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The Beginning of a Bad Thing

Shannon's walk was brisk and determined as she marched down the hall, clinically white, holding the yellow package tightly to her breast. Her formal purple dress clung to her like November frost to a car windshield, cut off at the knees, displaying her long and lithe stocking-covered legs. Her blue eyes glittered with resoluteness. They would listen to her now, and they would hear her. After years of patient work and risk of job loss, having to explain the unexpected drop in company revenues and workers disregarding designated company exits...all that hassle would finally be vindicated. Finally they would listen! Finally her lucky break had broken open out of that dark clam of fate!

She held the yellow package as though it were the be-all and end-all of existence...and in a way, it was. Inside were the hopes and dreams that would get the company out of its damn hole. It held everything that her father and grandfather had spent their whole lives for, had near-ruined their marriages for, and had almost lost their lives for. Her fur bristled at the thought of what she was actually holding, and her curled husky tail flickered with anticipation at what her superiors would say. It would help the world, and if it increased her income, then so be it, but she was doing this for her family, broken and destroyed though it was.

Suddenly a tall, emaciated greyhound in a dirty brown uniform stepped in front of her holding a mop, halting Shannon's pace. It was that goddamn janitor. For the past five days, she'd been receiving phone calls, getting letters and e-mails on her personal computer, trying to get her to stop her research. Two days ago, she had discovered that although there were multiple people attempting the blackmail (petty, vain, useless blackmail), they were all designed and planned by the guy they called Joe; this damn janitor. Say what they might, her work was the greatest. Not even all the gods ever invented by the old civilizations could stop her, and neither would this damnable peon.

"Ms. Borgia," the greyhound whispered in a low undertone, "I know what you're planning, and you have to be stopped. You think what you're doing is saving the world but you're only hastening its end."

The husky woman narrowed her eyes. How dare he presume to order her about? She replied in an equally monotonous tone under her breath. "You can spread your slander any way you want, Smythe. You can't stop progress, and you can't stop me. Now please move out of my way, before I scream and bring the whole damn LEGION down here."

The greyhound stared at her with wide, fearful eyes. His shoulder gave a violent twitch at the mention of that dreaded military faction, whose wrath was well rumored (and rightfully so) to be swift and horrible. With enormous willpower the greyhound stepped aside, allowing Shannon to continue her purposeful stride. She did not look at him when as he passed her. She heard the greyhound growl low in his throat, and the overwhelming urge to laugh forced its way up her esophagus. Stifling the raucous laughter that threatened to burst out, she twitched her mouth and strode onward, brushing her shoulders clean of the dust that fell on her with swift, dismissing gestures.

The CEO, an old and tired-looking squirrel with drooping features, stood outside the door. His pressed blue suit was a sharp contrast to his red fur, but the graying spots on his head and neck made up for that. The squirrel flicked his tail and nodded to Shannon, casting in her direction a wary eye. As she walked closer to him, he muttered to her in an almost unintelligible accent of the elderly.

"I certainly hope you know what you're doing, Ms. Borgia. The board is not thrilled at having to be here on a Sunday night."

"It's five in the morning, sir," Shannon said, perhaps a bit too brusquely.

"Yes, well...To them, and to me, it is still very much nighttime, especially when you look out the window..."

Shannon cleared her throat, cleverly hiding the growl that she started. She motioned to the door and said "May we?"

The CEO gave a surprised noise as though he suddenly remembered where he was, and opened the door. He walked through first, as is customary for CEOs who were much older than the rest of their workforce. The other members of the board were already seated there, some fiddling with the cufflinks they hastily snapped on, some still rubbing the dried material out of their eyes. They looked at her with annoyance, aggravated that her proposal had to be so early in the morning. Shannon merely smiled politely; very soon, they will be smiling back at her. She waited for them to settle down before she set her precious package on the table, and began.

---

The hyena in the white lab smock looked up from his charts, his face silhouetted against the throbbing, pale green light of the research capsule. "So how did it go?" he asked.

