Project Christmas.

A CIA venture to attempt the creation of a new wave of sleeper agents.

The concept was simple enough, the characteristics needed to become a successful agent started developing early in life, and it was so much easier to train children, their minds like a sponge ready to absorb everything.

Children who participated in the experiment were found in grade school. It was simple enough to have certain questions on standardized tests and then distribute them around the country. From there, the CIA had their choice of kids to invite to 'camp'. While there, the children were taught problem solving, puzzles and ciphers. For the entire summer the children were basically brainwashed. Told to act one way when their parents visited and another when alone.

After the children had gone home to start a new school year, the men involved with the project figured they had a success. The camps all over the country had reported good results and they made plans to continue with a new batch for next summer. Suddenly though, funding was cut and the importance of the project was lowered. Over time it became another CIA discard. No one thought anything of it.

Even though the project was put on permanent hiatus, there were a few that followed up with some of the more gifted kids. The ones who had excelled had kept good grades up to high school, and that is when the problems started coming in.

Johnathan Matthews, one of the best, had started getting violent at school. He ended up getting shot by the police during a stand-off.

Andrew Clarke from a small town in Wyoming, began having hallucinations and was diagnosed with severe schizophrenia and now lives under 24 hour care at an institution.

Margarette Rogers began hanging out with the roughest kids in her town. She dropped out of school, became addicted to various drugs and was found dead of an overdose in an abandoned house.

There were more, too many to count, but one by one the children involved with Project Christmas were having problems. A few did make it through their teen years and most of them had been recruited in some capacity. Not all were with the CIA however, due to the fact that others had managed to find out who the children were. The Alliance had recruited a few, including Allison Dorne, to work for them.

To expect that the children who had been involved with the training and brainwashing to not be affected by that summer was a mistake that the CIA did not realize until it was too late.