The Immortals

They say you die twice. Once when your buried in the ground. The second when your name is said for the last time. Ali loved that saying. Most people thought of it as depressing. To Ali it was motivating. His name could outlast him by millions of years, he always strove for greatness. So when he got the call to join a special team of scientist working in the middle of the Amazon jungle, he didn't hesitate to accept. Being from Brazil he was one of the first one's to arrive. The complex was in the middle of the Amazon. Ali found out that most of it was underground. The complex was bigger than any science facility he had ever seen. It was more than he had expected. Initially he had thought it was a small team of scientist funded by someone with money to waste. He had thought to use this opportunity to work alongside some of the greatest minds in this age.



The briefing told them why they were there. They would be split into teams, each working on something different for the company. They would be given everything they needed to complete their projects. Ali and his team were tasked with developing a new stealth material. There team leader had developed a theory in which an invisible material could be created, however it worked only in certain frequencies. Their job was to make it work in the visible light spectrum. If they completed their job, their reward was free use of the facilities and resources for any experiment they wished.



This was the main reason he had accepted, however the idea of actually creating this material was at best unlikely. Ali and his team worked solidly for for several months, they still had made little progress. They had made the material invisible when looking through thermal technology. In their benefactors eyes this was a win. They were the only team out of the hundreds recruited to achieve something which the company could use.



Ali found himself getting annoyed, their team leader was a man named Johnson miles, the man was an annoyance. Ali found out that the man had used his students to do all the work for him while he simply claimed credit. Ali understood from the moment they had been introduced. He had met many men like him when he was growing up in the slums of Rio. They smiled and were charming, however they would sell your soul or body if it benefited them in the slightest way. So even though it was the Russian man called Bronislava who had discovered how to make it invisible to thermal lenses. However Johnson had been the first to claim credit. Bronislava did argue, he was a quiet man, he moved like a dancer.



The two week vacation was here. Ali was the last one to leave, he smiled as he left. He had decided to start a little early on his promised reward. He had been using the labs to experiment with genetics his speciality. The subject he had been fascinated with since he had first heard of it in school. That night Ali left with two boxes. No one stopped him, which Ali found slightly worrying.



Ali was home. Of course he had never expected to return so early, but it was good to see the apartment complex still standing. He was never sure how it had hung around this long. He was glad that it had. Nostalgia filled him, he remembered running around the closed off gates, sneaking out to go to parties in the slums several streets over. Sadly some of his childhood friends never made it out of there.



He moved past the iron gates, he was surprised to see only one new bullet hole in the gate. The security guard was behind the gate half asleep in his chair, he nodded as Ali made his way into the dark corridor. The Family were surprised, his grandfather was still ill. The family news wasn’t good. His younger brother had run off with the girl of one of the local gang leaders. Idiot was the perfect word to describe his brother. Careless, ignorant, good for nothing. All words to describe him..........