Cannibal, Cannibal

[Ada Wong]

The Empire Peace Division looked exactly as Drs. T’Jung and Myers remembered it, but Intern Stefanie Gordon had never been inside the imposing building before. After entering through the first section of front doors and security, the next set of doors were heaved open for them, harshly glowing lights blazing a clear path into the heart of Coruscant’s law enforcement branch. Still, it was not precisely a branch— any citizen of the immense city-verse would agree that the EPD was more like a dense, crawling scrub of bracken, thorny and sharp with vines seeping into every nook and cranny, snuffing out the hopeful buds of petty crime all over the topmost tiers.

There were half a dozen soldierly Stormtroopers, brilliant and daunting in their shiny white plate-armor and black under-vests, nodding shortly to the three scientists as they walked past. With the lights glaring down on them, the sound of boots tromping over the floor echoing from the furthest reaches of the building and the cool reminder of a sheathed weapon around every corner, it was rather easy for Stefanie to keep her feet moving and stay close to her superiors. The air sizzled with menace, a malevolent snap of instinctual electricity nipping at the young woman’s heels.

Dr. T’Jung strode slightly ahead of Dr. Myers, her shoes striking the ground at a steady, unbreaking clip. She appeared… well, not necessarily at ease or comfortable under the scrutiny of so many soldiers and law enforcement officers, but certainly focused on her destination and unwilling to let any nervousness whatsoever dissuade her from looking straight ahead, chin held high, her dark eyes roving in an intelligent and easy survey of their surroundings. Her golden yellow robes swished as she walked, stirring like the petals of a flower beneath a breeze.

Myers, on the other hand, lagged somewhat behind, his footsteps sloping and uneasy. He had removed his lab coat earlier and left it folded across the back of a chair in his office; the red velvet of his clothes appeared utterly ridiculous under the EPD’s severe lighting, but that absurdity was entirely at odds with the man’s actual mood at the time. His hands fidgeted as he walked, repeatedly going up to fuss at his suit jacket’s lapels, his fingers flapping them around like he was an agitated flamingo. Thankfully, he had removed his heart-shaped glasses at T’Jung’s request, slipping on a pair of simple silver readers as an alternative. Stefanie had to remind herself that the man wasn’t at fault for what had happened, though her conviction wavered somewhat under the onslaught of his obvious distress. With all his fussing, Dr. Myers seemed spectacularly suspicious.

Abruptly, Dr. T’Jung drew to a halt in front of an open doorway. Her posture was stiff and unrelenting as always, but the Vulcan woman appeared to hesitate, contemplating the few steps ahead of her. For an elite science officer to make such a horrendous mistake, no matter how accidental, could spell the end of her and Dr. Myers’ careers. Possibly even their lives.

Turning her face downward, her regal bone structure and high cheekbones accentuated by pale flickers of white, T’Jung looked over at Myers. Their eyes met. She nodded, and then the trio walked into the room.

Stefanie expected almost anything as they entered. Immediate apprehension, maybe, or a harrowing execution. Fortunately, it had apparently been arranged by T’Jung that they would bring all the information they had on the rat experiment before a few of the EPD’s more experienced officers so that a solution might be found— quickly.

A long table was at the center of the room along with several chairs. The three were not examined in any way, likely because security had already sent out a notice ahead of time, so Stefanie and Myers accepted the chairs offered to them while T’Jung remained standing. Only two uniformed officers stood at the head of the table, three Stormtroopers wearing all but their helmets seated across from them. Stefanie was unsure of each one’s rank, though she inferred that the two standing persons in uniform, a man and a woman, were captains of some kind. The woman had her hair tightly-packed into curls against her scalp, her dark bronze tan, muscular shoulders and sharp grey eyes making her appear like an Amazonian vision. The older man at her side had drooping eyelids by contrast, but a clean-shaven face and bits of starched white tinging his short, black hair.

Both focused immediately on the standing Vulcan, and then the conference began.

“Dr. T’Jung,” said the woman, her words curt and all business, “I am Captain Werrman, head of the sector you reached first with your distress call, and this is Captain Yung, a secondary advocate selected by myself. The three officers seated here at our table are meant as witnesses and advisees to your questioning. I understand that there has been a grievous mishandling of Research and Development’s resources in the past eighteen hours. Do you have any information to present that was not mentioned in your initial notice?”

T’Jung did not react to the obvious slight, nor the underlying thread of Captain Werrman’s words. “I do. The source of the leak would be an intern in our laboratory, a Ms. Viola Burns. For the past two months, one week, and sixteen days, myself and Chief Assistant Science Officer Daveed Myers, as well as interns Gordon and Burns, have been focused on an experiment involving a specimen recovered from the Pale Moors by an auxiliary agent. By my calculations, as of thirteen point twenty-six hours ago, Intern Viola Burns was—"

“We don't need your near estimations, Dr. T’Jung. Just tell us what we’re dealing with, here,” Captain Yung interrupted with a sigh.

Stefanie noticed the slight bristling of T’Jung’s disposition at the acerbic use of near estimations, but was surprised when the scientist didn’t rise up to the bait with a remark of her own. Instead, T’Jung’s features smoothed even further, her every facet seeming intentionally filled with all the cool, chillingly tranquil detachment of a plaster statue.

“Of course, Captain Yung,” One of her hands shifted to reach into her sleeve, reappearing a moment later with an unmarked data chip between her fingers. “This video should assist with what my data briefing could not explain.”

