“Seems they’ve done some renovations since I was last here. Can’t say I disapprove.” Moreau turned to look at me as we stepped out of the cargo-sized elevator. “Welcome to laboratory number three.”
To access it, we had to get off the AV in an entry-bay thirty stories up, then take an elevator down to a loading dock, and from there take another elevator straight into the underground.
Lab number three was a massive, white, open room at least a hundred meters across and twice that in length, its area divided by steel walls that sectioned it off into rooms. The walls didn’t go up all the way, stopping at roughly five meters overhead. Meanwhile, the ceiling was another twenty or so meters up, with metal beams dividing the space above into a separate, darker area. The illusion of this division was reinforced by the upper parts of the walls and ceiling being painted dark gray. Sterile, cold LED lights hung from the beams, hiding away movement overhead.
It took me a moment to realize it was from drones, a dozen or so of which were flying about the place at any given time. They would land within the rooms, either dropping something off or picking it up, then fly away into some other area of the laboratory.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to feel other than the fact that I should be very careful of what I touched or got close to.
“By the by.” Moreau chimed, lazily walking ahead. “Laboratory number three was made before numbers one or two.”
“Why?”
“Lazy ass middle-management thought they could skimp on R&D. When I’d set up shop, they had no labs.” She cackled. “When laboratory number three started showing up in their expense reports, things got interesting.”
“I don’t…” I frowned slightly. “You made it so they’d create two labs just to keep from having to explain to management.”
She scoffed. “That was a nice bonus, frankly it was insulting they weren’t trying to research anything. The real reason was to draw attention.” Moreau grinned. “If you’re some corpo spy and you see a massive expense tab showing up for a lab, you get curious. But if there are two apparent missing laboratories? You start sniffing around.”
I didn’t get to ask why she’d do that. A startled sound down the wide corridor drew Moreau’s attention.
“Time to earn your pay,” she whispered at me.
The employee, some thirty-something woman, brightened up as if her paycheck had come with one too many zeroes. “Doctor Moreau!” She called out as she got closer, raising a tablet.
Realizing what Moreau had meant, I hastily moved ahead so I could place myself between the two and tried to look as imposing as I could. Which wasn’t much, since my academy uniform couldn’t exactly make me look any less scrawny. “Sorry, the doctor is currently occupied.”
All I got for my efforts was a deep scowl; the scientist gave me a look that I knew well. She was trying to measure me up, my neuralink getting a ping to verify whether I wanted to share my ID. I very much did not.
“Atta boy.” Moreau patted my shoulder, bursting the stranger’s bubble.
It felt like I just kicked a puppy. It wouldn’t be the last one, either.
About a dozen others would try to approach, with me playing the thin human-wall. Each of them went from shock to joy to disappointment within the span of seconds before being sent off to continue their work. But word spread all the same, and the number of people “coincidentally” walking out of their areas and into the corridor started to increase.
I began to wonder why Moreau hadn’t brought her own security. Though none of the people here seemed to present actual threats since they readily backed down. Maybe she was just using me, in a sense, as an ad-block? She’d definitely brought me along for her amusement and little else.
My musings stopped when Moreau approached one of the sections, ‘AK01’ was painted on the wall. “Do you know what bio-weapons are?” She asked.
“I’m guessing some sort of virus bomb?”
“Heh.” Moreau chuckled. “You would’ve been right a hundred or two years ago, but the whole field fell into shambles when we found out monster biology is extremely variable. What screws over one monster empowers the next and does nothing to the one after.” She shook her head in amusement, opening the door. “There are still a few holding on, who’ll chew your ear off claiming the term is exclusive to them, but I digress. Nowadays, if you hear someone talking about bio-weapons, they’re talking about things like this.”
Her tone of grandioseness drew my attention as she gestured at… an artillery shell? It was very much an artillery shell. One sitting snugly at the center of the room, held aloft and surrounded like the world’s most expensive museum display. The bullet itself was roughly twice my height in length, though made out of a deep-black substance that didn’t look metallic but closer to obsidian.
Concerningly, the blackness had a heartbeat, white veins pulsing up and down from it at a steady rhythm. A dozen or so tubes connected the shell to the display, with the veins spreading outwards from each contact point like a spiderweb.
“Is… is that thing alive?” I asked, a little concerned.
