Tales of Monsters and Angels

1.2 Monsters

Sometimes Lina had to ask herself why the dark thing in the last cage scared her the most out of all the monstrosities in the lab. Scared and fascinated. Did she see something of herself in its claws and wide eyes, trapped in the steel and glass?

Whenever she was there, its eyes would shine from the shadows of its cage, never blinking as far as she could tell. The only time it closed its eyes was when she set a strawberry in the food slot.

The strawberry pickers were done for the day. With a last sharp pinch from the inspector, she hurried to the platform. She had plenty of time since this building was on a direct metro rail link to Genieworks. That building also happened to house a strawberry greenhouse where her team was sent a couple times a month, and was how she found her second job. On those days, she had time to sit down.

Genieworks: Miracles in Genetic Enhancement. Your wish is our command. Rich high-rankers and stuffy government officials with homeland defense contracts only ever saw the sparkling entryway, the pale blues and greens of the upper hallways, smiling scientists in crisp white overcoats, not a speck of blood or any of their experiments' agony on them. Visitors breathed in the filtered air and perfume of modified lilac, with maybe a hint of antiseptic. Ah, yes, the building was kept very clean. The evening she had started there, she went through the main lobby on accident. That's how she knew that the smells and colors changed as you descended to the roots of the building.

It was always worse the lower you went. A universal truth if ever there was one in Pharm City.

She let herself through the security checks, her electronic chip beeping her along. The guards hardly glanced as she passed by, she was half invisible to them-as much a human being as the mops and vacs she pushed around on the floor.

Non-Viable Trials and Holding. She buzzed herself in. Two lab assistants working late turned to see who it was and immediately continued their angry discussion. She overheard some as she went in and out of the cloakroom and janitor closet.

"...can't be serious. Without new subjects for testing, this project grinds to a halt."

"It's a question of money. The gov defense contract is drying up and no more money means no more testing."

"They're the ones who wanted super-soldiers in the first place!"

"You know what they say..."

She got the elo-vac first, pausing to stretch her arms up and relieve the aching in her back before leaving the closet.

"...again, some of us will be transferred."

"Transferred? We should be promoted. If formula-E68U shows promise on new subjects it's because of our breakthroughs down here on #248."

She pressed on the wide vac and began sweeping, the low hum of elo technology drowning out the assistants at the far end of the desk area.

A few minutes later and several feet closer to the men she hear the word 'terminate.' Her ears pricked.

"What I don't get is that we have to advance termination of a living non-viable subject. It's because of it we isolated the longevity exon," the younger assistant said. "It still has a lot of testing potential for the defense program. It survives everything we do to it. Sure, get rid of the other subjects, but why it first?"

They stood to go, rolling chairs under desks and flipping poppers' foils on the floors-a mild narcotic that was cheaper and quicker than alcohol. She went back and swept the floor behind them. The assistants went in the cloak room for their street clothes. She did not wait any longer.

Steering the vac in front of her towards the glass and steel cage numbered 245, its inner walls and glass permanently scorched with acid burns, Lina disappeared deeper in the lab.

The monster #245 often rammed its head and shoulders on the walls of the cage until it bled. Then the blood would sizzle and melt a little of whatever it landed on. She couldn't believe it hadn't killed itself yet. Like the others, it was vaguely human shaped-humanoid the lab assistants said. Except humanoid seemed too clean and formed for what these things were. Tonight #245 hit the glass with its hand as she scurried by. Pink froth bubbled from a self-inflicted blow on its pasty white forehead where it must have hit itself earlier. The glass was supposed to be unbreakable, but she wondered if the monster wouldn't make its way out one day.

She wended between stainless steel tables fitted with Kevlaring straps, grateful nothing had been cut open on them today that she would have to wash.

The cage #246 was darkened, its lights obscured. The thing in there moaned and pressed its bloated genitals on the glass the same as whenever she or the one female lab assistant approached. She hated seeing its purple-blue skin flattened for her viewing, the monster was a huge bruise. It had been strapped to the table a month ago for sample removal; its blood a river on the floor to drain and it had taken her an hour to scrub the table. She hurried past, not looking at the thing rubbing against the glass.

Beyond a partial wall, file slots, compu stalls, cabinets with tools for dissecting and surgery, disk readers and a 5 x 5 cracked interface screen for meetings, she continued. Another partial wall and she reached cage #247. A twisted, broken thing survived in there somehow. The assistants complained frequently of the stench and that the tissue samples they took turned to useless blobs almost instantly. She saw it crooking its finger at her to come closer and working its deformed mouth and prickled chin as if trying to speak.

The lights above blipped and dimmed. The lab assistants were gone. They made her clean in the semi-dark to save on electricity. Slowing, she wiped her sweating hands alternately on her pants. She was nearly to cage #248. Her breath was coming faster.

The cage had lights at the front half, but they had faded like the others. The monster in this cage blended in with the darkness. Only its eyes shone in the shadows no matter how dark the lab was, watching her clean. Waiting for a strawberry to appear or not in the window.

There was a specific ritual they had established for when she had two berries that was different from when she had only one. She switched off the vac and sidled up to the food slot, making sure its shining eyes did not leave the far corner. She was afraid it would rush at her, grab her hand and hurt her when she brought her gifts, but so far it hadn't.

Lina placed the strawberries on the ledge. A sheet of paper was taped to the glass above it.

Term. Sched. 15.09.74. 08:00. Three signatures and today's date, 15 September 2174, were scribbled across the lower half.

Termination. Tomorrow.

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