FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"So", Tyler asked, "what the hell do we do now?"

I sighed, "do we take our chances in trying to hike to the nearest base?"

"No way", James said, "there much worse outside than what's in this lab. Have you wondered why the lab is built like an artificial planet?"

"A little", I said, "but I mostly assumed it was to keep what's in here in."

"And keep all of the bullshit outside out", James said, "there are plants out there than could consume a grown man like a small fly. Sometimes I make rounds around the outside of the lab and find the bloody bones of security guards, there always laden with the same thing,hydrochloric acid. I did some testing of the plants in the area and discovered nearly everyone of them was carnivorous due to the horrible mineral content of the soil on Ios, it turned out that they use the acid as a digestive juice, a little like Spanish Head Vines."

I sighed, "so what do we do then? We have no ship, a madman who will kill us if we try to hoof it out, and a planet full of meat craving plants. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm in no mood to get a 20mm through my skull."

No one said anything for a while after that, we all just kind of exchanged glances. Without a ship, we were stuck here until either we could get a distress beacon going or until someone decided that not having heard from the most famous bio lab in the universe for several months was suspicious.

"So hiking away is out of the question", Matt said changing his pose on the bean bag, "what about sending out a distress beacon?"

"To do that we'd need to restart the main generator and get to the top of the tower", James said, "we'd also have to find away around Dr. Loony Tunes."

"I could deal with Psycho man real easy", I said, "just let the High-Power do the talking."

James gave a dirty look, "Martin is the easy part. It's restarting the main generator that's the problem."

The way he said, "starting the main generator that's the problem" make my head hurt, just the tone of his voice made me wonder just how bad our situation really was.

"I'm gonna regret asking this", I said, "but how is restarting the main generator the hard part?"

"It's kept off site", James said, "in an old industrial complex, Ransol Industries, they manufactured steel for the longest time and as of recently they turned mostly to manufacture of heavy pumps, generators and fans. They also deal with experimental industrial equipment like hot water generators, air conditioning's and evaporators as well as furnaces that can cook the ore of heavy and light metals. The bad thing is that they've been dark since this whole mess started, so I'm kind of wondering if Chemical 240 managed to get over there and start fucking with people. If that's the case then who knows what kind of monsters that are hiding out over there."

I sighed, "there's a cold front coming in as well, will that complicate things?"

"It will make your hike safer", Mike said, "like I said, cold air makes the meat eating plants docile, so you probably wont have to worry about them, but in winter most of the planet freezes at night except for what we call Hotspots, places in the surface where the heat from the mantle wells up."

"The mantle?", I asked.

"The planet has a thin crust", James said, "the result is Geothermal heat penetrates almost directly to the top and destroys most of the nutrients in the soil, leaving it incapable of supporting life on it's own, that in turn lead to the death of most non carnivorous plants by starvation and left the carnivorous plants with room to grow."

"In other words the planet eats meat?", I asked.

"Essentially", James said.

"What kind of screw lose planet is this?", I asked again.

James shrugged his reply.

"Come on", I said, "for all the weaponry and contingents you guys have in place and there's no escape pod we can get to?"

"Actually", Tyler said, "now that I think about it, there is one in our area."

"Where?", Matt asked.

"Let me guess", I said.

"Martin's tower", James, Tyler and I said at the same time.

"There's a lovely surprise", Sarah said, "crazy man has the means of our escape on lock down."

"That still means I gotta go out and restart that generator", I said, "will that at leas restore power to the whole lab?"

"Yes", James said, "it will also give Martin full access to all of the labs systems. But seeing as how we have the Cluster 300 down here with us, we can use CHDISK against him."

Tyler and I exchanged glances.

"What?", James asked.

"Martin has probably beat us to that", I said, "he's hacked the Cluster 300 once before."

"What?", James asked, "how is that even possible?"

"He manually installed a back door in the form of a different operating software", Tyler said, "We sent Sky down to the basement to boot it back up and CHDISK found an operating system called CAD 22 on Drive E.

James sat back in the couch and set his face in his hands, "if he has control of the 300 then we have to get his software out of the drive before he can cause any more damage. Tyler come with me, I need your help."

Tyler and James walked into the security room as I started un doing my vest.

"Shouldn't you be headed for Ransol?", Sarah asked standing up.

"Not right now", I said piling my vest in the corner of the couch with my guns, "I need some time to get my shit together. It's like what Allen said, "stress equals death", I've been in situations like this before, it's best to just take it slow, but always be doing something to better your situation."

"Well if your gonna be like that then I'd like a lab assistant", Sarah said.

