Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents in this book are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.]
"Dear Jon and Tasha, if you are seeing this, that means I'm already dead. For that, I'm truly sorry, but listen closely to what I'm about to say."
Irvin Tier was a man of German descent. He had a muscular build for his age. He had light skin with short gray-whitish hair along with hazel-colored eyes.
"I have done a lot of things in my life I wasn't proud of, and I've also hidden a lot from both of you. But I couldn't afford to bring you into the world that I lived in."
Jon sat there and listened to his grandfather's words. The more he spoke, the more guilty he looked, as if he were ashamed of something.
"I was what you could call an assassin; in my younger years, I traveled the world, and I have done some hideous things while traveling the world, all for money."
Jon's eyes widened in shock at the sudden revelation from his grandfather. He had always suspected that his grandfather wasn't a regular old man. After all, no regular old man had the muscle mass of an MMA fighter at the prime of his life and was proficient in all types of weaponry.
He always thought his grandfather was some sort of war veteran or something, but an ex-assassin was something he was not expecting.
"About 40 years ago, I received a mission in China to locate and extract an extremely valuable resource that would change the way we harness and produce energy forever."
Jon was broken out of his initial surprise as he heard the solemn voice of his grandfather, which drew his attention back to the video.
"I and three others were sent by the U.S. government to infiltrate a search team organized by the Chinese government to locate and bring back that particular resource. The search team was made up of several guards and five researchers; the task was to head deep into the Kunlun mountain range, where a meteor had landed."
'A meteor? What's so special about that specific meteor?'
Jon thought as one of his brows rose in curiosity. As if to answer his question, he heard the sound of his grandfather's voice once again as the video continued.
"The meteor landed four months before the mission. In fact, this was the second mission to collect the meteorite. When the meteorite landed, the Chinese government sent a research team out to investigate it, but when they arrived at the sight of impact, expecting to see a huge crater in the mountain range, what they found instead was nothing."
"What!"
Jon exclaimed, surprised at what he had just heard.
'That's impossible; physics doesn't work like that.'
Jon's mind was in disarray until the voice of his grandfather once again drew his attention back to the video.
"They spent the next week searching for where the meteor landed, but they found nothing and had no choice but to abandon the mission and return. They ended up calling the case of the vanished meteorite a mystery. But after three months, they found vegetation growing rapidly where the meteorite had supposedly landed. So they had no choice but to send another team to investigate this weird phenomenon; however, the Chinese government wasn't the only one who kept an eye on this strange occurrence. Several other countries gained information about this weird event after they found out about the meteorite that mysteriously vanished, including other world superpowers like the U.S. and Russia."
Irvin stopped for a brief second, his eyes narrowed, and his voice grew solemn once more as he continued.
"The U.S. government decided to send spies into China to gain information about the meteorite, so they sent the CIA; however, the U.S. government wasn't the only one who was interested in what was happening. People of great wealth and power also took a great interest in what was happening, so they hired hitmen and assassins to infiltrate China to gain information, which is how I came into the picture."
Jon looked at his grandfather in the video. He stopped, and he seemed to be contemplating something until he began speaking again.
"Whatever you do, I want you to avoid those people at all costs. They don't view other people as humans in the way the majority do. Don't get involved with them."
With a serious look and a heavy tone in his voice, he left a warning so serious that Jon could feel the intensity of his gaze and the solemnity of his voice.
'Who are these people for my grandfather, who always seemed so confident and unshaken in his actions, to worry about?'
Jon thought to himself, and he then turned his attention back to the video as it seemed like his grandfather was ready to speak again.
"I and three others infiltrated the search team disguised as bodyguards. On that mission, I got close to a particular researcher; he was a weird one. When he arrived at the landing sight, what we found was an abundance of greenery that caught us by surprise considering where the meteorite landed was devoid of such vegetation."
"The researcher that I befriended started picking different plants and storing them. We made camp and spent days in the mountains as the researcher collected samples of various plants and observed the various wildlife that started to live there."
He stopped once more and sighed before he continued.
"That was until one of the researchers made an interesting discovery. The wild animals there were much bigger than they should have been; they were way more muscular, and some of them showed more intelligence than their species were capable of. The yaks were bigger than they should have been, and the snow leopards and wolves were a lot larger and smarter."
Jon's eyes widened at the information, and he turned his gaze toward the vial he had taken from the briefcase earlier.
'It can't be; there's no way that's possible, right?
Jon thought to himself before he decided to turn his gaze back to the video, deciding to finish hearing what his grandfather had to say.
