by A. J. Ponder
Missy? Presumably not, they could talk in confidence any time. Pinhead? Maybe. He had been around both times. But it didn’t seem likely. Squidge? Probably not, for all his brains he seemed to lack the ability to understand deception. Or someone else? A minion she’d brushed past in the corridor? One of the two people that had died today? It was impossible to know.
Part of her thought she should be happy that someone was on her side – but truth was, this cloak and dagger stuff made her nervous. All night her heart thundered in her chest as she tried to sort through the implications. Was there a clue she’d missed? Are you Schrodinger’s Cat? Alive or Dead. In or out. William Blake’s poem though – with the Tyger spelt wrong. That could mean anything.
§
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
§
Eyes watching. Stealth. Danger. With overtones that she was playing god. Was that a reprimand?
“How can I stop creating creatures, and how can I be in more danger than I already am?” she muttered at the unhelpful text, before diving into bed and hiding under the covers like she had when she was a little girl.
§
Dear Diary,
I don’t think I can handle this much longer. At least the lab is okay. Science is so much simpler than mind games and politics. My head is spinning. I don’t know what to think except that somehow I have to escape this triple reinforced, well-guarded, concrete bunker.
Tomorrow when I am feeling less jittery I fully intend to come up with a plan to get out of here. And I don’t need anybody else’s help to do it.
§
INTERNAL EMAILS: DEC 9
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: LL
I think from her dairy she got another note. Looks like we got the wrong people after all. Must say, I love her e-notebook, it makes our job very easy.
3sftm
§
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: 34txy
Or that its a major conspiracy with more than a handful of people involved. Besides, she’s cleverer than you think. Keep vigilante. You can’t make an omelette without cracking eggs. And I can’t be an international master-villain without breaking a few skulls.
•10•
Hope
THREE HECTIC DAYS LATER, the snake-hybrid was fully coded. Its avatar, a strange creature with an eerie reptilian quality, stared out of Squidge’s computer screen. It had large eyes, short legs, scales, a forked tongue and oversized fangs. Even the tail looked snaky – the few tufts of fur tagging onto it looked as if somehow it had caught virtual mange.
“Urgh, that’s ugly,” Missy said.
Lilly frowned. “Yes, I’m not sure how accurate the picture is … ” She hadn’t exactly been planning to create such an ill-proportioned creature. “I thought your first prototype was better. If we just switch back my original chromosome three … ” she extemporised, hoping the last minute change wouldn’t ruin everything.
“It’ll do,” Squidge said. “We aren’t being too fussy.”
Lilly raised an eyebrow – not that anyone took any notice. What the heck, she thought and made the change.
Squidge glared at her.
“I just want the creature to look nice – is that too much to ask?” More than that, she wanted it to be special. A companion. And it could be, if it worked at all.
“Waste of time,” Squidge muttered.
“Good. We done?” Brian said. “I’m starving.”
“One more thing,” Lilly said, and added rshyb3 series organelles she’d last minute tweaked to produce a social pheromone.
“Dinner was half an hour ago,” Squidge said reprovingly. “There might be some left if I start now, so stop fussing, I need to concentrate.” He switched on the video-feed from the microscope. It showed only fuzzy white – until the image resolved into the bottom of a petri dish. A moment later he placed several mouse eggs into the dish and collected a newly manufactured sample of snake-hybrid DNA. “This one looks good. Cross your fingers, here we go.”
Lilly massaged her temples and tried to ignore the tension headache as she looked over Squidge’s shoulder at his computer screen.
“What are you doing?” Missy asked, jostling closer to get a better look. “Is this even going to even work?”
“Shhh,” Squidge hissed, continuing to peer down the microscope. “I am transferring the manufactured DNA. It is delicate work.” He pushed the impossibly thin needle into the denucleated mouse nucleus, and injected the DNA.
“Shouldn’t we make a few, and not just one? Check out how they all grow?” Lilly asked. “See if there’s any variation? After all, it’s not impossible this one could be a dud.”
“What?” Missy said. “It has to live.”
“No. Our other project is too important.” Squidge slid the petrie dish into a special compartment in their new, top of the line, artificial womb. All white perspex, with a high-resolution viewing monitor on one side. “This was just a short assessment of you, Lilly. Which you passed, by the way. So congratulations, boss, tomorrow we will be ready for the real thing. I am so excited.”
“Yay,” Lilly said flatly. Trying to tell herself the embryo they were incubating didn’t really matter. That there was no point worrying about whether it lived, because it almost certainly wouldn’t. No matter how much she had begun to hope.
