It was a quiet and dewy morning when Ember began the walk from the unaffiliated dorm to the biology classroom. She pulled her sweater tightly around her shoulders, taking a breath of the crisp air and trying to calm the nervous fluttering of her heart. She preferred these early hours, when the campus seemed frozen in time other than the movement of the forest creatures.
A handful of administrators was the only reminder of the threat of the rogue, who had yet to be caught or seen since the initial announcement. Despite the officer’s warning, Naz’s reassurance and the relative safety of the trail made Ember comfortable enough to make the trip alone. Still, the empty classrooms were almost ghostly, and as she passed an open door she thought she glimpsed the glowing eyes of some animal hiding under a desk.
Professor Tinsley and the two male students had already gathered outside of the biology building when Ember arrived. She greeted the three of them, thanking the professor for the opportunity and avoiding Roland’s penetrating stare.
“I’m so glad you all could make it,” Tinsely said, clapping her hands together in a manner all too enthusiastic for the early morning. “The scientists at the laboratory have set aside three hours for your visit, and you should each have some one-on-one time to ask your questions. The lab is about thirty minutes away, so let’s head out now. If we’re a little early, we might get to see them in action.”
The professor started up the trail with the three students following behind her like obedient ducklings. Her short, teardrop-shaped wings glistened in the budding sunlight, and Ember found herself gazing at them appreciatively. Before coming to Mendel, her only reference for insects had been the farm’s pests and Ciradyl’s cockroaches, but she’d come to view them as animals in their own right.
Yellow-splotched leaves crunched underfoot as they passed underneath the great trees, a reminder that the true fall season was beginning. They turned away from the main path and onto a game trail, and the already minimal civilization devolved into true wilderness. The underbrush grabbed at Ember’s legs, and a bellow in the distance made her hurry behind the professor. Above, a troop of miniature, reddish-brown monkeys chittered in the tree canopy.
“Your name is Ember, right?” someone asked, and she turned to see the underdeveloped male student who had placed third in the biology class. She nodded, and he held out his hand to shake. “I’m Wesley. Are you excited for today?”
His question hung in the air as Ember gripped his hand. Its texture was jarringly peculiar: gelatinous and almost slimy. It wasn’t until he drew back and repeated his question that she refocused. “Yes… I’m excited, but I don’t know what to expect.”
He laughed. “I’m sorry, I forget to warn you. The slime’s non-toxic, I promise.”
A vein pulsed in Ember’s neck. “What species are you?”
“I’m an earthworm.”
She tilted her head. “It’s my first time meeting a vermes. Where is your dorm?”
He pointed at the ground between his feet. “There’s an underground complex on the north side of campus.”
“Isn’t it claustrophobic?”
“It was at first, but now I find it comfortable, and I’ve heard that it helps the parasitic species feel more at home.”
Ember concealed a grimace. Although she wanted to avoid prejudice, the thought of a parasitic Linnaean was inherently unappealing, and she said a quick prayer to whatever god might exist that her development would steer clear of the vermes class altogether.
As she opened her mouth to respond non-committedly, she was distracted by the feeling of being watched. She looked ahead just in time to see Roland whip back around, and the uneasy feeling spread across her stomach again. “Hey,” she said under her breath, “do you happen to know what species he is?”
“Yeah, he hardly shuts up about it. He’s a black hawk-eagle and a fighting protégé. Why?”
So that’s the reason for all of his confidence. Ember shook her head, filing away the information and deciding to focus on the field trip for the time being. The rest of the walk passed in anticipatory silence, and it wasn’t long until the laboratory materialized between two massive fir trees. It was a squat building, made entirely of brick with large glass windows. Lichen and vines had attached to its surface, giving it an almost fantastical aura. The professor pulled open the heavy wooden door, ushering them inside and whispering a few words of encouragement.
To her surprise, Ember found herself not in the laboratory itself, but in a smaller sub-room. The smell of pine and moss disappeared, replaced by something bitter and antiseptic. Ahead was a pair of glass doors through which she could see Linnaeans in long white coats bustling around workstations.
“Wash your hands here,” Tinsley said, directing them to a copper pipe that dripped into a basin. The three students obliged, scrubbing their hands with a square block of soap and rinsing them off in the cool water. Then, they wiped off their shoes and donned lab coats of their own. Ember turned to either side, enjoying the feeling of the dense material against her skin and her newfound sense of authority. Once everyone had been thoroughly sanitized and outfitted, Tinsely opened the door to the main room.
Almost immediately, Ember was inundated with new smells and sensations. While most of the buildings in Mendel made use of natural skylights, the lab was lit by gas lanterns that cast a yellow glow. The main room was metallic and bare, a stark contrast to the forest outside. There was unfamiliar equipment everywhere she looked: rows of glassware and chemicals lined each station, wide sinks sat against the opposite wall, and showerheads hung down from the rafters.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
A half-dozen scientists with glass goggles moved between the tables, looking through microscopes and jotting their observations down in grid paper journals. As Ember watched, one of the researchers dropped a flake of blue-green fungus into a shallow glass dish, eliciting a puff of vapor.
Professor Tinsely excused herself, promising to pick them up in three hours' time. A moment later, one of the scientists broke away from his station to greet the students. He was a silver-scaled pisces, tall and thin with a set of gills on either side of his neck. “Welcome to the Burbank biology lab,” he said, “I am Dr. Veige, vice president of this department and your guide for the day. For our first hour, I’ll take you on a tour, so please follow me.”
