Post by Sinister on Sept 11, 2006 16:26:49 GMT -5
Name: Nathaniel Essex
Codename(s): Sinister
Affiliation: Independent Mutant
Age: 171
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 180lbs
Hair Colour: Black
Eye Colour: Red
Appearance:
Nathaniel Essex is a tall, athletic man, neither heavily muscled nor emaciated. He appears to be in his mid-thirties but has seemed that way for over a century now. He keeps himself well groomed, hair short and tidy and either clean shaven or with a carefully trimmed beard and moustache that shows off his jaw line. He is almost always found clad in a well tailored suit or perfectly white lab coat. Somehow it is ALWAYS perfectly white. At face value he is not an unattractive man. At face value. Those that would look a little closer would notice that his smile is a little TOO perfect and it never reaches his eyes. Pretty brown eyes that take everything they see and give nothing back, eyes that hold not even the faintest glimmer of warmth, eyes that look right through you.
That is how Nathaniel Essex looked before his mutation and that his how he chooses to appear in public. In his true form his flesh is silvery white and his eyes are flat, red portals that hold even less warmth than his human eyes. His perfect, straight teeth are pointed and razor sharp like those of a shark, lending his joyless smile and even more horrifying edge. He looks, for want of a better description, sinister.
Personality:
Nathaniel Essex is a perfect gentleman. He was raised in Victorian England and learned all of his social graces and proper way of speaking during those early days. He holds the door for a lady, will not begin eating until everybody at is ready and will always ask to be excused from the table. If advances in drainage had not improved the state of the roads he would almost certainly cover a puddle with his coat to allow a woman to cross with her shoes unsoiled. He is charming, witty and intelligent. He is both learned and travelled and could readily converse on a broad range of topics. Very rarely does Nathan lose his temper; he has had decades to develop an almost superhuman level of patience. He smiles easily and often and is generous almost to a fault.
One only needs to take a closer look to see past the mask he wears however. He laughs because it is polite. He smiles because it is expected. He eats for the sake of appearance. All of it is a sham. That ready smile is the sort that scares children, not sets them at ease and his eyes hold all the warmth of a polar winter. When he is not working in his laboratory he is thinking about working in his laboratory. He might make polite conversation on the surface, but underneath his mind is recombining DNA strings.
Powers and Abilities:
Sinister's first and most terrifying power is perfect control of his own body and biology at a cellular level. Every part of him is, quite literally, self aware. In practical terms this means that it is almost impossible for him to die. He can repair broken bones, restore lost limbs and even replace destroyed organs in a matter of hours. It is even possible for him to rebuild his entire body from the genetic information stored in a single cell, though the process would take much, much longer.
A side effect of this cellular control means that he is able to change his shape into that of another human if so desired, though the process is nothing as refined as the likes of Mystique. He must carefully modify his bodily structure, usually over a course of days depending on the severity of the change. To simply change the pigmentation of his skin for example would only take about twelve hours, where as to completely change his sex or facial features could take upwards of four days. Though lengthy, the process does allow the otherwise obviously mutant Nathaniel Essex to pass unnoticed through the rest of humanity.
A further effect of his unique biology is the frightening level of adaptation with regards to harm. Quite simply; his body learns. Once a weapon, power or mutation has been inflicted on him once, his body is able to adapt itself to counter further instances of that mutation, though again the process is a lengthy one. Like an immune system learning to fend off different diseases his body remembers attacks it has suffered and reacts accordingly.
Finally, the cellular control of his body has allowed Sinister to access the parts of his brain that a normal human does not use and has discovered the power of telepathy that lies dormant there. The power is by no means great, simply allowing him to convey words, wishes and thoughts into the mind of a desired target, but it has proven useful on more than one occasion.
Weaknesses:
While Sinister is as close to physically perfect as it is possible to be, mentally he leaves a lot to be desired. To put it simply he is mad. There is a belief that the human mind is not designed to endure and if ever there was a case to prove the point, Nathaniel Essex is it. He is an obsessive to a degree that normal humans could not begin to comprehend.
