Prologue

A tall man and a shorter man stood before a wide window. Upon this window spread an electronic control panel; decorated with a vast number of buttons, switches, dials, and screens. The tall man turned and called to the assistants over his shoulder; "Are we set to go? I do not want this project delayed any longer."
The short man, with large round glasses and graying hair frizzled from the heat, laid a callused hand upon the other man’s forearm. “Are you sure that this is a good idea?”
The first man shrugged him off, nonchalant. “If I succeed," he said with fervor, "No, when I succeed, I will become the most rich and powerful man in the entire world.”
The bespectacled man stepped back, as if stung. A woman with black hair tied back into a sharp bun stood by the far wall, monitoring a screen. She shouted “All clear!”, and the tall man reached forward again. The switch flipped up.
The smoke inside the interior room spun rapidly, like many miniature tornados. Light streamed from a large cylindrical tube mounted in the center, so blindingly bright that most of the people turned away or covered their eyes. The two men in front, however, both squinted into the room: a dark mass began to form inside the bright glass cylinder, and little by little it grew larger and took on a more defined shape, like a plant growing in mere seconds. The figure inside the chamber twisted about, taking on a vaguely human-like shape. Arms grew and sprouted fingers, legs shot out and formed feet. Long hair spun out of the head and fanned out in the bright liquid encasing it. For a brief moment the creation hovered in the tube, but seconds later it writhed as if in pain, and the form began to looks less human. A thick tail was suddenly shooting out from the back; the legs elongated, bending with two joints. Finally, the neck stretched out unnaturally long, and the human face protruded out into a fanged, reptilian-shaped head.
The tall man laughed, his arms outstretched beside him as he beheld the monster; his creation. The monster, still growing in size, fell against the side of the container, its weight shattering the glass and sending the tiny glowing shards flying inside the sealed room. Several people in the crowd jumped or screamed, and the blinding light died away and the liquid from the tube evaporated upon contact with the air. The room was immediately plunged into darkness, smoke still blackening the sole window.
From inside the darkness, the beast roared: a terrible, shrieking roar. The short man stood with his mouth ajar, and as he watched the other man laugh with ecstasy at his creation, he wondered what on earth he had gotten himself into.