Chapter 2 is up! Sorry I took so long! It's a really stressful time of year, lol.

I do not own the movie Splice or any of its characters.

"Ms. Chorot, may I leave for the day?"

Joan looked up at her assistant, Dana. Dana was a nice girl, if a bit of an airhead. She'd applied at N.E.R.D. saying she wished to further her mind, but Joan knew it was just in the hopes of seducing one of the lab's wealthy benefactors. But, she did her job and she did it well, so Joan had nothing to complain about her.

"Yes, Dana. There's nothing more I need of you today. Just remember to turn off your computer and drive safely." The younger woman smiled brightly, already thinking about her plans for the evening. She would most likely be going home, slipping on something small and sultry, and then meeting up with friends at a club for drinks, dancing, and a bounty of young men. 'Ahh, to be 25 again', Joan reminisced.

"Thank you Ms. Chorot." And Dana was gone.

Joan took her assistant's incentive and shut down her own computer. She grabbed her purse and locked her office door, noticing Dana's desk already empty. She shook her head and entered the elevator, pressing G.

Walking through the dark lobby and parking lot to her car, Joan remembered to pick up Elsa's strange craving. Joan felt for the poor woman. After all, working for a laboratory, she understood the reasoning behind Elsa and Clive's drive for success, their drive for scientific advancements. They just didn't anticipant, and who ever could, the conclusion to their experiment. And of course, she so loved the chemical compounds contained in Dren's DNA. She just wished that so many people didn't have to die for it.

Once settled in her Mercedes-Benz R-Class Crossover, she located Giorgio's restaurant on her GPS. Joan couldn't help but be amused at Elsa's coy response to her pregnancy, sounding embarrassed when asking for the chicken Caesar salads. That was probably just another thing reminding her of Clive. Not having the child's father to go out in the middle of the night for her sudden and strange cravings, only waking up to empty space next to her, must be difficult to deal with. Joan remembered going through her own two pregnancies. Though her marriage didn't last, her ex-husband Gregory was supportive and loving to her when she woke him at 3am for treacle tarts and ice cream.

Joan then thought of her children while driving. Her eldest, her son Thomas, lived in France with his wife Clarice. He was a lawyer for a large car company, and she only saw him on holidays and her birthday. He was closer to his father, who lived near him in Toulouse.

Her daughter, her baby Amanda, lived in America, but not in California with her. She lived in New York, attending New York School of Design. Her dream was to be a world-famous fashion designer, have her pieces worn in shows all around. Joan saw her often, flying her in at least twice a month for weekends away from school. Elsa reminded her of Amanda, and after a visit with her, she'd always call her daughter just to see how she was doing. And knowing Elsa's situation with her own mother, Joan had taken to her like a close aunt.

Once she pulled up in front of the restaurant, Joan cut off her car and entered the restaurant, thinking she may get something for herself. Might as well, she'd probably be at Elsa's for a while.

Back at N.E.R.D., something terrible was about to happen.

What Joan didn't know, was that Dana had NOT turned her computer off. The young woman had neglected to do so, figuring the machine would automatically shut down after half an hour of non-use, as it usually did. And Joan herself had walked right past it and didn't even notice.

Now, normally, this wouldn't have been a problem. Except, Dana didn't know that Dr. Frederick Duscharm down in Microbiotics had opened up a virus e-mail earlier that day. It caused his computer to freeze, but Geek squad couldn't make it to the lab to fix it until the next day. His doctorate being in biology and not technology, Dr. Duscharm thought nothing of it. But by six o'clock that evening, the virus had spread all the way up to the last working computer in the building- Dana's.

Millions of bits of information per second pumped into the PC. It destroyed files, changed addresses and phone numbers, and shut down every running piece of equipment in the building. Every light, automatic door and freezer in the building stopped working. Including freezer number 13 in Unit 4 of the underground storage level.

So what? What was so special about it? It was an unlucky number anyway. Blame it on the number, but there was something special about freezer 13. It was small- 13 ft by 10 ft with an 8 ft high ceiling. It contained frozen experiments, successful, failed or otherwise. It had mutated rats with 3 tails in crates, the "leftovers" of Fred and Ginger, and Dren's body.

*The Next Morning*

Lionel Mitchell was pissed off. When he woke up this morning, he had no idea he'd be spending the day cleaning rotting flesh out of broken freezers. If he did, he'd have called in sick. But then again, Lionel was a 47-year-old college drop-out, divorced, paying child support on three kids, and his new girlfriend was pregnant. Needless to say, he wasn't happy, especially with his job.

After his construction business went under, he was forced to take the only job around- a "hazardous waste disposal technician". Lionel was a janitor, at N.E.R.D. Laboratories.

The night before, some secretary's computer made the entire electrical system crash. For some unknown reason, the generators hadn't turned on, meaning everything in the freezers (corpses) were just decomposing away in there. And guess what Lionel had been assigned to? Yup, the freezers.

He was just finishing Unit 4, and was about to go on to the last one, when he heard it. Some crazy repeated banging, like a person trying to punch a hole in the wall of the unit. Lionel could do nothing but stare at the door rattling against its hinges. He wanted to run, but his feet felt like they were glued to the floor. He couldn't move. The banging became louder and faster, before suddenly, it all stopped. There were no sounds, no rattling, nothing.

Lionel knew he should've run. Run away and tell his supervisor, or anyone for that matter, about what he heard and what happened. But he didn't. Instead, he decided that he should open the freezer himself and see exactly what was making the noise. Not a very smart man.

As he tentatively moved towards the door, he tried to think of what could've made the noises. No one had been in freezer 13 for about eight months, so it wasn't a fellow worker that had been accidently shut inside. Surely no animals had been locked inside; they'd be dead by then. What animal could've even made that sound anyway? By the time he reached the door, he was trying to convince himself it was something scientific. Something like the cold expanding objects and space or something like that. Remember, he was a college drop-out.

Nothing happened when he grasped the handle. Nothing happened when he swiped the keycard. Nothing happened when he pushed the handle down. Nothing happened when he cracked the door open slightly. All that happened was he was hit with the stench of every dead mammal in the small space. It made him momentarily forget there was something in there that tried to break down the door.

"Holy shit, these scientists are fucking freaks." He opened the door all the way, "What th-"

Since Lionel was the only one assigned to the freezers, no one heard his screams of agony as he was ripped apart limb by limb.