I just got the news that, upon getting shot down by all the girls working there, I am now banned from The Technosexual. They did not take kindly to me flirting with the girls.

And not drinking.

And generally not being a patron.

I mean, honestly, what kind of person patronizes a strip club? I am a teetotal and having a girl dance almost naked around a pipe on top of a stage does nothing for me. These places also have a no touching policy, which seems like mixed messaging to me. Why would they pressure you to drink beverages that lower your inhibitions and make you handsy and then tell you to not touch the girls and to keep it in your pants? It makes no sense.

I'm getting off topic.

So my investigation into this ghost account and the elusive Doctor G dropped me into the middle of this mysterious research project codenamed Ambrosia. It is a eugenics research project in order to, in theory, create super-beings, superior to a natural being in both mind and body. Naomi, my first girlfriend, comes to mind, but she is all natural; no bio-augments, 100% confirmed.

Gah, where was I? Ah yes, Ambrosia. So eugenics, genetic modification, has been a thing for a very long time. The base concept is pretty understandable and used in agriculture for thousands of years. Selectively breed different crop strains in order to promote the most ideal features. Diversify the genetics of the crops as much as possible to make disease transfers between plants more difficult, or introduce new strains that can resist these diseases into the crop.

Genetic modification is just going in and more directly tampering with these genes. It’s not inherently a bad idea. The thing about eugenics, however, is that it carries with it a heavy stigma now because of the actions of a dictator during the early 20th century. That’s part of the drive behind banning bio-augments now, even though such people are hard to come by, and doctors willing to perform genetic modification are difficult to come by.

The secrecy surrounding this ghost account, Doctor G and Project Ambrosia is borderline justified, but at the same time, it does little to dissuade those worries about what it could be used for, especially after reading that first email. The name itself also hints at some extremist ideology. Ambrosia, in Ancient Roman mythology, is the fruit and drink of the gods, capable of instilling the essence of immortality and even divinity into a mortal who consumes it. The mortal Psyche ate Ambrosia and ascended to godhood. There’s no other reason why they would choose that name in particular.

In the cache of data I found regarding this project, I also discovered some information about one of the oldest test subjects. Apparently Doctor G has been performing these experiments for a good long while now, even going as far back as the late 1900s. They disguised the project as clinical trials for cancer patients, choosing in particular those who had almost zero chance of survival and were already on their way out. The amount of medical falsification in order to conduct this project in secret for this long is extraordinary. I can’t even begin to describe how many moral, legal and ethical laws this begins to break, and that the public hasn’t heard about it yet is itself a miracle.

Anyways, long story short, the project came up empty for the longest time. Either the patients died from their terminal illnesses or the experiments accelerated their deaths. In theory, there was one subject that managed to survive. The subject name, along with all the others, was redacted and replaced with a new one: Subject 404. Supposedly they had responded well to the treatments, were released, and kept under close surveillance afterwards.

The personal ID of the subject was redacted, probably for the sake of perpetuating this secrecy, but their last known whereabouts were confirmed to be in California… over ten years ago, before geo-political circumstances caused them to fall off the radar.

I let out a hard sigh when I read that. California, a state that existed before the rise of the Western Republic, a restructuring of the old United States after it was brought to its knees after one wannabe dictator after another demolished their economic, militaristic and industrial presence in the world. They are currently embroiled in a civil war led by radicalized ideologies that see no difference between a civilian and a soldier. A war my neighbor was enlisted to fight in.

I know about the kinds of things that happened over there, that are currently happening right now. Finding a long lost test subject in that mosh pit, assuming they are still alive, was a laughable proposition. After a full decade, anything could have happened to them at that point.

I felt like I had hit a brick wall. Everything leading up to now was so easy, relatively speaking. I was constantly unraveling this mystery and making progress bit by bit. But now all of my leads were dead ends; mere speculation on this project that was bound to ruffle the feathers of the anti-augment movement.

I am extremely disheartened, but I'm not giving up. I have everything about this case on a big cork board in the main room of my apartment, ready for the next scrap of detail that could blow the case wide open. It may sound like something cliche straight out of a crime series, but you'd be surprised how useful these things are.

That being said, I sometimes throw a cover over it. Sometimes it's for any guests I have over, sometimes it's for myself. Sometimes I just don't want to look at the damn thing.

***

It’s been several months since my last entry. I have a new break in the case!

There was a hostage situation at a local augmentation facility today. Some radical anti-aug group-turned-terrorists stormed the place with weapons and took the employees hostage. Before negotiations could begin, an NBCPD rookie by the name of Daniel was shot by a sniper. He’s in critical condition, but stable.

I happened to witness the police response from the coffee shop across the street, before I could finish my evening coffee, no less. I went to see what was going down. The police set up a barricade around the entrance to the facility and attempted to get a line in to the terrorists. That’s about the time that Daniel got shot, only a few minutes after I talked to him. I hope he pulls through. The department needs good kids like him to begin righting the ship.

My old coworker, Constable Anderson, asked me to go in ahead of the Special Forces team and neutralize their leader. His prediction, which I agreed with, was that there would be a violent shootout that could get many of the hostages killed in the process, along with most if not all of this extremist group. If the NBCPD was going to get to the bottom of this and obtain information about the organization (assuming that they were going to actually do their job for once), then they would need the terrorists alive.

I managed to sneak into the facility and identify the leader. He was in one of the offices, ransacking through various documents and computers, looking for something. Eliminating his personal guards was easy, but as I moved to incapacitate him, he seemed to sense my presence and counterattacked.

I have been in more than a few fights in my life, even before joining the police. With this body and with most men being much larger than me, I have learned how to maneuver around them and use my smaller frame and superior speed to my advantage.

To be honest, this was one of the most brutal fights I have ever been in. This guy was large, but a lot faster and reactive than I could have predicted. Any attempt to dodge, and he realigned his attack to hit me anyways. Any attack I threw, he could counter by taking advantage of my opening.

That fight lasted only a few minutes, but it felt like an eternity. We disarmed each other early on, though the guns were empty, anyways. He could match my every move, every step as soon as I made them. BEFORE I could make them. It was at that point that I realized he could not have been any normal person.

He was a bio-augment.

Around the time I came to that realization, we were interrupted by the sounds of special forces breaching the complex. He took off, and I had to reluctantly let him go. I was nonmetal and definitely not an employee of this facility. The IFF tags on the special forces’ HUDs would not identify me as a hostage and I had no way to guarantee they wouldn’t open fire on me. I had to make myself scarce before I could be spotted.

It’s been about two hours since that incident happened. I’m back at home right now, bruised and in a lot of pain. Even my best mint tea does nothing to help; at times like this, I wish I had a taste for alcohol.

Still, despite the pain, despite the possibly fractured bones that I should probably get treated at the hospital, I’m too invigorated to sit down and rest. I finally discovered another bio-augment. Us bio-augments are incredibly rare, and unlike normal augments, it’s difficult to identify us. I just need to track down the identity of this guy.