Safari: A Technothriller

by Alexander Plansky

  Jesus Christ, she thought. This has to be a dream.

  The mirror was about five feet away on the wall to her left. Abruptly, she flew out of the chair and ran over to it, bracing herself for what she was about to see.

  The whites of her eyes were diffusing into a golden color. In her open mouth, gaping in shock, she could see her canines elongating. There was a light layer of fuzz around her face and on her arms that she knew was fur growing in.

  “Feeling in touch with your wild side, Sydney?” she heard Sans say. Her head whipped around to see him watching her panic with a smug smile. “Your psych profile said you’re quite insecure, so I hope you take comfort in knowing you are now a marvel of genetic engineering.”

  She was ready to leap onto the table and gouge his eyes out when Ramsay roughly grabbed her from behind and she felt a needle being inserted into her neck. She spun around as he pulled away, starting to feel dizzy. Ramsay and the technicians watched her collapse to the floor with a detached look, as if she were some kind of animal.

  Then they moved in and everything blacked out.

  PART III

  WILD

  TRANSFORMATIONS

  The next thing she remembered was waking up in a cell with rocky walls and a metal gate across the front. She was still in her medical gown. Beyond it, she could see that she was back in the cavern. She faded in and out of consciousness for a time, feeling pain all over.

  Finally, she opened her eyes to find a figure standing on the other side of the bars. It was Sans, silhouetted by the blue glow of the LED lamps. She could just make out a wicked smile on his face.

  “Pleasant dreams, Sydney?”

  All she could manage was a groan as she rubbed her eyes, careful not to scratch herself. The exhaustion was almost unbearable. Every inch of her felt sore. She didn’t think she could even get up off the floor.

  “You’re progressing marvelously. In a day or two, the transformation should be complete.”

  “What? To look like Brandon?” she asked, her voice feeling hoarse.

  He laughed. “No, you were given a different virus, one with leopard DNA. It appears to lack the hormonal issues of the lion strain, but the phenotypical changes have taken longer to become apparent.”

  “But, how was I infected?”

  “Your primaquine tablets never actually contained primaquine. You’ve been ingesting the virus every morning this week. If you had stopped a few days ago, your body might’ve been able to overcome it. But I’m afraid your DNA’s been altered too much to go back now. Still, it’s time for your daily dose.”

  Graves appeared beside him, punching something in on the keypad. The gate slid open and the two of them walked in. There was another technician standing guard behind them. As Graves stood over her, she could see her opening the pill bottle and taking out a tablet.

  Sydney huddled back against the wall. “I don’t understand,” she said feebly. “Andy and Courtney were on antimalarials too. Why weren’t they infected?”

  “We never took them off doxycycline,” Sans said. “We were going to switch them to the faux-primaquine this week when they took over field work while you and Brandon would conveniently disappear during your lab time. That way we could test out a version of the virus on a male and a female. And then the next week we would switch which gender got each strain. Andy was set to get the leopard virus, but we’re waiting to make sure you turn out okay first.”

  “How the hell do you think you’re going to get away with this?”

  Sans laughed. “Sydney please, your parents were informed last Thursday that all of you died in a horrific vehicle accident when a Land Rover was lost in the river. No one thinks you’re still here. You inadvertently helped me by actually destroying one last night, so I’ll legitimately have to buy a new one.”

  “But…Chang and Jones…”

  “Were also reported dead,” Graves said. “Before we even knew Jones had taken care of himself.”

  “I’m afraid none of you were ever leaving this place alive,” Sans said.

  “Open wide.” Graves was lowering the pill down towards her. All she could think to do was shake her head. “There are two ways we can do this,” the woman continued. Sydney said nothing. “Alright, we’re doing it that way.”

  She motioned to the other technician to come in and Sans stepped back while the pair of them restrained her. They barely needed to; Sydney didn’t have the energy to fight back.

  With gloved hands, Graves pried her jaws open. “The teeth are really coming in,” she said. Sydney tried to turn her head away, but the technician kept her facing up as the doctor placed the tablet on her tongue with her index finger and thumb.

