FCA005 620705.01 Waxman Roberto RM
620705.01_Waxman_Robert_RM
“Okay now this is on I think. This is the statement of, uhh, Waxman Roberto, wait shit. Ugh fuck.
Statement of Roberto Waxman, regarding a project called, Seraphim Dawn. Oh chills. Uhh statement originally given in 2062, on July 5th. Recorded 28th of March, 2070 by River May, assistant archivist at the FCA.
Statement begins
It didn’t start out so depraved, that wasn’t ever the goal. My job was a genetic analyst for the US government pre-war, in early 2031. I received my doctorate in 2025 in Genetics, and practiced for private companies analyzing DNA and other biological things. In 2030 the government snagged me with a very generous offer, and I went through maybe 6 months of training before getting sent to the New Mexico desert.
I wasn’t allowed to know what I was testing, it was rather strange. I’d receive a ready-made slide to analyze at first, almost always messed up somehow, as I learned later they were having soldiers take samples instead of a proper scientist. I demanded after a month to take samples myself, but was met with backlash for another month.
In January 2031 I finally got permission, and learned what I was really testing. I’d been told that my goal was to see if whatever biological matter was human or not, and if not, then what it was.
They’d have several vials of blood sitting up on a table, and I’d take one and do my tests on it. The rest were boxed and moved elsewhere in that compound. I took one back to my lab, like I said, and put a drop on a thin film, and put it to my microscope. Nothing out of the ordinary, so I put it in one of the fancy government sequencers and began to inspect it. It had a 62.3% match to humans, but had some avian strains and something else I couldn’t identify. I made a report and moved on to other things, mostly paperwork.
The next week, a new set of vials to analyze, very similar results, around 70% human, 5% avian, and the rest was unintelligible. Week 3, was different, they had samples of muscle, and week 4, hair and bone.
Each time the results were between 59 and 72% human, and between 4 and 6% avian. One thing that was odd with the feathers was that I was not able to pinpoint what kind of bird it was from. The National Development and Research Consortium, the NDRC, had full authority and confidentiality given to them by then president Judas Cohen. With that they had free rein, no one to answer to. The NDRC ran that compound like a fortress, and I was just a small piece of it, analyzing their mystery samples. But it stopped being a job when I saw him.
It was Week 6, August 2031. I’d been testing blood, muscle, feathers, getting those same results, 60-70% human, 5-10% avian, and that unexplainable rest. I called it ‘ghost fraction’ because it stuck with me, like a shadow. Then they called me to a restricted wing, said I needed to see the source to ‘calibrate my analysis.’ I thought it’d be some kind of animal, a genetic oddity. I wasn’t ready.
I heard it before I saw it, a low, keening sound, like a distant cry, coming from the end of a dim corridor. I’d swiped a key card from a tech who left it on a lab bench, and I used it to get in, late at night, when the patrols were thin. My heart was pounding, palms sweaty, but I had to know. The air smelled sharp, like antiseptic and something alive. At the end of the hall was a tank, a huge glass cylinder filled with cloudy, amber liquid. And inside, floating, was a man.
He was sedated, no question. Tubes ran into his arms, pumping clear fluid to keep him under, and his chest barely moved, like he was breathing in slow motion. The monitors glowed with vitals, heartbeat, brain waves, human but sluggish. He was tall, maybe six feet, lean, with skin so fair it looked untouched. No hair, no marks, just smooth, human skin. His face was… ordinary. Closed eyes, soft jaw, lips parted slightly, like he was sleeping. But then there were the wings.
Four of them, feathered, growing from his back. Two big ones from his shoulders, folded tight, maybe seven feet across. Two smaller ones from his lower back, three feet, curled inward. The feathers were pale, almost white, with a faint silver sheen, like moonlight. They weren’t some deformity; they were part of him, rooted in his muscles, natural as his arms. I stood there, frozen, the keening sound louder now, coming from him, muffled by the tank and the drugs.
Dr. Carver caught me the next day, said I’d overstepped, but she let me keep working. ‘This is Seraphim Dawn,’ she told me. ‘Analyze, report, nothing else.’ I tried, but I couldn’t unsee him. I tested a feather they gave me, avian, but so close to human it was like a cousin. The DNA was 65-70% human, with that ghost fraction that wasn’t lab-made, just… different, like he’d come from some other branch of us. Rumors in the compound said he was found, not created, in a Nevada cave, 2029, after locals reported ‘something winged.’ The NDRC had him caged, sedated, studying what he was.
I didn’t write more after that. Couldn’t. Every time I tried, I heard that keening, saw him floating there. It wasn’t science anymore. It was… something else.
Statement ends.
A follow up interview has been scheduled, will be conducted by myself. Isaac really gave me a rough one to start out. Asshole.