Revelations
The trio walked further into the room, and as they penetrated deeper into its darkened depths, shapes on the walls began to appear more clearly. The room was, or at least, had been, some kind of laboratory. There were long tables running along each wall, lined the accoutrements of an advanced genetic test centre, but much of it was dusty and looked not to have been moved in years. The longer they spent in there, the more they noticed the jars containing preserved Kat organs, limbs and even what looked to be a foetus. Even stranger, there seemed to be a large collection of metal organs displayed on the shelves, their shapes indicating their function.
They walked further inside, the hunched figure still motionless on the bed in the centre of the room. They were in an increasing state of shock at what they were seeing in the room. But there was one item that seemed distinctly out of place; a framed photograph stood on a shelf near the door. It was so comprehensively covered with dust that Razor couldn't make anything out. He blew the dust off, revealing a shot of two youthful-looking Kats in white lab coats outside Puma-Dyne labs. One of them was holding a small kitten, no more than a few weeks old, in his arms, the other had a young she Kat next to him, holding his hand. Razor looked at the label on the bottom of the picture.
"Doctors Xenon & Hackle with the modified mutagen vessels" he read aloud. "What does that mean?"
"It means" the hunched figure said, startling them all, "that I created the ultimate weapon against the ultimate virus."
The three of them turned to look at the figure, who had stood up from the bed. He had the appearance of one who had once been handsome, but had long since deteriorated. His eyes were sunken, and his fur matted. He was wearing a shabby lab coat that had been darned in several places and had perhaps once been white. He stared at the three Kats in turn, his eyes pausing only briefly on T-Bone and Razor, but lingering on Cody, who hid behind T-Bone's leg in fear.
The figure stepped forward, limping slowly towards Cody, who gasped at the emaciated figure approaching him.
"Its been a long time since I last saw you" he said to Cody, who retreated further behind T-Bone until the figure bent over into the shaft of light coming through the open door. "Yes" he said, simply.
Cody stared for a moment, before slowly emerging from behind the shield of T-Bone. "Dad...Daddy?" he asked, tentatively walking forward.
"Yes" said Xenon.
"Daddy!" Cody shouted, running forward to hug his father, while a disapproving T-Bone looked on at the reunion.
Xenon lifted his child up onto the bed. It was obviously an effort for him; he struggled to hold the small kitten in his weakened state. He looked Cody over more in the manner of an engineer examining an engine than a father looking over his child.
"Hmmm" he said, thoughtfully. "Your voice system is damaged, but I can fix that" he said, reaching for a scanning device on one of the workbenches.
Having recovered his composure from the surprise of the reunion, Razor asked the obvious. "Wait, you mean Cody isn't... A Kat?"
"Well, yes and no" Xenon answered. "He was created in a laboratory, designed for a purpose, built from inorganic components in many places. So, in that way, he is not. But at heart, he is what he is, made to help Kat-kind."
"Help people? How?" T-Bone stuttered, trying to get his head around what he was hearing. "Not a Kat, how can he not be?"
"Puma-Dyne have created many things, forces for good and evil. But it was I who created the ultimate evil. The epitome of malice; a weapon that wouldn't merely kill or maim, but would destroy what made a Kat themselves and turn them on everyone around them" Xenon explained. "I was young, full of ambition. I wanted promotion and glory, but when I saw what my creation did, well, I couldn't forgive myself. It mutates, you see. Destroying the individual and creating a monster that is forever changing and is driven be one desire; one base instinct; the need to feed."
T-Bone shuddered. "Like the time Viper mutated the city" he said. "I've been through something like that before."
