He pulled at his mustache, playing with it. He curled the thick dark brown hairs upward while twiddling it. "Doctor Grimm."
"Doctor Tesla, I'm sending you a recording of the data I've been compiling. Pay special attention to the genomes I have isolated."
He turned his head away from her and looked at another flat screen beside him. He watched the model play out, and then looked back at her, giving his full attention. He dropped his hands to his sides, leaning back, folding them. "Sensitive DNA. You think it is being absorbed in these creatures?"
She nodded. "We have been thinking that the Aeon Strain only absorbs traits during transmission to a new host by afflicting the new host in question. We know that the Aeon Strain adapts a non-humanoid creature into a bipedal form, but… I think that when the Aeon Strain encounters a beneficial humanoid trait, it too is shared with the host creature. It is the likely explanation for why these samples being sent in by our science officers are becoming more and more frequent."
He scoffed, "According to the reports, that still doesn't explain how a marsupial organism jumped the species barrier."
She tilted her head and looked dead at him. Her face portrayed her sincerity. "Sensitive DNA is a mutation. A Beneficial mutation, but a mutation, I think that the sensitive gene may have played a roll Doctor Tesla."
She brought up a holographic image of a purple DNA molecule spinning and pointed to it right after standing up. "Marsupials, the thylacine in question, has some canine genetic traits. I'm not saying that a thylacine could infect a feline or something else, but something at least closely related, given that the sensitive gene itself is a mutation of human genetics."
He nodded. He looked at Alice's holo feed from his end and back at his computer screen. He saw the model spinning on his computer. Bits of DNA were being taken out over and over as readouts along the side of his screen confirmed the genetic mapping as it sequenced the code. He looked back at her with a frown. "You may be onto something Doctor Grimm. Alert the science officers in the field, I will inform the council."
She nodded and turned back to her post.
_____
Ashley Brandon received the message as it displayed in a holocomm being displayed from her armband. The message stated; "BE ON ALERT. COLLECT ALL SAMPLES AND RUN PRELIMINARY SCANS FOR THE FOLLOWING GENETIC MATERIAL IN ALL SOURCE CREATURE ENCOUNTERS.
SENSITIVE GENOME 46, 32, 32A+B, DELTA-32-SEN-145.2 and 143.9
BRUTICUS GENOME 46, 32, 32A+B. DELTA-32-BR-145.2 and 143.9
NIMBIS GENOME 46, 32, 32A+B, DELTA-32-NIM-145.2 and 143.9.
IF ENCOUNTERED, LOG AND REPORT SPECIES/STRAIN/LOCATION/TIME/DATE
RECORD IF THE CREATURE HAS BEEN ERADICATED OR IS AT LARGE.
# OF INFECTED OR POSSIBLY INFECTED/SPECIES.
The recording floating in the air being displayed in bright purple letters flowing from her band and repeated itself before going on to message two, kept repeating until she pressed a button.
"The Society of Night thanks you for your service and your continued efforts in assisting our mission in cohabitation. It is vital that these creatures be recorded, reported, captured, or eradicated. Be advised, that continued reports are coming in of suspected mutation in source creatures that have come into contact with any of the Sensitive/Bruticus/Nimbs genomes. Failure to report findings, can and will result in disciplinary action.
Sincerely, Commanding Science Officer, Alice Grimm."
Ashley looked up as the entire recording repeated again and again, on a loop. She let out a sigh. Ashley ran her fingers through her pixie styled hair and huffed again. She knew that what she also suspected had to be true. She tapped her armband to halt the display.
"Commander Dolenigan?"
The vampiress looked over her shoulder and gave her attention to the science officer. She crossed her arms and rubbed the red kevlar of her uniform, scratching at her chest. "Officer Brandon, please tell me you have something useful?"
Ashley shrugged. "Same instructions commander. Capture, collect, and kill."
Helena smirked. "What else?"