  Sydney bit down.

  Graves swore and pulled her hand back. Both the latex and skin had been broken and blood trickled down the clear glove as Sydney spat the pill out. Graves smacked her across the face, retrieved the tablet, and tried to pry her mouth open once more.

  Sydney kept her teeth firmly clenched as the technician peeled back her lips. Graves shoved the tablet down the side of her mouth and the technician gave her an opened bottle of water, which she brought to Sydney’s front teeth and held upside down.

  She struggled but they held her there. Liquid spilled down her cheeks and splattered on the floor, but still she refused. Graves’s eyes stared into hers with a vicious intensity. Finally, the water bottle ran out. Sydney didn’t move.

  Graves leaned in closer. “If you don’t swallow, I’m going to shove that pill down your throat with my bare hand.”

  Sydney spat the water back in her face. The pill tumbled to the ground again.

  Angrily, Graves wiped her face off as she stood up and kicked Sydney in the stomach. She doubled over in pain, but the doctor’s foot lashed out again. The technician backed up, but Sans merely looked on, amused.

  Sydney groaned as Graves knelt beside her again and shoved the tablet into her mouth. She stood up again and kicked Sydney once more, this time slightly gentler. “Swallow it,” the doctor hissed.

  She siphoned as much saliva as she could and gulped, the pill scraping her throat on the way down. Graves got back down and pulled her lower jaw down to check for any sign of it. She turned to Sans. “Clear.”

  “Well, that took long enough,” he said, walking closer to stare down at Sydney. “Get some rest. Dr. Graves will be back for you later. I’m afraid I have a business call.” The three of them left the cage and Graves threw one glance back at her, malice burning in her eyes.

  Then the gate closed over and Sydney was all alone.

  She drifted off to sleep again and groggily awoke to the sound of the gate opening once more. Ramsay and Graves helped her to her feet, then led her out into the cavern. She heard the hybrids growling and biting at the bars as she was taken down the corridor to the left, where the operating rooms were.

  Panic gripped her as she struggled in their grasp.

  “Now, now,” Graves said. “There’s no need to worry. We’re not going to cut your head open.” She wasn’t sure if that was meant to be reassuring.

  They brought her into the first room on the left, where three technicians were already waiting around the operating table. A fourth was viewing the monitors. She put her feet up on the edge of the table to push back and was horrified to see that they were covered in fur and her toes had become sharp like a leopard’s hind claws. She was too shocked to fight back as they gently turned her around, helped her out of her gown, and lay her on her back.

  There was a mirror above her and she could see that the peachy fuzz of the night before had become a short coat of beige fur with black spot formations over her entire body. Her breathing quickened as she stared at the reflection of her eyes. Around the pupils, the color was completely a dim, golden yellow. Her other front teeth looked sharper now too, not just the canines.

  They started strapping her down but she was too fixated on the mirror to do anything. She only snapped out of it when they fitted the IV tube i
nto her arm and began placing electrodes on her arms, stomach, and legs. Only her underwear provided her with any sense of decency.

  Graves fitted her medical mask on and came around beside her. “This is a test of muscle stimulation. Normally, it doesn’t have to hurt so much, but after this” – she held up her bandaged finger – “I don’t think Dr. Sans will object if I use a little extra voltage.”

  Ramsay placed the final two electrodes on each of her temples.

  “Shall we begin?” Graves asked. Without waiting for an answer, she turned to the technician behind the monitors. “First test: abdominal.”

  There was an electric buzz and suddenly horrific pain shot through her midsection. Her entire core tensed up and she lurched against the straps, her mouth opening in a scream.

  It was over just as quickly as it began. Her muscles relaxed and she began hyperventilating.

  “Excellent muscle response. Abdominal strength has increased twenty-three percent since the pre-trip physical,” the man behind the monitor reported.

  “Hear that?” Graves said, leaning closer. She was clearly amused by the terror in Sydney’s eyes. “Cheer up, you’re in great shape. Let’s test the biceps next.”