The drive for genetic perfection is an absolute and all consuming goal and he will do whatever it takes to see his dream realised. His loyalty will only ever last as long as someone continues to be useful. When that period comes to an end he will sacrifice them, or worse use them as his next experiment without a second thought. He is alone in the world and unless his research ever succeeds he always will be; a lonely immortal who will never know the simple warmth of another’s affection.
History:
Nathaniel Essex was born in London in 1835. His mother and father, the lord and lady Essex of Kensington had never actually desired a child but the Lord Essex needed a son to continue the family name and inherit the ancestral home and fortune. While not vastly wealthy, the Essex family were comfortably well off by Victorian standards and had a comfortable estate and grounds on the outskirts of London. It was on this estate the young Nathan spent most of his early years. He was raised as any fledgling member of the gentry and was educated by a series of nurses and then, as he grew older, tutors who schooled him in the finer points of etiquette and manners. Young gentlemen were expected to know how to address their betters and dine among the high and mighty before their tenth birthday was due.
Nathan took to his lessons as expected in an effort to impress his always aloof parents who took only a passing interest in the development of their son. As long as he spoke only when spoken too and listened the rest of the time they were well satisfied. When he was eleven his parents moved their young son on to the next stage of his education; arts, crafts and the sciences of the world. He was never expected to actually take up any of the more exotic (and by Victorian standards the sciences were still considered exotic) lessons, simply learn the important aspects of business management, the life-blood that kept the Essex coffers full.
Things did not go quite as the lord and Lady Essex planned. Their son found the subject of science and particularly biology fascinating. The boy took to the lessons with a veracity that delighted his elderly tutor and the pair often spent long hours together dissecting frogs (much to the young mans delight) and sheep’s eyeballs. Though the Lord and Lady did not approve of their sons new found fascination he was a quick study for all of his subjects, so they had little cause for complaint and besides, the Lord Essex often observed, all boys go through a period of slightly morbid fascination with gore.
Two years later his father enrolled him in the prestigious Eton boarding school. It was the young Nathaniel Essex’s' first real taste of freedom. Sure, the rest of the kids there were the stuck up brats from the various levels of nobility, but Nathan mostly paid them and their games no attention. Here was a place with books and labs and tutors who could tell him more than just basic anatomy. None of his tutors could have complained of his diligence, in particular, his science professors often commented on how swiftly he studied and how voraciously. They worried a little about his social tendencies, always preferring his own company over that of other students, but he never once complained or even bore any marks of bullying. There was something indefinably creepy about the young Nathaniel Essex, something that kept potential trouble at bay.
Shortly after his eighteenth birthday he left Eton to start his way in the world. The Lord and Lady Essex welcomed their son home with an uncertainty that spoke volumes; he was not turning out the way they had envisioned at all. They had hoped for a son that would manage the family estate as his father had before him, marry and continue the family name. What they got was a highly intelligent, aloof, biologist. After two unsuccessful attempts to find him a bride (and more than a few extended rows) the Lord and Lady Essex decided it would be best for things to take their course naturally. They convinced themselves that their son was simply a late bloomer, one of those intellectual boys that would be caught up in his work right up until the right girl slapped him in the face. For all the years they lived they never saw it happen. It may be a small comfort to their restless souls that Nathaniel Essex has continued the family name, though perhaps not in the way they intended.
At twenty he finally tired of his parents interminable nagging about wives and children and propriety and went to work for one Professor McGile at the British Science Museum of London. The pair were a perfect match. Long nights were spent in debate, usually on the subject of Darwin’s theory of evolution, something that had fascinated the young Nathaniel during his Eton years. He couldn't help but think that nature worked too slowly. The human body was far from perfect, why wait for thousands of years for it to iron out the problems if they could be ironed out in a few decades, or even a few years?
At twenty three his mutation manifested and he became his own image of perfection.
The experience was both disturbing and utterly fascinating for the young man, to wake up one morning and be completely aware of every single part of ones own body. Nathaniel Essex had studied anatomy extensively in the many dead creatures he had dissected in the course of his studies, but now he had the opportunity to study the human body at work in a living subject, even if that subject was himself. It was through this study of his own cells, indeed his own genetic make-up that lead him to believe that he was the next stage in human evolution and that more like him would soon emerge; people superior to homo-sapiens, people that would lead the world forward into a new, golden age of enlightenment.
