Chapter One

Zella Mills - London, 2044

A sharp, uncomfortable crackling came through Zella’s headset. She cringed. “Zella, if you can hear me, lift one leg up and hop on the other.” Joe Halili said.

Zella rolled her eyes. “You’re loud.”

“Sorry.”

It took her a while to think of a response. She wasn’t good with pleasantries. She preferred when Joe joked around. At least then she could ignore him. She didn’t know what to do with an apology. “Khloe confirmed that he’s coming, right?” she asked, choosing to divert the conversation to the mission.

“Affirmative,” Joe replied. “I know we’ve gone over it a hundred times, but I’m going to repeat it so our lovely assistants on this line hear it. The plan is, you wait for Zip to get on his balcony and smoke a ciggy. Just as we’ve watched him do a million times. We’ve put our jammer on the back door, so when he goes back inside, it won’t fully shut. You’ll swing down from the balcony above, and once he’s out of sight, you infiltrate and do your sneaky stuff. The goal is the laptop. Snatch it and get out of there quietly.”

“That’s what we discussed,” Zella replied. But it wasn’t quite the plan she had in mind.

“You shouldn’t be going in alone,” Joe said.

Zella raised her hand to her ear. “I told you. I can handle myself. Goodbye, Halili.” She tapped the power button on the headset. Distractions were no longer welcome.

She leaned over the balcony and glanced down at the footbridge connecting building A and B. Zip’s balcony was directly below her. Earning the trust of the tenant above Zip had taken some planning. The tenant was an elder man named Mr. Garnet. He never trusted the immortals or the Starlight program and despised living above one of them. They’d needed Mr. Garnet’s help because getting in the building presented challenges. This luxury apartment building prided itself on having top-notch security. They were in Embassy Gardens, London, after all. The grind it took to get here was worth it. Khloe had given them the intel that Zip was holding onto some valuable footage that would expose the immortals. And the cherry on top was that Zella could get even with one immortal who murdered her father.

Zella lost herself in the memory of what happened five years ago when she was sixteen years old. Dr. Calloway raised Zella as his foster child. Not only was he her unofficial foster father, but he was also the inventor of the star serum. The serum that made the immortals what they are.

It all started in 2022 when a meteor crashed into Montana. Scientists discovered a mysterious substance that was later named Starfalite. Dr. Calloway studied Starfalite extensively. One day, he made a breakthrough in his research. He believed that the substance could enhance human genetics. Making humans immune to disease and old age. A subsidiary of the government-funded Dr. Calloway’s idea, and the Starlight program, was born.

Dr. Calloway’s team selected ten subjects. And because Dr. Calloway’s team believed infant genes would better adapt to the star serum, they chose orphaned babies and infants as the subjects. They gave eight children the serum, and in a moment of pure disaster, two babies died. Dr. Calloway sent an order to shut down the project before the final two subjects could receive the serum. That left six successful cases of the Starlight program. Today, those six individuals are the immortals.

The world revered the mighty immortals. A few of them reached celebrity status. The rest of them flew under the radar. In the years they’d been immortal, they even gained a few special abilities that separated them from normal humans. Zip, for instance, could teleport up to ten feet in any direction. They kept their abilities secret to prevent global leaders from feeling threatened. Their unique abilities made them seem like deities. But Zella knew the truth about them. They were corrupt, murderous, power-hungry dogs.

With the Starlight program shut down, Dr. Calloway spent years researching the effects that his project would have on the world. The government banned him from carrying out any kind of test work on the six immortals, but he still made a shocking discovery. He learned that the star serum would have a terrible impact on their psychological profile. He believed that despite their immunity to disease; they possessed a mutation that changed their cognition. This was problematic. He worried that their immortal qualities would make them a tyrannical threat to society. That’s why Dr. Calloway researched a cure for the immortals. A way to reverse the effects of their immortal mutation. A cure for his own creations. But Dr. Calloway would never get far into his research.

Zella’s eyes closed. Memories of her foster father’s murder played in her mind like a montage. Her father running. Zip teleporting behind him, striking him with the butt of a semi. The laughter of the one they call Quinn echoing in her head.

A door slammed somewhere below. Zella twitched. She gripped the handle of the VP11 pistol in her leg holster. A soft vibration came from the inside of her pocket. Zella tapped her headset. “Halili, is that him?”

“Correct. We got a ping on his biometric security system,” Joe said. “He’s home.”

Zip was below. The moment had arrived.

To be continued! - The next free release will publish tomorrow

• Mere Immortal is written by Gary Swift. If you see this on another website under another name then it has been plagarized. Visit mereimmortal.com for official chapters. Subscribe to the Substack paid tier to read further ahead in the story.