“Do you ever feel guilty?”
“Hmm?” Cedric set down the small white mouse in its plexiglass enclosure. The mouse shook its shoulders, then scampered out of sight under the upside down plastic bowl that served as its home. “Regarding what?”
“About this. You know...Animal experimentation.”
Cedric turned to his lab partner, a certain Alyssa Thompson who had joined BioLab Solutions several months ago after graduating. A white lab coat hung limply from her figure and her normally bright countenance was darkened by a troubled frown. Cedric followed her gaze to the rows of plexiglass enclosures that glimmered under the harsh fluorescent lights of the lab. Blue sharpy marked each box in his own squirrely handwriting.
“Not particularly,” Cedric shrugged, popping the needle into the red sharps container beneath the lab table. The heavy-duty plastic box was brimming with needles from the recent round of injections. Cedric tossed the disposable syringe into the yellow biohazard bin and consulted his notes. He popped the lid to a blue sharpy, and labeled the side of the mouse’s enclosure.
GLH-412-t47
“I mean, I guess you’ve been doing this for ages,” Cedric hid a wince as Alyssa continued. “But we already know that GLH has horrible side effects on mammals. I was totally on board when we were testing petri dishes, but 30% of these little guys are going to die in a week.”
“These little buggers are going to die anyway. Lab mice never live long no matter what experiment they are a part of. Don’t you think what we do here is necessary? Would you rather we test new drugs on monkeys or humans?”
“Well, yes. No...I mean. We aren’t really advancing human knowledge here are we. GLH is never going to be approved by the FDA. The ECM degradation in the HeLa study alone would stop that. All we are doing now is—”
“Confirming without a shadow of a doubt that GLH can’t be used to save lives,” Cedric interrupted. “The preliminary protein simulations indicated a potential agonistic response in RIT3 which as you very well know is linked directly with Chromegenia Syndrome. Solutions are rare enough that this one was worth pursuing.”
“But like, 12 people are sick with Chromegenia in like, the whole of the states. It just feels like...I don't know. Don’t you have any compassion for the hundreds of mice that die for a dead end?”
“I didn’t say that, but no, not particularly. Animals and I have never really, uh...vibed.” Cedric chuckled awkwardly around the unfamiliar word. “Animals are pretty useless in this day and age. Certainly, they deserve a place in this world, but preferably not around me.”
“Weird profession to go into if you don’t like animals, considering,” Alyssa grumbled gesturing vaguely to the room full of mice.
Cedric chuckled far more genuinely this time. That was a long story.
----------------------------------------
The memory faded like a pleasant dream as the harsh reality of the situation hit him like a truck. He shivered, clutching at the thin fabric of his soaked lab coat to preserve as much heat as possible. Pouring sheets of freezing rain cascaded from a dense alien canopy. The noise was deafening, only intensified by the terrifying song of little balls of light that danced in the downpour.
This wasn’t some nightmare. Earth was gone and he had inexplicably appeared in this world.
Cedric stumbled over grasping tree roots, some of whose bark was riddled in vicious spines, and around the looming trunks. Hours in the gloom had weathered his endurance and sapped his body heat. The first and only thing on the middle aged scientist's mind was discovering shelter. And fast.
At the very least, the glowing spirit-like manifestations provided light. No matter how much they appeared like mushroom-induced hallucinations with their drunken cavorting and high pitched wailing. The light was alien and ghostly, but still enough that his eyes could pierce the gloom of the storm.
Those were what had convinced Cedric of his translocation the most. The spined trees and devastating downpour could theoretically exist on earth. But independently moving motes of light? Perhaps an advanced projector setup with that new hologram technology could replicate some of what he was seeing, but Cedric wasn’t so delusional as to think anyone with that level of tech would test it on him.
Cedric shivered again, nearly falling over with the strength of the convulsion. His fingers had long since fallen numb, and even his closed-toed shoes and warm woolen socks had failed to retain any heat in the wet. He clenched his teeth, fighting back another convulsion as he scanned the treeline. No civilization in sight. Just forest, forest and more—
Wait!
A stone outcropping peeked through the trees. It wasn’t much, not the smooth constructed walls of a human home that Cedric so desperately wanted to see, but Cedric raced to it like it was his last lifeline anyway. Anything to get out of the torrential rain.
