by Nick Ryder
Marie recoiled. “We can’t do that. To living things? That sounds cruel...”
“So you were a vegetarian before I brought you back?” I asked, really hoping I was right and she was not.
“Well, no, but—”
“You go out there and kill things to bring them back so I can add them to the database,” I reminded her. “You’re living off the nutrigel right now, and that’s taken from dead animals already.”
Her ears flattened. “I know you’re right, but it just feels wrong. Creating something only to kill it.”
If I’d had a body, I would have smirked at her. “It’s okay, I can create them with really tiny brains. Huge happiness centers. They’ll just wander around and screw and sleep. They’ll be happier than any one of us, I promise.”
Marie didn’t look placated by that idea. “Do you think it’s safe? To just create loads of monsters like that?”
“We can make them F-tier,” I explained. I’d been skeptical of Ego’s arbitrary rating system for the creatures they made when he’d first said it, but it was easier than using the raw stat data he got for each creation. “We make them weak and without aggression. They’re not dangerous. It’s just like keeping chickens. In fact, I would make them chickens if we had a chicken blueprint.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Marie said.
“We can give them lots of space. We have plenty to spare. And like, pillows or whatever they like,” Elaine offered. “Like free range.”
“Yeah okay,” Marie conceded. “And we really do need to make sure we have more nutrigel, otherwise we’re screwed.” It was her plan that required the most nutrigel, so she ultimately had to accept it.
“We should make rabbits,” I said. “They’re docile naturally.”
“But they’re so cute,” Marie whined.
Elaine gave her a scratch on the head, between the ears, and it calmed her down.
“Ego,” I said, hoping he was in a better mood. The image of him sauntering around as a huge blond Greek god figure with gigantic breasts popped violently back into my mind and I forced it out again. Eurgh. “We need to make some rabbits.”
“You mean I need to make some rabbits.”
I didn’t respond, but instead returned to the screen with the blueprints we’d taken. “Can we use some of the DNA from the mule deer we got?” I’d spent a lot of time reading up on the different animals that’s we’d taken DNA from so that I knew what their strengths were. “They mate year round rather than just once a year. We want our rabbits to always be having babies.”
“I can do that,” Ego said. He continued to flick through his list. “Mosquitoes have tons of kids,” he suggested.
“We maybe don’t want our rabbits to be giving birth to a hundred little rabbits at a time, but the bigger the litter the better, within reason.”
“I’ll play around with what we’ve got,” Ego promised. “Lots of kids but not too many.” I was sure a detected a hint of sarcasm. Ego had found a collection of British shows on his hard drive, and it wasn’t doing his already dry sense of humor any favors.
“Let’s go and find somewhere to put them,” Lisa said.
I’d diverted all resources away from opening more levels of the facility. After the disaster that was opening up level 5 I’d decided we needed to be more prepared before we started delving further down into the sealed levels. Besides, we weren’t making full use of the facilities we had on these floors yet. With access to more nutrigel, we’d start to be able to consider opening up more floors.
I flicked through the CCTV cameras, following them through the facility. Lisa seemed to have an idea of where she was going. They had access to five levels, and the facility was huge in terms of floor space. There were endless rooms, and barely any were being used. The labs were obviously in use; that was where the creatures were gestated. There were also three rooms taken up as bedrooms for the girls. The monsters and animals we’d made had rooms, too. They were all kept in rooms on sub-level three. That floor had been dedicated to storage space for their growing army. I would have liked to knock some of the walls out and create more open space, but there was nothing I could do about the infrastructure of the place.
Instead I’d let Lisa deal with organizing that. She had an eye for it, and there hadn’t been any problems so far.
It was why I let her take the lead now, stalking through the facility on powerful legs with a goal in mind.
They settled on sub-level one. This floor was mainly out of action. There was no lab on the floor, and consisted of mainly empty rooms that had previously been office space.
I could immediately see why she’d picked it. The room was full of cubicles with desks and outdated computers. Infrastructure that could be changed. They weren’t loadbearing walls. When the cubicles had been ripped away it would leave a huge space.
“Perfect,” I said. “Good choice.”
Lisa grinned. “I thought you’d approve.”
“I wish I could get to work ripping that shit out straight away,” I said. The muscles I used to have had a phantom ache. “I miss manual labor.” I’d never been a manual laborer, but I’d lived in the gym every morning. This was torture.
“You’ll have a body soon,” Elaine said with a small, encouraging smile. I knew she meant well, but it felt patronizing. The frustration burned hot.
I kept my mouth shut. Metaphorically, of course, because the only mouth I had now was the intercom.
The girls got to work changing the room so that it would be able to host the rabbits Ego was creating.
I left them to it, returning to the creation of my body. Marie had been right, we didn’t have the immense amount of nutrigel it would take to make my uber-body just yet. I had to prioritize keeping the facility safe over the selfish need to feel things beneath my fingers again.
