Chapter Text
Bright Moon Laboratories must have been really low on staff to contact Dr. Entrapta.
She was brilliant, there was no question about it. She knew she was an exceptionally talented scientist and engineer, and saying otherwise just for the sake of humility would have been a lie. She also knew that people found her methods to be questionable. Eccentric, they called her to her face. Uncooperative and difficult, behind her back.
Unethical.
Which was… Well. Entrapta supposed it was true, in a way. Depending on the way you looked at it. The scientists at Bright Moon Labs just restricted themselves with too many arbitrary limitations. It was no wonder the Horde had such a strangle hold on them.
And. Well. Sometimes they seemed to have some trouble understanding Entrapta’s field of study. In peacetime, her robots and weaponry wouldn’t have seen much interest, she was sure. But now that the war had raged on for over fifteen years already, they were growing warmer to the ideas she sent them.
The thing was, Entrapta was perfectly fine with the arrangements they’d made with the Royal Academics. Entrapta stayed far from the capital, on her family’s lands in Dryl, and worked on her contraptions out of sight, out of mind. She sent them her best works and they sent her funds.
She’d been perfectly fine with that.
The letter with Bright Moon’s official seal made it seem that the others wanted to change the deal.
Dr. Angella must have gotten desperate.
Well. Never mind that. Entrapta wasn’t planning on answering her invitation anyway. She’d skimmed the letter through. They’d found something, some kind of a techno-organic creature from the Horde’s facilities or something. Organic stuff wasn’t really Entrapta’s thing. She had the basics down, but it didn’t interest her enough to draw her out of her lab.
She was fully planning on just forgetting the letter under a pile of more interesting papers. Sooner or later they were going to forget about her too and things would go back to normal.
As it turned out, though, she had underestimated Dr. Angella’s desperation. It became clearer to her, when just three days after she’d received the letter, her robotic servants led two Alliance soldiers into her lab.
“Dr. Entrapta,” the woman said, kicking her feet together and saluting her. “I am Captain Adora and this is Private Bow. We’re here to escort you to Bright Moon Laboratories.”
They were quite adamant about her coming with them. And they had cornered her at her own home. They did not seem to be looking for a no for an answer.
“It would be better we leave within the hour,” the woman said. “We have it on good authority that Horde spies have been spotted in Dryl.”
“Well of course they have,” Entrapta said. “I’ve had Emily compile all their names and locations. It’s better to know where they are, right?” She looked from one confused face to the other. “Although,” she said a little slower, “it might have been good to let you know about it? If this was supposed to be a secret? Right?”
The two soldiers shared a look.
“I… Dr. Angella really needs your help,” Captain Adora said. “We can’t let you stay here. This is urgent.”
In the end, there wasn’t much Entrapta could do but follow them out, where they had a closed ground-skiff waiting. They were in such a hurry she didn’t even have time to get her stuff. The only things she managed to snatch before she was being pushed out the door were her trusty recorder and her utility belt.
Not even a change of clothes.
Well. She probably wouldn’t even be staying long. She’d just let Dr. Angella know that there must’ve been some sort of a mistake and she’d be continuing her work from her home like she’d done so far. It was a small mistake. Entrapta would have it corrected by the end of the day.
The skiff kicked off and soon Dryl was nothing but a speck in the horizon. Captain Adora was quick to tell her more about this creature they were so excited about. Apparently, it was something Dr. Angella was sure could change the tide of the war. That was, if they’d just be able to crack the mystery of it.
It wasn’t a piece of some ancient magitech, though, or even weaponry from the Horde, but something more of biological nature by the sounds of it. An aquatic creature they were keeping in a tank.
”What? Did you lose all of your biotechs?” Entrapta asked.
The look Captain Adora and Private Bow shared made her think maybe she should have kept her mouth shut.
Bright Moon Labs was a fancy place. Most of the students graduating from Mysticor dreamed of working there and with the war going, most got hired right after graduation, with no questions asked. Scientist didn’t have as big of a turnover rate as the soldiers, but it wasn’t like they were completely safe either.
Fifteen years into the invasion and they were still struggling with the changing times. Etheria took things slowly.
The Horde didn’t.