Ashley could tell she knew she was holding something back. She sighed. "Sensitive DNA and two other human evolutions might be speeding up the adaptive capabilities of the source creatures."
Chapter 8
The Commander went over a battle plan with the AI on the ship. She was sitting in her command chair near the cockpit, wearing a helmet attached to metal cords connecting her to a metallic orb above her. It looked like tentacles made of shiny black metal attaching to her helmet. It was scanning her thoughts.
Helena Dolenigan wasn't about to take chances. She needed the area wholly surveyed. By thinking about it, the mental connection she had with the ship's AI, allowed her to launch sixty-seven small orbs roughly the size of softballs. Each one was black, made of the same solatex technology as most other technological advances of this age. Like the satellites in space, they had laser propulsion. Green lights shot out from their sides, propelling them outward into the launchers.
The orbs launched out from the vessel and shot out faint purple scanning lasers as they swarmed around the ship mapping the area. They spread out in a web-like pattern, scanning the forest around them while relaying the terrain back to the AI, which in turn began programming both wearable visors fashioned into what resembled glasses that the team could wear along with the newly issued armbands. With a little luck, the probes would find where the thylacines were hiding. Commander Dolenigan wanted this operation to end on a good note.
Helena took the well-formed helmet off her head and set it on a resting place beside her command seat. She smiled. Two of the probes found what she was looking for.
Eight miles away, the wolves had gathered in a dense thicket of the woods. The population count had grown. By her counts in the Den, there were fourteen now, and others in the process of becoming.
She pressed the commlink button on her armband and spoke into it. "SUIT UP 203!"
Xairin heard his ranking officer over the same device he was wearing. He made a duck face, scratched his chin, and then twitched his lips to the side as he looked at Griffin. "Seriously, already?"
"From what I know about Dolenigan, she wastes no time Xairin."
Griffin shrugged. "Besides, after this assignment, we still have another one to attend, remember?"
Xairin scratched his chin while recalling that they had another operation to do. He had almost forgotten about meeting up with another team to help take on a militant group of the Immortium Conclave that may be holding Lilith and Damien Winters. "Oh yeah…"
The young vampire stood there for a moment as he contemplated his situation. Part of him was excited to be doing this. Another part of him couldn't believe he was doing this. Xairin never once thought himself to be a man of action like his father was, and now, here he was, fighting bad guys and playing a monster hunter. Xairin kept waiting to wake up from all of this, but that wasn't something that would happen, this was real…
He grabbed his blaster pistols, along with a holster to go with them and started putting it on. He put the blaster pistols into their holsters and turned around as Griffin handed him a blast rifle that magnetically adhered to the circlet holding his swords. Xairin had to admit when he turned around and looked in the mirror beside him that he looked badass.
With a quick run of his fingers, he fixed his wavy red hair into place and darted around to follow behind a disgruntled vampiric mentor. Griffin was rolling his eyes. "Primp later, we have killing to do."
The pair left the craft, while other pairs split up and had their orders to carry out just as Xairin and Griffin did. Griffin was looking at a holographic image being displayed from his watch that showed a map of the area since he didn't want to wear the glasses. The route the orbs had mapped out for them earlier from when Commander Dolenigan sent out the probes was quite detailed. Xairin also opted to go just using a feed to his watch.
"Lieutenant Giovanni?" The Commander's voice announced ove
r Griffin's commlink.
"Yes, Commander?"
"I'm sending recruit Joanie Greer with you and your recruit Mr. Thunder."
Griffin snarled. He had met the bubbly werewolf earlier and thought her high-pitched voice and bouncy personality to be a little annoying. It is what it is, though, he had no choice in the matter. "Yes, Commander Dolenigan."
It wasn't a few seconds later that the blond-haired blue-eyed woman caught up with them. She came running, sprinting in fact. The way she ran was a little suggestive. Xairin couldn't tell if she was just really sultry, or that was just how she ran. "Hi, guys!" She then eyed Xairin, eyeing him up and down.