“Alive in the same way your heart is alive. Just a bunch of cells being kept from death.” Moreau answered, drawing in looks from the scientists gathered there. “This is the alpha-killer, AK01. I was never good with names, but I think this one describes it well. Each shell of the AK01 series can likely kill and definitely cripple an A-class monster.”
Had I anything in my mouth, I would’ve spat it out.
In the monster classification, human technology had always been described as only ever reaching C-class at best. Monsters at that threat-range had esoteric capabilities that made them a nightmare to deal with conventional weaponry. When the target could just bend space around them, artillery fire could do nothing.
Or so I’d thought.
“Effective range of two thousand kilometers… only if you slap it on something hypersonic. Once it’s loaded up, life-support needs to be cut off, and the system’s efficacy drops quickly if it’s not fresh.” She explained. “The device has a low-AI targeting system, primed with CYPHER data to guarantee maximal damage. Cloaking and phase are activated half-way to the target, rendering it impossible to detect or shoot down.” Moreau flashed a smile that was all teeth and pride. “At phase three, it splinters into a cluster of explosives, each one roughly the size of a fist. Every bomb is individually timed and primed to break phase within the target, with the targeting system defaulting towards neuron clusters… like the brain.” She continued with a lower voice. “The weapon’s best deployed with a squadron of megucas, to make sure the thing’s properly dead.”
Moreau didn’t seem particularly happy about that last part.
The doctor crossed her arms, complex emotions passing through her features as she gazed upon the weapon. “I made forty of these.” She muttered.
“Doctor Moreau’s work has single-handedly pioneered the field.” One of the scientists pipped up. “We’ve yet to be able to replicate her work, only three AK01’s remain worldwide.”
“Why?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“The materials are only obtainable from a monster.” Moreau answered, jaw tightening. “It needs to be both phase and armor type, B-class or higher. It turns out the combination is pretty damn rare.”
B-class, phase and armor type.
My eyes widened.
“Yes.” She spoke, looking away from me and towards the weapon, as if reading my mind. “This is made from the monster that killed your father.”
There was a lump on my throat. “I…” I blinked hard a couple times. “So this is what my father’s sacrifice helped create?”
“What?” Moreau scowled. “Look at it. It’s saved countless lives. Without someone developing the technology-”
“But it wouldn’t have been possible to gather the pieces without the guards that helped take it down… right?” My voice shook a little, but I felt my resolve steeling. “Why don’t they mention this in the history texts?”
Moreau let out a frustrated sound. “This was not the lesson I was trying to teach.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Bio-weapons aren’t exactly common knowledge. Something about knowing the stuff you’re using has monster bits in them kind of doesn’t mesh well with marketing.”
That jostled me. “How… much of the ‘stuff’ we use is monster-bits?”
“The ignorance of the process is the bliss of the consumer.” Moreau pipped up, cackling evilly. “Are you sure you want to know?”
I remembered the Bacon-nado™ baths and shuddered. “Please don’t say ‘protein slushy’.”
The other scientists barked out in laughter. “Of course not.” One of them commented. “Besides, with how little they leave behind, you’d need to be killing hundreds of B-class monsters every month just to keep a village fed.”
Though most of the room lit up with chuckles and amusement, I noted Moreau had gone very still. A darkness was cast over her expression, one she quickly hid behind a mask of impassivity. “What he said.” She confirmed with a slightly stiff nod.
“Doctor, if it wouldn’t be too much to ask, could-”
“I know where these rabbit holes lead, unfortunately I’m here on business, not pleasure,” Moreau said, shaking her head. “As the bearer of bad news, the New Francisco council is going to put forward a request for the AK01 over here.” She gestured at the pulsating warhead. “The request will be passed through more official channels in two weeks. I’m mostly here to make sure that when the order does come through, everything is already ready to be shipped.”
That did not sit well with the room, they immediately started to raise questions, muttering. Moreau quieted them easily with a raised hand.
“CYPHER caught signs of what could be a nascent A-class in the Pacific.” She stated, which immediately got some gasps. “It’s not confirmed yet, and the council wants to keep things hushed. But in the event that it is a new A-class, then New Francisco was deemed the best place to shoot it from if it comes our way.”
“What of Asia?”
“They’ll be setting up theirs in Hong Kong.”
“That’s bullshit,” One of them said. “Sendai would be a better-”
“Trust me, if I could make the decision for them, I would have.” Moreau cut him off. “This is just a courtesy call. Now, I want a catalog of everything you guys mothballed that was from the original project. I need to review what’ll get left here for you folk to keep poking at and what gets sent over.”
