Cisca's Laboratory

"Because of the lack of supervision from a parent, I had a lot of freedom to do whatever I wanted."

"You didn't have any maids or butlers looking after you?" Cisca asks.

"There were, many, actually, but they did anything I told them."

"I can see that."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. Go on."

"Okay… Anyways, I was immensely interested in what my father did, so I followed him everywhere, sneaking into meetings and peeking at contracts and all that."

"How old were you?"

"I don't know, twelve?"

"What kind of twelve-year-old does that?"

I stare into Cisca's unflinching eyes. Is she being serious?

"Like you are the one to talk," I say, "Weren't you receiving your bachelor's degree when you were twelve?"

"Fair point. And? Why is that relevant now?"

I take a deep breath as I am about to venture into a corner of my heart I have never flipped over to anyone before.

"Even though my father couldn't see it at the time, I did."

"See what?" Cisca leans in slightly and asks.

"How the people around him were taking advantage of his grief."

"What do you mean by that?"

"His business partners would bond with him and get on his soft side to sign better deals for their selfish gains."

"What? That's it?" Cisca asks.

"What do you mean that's it?"

Cisca rolls her eyes and says, "In case you haven't noticed during your years in the socialite circle, that's just how people are, Kris. They couldn't have been that bad if your father turned out to be a millionaire in the end."

"I suppose you are right, but my father could have been much more successful if he didn't let his emotions get involved."

"So, what? What you learned from all that is people shouldn't feel emotions?" She says.

"Precisely, but that isn't your question, is it? I can't let the people who once took advantage of my father still prosper off his legacy now, and that's why I broke ties with all of them as soon as I had the authority to do so," I say.

Cisca nods in acknowledgment. "I see," she says, "But you still shouldn't think of emotions as flaws."

"Well, I've been doing that my whole life, and look where it got me."

"What? Unbelievably rich, young, handsome, and yet somehow still a lonely virgin?" Cisca asks with a smirk.

"Wha-"

"Ha-ha-ha!" Cisca bursts into laughter.

If I didn't know Cisca, I would have never guessed that she is a holder of a Ph.D. degree, let alone multiple.

"How does that have to do with anything?" I ask.

"Nah, don't worry about it, I am just teasing," she says between laughs and waves me off.

The elevator floor suddenly trembles beneath my feet, and we have come to a stop.

"It seems like we are here," she says while recovering from her laugh.

"Yeah."

DING. The elevator doors slide open. On the other is pitch darkness. I can't see a meter out of the elevator.

Cisca claps once. PA-PA-PA-PA-PA-PA-PA-PA…. The lights come on one row at a time, illuminating this football-field-sized underground chamber. I have to shield my eyes for a second to get used to the sudden blinding white lights.

This is far from the first time I visited Cisca's lab, and yet, I still can't help but be awed at the scale of this laboratory built by one person, and for one person only. Well, she did have the help of construction crews, but we told them nothing about what we were doing.

There is a sharp smell of sanitary chemicals in the air, similar to the one Cisca perpetually emits from her lab coat. As the screens around the room slowly come online, I get a better view of everything. There are countless machinery, each one bigger than me, laid across the floor. When the lights turned on, the machines also came alive, growling and sending rumbles through the ground.

The laboratory has no walls other than the four outer ones. It's one big, open facility, but the colors of the equipment and concrete floor tiles divide the room into many parts. Cisca once told me that each of those parts is used for one specific strand of science. Green for biochemistry, red for nuclear reaction, blue for quantum mechanics, so on and so forth, but wow, is there an assortment of them, and to think that Cisca alone is the unknown world-leading researcher for all of those fields is… something.

"Come on, stop staring. We have a humanity to save," Cisca says and steps out of the elevator.

"R-Right." I return from my thoughts and follow her into the laboratory.

As we weave through the isles of machines, Cisca says, "First of all, you need to administer the anti-aging agent."

"What about you?" I ask. I can't complete the mission if Cisca's lifespan is a tenth of mine.

She grins and says, "How did you think I did the testing?"

"You are a mad scientist, you know that?"

Cisca chuckles.

"I'm joking. Of course, I didn't test on myself, but I already took the shot. There is no point in waiting to become immortal, is there?" Cisca says.

"You do know it's not going to make you immortal, right?"

"Well, duh. I am the one who made it. It's just figure of speech, Kris."

"Whatever. Where is it?" I ask as we enter the green section of the laboratory.

"Right over here," Cisca says and walks over to a metal cabinet about her height.

She grabs a pair of gloves from beside her. With them put on, she opens the cabinet. Vapor and cold air flood out of the container. Cisca reaches her hands inside and takes out a syringe filled with a yellow liquid.

"This is it?" I ask.

"Yep. This here will make you live a thousand years," she says and flicks the tip of the needle.

"You alone can cause Armageddon, Cisca," I say with a dry chuckle.

She looks at me with furrowed brows. "I… don't know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult."

"Well, seeing that in your hands is the key to 900 more years of my life, I meant it as a compliment."

"Good. Now, pull up your sleeve."

Oh, I guess we are diving right in. Extending my life span by 10 fold is easier than getting a flu shot, apparently.

I tug up my sleeve and give Cisca my arm. She takes a wet piece of cotton and wipes a patch of my skin, then, she presses in the needle. As I see the yellow fluid being injected into my veins, I truthfully feel… nothing. There is no difference between this and a simple vaccine.

Once the syringe is empty, Cisca pulls out the needle. She tosses it into a garbage bin beside her and says, "Congratulations, welcome to the millenarian club."