Cedric reached the stone and almost burst out crying. Dirt and a pale cyan moss clung to the surface of the huge rock like barnacles on a whale. A quarter of the way up the rock, a gnarly old tree was desperately clinging to life. Its root twisted around the stone as if trying to strangle the life out of it in their desperate bid to reach the life giving soil beneath. But best of all, sometime in the past, the stone had tilted over, creating a shaded overhang that neatly diverted the pouring rain away from a bone dry hollow.
Cedric rushed under the outcrop. The rain instantly stopped pounding on his back. The cold was still there, but without fresh ice cold water constantly being introduced, a spot of warmth took shape in his belly.
Cedric squatted down, hugging his knees for warmth with a sigh of relief. He squeezed his coattail of excess water and watched silently as the rivulet streamed between his shoes and into the depths of his little shelter.
Just then, one of the rain spirits floated by and cast its ghostly illumination upon him. He squinted up at the fast moving sphere of light, idly wondering at the biomechanics of such a creature.
He looked away, blinking away spots, then froze as his heart jumped into his throat. Hanging stock still barely out of arms reach was the largest spider Cedric had ever seen. Except it wasn’t a spider. Its carapace was perfectly smooth and gray, as if it was made of concrete instead of chitin. Its five long legs possessed only a single bulbous joint, entirely at odds with normal spider biology. Most troubling, the radially distributed legs were also capped by razor sharp blades that gleamed maliciously in the rain spirit’s light.
Adrenaline spiked, and time seemed to slow as all moisture fled from Cedric’s mouth. He stared at the statue-like creature. He could see no eyes, mouth or other features to indicate the thing was alive. In fact, if not for a moldering skeleton splayed beneath the thing, Cedric would have dismissed the creature as a particularly malicious effigy.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
It twitched.
He watched in rapt fascination as the leg closest to him bobbed up and down as if smelling the air. It waved side to side, passing the razor sharp end within inches of Cedric’s pale nose.
An imperceptible flexing of the creature’s body was all the warning Cedric got before it lunged.
He screamed, lashing out blindly as he scrambled back into the rain. Pain lanced up his arm as the ice cold water drew long streamers of dark, dark blood out of the long gash in his forearm.
He ran several steps into the forest before he stopped. No matter what happened he would die if he ran blindly in the forest. If not from the spider creature hunting him down, then from the cold. Both were such ridiculous ways to die in the age of air conditioning, and he would be damned if he would let either do him in.
He spun, noting the skittish reaction of the spider to the rain, though after a second's hesitation, it skittered after him. It moved quick, but not so fast that Cedric couldn't outpace it. He jogged away at a moderate pace, buying time for his sluggish thoughts to restart.
With no supplies other than the clothes on his back, he had nothing to fight off or kill the creature with. He could try wrapping his lab coat around his hand like the knife fighters in movies, but entering a heated brawl with only a thin layer of polyester as protection seemed foolhardy at best. If only there were people nearby with weapons, armor, or anything really.
Or was there?
Cedric’s eyes locked on to the dark hollow where he had seen the skeleton. Perhaps it would have something he could use to beat the spider?
Plan set, Cedric jogged around the large stone outcropping, slowly leading the creature further and further, before he broke into a sprint and dove out of the rain. He fumbled with numb fingers in the dark as the helpful rain spirit had long fled. He touched dry bones, and other nameless mush, but he had touched far grossier things in his career as a biologist.
A glint of light caught his attention, and he picked up a faceted gemstone from underneath a long bone. He had a quarter second to admire the brilliantly pure sapphire, before it melted into the skin of his right palm with a searing hiss.
Letters and runes flashed across Cedric’s vision as he clutched at his tingling hand. The gemstone flashed in tune with his heartbeat as the strange holographic mess resolved before him.
System Initializing...Welcome Cedric O’Connor
Besides the glowing text, thoughts and ideas flooded Cedric’s mind on what he was seeing, and how to use it.