There was a discussion, some back and forth; they just left me there to stand and stare wide-eyed as I tried to just… take it all in. Though I could’ve ruminated on the “open secret” of what corporations did with monsters, I was mostly just trying to get a measure of Moreau. The older woman was working on a scale I couldn’t readily grasp. Sedai? Hong Kong? A-class monsters? I’d be worrying over whether or not I stumbled onto an F-class on my way back to my pod. Not whether a whole chunk of a continent might get destroyed or not.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
And yet… I kept coming back to the AK01. I couldn’t help but feel a bit of pride, looking at it, wishing I could tell my father about this.
“Don’t get lost on me, now. Got a busy night ahead,” I was yanked out of my reverie as Moreau grabbed my hand and pulled me away. “Going to need your help as muscle.”
“Yes Doctor.” I quickly nodded, following along as we left the small lab and back to the main corridor area.
Behind us, there was a wake of highly distressed researchers that had started to argue very loudly with one another. Some of them even marched out towards the elevator, the kind of march that promised someone would get their ears chewed off.
Moreau’s steps continued moving further away from the main elevator, reaching an area near the back that had a lot more drone activity than the rest. There were many shipping containers here, with wheeled bots that moved in and out, depositing or extracting materials in tandem with the drones.
“Why not set these up near the entrance?”
“Safety mostly. Some of these things have dangerous stuff.” She tapped one of the containers as she marched on. “If something breaks or leaks or whatever, no one wants the super-carcinogen to be between them and the exit. Also why this section has a slight incline, so if something does spill, it’ll pool here rather than spread.”
“Super-carcinogen?”
“I’d make a joke about some old-school bioweapons engineers' failed project, but it’s mostly just tools of the trade. Perfectly harmless as long as you follow safety protocols.” She growled a little. “And so long as you don’t let corporate skimp on your safety gear.”
I chose not to ask whether she had any personal tales about any such occasions.
Honestly, were anyone other than a VIP saying half the stuff Moreau was talking about, I was pretty sure I’d get reviewed and flagged for “being with bad influences” or somesuch.
“Huh.” Blinking in slight surprise at the realization I hadn’t been paying all that attention to my potential AI spy, I checked the clock. It was barely a quarter to twelve. “Just another fifteen minutes.”
“For what?” She saw me draw the circle with my hand. “Oh, right. I almost forgot about that thing. Good call, better hurry.”
Hurry? I frowned, a little confused, but following quietly as Moreau swerved off of the main aisle and began to navigate between the containers, checking the identifications that were painted at their fronts and sides. “Should be over… here.”
It didn’t look much different to the other containers, other than most drones just not moving things in or out of this particular storage area. Moreau approached the container and brought up her datapad, fiddling with it. A glance over her shoulder revealed… nothing? The screen was on, but blank, yet she was swiping at it as if there was something there.
“It’s just a neat little trick to guarantee privacy.” She didn’t elaborate, and I quickly stepped back, mildly embarrassed. “And… there we go.”
The doors of the container hissed open. Inside there were three rows of shelves, each of them containing a myriad of objects, labels on the shelves themselves assigning each an ID code, but not a description. For a moment I wondered why it’d taken her a minute, but now that we had some mild privacy, I felt like I couldn’t hold back the question anymore.
“Did you know my father?” I asked.
“What?” She raised her attention from the tablet, frowned, then shook her head as she stepped inside. “No. Of course not.”
I suspected that was the case, it’d been a silly question, but there’d been that bit of lingering hope. “I just… no one survived that day, not from the guard. And records are restricted access, so I don’t really know what happened other than…”
“Yeah, real shame, that.” Moreau compared whatever was shown on the tablet with the ID’s on the shelves.
“What’re these?”
“Stuff I tinkered with while designing the AK01. Most of them are just proofs of concepts built with spare parts. A few were just fun things to put together… stuff like that.” She hummed, turned towards the entrance, and gestured at an elongated rectangle with straps that was near the entrance. It looked like a coffin that’d been only shrunken down enough for someone to carry. “Put that on and come on over. We’re going to load some of these up.”
“Could you tell me more? About that day?” I tried to press on as I slung the carry-backpack into place, fastening it.
The doctor was picking up items seemingly at random, most of them barely large enough to fit into a pocket, and storing them into the transport equipment. Why not use the drones instead?
