CHIMERA - A Short Story for the Morbidly Scientific

“Stay sharp, people,” Max’s digitized voice fuzzed in over the com-link. He turned and faced us, giving a rigid thumbs-up. I saw a gleam in his icy blue eyes just before his helmet visor snapped into place. He held two fingers up and cracked his arm forward like a whip, motioning me and my squad down the hallway to the right.

I was still reeling a bit from the fumes and the stench that had billowed up at as when we’d cracked the door to the lab – I reached up to my mask and cocked my rebreather a few times. Then I looked up, closed my eyes and took a deep breath, smelling the air as it was quickly cleaned on its way to my nostrils.

I breathed out in a low whistle, slung my pulse rifle back into my hand and crouched down behind Carric as our cell moved in.

I shuffled forward and took my place beside him.

“Looks easy enough,” I said – the hallway was a long, constant corridor of doors, some of them still locked, their keypads glowing red. There was a sharp kss-tah as Carric loaded his rebreather again and a whirring as his armored hand motioned me to the right of the corridor.

“That’s your side,” he said. “Open each door and give the room a sweeping. Come to a locked one, Donald’s your hack. Germaine is your combat backup – hopefully you won’t need him.”

“Hear that, Germaine?” I said as I straightened up and looked over my shoulder. “Here’s hoping you’re wasting your time.”

All I saw was Germaine’s glossy, yellow, blacksteel-framed visor staring back at me as I sighed and reminded myself that jokes were a waste when wearing toxmasks.

“Alright guys,” I said, doing my best to shrug with my voice. “Let’s see what’s behind door number one…”

“…Door number twelve…”

The search had gone like this for an hour and a half. In eleven rooms we’d found nothing but clutter – clothes piled up, foodstuffs, terrible smells, personal (sometimes too personal – which Germaine kept) data logs on computers or handhelds. And room number twelve was no exception.

“The hell?” I seethed through the com. “A distress beacon from the single biggest nuclear bio-science lab in the country – probably the world – an almost completely toxified environment, and there is absolutely nothing here to show for it?”

“Everyone was probably moved,” Carric buzzed back, tensely, and I could tell he was as frustrated as me. “Labs are downstairs; most likely there’s a quarantine cell where everyone’s holed up.”

I turned – the hallway had ended and became a long set of zig-zagging metal steps which descended from the residences to the lower laboratory level. It was a long way down, and half the stairway was swallowed in darkness. I stood still for a moment; in the silence it was easy to think I heard eerie clanging and shuffling noises reverberating from the dark level below and despite myself I shuddered. I jolted back to reality as Carric came alongside me and buzzed the radio.

“This is D-Cell to A-Cell,” he said with perfect military terseness. “No signs of life so far – we are about to descend to the laboratory levels. Please relay your position, over.”

The radio went fuzzy and, after several moments, Max’s voice emerged fluidly from the static.

“This is A-Cell. We read your position D-Cell and are about to do the same – we have some signs of movement over here; we’re going down below to check it out. No visuals yet – keep channels open. Over.”

“Huh. Maybe I’m not crazy,” I quipped and was again met by an expressionless pseudo-face as Carric moved past me and began heading down the stairs. I fell into step behind him, the four of us flicked on our gun lights and we moved forward.

The stairs were steep and each step echoed around so that each of our footfalls sent up a hundred others stomping all over the place. The further we went, the more I couldn’t help but think that the clanging echoes around us were covering up something much deeper below.

Finally we stepped onto the lower level. There was a unanimous hiss as each of us dialed our rebreathers – the gas down there was especially thick. Up ahead was another long corridor with two sets of doors and then a long stretch of blank steel. All of the doors were locked, save one – it was crumpled in at the center and to one side, sparks shooting everywhere.

“Looks like forced entry,” said Carric and braced his pulse rifle.

“Forced by what?” I said.

We stepped quickly to the walls by the door and placed our backs to them, two on each side, guns up. I looked across at Germaine and he nodded.

“Door number thirteen…”

We whipped towards the door and went through into the room, Carric and Donald close behind us, our lights dancing across the walls like stage spots in the darkness.