"You two ready to kill some stuff? I can't wait!" She said with a wink.
"What exactly is your specialty?" Griffin asked as he rubbed his temples.
"I'm a tracker silly. Now, if let's get this party started." She said as she instantly took the front.
Griffin smirked. "PFFT. You may be a tracker, but we have infrared vision and echolocation. You're new, so you stay with Xairin, got it?"
Griffin rolled his eyes while looking at Xairin. "I mean it, you two keep up the back."
"But I'm a tracker?" She asked.
Griffin snarled. "I don't care, you are a recruit, and it is your first mission, yes?"
She nodded.
"We have the location mapped out from the probes that Dolenigan sent out. I need you sniffing the air and listening for movement. I will be taking point. Now if you catch wind of something, alert me, till you've been on a few more missions, that is the way this is rolling, got it?"
Joanie had no choice but to agree since Griffin Giovanni outranked her. She was excited. It was her first mission. She had such high hopes on making her pack proud, especially her mother, given that Joanie was a born werewolf and not one of the recently created ones from the Aeon Strain fall out. She smiled and shrugged with a friendly, yet surprised demeanor. "You are the Lieutenant."
Griffin noticed she had a scythe on her back, a bladed axe that curved down the center. "A scythe?"
She looked over her shoulder, "Oh yeah, I'm not all that great with handguns, I do better with melee weapons." She replied with a perky tone.
Griffin frowned. "You do realize that these things are going to be right up on you swiping at your face, neck, and chest, right?"
She shrugged again with the same attitude. "Oh yeah, I totally know they are going to attempt to claw my titties off. I promise I am pretty good with a blade."
Griffin smirked. "Alrighty then."
Xairin raised an eyebrow, "Did she actually just say the word titties?" He thought.
The woods were dark, dark as one would expect for a stroll at night. If it weren't for being Immortium, they would have needed night vision gear to assist. Instead, Xairin and Griffin's vampiric lenses were down, while Joanie's eyes, her irises had gone yellow.
They dodged thorny bushes and leaped over logs. They landed on tree limbs and ran the length of the branches as far as their weight would carry before jumping to another tree and down to the ground. It was like watching acrobats move through the forest, acrobats with superhuman abilities that is.
Each landing was soft, nearly unnoticeable as they landed. Griffin taking a quick moment to look at his holographic display, get his bearings, and then point to the direction he wished his two teammates to follow him too.
He took off into a sprint, leaping from tree to tree, and then spun into the air, landing on a long tree branch of a vast white oak and waited for Xairin and Joanie to catch up. They were five seconds behind him. Upon landing, Xairin noticed Griffin kneeling down on the limb and pointing. Joanie saw quickly what Griffin was pointing at, while it took Xairin a few seconds to realize what it was.
A large thylacine creature was walking through the woods, sniffing the air. The beast was almost seven feet tall as it's bipedal form moved through the woods. It was dragging behind it, a body, a human body.
Standing on the limb of the towering oak, Xairin knelt down and allowed his eyes to focus in. They zoomed like a camera without any willing it, it was instinctive now. He could see a woman's body. Her chest had claw marks across the chest, but not deep enough to reach the heart. He could make out a bite wound on the shoulder, along with gashes on her face and along her arms and legs. She was lifeless, wearing dirty clothes, her dress code was simple. Xairin figured she was a farmer at one of the nearby settlements. Either way, given her heart, was still intact, she could resurge if they acted quickly.
He was a split second away from leaping downward when he felt Griffin's grip keep him from jumping to the forest floor. The Brazilian vamp grit his teeth, "What do you think you're doing Xairin?"
"Saving an innocent?"
Griffin's accent was thick this time. "Our orders are to find the den and wipe it out, not go on excursions."
"Griffin, her heart is still there, she could resurge. Why can't we save her?"
