Chapter 2 : The Creature
Hiccup sighed, rubbing his tired eyes and pulling his sleeve up to check the time. The little green numbers on his digital watch displayed 1:47 am. He groaned at how late it was and reached over to grab his coffee mug and take a sip from it. The whole lab was now bustling with tired and cranky scientists who had been called in due to the machine's malfunction.
"I hate you so much right now." Fishlegs grumbled as he stared into his computer screen with red drooping eyes. Fishlegs was Hiccup's closets friend, or perhaps a better description was that Fishlegs was Hiccup's only friend. He was a large pudgy guy, with a fat chin, scraggy blonde hair and stubby arms and legs. Fishlegs looked pretty much the same since before Hiccup could even remember. The two of them had been friends since first grade, and they had spent pretty much their entire school lives together, including university where they both got their master's in engineering.
Hiccup chuckled weakly. "Hey, it's not my fault the machine decided to start up on it's own."
"I don't even know why I'm here, it was the machine that was acting weird not the fuel, I don't see why I need to sift through all this crap."
Hiccup took another sip from his coffee. "They don't know it wasn't the fuel, they don't know what it was at all. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it was the fuel that stuff is super unstable."
"Too bad the cameras stopped working, maybe they could've seen what caused it to start up like that." Fishlegs looked over at Hiccup. "You seriously didn't see what happened?"
"I already told you, I just looked from the window, I could see this really bizarre light-orb looking thing, but it was there already by the time I got here." Hiccup said running his fingers through his hair. "So I didn't see how it started."
"I'm surprised they didn't kill you after you saw just that, they're seriously secretive about this stuff. I'm not even sure what I'm working on half the time." Fishlegs said with a sigh as he leaned back into his chair. "You'd think after all this time we would've made more progress. This is the first time they've gotten the machine to work and it was by accident, that's not a good sign."
"Welcome to the field of science." Hiccup said dryly.
Fishlegs let out a tired sounding laugh. "No kidding."
Hiccup stood up from his chair and took his coat from off of the back. "As much as I'd love to stay here for another three hours, I really need to get some sleep."
"Wait, you're just going to leave me here?" Fishlegs exclaimed whipping his head around.
Hiccup shrugged. "I finished my report, and I've been awake since nine this morning, if I stay any longer I'll hit the seventeen hour mark."
"Ugh fine." Fishlegs said slouching back into his seat. "Ditch me here."
Hiccup smiled and rolled his eyes as he pulled his coat on. "Uh-huh, see you on Monday."
Only a few people said goodbye or waved to Hiccup as he walked to the front of the building, under better circumstances more people would've greeted him but most weren't in the mood at two o'clock in the morning. Hiccup fumbled with his car keys, fingers already freezing just from a few moments outside of his warm pockets. He climbed into the driver's seat, it was just as frigid inside as outside and the steering wheel was ice cold, he pulled his coat sleeves over his hands slightly so he could grip it comfortably. Hiccup backed out of his parking space and drove out onto the empty road, the drive was a struggle to stay awake, he nearly fell asleep at a streetlight but was awakened by the sound of sirens and a cop car whizzing by his window. Even the usual thugs crowded in alleyways that would normally make Hiccup nervous, he didn't seem to notice in the slightest. By the time he had made it into his building's underground parking lot he felt like a corpse and he dragged himself up to his apartment and shuffled inside.
Hiccup kicked his shoes off and removed his coat, hanging it up before moving towards his bedroom. As he tried to take his shirt off, he noticed that he hadn't taken off his lab coat and was still wearing it. "Crap." He mumbled sleepily, pulling the lab coat off and throwing it onto a nearby chair. He proceeded to empty out the contents of his pant's pockets onto his bedside table, the last of which was his keycard, another thing he had neglected to put away before leaving the lab. Not wanting to forget it on Monday, Hiccup reached over to his lab coat and stuffed the card into one of the pockets. Just as he did, something moved past his hand and he recoiled sharply. The drowsiness he had been feeling up to now had completely disappeared, Hiccup was now more awake than ever.
For a moment he stood there, trying to convince himself that what he thought he had felt was not really what he felt, that he was just out of it from the lack of sleep and he had freaked himself out over nothing. This was short lived however, because as he stood there, the pocket his hand had just been inside started moving, as if there was something small, like a mouse, wriggling and squirming inside of his jacket pocket.
