• Chapter Three: Genetic Mishap

    Chaucer rode the elevator back up to his room in silence. Every so often he’d take a sip of the coffee that he had picked up in the cafeteria a little bit ago. His body still felt a little numb from the shock, though he was otherwise unharmed. Whatever Hunter was planning, it had failed miserably.

    “As usual,” Chaucer thought to himself. He remembered the multiple times before when Hunter had been on the brink of “success”, only to have it foiled at the last minute. Unfortunately, it usually involved Chaucer in some way. When Chaucer had first started working at BioTech, he was the type of person that kept to himself, ever diligent on his assigned task. Somewhere along the way, Hunter had dragged him into his current department, which focused on gene splicing and its uses in human genetics. Chaucer snapped out of his thoughts when the elevator chimed as it reached his floor. Shaking his head slightly, he wandered out and began his walk down the hall. Every now and then a few people would run by him, almost knocking him down. Chaucer simply tried to hug the wall for the last few meters of hallway until he reached his room. He stopped at his room number, unlocked the door with his key card and entered, closing the door slowly behind him.

    Chaucer set his coffee cup on a small table, took off his over-shirt and laid it on the bed, and promptly flopped down beside it with a sigh. Glancing over at the clock, he noticed it wasn’t even 6:00 A.M. yet. Chaucer didn’t have anything else scheduled for the day, so he took the opportunity to rest up a bit after the experiment drama with Hunter. Almost immediately after he closed his eyes, the intercom blasted a generic sounding message:

    “Incoming call from floor B1, room B316.”

    Rolling his eyes, Chaucer sat up and pressed down a button on the intercom.

    “Yes, what is it?” he asked annoyed. The voice that came through sounded nervous.

    “Chaucer, it’s Hunter…Sorry to bother you after all that, but by any chance were you watching the DNA sample on the microscope while the machine was going?”

    “My attention was on the machine you used to try and kill me with,” he said, half jokingly.

    “Very funny Chaucer. Alright then, never mind. Sorry to bug you.” And with that, the intercom clicked off. Chaucer shrugged and laid back down to catch up on some rest.

    Hunter was pacing around the room, looking at everything to see if he had missed something. The sample couldn’t have just gotten up and wandered off on its own, so that means that someone had taken it. But who? And how? He and Chaucer were the only ones near the sample at the time. This didn’t make any sense…

    As Hunter exited the room, he was still lost in his thoughts and didn’t notice the object on the ground before him. He tripped over it quickly and fell on his face with a thud. Jumping up and making sure nobody saw it happen, he cleared his throat and dusted himself off.

    “Who would leave a…” was all he managed to get out as he set his eyes on the object that tripped him up—it was a BioTech worker. He blinked and kneeled down to get a better look. The worker was still breathing, though he seemed to be unconscious. Hunter was about to go in search of help when he noticed something moving around on the worker’s body. Curious, he gently rolled the worker over onto his back. A small, odd looking red mass appeared to have attached itself to the worker’s neck. Without thinking too much on it, Hunter reached over and poked it. Amazingly, it gave a small squeak, popped off and zoomed off down the hallway. Hunter blinked as he tried to comprehend what just occurred. As Hunter was trying to collect his thoughts, the worker began to stir.

    “Nng…” he grumbled as he sat up slowly. Hunter helped him up and instructed him to the infirmary to have him checked out. The worker said he couldn’t remember anything that had happened, but he went on his way anyway. Now Hunter was even more confused. As the worker was walking off, Hunter saw a red circle on his neck. Was that where the thing had been? The outline looked almost like a cookie-cutter indent. He then glanced down in the direction that the mass had run off. How could it have moved at all, let alone as quickly as it did? This whole thing was giving Hunter a headache. He shook his head, half in disbelief and half in confusion as he reached for a small radio he kept on his belt. He held it up to his face and spoke.

    “Travis? It’s Hunter. We have a situation down here…”