1-3. Fellows
Lucrecia shivered in the chilly air of the Mansion basement, listening to the two sets of footsteps echoing against the stone walls.
"Damn," Shelan swore appreciatively, "you know, they used to have Halloween parties in the main hall of this house when I was growing up, you know for Shinra employees, with costumes and all. But I think they missed the primo haunted house spot of the century down here."
Lucrecia nodded silently and pushed open the door to the lab. It was empty. She sighed in relief. "All right, this is the main lab. It's not very big, but this is all the room they had to set up right now." Shelan followed her in and stood in the middle of the room as she pointed things out. "Your chem equipment is over in that corner, against the far wall is my equipment, in the other corner is some general equipment--you know, centrifuges, incubators, stuff we'll all use--"
"Hah. Incubators are for bio geeks," Shelan scoffed, smiling devilishly at her.
Lucrecia stopped for a moment, realized he was joking, and went on. "...and against the right wall there is H...Dr. Hojo's equipment. Oh, and down that hall are some reference books and scientific journals--not all of them are moved in yet--and at the end of the hall is Dr. Gast's office."
"Sure," Shelan remarked, paying only half attention. He'd already started to wander toward his own table, checking the supplies.
"I think they're supposed to have everything of ours in," Lucrecia said. "It's just the books that haven't come in yet from Midgar, and the Project cells. The cells are on their way from the Knowlespole excavation site now."
Shelan nodded. "Great. When are they due?"
"Tomorrow morning."
"Awesome," said the chem student. "So, I can start setting up some preparations now if you don't mind."
"Not at all. Those were my plans exactly."
"Great minds think alike," Shelan grinned. "All right, let's get this alien life-form analyzin' party started."
Lucrecia turned to her own table, opened her notebook, and pulled a stack of sterile-wrapped petri dishes from the cupboard. She usually disliked joking around in the lab, but Shelan's humor seemed to be almost necessary in this damp, chilly place.
Despite the unsettling environment, Lucrecia thought the Project work might be pleasant after all.
"So you never took a class with him?" Shelan asked incredulously. "How the hell did you manage that?"
"He teaches freshman chem, Organic 1, right?" The other student nodded. "I tested out of that," Lucrecia explained. "I skipped the whole course."
Shelan groaned. "Of all the lucky..."
"Lucky? You try studying Organic 1 texts in high school."
"Fine, of all the super-genius..." Shelan carried a rack of test tubes to the incubator and set it carefully inside.
"I thought incubators were for bio geeks," Lucrecia remarked half-sarcastically.
"Ehhh-hh." Shelan made a face. "Until you get me some proper water or sand heaters, I'm stuck with your puny mortal heating devices."
"That won't affect your experiment?"
Shelan shrugged. "Not if it stays at an even temp, it should be okay."
Lucrecia nodded and turned back to her rows of dishes. Each had been coated with nutrient gel, ready to nourish a thin layer of Project cells. She counted them again and made a note in her notebook.
"Hey!!"
Lucrecia startled, expecting some dropped glassware or escaped fumes. "What is it?"
"You... you made a joke back there! I heard it!"
She relaxed, though she had half a mind to punch Shelan for the false alarm. "And?"
"And?!? This is a breakthrough! I could publish that! 'Lucrecia Gainsborough found to be physically capable of humor.' Damn. Watch your committee chairmanships, here I come."
"I'm sure they're terrified." Lucrecia stacked the plates into neat stacks of five and set them on a metal tray. "For their lives, not their chairmanships."
"You made two jokes in one day. Now, either you've been sniffing Mako, or the Apocalypse is finally upon us."
Lucrecia smiled and considered the bizarre idea. "No...I don't think that's the final sign of the Apocalypse," she said, letting the punchline dangle.
Shelan leaned his back against the chemistry table and crossed his arms. "And what is, pray tell?"
"Hojo running up and giving someone a nice...big...friendly...hug."
The students' laughter echoed down the hall. It did not go unheard...
