Specimen 231

Specimen 231

Chapter 1

In a barren, broad expanse of unwanted space, a vessel slides through the darkness. It appears to be derelict, its lights nearly all off. Yet there are some points of illumination. There is life inside the hull, were one to look.

Within, the hallways of the ship pulse at a low hum, the engines pushing the vessel forward steadily, through gas clouds, dust, and radiation fields. Those corridors inside are cold, sterile, and still, the lights set low to a cool cyan. Rays of blue wash over black, gleaming tubes that run like in bundles like veins, insulated against the cold. Those conduits churning fuel, coolant, oxygen, and other substances throughout the body of huge the ship, circulating what the vessel needs to function. There is very little here that isn't hard and unforgiving. Chitinous, gleaming, reflective black panels line the vertical walls, with interfaces located here and there that blink in greens and reds, as if to lure in a crew that's no longer there.

This isn't to say, of course, that the vessel is unmanned.

There is one person within this climate-controlled shell, walking the pathways he's walked countless times. The sound of his boots is a harsh clap on the polycarbonate flooring, echoing down the narrow, open spaces. His reflection walks with him on either side, revealing a slender body clad in pseudo leather pants, canvas and rubber boots that strap up to his knees, and a tunic of neoprene, all of it in black. His left arm bears a gauntlet strapped tightly to his skin, with a keypad on the underside of his wrist. The man's arms, wiry and thin, are pale and bear tattoos - vines of circuitry, all flowing at right angles back and forth across his biceps, elbows, forearms, and down to his palms. Ink winds even around his index, middle, and ring fingers on both hands, leaving his thumbs and pinkies starkly bare.

His features, however, are obscured by a narrow helmet. Broad straps around the back of his head hug a gleaming black carapace to his face. His sure and careful stride gives evidence that his vision is in no way hindered by the plate. Slender tubes coil back and then join together, flowing down the nape of his neck into a flat, silent respirator pack on his back.

Without fail his stride is regular and constant, his head up and facing forward even as his right hand types in commands onto the keypad attached to his gauntlet. The glow of the rubberized keys gleams over his black faceplate, bars of green streaking in diagonals across the golem-like, featureless facade.

At last his steps take him toward the back of the vessel, and a moment to type in a code to his keypad unlocks and opens a certain door for him. Once he walks through it, he keys the door to close and lock once more, sealing in the room atmospherically. One never knows when it will be necessary, and today is a special day.

He has never gone in this room before, though he knows what it is. What greets his gaze first is a gallery. Comfortable seating is provided, rows of upholstered couches all face a huge, dimly lit warehouse. There is an electrical frame around the open viewing space - an emitter for a force field, to allow the spectators their entertainment while keeping the object of their amusement at a safe distance. At present the force field has not been activated, and the slight layer of dust on the couches and controls suggest that no one has been in this part of the ship for a very long time.

The man in the mask ignores all of this for now, choosing instead to pass through the viewing suite and into the warehouse, which is itself a containment facility. In full view of the gallery, this massive open area is populated with glowing stasis tanks. All of them are stored in neat rows, hundreds upon hundreds of tanks, each some two meters in height and a meter in diameter, filled with a light blue, viscous fluid. Many of them contain dormant creatures. These specimens have remained like this for countless years, collected first and stored, their tanks humming with the slight effort of life support as the ship had passed through space, abandoned and, curiously, fully functional.

All manner of creature has been collected. Humanoid beings of the same shape as the man in the mask, as well as other, more exotic forms of life. A breathtaking variety of body shapes, from the beautiful to the monstrous, float in silent captivity for the delight of their captors, now numbering only one. Each captive is unaware of its captivity, their eyes closed, mouths and noses occupied with tubes, and their neural activity quieted almost to nothing with a steady flow of drugs. Sensors monitor each creature's vital signs, and small input screens on the side of each tank provide data in real time about their current state. The entire system runs without sound, the containment facility like a tomb for the living.