He penned a paper on the human genetic structure, a paper way ahead of its time and presented it to the British Academy of Science. He lectured on how his studies had revealed the flawed nature of the human genetic make-up, he told them of his theories of genetic mutation and he explained his beliefs that the next step in human evolution was closer than anybody believed, that even now people were being born with what he dubbed the Essex-gene that would mark them as the future.
He was laughed out of the building.
Professor McGile never spoke to him again. As far as he was concerned the young Nathaniel Essex had committed professional suicide. Nobody took his wild theories seriously and those that did were treated with as much contempt. Lord and Lady Essex shook their heads and prepared to accept their wayward son back into the fold in the mistaken belief that he had finally seen the error of his ways. He had not, to Nathaniel Essex, there was no greater pursuit than that of perfection, and if the ignorant scientists of London would not see it, then he would find those that would. He left the country and travelled the world in search of those like him, those that had the elusive Essex-gene that would understand what it was he was trying to do. He did not return to London for nearly twenty years.
When he did finally return to the land of his birth, Nathaniel Essex was a different man. In his travels across the world he found no more than a dozen individuals that carried the elusive Essex-gene. A dozen blood samples out of the thousands he had taken. He also returned with a wife, Belinda. He returned too late for his parents to see their son married however, both having passed on while he was away. Nathan gave them not a second thought; the house and fortune had been left to him and he quickly set about converting the old manor into a laboratory to further his studies. None of the former staff stayed on.
Already they whispered amongst themselves that there was something peculiar about the new Lord Essex, something not quite right, something sinister. Perhaps it was the ice in his eyes, or the way his smile had entirely too many teeth, or the way he seemed to have aged so little over the years.
He spent that next ten years examining and refining the genetic samples that he had taken in an effort to isolate the gene that triggered the evolutionary jump and whether or not it could be introduced into a normal, adult human to trigger the mutation process. The whole time Belinda stood dutifully by his side. Members of the gentry observed, rather unkindly, that a man as eccentric and distant as Essex did not deserve a faithful wife such as Belinda, but whatever the bond was between the pair it was stronger than all would have believed. When she was diagnosed with tuberculosis Nathaniel finally found something more important than his genetic research to occupy his time. He worked tirelessly to develop a cure.
He succeeded two days too late.
It is quite possible that it was the death of his wife that drove Nathanial Essex over the edge of obsession into the depths of true madness. It is equally possible that he had always been unhinged to some degree and that the timing was pure coincidence.
Whatever the ultimate cause, Lord Essex finally grew weary of the slow, traditional methods of research and embarked on a more radical line of investigation. He had all but exhausted the twelve samples originally collected and in 1888 he set about collecting more. This time the investigation was much closer to home. Not content with simple blood samples this time Essex harvested all the mutant tissues he could gather from those bearing the Essex-gene. Even if those tissues were still attached to their owners.
It was from this period that the legend of Jack the Ripper was born.
Then Nathaniel Essex disappeared.
Money still flowed into the bank from the Essex family investments but the manor fell into disrepair. No search was ever carried out for the Lord Essex; the man was known to have travelled extensively and if he had left the country again he was as good as vanished.
He wasn't missed.
Time moved on and the world forgot the name of Nathaniel Essex except as a foot-note in the records of London history. Over the decades a man bearing a striking resemblance to the young Lord Essex surfaced from time to time, but none still lived to remember his face even if they had cared. In 1916 he appeared working as a doctor in a British field hospital for wounded soldiers, coming in off the front line.
In 1942 he surfaced once again working in Auschwitz as a medical examiner. Always he found his way to sites where research material was abundant, and the common rules of decency were suspended. Still time moved on, and mutants started to become more prolific exactly as Nathan had predicted they would almost a century ago. They hid among society and kept themselves to themselves, but Lord Essex knew what to look for and how to find them.
