, so setting up an improvised camp was pretty easy for me. I built a small fort made up of tree branches and twigs and made a fire in front of it. The whole night, I sat in front of the fire thinking about what happened back there.

  I wondered if it was just another sick exercise in survival training, or if the facility really was attacked. I hadn’t heard a word from anyone else or any of the trainers. I just hoped that the attackers wouldn’t find me next. Who were those people and how did they know about us? Were they terrorists or maybe a rival faction that we were at war with?

  For all I knew, we could have been at war with another country. I sat in front of the fire almost all night, listening to the crickets chirping, the fire burning, and the cool wind blowing. The fire brought me some comfort in the night.

  When I woke up the next morning, I continued to move. I didn’t know where to go or what to do. All I could do is keep moving until I ran into people who could help. I was surprised that I had not once encountered any of the terrorists. Maybe they lost me or maybe they just assumed that I was killed and gave up I didn’t know.

  At that point, I didn’t know where I was. The only thing I knew was that I was somewhere in the US. The terrorists must have given up on finding me. I kept moving until one night I made a camp, and the next morning, two cops woke me up by tapping me on the shoulder. They were wearing the usual police uniforms, all black with their coats and hats on. I was startled and got up preparing to fight with my hands in front of me and waiting for an attack.

  “Hey, take it easy,” one of the cops said as he put his hands up.

  “Are you okay?” the other cop asked.

  I just stared at them, breathing heavily, waiting for the cops to make a move.

  “Look we’re not going to hurt you. Just calm down and relax,” the cop said as he approached me with open hands, trying not to come off as a threat.

  “Just come with us, and we can get you help,” the other cop said.

  At first, I thought they were the terrorists that attacked the facility, maybe disguised as cops. The cop reached his hand out to me, and I slowly moved toward him. I realized that they were good; I could sense that they weren’t trying to kill me. We walked back to their car and drove off.

  We drove for a few hours until we arrived at a huge building. I saw a sign outside that said, “St. James Home for Orphaned Children,” in front of the gate. I got out and observed the building; it was massive with red bricks and white pillars in front of it.

  We went inside, and the cops told me to sit on the bench while they spoke to the nuns there. The wooden bench got kind of uncomfortable to sit in after a while, but at least it was more comfortable than the furniture I sat in during training. The inside felt warm and smelled old, like it was there for years. In a room to my right, I saw children playing and running around, something I never got to do unless it involved killing someone.

  I overheard them talking about me as I waited in the lobby. Afterwards, the cops came out, and the nun asked me to go into her office. I sat down in the chair across from her desk, which had some papers, a pen holder, and a cup of warm tea that smelled soothing. Her office had a giant picture of a man nailed to a cross behind her desk. I didn’t know what it meant. The nun was dressed in all white and blue, her skin was as wrinkled as she was old. She sat with her hands crossed upon her desk.

  “Welcome to St. James. My name is Sister Jane,” she said.

  “Hello, ma’am,” I replied as I nodded my head a little.

  “What’s your name?” the nun asked.

  “115, ma’am,” I replied.

  She looked at me with confusion.

  “Surely that can’t be your real name.”

  “That was the designation they gave me, ma’am.”

  “Who gave you that name?”

  “My superiors, ma’am.”

  “And who are your superiors? Are they around?”

  “No, ma’am. They’re dead.”

  “How did they die?” she said as she rested her hand under her chin and leaned forward.

  “They were kil
led by people I have never seen before, ma’am.”

  She paused for a moment, and then leaned back in her chair.

  “Well, a name like 115 would not work here.”

  “Why not, ma’am?”

  “We usually have names with letters here. How about we call you Alex?”

  “Why Alex, ma’am?”

  “You seem like an Alex to me.”

  “Alex will suffice, ma’am.”

  “Good. And where are you from?” She rested her hand back on the desk.

  “Classified, ma’am.”

  “Why classified?”

  “Just orders, ma’am.”

  “I see. And how long were you in the wilderness?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. Several days, maybe weeks.”

  “You were running because of the people who killed your superiors?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I had no choice.”

  “Where exactly did you come from?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am.”

  “Is it because your superiors told you not to tell anyone?”

  “I never left or went outside the compound, ma’am. I was wondering, ma’am, who’s that man in the picture behind you?” I asked. She turned around to look at it.

  “That’s Jesus Christ. He died for our sins many years ago. He rose from the grave and assented to heaven to be the right hand of God,” she replied.

  “I have never seen or heard of it before, ma’am,” I said.

  “Well, you will learn all about it here.”