**January 1, 2013.**
In a massive underground facility hidden beneath layers of bureaucracy and classified documents, hundreds of children stood in orderly lines. Each one had been born in this place, raised in sterile rooms, trained from the moment they could walk.
Today, they all turned five years old.
Not by coincidence. By design.
They had been born on the same day, in the same facility, as part of the same experiment. Everything they had experienced—every lesson, every test, every moment of their short lives—had been leading to this moment.
Twenty-six arenas had been prepared. Each one was a self-contained environment roughly the size of a football field, filled with obstacles, weapons, and hiding places. The children had been divided into groups and assigned to their respective arenas.
A voice echoed through the facility's speaker system—calm, clinical, devoid of emotion.
"Project Genesis: Final Selection. Objective: Survival. Duration: Until one remains. Begin."
The doors to each arena sealed shut.
And the children began to kill each other.
In Arena I, a small boy with dark hair crouched behind a concrete barrier, his heart pounding so hard he thought it might burst from his chest.
Around him, he could hear screaming. Fighting. The wet sounds of violence that no five-year-old should understand but that all of them had been taught to recognize.
They'd been trained for this. Combat instruction. Survival tactics. Weapon handling. But training was different from reality. Training didn't involve watching the girl you'd shared meals with for five years bleeding out on the floor.
The boy—who had no name, only a designation that would become the letter 'I'—forced himself to breathe slowly. Panic meant death. The instructors had made that clear.
He assessed his situation. The arena contained improvised weapons—pipes, chains, sharpened metal. No guns. This was meant to be personal.
Footsteps approached his hiding spot. Another child, larger and more aggressive than most, wielding a length of chain.
The boy who would become 'I' didn't hesitate. Hesitation meant death.
He struck first.
In Arena B, a different kind of battle was taking place.
The boy who would become 'B' was larger than most of the others, stronger, more naturally aggressive. He moved through the arena like a force of nature, not because he wanted to, but because survival demanded it.
Each time he was forced to hurt another child, something inside him broke a little more. But he kept moving, kept fighting, because stopping meant dying.
And something primal in him refused to die.
Hours passed. The number of children in each arena dwindled. Some died quickly. Others hid for as long as they could before being found. A few formed temporary alliances that inevitably dissolved into betrayal.
By the time the sun set on that terrible day—though none of the children could see the sun from their underground prison—each arena had its survivor.
Twenty-six children. One from each arena.
The survivors were extracted from their arenas and brought to a medical facility within the complex. Most were injured. All were traumatized, though they'd been conditioned not to show it.
They were cleaned, treated for their wounds, and fed. Then they were brought to a room where a man in a white lab coat waited.
The Doctor.
He was younger then, perhaps in his early twenties, but his eyes already held that same clinical detachment that would characterize him for years to come.
"Congratulations," he said, addressing the twenty-six children who stood before him in a line. "You've proven yourselves worthy of the next phase."
One by one, he tattooed them.
The child from Arena A—the strongest, the one who had dominated his arena from start to finish—received the letter 'A' on his shoulder.
The child from Arena B—second strongest, the one who had shown the most raw physical power—received 'B'.
Down the line it went, each letter representing their assessed strength and potential. 'A' for the strongest. 'Z' for the weakest.
When The Doctor reached the child from Arena I, he studied him for a moment.
"You won through intelligence rather than strength," The Doctor observed. "Interesting. You'll be 'I'."
The tattoo burned as it was applied, but the child didn't cry out. Showing weakness was dangerous.
After the tattooing, the children were taken to an operating theater—a large, sterile room with twenty-six tables arranged in rows.
"Lie down," The Doctor instructed.
They obeyed. What choice did they have?
The Doctor moved between the tables with a team of assistants, each carrying syringes filled with a luminescent liquid that seemed to glow with its own inner light.
"What you're about to receive," The Doctor explained as he worked, "is the culmination of decades of research into vital energy manipulation. We've developed a serum that will make you Vitra-familiar with specific objects or concepts. Instead of spending years learning to create something through Vitra mastery, this injection will give you that knowledge instantly. You'll still need to master control, but the foundation will be there from the beginning."
He stopped at the child marked 'I' and held up a syringe.
"For you, we've chosen enhancement. Not of strength or durability—those are crude applications. No, you'll be able to enhance the quality and function of your body parts themselves. Your senses, your organs, your brain. You'll be able to improve how well they work, not just how much force they can withstand."
The needle pierced skin.
The child gasped as liquid fire entered his veins.
Within minutes, chaos erupted.
The children began manifesting abilities they shouldn't have been able to access. Objects appeared from nowhere—weapons, tools, constructs of pure energy. Some children created things successfully. Others lost control, their creations unstable and dangerous.
A girl marked 'K' screamed as crystalline structures erupted from her skin uncontrollably. A boy marked 'M' accidentally created a toxic gas that had to be quickly vented before it killed everyone in the room.
The Doctor and his team moved quickly, sedating the children who couldn't control their new abilities, stabilizing those who were injuring themselves, documenting everything with cold scientific precision.