The masked man walks quietly down the various cylinders, examining them, assessing them. The contorted reflection of the occupants glide over the man's face plate, each passed over and rejected. He nears the end of the seventh row when he comes upon a dark specimen. At first he observes it casually, just like the others. Tubes in milky white flow out of a mask strapped to the lower half of the specimen's face, the lifelines coiling like umbilici towards the top of the tank, to the filters and nutrient rationers there.

This creature, despite having feminine arms and legs, has a torso that bears no signs of breasts. A long, muscular tail, with a ridge of silken hair along the topline, curls down around the creature's legs, the limb flexible in appearance as it floats limply, measuring nearly one and a half meters on its own. The creature, with skin as dark as ink and a long head of hair as silky and black as that on its tail, would stand at one- and three-quarter meters in height, were it standing on its own feet. In that case, it would be at the same height as the masked man currently looking at it.

If pressed, the masked man wouldn't be able to give a reason for his fascination. The creature's alien beauty is unquestioned. She is clearly designed, by nature or mortal intent, to be deadly. Talons grow from its digits, and its general physique is whipcord fit, despite the clear effects of tank atrophy. While there is nothing overtly sexual in the creature's naked body, the man considers her form regardless, admiring it like a work of art.

Longer moments pass in front of this tank than in front of any of the others before, and eventually he steps around to look at the readout panel. Slender fingers type in a command to pull up the creature's identifying information, though the system only has a number, species, age, and gender on file.

Number: 231

Species: Nalatine

Age: 32 Terran Years (upon capture)

Gender: Female (subgender: Sterile Drone)

For nearly an hour the masked man continues to observe the floating creature; her subtle movements, the compulsions of dreams, making her deadly fingers slowly curl or uncurl, her tail's tip moving almost imperceptibly. The man's mask finally tilts down, and another command is keyed into the interface, whereupon motors begin to whir in earnest. The masked man walks back down the aisle of cylinders as that particular stasis tube, housing Specimen 231, is detached from its base and lifted with cables, guided on a track in the ceiling towards the space directly before the viewing gallery. The other tubes move, their bases on tracks as well, smoothly flowing back like a flock of birds deeper into the cavernous warehouse in the guts of the ship.

The tube holding Specimen 231 is brought to the forefront of the large containment facility, and walls descend from the ceiling and slide into place, creating an adhoc detanking suite in full view of the gallery. The masked man moves back into the gallery and keys in the force field to take effect, creating a barrier between himself and the rest of the containment facility. A gentle caress of his bare finger along the barely perceptible barrier results in the sharp snap of ozone and a stinging shock, and he moves back, keying in a new sequence on his wrist.

The floor of the newly-arranged detanking room is made of durable rubber mattering, pierced with holes to allow drainage into the sewage grates below. Mechanical arms descend from the ceiling and begin the process of disassembling the tank, beginning with the filter system within the heavy cap. Lights flutter and lessen on the readouts, glowing bars melting down to zero first on temperature, then nutrient, then sedative provision. The last function to be terminated is respiration, and once that happens the tubes at the top break away with a hiss, their moorings detached from the cap to leave the tubes to sink into the dense fluid slowly.

A broad, black hose is fastened to the base of the tank, and a churning motor begins to suck out the gel. Without the buoyancy provided, the creature begins to sink, until at last it remains curled up at the bottom of the clear polycarbonate cylinder. The man looks to the side, watching as the room begins to change, providing canisters of water and food, and a showering facility lifts up from the floor, well-lit and inviting. His head is only turned a moment, but when he turns back to the cylinder he notes that it's empty.

His reflective mask tilts slowly to the side by a fraction of a degree, his bare fingers hovering over his keypad as he watches. A pop and snap, like an electrical fixture overloading, comes from the ceiling of the detanking room just out of sight from the gallery, then a spark. He approaches the force field and looks up, just in time to see a slime-covered black tail slide up into the grating where a panel has been torn out.

Immediately he keys in a sequence to his wrist pad, and red lights and klaxons go off around the ship. Doors seal, though if the creature is in the ceiling space, locked doorways won't be of any use. As he looks up at the grated paneling, he notices a trail of dripping fluid, the same kind of viscous gel from the tank, leading away to the right. He then looks up at the force field, and notes with relief how it pierces up through the grating to the upper limit of the room, creating an impassable barrier in the crawlspace as well.