1974 found a Doctor Essex working in a health clinic in suburban New York. Mutants were now more prolific than ever but the public awareness was still low. The practise allowed him easy access to genetic material a blood samples of people he suspected to be mutants to further his research. It was here that he was almost discovered by a psychic mutant and was forced to flee the practise and once again go into hiding.
Thus it was that when a brilliant geneticist by the name of Kavita Rao joined the prestigious Worthington Labs as their chief researcher none were ever the wiser. By now mutants were in the public eye and fear and mistrust was at a record high. Warren Worthington sought a way to end that fear with a cure for mutation. A cure he left in the capable hands of one Kavita Rao to develop. The Alcatraz incident marked the end of Worthington, the end of corporate funding and the end of Kavita Rao, who Essex decided had outlived her usefulness as an identity. He was once again reborn, this time with his own face, as Doctor Neil Essex. There were other companies, ambitious companies that would fund him and his research while he tinkered with their little projects. Companies like NovaTeX.
Sample post:
Patrick huddled in the corner of his cell shivering. It was dark, but that didn't mean anything; surrounded by the cold concrete walls day and night ceased to have any meaning. The electric lighting seemed to go on and off of its own accord, never sticking to any sort of regular pattern. He hadn't slept in days. He couldn't sleep, every time he tried the dreams returned to haunt him, dreams that would have him awake, drenched in cold sweat and screaming like a banshee.
He didn't understand why he was here. He didn't even know where 'here' was.
Patrick HAD come to understand that he was a mutant, one of those people he'd seen on the news with the weird powers. As far as he could tell his powers extended to nothing more heightened senses and enhanced strength, dexterity and stamina. If he'd had something useful, like blasts of energy he would have been out of here long ago. He would have said days ago, but he had no idea how long he had been here.
It felt like a life-time.
He'd only gone to the doctors for something to help him sleep and then it all became a blur.
There was a metallic clang from down the corridor outside, the sound of a barred door opening.
Patrick held his breath, listening intently for any approaching footsteps.
Click, clack, click, clack, click, clack.
The sound of hard shoes on the green painted concrete floor. He knew those shoes were black and polished to a glossy shine, knew that they were Gucci and knew exactly who was wearing them.
Patrick whimpered. He could already feel the terror bubbling up inside him and knew that it wouldn't do him any good. The man, if that's what he was, didn't pay any attention to his pleading, shouting or any other reaction for that matter.
"Mmmmhmmmm ... mmmmhmmmm hmmmm ... "
Blue Danube. The man hummed the tune as if he was walking down the street to work, not down a corridor lined with little grey holding cells.
The humming and the click, clack of shoes drew closer. Patrick could feel the prickle of tears behind his eyes already. He didn't want to cry, didn't want to show the man his fear, knew that it wouldn't do any good. The man would shush him and comfort him like a parent with a hurt child and go right ahead with his needles and his tests anyway.
The footsteps stopped. Patrick as sure his heart stopped too.
Then there was the sound of locks sliding and bolts drawing back. Then the door opened.
Patrick sobbed as the man was revealed, his form silhouetted by the lighting from outside and framed by the doorway like the cover of some cheesy horror novel.
"Good morning subject 52, I trust you are well today?" The man asked in genially.
Patrick mumbled something incoherent and a tear slid down his cheek.
"Oh, ssshhhh now," The man said gently and he moved to squat next to the huddling prisoner.
"Bad dreams again?" He said with a sympathetic smile.
In all twenty two years of his life Patrick had never seen a smile that was quite as unnerving as the one possessed by his captor. It was the sort of smile he suspected divers saw right before the shark attacked. The sort of smile that made children cry and dogs bark, the sort of smile that was full of promise and devoid of warmth.
Patrick started to cry in earnest, his shoulders heaving with great wracking sobs.
"Oh come now," the man said and put a comforting arm around him. His other hand reached inside the long white coat and drew out a large hypodermic needle filled with a milky looking liquid.
The scream echoed far down the corridor, the sound reverberating through the concrete and metal that lined the walls of the dreary place.