Think: Status, to bring up an estimation of your condition
Cedric O'Connor
Stats Invested: 50
Talents Invested: 50
Health[3]: 177/203
Regeneration[2]: 13/hr
Attack Damage[3]: 8
Lethality[1]: 2%
Armor[3]: 16 (Damage reduction: 14%)
Ability Power[2]: 6
Ruin[1]: 2%
Magic Resistance[3]: 10 (Damage reduction: 9%)
Ability Haste[1]: 1%
Area of Effect[1]: 4%
The table blurred as Cedric scrunched his eyes closed before opening them again to behold the honest to god spreadsheet floating before him. Somehow the thing knew his name, though at this point he wouldn’t be surprised if it knew his social security number.
Think: Stats, to bring up an estimation of your abilities.
The blue table vanished only to be replaced by another.
Stats Locked
You can allocate stat points attained through your travels to become stronger
Cedric narrowed his eyes, the gemstone fused into his flesh momentarily forgotten. This entire sequence of events reminded him way too much of old RPG games he used to play. This current one being a poorly coded variant considering the discrepancy between the system messages and the menus shown to him.
Think: Companions, to bring up a list of tamed animal companions
Companions
None
None
An empty table filled Cedric’s vision. One that would stay that way if he had any say in the matter.
Think: Augments, to bring up a list of augments to empower yourself and your companions
Augments Locked
Good luck!
The table and all the system messages vanished, leaving Cedric staring incredulously at empty space. He had played enough games in his time to understand the general terminology being used, but that only emphasized how useless the so-called System was to him. Not only was the general status screen rather redundant and uninformative — what even was Ruin in the first place — but the only screens that would have helped were locked for whatever reason.
The harsh clicking of blades on stone sounded behind and Cedric was forcefully thrust back into the present. He spun just as the spider lunged at him with an incongruous burst of speed. Two deep gashes opened in his shoulder as scrambled out of the cave.
Cedric snarled, angry at himself for losing focus in such a dangerous situation and raced to make space between him and the beast. If there was nothing useful in the cave, he would squash the spider on his own.
He quickly located a sturdy branch that had fallen from the canopy and grasped it around the base, careful not to poke himself with any of the menacing barbs sticking out of the bark. The spider thing was fast on his heels, so with a roar, Cedric swung the stick at it.
The spider ducked beneath the improvised weapon, eerily silent and aware despite its complete lack of eyes. It danced to the side, its razor legs sinking into the hard bark of a root.
“Not so tough now, huh!” Cedric yelled at it, advancing and swinging again. “Bet you don’t even understand the most basic concept of tool-use, you pea brained arthropod!”
The spider danced back, avoiding the following few blows. It bobbed up and down in distress, and then, something truly strange happened. Parts of the beast rippled, then became perfectly translucent. The effect spread across its carapace making it completely invisible except for the rain that outlined its form like some shitty CGI invisibility.
Cedric gaped open mouthed as his eyes struggled to follow the distortion. Another sheet of rain washed over him and he nearly screamed as he tried to keep his eyes open to see the thing.
Cedric blinked rapidly, desperately trying to find the distortion again, but it was gone. He spun, swinging his stick like a maniac as he screamed profanities into the night.
He didn’t hit anything and he could literally feel the weight of the spider waiting just out of his range for the perfect opportunity to jump him.
In a desperate bid, Cedric opened the system again, flashing through the limited menus for something, anything that would help him. Lethality and Ruin were apparently just armor and magic penetration respectively, but actually useful information was frustratingly absent.
Then he recalled one of the messages from before:
Think: Companions, to bring up a list of tamed animal companions
“Tame!” Cedric screamed, holding out the gemstone on his palm like it was his salvation.
Taming: Stone Shell Clinger...
Estimated time to tame: 1826y 31mo 1w 5d 12h 7m 45s — reduce distance or health differential to creature to reduce time.
Cedric blinked at the nonsensical notification and tried again, only to receive the same message again except the time had gone down to 1300 years. Confused, he waved his hand and tried to tame again, this time the time had reduced down to only 50 years.
Cold stone blades slammed into his back, sinking right through the thin polyester of his lab coat as if it wasn’t even there. In the back of his mind he felt the crystal in his palm flash and send two numbers to his brain.
Health: 177/203
You have taken 58 physical damage
Health: 119/203