The Best in a Bad Situation
Written for the prompt : Dark Angel, Lydecker, He did everything Manticore asked but these were his kids damnit and if one had to be put down they deserved a quick painless death. .?
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Lydecker stood at ease watching the maneuvers of the unit in front of him with pride. The X5s had been the most successful project so far and hopefully they were over the problems of the last few weeks. They'd lost a number of the X5s to seizures. It had started simple, one seizure, a few tests and no answers, then two seizures, followed by more and more until they were too far gone. It was a painful way to die and they might be soldiers, might be genetic experiments but they were also his charges, his kids.
The medics hadn't come up with any remote possibility of a solution. If it happened again . . .
As if the mere thought had provoked just the scenario he didn't want, Lydecker watched one of the X5s dropped to the floor, muscles spasming. He waved away the attending guards. He wasn't going to watch another of his kids go through that. Instead he stepped forward, drew his gun and put a bullet between the prone X5's eyes. The body stopped its jerking movements and there was a sudden silence.
He looked up at the others in the unit. He'd been met with increasingly frightened eyes over the last few weeks as more of them had succumbed to the seizures. The numbers had slowed, he had hopes that perhaps the worst was over, maybe he could put it down to survival of the fittest. The fear he'd got used to seeing had changed, morphed into something stronger – terror and hatred.
Like the animals in their blood, they were a pack, they protected their own. They were too young to realize that that was what he was doing as well.