Project Silas

This is a story that has bounced around in my head for a few years now. I have always wanted to write it and never taken the time. I have the outline now, a roadmap to it all and hope this prompt me to keep going with it all until I am done. I will be doing it blog style, writing when the words appear and letting it ferment when they don't. I hope you enjoy it, look at the publish dates for the order. I probably need to add post numbers. We will see.

Project Silas - 15 The Jade Premiere

 The basement was no longer a sanctuary of silence; it had become a heartbeat.


Edward moved with a rhythmic, mechanical precision between the rows of glass carboys. Production was a balance of biology and patience. The "Luster" vector required a precise incubation period under high-intensity ultraviolet lights—mimicking the high-altitude sun exposure that had first triggered the mutation in Oak Haven. To the casual observer, it looked like a high-end apothecary. To Edward, it was a munitions factory where the bullets were made of light and modified DNA.


While the carboys bubbled, Edward watched the initial seeds he had planted begin to sprout.


The Matron’s Gamble


In a sprawling estate overlooking Forest Park in St. Louis, Evelyn Thorne stood before a triptych of mirrors. At sixty-eight, Evelyn was the undisputed matriarch of the city's opera board and half its charitable foundations. She was a woman who commanded rooms, yet in the cold, unforgiving light of her dressing room, she felt she was losing a war.


The "Luster" cream had come to her through a contact who usually dealt in offshore tax havens and rare antiquities—not cosmetics. The price had been absurd, the warnings even more so. A permanent change. A signature look.


She opened the small, heavy glass jar. The cream didn't look like a beauty product; it looked like liquid emerald, swirling with a faint, bioluminescent pulse. She remembered the vigor of her thirties—the reckless immortality of youth that Edward had woven into the vector. She didn't just want to look younger; she wanted to feel the sharp, bright edge of the world again.


She applied it. Slowly. Expecting a sting.


Instead, there was only a deep, penetrating warmth. Within an hour, the "fog" of her morning—the dull ache in her joints and the slight blur of her memory—didn't just fade. It evaporated. She felt a terrifying clarity. She remembered the exact scent of the rain on the night of her debutante ball forty-five years ago as if it were happening in the next room.


The Greening


The change was subtle at first. By the third day, the mirrors in Evelyn’s home were no longer enemies. Her skin had taken on a vibrant, translucent quality. It wasn't the pallor of sickness; it was the glow of a forest at high noon. The fine lines around her eyes were gone, replaced by a smooth, matte texture that felt like silk and looked like jade.


She stopped ordering lunch. The very idea of the heavy, cream-based soups she usually favored felt repulsive. Instead, she found herself spending hours in her solarium, seated in the direct path of the morning sun. Her breathing slowed. Her heart rate settled into a steady, powerful rhythm.


She felt invincible. She felt like an apex predator in a silk gown.


The Inroads


Evelyn wasn't the only one.


While Edward monitored his carboys in the dark, the products were moving through the three intended channels:


1. The Elite: Like Evelyn, the "Luster" users were becoming the talk of the gala circuit. The "Jade Glow" was being whispered about as the ultimate secret—a treatment so exclusive it hadn't even reached the coast yet.


2. The Security: In the private hallways of corporate Springfield and St. Louis, the "Dermis" patches were finding their way onto the shoulders of executive protection details. Men who had spent their lives in gyms were suddenly developing a density of skin that could turn a blade and dull the impact of a low-caliber round.


3. The Boardroom: The "Zen" drops were appearing in the coffee of CEOs and hedge fund managers. The hunger for an edge—mental clarity without the jitters of caffeine—was driving a silent epidemic of metabolic optimization.


The Media Ripple


By the end of the week, the first cracks appeared in the public narrative.


A local lifestyle blogger in Springfield posted a zoomed-in photo of a prominent developer at a ribbon-cutting. “Is it just the lighting, or is Mark actually glowing?” the caption read. “And what’s with the green tint? New trend or a very expensive filter?”


On the evening news, a segment on "Designer Bio-Hacking" featured a brief, grainy clip of a nightclub in St. Louis where three different patrons shared that same unmistakable, luminescent hue. The anchor laughed it off as a temporary fad, but the comment section was already a battlefield of theories.


Back in the basement, Edward sat in the shadow of his UV rigs, his own obsidian forearms resting on the workbench. He watched the news clip on a burner laptop, a faint, dry smile tugging at his lips.


The underworld was profiting. The elite were feeling immortal. The security firms felt bulletproof.


And as the sun rose over Missouri, millions of people were unknowingly beginning to look at the sky not for weather, but for sustenance. The Tanner’s garden was no longer confined to jars. It was walking the streets, and it was beautiful.