Beta Reader: Khalthar and Evilservant1094
Chapter 2: What Are You?
Hidden behind a false wall inside the deep freeze resource, or what most people commonly referred to as the 'ice box'. Doctor Henry Wu was sitting at the work counter inside his secret lab.
The secret lab still showed signs of incident that had involved himself, two InGen security guards and a freelance corporate espionage agent. He had yet to ask someone he trusted to clean up the secret lab. The broken freezer was a lost cause. It had been unplugged and pulled away from the wall before it made its way to a trash barge. The majority of the broken glass from the freezer's door and the vials from inside the freezer were swept into a pile, but not yet made their way into a trash can. There were burn marks on the tile floor where the freezer had been turned into an oven. There was still the smell of ionized air making the room feel charged with electricity. Also unpleasant odor of burnt skin, hair and muscle.
"I need to bring an air-fresher next time I come here," Henry muttered to himself. He tried to ignore the unsavory smell in what was supposed to be a sterile, clean and bleach smelling lab environment. It was usually a bad idea to return to the scene of a crime. Henry fortunately did not have to worry about this because InGen security was on his side. Working to keep the matter secret.
Henry collaborated with the head of security, Vic Hoskins. Together they conceived a convincing cover story to hide the truth about the incident surrounding Clive Crusher, the freelance corporate espionage agent.
As for why Henry had to return to this secret lab, he needed the privacy on the matter he was researching. There was no other place where he could continue his own genetic experiments. More importantly, investigate into what had happened to Clive Crusher. He wanted to keep control of all the information related to these subjects confidential; from everyone if possible. If he conducted his research in the main lab surrounded by others, there was a likelihood that the cover story would be compromised. This would undoubtedly lead to a full on investigation into the matter.
For now Claire Dearing and Simon Masrani both believed the cover story Henry and Vic had fabricated around the whole Clive Crusher incident. They wanted, no needed, to keep the situation that way. If the truth came out, more questions would be asked and things would quickly spin out of their control.
At the moment Henry and Vic still had questions about the whole situation. Questions that Henry was only qualified to answer.
A new smaller freezer was brought in to replace the broken one. Inside this new freezer there were roughly a dozen blood samples. All from the same subject. Right at this moment, those blood samples were being analyzed by the InGen super-computer used to map the billions of DNA sequences and codes. While the machine was processing, Doctor Wu was studying x-ray images of the subject. What the x-rays showed was beyond fascinating.
All the different systems and networks that made up a creature's body; skeletal, digestive, respiratory, cardiovascular, muscular, etcetera. All of these functions that made this creature's body were healthy and working properly by all indications. Better than just properly even.
The digestive and respiratory showed indications that the oxygen and nutrient exchange was highly efficient. The muscles and bones were far denser than normal. Meaning that the muscles were stronger. While the bones could support a greater amount of stress and weight. Due to the muscles being stronger, this meant the strength of the animal's heart was coincidentally improved. Pumping the creature's life blood through its cardiovascular system in a proficient and enhanced manner. Even the epidermis, despite being damaged and taking some time to heal, was showing to have an unusually tougher outer layer of scales.
What seemed to be the most unusual was the nervous system. At the center of the nervous system is the brain which sends and receives information throughout the entire body. The creature had a highly developed brain. Especially when it came to the cerebrum. The cerebrum was the part of the brain used to think and usually corresponded with intelligence, problem solving and learning.
Henry did not have any chemistry or samples of the creature's nerves, but he suspected they were also improved. Nerves are the wires the brain communicates information throughout the entire body. Henry guessed that these wires relayed information faster; much faster than normal.
For example, when someone is pricked on the finger with a needle, a signal is sent through the nervous system to the brain. The brain then receives the finger's signal that it has been pricked and then sends instructions to the finger. The muscles in the finger receives the brain's instructions to move away from the needle. This whole process usually takes about 0.03 of a second for a human. Judging how everything else was improved, Henry theorized that this creature would process this same example of being pricked on the finger in less than 0.001 of a second. It was almost like comparing copper wire to fiber-optic line.
"Amazing, truly amazing," Henry leaned back in his chair still not quite believing what he was seeing. He was no stranger to genetic improvements. In fact he intentionally tried to make improvements to his creations for their health, longevity, appearance, etcetera. However, the full of array of improvements this creature had was startling.