  They continued shocking her all over her body for what felt like an eternity. Finally, when it was over, they let her sit up and put on a fresh gown. Ramsay and another technician held her arms as Graves led them back to her cage. Between everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours and the fact that her family didn’t even know she was alive, she was struggling to hold back tears.

  It didn’t work. Graves saw them welling up in her eyes after she punched in the gate code. “That’s a good sign. Other than elephants, we’re the only animals that cry when we’re sad. So even though you’re technically a subspecies now, I guess that means you’re still mostly human.”

  She gave Sydney a big, smug grin and gestured for her to enter the cage.

  Later, she tossed and turned on the hard floor while trying to get to sleep. But hunger gnawed inside of her, and it was all she could think about until she heard footsteps outside and crawled to the bars to see Ramsay walking by.

  “When do I get fed?” she shouted.

  He turned and walked over. “That is for Dr. Sans to decide. A well-fed predator doesn’t make for good hunting.”

  “Fuck you!” she spat at him, rattling the bars as best she could.

  Ramsay watched her with pity. “Those are titanium, so good luck with that.” Then he walked off.

  Sydney leaned back against the wall and slid down, putting a hand on her stomach as it gurgled loudly. Her mood grew progressively more sour with each passing minute as she moved from trying to sleep in various parts of the space to pounding on the rocky wall angrily.

  Eventually, she resolved to simply lie on her back, staring at the ceiling and listening to the noises of the cavern. Her hearing was much more astute now and she could faintly make out the consistent drip of water somewhere deep within the cave system. It lulled her into a trance and she was just finally beginning to drift off to sleep when several voices appeared, down the hallway to the right.

  A few moments later, Sans appeared at the bars. “Hello, Sydney. I’ve brought you company.”

  He stepped aside to show Graves gripping the arm of a drugged-up Courtney as Ramsay worked the keypad. The gate slid open and the girl was pushed inside, collapsing to her hands and knees. The grating closed over again.

  Sydney rushed over and gently shook her arm. “Are you okay?”

  There was a thin layer of peachy fuzz on her face. Sydney could feel it on her forearm too. Courtney looked up at her weakly with fear in her yellowish eyes. “Sydney, I want to go home.”

  She turned to Sans. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Her little stunt on Thursday forced a change of plans, so since we locked her up down here we figured we might as well begin her on the lion virus, which she was scheduled for this week anyway. Of course, we didn’t know about the hormone imbalance and I already have Brandon to poke, prod, and dissect, so she’s basically useless to me now.”

  Sydney’s eyebrows narrowed. “Then what do you want me to do with her?”

  The right side of Sans’s lip curled upward in a sinister smile.

  “I want you to eat her.”

  ETHICS

  “What?!” Sydney said. “I can’t do that!”

  “Why not?” Sans asked.

  “She’s a person!”

  “And you’re an animal, Sydney. A carnivorous one, I might add. And when carnivorous animals are hungry and the opportunity to consume meat presents itself, they consume the meat.”

  Courtney scurried away from her, backing against the grate. “Get away from me!” she screamed.

  “Jesus, look at her. She’s pathetic,” Graves said, eyeing the terrified girl with pity.

  Sydney looked at her claws and retreated further into the cell, feeling the cool rock of the rear wall press against her back. “No,” she said. “I won’t.”

  “See,” Sans said. “You changed your vocabulary. A moment ago, you said you couldn’t eat her, but when I pointed out it is perfectly within your capability to do so, you said you wouldn’t. You are acknowledging that you are making a conscious decision to go against your instincts. Therefore, you know that the choice lies with you.”

  Her stomach growled loud enough for Courtney to hear it, a look of even greater panic coming across her. Sydney glanced between her and the others beyond the gate.

  “Look at it this way,” Sans said. “You’re a biology major. When you are experimenting, what do you do with the waste? You dispose of it. She’s not a person anymore, Sydney. The outside world thinks she’s dead. Therefore, she still exists only as a test subject, a test subject that has served its purpose. You won’t be committing murder; she’s no more than biological waste.”