Xairin brushed Griffin's hand away from his shoulder. The first thing that came to mind was the boy in New York City's ruins. Xairin couldn't help him. He had no choice to do what he did, but this was different. That woman wasn't going to become a ghoul and had every chance in the world to resurge as a Thylan werewolf. Xairin leaped from the tree, landing with catlike grace before Griffin could stop him again.
Griffin was frustrated. Being a new vampire made Xairin ten times as likely to be impulsive, even with the training. That impulsivity could get him killed, and if that happened, Ethan would hold Griffin accountable for it. The Beta had to act fast. Meanwhile, Joanie was digging Xairin's attitude and leaped behind Griffin.
Xairin was faster than Griffin this time. Being a vampire with the uniqueness that was his own, Xairin's movements were becoming far more fluid, stealthy. He moved through the grass, the weeds themselves didn't have time to react to Xairin passing. It was like time stood still while he raced to catch the thylacine creature.
The biped monster was too busy dragging the meat behind it to notice the approaching vampire. By the time it heard a snap of a twig, it was too late.
Xairin leaped into the air with his blaster pistols in both hands aimed forward. He was at point-blank range when he discharged his laser pistols, causing a fiery fury to trade places with the monstrous creature's elongated face. The animal went limp by the time Griffin and Joanie arrived. By that time, Xairin was already looking at the body and was pressing on his commlink. "I have a body, possibly a resurgence victim. If you can send a transport to my location, you can retrieve her?"
Science Officer Ashley Brandon's voice came across the airwaves. "Identify?"
"Recruit Thunder, Officer Brandon."
"You found a resurgence case near the den?"
"While I was in route, Officer Brandon. I caught sights of one of the Thylan converts dragging a body."
The comm went silent. Xairin was inpatient. "Officer Brandon, do you copy?"
"A hover droid is in route, to your currently mapped location."
Xairin pressed the commlink on his armband again. "Copy that."
Xairin hoped he was using the proper language given he had graduated ahead of schedule.
Griffin was huffing, standing there with his arms crossed. "I told you to stay behind me, did I not?"
The young vampire looked up at the tan skinned vampire stewing over Xairin's impulsiveness. "This woman has a chance to come back, Griff?"
"HOLY SHIT, you blew that things head clean off!" Joanie blurted out as she studied the body.
Griffin put his hands on his sides. "And now we're giving up our position to the enemy, bravo…" Griffin could have tossed daggers through his eyes at both of them at that moment. Xairin for racing off half-cocked, and Joanie for blurting out "HOLY SHIT!"
"I do hope you two are happy because we are about to engage the enemy head on!"
Xairin shrugged. "Pfft, wait, what?"
Joanie was more on point. "Oh, incoming!"
The young vampire's ears became elf-like whil
e catching the grass and twigs snapping around him. He turned his head, cocking it. Like before, his eyes zoomed in. Xairin's mind lit up with the electric outlines of everything around him detailed with picture perfect imprinting of the situation from his biosonar. He could see the trees, the rocks, the dirt, the leaves moving in an energetic population in his mind. He could see a tree fifty yards away that was split in half, growing like a V, a perfect V. The details of the forest were important, but not as important as the six thylacine creatures quickly approaching, running on their hind legs, and switching to all fours to pick up speed.
One of them leaped into the air, jumping through the tree with two strong limbs split perfectly at angles in the distance. Xairin's right eyebrow lowered as the left rose upward. His snarky duckface was on point. "Well shit…"
Griffin took point. His hands hovered his pistols like an iron-willed gunslinger ready for a showdown. He knew that these things were never human, so that did give a little bit of an edge, but their movements would be swift, likely like shooting at a wererat or the thing that spawned them. He had to anticipate the actions. Where they would be, where they wouldn't be, meanwhile he didn't yell, but simply spoke calmly. "Don't aim for where they are, aim for where you think they will move to next, got it?"
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