Now, in order to deem something an improvement, you generally need a baseline to compare it to. So what was the baseline Wu used for his judgments? His baseline he was comparing to was Rexy, Jurassic World's only Tyrannosaurus Rex. He also used the statistics of what was considered a normal human as a second baseline. Why Rexy and a normal human?
Well because of how the creature had been created.
Doctor Henry Wu and Vic Hoskins' cover story was that a freelance corporate espionage agent. This agent, Clive Crusher, had infiltrated the InGen labs at Jurassic World as a lab technician. During Clive's time working for InGen he was gathering company secrets for his unknown client. At one point during his infiltration Clive managed to create a dinosaur embryo, hatch it and care for it; all the while remaining undetected. This was a practically impossible feat considering the level of security, oversight, supervision and restrictions in place at InGen and Jurassic World.
The cover story was grossly more believable that what actually happened.
"AAHHHHHHH!" Clive's sudden screaming caught the three InGen employees off guard. Jumping away from the man stuffed into the freezer.
"What's wrong!" Bruno asked looking at Clive as he continued to scream his lungs out.
"He's being electrocuted!" Henry realized. The electrical cord running to Clive's impromptu weapon had been cut by a shard of glass. Now the exposed wires had touched the inside of the metal freezer. Since Clive was the only path for it to take, the volts of electricity began to race from the metal freezer through him, to the grounding floor.
"Quick pull him out," Brent said motioning Bruno to the other side of Clive to pull him out.
"Don't! You'll get electrocuted yourselves," Henry exclaimed, stopping the two security guards from touching Clive.
"AAAAHHHHHHHHHH!" Chive kept screaming in pain.
"What do we do?!"
"Get the coats we wore through the main freezer," Henry instructed. "Use those as insulation, then grab him and get him out of there."
"Got it," Brent and Bruno rushed past Doctor Wu to retrieve the coats.
"AAAAAHHHHHHHH!"
Henry looked at Clive concerned. The frozen samples that were in the freezer had begun to melt and then boil. Clive's clothing began to catch fire and there was the smell of burning human flesh. Clive continued to scream as he was being cooked alive, in a freezer filled with Dino-DNA.
Brent and Bruno quickly returned with the coats. Covering their hands and arms with the thick material they grabbed a hold of Clive's arms and pulled him out. Clive flopped to the floor face first and did not move. The back of his arms, legs and torso were burnt and boiled to a crispy black and red. The painfully looking black and red skin was pierced by hundreds of little sparkling shards of glass.
"Is he dead?" Brent asked with a wince as he looked down sympathetically at the burnt man lying at his feet. Cautiously Bruno stepped forward to search for a pulse on Clive's neck.
"He's got a very weak pulse, and I don't think he's breathing. He'll die soon if he doesn't get help. Hell, he'll probably die even if he does," Bruno told the other two men.
"What do we do? Doctor Wu?" Brent and Bruno turned towards Henry waiting for an answer and their orders. Henry gave a stressed exhale as the pondered the situation.
The threat to InGen and Jurassic World had been neutralized, but with a larger mess than Henry had wanted. He wanted to deal with Clive, get him off the island, far away from InGen and quietly. He had been truthful about the boat ticket earlier. When he was trying to convince Clive to go peacefully with Brent and Bruno. Things just didn't turn out that way.
"I want to keep this completely under wraps," Doctor Wu began. "It is unfortunate that Mr. Crusher is gravely injured and may die, but we cannot risk taking him to the hospital. Otherwise, InGen's secrets may be exposed. Which we cannot allow," Henry stated with a great amount of resolve.
"Get in contact with Vic Hoskins," Henry instructed. "Inform him what has happened, don't tell anybody else about this. Once you find Vic, come up with a way to discreetly get Mr. Crusher out of the InGen building and off the island. I'll stay here to clean up my lab a little bit and supervise Mr. Crusher while you set things up for his departure."
Brent and Bruno nodded, following Doctor Wu's instructions they left to get in contact with Vic and inform him what had happened. Henry let out another stress filled sigh after Bruno and Brent had left as he looked at his wrecked lab.