Moreau picked up a canister, looked at it, checked the pad, then hastily put it back on the shelf, taking half a step away. “I finished the designs for the prototype about a year before we finally found the monster. After a year or so keeping our ears on the ground, we finally got a ping for a high-class phase-type.” She reached out to some mess of wires, scowled, and left it there. “The city went into lockdown, everyone got into gear… and the local megucas didn’t like that we’d shown up to take over. So they ignored CYPHER, and flew off to try proving a point.” Though Moreau sighed, I noticed the way her brows settled sternly. “Their hubris got half of them killed, the other half ran off rather than come back. If things had gone wrong that day…” Her hands clenched, and unclenched, glaring hard into the darkness deeper into the container. “It was a massive waste, one that could’ve gotten everyone killed. We had to change the plan.”
“What… was the plan?” I asked, shifting from one foot to the other.
“The local megucas had some mobility options. CYPHER estimated that so long as they kept the monster distracted, then your-huh?”
The surprised sound caught my attention. I followed her gaze toward a weird-looking cube made out of a series of interlocking obsidian glass pieces, all of them held together by a metal frame. There was a single light on the cube, a green LED that was flashing on and off.
“Weird. I thought it didn’t work.” Moreau muttered, lifting the cube and looking at it. “Hold this for a sec.” She handed it over, and I did as told. Immediately, she began to tap away on the datapad. “Weird…”
“So my… father?” I asked. “What about my father?”
“Hm? What about him?” She asked.
I wanted to throw the box right back at her, if just to get her attention properly. “Distract the monster, then…?”
“Ah, then your aunt would just kill the thing once it materialized.”
I blinked.
“My aunt? What’s this about my aunt?” To say I was confused would be an understatement.
“Oh please, don’t play coy. You’ve got a good cover story, pretending to be homeless and whatnot to stay off my radar. But really? Keeping yourself in an academy registry?” Seeing the clear confusion in my face, she rolled her eyes. “Your aunt, meguca Gravis Aqua.”
“That’s… not my aunt.”
“Pfft, yeah, right.” She let out a laugh. “Your father was the crazy driver that guaranteed Aqua would hit the thing. After the op, she’d been obsessing over this picture she’d found in your father’s vehicle, hunted you down, called in some favors, and adopted you as soon as the project was done.” Moreau waved me off. “After that she’d just pretend to be a human, work in a factory, keep a low profile, and once she caught wind of me showing up, she asked someone to falsify her death. Whoever did the job was thorough too, the kind of expert I’d definitely like to hire.”
“That… doesn’t make any sense.” I spoke carefully, trying to keep my temper in check. “My aunt was with me in the shelter during the attack. I only entered the orphanage system after the-”
“Your father.” Her robotic eye took a slightly red color. “Your father, the guard, his name was Marcus Garcia.”
“No.” I deadpanned. “His name was Robert Garcia.”
There was a prolonged silence as we stared at each other.
Moreau looked at me as if for the first time, speaking with an edge of irritation. “Then who the hell are you?”
“Axel Garcia.” I responded through clenched teeth, anger welling inside my chest as I squeezed the cube between my fingers. “Do you even know anything about my father? How did you even get wrong who my father is? Did you even read my profile!?” I stepped forward, raising my arms above my head.
Moreau’s shriek came out in a panic. “DON’T BREAK THAT!”
“Why!? Why shouldn’t I!? Did-” I paused, then frowned as a thought crossed my mind. “Did you cancel the graduation just to get me here? Why!?”
“Alright, alright, let’s all calm down for a moment and not do anything brash.” Moreau took half a step back, hands raised in a placating gesture. “This is your private corporate profile, look.” She turned the tablet, and I scowled at the screen that was now legible.
Right there was a picture of me, but what caught my attention was the details. It labeled me an orphan, no parents. “What the fuck?” The only mention of my aunt and parents were in the notes section! “It barely even mentions… ‘rowdy and prone to delinquent behaviour. Highly aggressive and prone to vandalism’!?”
“Don’t mind it. Probably some butthurt corpo jabbing at you,” she said. “Anyone would see it’s bullshit if they check your criminal record… or lack thereof.”
“Terry!” I almost screamed. “That motherfudger. He… I’ll smash his pumpkin in!” I began to pace, clutching the box. “Five fudging years. FIVE with this piece of brown paint spying everything I do, and he went and put up a false report into my permanent record!? No, worse, so much worse, it’s in my profile. Everyone in any position of authority would see it but me!”
