The capsule was no different from any of the other one thousand three hundred twenty others in the room. It was a cylindrical thing; one-meter tall by half a meter in diameter. It was made of a clear bioplastic material, allowing for a clear view of the dim yellow-lit inside of the capsule. The top and bottom of the capsule were made of a metal alloy; with a multitude of tubes going in and out of the capsule at the ends of it.

Inside, the capsule was filled with a vaguely clear fluid. And in it, floated a female baby. At thirty-seven Weeks, she appeared healthy and ready for birth, if it could be called that. Was it birth if she was merely taken out of a capsule? Maybe it would be more appropriate to call it the take-out.

But she hadn’t signaled that she was ready for that though, unlike some of the others. Her eyes were closed, giving her the regal appearance of a beautiful royal asleep. She looked so peaceful, moving her tiny arms and legs every once in a while. Those would be considered kicks if she were inside someone’s womb. Though they would be barely felt. She was highly subdued compared to what was considered average for the brood. There were vigorous kickers among them, and they would prove a handful to rear when the time came. Some of those had already been taken out of their capsules. With the first one being more than a Week earlier.

She had the makings of hair covering her head. It stood spiked in all directions, slowly waving in the clear fluid as if moved be an invisible current. The hair quickly tapered off to a narrow band as it went past her neck. And down her spine, to the base of her tail. Where it thickened again to cover the whole tail, ending in what appeared to be a black tip. The tail was wrapped between her legs, raising up her front. It wasn’t easy to see unless one was actively looking for it.

Kamort didn’t understand why they had left it. He didn’t think it would be anything but trouble for the girl. Let alone design clothes that accommodated for the tails; the horns present in some members of the could be easily ignored, but not the tails. Definitely not the tails. And there were a lot of babies with tails, more than three quarters. It was surprising how members of the same base species had some of them losing their tails as the embryo developed.

He stared at her a while longer, wondering when she would decide she had had enough of the capsule. Would it be at the expected thirty-eight Weeks, or would she wait a while longer. He hoped she would, that would increase her chances of being smarter. If only theoretically. Any advantage would be advantageous to her, especially in the era she was being born to.

Her plate number read 0666. An unlucky number, if Kamort were a superstitious man. Her name was Mondhe. Kamort didn’t even where its origin was, but he knew which species her base DNA was: cheetah. Maybe it was African then. There were eight of her kind; five males and three females. The least representative number of any base species in the room.

Her capsule was contained in a shelf, with a display at the top, showing her vitals. Her capsule was in the middle row, with the room containing eleven rows made up of one-twenty capsules each. Sixty stacked on top of sixty.

He gave it a long last look as he moved onto the next capsule whose occupant wanted out of their capsule. 0667, buffalo base species male. There wasn’t that much difference in size between the two. But aside from having a human appearance with little traits from their base species sneaking out, there wasn’t that much the two babies had in common.

Where Mondhe had been regal in demeanor, the male looked downright feral. Maybe it was the constant thrashing. He knew Kamort had spent more time than was necessary on someone who wasn’t ready to come out. And he was already complaining about the unfair treatment. Kamort was just glad he wouldn’t be the personal caretaker of the hybrids. He wouldn’t be surprised if their base instincts peeked through. Predators going after their prey.

He would still get occasional visits from the kids as they grew up. It was a relatively new field and all the data would be necessary for the research, and future hybrids. Unless big changes happened and someone powerful enough came to stop them, he didn’t think the hybrids would stop being produced any time soon.

There were twenty-three other doctors in the room. Each going to their designated capsules to retrieve the babies and take them to the nursery room. They would spend a Month there before being distributed to their caretakers for the next several Years.

Stolen novel; please report.

…

Kamort had joined the hybrid project six Years ago, at its inception. He had been working on genetic reprogramming before then. Molding the genetic makeup of an organism to suit their needs. More specifically, their employer’s needs.

