PREPARATIONS

(Lunar Alpha, present time) 

"And?" exclaimed Santos. "That's it?"

Nanami nodded. "Big Sis' transmission ended here, she said that she will be delivering a modem to prevent being intercepted.

Just then. Xiao Tian returned with a huge parcel, putting it on the table. 

"Hey Xu Qing!" he exclaimed. "Your old buddy Liang Chen sent you this," he said. 

Perplexed, Xu Qing opened the parcel, revealing a huge load of snacks. 

It did not take long for them to distribute the snacks among themselves. Just as Phineas was rummaging the box for more chips, he pulled out a tablet. It has the logo of the former Squad Artemis drawn crudely by a marker on the back. 

"That's Aya's handiwork," recognised Xiao Tian. 

"Then the intel must be here," exclaimed Nanami, turning it on while stuffing her face full of beef jerky. 

Soon, it projected images, and Team Zero sat around the table, carefully studying them. 

"Project Genesis is a top secret Archangel research project," said Phineas, reading through the files. "It appears that they are trying to use micro-organisms to interfere with the brain..." 

"Translate that, Doctor?" asked Ariel, gently poking him in the lips with a pocky. 

Phineas bit down on the pocky. In between chews, he explained that this is the further evolution of Dr Edward Sterling's research, instead of simply controlling expressions of the brain, this new research entails the usage of the Asclepius phage to outright remove certain tendencies and behaviours from one's genetic instinct in a brain, and replace them with anything the user wants if the user has the need. 

"For example, the hypothalamus is the brain part responsible for sending out thirst signals and the demand for water, I can literally use the phage's genetic targeting ability to find the DNA in the part's cells responsible for that function, and delete it like writing a computer code. The hypothalamus will lose it ability to send out thirst signals. You will die of dehydration without feeling thirsty," said Phineas. "Or, I can replace the deleted DNA strand with another strand that tells you to drink water at all costs, then you will die from water poisoning." 

"Is this really possible?" asked a skeptical James. 

"Science has progressed to the point where the creation of life is already explained, that's how we are created," remarked Sean. 

Squad Artemis soldiers are created from living cells that were randomly generated by a process that replicated the conditions that facilitated the matter exchanges that led to the creation of the first lives on Earth billions of years ago. Then, these living cells would then go through genetic editing where Sellardraxian DNA is inputted together with all of their desired mutations. This process means that the 14 "siblings" of Squad Artemis are all born without biological parents, and they are all unrelated, except Frederica and Nanami whose cells split, creating identical twins. 

This process, known as Artificial Life Forging (ALF), is the top secret of UNSSD, and is prohibited from usage outside of Squad Artemis due to the obvious ethical controversies it will spark. To the public eye and the majority of UNSSD, the secretive Squad Artemis members are believed to be some form of advanced cyborg. In the entire world, only the UNSSD lab that it collaborated with Rhode Life located in the birthplace of Squad Artemis at Khaosiung, Taiwan SAR, is capable of doing ALF.

As Sean's thought drifted to his history, another file snapped him out of it, shocking him, Frederica and Nanami the moment they found it to be from the Khaosiung lab, which is a portion that detailed parts of the mechanics of ALF. 

Hurriedly piecing together the information and the analysis of the creature in Djibouti, Sean realised to his horror that the creature, too, is a product of ALF, just like him. To add further salt on his injury, some of the creature's DNA in fact came from none other than the reverse engineered DNA of his deceased comrade and "sibling": Artemis 14 "Freyja". 

The 3 ex Squad Artemis member's faces turned dark as rage built up within them. 

Despite growing up being relatively sheltered by Dr Allen and the UNSSD Military Commission, voices of disgust and horror at their "unnatural" form of creation still regularly seeped into their ears. Hence, all 14 of them are extremely sensitive to being dehumanised and being treated like experiments and freaks. It's one of their reddest red lines that nothing and no one can cross. 

Xiao Tian patted Sean on the back, feeling and understanding his rage and grief. 

