Prologue

It was a perfect night for beginnings. Low in the sky, a laughing moon was frozen in anticipation, holding its breath for the next wave of insanity to enter the world. A kishin was coming. A kishin would be reborn again.

Deep in the dark, concrete laboratory of Franken Stein, an insomniac wandered, thoughts racing through his mind as he paced the gray tile floors of the hallway. Thoughts of the future sped through his mind at a furious pace, leaving his senses in a blur of blinking visions. Madness pulsed in the darker half of his being, waiting for him to make the slightest error in his mindset. Madness and genius were two sides of the same coin. He didn't have much time.

"We're not ready for the race," he said to himself, his voice cracking with a hint of nervous energy. All of this sleeplessness was a sign. It had to be. He could feel his carnal instincts waiting, and whenever those were eager, it meant that danger would find him soon. He had a gift for sensing darkness. He just had to keep it a gift and not a curse.

"We're running out of time!" he shouted, rushing to his workspace and opening the scientific metal drawers of desk. He dug through files furiously, looking for something he knew he shouldn't search for, something he never should have kept. Forbidden science. A project that would doom him to the devil.
He sighed as he pulled the gray folder out, dusting its cover with his lab coat's sleeve. Psyche. That was the name of the project. He remembered the glee he'd felt as a recent graduate working on his doctorate, the sinister smile that had spread over his features as he'd outlined the procedure. It had been all too perfect, too orderly and obvious. The materials before him, the circumstances of their findings, all had pointed him towards the realm of hidden knowledge, of secrets covered up in simple view. Like so many corpses.

He shook his head. He could not afford to be devoured by his old desires. He had promised Marie that he would never go there again, that he would allow himself to breathe again. He couldn't lose it yet. Not with so much at stake.

Cranking the screw's head jutting from just above his left ear, the scientist known as Dr. Stein headed for the basement, the floor that not even Marie knew of. He hadn't allowed himself to remember its dank storage rooms until now, so many years after he'd abandoned his younger, more sadistic days. Contrary to his students' suspicions, Stein was not the most frightening of men. That diploma would have to go to his college-aged self, the one before the glasses and the mask of foolishness. The colder one.

He descended the stairs hidden behind his medical cabinets. The heavy furniture was difficult to move without the use of a complicated lever hidden beneath the glass cabinets, an insurance against mental lapses of his own. He couldn't afford rushing down there in a fit of madness. Not to this place.
The room seemed to sigh as he entered it, air from the upper world flowing into its concrete lungs with enthusiasm. If only he felt the same. He was already wishing he hadn't come down here. He could already feel the tethers of his past tightening.

But this was for the better. This was for the future of the human race, not for his own comfort or security. He had to do this. He went to the dusty tables in the nearest corner. Everything was waiting for him. Thread, needles, a defibrillator, they were all there. All he needed was a Rosetta Stone, an answer to every question posed. And he still had one in his hand.

He grinned as the rapture took him and flung open the gray folder on the table's top. Still organized after so many years. He smiled, dancing on the edge of his coin again, the point between madness and creativity. He rushed to his experiment giddily, crying out in his ecstasy despite any kind of judgment his saner self would've had.

"It's good to be back again!"

And for the rest of the night, Stein busied himself with stitching. It was a busy night for the sleepless. A busy night for a kishin.