But there was nobody to hear it.
Player Info: It's Ben again.
Codename(s): Sinister
Affiliation: Independent Mutant
Age: 171
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 180lbs
Hair Colour: Black
Eye Colour: Red
Appearance:
Nathaniel Essex is a tall, athletic man, neither heavily muscled nor emaciated. He appears to be in his mid-thirties but has seemed that way for over a century now. He keeps himself well groomed, hair short and tidy and either clean shaven or with a carefully trimmed beard and moustache that shows off his jaw line. He is almost always found clad in a well tailored suit or perfectly white lab coat. Somehow it is ALWAYS perfectly white. At face value he is not an unattractive man. At face value. Those that would look a little closer would notice that his smile is a little TOO perfect and it never reaches his eyes. Pretty brown eyes that take everything they see and give nothing back, eyes that hold not even the faintest glimmer of warmth, eyes that look right through you.
That is how Nathaniel Essex looked before his mutation and that his how he chooses to appear in public. In his true form his flesh is silvery white and his eyes are flat, red portals that hold even less warmth than his human eyes. His perfect, straight teeth are pointed and razor sharp like those of a shark, lending his joyless smile and even more horrifying edge. He looks, for want of a better description, sinister.
Personality:
Nathaniel Essex is a perfect gentleman. He was raised in Victorian England and learned all of his social graces and proper way of speaking during those early days. He holds the door for a lady, will not begin eating until everybody at is ready and will always ask to be excused from the table. If advances in drainage had not improved the state of the roads he would almost certainly cover a puddle with his coat to allow a woman to cross with her shoes unsoiled. He is charming, witty and intelligent. He is both learned and travelled and could readily converse on a broad range of topics. Very rarely does Nathan lose his temper; he has had decades to develop an almost superhuman level of patience. He smiles easily and often and is generous almost to a fault.
One only needs to take a closer look to see past the mask he wears however. He laughs because it is polite. He smiles because it is expected. He eats for the sake of appearance. All of it is a sham. That ready smile is the sort that scares children, not sets them at ease and his eyes hold all the warmth of a polar winter. When he is not working in his laboratory he is thinking about working in his laboratory. He might make polite conversation on the surface, but underneath his mind is recombining DNA strings.
Powers and Abilities:
Sinister's first and most terrifying power is perfect control of his own body and biology at a cellular level. Every part of him is, quite literally, self aware. In practical terms this means that it is almost impossible for him to die. He can repair broken bones, restore lost limbs and even replace destroyed organs in a matter of hours. It is even possible for him to rebuild his entire body from the genetic information stored in a single cell, though the process would take much, much longer.
A side effect of this cellular control means that he is able to change his shape into that of another human if so desired, though the process is nothing as refined as the likes of Mystique. He must carefully modify his bodily structure, usually over a course of days depending on the severity of the change. To simply change the pigmentation of his skin for example would only take about twelve hours, where as to completely change his sex or facial features could take upwards of four days. Though lengthy, the process does allow the otherwise obviously mutant Nathaniel Essex to pass unnoticed through the rest of humanity.
A further effect of his unique biology is the frightening level of adaptation with regards to harm. Quite simply; his body learns. Once a weapon, power or mutation has been inflicted on him once, his body is able to adapt itself to counter further instances of that mutation, though again the process is a lengthy one. Like an immune system learning to fend off different diseases his body remembers attacks it has suffered and reacts accordingly.
Finally, the cellular control of his body has allowed Sinister to access the parts of his brain that a normal human does not use and has discovered the power of telepathy that lies dormant there. The power is by no means great, simply allowing him to convey words, wishes and thoughts into the mind of a desired target, but it has proven useful on more than one occasion.
Weaknesses:
While Sinister is as close to physically perfect as it is possible to be, mentally he leaves a lot to be desired. To put it simply he is mad. There is a belief that the human mind is not designed to endure and if ever there was a case to prove the point, Nathaniel Essex is it. He is an obsessive to a degree that normal humans could not begin to comprehend.