  I could do it, she realized. It would just take one quick pounce to be over there, one second more to tear out her throat. She wouldn’t feel anything after that. Courtney’s nightmare would be gone with Sydney’s hunger.

  Then she snapped out of it, not horrified so much with what Sans was proposing but with the fact that she had even considered it.

  “No,” she repeated, flattening herself against the back wall. “No, no, no.”

  Sans sighed. “This is your only chance for food today, Sydney.” She said nothing, glaring at him with her leopard’s eyes. He shook his head. “So be it.”

  The gate opened and, grabbing her by the shoulder, Ramsay dragged Courtney out. The door closed over again before Sydney could even think of an escape. She watched as the girl was hauled to her feet and led across the cavern. It struck her as odd for a moment. He wasn’t taking her back to the other corridor.

  Then she realized.

  Sydney ran to the bars, watching Ramsay bring Courtney to the cave access gate on the far side. “Wait, you can’t!” she cried.

  Sans turned to her. “You had your chance, Sydney. But in nature, nothing is left to waste.”

  Courtney was trying to get free, but Ramsay effortlessly held her back with one arm while punching in the code. His eyes scanned through the bars to make sure none of the hybrids were near, then he swung open the door and, keeping it that way with his foot, turned to grab Courtney with both arms.

  She screamed as he roughly threw her through the opening and swiftly shut it behind her. Her face appeared at the gate a moment later, her hands wrapping around the bars.

  “Please!” she screamed. “Please, I’ll do anything!”

  “It’s not your fault,” Sans said soothingly. “It really isn’t.”

  There was the sound of something moving through the cave behind her and Courtney was suddenly pulled back into the dark, vanishing from view altogether. Sydney covered her ears and tried to drown out the screams as they echoed all around the cavern.

  Abruptly, they ceased and were replaced with the tearing of flesh and the sickening crunch of bon
e.

  ANSWERS

  Ellie Chang lowered her book and checked her watch. It was nearly six, which meant dinner would be served soon. She hadn’t seen Sans all day and was waiting for him to make an appearance. In fact, she hadn’t seen much of anyone around the lodge save for a handful of the staff.

  It annoyed her that Sans wasn’t letting her talk to the board. He said it would be best for her to give them a complete summary of their discussions once she returned. He also said he had informed the board about Jones’s death.

  She exhaled deeply. Poor Richard. She’d told him not to go out there and yet he hadn’t listened. She didn’t know what he’d expected to find in the lower labs. Sans had always been a very private person and he was always secretive about his work.

  Granted, the company was losing market share and its CEO was but a specter in the upper ranks of management, lurking off in a far corner of the world to perfect “the next level of gene therapy”. Over the years, he’d earned the board’s trust, but this latest project was hemorrhaging money and he stubbornly refused to show the results. They would be revealed “all in good time”.

  But NASDAQ prices didn’t believe in such philosophies. Quarterly reports had to entice investors just as much as promises for the long term. So they’d sent Chang because she was the CFO and she knew Sans well, and they sent Jones because he was a trusted Senior Vice President and had been openly skeptical of the CEO as of late. It was like fishing up north: the board must’ve figured they had someone who could break the ice with Sans and another who could haul him out of the water.

  Chang herself had tried to explain to them time and time again that Billy Sans was a complicated, albeit very intelligent person. But during the excruciatingly long trip over, she’d begun to reflect on how many excuses she was making for an old friend. And friendship and business weren’t supposed to mix.

  For the first few days of the past week, she and Jones had talked with Sans about the direction of the company. He’d showed them around part of the labs and pitched them his vision beyond the current project: gene therapy completely free of the risk of cancer, advanced genome editing for disorder-free children, introducing cloned animals to the wild to bring endangered species back from the brink of extinction. Their competitors were working on many of these things, but Sans assured them the tech that had been developed here was half a decade ahead of theirs.