"What I created was given a name at the centre we tested it at; 'The Pandemic'. It couldn't be cured with the conventional anti-mutagens we used to try and treat it..." Xenon tailed off, sighing. "Only an adapted form of anti-mutagen would be effective against it. I had to create something that could fight it, or Kat-kind could have been destroyed. Puma-Dyne let me start work on project CODEE. The Counter-Organic Defence Engineering Establishment was meant to create some way of fighting The Pandemic effectively both as a pre-infection preventative and a post-infection cure. I wish I hadn't been so foolish. I thought Puma-Dyne wanted to help Kat-kind, but they only wanted the cure because they could never have sold the virus without it; no one would buy something so dangerous if they could not control it. But we did succeed, and the result is here for all to see."
"What do you mean, where is the result?" Razor asked, to which Xenon merely looked at Cody.
"But... You mean..." T-Bone stammered.
"Yes" said Xenon. "Cody is a living vaccine and cure. In his very veins flows the modified anti-mutagen. It required a living host to grow correctly, so we created two vessels to carry it. Unfortunately, it was very volatile when they were first born. It attacked their bodies, and they required a number of replacement organs" he finished, gesticulating towards the range of metal organs arrayed around the room.
"So why are they trying to destroy Cody, if they need him as a host?" T-Bone asked.
"They have probably extracted some of his blood. Now the anti-mutagen is fully formed inside him one phial of his blood could theoretically be used to mass-produce the anti-mutagen in vast quantities" Xenon explained. "If they're trying to destroy him, that can only mean one thing."
"What?" Razor asked, urgently.
"It means that the element at Puma-Dyne that put me into the project in the first place is going to unleash The Pandemic on the City" Xenon answered.
"Why would they do that?" T-Bone burst out "it would be madness!"
"Don't you see?" Xenon said. "Without anyone infected, vaccines and cures are worthless. But if The Pandemic gets widespread, then the value of those will skyrocket. Puma-Dyne will be able to charge however much they like for the vaccine, especially if they have total control of all the anti-mutagen. That is why they smeared me name and destroyed my company. They wanted total control over it, and I knew too much. The vaccine and the cure are extremely cheap to mass-produce, and they knew if I was allowed to produce it myself I would undercut them. I thought having a public company to sell it through would have protected me, but there is an element at Puma-Dyne that will stop at nothing to protect their profit margins."
"So, basically, you just wanted to make the vaccine available to more people, and they destroyed you for it" Razor said.
"Yes, I tried to do good, but Puma-Dyne wanted to use the victims of The Pandemic as a means of making money."
T-Bone and Razor looked at each other, the sheer weight of the conversation etching itself in the expressions on their faces. While they were getting their heads around it, Xenon manipulated a magnetic screwdriver that had been sitting on a bench to fiddle with Cody's vocal chords.
"Yes T-Bone, I'm a living vaccine" Cody said, his mechanical voice box repaired.
"You can talk now Cody?" T-Bone asked, slightly surprised.
"His speech was damaged by the anti-mutagen when he was younger, but I've fixed it, so he can talk more clearly now" Xenon explained.
"T-Bone, I'm sorry about what happened, you didn't need to be dragged into this" Cody said.
"It's okay kiddo, I promised to protect you, and I will do that" T-Bone replied.
Xenon looked admiringly at Cody. "That's good Cody, you made friends despite what you are" he said.
"There's still something I don't get" said Razor. "Why are the Enforcers holding you? Isn't Puma-Dyne handling this?"
"I'm not sure myself, but I did overhear a sergeant saying that I was being held on the orders of a Commander Steele. Maybe he's on Puma-Dyne payroll?" Xenon suggested.
"A deal... That would explain it..." Razor said. "Who would have thought that Steele was capable of something like that."
"Perhaps the Boot kissing finally gave him some brains" T-Bone sarcastically suggested.
"There's nothing we can do about that for the moment though, right now we need to figure out what we're going to do now." Razor said.
"Well, I need to get out of here and finish what I started. I need to see professor Hackle, he knows my research and he could help. If we could get back to my refinery facility I could take steps to putting out the vaccine." Xenon told them.
"Then lets not hang around here, then" T-Bone said.