The damage to the lab itself wasn't significant. The blood centrifuge that Clive grabbed as an impromptu weapon and the glass door freezer, were the only items completely destroyed. What was the greatest loss were the embryos, blood and genetic samples that had been smashed and cooked inside the freezer. With his hands double wrapped in latex gloves, Henry picked through the broken glass to see if there was anything salvageable.
Everything was either smashed by Clive's forced entry into the freezer or electrically burnt when a cut power cord touched the metal freezer. It was a complete loss Henry realized as he picked through the glass shards. Everything could be reconstructed by using the accompanying computer data, but that would require time. A lot of time to rebuild each sample, protein code by protein code. He would need to prioritize which samples he wanted rebuild first.
For roughly a half hour Henry inspected the damage done and cleaned up the mess in his secret lab. He was sweeping the glass shards out of the way into a pile to be disposed of later when Brent and Bruno returned with Vic.
"Well, thankfully this didn't turn out to be a complete fubar," Vic voiced with a bright voice of optimism.
"Yes, but my research has suffered a major setback from the destruction of my stored samples." Henry responded with a greater amount of pessimism to counteract Vic's optimism.
"How much of a setback?" Vic asked a little concerned.
"I still have all the computer data. That helps greatly, but digital Dino-DNA cannot compare to the real thing. Computers can only calculate the probability of how Dino-DNA will work. When dealing with Dino-DNA there are so many factors that not even today's most powerful super-computer can solve for all the little deta- "
"Uhm, Doctor Wu, Mr. Hoskins… uhm…" Brent got the two men's attention.
"Yes, what is it?" Vic answered turning around to look at his two security guards.
"You guys should to see this," Bruno finished motioning to two men to join them. Vic and Henry joined the two security guards looking down at the burnt and dying body of Clive Crusher. Seeing the obvious subject of their attention. Vic and Wu looked at Clive to see what had caught the security guards' attention. The four men stood in silence as they watched in stunned fascination.
In the half hour since Doctor Wu had looked at Clive's body he noticed several miniscule differences from before. A prominent bump had formed just about where the man's tail bone was located. Clive had his face turned to the side on the tile floor and his face appeared to have been stretched outward. Clive's arms were now out of proportion with the rest of his body, as they seemed to have shrunk. His fingers and hands were also shrinking and appeared to be melding together. His shoes had been ripped apart from the inside as his feet had swollen. There was something also wrong with his legs as it now appeared as if they had an extra joint.
The kicker was that all these mentioned areas were continuing to grow, shrink and change.
The bump at the tail bone was getting larger. The face and head continued to elongate. The arms deflated and retracted towards the torso. The five fingers and hand were morphing into two appendages. The fabric that made up his shoes shredded completely as the feet massively expanded. The angles in the legs, where there were joints became more pronounced and with it became less human looking.
All of these changes had noises associated with them. Bones cracking and grinding against one another. The sickening sound of skin and muscle tearing. The four men in the audience watched and listened on in white faced horror.
"W-Wu?" Vic called out his colleague questioningly. Hoping the lead geneticist had an explanation.
"I…I don't…this is scientifically impossible," Henry sputtered out in disbelief.
To Vic the only thing that he could draw a comparison to was the 1981 movie, 'An American Werewolf in London'. In the movie, the main character becomes a werewolf. The first transformation was and still is one of the best uses of practical special effects and props in cinematic history. The detailed and grotesque transformation from a human being into a bi-pedal, wolf-anthromorph monster. That moment in the movie when the transformation happens, was the only thing Vic could possibly relate to what he was witnessing.
The hair on the top of Clive's head had begun to fall out, leaving a growing pile of hair on the tile floor. The balding scalp began to change colors, at first becoming a sickly light green with freckles of yellow. Then the pigment continued to darken. Through darker and darker shades of green until it was a deep rich forest green. The speckles of yellow gradually shifted to a light brown, then deepened until it was a dark brown-red tree bark color.
The four men stood there transfixed by the sight in front of them as the human form transformed into another. They watched the human transform into …
Next Chapter: 4th November
A/N: You know what… actually I think I'll work hard tonight.
Next Chapter: 29th October
A/N: Bet that makes you readers happy, does is not? Thanks for the favs, follows and reviews so far! See you tomorrow folks!