Monica's Lab (Data File Set)

**Monica's Lab Set** is a collectable intelligence series, giving detail about the work of Monica Rappaccini and AIM. It has seven parts to collect.

## Files

### A Note For New Hires

You have been selected to work with extremely confidential data on the basis of your intellect and abilities. New personnel on the Terrigen Initiative are expected to be familiar with all prior findings with regard to the Experimental Regenerative Terrigen-Hemogloblin Catalyst Formula (henceforth "The Regenerative Formula"). The company intranet has an archive of all previous research.

The applications will become clear, but for the purposes of security and shareholder obligations, we filter our results. The primary goal must always appear be the complete cure of the Inhuman condition through use of the Formula, even if your work takes you in another, more important direction.

We at AIM have certain expectations of you. Failure to live up to expectations at this stage puts you in a dangerous position, operationally speaking. You have all been through rigorous vetting. We are working with arguably the most important discovery in the history of scientific inquiry. Do not disappoint.

### Personal Research: Inhumanity

Although we must always acknowledge the loss of human life on A-Day, we have been given an unprecedented opportunity: a large-scale human trial on the effects of exposure to Terrigen.

Terrigen has an immediate reaction to water, creating a fine particulate mist. For a fraction of human subjects, this Terrigen mist has a profound transformative effect. We have since isolated a mitochondrial DNA shared by this subgroup. Thus far, only those we have dubbed "Inhuman" have entered "Terrigenesis" upon exposure.

A closer examination of Inhumans is underway, but the early reports are both fascinating and distressing. The genetic distinction in question arise identically from multiple geographically diverse populations.

I've tightened the security on these reports, but it seems almost inescapable: at some point in the past, someone, or something, did this to us on purpose.

### Personal Research: Terrigenesis

Our understanding of "Terrigenesis" continues to increase, with certain commonalities being identified. All Inhuman subjects form a protective "cocoon" around their bodies during the process - though the structure is more akin to a chrysalis. I'm afraid the catchier name has stuck.

The gestation period varies wildly, and the mortality rate is still high, but surviving subjects emerge changed, and from there, no two metamorphoses are identical. There also appears to be a psychosomatic component to the mutations, a connection between the consciousness of the subject and the change.

Work with the Regenerative Formula on Project Adaptoid advances in parallel, with great strides being made in the mimicry of Inhuman abilities. That research group must remain isolated from the rest and away from any diagnostic equipment that would allow study of the Regenerative Formula itself. This level of secrecy is prohibitive to progress, but the composition of the Formula must remain known to me alone.

### Personal Research: Test Subjects

The Inhuman death rate is concerning, but more worrying is the apparent correlation between the subjects' desires and their individual manifestation post-Terrigenesis. The more a subject is aware of the program and its risks, the more likely their enhancements will assist them in escape or resistance. We must be cautious, keeping subjects isolated and ill-informed is the smartest approach.

It's also becoming difficult to keep George unaware of the Regenerative Formula's importance in our research, or in his own treatment. Without it, his condition would be terminal. But the Formula allows me to direct the course of his transformation, and he remains my most important subject. He would kill me if he learned the truth.

So many little calculated risks. But nothing else matters besides the work. We're on the event horizon of nothing less than total human evolutionary apotheosis or extinction. Someone has to be the adult in the room and make the hard choices.

### Personal Research: Causality

AIM has scraped together enough Vibranium to continue research into quantum causality for now. If the implications of our early tests are correct, we may be re-writing the common conception of linear time before the decade is out, but we will soon need a new supply.

I've made initial overtures to the Wakandan government now that I am in a position to do so, but I don't believe it will amount to much. We will need far more than they will part with, willingly.

Tarleton continues to act like my prominence in public life is something I desired, not something I endure. Before A-Day, I mirrored his resentment at being sidelined by Tony and the Avengers. I let that be our bond, a false longing for credit and fame. As if I didn't manufacture the situation to position myself exactly where I wanted to be.

People are always willing to believe that you share the same desires. From there, it's all momentum and inertia. A gentle push here. A single word there. Then you let them do the work, and think it was their idea all along. People can be so easy.

### Personal Research: Diagnosis

I have enough of a foundation in psychiatry and human behavior to diagnose and categorize my own particular mental illnesses and pathology. I am not deluded. I know that chemistry can render my mind suboptimal, and that I must take responsibility for maintenance.

Once, to eliminate the possibility of confirmation bias, I hired the best psychologist I could find, and allowed unfettered access. I could tell she was horrified, but she hid it well.

It was a waste. She refused to believe that I was not made who I am by trauma. She needed so badly for there to be some answer, a clear causation to my need to control. A reaction to a stimulus.

The real answer, of course, scared her too much to consider. I am a shadow without a light source. Trauma didn't make me. I made me. In my position, with my resources and abilities, how could I not do what I have done? It would be an abdication of my responsibility to my species not to.

I had her killed afterwards, like I had always intended.

### Personal Research: New Data

I avoid intoxication. Social situations demand that I sometimes put on a show, but I am not in the habit of relinquishing control without getting something in return.

That's out the window tonight. Just received the final report from the archeology teams. Every geographic site we've linked to Inhuman origins shows the same signs. Unmistakably extraterrestrial. This changes things. If they've been here once...

I've opened a bottle, locked the doors and blacked out the security system long enough for me to sink into oblivion for an evening. I deserve it.

I am so lonely. I don't need something so trite or squalid as companionship. What I need is the one thing I cannot have, someone I can depend on. I'm so tired of doing this alone. I just need there to be more of me.

I don't blame the rest of them for resisting what AIM must do. Not everyone can see what's coming. If they understood what I was doing, and why, they would try to worship me. But no. They must be dragged, kicking and screaming, into salvation. I accept that.