Page 39 of Monstrous Rampage
The illusion of a cliff wall shimmered into a transparent doorway. Snyder waited on the other side. He laughed, shaking his silver head. “Do you honestly believe the BGR++ is going to let you live long enough to mate? Maybe we should drop you into his cell now and see how he reacts.”
“If he cares at all about Holly, he will let me live. If he kills me, then he’s not a fit mate for her anyway.”
Snyder led the way down a tungsten-lined hallway. Heavy doors slid shut behind us every ten meters, their panels turning red. Ten locked doors to reach the lift. “There’s no question he’s not a fit mate for her. He’s impossible to control, and he nearly killed her already.”
We stepped into the lift. Rather than returning to the sleep chambers, he requested the hold.
I blinked, wiping my frontal cortex of any response or log that could be noted. Though I began building a detailed map in my amygdala. Since it was an area typically used for emotions, I hoped the agent wouldn’t think to check those databanks.
Just the simple request to move to the hold told me far more than Snyder probably meant to reveal. This was no planet-side facility but a ship.
Which meant their security was even more precarious. Life support systems could be easily compromised. The entire ship could be destroyed with an inconvenient asteroid puncture in a vulnerable spot of the hull. Though a ship did allow this laboratory to be mobile. Was it a converted freighter, or a decommissioned military fighter?
“Your curiosity is leaking into the grid despite your best intentions,” Snyder said.
“You chose me as a candidate because of my intelligence. If this ship is easily destroyed, we’ll lose Holly. That must not occur.”
“A simple kiss and you care so very much for our little human damsel in distress?”
Nothing about that kiss had been simple. Another demonstration of an agent’s lack of emotional understanding. His controllers, whoever they may be, certainly tried to convey emotions through the agent, but it was a poor substitute for true empathetic interactions.
Even more importantly, the controllers weren’t dyni and didn’t have even basic comprehension of what it meant for us to be in Dynosauros.
Despite being completely engineered, I still yearned for a squad. The camaraderie of a like-minded team working together to accomplish our mission. Let alone the biological urge to procreate and continue my species. Even spliced and manipulated DNA wanted to live long enough to be passed down to the next generation.
The agent and his controllers had access to DSC’s immense library of information accumulated from across the universe, yet they couldn’t understand why I might care about Holly so quickly.
My mate. The very reason for my continued existence. Even though we’d only met, the mating bond was actively developing, or I wouldn’t have climaxed so easily. Dyni accepted into Dynosauros didn’t have sex drives any longer, unless we were deliberately prepared for breeding by allowing our hormones to develop. We were chemically altered and controlled, basically castrated with drugs so we could better focus on the mission at hand.
Mating overrode those chemicals and released a surge of hormones that would only increase exponentially. Mated dynigained muscle and mass rapidly. The better to protect and please their mate—and continue the species by breeding.
Which only led me to other pressing questions. If the BGR++ wasn’t controllable, then his hormones were likely already compromised. “For Holly’s safety, I feel I should warn you the BGR++ may come into rut. Is there a way we can regulate his hormones?”
Snyder let out another sarcastic laugh. “Unless you’re willing to examine him and administer the regulation controls yourself, then no. He won’t allow any agent or control to be placed upon him. Even if you managed to dose him, I doubt they’d work. We were barely able to sedate him long enough to extract Holly from his cell in one piece.”
The lift door opened, and sound waves crashed into my senses, making me stagger. The booming, sonorous rumble of a pissed-off alpha filled the air with buzzing, thick energy. He bellowed and crashed against the tungsten holding cell, making it so difficult to hear that Snyder switched to the grid.
:You will be quarantined down here with him. If he breaks out, you’ll be the first he’ll kill. So it’s in your best interest to try and calm him down.:
I could only stare at the agent. Dumfounded. That was their response to a dynos going into rut? Put the medic in a tungsten cell and hope for the best?:Rut is extremely painful. It’ll drive him mad. Nothing will ease his suffering except getting inside his mate and staying, ideally until she’s bred. It’d be kinder to terminate him if you don’t intend to let him near her again.:
Snyder paused at the adjacent cell where the BGR++ bellowed.:He’s already insane. We’ll save him as a last resort if the rest of our candidates fail to accomplish the goal in a safe and timely manner.:
:If he’s driven mad by rut, he’ll kill her.:
:That’s a chance we’ll have to take.:Ignoring me, Snyder pressed a code into the keypad and the cell door opened.:Once you or another candidate is successful, we’ll terminate him.:
I stepped inside the cell. What else could I do? Another agent waited inside, this one a medic with implements like mine. He connected one over my heart and another at my temple and began a full-body scan.
Closing my eyes, I stood quietly, my breathing slow and measured. I entertained myself by replaying Holly’s scans, watching the way her neural network shifted in such a short amount of time. Truly miraculous. Sinking into the inner workings of her biological systems so different from mine. Creating baselines in my own databanks for her statistics.
Still connected to me, the agent responded on the grid.:Scan complete. No mrion contamination detected.:
I didn’t allow myself to respond in any way.
:We’ll give you another scan in twenty-four hours,:Snyder replied.:Dismissed.:
The medic disconnected and exited the cell. The door slammed down from the top and the lock initiated to red. I couldn’t hear their footsteps as they retreated but I held myself motionless, making myself focus on the baseline charting as long as possible. This cell would be heavily monitored. Sound. Video. I didn’t look around to note where the cameras might be. I probably wouldn’t even be able to see them, let alone reach them unless I extended my implements. The tungsten would prevent me from shifting to my beast.