The three students went with him eagerly as he stopped at each point of interest. The lab had been designed with efficiency in mind, with each piece of equipment placed logically to form a cohesive whole. As Dr. Veige showed them the fume hoods, emergency eyewashes, and decontamination apparatuses, Ember couldn’t help but think of Wentworth’s lab, which had been a dank and dirty afterthought. Once again she was confronted with one of her own misconceptions—although Linnaeans might choose to live intimately with nature, they were far more technologically advanced than Ciradyl.
The group’s final stop was at one of the middle stations, where an active experiment was taking place. A scientist with black and white striped hide was crouched in front of a row of glass beakers, wearing a mask and a glass shield fitted tightly over her face. She looked up as the group approached and directed them to stand back.
“This beaker contains ten milliliters of wood-ant venom,” she said, gesturing to a small glass of clear liquid. “This particular sample was gathered from a young Linnaean, whose issues controlling his venom glands just landed one of his classmates in the hospital. I want you to watch what happens when this solution comes into contact with copper.”
She pinched a thin piece of wire between her gloved fingers and dropped it into the beaker. After only a second, the mixture began to bubble and fizz, forming a thin cloud of vapor that dissipated right above the surface. The wire bounced around vigorously, hitting the glass walls like a frantic fly trapped inside a jar.
The scientist checked her timepiece regularly, jotting notes at each interval. By the five-minute mark, the wire had darkened in color and diminished to half its original diameter. “As you can see,” she said, “the venom from this particular individual has a potent acidic component. You can imagine what it did to his poor classmate’s eyes.”
Ember shared a horrified look with Wesley. “Are you saying that a Linnaean produced a substance that can dissolve metal?“
She nodded. “It seems that way.”
The students shook their heads in amazement as the scientist resumed her work. With a slight smile, Dr. Veige led them to a quiet area of the laboratory to give them their next directions. “At this point,” he said, “I’m going to allocate each of you to a researcher for some hands-on experience. Feel free to ask them any of your questions.”
Ember was the first to be assigned. Her station was located in the back left corner, where a scientist with a distinctly feline countenance was working with a series of microscopes. His long, tufted ears tilted back as he peered through an eyepiece, muttering observations to himself.
“Hello,” Ember said shyly. “I was told I’ll be working with you for the next hour.”
He looked up from his work with a startled expression. “Yes, yes,” he grinned, displaying a set of canines that rivaled Carn’s. “I’m Dr. Shire, and my specialty is microbiology. Do you have any questions?”
“I have a lot, actually.” Ember nodded, closing her eyes as she recalled the constant confusion of the last month and a half. Thoughts of mutations, the treatment, and bloodlust came to mind, but it was the uncertainty of her origins that won out in the end. “I suppose that what I want to know most of all is where the affliction comes from.”
Dr. Shire whistled. “Jumping straight into it, are we? Well, do me a favor and look into the second microscope.”
Cautiously, Ember crouched down to peer into the eyepiece. As her eyes adjusted, she realized that she was looking at a structure made entirely of tiny, interconnected blobs. “These are animal cells, right?” she said without looking up. Even her teachers at Wentworth had possessed a basic knowledge of cell theory, though it was much more rudimentary than what she had learned in Mendel.
“Yes. Do you see the dark spots inside the cells? Those are the nuclei.” Ember squinted, and sure enough, each of the cells had a chia-seed-shaped speck near its center. “Within the nucleus is DNA, which contains our genetic information and controls how our body functions.”
“Then the affliction must come from the genetic code.”
“Yes, but it’s not so simple,” Shire said, holding up a finger. “Approximately fifty percent of our DNA comes from each parent. But the strange thing is that each Linnaean starts out with a fully human phenotype.”
Ember frowned, feeling more confused than before they’d started talking. Seeing her expression, the researcher pulled a scrap piece of paper from a pocket in his lab coat and drew two images: an intact ladder and a ladder split in half lengthwise. “You can think of DNA like this,” he said. “There are two strands that fit together. Since cells come from other cells, these strands must be copied for the body to develop and maintain life. It’s during this process that the error occurs.
“First, the intact ladder is split into two parts. Then, an enzyme—called polymerase—builds a new strand on top of the old one, using a pairing system. For Linnaeans, instead of following the pattern, the polymerase inserts a few nucleotides out of order. That is to say, the new DNA is not that of a human, but of some other organism. And when the cells replicate, this error spreads.”
Ember’s head spun as she tried to make sense of it. “But why?” she asked. “Why would our cells just start producing the DNA of an animal instead of a human?”
Dr. Shire shrugged. “Honestly, we don't know. Our technology is still limited, so most of this is just theoretical. The trigger could be an error in a gene, something environmental, or a foreign pathogen like a virus or a pollutant. But since the cause is uncertain, we can’t cure or prevent the affliction, only slow and manage it.”
Ember paused, digesting the implications of what she’d learned as though they were a particularly hardy meal. Horns, wings, fangs… they’re not a curse from god, but a real, biological condition. Never had the affliction felt so tangible, and suddenly she wanted to know more, an interest that gnawed at her belly and whispered in her ear.
“Thank you,” she said, gripping and shaking Shire’s hand.
He chuckled, and his pale eyes danced with amusement. “Your professor was right; one day, you might be a good addition to this lab. Now, do you have any more questions?”