"Tell you what, Griffith? Why don't you use your well-paid chemical manipulation expertise and cook me up a drink," Shannon said as she tossed her purse onto her chair. She threw it so forcefully the wheeled chair moved a foot, quietly gliding along the pearly linoleum. She ripped the band out of her golden hair, letting it fall over her livid eyes.

Griffith said nothing, he only returned to his charts. It was the only thing he could do; the hyena had been working in this place far longer than the others, and he knew how to conduct himself when Shannon was like this. The trainee, a small grey fox, however, was of a different matter entirely. Thinking Shannon's command was not an empty one, and thinking that instant action would reward him either financially or sexually in the future, he poured a glass of diluted vodka and offered it to Shannon. The husky accepted it, but she gave the vulpine a look that would ensure him a sleepless night full of worry and stress about his possibly endangered job position. Shannon downed the semi-vodka in one gulp and slammed the glass onto her desk.

The yellow package was in her hand, clutched tightly, painfully, to her bosom. She threw it onto the couch in the back of her work area, where it landed with a dry, crinkling sound. The tip of a small, titanium case spilled out of it. Inside, you could hear the little vials rattling against each other in vehemence to being treated in such a disrespectful way.

Shannon held her head in her hands, her eyes covered by her expensively manicured fingers. Her left eye twitched as she remembered the way they sneered at her when she gave her proposal. How they rolled their eyes when she took out the case! She pretended not to see their looks of annoyance and aggravation, but she saw it all again in her mind's eye, playing the whole scene over again with such vivid clarity.

She wasn't even halfway through with her proposal when the CEO (that stupid, narrow-minded rodent) stood up and halted her in mid-sentence. Who was he to call her an avaricious embezzler, a frightening ghoul of a scientist? Who in the hell was he to say her work was "tripe" and her goals were "ludicrous?"

It had been these two words that harmed her the most, the horrifyingly daft and stupendously awful words, "tripe" and "ludicrous." The fact that these words were used to evaluate her life's work...it was just disheartening.

She raised her head wearily, her face now bathed in the test tube's eerie green radiance. She stared hard at the thing inside that tube, the thing that only yesterday shifted a fraction of an inch, when all possible scientific evidence said that it had been dead for at least five thousand years. To think that it takes thirty-six hours to extract enough genetic material from it to fill a vial barely an inch long was both astounding and remarkably grueling. She looked on at the dim outline of the creature, hardly noticeable in the swirling mass of glowing fluid.

She remembered how shocked she was when they placed the creature inside the capsule and then poured in the preservation fluid, how amazed she was when it immediately transformed from a crystal-clear, watery substance into a thick, green mucous-like material the moment it connected with the thing, emitting that strange, unnatural glow.

That glow, she soon came to realize, was very soothing. At times when she would lie awake in anxious anticipation of the next time she would speak to the board members, and she would glance at the capsule and be swept up in its calm, almost smoothly touchable, periodical throbs of light. She always felt at home here, with her beakers and test tubes and microscopes, but there had always been something missing, something which she didn't have and could only feel whole, feel complete, with. The capsule wasn't the thing, the thing wasn't the thing, and the light wasn't the thing. That thing was, she discovered, her whole life and its destiny, which as of thirty minutes ago had been deemed "tripe" and "ludicrous."

The LEGION was a powerful military fighting force, but it wasn't the best; the massacre at the place soldiers call "Slaughterhouse Sixty Six" was pure proof of that. She knew that the soldiers were strong and powerful, but only to a physical and psychological limit. She knew that if she could inject the soldiers with enough genetic material from the creature in the capsule, they could be the absolute best, with no physical or psychological barriers whatsoever. No impediments or hindrance of any kind, just straightforward and unquestionable success.

Nope. No barriers whatsoever...