Her main aim had be to escape back home, out of this nightmare. So all she really needed to do was stall, and keep on stalling, until she thought of a plan that wasn’t all hope and big fluffy fairy dust.
§
INTERNAL EMAILS DEC 11
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
CC: [email protected]
Subject: My Dreadbeast
Isn’t it about time I saw sum results from this department? What have you bean doing? I thought Miss L and that boy were supposed to be geniuses. Get on with it.
I shouldn’t kneed to remind any body about what happens when I’m waiting around during the New Year for a mascot that doesn’t arrive. A result I would consider worse than last year when the second unit Lion-hawk pooped on Tarpin’s shoulder, and I had to shoot Tarpin, the hawk, and the design crew. Stop mucking around on trial projects and GET TO WORK!!
Your Boss and Overlord
§
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: LL
Remember, we got this girl for a reason. To find our leek. So where are all her contacts? Who is sending her all the notes? Why haven’t you found them? Why in all hells is she writing a dairy? And WHY aren’t you doing your job?
Your Boss and Overlord
Mr Big
§
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
I ashore you. Security is tight. There have been no more attempted massages. My survey lance says our initial information may have been correct and she is a scientist not a spy. She knows her job better than the old Prof you had offed.
11sftm
•11•
Threatened
THREE DAYS LATER, LILLY was still alive, and, to her surprise, so was the hybrid embryo. It all seemed to be going swimmingly well, until she looked up from a mile of dreadbeast sequencing.
“Lilly!” Missy was yelling. “Lilly hurry.” She was hovering next to the hybrid’s artificial womb.
Something had to be horribly wrong.
“Lilly, look how fast the baby’s grown already.”
“Not baby, foetus,” Squidge corrected, too busy on his computer to go and actually look.
“I think it moved!” Missy yelled.
Interest piqued, Lilly pushed past Missy and peered into the tank. The creature, a tiny curled up pea inside its Plastech sleeve, wasn’t doing much, but it was still alive, and that was a good thing. For now. Determined not to get her hopes up, she shrugged. “Wait until next week,” she said. “That’ll be when it dies.”
Brian looked over to Squidge. “It’s not going to die, is it?”
“Of course not,” Squidge said. Without looking up, he launched into an explanation about how his new and improved optimised embryonic conditions would let the embryo grow at an enormous rate.
Lilly didn’t really believe him, he always seemed to be full of profoundly unjustified enthusiasm. “That’s lovely,” she said, gulped down two aspirin, and then thought about it, before downing another – for luck.
Maybe it was time to shift focus away from the hybrid. She forced a smile, as much for the camera hovering nearby as for her team. “Look everyone, whether this little critter lives or dies, let’s just remember we’re making wonderful progress with the dreadbeast. We should all be proud.” It was true enough. They were doing well. Not only that, but even Missy was learning how to use some of the equipment. And Brian was learning how not to use the really expensive fragile things that were best left in the hands of Lilly or Squidge.
At least tinkering with the dreadbeast physiology was fun, and the models were good – brilliant, in fact. Even if, in the end, none of it had a hope of working. Except, maybe, for the all-important job of convincing Mr Big to let her live long enough for a brilliant escape plan to pan out. And for her to think up that brilliant escape plan in the first place. Until then, as head of the lab, it was her job to put the best face she could on this project. However impossible.
She was about to go for another exploratory walk when a familiar figure with wild hair, walk shorts, and an Hawaiian shirt burst into the lab.
“D— D— D— Doctor Deathless,” Squidge gasped.
“Let me see this … this nothing you think you’ve designed,” Dr Deathless demanded. “I know you’ve got nothing. You kids couldn’t even make a six legged mouse, let alone one of Prof’s crazy creatures.”
“But—” Squidge tried to interject.
Dr Deathless was having none of it. “Squidge, you’re a fool! Prof was a fool, and now he’s dead. You’ll all be dead soon. Especially you, girl!” He glared at Lilly through straggly clumps of unkempt hair.
Lilly shrank back.
Dr Deathless loomed closer, still ranting, “You’re on a fool’s errand. You’re making a dead-beast. Not a dreadbeast. It’ll never work.” With evident relish, he spat out all the reasons why. The breathing, the skeleton … all the problems Lilly had talked about on her first day. But the more he ranted that the dreadbeast would never work, the more Lilly was determined that it would. She even started to see some quite elegant fixes for some of the problems. Maybe she’d been working too hard on going through the motions of working, rather than being her usual resourceful self.
Even as Dr Deathless screamed and ranted, his rabid overreaction gave Lilly a kind of perverse optimism that they might have a real chance of making the dreadbeast. It had to be possible. Why else would Dr Deathless be so worried? For a moment (before she reminded herself she was supposed to be escaping), Lilly even hoped it could be completed in time for Mr Big’s Spring Catalogue of Evil.