A clatter originates some fifty meters further away in the warehouse, beyond the temporarily erected walls of the detanking room. To fill the entire warehouse with sedative gas would take countless hours, and if the creature has been capable enough to escape containment within seconds, hours might give it control of the ship. The man turns towards a cabinet and he unlocks it, pulling out a personal force field emitter. He straps this to his bicep and turns it on, and the crackling hum of the invisible barrier around his body comes to life. He also takes up a tranquilizer rifle and enough cartridges for twenty shots, and pockets them in his tunic. He pushes through the room's force field, his own negating the barrier and letting him through into the containment facility.

Shouldering the rifle, he cautiously walks back through the detanking suite and past it, the lights low over hundreds of square feet of flat, grated floor space. A trail of slime drips towards the back, and a puddle gleams in the distance. An object rests at the center of it, and when he approaches it he can see that it's the face mask, with the nasal and oral tubes still intact on the inside while the umbilici are intact on the outside. The length of the tubes, meant to provide oxygen and nutriment, are considerable, and wouldn't allow the mask to simply fall of. It had to be physically removed, pulled out intentionally. The ceiling above is unbroken, the grating just large enough to have allowed it to fall through. The creature must have removed the mask on its own and disposed of it. Whatever sedatives had been in its system are not hindering its cognition now.

A sudden clattering echoes deeper in the facility near the other stasis tubes. His mask turns toward that direction, though there is no sign of movement. A minute later, the sound of skittering feet, then a thud, and the squeal of wet skin on glass-like polycarbonate are a prelude to the rattle of another ceiling grate, a trembling in the panels which begins to approach the man directly. He pulls the rifle in tight to his shoulder, the first cartridge loaded, and he tilts his head to aim along the sights. The clattering stops as soon as he lifts the weapon, and drips of fluid begin to weep down from the grate some thirty meters directly ahead of him.

Suddenly, the grated ceiling ten meters to his left clatters and drips, and the man turns and quickly fires a dart up through the bars. Another clatter sounds to his right, and he fires again. A third, fourth, fifth... and all the while, that initial drip has kept dripping, a puddle of stasis fluid collecting beneath it, growing and spreading.

The man in the mask pauses, listening. There is silence, though the original source of the dripping continues to exude the fluid. Slowly he lowers his gun, takes a step back, and prepares to reload more cartridges. As he does so, the grate some five meters in back of him lifts silently, placed carefully out of the way, and a slender, black body drops down, landing on all fours. Gleaming, orange eyes narrow, focused on the masked man's back, though just before the creature slinks up to him he turns, firing the gun.

The dart strikes the rubber mat where the creature had been only a second before, the smear of stasis fluid left in its place. Her white teeth flash in a snarl as she lunges forward, her wasted body glistening and taut with fury and hatred. He kicks at her head, his boot thudding with the solid mass of her skull and hurting his foot. While it doesn't phase her, it does deter her enough to halt her charge. A swipe from her arm catches his ankle and sends him sprawling backwards. The impact is painful, but it's not enough for him to lose his aim. He squeezes the trigger and fires his gun three times in rapid succession at the black, slimy body rapidly crawling after him. Each dart, at last, finds its mark, and the black creature bellows in frustration, sinking down to her hands and knees, and then, finally, onto her side.

Still on the floor, the man lets the gun fall to his side with a clatter. He leans tiredly and painfully on his elbow as he take a moment to collect himself and stop the shaking in his hands. The reflection of the fallen creature slides across his mask as he looks at her, until at last he turns away and stiffly gets up, setting the next part of his plan in motion.

Chapter 2

Specimen 231 lies on a steel table, her body strapped down tightly. For the last hour, the masked man has cleaned her off, using a hand-held spray nozzle to rinse the stasis fluid from her dark skin and long hair. It's given him time to examine her as she dries, her body relaxed and unconscious as the tranquilizers maintain their effect.