Calming himself down, Sean brought Frederica and Nanami back online, and they returned to analysing the intelligence received. 

To his surprise, the deeper Team Zero dived into the files, the more confused they got by the load of information they are reading. 

Finally, an annoyed Xiao Tian pulled out a whiteboard from a corner, grabbed markers, and started to evaluate everything they know. 

"Right now, we have uncovered 3 factions among the enemy," said Xiao Tian, drawing. 

"In the middle, we have Archangel, who is spearheading 2 different projects at once: Project Lone Star which seeks to create a so-called perfect living being, and Project Genesis which seeks to format brains like how one would format a computer, and overwrite it." 

"Sir Howard and the English nobility members of Archangel seem to be in charge of Project Lone Trial, while Sir Campbell and the Scottish nobility members of Archangel seem to be in charge of Project Genesis," he analysed. "If you all recall, when we captured Sir Campbell, he only revealed intel for Project Lone Star."

"That means that there is a severe internal divide among Archangel, Sir Campbell chose to sell out Sir Howard's side to save his research," analysed Sean. 

"Bingo," commended Xiao Tian. 

"But what about the traitors?" asked Louis. "How do they link to this?" 

Xiao Tian nodded. He then wrote the word "London" on the whiteboard. Seeing those words, Nanami pieced together the missing link. 

"The traitors first struck in London when we were investigating the leak of the Aesclepius phage, which is the key of Project Genesis. This is the one they do not want us to uncover," she exclaimed. "Yet, they are completely alright with us finding out about Project Lone Star and throwing it into the public news, so this is the unimportant one to them." 

"They then tried to assassinate us in the Palestine region," said Jay. "When that failed, they used us as scapegoats and branded us traitors, had we not managed to uncover Project Lone Star and deal a heavy PR blow to them, our fate would be getting killed from the combined push from the rest of the world and the enemy." 

Xiao Tian concurred, writing more things on the whiteboard, he circled 2 more words on the whiteboard, "Extremist" and "Vanguard", referring to the faction in the Sellardraxian Dynasty and the terrorist organisation on Earth affiliated with them respectively. 

"What do they want? Which faction of Archangel do they support?" asked Xiao Tian. 

"I suspect, Sir Howard is using them as pawns to cause chaos on Earth to act as a smokescreen to shield Archangel. Come to think of it, the creature in Djibouti is explicitly designed to counter Cosmic Energy, meaning that Sir Howard considers neither humanity nor Sellardraxians to be worthy of being his desired life form," analysed Xiao Tian. 

"Claim themselves to be the better species, yet bested by a mere human," sneered Sean, finding it ironic. "Then why was the Djibouti lab not properly cleaned?" he asked. 

"Archangel is using Vanguard as their black glove to do the evil things behind the public's eye, so extermination orders like what happened in Djibouti and Korea were done by Vanguard, this allows them to cover them up as ordinary terror attacks," said Xiao Tian. "On that note, Richard contracted Spades International to help him in killing the Vanguard terrorists in Korea, meaning that to the UNSSD traitor faction in the enemy does not want Vanguard to know what is happening in their plans." 

"Back to the topic, we do know for sure that a certain Inari in Vanguard has saved us multiple times," said Xiao Tian. "The clues in the Djibouti lab may had been deliberately left behind by him." 

All of Team Zero finally pieced the whole plot together now, knowing that there is still one more problem they need to resolve before they can take down Archangel for good: sniffing out the high-ranking UNSSD traitors. Richard William does not have the clearance to delete combat records, meaning that there is, or are, much higher-ranking UNSSD personnel involved.

"What's the plan?" asked James. 

"They want to cover up Project Genesis badly. Thus, we will strike them there," said Xiao Tian, projecting a map. "We will blow out the traitor like a sea mine in the ocean." 

"Contact the rest of Task Force Prime, we are going into Taiwan, all guns blazing," he said. 

"To our birth place huh," muttered Sean.