Child 'I' lay on his table, feeling something fundamental change in his body. He could sense his own organs now, could feel his heart beating, his lungs expanding, his brain processing information. And somehow, he knew how to make them work better.
Child 'B', two tables away, was screaming. Not from pain—though there was pain—but from the sensation of his cells multiplying at impossible speeds, dying and being reborn in an endless cycle.
"Fascinating," The Doctor murmured, making notes. "The regeneration is more aggressive than predicted."
Over the following three years, the children were subjected to individualized experimental protocols designed to push their new abilities to their limits.
Child 'I' was introduced to electricity.
They started small—mild shocks, barely uncomfortable. But gradually, the voltage increased. The goal was to enhance his body's resistance, to improve the quality of his cells until they could withstand electrical current that would kill a normal person.
He was strapped into a chair. Electrodes attached to his skin. Then the power would flow, and he would scream, and The Doctor would take notes.
"Enhance your heart," The Doctor would instruct during these sessions. "Make it stronger. Better. If you don't, the electricity will stop it, and you'll die. Enhance your brain. If you don't, the current will scramble your neural pathways, and you'll be a vegetable. Enhance your cells. Make them resilient. Adapt or perish."
Child 'I' learned. Day by day, shock by shock, he learned to use his ability not just to survive, but to excel. His senses became sharper. His mind processed information faster. His organs functioned at levels that shouldn't have been human.
Child 'B' had a different hell.
His ability to create cells automatically—to regenerate from any injury—was tested in the most brutal way The Doctor could devise.
They called it the Fire Room.
'B' would be placed in a chamber where flames would burn his skin, his flesh, his body. And he would heal. His cells would regenerate automatically, faster and faster as his ability developed. But regeneration wasn't instantaneous. There was always a moment—seconds, sometimes longer—where the pain was absolute.
And they kept him in that room for hours.
"Your regeneration must become faster," The Doctor explained clinically. "Right now, you heal in seconds. We need milliseconds. The fire will teach your body to create cells simultaneously with destruction. Pain is just a signal. Learn to ignore it."
But pain wasn't just a signal when it was constant, when it was everything, when there was no escape from it except unconsciousness—and they wouldn't let him be unconscious.
Child 'B' learned to hate. To rage. But also to endure.
**Three Years After the Selection.**
The facility had become routine. Wake up. Eat. Experiment. Sleep. Repeat.
The children—now eight years old—had been so thoroughly broken and rebuilt that they no longer questioned. They simply existed, surviving one day at a time.
Child 'I' could now withstand electrical currents that would power a small building. His enhanced brain could process information at superhuman speeds. His senses could detect things no normal human could perceive.
Child 'B' could regenerate from injuries that should be fatal. Fire no longer scared him—he'd been burned so many times that his body treated it as routine. He could create thousands of cells per second now, maintaining his body even under constant damage.
They were eight years old, and they were weapons.
And then, on an otherwise ordinary night, everything changed.
Explosions rocked the facility.
Not from inside—from outside. Someone had breached the perimeter.
Alarms blared. Security personnel mobilized. The Doctor's calm voice came over the intercom, ordering all children to remain in their cells.
But Child 'I', strapped into his electric chair for another routine session, heard something else. The explosion had damaged the power grid. The lights flickered.
And the electricity flowing through his chair stuttered, died for just a moment.
That moment was enough.
His enhanced brain processed the situation in microseconds. His enhanced muscles, improved for function rather than raw strength, allowed him to break the restraints that had been designed for normal eight-year-olds, not for enhanced ones.
He escaped the chair.
In the chaos of the breach, with security focused on the intruder, no one noticed one small boy slipping through corridors he'd memorized over three years of captivity.
Child 'I' made his way toward the facility's edge, following emergency exit routes he'd observed during his training. He could hear fighting somewhere in the complex—gunfire, shouts, explosions.
Someone was attacking the facility from inside now. Someone who seemed to know where to strike for maximum damage.
'I' didn't care about the intruder's goals. He just wanted out.
He reached the parameter fence and was about to climb it when he smelled something.
Gas.
His enhanced senses detected it immediately—a dangerous concentration, leaking from damaged pipes. The explosions must have ruptured the facility's gas lines.
He should run. Get away before—
But his eight-year-old coordination failed him. He stumbled, his hand struck a piece of damaged equipment that sparked.
The spark met the gas.
The explosion was massive—a chain reaction that consumed the entire facility. Fire and force that killed everyone inside.
Everyone except Child 'I', who had enhanced his body's durability just enough, who was thrown clear of the blast radius by the shockwave.
Hours passed.
Child 'I' lay in the rubble, consciousness fading in and out. His enhanced healing was working, but slowly.
When he could finally move again, he stood and looked at the destruction.
The facility was gone. Completely. Nothing but smoking rubble and twisted metal.
Everyone was dead.
Or so he thought.
As he stumbled through the wreckage, searching for... he didn't know what... he found something impossible.
A body. Or rather, part of one.
Child 'B'.