Werrman flicked her fingers at one of the seated Stormtroopers, who then quickly reached out to take the data chip. The tiny chip was inserted into a smooth black data pad, and moments later, a shifting combination of audio and visuals appeared.

A weird, distorted video began playing out on the screen. Rats inside of pure glass cages scuttled around, the camera recording device apparently aimed down from a high corner inside one of the cages. There were all sorts of rats: black-furred rats, white-furred rats, rats with brown spots and big piebald splotches of healthy, glistening fur. The video seemed innocent enough, some of the rats picking at pieces of nutrient-rich pellets that had been scattered around the cage. They were just rats, beady-eyed and whiskered and following the natural code of rat behavior. Nothing atypical, nothing sinister or malevolent. Just a group of about seven to ten rats.

The timestamp at the corner of the screen read 8:19:25 PM, the seconds swiftly ticking by with no significant changes whatsoever. “What is this supposed to explain, exactly?” asked Yung, leaning forward to squint at the scurrying rats.

“You’ll see,” Myers said from where he was seated at Stefanie’s left. He visibly shrank into his chair as all eyes turned on him.

“Who are you, again?” Werrman said, her calculating stare shifting slowly between Intern Stefanie and CA Myers.

“Dr. Daveed Myers is my Chief Assistant at the testing center, as I said before,” T’Jung cut in, the volume of her voice never quite raising, but definitely brooking no room for argument. “Now, if you will return your attention to the screen…”

“She almost never calls me Dr.,” Myers muttered at his lap.

The rat video once again became the most pressing concern of the interview. As everyone watched, the timestamp at the corner of the screen circulated forward by nearly ten minutes, the rats all going about their ratty business at exaggerated speeds. Suddenly, the video slowed just as a brown-furred rat was being picked up by a pair of gloved hands. A syringe with a long, metallic needle glinted as it disappeared inside the furry nape of the poor rodent’s neck, the creature squalling and its tail twisting about like a decapitated snake.

Out of the corner of her eye, Stefanie could see that a few of the Stormtroopers were somewhat disconcerted, armor clacking a bit as they shifted around in their seats. Werrman and Yung appeared unfazed.

“This was the first injection of a subject with the Pale Moors specimen, conducted by Intern Viola Burns. And,” said T’Jung, unblinkingly, “A mixture of several steroids to enhance the subject’s physical vitality and prevent premature expiration.”

With a hurried motion, the gloved hands plopped the rat back into the cage, pausing only to rub at the injection site with a few jerky gesticulations of the latex-coated fingers, the only sign that the dealer of the drug cared at all about the test subject's well-being. The hands then retreated out of the frame, shuffling shadows and reflections denoting their retreat.

Stefanie watched with a confused frown, her eyes flicking between the timestamp and the scene unfolding before her. Why was this important, again? Had Viola done something wrong, like sealing the cage incorrectly? It wasn’t often that Stefanie assisted with anything beyond coffee runs and number crunching. She thought the rats were cute little things… for a bunch of test subjects, anyway. But beyond that, she hadn’t observed the experimentation process all that regularly. She didn’t really get Viola’s fascination with them, to be 100% truthful. The things ate and pooped and nibbled on the water drippers with their teeth, and that was literally it. Looking around the room, Stefanie could tell several of the others were thinking the same thing, all except for Myers and T’Jung.

They were just rats, weren't they?

After sitting still for a moment after being so unceremoniously dropped, the injected rat began to meander around unsteadily, sniffing at the glass bottom of the cage and appearing just utterly bewildered. The other rats even wandered over to sniff curiously at it, probably searching for scraps of food pellets. Certainly nothing to write home about.

The video shifted forward by about half an hour. Gradually and over the course of those thirty minutes, Stefanie noticed that the injected rat began to move more erratically around its rectangular glass prison, movements growing more and more uncoordinated, almost jolting from one place to another, its tail and limbs seeming oddly stiff. It was weird, but nowhere near as unsettling as the behavior of the other rats.

At first, they appeared to avoid the injected rat, deviating around it like strangers on a crowded street might pass one another. The rats usually let each other alone, however, so this was hardly unusual. This bubble of avoidance steadily expanded, however, until there were at least two rats crowded into each of the four corners of the cage— clumped together in piles of shivering, terrified fur, as if they were seeking body heat from each other. The rat that had suffered the injection fell still after a while, twitching painfully and curling into itself in death.

Scarcely two minutes later, and the rats were screeching and tearing each other apart in a desperate bid to claw their way out of the cage.

Three minutes later, and the rat injected with the specimen was very much awake, if not necessarily alive— cutting into and attacking other rats in a tangle of writhing fur, gore, and clicking mandibles-- a real berserk frenzy. The rat's torso ruptured open, insides oozing sticky and black fluid as new teeth began to form, the hapless uninfected rodents desperately trying to burrow their way out or kill the imposter. All failed.

Four minutes later, and it became very obvious that something was very wrong with the only rat left standing, the creature’s whiskers streaked with red, its ears and face torn to bits until blood-soaked bone was peeking through. It busily gnawed at the mass of furred corpses in the enclosed area, dragging them nearer to its own body in a strangely intimate kind of hug, ripping them to shreds until muscle and flesh began to pulse and shift and throb, binding them together even in death. The corpses shifted in a strange kind of awakening, with the moving, hungry, beady-eyed thing squatting in the center of all that carnage, consuming them until its own mass became twisted, horrid, and impossibly, horrifically engorged with additional organic growth.

“My god,” Stefanie breathed.