Lucrecia arrived at the lab early on her twenty-first day of work, but Shelan was already there, running some clear liquid through a long, complicated series of tubes and dripping pipettes. "So...what's the objective today?" she asked as she looked over the setup.
"I'm attempting...to discover..." Shelan adjusted a small valve, and the liquid in one of the catch-basins turned bright pink. "...the perfect...rum cocktail." He paused. "Crap. Too much."
"Your grant money from the Turks came in, eh?" Lucrecia smirked. "Try some more rum."
"No...more like sodium hydroxide." He sighed. "Got any on ya?"
Lucrecia drew a rack of petri dishes from the incubator. "As if I would sully my hands with your puny mortal 'chemistry supplies'." She opened a door on the side of a large, lighted glass cabinet and slid the rack of dishes inside, then latched the door.
"Good stuff today," she remarked. "A trial of--"
"Stop. English please, first."
"...fine. Mixing the freaky alien cells with some normal cells in a dish to see if they interact."
"Me no understand. Me puny mortal biochemist."
"Oh, stuff it," Lucrecia replied good-naturedly.
"No, that would be taxidermy."
Lucrecia rolled her eyes. "Get back to work, you're wasting precious company time."
"Oooh, a Hojo phrase. 'Precious company time.'" Shelan set aside the pink flask of liquid and replaced it with an empty flask, then restarted the flow through the apparatus. He made some notes in his book, half-watching Lucrecia as she settled in front of the glass cabinet for her preparations. The cabinet had a solid front with two flexible gloves projecting into the work space; it was completely sealed from the outside air, and from any contact with Lucrecia's skin. You couldn't be too careful with these Project cells.
Lucrecia inserted her hands into the gloves from the outside and, with them, separated some of the petri dishes from their rack into a row inside the cabinet. Shelan left his table to lean against the cabinet, watching, glancing back at his setup of tubes now and then.
The focus of their attention was a tiny vial of translucent reddish broth, propped in a rack in the sealed cabinet. "So that's them, huh?" Shelan mused. "You know, no matter how often I see that stuff, it always blows me away. Cells--life--from outer space. That could be from outer space," he corrected.
"Theoretically," Lucrecia muttered, keeping most of her concentration on the task.
"Right, theoretically. But this has to be the most notable discovery of our generation! And we're in on it, Luce. You, me...Dr. Gast...and...that other guy..."
"H...H something? Hobo?" smirked Lucrecia.
Shelan chuckled. "That was one of them. We had so many names for him in freshman chem. Man, we hated that guy."
"Awww, cuddly wittle Hojie?" As Shelan snickered, Lucrecia reached over with the gloves and twisted off the lid of the vial. She reached in with a calibrated dropper and drew out a tiny amount of reddish liquid.
"So those are them?" Shelan marveled.
"Those are they. Yes." She dripped the liquid onto one of the plates and tipped the plate to spread the liquid around. "Well...technically...those are loose Project cells floating in some growth medium. They're easier to handle that way, rather than in a big chunk of solid cells."
"Oh, okay. Gotcha." Shelan turned back to switch one of the catch-basins and adjust a clamp, then returned to watching Lucrecia's procedure. He peered pensively down at the array of plates, leaning on the cabinet, his arms crossed over the front of his lab coat. The top window of the cabinet reflected both of them--Shelan's messy blond hair and sky-blue eyes, and Lucrecia's dark ponytailed hair and calm, serious eyes behind the glasses. Lucrecia continued to dispense a thin film of Project cells over the surfaces of the plates, until each had received a specific amount. She then stacked the plates back up onto the tray and re-capped the vial.
"How do you dispose of that now?" Shelan asked. "I mean, when I get those cells they're ruptured into goop and centrifuged into spare parts. Those are the real, whole creepy-crawlies."
"So they are," Lucrecia said. As an answer, she dropped the vial into a hatch at the back of the cabinet and flicked a switch. A dull whoosh could be heard through the wall. She looked up at Shelan. "Incinerator."
