Lost Boys
| Project: Lost Boys | |
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| First Seen: | January 2004 |
Lost Boys was a top secret CIA program designed to create specially trained mutants for undercover work all over the globe. Named for their ability to radically slow the aging of their teenaged subjects, Lost Boys existed for almost thirty years, and produced such agents as Remy LeBeau.
Roster
Rory Browne, Landin Judkins, and Laura ‘Flair’ Vincent
Details
Lost Boys grew out of a different scientific program called Leonization. Named after Pone de Leon, the fabled explorer who sought the Fountain of Youth, the program was supposed to limit and reverse the effects of aging. It was uneffective and shut down, but one success was that it did develop a process that could drastically slow the aging process of mutants in their adolesence.
Chester Whelan, the CIA DDO took control of the process, and created a new black book program which he dubbed Lost Boys. The idea was to take young mutants, who Whelan was already actively seeking for his plans, and use the process to slow their aging while pushing them through a rigerous training programs. Due to the process, the agents who graduated would not fit traditional profiles used by counter-intelligence, and have a better chance at penetrating security forces and secure instillations.
Launched in 1972, the program would eventually recruit over two thousand mutants during the next three decades, eventually producing close to four hundred agents. Due to the high fatality rate of the process, and the dangers of the assignments, Whelan kept his agents deeply hidden and constantly replaceable. The slightest hint of betrayel was met with overwhelming force, and most agents perished in the field on exceeding difficult assignments. Their success and disposibility convinced Whelan to continue the program as long as possible.
While all the members of the program were mutants, few had powers of any great strength. Whelan adapted by forcing his subjects through painful augmentation procedures, grafting metal to bones, transplanting muscle, and other advances that he was able to acquire knowledge of. The most successful of his agents turned out to be a young Cajun named Remy LeBeau. Operating primarily in Europe as an assassin, he made his code name, Gambit, a symbol of fear for over a decade.
With the new century, Lost Boys became increasingly difficult to hide. With his retirement approaching, Whelan decided to shut the program down and remove the last three dozen agents from being able to threaten him. Under the pretext of various meetings, the agents were captured and psychically lobotomized. Their blood held a specialized treatment of nano-suppressors that masked their mutant signatures, and a code phrase was implanted to draw back out their original personalities if they were needed. The agents where dumped onto the streets in a dozen American cities. Due to the severe mental limitations the conditioning caused, most did not survive their first winter.
In 2004, the CIA intentionally planted Remy LeBeau in the mansion as a trojan horse in case the X-Men ever looked like a threat. Months later, fearing they had lost control, they activated Gambit, only to find that his current personality was able to fight off the effects and retain control. Whelan was killed not long after by Sarah Morlocke, for his part in the Morlock Massacre.
In 2006, Arcade got hold of the locations of the final three surviving members of the Lost Boys, and used their lives to manipulate Remy and Ororo Munroe into a twisted race to the death to save them. The three, Rory Browne, Landin Judkins, and Laura ‘Flair’ Vincent, were rescued and moved to the Muir Island Research Facility under the care of Moira MacTaggart, undergoing extensive physical and psychic healing. They were all killed in the Muir invasion in January 2015.
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Socked by: Dex