“And what have we here?” Dr Deathless laughed as he approached the artificial womb with the tiny hybrid inside.
It was moving. Lilly felt as if she was seeing the critter for the first time. It was so cute, a pea wrapped up in its own tail, legs gently flailing.
In solidarity she joined Missy, standing bravely in front of her creation.
“Um. Get away from that,” Squidge shouted.
“Your creature will die. And then you will die—” Dr Deathless ranted.
“Get away!” Brian advanced on Dr Deathless.
More eyes floated into the room, diodes flashing.
“Yes,” Squidge said. “The embryo is growing nicely. You should back off and get out of here.”
“I don’t much feel like it.” In a show of clumsiness, Dr Deathless tripped over the spare artificial womb, so it smashed into very expensive pieces of perspex and electronics.
“Sorry!” Dr Deathless said, turning to the cameras in a tone of artificial sincerity. He backed away with exaggerated care.
“Get out! Get out!” Squidge squealed. He raised his skinny arms like a boxer. “Get out of here,” he repeated, this time with a conviction that belied his skinny frame.
“You and whose army?” Dr Deathless laughed, towering over the boy. He lunged toward Squidge.
Squidge backed off, eyes wide.
Coming to his rescue, Missy and Brian approached, fists raised just as unconvincingly. “That’s right, get out!” Brian said.
Seeing Dr Deathless was unimpressed by this display of solidarity, Lilly picked up a lab chair, and he finally backed away with an infuriating wink.
The door crashed open. Two security guards rushed in.
“About time,” Lilly muttered under her breath.
The guards stepped aside.
Calm as a cucumber, Dr Deathless walked past them, stopped in the doorway. He turned and waved, a grin plastered over his face.
Lilly, the last of her patience gone, threw the chair. It skidded across the polished floor and hit the rapidly closing door. She shook her head and turned toward the others. “How can they just let him get away with this?”
“Um, that would be because of his bomb,” Missy said, gingerly picking up broken circuitry from smashed artificial womb.
“Or the army of zombies he’s promised Mr Big.” Brian picked up a smashed piece of perspex and grimaced as black tubing fell out.
“A bomb, and an army?” Lilly whispered in horror.
“I do not see the problem,” Squidge said. “I am pretty sure someone could disarm the bomb. It is only gelignite. And as for zombies, he only has two. o far. That is nothing, you wait. Soon, we will have dreadbeasts.”
Lilly sighed. “But we’ll only have one. Deathless destroyed our spare AW3.”
Still, maybe that would give them a little more time. Surely Mr Big couldn’t expect them to move quite so fast when the only artificial womb they had was already occupied. Could he?
“It might not be so bad.” Squidge picked up pieces of shattered equipment, while the rest of the team looked on in hope.
Finally he shook his head. “Snakes bladders! What are we going to do now?”
§
INTERNAL EMAILS DEC 14
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: LL
She is either very clever or very stupid. In either case she has made no effort to contact anybody outside her teem. As for her dairy – it seems to be just that. I am not noticing any code. Perhaps she is foolish enough to think we cannot read said dairy. That, or she doesn’t care. And it looks like you were right about her running around tapping on walls. According to her diary, all she’s doing is trying
to do is escape. Good luck with that.
I promise I’m working on her security issues and will keep you informed – wait a minuet, she’s hiding something in her fist. Now she’s pushing it up to the screen – Its another note.-
§
Please, can the people doing the washing around here read simple instructions like, “dry-clean only.” They completely ruined my skirt. And don’t you think it’s about time I got my own email address so I can organise proper replacement clothing? My only respectable clothes are becoming rather shabby.
Sincerely,
Lilliana Lionheart
§
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
CC: [email protected]
Subject: Your note
Miss Lionheart you are now on the internal e-mail system. As for extra clothing, please contact [email protected]
§
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Clothing
Attachment: Minions ‘R Us Catalogue
Hi. I hope you have settled in well and are beginning to enjoy the lifestyle the WWOE offers. Digital Security mentioned you were after some new clothing. Well, they didn’t so much mention it, as it came up on my search parameters. It’s not like I snoop or anything. Forward planning is in my job description, and my algorithms were simply monitoring the digital traffic to create a more impactful service. As Lab HOD you may purchase up to 20 items in the “mad about science” range. Don’t you love it? Came up with that myself.
Cheers,
VF Your virtual friend at HR
§
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Your note
The selection of clothing is hideous, but I am desperately short of clothes. So, if you could, please order the items I have chosen.