Senton
Because of his earlier stomach upheaval, the flopping of his guts on seeing the large Dentolura break through the fence made his legs weak and his head cloudy. He could hardly stand the excitement. The Dentolura had noticed the broken wall and come through! That they wanted the baby was the most likely explanation, though without some testing he couldn't say for certain. Still, this bespoke not only that his pheromone hypothesis was correct, but that there was some sort of familial structure--or, at least, protracted concern for their young--that the larger lura relied upon. This made him almost faint with excitement. Looking around, he could only guess what the others were thinking, but based upon the intense frown on Chief Timpson's face, Ann wasn't very happy about the breach. Korryn had an expression of interest and thoughtfulness that Senton found alluring, while Nolan merely looked confused. The new Timpson, Charalee, was glaring at the distant arrival of the creatures as though they had personally insulted her by being there. Before he could speak, Ann gave her verdict. "We need to lock down." "Wait, you don't think they're here to hurt us, do you?" asked Senton, stepping in front of Ann and pulling her attention away from the creatures in the distance. "I think I don't know what they want, and I need the Compound secured as soon as I can." She flicked her hand, obviously commanding her aedee to do something. Her hand actions were different than what Senton used, so he could only guess what she intended. "Secure this area, Senton. You, too, Korryn." "Wait, what?" Ann shot her a look. "You're interested in this specimen, right? You had better make sure it stays put." "Why?" asked Senton, afraid of what Ann would say but anticipating it nonetheless. "You're not thinking of giving it back, are you?" "I am going to report this to the captain, prepare my crew for a repulsion of xenoforms that we don't understand, and--maybe--figure out what happened to the other person who was in that room. If those creatures are here for their baby, I want to know precisely where it is." "And what about me?" said Nolan. "I need you to prepare the delivery of the creature." "Um," he said, his face puckering in confusion. "How?" "We need to get this thing outside to where they are, but I don't want them to think that they simply found their darling. I want them to know that we returned it, that we didn't kill it." Senton made a rude sound in the back of his throat. "They don't think that way." Ann turned toward him, her face a mixture of disbelief and fury that Seton had never seen before. "What's wrong with my plans, Doctor?" Senton shrugged, then said, "We don't know enough about the creatures to be able to judge how they're going to react to seeing us with the baby. Maybe they'll think we took it and try to get revenge." Korryn sighed. "The point is, we don't know what is best here. So why don't we do what Chief Timpson said and we'll go from there?" Though Senton hated the idea of losing the little lura before he even had a chance to study it, he capitulated in the end. It wasn't worth the fight. "I'm going to check on the Portal," said Charalee. "That's why I'm here. Your little domestic problem isn't mine." Ann nodded. "The Compound appreciates you returning our specimen." Charalee smirked. "You're welcome, sister." Charalee sauntered away, which Senton took a moment to appreciate before returning to the matter at hand. "Take care of this thing. Make sure it doesn't go anywhere." "Can we at least move it to a room that doesn't have a corpse in it?" asked Korryn. "Fine. Update me on the location when it's settled," said Ann. "This is a big mess, Doctor, and I'm not happy that I have to clean it up. We aren't done, you and I." Senton swallowed. "Yes, Chief." Ann and Nolan headed down the opposite direction that Charalee took, both of them furiously wiggling their hands as they told their aedees what to do. Senton let out an angry breath and looked up at Korryn, who was watching through the window. "Can you believe it?" "Believe what?" she said, not turning to face him. "That they want to get rid of the specimen." Korryn shrugged. "That's okay." "What? You were the one who thought that we should do something with it. Right? To make a profit?" He stepped closer to her--not too much, he didn't want to be too forward--using a chance to glimpse out the window as a pretext to do so. "But there are more options." "Huh?" She pointed. Through the gloom, Senton could make out what seemed like an entire herd of Dentolura of almost every size and shape they'd documented pour through the breach. Senton felt his knees wobble again. "They're…they're massing toward us." Korryn glanced over, then smiled. "That's more for us." The comment demarrowed his concern. "You mean--" She nodded. "We can give them the baby, provided we snag some of these bigger creatures. That's a better move anyway--they're more likely to survive us taking them back to civilization if they're bigger." She paused. "Do you even know what they eat?" Senton shook his head, then gestured for her to follow her into the lab. The fact that a lot of potentially dangerous creatures were rushing across the empty fields that surrounded the expansive Compound didn't worry him over much. Not only was the Compound hermetically sealed against their atmosphere, but the terraglass that formed most of the tunnels was extruded in such a way that they could withstand thousands of pounds per square centimeter. They could prowl around the buildings all they wanted; they couldn't get in. Still, Ann's precaution was understandable. If the thing they wanted the most was the baby, then the humans needed to make sure they could get the baby into the hands--claws?