“The box! Careful with-”
DING DONG
I shrieked, jumping a foot into the air as my neuralink alarm signaling midnight went off at full volume. The noise was immediately followed by a loud cracking sound. Then came a burst of pain from my hands, the box had shattered in my grasp, almost like glass, pieces dug into my palms.
“FUDGE!” I swore as the remains of whatever I’d been given fell to the ground, shattered into a hundred pieces.
“Having that thing in your head really did a number on your language, huh.” Moreau kept eyeing me, less wary and more pissed. “But did you really need to break that? It was a very old prototype, but I wanted to figure out why it was doing that.”
“I don’t care!” I winced as I clenched my hands, a tingling sensation climbing up my arms. Fortunately the cuts were shallow, but the adrenaline was clearly doing a number on me. “Just… just please delete that damn comment on my profile and let me get out of here. Today’s been just… ugh.”
“Yeah, about that. I’m not a VIP anymore.”
In the following silence, I could faintly make out the sound of drones flying overhead.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m not a NexCorp VIP, haven’t been one for… five years now? I hacked and falsified the new VIP credentials off of my old profile.” She crouched to pick up the pieces of the box, putting them into a bag. “Tch, you contaminated this. I’ll have to-”
“What do you mean hacked?”
“Don’t worry, and stay still.” She reached into a first-aid kit that’d been on the wall, pulling out a spray and fritzing the contents against my palms. The bleeding stopped immediately, but the tingling had only gotten worse. “There we go.”
“What do you mean hacked?” I repeated more insistently now.
“Grab this.” She put the transparent bag with the pieces of broken cube for me to hold.
“Oh… oh god, you’re stealing.” My eyes widened as I stared down at the bag containing the remains of a piece of technology I broke. A prototype that had my blood on it. “Shit, shit, shit-”
“Calm down, calm down. NexCorp security protocols are set up to allow people to leave. It’s practically industry standard, how else can a CEO bring their piece of ass to their secret office to get some action?” She picked up several other objects from the shelves. “Unless you do something stupid, no alarms will be raised on the way out. We both legally accessed these areas, thus it’ll allow us to leave, legally.”
I lowered my voice into an angry hiss, leaning forward. “Why would I even help you!? Are you insane!?”
Moreau stopped for long enough to address the question. “First, this isn’t theft. It was mine, I’m just getting it back.” She raised one finger. “Second, if they catch us, I will be detained and forced to work on their projects for a few years to compensate them. You? You will get shot and dumped into a sewer.” Her second finger went up. “Third, if we do this right, we just go on with our lives and no one finds out. You waste your potential playing soldier, and you’ll never hear from me again.” Third finger now. “And lastly, you promised.”
“What?”
“You promised to be my bodyguard, standard contract. I’ve got a recording of the verbal agreement.”
My hands were numb now, a chill that was reaching all the way up into my shoulders. I tried to ignore it, but it was like my limbs were falling asleep. “Standard contract does not include helping commit a crime!”
“Legally, this is not a crime. Also, the contract does point out that committing a crime does not stop you from protecting your client from harm.” Moreau smirked, and suddenly my vision flickered. The clock at the corner vanished, alongside every menu. “I’d let you check, but I hijacked your neuralink. Consider it offline until we get out of the building. I’m sorry, but I can’t have you sending some discreet message right now. Too many lives are at stake.”
I immediately tried to at least summon my clock, but she was right. Everything had been cut off. I imagined I could try and manually reboot, but that’d tip her off-
“Lives?” I frowned.
“None of your business,” she said, seriously.
I hesitated. Fuck it. “Promise.” I glared. “Promise you’re telling the truth about lives being at stake… And I want double the rate.”
“I promise, and I promise. Done and done.” Moreau shook my hand without a second thought, frowning and looking down at my hands as I clenched and unclenched them. “You ok?”
“Tingling.”
“...the anesthetic was expired, that might be why. Just tough it out.” She mumbled under her breath. “Well, anyway, let’s get out of here and never see each other again. Payment due once we’re out.”
My fists clenched tightly, jaw setting into place. I gave her a firm nod. “Lead the way,” I glowered through clenched teeth.
As soon as the tingling numbness reached my shoulders, it spread all over my body. It would’ve been more concerning if it hadn’t weakened as it did. Yet something else caught my attention.
A strange notification had coalesced into my field of view.
W͕ha͠t ̷̄is̠ͥ s͖̙tr̺͗en͗͒gt͌h?͋