Shannon made up her mind then and there. She would show them who was "ludicrous", whose ambitions were calculable to "tripe." With a face devoid of expression, she walked through the large empty area, passed the glowing capsule (Griffith thought he saw Shannon give the capsule what might have been a look of love and affection, but he pushed the thought aside immediately, seeing as how the next sequence of numbers on his charts was being a real bitch) and into the makeshift emergency room. She took out her keys and unlocked them all one by one. Rifling through the cabinets, her blue eyes were cold as they searched for the cotton and the syringe. She found them and stuffed them into her pocket. She shut the cabinets and locked them again.

Shannon walked back through the work area, giving the hyena a warm smile (Griffith felt much more relaxed when he saw that smile; it meant good things were about to happen). She walked into her room and locked that as well. She went to the windows and shut the blinds, which were half open and cast green-black prison bars on her body.

She walked to the case and opened it, aware of just how fast and hard her heart was beating. There they were, all aligned in a neat little row, glistening with a clear, viscous material that was the creature's DNA. A total of four hundred thirty two hours was systematically packed inside the case, along with the twelve floppy discs and compact discs that comprised the work of three generations of her family.

It's not just a job, it's a way of life, she though disconnectedly as a smile slowly spread across her muzzle.

She took the syringe out of her pocket and threw away the plastic safety cap into a corner. She took a bottle of alcohol from her desk and poured it over her shoulder. She took the syringe and carefully grabbed one of the precious vials from the case. Pushing the needle into the vial, she extracted all of its semi-liquid contents. With the needle full, she jabbed herself in the left shoulder, knowing precisely where the vein would be. The needle slid in so easily, so finely that she didn't even feel it. Of course, that might have been attributed to the explosion of adrenaline in her body moments before she put the needle in. She pressed down on the plunger and let the dream take her to strange and foreign lands.

Three weeks later...

"Are you alright, Shannon?"

"Oh, come on, Grif, I'm perfectly fine. There's no need for you to be mothering me like this."

Griffith followed the husky woman as she strode resolutely down the hall, his arms laden with boxes filled to the brim with things she had brought from home. He didn't need exercise to know that he was overweight, but he felt compelled to do this for Shannon. He shook his head as he remembered seeing her, lying crumpled in the corner of her room, snow-white foam drizzling out of her mouth and her eyes rolling up in their sockets. He was shocked for the first few seconds, but his eight years as an army surgeon had blunted the effects of unpredictability. He managed to get Shannon to the hospital without her going into cardiac arrest. It did his old heart good to see her back on her feet in such a short time. Already she seemed healthier and fitter than before. He noticed this as she walked in her green low-cut skirt and blue tank top. It was a shame she wore those large sunglasses, he would like to have seen her nice blue eyes again for the last time.

"I'm sorry again...that you lost your job..." he said brokenly.

Shannon dismissed his apology with a whisk of her hand. "Don't worry about me, Grif. I suppose it's for the best that this would happen. Oh, I have to use the bathroom...would you mind carrying my things to the car?"

Griffith nodded as perspiration started its slow and agonizing journey down his muzzle. Shannon thanked him and darted off to the left into the woman's bathroom.

Shannon walked up to the mirror, savoring the silence and the calm of the bathroom's closeness. She took off the sunglasses and stared at her new appearance. She was definitely changing; her once-blue eyes had now become darker and tinged with red. Her pupils were no longer circular, but were now three, thin black prongs in the center of her eyes. They were also becoming wider; soon the outer tips of her eye-slits would be reaching her ears. The sunglasses were helping now, but in a few more days?

There were so many changes, so many new and wonderful discoveries. Her teeth were becoming sharper, and more were filling out in her mouth. She would have to cancel her dentist appointment next Thursday. Her ears were becoming longer and more fluffier. She was taller than she was yesterday. Last night she found that she could do strange things with her tail, things that would have been impossible a month ago. When she talked to the CEO earlier this morning she thought she could hear his thoughts, and the things they spoke of were not church material at all.

And then there was the incident in the pool...

She stared into her bizarre new eyes and smiled. If Griffith were standing beside her, he would have said that it was the warmest smile he had ever seen on her.

This was ludicrous? This was tripe?

This was perfection.