Prologue

There are those who believe that during infancy, the chance to mold the perfect race is lost. The soft handedness of the mother and the lack of rules and order leave ideals of rebellion and disorder in the child's mind, and with no fear for authority or those who rule them. There are also those who believe those who think the previous thought to be oppressive fascists.

What I believe is both.

The Harlequin Project, born from the first of the two thoughts, was the long awaited salvation for those of the first group, an experiment in genetic modification and psychological manipulation to create "the perfect being". No one quite knows where the two ideas mixed, mutant and manipulated, but somewhere, at sometime, a great mind thought of it.

And as I have stated, The Harlequin Project was the fruit of this idea.

To the people of the land of Eden, this was met with a mixture of disgust, curiosity and fear. After all, if successful, those created in the project would almost certainly gain superiority quickly above those born to the old ways. But with little say, after time passed, and nothing came from the initial tests after a series of miscarriages and birth defects that left the babies incapable of living, most no longer batted an eyelid in the direction of the scientists involved.

But over time, methods were perfected, and almost 30 years after the first failures were born and died, a whole generation of Harlequin babies were born. From birth they were mistreated, kept alive but not pampered or preened, given only enough food to keep them working but not too much as to let them grow fat and slow. From their first steps and words, they were taught with no love, no compassion. By early childhood, the children already grew cold towards everything, but feared their masters and teachers, for one false step and bones could be broken, though thanks to several genetic alterations these regenerated and fixed in a matter of weeks, sometimes even days.

But there was one thing automatically that set them apart from normal Humans. Their skin was not just pale, but almost purest ivory white, and their hair was sleek, and black. Around their eyes, after only a few weeks of life, great dark spheres of black began to appear, and their birth eye colour shifted to a light purple. Their lips grew blue, as if they were cold and dead one night, then by morning be black.

And this was the image they'd take, dressed all in black and white, like prisoners, but that was not to say the clothes were not extravagant for their puny standing in any hierarchy. The kind had ordered them the finest silks, and gave each of them masks. He hoped through this to deny them even basic identity, they were all the same, hair cut to the same length, and if they grew even a few pounds heavier or lighter they were force fed or starved till they all resembled the norm.

I was one of them.

But the beatings and genetic anomalies now and then claimed one of us, and soon their were only a few dozen. By then we were 12. Then we began to learn the basics of combat and weaponry, but again this claimed many lives, accidental injuries claimed the majority of those who remained. And after a while, I began to realise one thing. I was the last of our kind.

I quickly began to suspect what had been accidents to me only days before, were in fact tests, to see who could endure the most, who was the strongest, fittest, most resilient and best. And with that sorted, I was to become the genetic basis for the next generation, as the best specimen from me they would recreate the hundreds there had been, after which they would have the slave force and soldiers they desired.

But I was not destined for that. On the day they took their final sample from me, I was requested to the kings side, he deemed me worthy of at least a home and supply of meals.

It was also there he named me.

Adam The Harlequin Child.