The drive for genetic perfection is an absolute and all consuming goal and he will do whatever it takes to see his dream realised. His loyalty will only ever last as long as someone continues to be useful. When that period comes to an end he will sacrifice them, or worse use them as his next experiment without a second thought. He is alone in the world and unless his research ever succeeds he always will be; a lonely immortal who will never know the simple warmth of another’s affection.
History:
Nathaniel Essex was born in London in 1835. His mother and father, the lord and lady Essex of Kensington had never actually desired a child but the Lord Essex needed a son to continue the family name and inherit the ancestral home and fortune. While not vastly wealthy, the Essex family were comfortably well off by Victorian standards and had a comfortable estate and grounds on the outskirts of London. It was on this estate the young Nathan spent most of his early years. He was raised as any fledgling member of the gentry and was educated by a series of nurses and then, as he grew older, tutors who schooled him in the finer points of etiquette and manners. Young gentlemen were expected to know how to address their betters and dine among the high and mighty before their tenth birthday was due.
Nathan took to his lessons as expected in an effort to impress his always aloof parents who took only a passing interest in the development of their son. As long as he spoke only when spoken too and listened the rest of the time they were well satisfied. When he was eleven his parents moved their young son on to the next stage of his education; arts, crafts and the sciences of the world. He was never expected to actually take up any of the more exotic (and by Victorian standards the sciences were still considered exotic) lessons, simply learn the important aspects of business management, the life-blood that kept the Essex coffers full.
Things did not go quite as the lord and Lady Essex planned. Their son found the subject of science and particularly biology fascinating. The boy took to the lessons with a veracity that delighted his elderly tutor and the pair often spent long hours together dissecting frogs (much to the young mans delight) and sheep’s eyeballs. Though the Lord and Lady did not approve of their sons new found fascination he was a quick study for all of his subjects, so they had little cause for complaint and besides, the Lord Essex often observed, all boys go through a period of slightly morbid fascination with gore.
Two years later his father enrolled him in the prestigious Eton boarding school. It was the young Nathaniel Essex’s' first real taste of freedom. Sure, the rest of the kids there were the stuck up brats from the various levels of nobility, but Nathan mostly paid them and their games no attention. Here was a place with books and labs and tutors who could tell him more than just basic anatomy. None of his tutors could have complained of his diligence, in particular, his science professors often commented on how swiftly he studied and how voraciously. They worried a little about his social tendencies, always preferring his own company over that of other students, but he never once complained or even bore any marks of bullying. There was something indefinably creepy about the young Nathaniel Essex, something that kept potential trouble at bay.
Shortly after his eighteenth birthday he left Eton to start his way in the world. The Lord and Lady Essex welcomed their son home with an uncertainty that spoke volumes; he was not turning out the way they had envisioned at all. They had hoped for a son that would manage the family estate as his father had before him, marry and continue the family name. What they got was a highly intelligent, aloof, biologist. After two unsuccessful attempts to find him a bride (and more than a few extended rows) the Lord and Lady Essex decided it would be best for things to take their course naturally. They convinced themselves that their son was simply a late bloomer, one of those intellectual boys that would be caught up in his work right up until the right girl slapped him in the face. For all the years they lived they never saw it happen. It may be a small comfort to their restless souls that Nathaniel Essex has continued the family name, though perhaps not in the way they intended.
At twenty he finally tired of his parents interminable nagging about wives and children and propriety and went to work for one Professor McGile at the British Science Museum of London. The pair were a perfect match. Long nights were spent in debate, usually on the subject of Darwin’s theory of evolution, something that had fascinated the young Nathaniel during his Eton years. He couldn't help but think that nature worked too slowly. The human body was far from perfect, why wait for thousands of years for it to iron out the problems if they could be ironed out in a few decades, or even a few years?
At twenty three his mutation manifested and he became his own image of perfection.
The experience was both disturbing and utterly fascinating for the young man, to wake up one morning and be completely aware of every single part of ones own body. Nathaniel Essex had studied anatomy extensively in the many dead creatures he had dissected in the course of his studies, but now he had the opportunity to study the human body at work in a living subject, even if that subject was himself. It was through this study of his own cells, indeed his own genetic make-up that lead him to believe that he was the next stage in human evolution and that more like him would soon emerge; people superior to homo-sapiens, people that would lead the world forward into a new, golden age of enlightenment.