“Holysh---…”

I almost puked.

There were people in there. A few, at least. If you were able to put the parts back together.

I fell against the wall. Germaine caught me under my arm as Carric stepped forward into the room. He stumbled, having nearly slipped on a slick of blood – there was hardly a surface that wasn’t covered in gore.

“This is D-Cell to A-Cell,” be breathed heavily into the com. I didn’t listen to their conversation; I was desperate for something to take my eyes off of the carnage around me.

A light in the upper corner caught my attention and I walked with heavy steps towards it.

It was a glowing computer monitor obscured by a torso that had fallen across it. I went to move the body. As I turned it over, instead of seeing a face, something human, I saw mush. I swallowed hard and shoved the body away. Then I bent down, cleared a disembodied jawbone from the keyboard and called Donald over.

While he worked at the console I looked up at the pane of glass beside us. It was a viewing port – beyond the glass was what looked like a medical room with a cot and several instruments. Most everything was broken and strewn about. As I looked I saw a segment in the corner where the room extended into another hallway, one what would have been invisible from the corridor outside. I could see a bit of light as it floated in from the end of the hall.

It took a bit of work but Donald finally cracked the computer.

“I’m surprised,” he said. “Heavy encryptions, fail-safes, hardly any dud-scrubbers,” he looked up from the monitor to me. “This is Intelligence programming, not run-of-the-mill laboratory firewalls or password-prots.” He turned back to the screen and shook his head. “Even for a government lab, this seems overly paranoid.”

“Well, what’s in there?” I asked.

“See for yourself.”

He straightened up and backed away from the screen, giving a mock-bow and motioning for me to look. I moved into his place and bent over the monitor.

LOG 0.88184.517.5 DR. GERARD MICHAEL KAISER

ΧΊΜΈΡΑ SUBJECT: 20.264-278 “TENEBRAE”

>>>>> Subject is displaying heightened senses, intelligence and voracity. Initial mutagenic degeneration appears to be offset by a rich and, most importantly, diverse diet. As such, Tenebrae is now thriving.

Blood tests are quite remarkable – the host’s Carrier* appears to have mutated, evolving to recognize, and combat, its predicament.

[* The JOTUN organism – also dubbed ‘Carrier’ - developed during the Soviet NovSen project – A synthetic, autonomous protein, JOTUN mass-produces within the host at the cellular level where it disables and replaces RNA Polymerase during the transcription process. It then uses the host’s genetic code as a foundation for its own preloaded ‘Alien’ code – most often an animal gene of some sort. JOTUN then transcribes and splices the Alien with the host’s code so as to maximize advantages. It was only recently discovered that numerous specimens of the Carrier, ones that were used in human hosts, developed what we labeled an ‘Inferiority Allergy’ – Interpreting the Alien to be more advantageous than the host code which it encountered, the Carrier began overwriting entire lines of host code and repeating the Alien gene. Long term repetition of this process has led to massively degenerate mutations resulting in the suffering, insanity, and often deaths of the hosts.]

Perceiving a threat to…

“Alright guys, nothing left to see here,” Carric droned in. I downloaded the log and as much of the hard drive as would fit onto my onboard computer.

“This is D-Cell to A-Cell, do you…”

“This is A-Cell,” Max’s voice snapped in over Carric’s. “We have movement. We are going to investigate, move in to assist.”

There was a garbling of voices over the com when suddenly we all jolted. Max was screaming. Then came a sick, fuzzy sound of crunching and slopping and the com went dead.

“A-Cell…A-Cell, come in,” Carric said frantically. “A-Cell…Max! Damn it, Max! Come in!” Carric looked up at us and waved us out the door. “Come on!”

We rushed out of the observatory and back up the hallway. We pounded back up the stairs and turned sharply towards the other hall where our groups had split up. The whole time I knew it was taking too long, that whatever-the-hell-it-was was working faster than us. I had a gnawing, pitted feeling in my stomach – it had been eating at me since I glanced at the computer on the way out:

>>>WARNING>>>WARNING>>>WARNING>>>WARNING>>>WARNING>>>

READ CEASED ON ΧΊΜΈΡΑ SUBJECT: 20.264-278 “TENEBRAE”

SLEEP CYCLE INTERRUPTED. QUARANTINE COMPROMISED.