"And that kills them?"
"We sure hope so." She withdrew her hands from the gloves, opened the access door in the side of the cabinet, and pulled out the tray of plates. "Now, these are filled with alien cells, so we have to be super-careful with them. Anything with an X on the lid is dangerous, all right? And we keep a separate incubator for them too." She opened a smaller incubator and slid the tray into it. "Now. I'll let those grow for a day or so and see what happens."
"And that's it?"
"Ha. That's enough. Then I have to look at all this stuff under the microscope and see how the little alien/earthly mixer went."
"See, that is where my rum cocktail would come in handy."
"How's it going, by the way?" Lucrecia shut the light off in the sealed cabinet and closed the access door.
Shelan looked over his shoulder at the dripping apparatus. One of the catch-basins was tinged faintly pink. Shelan lunged toward it and shut the drip off. "All RIGHT! That's more like it. Freakin' first-year procedure and it keeps screwing up on me." He noted the calibrations on the side of a tube and made a note.
"Congratulations. You've passed first year." Lucrecia washed her hands in the sink.
"Ooooh, don't remind me," Shelan groaned. "First year was Hojo the Hobo's year. He owned our asses. Give one wrong answer in class, if you caught him on a bad day, and he would ream you out like you'd killed his grandma."
"That bad?" Lucrecia was alarmed. Why was this man allowed in the company, let alone in the academy?
"He's a freaking terror. Lots of people transfer out to the Junon campus for their first year just to avoid him."
"Really?!"
"Uh-huh. 'Course, we tried to cope. We tore into that jerk like there was no tomorrow, when his back was turned. There's a small cottage industry in Hojo nicknames in the Midgar Science Academy first year."
Lucrecia smirked in spite of herself. "Now you're making me curious."
Shelan grinned and hopped up to sit on the desk in the center of the room, lightly banging his heels against the side as he swung his feet. "Hmm...let's see... there's the ever-popular Hojo the Hobo, and some other ones... um... the Shuffling Terror... Amazing Flying Nasal Man, someone actually drew a little comic on that when I was in the class. Sounds stupid but man, was it funny. And then the titles were always fun. Hojo the Hobo, DMS, Doctor of Mad Scienceology... the PhD of 'Hee Hee Hee'..."
Slam!
The students jerked up, their laughter choked in their throats. The door was closed. And in front of it stood Hojo himself.
There was a stunned silence, as the childhood response kicked in--Lucrecia felt like a second grader, caught telling dirty jokes by the schoolteacher.
But no schoolteacher she'd seen had ever looked at a student with such murderous hatred.
Hojo slowly released the door handle. His arm fell to dangle at his side; the other arm clutched a thick pile of papers. His narrow eyes never left Shelan.
His voice, thin as it was, had taken on a sibilant, breathy sort of menace. Though he still glared at Shelan, he addressed Lucrecia first, slowly. "I told you...I wanted none...of their kind...here. This is my project, and my laboratory, and I will have none of your insolent, snivelling kind to ruin it!" Hojo walked slowly toward Shelan, who remained tense and perfectly still, as if he'd been flash-frozen, encased in glass. Hojo's voice rose to a frightening, insane rant. "Now get out of my lab and out of my presence before I find it fit to throw you into the Reactor! You will get out of my sight and if I ever see you again so help me I will make you wish you were never born! IS THAT CLEAR?"
Shelan opened his mouth as if to answer, but decided against it. With one desperate look at Lucrecia, he leaped from the desk and ran out of the room.
The door banged shut behind him. Hojo stood in the middle of the room, absolutely cold, absolutely calm.
Lucrecia's whisper barely made it through the silence. "Dr. Gast."
Hojo scoffed. "Dr. Gast will not always be able to protect you, girl," he muttered. "Never forget that."
Another thought came to her mind: The Turks.
But she dared not say that.
Slowly, she crossed to Shelan's table and shut off the valves one by one. The flow of liquid stopped. She picked up Shelan's notebook and quietly left the room.