Each of her hands has four digits - three fingers and a thumb - and her feet are arranged in similar fashion, with four human-like toes each. Hard, curved nails grow from her digits, and dewclaws are present on her ankles and wrists. The dewclaws aren't attached by bone, as revealed by a body scan - the hooked talons are attached to powerful muscles, allowing her to climb and grip even on slippery surfaces, such as the rubber matting of the containment warehouse.

Her tail is long and tapers, curled now on the table by the creature's bound feet. As he enters notes into a nearby console, the tail slowly begins to uncoil, its muscular curve slipping from the table but coiling just before the last few inches hit the floor. Beneath the table the fixtures of the straps begin to strain, the pseudoleather whining as she begins to stir. Her lean, hard body trembles and tightens, her rib cage rising and falling faster as her body wakes, demanding more oxygen. Cords of muscle stand out beneath her skin, her fat content nearly at zero from having been tanked too long. Straps restrain her wrists and ankles, and even more wrap over her neck, chest, stomach, hips, thighs, and shins. Orange eyes slide open, the drugs still leaving her dazed, but even so the circular pupils slowly contract, lids blinking a few times. Her eyes turn towards the side of the table where the masked man stands, and her head slowly turns, wet hair squeaking softly on the rubber pad beneath her skull.

This time the masked man is prepared and moves away, gripping at the serpentine tail that lifts to grab at his thigh and trip him. The limb is muscular, firm and slender, writhing like a snake in his grip. His arm tenses, the muscles standing out sharply beneath his tattooed skin as the creature's snakelike appendage writhes and struggles. Specimen 231 grunts, arching against the straps actively now. Her fingers flex, her nails clicking and scraping on the metal table in distress as he turns to look at her.

Her face is reflected in the man's mask, her beautiful, fearsome features changing from angry to wary very slowly before she asks in a husky growl "What are you?" As she speaks, her black lips part to reveal her teeth. They are white, clean, and arranged like a human being's, save for four dog-like fangs, two above and two below.

The man in the mask tilts his head, then looks down. While his left hand holds the squirming tail, his right taps a code into his keypad, and he moves to face her again. The voice that issues from the mask is filtered, the tonality almost completely stripped, though it retains a masculine timbre. "I am Janus."

The creature's eyes narrow, and her body settles back onto the cold, steel table, somewhat comforted that her captor can speak. Thinking creatures can be reasoned with or tricked. "What is a Janus?"

Noting that she isn't struggling anymore, the man releases her tail and takes a step back, remaining out of reach. "It is my name. I..." he gestures to his chest, "...am Janus."

The answer's simplicity frustrates her, and she turns her head to look directly up at the ceiling, studying the grate above her. With his filtered, flat tonality, it's difficult to get any feel for his inner thoughts. Without sight of his face, there are no small expression cues to observe. He is maddeningly impossible to read. Still, her orange eyes slide again toward him, and she presses her lips together for a moment before asking tensely "Where are the others?"

With a confused tilt of his head, Janus asks "The others?"

"The other Nalatine prisoners. There were six of us - a Compliment. I looked, but they weren't among the stasis tubes."

Janus looks down, then he turns fully towards the computer console and types in a quick series of search strings. "Records show that the other five Nalatine were sold before I acquired the ship."

The creature's eyes close and she tenses angrily, her jaw clenched. "Who purchased them?"

Another series of search strings are entered, and Janus recites "All five were purchased by a conglomerate, called 'the Guild'." His fingers type a little more, and he stands up straighter, saying with slight hesitation. "They were sold three hundred and ten years ago."

The Nalatine on the table closes her eyes, her body riddled with strain even as she tries to school herself. Several minutes pass in silence, and Janus closes down the records program, moving closer to the table, but still not close enough for her tail to reach him. "Were you searching for them when you woke up from stasis?"

"Yes" she hisses, not opening her eyes.

With a nod, Janus moves back to the console. "I don't mean you any harm" his voice assures, though with the flatness of the tonality, his sincerity is difficult for her to discern.