🌒 Episode One: Phantom Genesis
Setting: New York City, 1987 Main Character: Gideon Young, age 17
🕯️ Scene 1: The Boy in the Alley
It's October 3rd, 1987. The city is a concrete jungle of neon signs and rusted fire escapes. Gideon Young, a wiry teen with a mind wired for machines, slips through the back alleys of Brooklyn. He's been living off-grid since his mother vanished six months ago. His only clue? A torn photograph of her standing beside a man in a trench coat marked with a strange emblem: a flaming steel mask.
Gideon's been chasing whispers. Tonight, he finds one.
🧬 Scene 2: The Lab Beneath the Church
Beneath an abandoned cathedral, Gideon discovers a hidden elevator. It descends into a forgotten lab—dusty consoles, shattered glass, and a humming containment pod. Inside: a
suit. Sleek, metallic, laced with glowing red veins. A voice echoes from the terminal:
"PHANTOM PROTOCOL: INITIATE."
Before he can react, the pod opens. The suit latches onto him like it's alive. Pain. Light. Silence.
🕸️ Scene 3: Awakening
Gideon wakes in a haze. His body feels alien. His vision sharpens. He can hear electricity. He can see heat. The suit has fused with his nervous system. He's faster. Stronger. Invisible when he wants to be.
But it's not just power—it's a curse. The suit is a prototype from a secret military project called PHANTOM MAN, designed to create living weapons. And Gideon wasn't supposed to survive the bonding.
🧿 Scene 4: The First Hunt
VIREX, the agency behind the Phantom Program, sends a retrieval unit. Gideon evades them, barely. He learns to cloak, to manipulate magnetic fields, to leap across rooftops like a shadow. He's no longer just a runaway.
He's Phantom Man.
🕯️ Final Scene: The Signal
As Gideon escapes into the night, a beacon activates deep underground. Seventeen other signals respond across the globe. Each one tied to a different soul. Each one awakening.
The Magnificent 18 are real. And the world is about to change.