I nodded and followed her out of the lounge, down a long hallway and to a medium sized room with a glass door. Sarah swiped her security card and some text appeared on a blue screen beside the door.

"CHDISK is verifying security clearance.. accepted. Welcome Doctor Sarah Renos."

Sarah and I stepped inside the room, which was a chemistry lab. In the middle of the room was a table that was about seven feet long and two or so feet wide. At the right hand end of the table was a small, stainless steel sink and at the other end was an older looking desktop computer. In the middle of the table there was a very complicated looking chem station and there was also a shelf holding beakers and test tube racks. At the back of the room was a glass wall that had a back light and there was a marker cup on a table next to it. There were rows of counters and cupboards at each side of the room. They held hot plates, more computers, first aid stations. Sarah went back to a small refrigerator in the corner and pulled out the small bag of...what ever it was that Mike and I had got from the cages.

"So what exactly are you going to be doing to that bag of melted meat?", I asked.

"I'm going to run a chemical analysis and look for any Gene Modification agents, such as Number 12 and Chemical 240 as well as more basic chemicals that induce small changes in cell structure."

I just looked at her, "yeah...I don't speak...whatever language that was."

She sighed, "I'll be looking for things that shouldn't be there."

"Better", I smiled.

She shook her head and pulled up an office chair. She booted up the computer and then scrapped a small amount of the meat into a peteri dish, setting underneath a high powered microscope. She turned two knobs on the scope and then looked at the computer.

"Hmm...there's quite a high particle count", she said to herself, "that's weird, human tissue shouldn't be that dense."

She mumbled something else that I couldn't make out and then took a huge syringe out of a drawer and withdrew more of the matter from the plastic bag. She grabbed a few test tubes and filled them with a clear liquid and then injected a bit of the fleshy matter into them. She walked over to a small machine, set the test tubes inside and then started the machine.

"What's that one for?", I asked.

"It's a centrifuge", Sarah said, "It works by spinning the samples and using the centripetal acceleration to separate substances of greater and lesser density."

"How does that work?", I asked

"Basically what it means is if I mixed sand and water and then stuck in there, the speed of the rotation would make the sand go to one side and the water to the other, since water is less dense than sand", Sarah answered me.

"Cool", I said.

"One of the reasons I became a biologist was so I would get to play with cool shit like microscopes and centrifuges. I've always been obsessed with science and biology ever since I was little."

"I never really had any interests when I was little", I said, "I was always in too much pain to think straight."

Sarah looked at me, "you know...we have medications here that can get rid of your scars."

I wasn't sure how to reply.

"Really?", I asked after some time.

She nodded, "It might take a few doses and a couple of weeks, but yes, it can be done. We've done it before."

I sighed, "I'll have to think about it."

"Take your time", Sarah said turning her attention back to the machine, "there's no rush."

I got down on my knees and leaned against the table with my head on my arms, but still clearing the table. I had to admit I wondered what I would look like without the scars, but at the same time, I felt like I shouldn't get rid of them. Sarah pulled the samples of the meat out of the centrifuge and placed them into another, high powered electronic microscope. I saw her flinch.

"What?", I asked.

"I'm not sure, gimme a minute", she answered.

Sarah pushed her chair back over to the computer and opened a file on it's desktop. She scrolled down through a few text files and then turned back to the microscope.

"That's...odd", she said.

"What?", I asked again.

"Well let's say that I got a double positive", she answered.

"A double positive?", I asked.

"When the same chemical comes up twice, but no others do", Sarah told me, "the sample you guys bright back is heavy, heavy, HEAVY with a chemical called Red Code."

"Red code?", I asked

"A chemical based Gene Modification", she answered, "it hardens cardiac and other soft tissues while allowing them to keep their full flexibility. Take enough of the stuff and the muscle in say, your heart or lungs could become as hard as titanium and still work like they were as soft as the day you were born. It was outlawed in biological research because people were using it to make their skin into natural body armor. The tissue you brought back is skeletal tissue, and from the looks of it it was exposed to a tremendous amount of heat."

"The lasers from the drones", I said.

"What drones", she asked.

"Last night there were a couple of laser drones trying to get into a room that Allen said had been clear for a while", I answered, "me thinks that the laser heated it and the hardness of it caused it to melt rather than burn." "That's...actually a pretty sound conclusion", Sarah said, "I'll show these results to Jacob and Tyler and see what they think."

"What do you think is going on?", I asked as we walked out the door.

"Not sure", she answered, "but I have a bad feeling about it."

"Bad how?", I asked.

"Were gonna need a new planet bad", she answered.