LOCKDOWN IN PROGRESS. EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION.

>>>WARNING>>>WARNING>>>WARNING>>>WARNING>>>WARNING>>>

We plunged down the eastern corridor and into the opposite observatory expecting the worst.

We got it.

“Sonuva…!” Carric roared and pounded the wall.

Fresh blood was streaked all across the floor, the walls, everywhere. A few limbs lay in a trail of fluid that wound away into a dark corner of the room. It continued through a section of the wall which had been torn open and down what looked like a maintenance corridor.

“Who’s coming in with me?” Carric shouted. No one budged. He turned to each of us, his expressionless visor strangely threatening. Then he turned and looked again down the maintenance tunnel, took a few steps back, and jogged back into the main room.

At a loss for what to do, Germaine and Donald starting turning over everything, mindlessly following protocol. I casually tapped around a few desks and then clicked the HUD on my visor to review the files I’d downloaded in the other observatory:

>>>>>…Perceiving a threat to the host’s genetic stability due to repeated transcription of the Alien, Tenebrae’s Carrier (which we have named after the subject as they are at this point an inseparable entity) has mutated to cope with this dilemma.

Tenebrae has developed a sister-strain – one which settles in the stomach lining and intestinal tract to harvest fresh genetic material gleaned from the host’s diet. This constant influx of material gives Tenebrae ample choice when reconstructing its genes, selecting the best and strongest traits from the material it ingests. This process results in Tenebrae developing traits associated with whatever forms of life it consumes. The subject’s metabolism also calls for frequent feeding, with its form fluctuating according to the contents of its most recent meal. This allows new and decidedly the most advantageous mutations to develop, ensuring that Tenebrae is literally formed out of the most optimum parts of its most recent meal.

A diverse diet, especially one offering stem-cell-rich tissue, opens infinite possibilities for Tenebrae’s evolution, as well as the potential for a single, stable form if a constant, regimented diet is administered. The subject may truly be called a Chimera.

“Got something over here!” Germaine shouted to the rest of us. We moved over to where he was pointing his flashlight.

Huddled in the corner, panicked but alive, was a thin man in a white coat.

“Yes, it got them,” said Doctor Kaiser. The man we’d found in the observatory had calmed down a bit and was reiterating to us the doom of the lab and the story of its strange occupant, “Tenebrae.”

“He was one of the few human-Carrier pair-bonds to develop such a mutation,” he said. “There were records or suspicions of others but Tenebrae was the only one accessible to us. His original Carrier was loaded with a gorilla Alien, designed to have incredible physical strength. But the Carrier went rogue and it began mutating him into a hideous, enormous mockery of a man.

“We gave him little hope – we tried to keep him comfortable and well-fed at least, mostly with vegetables. One day he was nowhere to be found, having escaped his quarantine cell early in the morning,” and then Kaiser chuckled. “We found him outside, sunning himself. The poor bastard had eaten so much greenery he’d developed his own form of photosynthesis to keep himself alive.”

I had been comparing his story with the files I’d gotten off of the observatory computer. He stopped and looked up at me for a moment. Something about him seemed very oddly familiar but I couldn’t put my finger on it. He turned back towards Carric and the rest of the crew and continued.

“We tried several combinations to test out Tenebrae’s new abilities, its form changing in accordance with its diet – I don’t think another creature on this planet has enjoyed such a culinary diversity,” he laughed to himself. “He developed the bones of a buffalo, usable gills like a fish, the jaw strength of an alligator, the toxins of various plants,” then he went into gruesome and visceral detail about the aberrant amalgamation. Squid, bear, snake, spider, eel, bat, owl, anything and everything was at one point ingested to see what sorts of mutations Tenebrae would glean from them.

“What the hell did this thing look like in the end?” Germaine asked. Kaiser looked up and smiled darkly.

“Too hideous to imagine,” he said slowly. “But he was healthy, powerful, and wonderfully intelligent.”