Most of him was gone. An arm. Half his torso. One leg completely destroyed. His face barely recognizable. But his chest was moving—slowly, impossibly, he was breathing.
And even more impossibly, he was regenerating.
Not quickly. Not like he'd been trained. This was glacial—cells growing one by one, organs reforming at a pace that would take months or years to restore what had been lost.
But he was alive.
Child 'I' made a decision. He couldn't leave someone from the facility alive. But he also couldn't leave someone dying.
He picked up the half-destroyed body as carefully as he could and began walking.
For months, they wandered.
Child 'I' found abandoned buildings to hide in, stole food when necessary, and watched as Child 'B' slowly, painfully regenerated.
At first, 'B' was barely conscious. Just breathing, healing, existing in a state between life and death.
But gradually, organs reformed. Limbs grew back. Skin covered raw muscle.
The process was horrifying to witness, but 'I' stayed. He didn't know why. Maybe because 'B' was the only other person who understood what they'd been through. Maybe because leaving him felt wrong.
After four months, 'B' could speak.
After six months, he could walk.
After eight months, he was whole again.
They didn't talk about the facility. Not then. Not for years afterward. The memories were too fresh, too painful.
They just survived, together.
Two children with no names, no identity, no past except torture.
Child 'I', who would become Itachi.
Child 'B', who would become Beto.
While Itachi and Beto stumbled through the wreckage above, a very different scene played out in the facility's underground levels.
The intruder—a boy, no more than eight years old himself—had fought his way through security with nothing but explosives and desperate courage. He'd studied the facility's layout somehow, had planned his attack with surprising sophistication for a child.
He'd reached the lowest level, where The Doctor's personal laboratory was located.
And there, he confronted the man himself.
"You killed my family," the boy said, his voice shaking with rage and fear.
The Doctor looked up from his notes, adjusting his glasses. "I've killed a lot of people's families. You'll need to be more specific."
The boy charged with a scream.
The fight was brief and brutal. The Doctor, despite being a scientist, had been trained in combat. The boy, despite his courage and planning, was still just a child with no real fighting experience.
Within seconds, the boy was on the ground, The Doctor's foot on his chest, a scalpel positioned over his throat.
"Brave," The Doctor acknowledged. "But foolish. Now, who are you, and how did you find this place?"
Before the boy could answer—or before The Doctor could kill him—a voice interrupted from the laboratory entrance.
"Stop."
A man stood in the doorway, tall and powerful, with an presence that commanded immediate attention.
Marcus Reid. The Number One adventurer. Pride.
"Marcus," The Doctor said, not moving his foot from the boy's chest. "This doesn't concern you."
"That's my child," Marcus said calmly. "Remove your foot."
The Doctor's eyes narrowed. "Your child? I don't recall you having any—"
"I'm claiming him," Marcus interrupted. "Right now. That boy is under my protection as of this moment. Touch him, and you'll answer to me."
For a long moment, The Doctor considered. Marcus Reid was one of the few people in the world who could actually threaten him. Not because of combat ability—though Marcus certainly had that—but because of political power. As Pride, as the Number One adventurer, Marcus could cause problems that even The Doctor's organization couldn't easily handle.
"Fine," The Doctor said finally, stepping back. "But I want it documented that I'm giving him to you. If he becomes a problem, it's your responsibility."
"Agreed."
Marcus scooped up the unconscious boy—the explosion and fighting had been too much for his small body—and left the underground laboratory.
Behind them, The Doctor returned to his notes, already planning how to rebuild his facility.
The explosion had destroyed his research, killed his subjects. But he still had his knowledge. He could start again.
And he made a mental note about two particular subjects: Child 'I' and Child 'B', whose bodies hadn't been found in the wreckage.
They were out there somewhere.
He would find them eventually.
Marcus took the unconscious boy—who he would introduce to others as Laurel—to a small house where a woman and another boy were waiting.
"I've brought Laurel back," Marcus told the woman, who had agreed to help despite not understanding the full situation. "He should always be at your sight from now on."
The woman—Nelson's aunt—looked at the battered, unconscious child and her heart broke. "What happened to him?"
"Things no child should experience," Marcus replied. "But he's safe now. Take care of him. Raise him like he's family."
When Laurel woke days later, he remembered very little of the underground confrontation. The trauma, the exhaustion, the head injury he'd sustained—it had all created gaps in his memory.
He remembered his family dying. He remembered investigating, finding clues that led to the facility. He remembered explosions and fighting.
And he remembered a powerful man appearing like a hero, saving him from certain death, bringing him to safety.
Marcus became, in Laurel's fractured memories, the man who had rescued him. A savior. Someone to aspire to be.
He didn't remember The Doctor's face clearly. The underground laboratory was hazy, dreamlike in his recollection.
He grew up in that house with Nelson and his aunt, never knowing that the man he saw as a hero was actually part of the same organization that had killed his family.
Never knowing that the friendly doctor who had treated Stephanie years later was the same Doctor who had stood over him with a scalpel, ready to kill.
Some memories stayed buried. Some truths remained hidden.
Until years later, when a heist in La Vendetta brought everything crashing back.