--of the parents. That only made sense. "That is something that I've been working on," he said, tapping his temple. "I've a lot of research done, but much of it is guess work or hypotheses. I really want to spend some time with these creatures." "That's why you're doing what I'm saying we should do?" Senton paused, looking down at his hands. Centuries of scientific dogma had coalesced into the single greatest error in human history: The loss of their own planet. In the immediate aftermath of the loss of Earth, scientists were held responsible for such a mistake. But humanity needed the ingenuity and the advancements that only science and engineering could provide if they were to survive in the stars. Nevertheless, the purpose of science and discovery was still taught, albeit with a greater emphasis on considering the ramifications and impacts of what was being created. Senton always chaffed under that sort of thinking. Yes, losing the Earth and creating a postlapsarian migratory society was not the best thing that the sciences had done. But there was much good, too, that they had accomplished. Back before the regulations and societal disapproval of unfettered scientific exploration were enforced, scientists could explore the questions they found most intriguing. Confident in their knowledge that what they discovered would always, eventually, benefit Humanity, they were given free rein. Senton wanted that back. And the only way, he begrudgingly admitted, was through commercial enterprise. No, he didn't want to sell off the creatures, or put them in zoos, or anything other than study them. But if working with Korryn's plan to profit off the lura meant that he'd get to study them more? He'd have to bend to that rule of reality. Looking up, he said, "Yes. I'm with you." He raised a finger. "But we're going to have to be really careful. We'll need to tranquilize the creatures so that they don't send out pheromones, as well as keep them tightly contained." Korryn frowned, then brightened. "I know of a place. It's in the Hangar. Fresh food has to be carefully checked to ensure we don't get any nasties from a spacestation--the last thing we need is an outbreak of some disease that proliferates easier in our more confined environment. It's large and, if I remember correctly, we took out the latest cargo a day or two ago. There's plenty of space for us to keep any specimens we find." "Should we take this one there?" he asked, jerking his head toward the still-closed door of the lab. Korryn thought for a moment. "Yeah, I think so. I mean, I don't want to stick around a dead body. Do you?" "Not really." He finally admitted to himself that he felt bad, and the idea that maybe someone had killed the poor guy and was now running loose in the Compound made him uncomfortable, but Ann would take care of that. He had other things to think about instead. "Let's transfer the little guy." Korryn laughed and threw him a smile that made his uneasy stomach tighten in excitement and hope. Their first couple of dates had been really enjoyable, and the idea that maybe they could turn it into something more was another tantalizing possibility. He tried hard to focus on the task at hand, but seeing her smile had sent his mind headed down…different paths. He palmed the door open, talking as it dilated. "Do you think we should name it, or…" He trailed off as he stared in mute dismay. Shattered terraglass sparkled over the ground, intermixing with the congealed blood. A large hole in the container gaped at them, the jagged edges of the broken glass looking like so many teeth. Senton took a deep breath. The box was empty. "How is that possible?" he asked, a fire of indignation at the injustice of it all burning through what should have been a flash of distress and panic. He looked around the room, casting about for some explanation--an intruder who'd snuck in while they weren't looking, or maybe the dead corpse coming alive and letting the Dentolura baby loose--anything to keep him from accepting the truth: The baby had escaped again. "It broke out," said Korryn, her voice tight with distress and worry. "Look, the glass is sprayed away from the container. It wasn't broken inwards: It was smashed out." Wiping a hand on his lips, Senton turned on his scientific brain. He'd been running on enthusiasm and instinct for too long. He needed to focus again, to turn himself toward what he'd been trained to do: Observe, hypothesize, experiment. What was different in here? What could he rely on that didn't touch his personal anxiety? Dropping into that mental state had helped him countless times before. When his mother had left them, he'd pulled himself deeper into his studies, one time tackling a genetic code that had been particularly vexing for days at a time with precious little sleep or food. He'd come to himself a week later, having discovered a mutation within one of the genomes he'd been studying that had explained how the specimen (it had been a particular kind of tree) had managed to adapt to the sunrays that came in through that spacestation's filtered windows. When his father had suffered his debilitating accident on a job done to provide support for Senton so he could continue his training, thereby leaving him mentally irreparable and physically broken, Senton had done the same thing. The project had been a theoretical treatise on the way evolution of microbial life had changed by being exposed to centuries of artificial gravity and the modified human experience. Though he'd pulled himself out of that state often enough to tend his father until his father, too tired to go on in such a crippled state, had passed away, Senton's had found this the best way to cope with the difficulties of life. Losing the lura wasn't on the same level as losing his parents--one to selfishness, one to selflessness--but the principle remained. If he could focus on the questions