I tried to find the silver lining: that meant I had time to make sure my body was perfect before I started gestating it.
Chapter Three
We’d done a good job with the farm.
It wasn’t just that Ego’s DNA manipulation had made the F-tier creatures the perfect farm animals. Within minutes of them being let loose in the specially created room that was their home, they’d started going at it. After a week a slew of baby rabbits took up the space. There were almost too many. The whole of sub-level one might end up dedicated to the nutrigel farm, and I wouldn’t be opposed to that. The more nutrigel we had, the more things we could create, and the more sub-levels we could open.
It was the perfect system.
It had also given me time to tinker. I’d instructed the bots to rip up the floor before the rabbits went in, and create pressure pads. That way, when a rabbit got to a certain weight, it would alert the bots and they would pick it up and send it to be made into nutrigel. Doing it arbitrarily like that made the most sense, I decided. It was easiest to measure, and it removed any need for human intervention.
My girls stayed away from the rabbit room, too. None of them wanted to get attached to them. They lived on sub-level one by themselves and that kept everyone happy.
Including them, I thought. On the odd occasion I checked in on them they looked as happy as rabbits (or rabbit-adjacents) could be.
The girls were out scouting right now. The tension had still been obvious between them because Lisa had made the decision, so I’d stepped in and given them essentially the same instructions as Lisa had. Coming from me, they took them more easily. They were out scouting the area and keeping an eye on Cara and her village. Elaine was enamored with the village, but the rest of us were more skeptical. They had the power to attack us, and at least come close to destroying us if they wanted, and that kept me from going to Cara and asking her to come back to the facility to bargain.
While they were gone, I was working on the facility. Secretly I agreed with Marie the most. The facility was our stronghold, so it needed to be strong.
In gestation we had two D-class monsters. They were nothing speci
al—with the currently lab facilities we couldn’t make anything above a C-class anyway—but they were more powerful than anything we’d created so far. The larger store of nutrigel meant we could afford to play around a bit more.
They were a mixture of blueprints, too. Combining DNA and seeing what happened was my favorite thing. Mixing things together to create super-predators. That was how I was going to keep my facility safe and then start to spread out, to help make the world that had fallen into chaos a better place again.
I hadn’t shared that part of my plan with the girls yet. That was a way off.
Creating the pressure sensors for the rabbit enclosure had gotten me thinking, though. Right now I had the bots ripping up floorboards closer to the entrance of the facility. Beneath the metal panels of the floor was space for electrical wiring, airflow and storage. Space for a trap. Instead of creating just pressure sensors, I was having them make a trap door. It opened up into a small room where I had two large rats lying in wait. I didn’t feel bad about keeping them cooped up there; they loved the small dark space, and I’d added some laziness in them to make sure they wouldn’t get frustrated. I planned to rotate them out, so they could have some running time.
As I watched them work, my mind buzzed with possibilities for more traps. I was going to make this place a fortress.
When the girls showed back up I was waiting at a camera near the solar panels and the entrance to the facility. “Watch out,” I said, “I’ve added some traps near the entrance.”
I guided them through the facility and back to the lab while they praised my traps. Marie especially looked pleased, even when I told her about the rats beneath the trap door.
They handed the few specimens they’d caught to the bots. They were getting fewer with each trip they made outside. There were only so many things living outside the facility and even with the mutations, that meant they kept running into the same creatures over and over again. For a few trips outside in a row they’d brought back only slightly different insects.
I was going to have to start sending them further afield soon, maybe even to be outside overnight, and I didn’t like it.
I wanted to be with them when that happened.
The thought of being stuck alone in the facility with just Ego for company—an Ego who continued to sulk with me despite nearly a week having passed by now—was wholly unappealing.
“They’ve nearly finished gestating,” I said, bringing them to the lab where the D-class creatures were at full size. “They’ll be waking up any minute now.”
Marie looked uncomfortable, but Lisa watched them with keen interest. “You’d better have got the obedience level right,” she said. “Otherwise we’re in trouble.”
“The obedience level is correct,” Ego said. “I was accurate.”
Lisa smiled. They were all getting sick of his surly tone. “Thanks, Ego.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, mollified.
There was a low whine from one of the creatures and I zoomed in.
They were ugly looking things. I’d been playing around with the same kind of combination I wanted to give my own body, though I’d kept the wolf lower in them to help with the obedience. Independence and intelligence were too ingrained in the wolf’s DNA to reliably create obedient wolves. Lisa could keep control of the few they did have, but I was still wary.
We could make dangerous creatures without taking the risk.
The D-class creatures were quadrupedal and the two front legs were the only thing I’d taken from the wolf. They were powerful with sharp claws. The back legs I’d taken from the cat blueprint. The most experimental thing I had were wings. The wings were from a small bird my girls had managed to capture a few days before. I’d asked them specifically for things with wings.