He had a few reservations on whether they should actually be doing it, but he also knew that short of killing all parts interested in the field, there was no way to stop the research from being carried. He reasoned that it was better to be the one doing it, rather than let someone who might not actually care for the organisms to do it.

When the hybrid project started, he had nearly called it quits. But in the end, there was nothing he could do. Leaving then would have been worse than if he hadn’t started on the project in the first place. It was true what they said: once you begin, it was a slippery slope to hell.

That was then, and now, six Years later, he couldn’t think ever not starting on the project. If he hadn’t, maybe the little kids wouldn’t exist. That would be a wrong to the universe, they deserved to be here just as anyone else did. No child ever chose to be conceived, but they did anyway. He could think of worse ways to be conceived. Way worse.

All the kids had finally been born. Their stay at the nursery had been extended to accommodate the late arrivals. No one had made it to the forty-Week mark, but some had cut it pretty close. The age difference between the oldest and the youngest was twenty-six Days and a few Hours. They weighed same as any human child weighed at birth. With the expected deviations from the standard weight. It was expected that rather than expressing the extreme differences found in their base species, at the age of maturity, they would differ as humans differed from each other. Aside from the obvious of course.

The babies had quickly differentiated themselves, from the constant brawlers to the extremely quiet ones. So quiet that they were never loused to crying no matter how noisy the nursery got. Then there were the heavy eaters, who mostly included the brawlers. But there were some of the quiet ones that gave the brawlers a run for their money when it came to food consumption. Those would grow up to be big, it was a given. Only if they kept their feeding habits though.

The brawling had led the kids to be divided into separate nursery rooms; depending on how much brawling and quietness the babies presented. The caretakers were allowed interactions with their prospective children during that time. For bonds to form, and all that. There were ten children per caretaker on average. Some had an easy time with their subjects, while others had to fight tooth and nail with theirs.

Through the last five Years, the caretakers had gone through a rigorous training that helped them prepare for the arduous journey that awaited them. Taking care of young hybrids was expected to be different in some ways than taking care of human children. They had to take into account that some of the hybrids might revert to their base instincts in the extreme of cases. It was the caretakers job to guide the children through those periods and help them be well, more human than beast. Though that was highly debatable, some humans were more beast than humans themselves.

Kamort didn’t think they would have any issues in the behavioral side of things. But he also knew that it couldn’t hurt to be prepared.

Most of the training had been spend making sure that the caretakers didn’t have any superiority issues towards the hybrids. It wouldn’t do to have the supposed caretakers treating the children as if they were less than humans. If Kamort was being honest with himself, on the genetic level, the hybrids were a class above the human genome. But time would tell whether that was true or not. Time would tell.

As the Days wore on, the caretakers began removing their children from the nursery one by one. Of the ten children allocated to each caretaker, no two could be of the same base species. But avoiding the family was impossible. In a way, it was the program’s approach to try and get the hybrids used to the different base species in a familial setting.

Slowly but surely, the brawling reduced as the number of the children in the nursery steadily decreased. Some even left before the allowed one-Month period was over. Having easily and fast acclimated themselves to their new caretakers.

The cleanup process began soon after. It wouldn’t do to have the facilities remain with the contamination left behind by the brood, and the caretakers and doctors. There were a dedicated set of personnel for the cleanup process, but Kamort liked to help in such situations. Not just because he wanted to be helpful, but to also have something to do. It also helped ease his mind from what some would consider unethical practices. Some, including himself.

As they finished with the cleanup process, Kamort stared at the incubation room. The life that had filled the room was now completed gone, leaving it a room of machines. It was hard to picture it helping to nurture a microscopic embryo to the full blown brawling creatures that had recently left the nursery to begin their lives. All the capsules were empty, devoid even of the nourishing fluid itself. They sat there in wait for their next embryos. And they would get them, that much Kamort knew. What he didn’t know was the kind of base species the embryos would be.