He penned a paper on the human genetic structure, a paper way ahead of its time and presented it to the British Academy of Science. He lectured on how his studies had revealed the flawed nature of the human genetic make-up, he told them of his theories of genetic mutation and he explained his beliefs that the next step in human evolution was closer than anybody believed, that even now people were being born with what he dubbed the Essex-gene that would mark them as the future.
He was laughed out of the building.
Professor McGile never spoke to him again. As far as he was concerned the young Nathaniel Essex had committed professional suicide. Nobody took his wild theories seriously and those that did were treated with as much contempt. Lord and Lady Essex shook their heads and prepared to accept their wayward son back into the fold in the mistaken belief that he had finally seen the error of his ways. He had not, to Nathaniel Essex, there was no greater pursuit than that of perfection, and if the ignorant scientists of London would not see it, then he would find those that would. He left the country and travelled the world in search of those like him, those that had the elusive Essex-gene that would understand what it was he was trying to do. He did not return to London for nearly twenty years.
When he did finally return to the land of his birth, Nathaniel Essex was a different man. In his travels across the world he found no more than a dozen individuals that carried the elusive Essex-gene. A dozen blood samples out of the thousands he had taken. He also returned with a wife, Belinda. He returned too late for his parents to see their son married however, both having passed on while he was away. Nathan gave them not a second thought; the house and fortune had been left to him and he quickly set about converting the old manor into a laboratory to further his studies. None of the former staff stayed on.
Already they whispered amongst themselves that there was something peculiar about the new Lord Essex, something not quite right, something sinister. Perhaps it was the ice in his eyes, or the way his smile had entirely too many teeth, or the way he seemed to have aged so little over the years.
He spent that next ten years examining and refining the genetic samples that he had taken in an effort to isolate the gene that triggered the evolutionary jump and whether or not it could be introduced into a normal, adult human to trigger the mutation process. The whole time Belinda stood dutifully by his side. Members of the gentry observed, rather unkindly, that a man as eccentric and distant as Essex did not deserve a faithful wife such as Belinda, but whatever the bond was between the pair it was stronger than all would have believed. When she was diagnosed with tuberculosis Nathaniel finally found something more important than his genetic research to occupy his time. He worked tirelessly to develop a cure.
He succeeded two days too late.
It is quite possible that it was the death of his wife that drove Nathanial Essex over the edge of obsession into the depths of true madness. It is equally possible that he had always been unhinged to some degree and that the timing was pure coincidence.
Whatever the ultimate cause, Lord Essex finally grew weary of the slow, traditional methods of research and embarked on a more radical line of investigation. He had all but exhausted the twelve samples originally collected and in 1888 he set about collecting more. This time the investigation was much closer to home. Not content with simple blood samples this time Essex harvested all the mutant tissues he could gather from those bearing the Essex-gene. Even if those tissues were still attached to their owners.
It was from this period that the legend of Jack the Ripper was born.
Then Nathaniel Essex disappeared.
Money still flowed into the bank from the Essex family investments but the manor fell into disrepair. No search was ever carried out for the Lord Essex; the man was known to have travelled extensively and if he had left the country again he was as good as vanished.
He wasn't missed.
Time moved on and the world forgot the name of Nathaniel Essex except as a foot-note in the records of London history. Over the decades a man bearing a striking resemblance to the young Lord Essex surfaced from time to time, but none still lived to remember his face even if they had cared. In 1916 he appeared working as a doctor in a British field hospital for wounded soldiers, coming in off the front line.
In 1942 he surfaced once again working in Auschwitz as a medical examiner. Always he found his way to sites where research material was abundant, and the common rules of decency were suspended. Still time moved on, and mutants started to become more prolific exactly as Nathan had predicted they would almost a century ago. They hid among society and kept themselves to themselves, but Lord Essex knew what to look for and how to find them.