and the potential answers, he could quiet his mind enough to get the job done. It was one of his talents. "The body is different," he decided after a moment's quiet contemplation. Korryn glanced over. She'd been checking the perimeter of the room, opening the cupboards to see if it had somehow gotten itself into one of them. "Ugh. I don't want to look at that," she said, turning away. "But that's just it. I remember what I saw when we first walked in." "Before or after you puked?" His face prickled with an embarrassed flush. "After. And I know you don't want to look at it, but I think there's more of this guy that's missing. In fact, I'm almost positive." Her curiosity obviously piqued, Korryn came closer to the body. Her petite nose scrunched up in a way that he found attractive, but considering the context, not particularly sexy. She dropped to her haunches and stared at the horrible maiming Theodore had taken. His eyes, glassy and vacant, stared off at nothing, his face still tight with a now-silent scream of dismay. "What do you see that I don't?" she asked. Senton pointed. "That. And that. And some here." She stared at the indicated parts, but then shook her head. "I can't see it." "They're bite marks." "You're certain they weren't there before?" Senton let his eyes rove for a moment, then sighed. "As sure as I can be without evidence." "So, not very?" He paused. He didn't want to say what had come into his mind. For a brief moment, he figured that if he didn't talk, it would mean that what he saw wasn't true. But the impulse faded and he said, "I don't think there's a murderer loose in the Compound. I think it was the lura." Korryn blanched. "It's just a baby, though." "But look what it did to the container," said Senton, gesturing with his chin. "And see this?" He pointed to the jagged flesh around the torso. "The bite patterns are the same as what's taken out of the cheeks here and here." He pointed to the same spots as before. "Additionally, if you look at how the body was emptied out--" Korryn made a gagging noise, but waved him on to continue. "--you'll see that its size is only slightly larger than what the lura's body is." He gestured at the splatters of gore that surrounded them. "You see this? The way the drops formed…it's like something was writhing inside him, burrowing in him--" "Nope," said Korryn, standing up suddenly. "Nope, not gonna hold it." She spun and turned to the sink, her retching sound making him almost do the same. He gagged, but managed to keep his bile in place. Her reaction pulled him out of his analytical mind, and he stood up, no longer able to look at Theodore. He spotted a recycling bag on the abandoned trolley that still sat off to one side in the lab. Pulling it free, he dropped it over the upper part of the man's ruined body. "So you think," said Korryn as she washed her lips and turned back to him, her face ashen, "that your little friend ate its way through this guy, then, while we were out in the hall, had a second helping?" Senton rubbed the back of his head and avoided her eye contact. "I know that I said we don't know a lot about these creatures, and I stand by that, but…" He paused, looking guiltily at his workstation's viz-player, then back at Korryn before dropping her gaze. "We know enough to realize that they're dangerous creatures. That's why I was so anxious to study it," he said as Korryn dropped her hands in an exasperated gesture. "I wanted to know what they can really do." "Senton!" "What?" Korryn put one hand on her hip and leaned in, a movement that made Senton feel like he'd missed something important. "How are they supposed to be pets if they're dangerous?" He shook his head. He hadn't wanted to consider that. Disgusted, Korryn made to leave. "I'm done, this is stupid. I shouldn't be here." "Hey, wait," said Senton. "This doesn't have to be the end." He licked his lips, his mind suddenly blank. Losing his chance with Korryn was bad enough, but he'd lost the specimen, too. A double loss was too much for him to countenance. Licking his lips again, he said, "Wait, there's still a chance." "For what?" "Modification. Gene therapy." She rolled her eyes. "No, hear me out." He stepped in front of the door. "You can't leave without my aedee anyway. Listen for a second, this isn't irretrievable." "Get to the point, Trapp," she said, her irritation palpable. "We find a few more specimens. It doesn't matter which ones--like you said, the bigger ones will probably be better anyway--and we store them. Just like you wanted. Then, when we get them back to the Vanguard, I will turn off their killer instinct. That's inside their genes. I can reprogram them." "Like the digi…dige…what is it?" "Digenetics?" "Yeah, that." He nodded. "Exactly. The digital genetics protocols are safe for humans--we understand the technology really well. It shouldn't take too much for us to turn them docile. Then…" He held out his hands and forced a smile onto his face. "Then we sell them off and make all the money you want." Korryn paused. "It's risky." "With large rewards at the end." She thought a moment longer. "All right. We'll do it." She paused and looked at the body again. "This was just a fluke, right? An accident?" "I'm sure of it," he lied. Korryn nodded at the door. "We should get going. I think it went into the ventilation system again. If those things are after the baby, it'd be better to know where the baby is, right? After all, they're dangerous." Senton widened his eyes as he bobbed his head in agreement. "Very dangerous." At that moment, the Compound shook and the lights went out. |
What is this?This is a NaNoWriMo project that publishes, day by day, the chapters I'm writing for 2017. If you're confused, go to Chapter 1 Ann and start there. ArchivesCategories
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