"What in Thor...?" Hiccup murmured squinting his eyes and leaning forward slightly as to get a better look at whatever it was. He didn't want to stick his hand back inside, especially not knowing what it was, but he certainly wouldn't be able to get any sleep if he just left it there. He grabbed a pen from his bedside table and inched closer, his neck strained and extended out in hopes that he would be able to see down into the pocket. The fabric was folded and wrinkled too much to see directly inside, so he moved the pen ever so slowly towards the lip of the pocket and used it to pull it open just enough to peer down inside. Whatever was in the pocket shot out at an impressive speed before Hiccup could get a look at it causing him to stumble backwards onto his bed. "Fuck." He cursed, eyes darting around the room, uncertain of where it went.
Hiccup got up and exited his bedroom, quickly shutting the door behind him. He stayed there leaning with his back against his bedroom door for a few moments, his fatigue catching up on him, but soon his eyes were drawn to the bottom of the door. He knelt down and pushed his fingers under the door, there was more than enough space between the floor and the door for whatever the thing was to crawl underneath. "Give me a break." Hiccup groaned.
He contemplated calling an exterminator but decided it wasn't worth the money since it was just one, one whatever it was. Instead, his solution was to lure it out with food, so Hiccup went to the kitchen, chopped and heated some hot dogs and left them on a plate by the door. Then, positioned in an arm chair a couple metres away, he waited for the creature to creep out from under the door...
BAM BAM BAM
Hiccup jolted out of his seat, eyes still blurry and hazy from sleep. He looked around the room in confusion for a moment before recognizing that the sound was coming from the front door. He carefully pulled himself up from his chair, wincing from the pain in his aching head and moved towards the door.
BAM BAM BAM
"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming." He grunted shuffling over, grabbing the handle, and swinging the door open to find a displeased looking Fishlegs on the other side. "What are you doing here?"
"Don't you answer your phone anymore? I called you like eight times."
Hiccup rubbed his eyes and moved out of the way so he could enter. "I was asleep."
"Yeah, I figured that out already." Fishlegs said walking inside. "There's some really big news at the lab right now, they've found evidence that some kind of lifeform came through the machine while it was on last night, the whole building is in a frenzy about it."
Hiccup furrowed his brows. "Lifeform?"
"Yeah, I know, they think it's still in the room that the machine is in, but they haven't been able to find it. A lot of people are saying that the reason they can't locate it is because it might not be detectable to humans. It's crazy." Fishlegs said pacing around the room.
"Not detectable?" Hiccup said flopping back down into his chair. "How do they know it hasn't gotten out of the lab or something?"
Fishlegs shook his head. "The room is hermetically sealed, and nobody has entered the room since you reported the malfunction, so there's no way it got out of there."
Hiccup began to feel a uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, his eyes slowly moved towards the plate on the floor which was now completely empty. "How much information do they have about this possible lifeform?"
"I don't know." Fishlegs said shrugging. "They wouldn't tell me much about it, they don't tell me anything. I think they're trying to keep this on the down low right now. If it went public there would be a lot of outcry about it."
"This is crazy." Hiccup muttered.
"I know, that's why we need to get back to the lab right now." Fishlegs insisted, gesturing towards the door. "This is history in the making, and they could seriously use our help."
"How did they get any evidence from the room if the drone isn't working?"
Fishlegs looked over at Hiccup. "...You didn't fix it?"
Hiccup shook his head. "No. I never got the chance."
"Right, right, you never went inside the room."
"...Right."
"Well, I don't know what was wrong with it, but as far as I know it's working perfectly fine now." Fishlegs replied shrugging. "It was probably a mistake."
"Yeah…" Hiccup said glancing around the room nervously. "Listen, I have some stuff to deal with here, just go back without me, I'll meet you there."
Fishlegs shot him a confused expression. "What? What stuff?"
"I have a pest, I need to catch it." Hiccup explained. "Just get back to the lab, I'll get there as soon as I can."
"What are you talking about? A pest? Can't it wait?" Fishlegs asked following Hiccup as he moved into his bedroom. "I don't think you understand the gravity of these findings, this lifeform isn't just some single celled organism, it's huge!"
Hiccup whipped his head around to look at Fishlegs. "Huge? It's huge? How do they know this if they haven't located it?"
"There was a footprint, it's like...the size of your head." He said making a motion with his hands to further illustrate the size.
Hiccup's demeanor relaxed a bit. "Oh…"
"Oh?" Fishlegs asked. "You're not excited by this?"
"No, no, I am." He replied quickly. "I'll go, just let me put down a mouse trap first."
Hiccup nervously fiddled with his pen, flicking it around his fingers and tapping it against his desk. He watched from the office as men and women speed walked back and forth down the hall carrying various pieces of equipment from room to room. The lab was extremely busy, practically anyone they could call in, they did call in. Everyone was needed to help out as they prepared to send the first person into the room with the machine. Hiccup was growing increasingly concerned of what they would find, or perhaps, what they wouldn't find. He couldn't be sure what he had compromised by walking through the airlock, but he hadn't known that the machine was on. Did the creature escape through the door when he left? He wasn't certain. Hiccup contemplated telling someone about it, but in the end decided not to, he didn't want to be fired, especially not over such a stupid mistake.