1974 found a Doctor Essex working in a health clinic in suburban New York. Mutants were now more prolific than ever but the public awareness was still low. The practise allowed him easy access to genetic material a blood samples of people he suspected to be mutants to further his research. It was here that he was almost discovered by a psychic mutant and was forced to flee the practise and once again go into hiding.
Thus it was that when a brilliant geneticist by the name of Kavita Rao joined the prestigious Worthington Labs as their chief researcher none were ever the wiser. By now mutants were in the public eye and fear and mistrust was at a record high. Warren Worthington sought a way to end that fear with a cure for mutation. A cure he left in the capable hands of one Kavita Rao to develop. The Alcatraz incident marked the end of Worthington, the end of corporate funding and the end of Kavita Rao, who Essex decided had outlived her usefulness as an identity. He was once again reborn, this time with his own face, as Doctor Neil Essex. There were other companies, ambitious companies that would fund him and his research while he tinkered with their little projects. Companies like NovaTeX.
Sample post:
Patrick huddled in the corner of his cell shivering. It was dark, but that didn't mean anything; surrounded by the cold concrete walls day and night ceased to have any meaning. The electric lighting seemed to go on and off of its own accord, never sticking to any sort of regular pattern. He hadn't slept in days. He couldn't sleep, every time he tried the dreams returned to haunt him, dreams that would have him awake, drenched in cold sweat and screaming like a banshee.
He didn't understand why he was here. He didn't even know where 'here' was.
Patrick HAD come to understand that he was a mutant, one of those people he'd seen on the news with the weird powers. As far as he could tell his powers extended to nothing more heightened senses and enhanced strength, dexterity and stamina. If he'd had something useful, like blasts of energy he would have been out of here long ago. He would have said days ago, but he had no idea how long he had been here.
It felt like a life-time.
He'd only gone to the doctors for something to help him sleep and then it all became a blur.
There was a metallic clang from down the corridor outside, the sound of a barred door opening.
Patrick held his breath, listening intently for any approaching footsteps.
Click, clack, click, clack, click, clack.
The sound of hard shoes on the green painted concrete floor. He knew those shoes were black and polished to a glossy shine, knew that they were Gucci and knew exactly who was wearing them.
Patrick whimpered. He could already feel the terror bubbling up inside him and knew that it wouldn't do him any good. The man, if that's what he was, didn't pay any attention to his pleading, shouting or any other reaction for that matter.
"Mmmmhmmmm ... mmmmhmmmm hmmmm ... "
Blue Danube. The man hummed the tune as if he was walking down the street to work, not down a corridor lined with little grey holding cells.
The humming and the click, clack of shoes drew closer. Patrick could feel the prickle of tears behind his eyes already. He didn't want to cry, didn't want to show the man his fear, knew that it wouldn't do any good. The man would shush him and comfort him like a parent with a hurt child and go right ahead with his needles and his tests anyway.
The footsteps stopped. Patrick as sure his heart stopped too.
Then there was the sound of locks sliding and bolts drawing back. Then the door opened.
Patrick sobbed as the man was revealed, his form silhouetted by the lighting from outside and framed by the doorway like the cover of some cheesy horror novel.
"Good morning subject 52, I trust you are well today?" The man asked in genially.
Patrick mumbled something incoherent and a tear slid down his cheek.
"Oh, ssshhhh now," The man said gently and he moved to squat next to the huddling prisoner.
"Bad dreams again?" He said with a sympathetic smile.
In all twenty two years of his life Patrick had never seen a smile that was quite as unnerving as the one possessed by his captor. It was the sort of smile he suspected divers saw right before the shark attacked. The sort of smile that made children cry and dogs bark, the sort of smile that was full of promise and devoid of warmth.
Patrick started to cry in earnest, his shoulders heaving with great wracking sobs.
"Oh come now," the man said and put a comforting arm around him. His other hand reached inside the long white coat and drew out a large hypodermic needle filled with a milky looking liquid.
The scream echoed far down the corridor, the sound reverberating through the concrete and metal that lined the walls of the dreary place.
But there was nobody to hear it.
Player Info: It's Ben again.