In our growing army we had cats with wings from a small bird that had been enlarged and added, but they weren’t quite right. The wings were too small and the creatures could only fly for short distances, and it wasn’t graceful. This bird was different and I’d hoped maybe the outcome would be different, but they looked just as unnatural.
It might be my vanity talking, but the wings were the thing I’d been most enamored with in my dream. I could still feel Elaine’s fingers running over the soft feathers. I didn’t want some makeshift wings that would just about do their job but looked clunky and like they weren’t meant to be.
I didn’t know how much I could edit a body once I’d made it. I wasn’t going to risk making something that wasn’t perfect.
The D-class creatures I’d made might not be perfect, but they were definitely powerful. They stood up, stretching and testing their new bodies. They made no obviously aggressive moves, but started stalking around the lab. They sniffed at the girls with snouts, but didn’t bare their sharp canines or growl.
The girls didn’t look scared or tense either.
“I’ll show them to their new home,” Lisa said, looking the creatures in the eye and then barking orders for them to follow her. I didn’t think they understood the orders, but they understood her body language perfectly, and hurried to do as she said.
“We don’t know how powerful they are,” I said, following them through the facility. “They should fight each other.”
“We can’t do that,” Marie argued immediately. “That’s not right.”
“They’re born to fight,” I replied. “That’s what they’re meant to do. It’s not like they’re going to kill each other. We need to know what they can do, how much more powerful they are.”
“I can give you their stat reading,” Ego said. “If you want more information than to know their class rating.”
“I want to see them in action. I want to see what they can do.” Stats were one thing, but it wasn’t the same as watching something fight.
Something that I was planning on becoming. I wanted to know what my body would look like in action when I created it.
“Make them fight each other,” I told Lisa. “Just for a little bit, just to see it. We need to know their fighting style to know how to use them properly.”
Lisa brought them to the room they’d be living in. Elaine and Marie stayed outside. Lisa pressed herself against the door and then gave the order that they should fight.
I changed my mind about whether they could understand her then. They might not be able to speak, but they knew exactly what she’d said to them.
The change in them was instantaneous. Neither hesitated to bare their teeth and lunge at the other. Lisa had complete control over them.
She made a move as if to leave, but then stayed to watch. She had nothing to fear from them, they wouldn’t hurt her.
But they definitely hurt each other. They wrestled on all fours, scratching and biting. Both beasts aimed for the other’s neck, the vulnerable part, and I was tempted to stop them. I didn’t want them to actually hurt each other.
Then the fighting evolved.
One of the creatures spread its wings and flew backward, rearing up onto its hind legs. It stayed that way, kicking its opponent with clawed feet and opening up large wounds on its back. It used the wings to keep itself upright and the advantage over the beast still on all fours was immense.
“Interesting,” I said. “Why hasn’t the other one copied it?”
The other creature continued to try and fight on all fours, it spread its wings but couldn’t make them work in the same way.
I let it play out for too long. In one critical blow the more intelligent beast went properly airbound. It clasped clawed feet around the neck of its opponent and squeezed with its claws, decapitating the beast.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Maybe next time, the stat reading will suffice,” Ego said.
Lisa sighed. “Well that’s going to give us a lot of nutrigel, anyway.”
The winner of the fight returned to all fours, folding its wings away. It stood still, not looking at the thing it had just killed. Then it turned around multiple times like a domestic
dog and collapsed to the ground, licking its leg, where it had an angry gash.
Elaine and Marie poked their heads back around the door. Both women pulled a face at the gory scene. Blood was pooling rapidly from the fatal wound. “What happened?” Elaine asked.
“The alive one was a much better fighter,” Lisa said.
“I thought they were exactly the same,” Elaine replied, backing further out of the room as the pool of blood got closer.
“I thought so too,” I said, leaving the room with the girls. I called on the bots to go and sort out the mess I’d allowed to happen. “I don’t know why one figured out better tactics.”
“Because they’re still living things,” Marie said, pointedly. “They’re not identical clones of each other. They can make decisions.”
“Okay, I see your point,” I allowed. But soldiers were people too, and they were still put into situations with the possibility of dying because it was necessary. They were trained for it just like these creatures were bred for it. And soldiers were put through tests, too. It was necessary to know a soldier’s capability before he was put on the battlefield, just like I needed to know what these beasts could do before I set them loose.
I needed to know how many more of them I needed, too.
Elaine stretched, extending her claws and then retracting them again. “I’m beat. I’m going to go to bed.”
They separated, the girls going to their rooms and me going back to my drawing board. I had so much more information now to reconsider my body building with.
Chapter Four
Cara had always enjoyed scavenging, but nowadays she took every opportunity to spend time outside the village.
It hadn’t taken long for the jubilation of people ripping off their tartans, of abandoning the divide that had separated the village for as long as it had existed, to sour. The realization of how many people had died in an offensive from a neighboring people had come back to the forefront, and arguments immediately broke out as to how they were going to stop something like that happening again.