"Earth to Hiccup." He jumped at the sound of Fishlegs' voice. "You are seriously out of it, how long did you sleep last night?"
"Not enough." Hiccup grumbled.
"Well I was going to ask if you wanted to go for lunch, but I think you should take a nap or something, you look awful."
Hiccup shook his head. "No I'm going to stay here, they want a new drone now with a bunch of new upgrades and they're not being very patient about it."
"Another one?" Fishlegs asked.
"Yeah, apparently they're planning on starting the machine up again in a month or so and they need a drone to go in...in whatever that orb was. The one I already built isn't going to cut it anymore." He said with a heavy sigh. "It wouldn't be so difficult to accomplish if they hadn't taken half our engineering crew to work on other projects."
"Maybe you should ask for more time, and a break on Monday." Fishlegs suggested. "You already came in on Saturday night and you've been here since noon, if you work too long with no breaks you're going to burn yourself out."
Hiccup raised one eyebrow. "You're the one who dragged me here this morning in the first place. Now you think I should go home?"
"I know, I know. It's just because it's crunch time right now, and we're so close to getting this to work." Fishlegs said trying to hold in his excitement. "But you look really bad right now, I think you should go home and get some rest. Just for today at least. I'll talk to Finn alright? He'll understand."
He nodded. "Alright, but just for today. I'm coming in tomorrow." Hiccup didn't understand why he was feeling so drained, sure he hadn't gotten much sleep last night, but this wasn't the first time he had been sleep deprived. It was frustrating to be feeling so under the weather while everyone else was working overtime but still he needed rest so he reluctantly returned home. Once home again, Hiccup quickly undressed and got ready to go to sleep, but just as he was about to climb into bed he remembered the mouse trap that he had left out. It was probably just him being paranoid about the whole situation but he wanted to check the trap to see if it had caught anything, and if so, what it had caught. Most of him believed that it was just a mouse that he had seen, but the tiny part of his mind that didn't, urged him to check. So he walked into the kitchen and opened one of the lower cupboards and peered inside to see if the trap had been set off.
It had. However what it had caught was not a mouse, not by a long shot. Whatever it was, it was dark and scaly, it looked like it was perhaps a salamander, but Hiccup had never seen a samalander quite like this one. It had strange flaps around the back of it's head and plates sticking out of it's back that went from the small creature's neck all the way to the end of it's tail very similar to a stegosaurus. It's feet were distinctly un-salamander like, it didn't have the long skinny fingers but instead large round feet with black claws. It most jarring thing though, were the black bat-like wings that the creature had on it's back.
Hiccup couldn't believe his eyes and he wasn't sure what to think about the creature before him. He stood up and rushed to his computer, opening up a browser and immediately searching for images of salamanders, lizards, or just anything that the creature could possibly be. Nothing. He couldn't find one single species that it could be. Hiccup turned to look over to where the mousetrap with the creature still lay and the horrific realization came over him.
"The first alien lifeform ever discovered...and I killed it." He said to himself quietly, before walking back over to the cupboard and slowly pulling the mousetrap out. As he moved the trap out, the creature moved making a growling noise, Hiccup immediately removed his hand, stumbling backwards onto the floor. "Fuck!" He stared at the creature for a moment. "It's alive?…it's alive!"
Hiccup moved forward and quickly grabbed the mousetrap, pulling it open to release the creature from it. It moved out from the trap squirming around on the floor, it was clearly injured. He cupped his hands together and scooped it up, rushing back into his bedroom where he placed the creature down onto a pillow.
Hiccup then started pacing back and forth in front of the bed occasionally throwing a nervous glance at the creature. "Shit, shit, shit! What am I supposed to do now?"
He wondered if he should bring it back to the lab and explain what happened, but if he did he would have to tell them that he lied about not going into the machine room. Hiccup thought maybe he could sneak it back into the lab and return it into the machine room since he still had the key card. Since the machine started working however, the room was on lockdown until it was decided to go back in, and he didn't know how long it would be until then. They said it was in two weeks but they never did anything as fast as they said they would. He looked over at the creature. It was clearly wounded, and he couldn't just leave it like that until he was able to return it. "A mousetrap!? You idiot!" Hiccup cried out in frustration at himself.
He would just have to take care of it somehow in the meantime, but as soon as the machine room became available, he would return the creature back to where it came from.
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