“Intelligent?” Carric questioned. “How can something like that be intelligent?”

“As I’ve said,” Kaiser said, impatiently. “The Carrier picks out those traits which are most advantageous. As nothing is more advanced than a human brain, that region was largely left alone, though numerous predatory instincts were implanted. The madness in other subjects was induced by baneful mutations – Tenebrae found a way around such disadvantages.”

Kaiser rubbed at his head and sighed. “Or so we thought…in the last few weeks Tenebrae began acting increasingly agitated and violent. Then he stopped acting altogether. He just sat there, staring. We suspected insanity, and believed him pacified,” he ran his fingers through his hair and pulled at it.

“But I suppose he was thinking, plotting, because just the other day he escaped again, slaughtering everyone he found and wreaking havoc on the filtration system – if he didn’t kill us with his own hands he was certainly going to get rid of us by irradiating the place.” Kaiser lifted his head towards us again.

“I managed to hide away in the east corridor where you found me, but I’m afraid,” he took a deep breath. “I’m afraid this is the beast which killed your comrades.”

Carric looked up at me. I merely stared back.

“Alright,” Carric said with a sigh. “Thank you for your help, Doctor.” He threw Kaiser a change of clothes he’d pulled out of a locker and motioned to the rest of the squad. “Germaine, Donald, you’re with me. We’re hunting this thing down.” He looked up to me and gave me my order, pointing for emphasis. “Stay here and take care of Kaiser. Radio if you see anything.”

I nodded and rolled my eyes behind my visor as I watched them march out. Kaiser began to change and, while keeping an eye on him, I began reading through the files again.

LOG 0.88184.517.8 DR. GERARD MICHAEL KAISER

ΧΊΜΈΡΑ SUBJECT: 20.264-278 “TENEBRAE”

>>>>> Subject is improving exponentially. Metabolism is fantastic, mutations are fully functional and genetic integrity is confirmed. Subject is becoming increasingly agitated and restless, however. It has begun refusing food – as such, subject is being tranquilized and fed with dietary supplements.

“Gives a whole new meaning to, ‘you are what you eat,’ huh?” I said. Kaiser didn’t answer as he pulled his dirty and bloody shirt off. Suddenly I realized how thick the man’s arms were – far too strong and powerful to match the doctor’s gaunt, middle-aged face.

Not to mention the striations along the skin of his back. It looked like scar tissue but marbled across his flesh in a blend of whites and yellows and browns. I cocked my head for a second and then turned around to call Carric and let him know that something might be wrong with Kaiser. Then I glanced back at the computer file as it continued to scroll down my HUD.

LOG 0.88184.518.3 DR. INGRAM DARUD HILL

ΧΊΜΈΡΑ SUBJECT: 20.264-278 “TENEBRAE”

>>>>> Subject has become dangerously aggressive and has severely wounded Dr. Kaiser. Chances of recovery are highly unlikely – he is confined to the medical bay with severe tissue damage and internal bleeding. The monster fairly devoured his face. I will be taking over for Dr. Kaiser, and I intend on overseeing the destruction of that thing.

LOG 0.88184.518.5 AUTOMATED MESSAGE

>>>WARNING>>>WARNING>>>WARNING>>>WARNING>>>WARNING>>>

READ CEASED ON ΧΊΜΈΡΑ SUBJECT: 20.264-278 “TENEBRAE”

SLEEP CYCLE INTERRUPTED. QUARANTINE COMPROMISED.

LOCKDOWN IN PROGRESS. EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION.

>>>WARNING>>>WARNING>>>WARNING>>>WARNING>>>WARNING>>>

I felt that shallow, pitted feeling in my stomach again and thought my heart might dive down into it. Then a thought entered my mind and it nearly made me retch to voice it but I had to know.

“So, say this thing, with a human brain, decided it wanted to be fully human again. Then it would go about this by…”

Kaiser pulled his shirt on and turned to me, staring me down with a wicked grin and two gleaming, ice-blue eyes.

“Exactly,” he sneered.

They were Max’s eyes.