"What we found out that day changed everything. We waited until the researchers found out what caused the change in biology for the animals, and what they came up with was the vegetation. You see, the herbivores ate the plants and the carnivores ate the herbivores, and in the span of a few months, that was enough to change their biology."
"But we didn't know what specific plant caused this, so we decided to expand our search area through the small forest that was created on the mountain. The researcher that I befriended decided that he wanted to split up from the group to see if he could get lucky and find anything, and I decided to follow him, acting as his guard."
"The researcher, whose name was Xin, was a lucky man in many ways. We did find something, a cave, and in that cave, the walls seemed to glow in a myriad of different colors, but that was the least surprising thing we found in the cave because the meteorite that mysteriously disappeared was in the middle of that cave on the ground, surrounded by flowers that Xin called chrysanthemum. The meteorite seemed to be fused to the ground in some way."
"We spent hours in that cave as Xin examined the meteorite and flowers. Mostly because he couldn't get a piece to fall off the meteorite. He said it was like it was absorbing the impact of his hammer, chisel, and poll pick, but eventually, he got a piece to fall off, and he was excited as he spoke about the possibility of how much our medical and energy fields will advance due to this single meteorite and the effect that it had on the flowers around it."
Irvin had a look of nostalgia as he reminisced, but the look in his eyes changed, and his eyes narrowed as he began to speak once more.
"On our way back to camp, we heard multiple gunshots and screams, and as we approached, I found the dead bodies of the guards that accompanied the researchers on the search team. I knew what was happening, and I pulled out a gun that I had on me. I knew my mission, and based on what I heard from Xin and what the other researchers discovered, I knew how valuable what we had discovered in the cave was. But for some reason, maybe because I knew how many terrible things I'd done, maybe it was because I wanted to do at least one good thing in my life at the time I decided to protect Xin."
Jon sat quietly and listened to his grandfather talk about events of the past with a somber expression.
'So the old man from earlier was the researcher that Grandpa saved? That old man didn't seem like just a researcher, though. '
Jon thought to himself as he remembered the old man from earlier who introduced himself as Mr. Shin. The voice of his grandfather resounded, which pulled Jon's attention back to the video.
"I had Xin hide, and I headed back to the camp by myself. When I arrived at the campsite, I could see the dead bodies of researchers and guards all around, and the others that I came with were packing up all sorts of research material that the researchers had collected. I wasted no time and opened fire at them, and I managed to kill two of them and deeply injure one of them as he made his escape, although it wasn't as easy as it sounded because I also got injured in that little scuffle."
The old man said that last part with a small chuckle, as if he had found something amusing.
"On that mission, there were only three survivors: me, Xin, and a CIA agent who managed to escape with documents of what the researchers found during our stay at the mountain. Me and Xin managed to escape the mountain range after a few days, and I told him about everything that happened and why I decided to save him. That incident caused friction between the two countries considered superpowers of the world when they found out about what happened."
"The cave that I and Xin found was never reported, and the flowers and the meteorite sample that Xin took were never handed in either. Xin studied the meteorite sample, and the flowers unveiled their secrets. Years later, he became a world-renowned engineer and scientist. He became the chairman and CEO of Starlight Technologies and Pharmaceutical, which became a multibillion-dollar company, and I became a person wanted by really powerful people."
Jon looked at his grandfather's face in the video, and he could see a somber expression all over his face until he let out a sigh and continued.
"I continued to protect Xin from the shadows, as many suspected that he found something in the mountains that he didn't share, and they were right, but none got close enough to prove it. As the years passed, Xin made several different medical discoveries and created a multitude of different medications that proved to be wondrous in the medical field due to the flowers he took from the cave. But all of them seemed like a child's play to his greatest creation so far. The Ambrosia."
Jon watched as his grandfather got up from in front of the camera he was using to record and started to take off the shirt he was wearing; it was a white buttoned shirt that stuck to his muscular body. Once he took off his shirt, a finely tuned muscular body was revealed that would put most athletes to shame.
He began walking toward the wall behind him and stood in front of it. He then folded his right fist and let off a powerful punch towards the wall.
Jon's jaw almost fell to the floor due to what he saw.
BANG!!!
A loud impact was heard as he watched the old man's fist hit the wall, and the concrete started to crack all over and crumble in front of him.
Jon couldn't believe what he just witnessed; he was in shock as he watched the old man slowly walk back to his seat in front of the camera and pick up his shirt.
"The Ambrosia is a drug that Xin created after he finished studying the flowers after a few years; it's basically a super soldier serum."