But the Labs themselves truly were fancy. Built like a castle, with all its colorful banners, mosaics on the walls and light crystals shaped like chandeliers. It was bright and clean. Too bright. Entrapta was squinting her eyes when the skiff door opened and it didn’t get better when they left the hangar. With her eyes watering, she pulled down her goggles to shield herself from the brightness.
The two soldiers led her out of the hangar and into the castle proper.
Everything here was shiny. The walls, the ceilings. Even the guards passing them by were wearing light pastels and glittery metals, like their armor and weaponry was just for show, not for use. But Entrapta knew those rifles. Shiny as they may have been, they could incapacitate any Horde soldier, if used correctly.
There was no clutter either. Entrapta could barely see any equipment. Everything was behind locked doors, in their own, separate compartments.
Her hands were getting sweaty in her gloves. To distract herself from it, she started tapping her fingers against her thighs. A fast rhythm to keep her mind busy.
How was anyone supposed to work in a space where they’d be too worried to make a mess?
“Dr. Entrapta!”
She lifted her eyes from Captain Adora’s reflection on the floor and looked for the source of the voice.
The fast clacking of heels against the floor preceded Dr. Angella’s approach. She was a tall and powerful woman, her white lab coat neat and clean, her hair billowing behind her as she marched. She greeted Entrapta with drawn brows and a frown on her mouth, marching at full speed until she was just a few steps away, then stopping and staring down at her.
The head scientist of Bright Moon still drew an intimidating figure. It didn’t help that she was at least two heads taller than Entrapta.
“Oh. Hey there,” she said. It’d been a while since they’d met and Entrapta could never remember what was the right way to address a person of her status. “Nice of you to invite mere here like this, I guess. Um. Doc.” She scratched her head and pulled the strap of her goggles higher. “I got to say, though. I wasn’t going to take your offer. Until you sent your friends to get me.”
“Nonsense,” Dr. Angella said, and Entrapta could kind of remember her voice being kinder before. “It’s for the war effort. It’s safer for you here and we need your input. Besides, would you not rather do your work here? With your peers?”
“Not really,” she said, looking around. “You guys have a specific way of doing things.” She wasn’t going to say it was the wrong one. That usually ended badly for her. “And I have mine. I liked how we dealt with it before. You run things too tightly here.”
Captain Adora snorted behind her.
“Bless you,” Entrapta said. “Anyway, if there was something you needed me for, I’d rather get it over with it. The sooner we get it done, the sooner I’ll be on my way back home. Your guys didn’t even give me enough time to pack my stuff! All I have is my recorder!” She pulled the thing out of her pocket for show.
Dr. Angella stared down at her without a word for a moment. A longer moment than Entrapta would have been comfortable with. Entrapta looked from Captain Adora to Private Bow, but neither of them was giving her anything to work with either. Private Bow looked like he’d swallowed something he wasn’t supposed to and he was sweating profusely. Captain Adora just looked amused.
Dr. Angella drew a long breath through her nose, then breathed out a sigh so long and suffering Entrapta started to wonder if the doctor perhaps thought Entrapta had done something wrong.
“I’m sure,” Dr. Angella started slowly, measuring her words with care, “that we can arrange to have your belongings brought here, if that will make your transition easier. However, I must insist that you stay with us. It would seem that the Horde has realized the importance of your work and you will be safer in here than in Dryl.”
“Well, at least someone has eye for talent!” she said and laughed.
The corridor was as silent as a grave. Entrapta swallowed her laughter and shifted.
“Which… is bad, apparently.” She sighed as well, putting just as much long-suffering annoyance into it, and then some. “Fine, fine. Let’s hear about this project of yours then, if it’s so important.”
The stiffness didn’t leave Dr. Angella’s face. She took half a step back and waved her hand.
“We will discuss the work-related matters first, then you may talk to Captain Adora about the equipment you need, since apparently my people failed to mention the permanence of this stay.” Her voice gained a sharper tone and Entrapta followed her glare to the soldiers behind them. Private Bow jumped to attention, while the Captain just gave a lopsided smile and a shrug.
Well. She supposed it wouldn’t be that bad if she’d be getting her stuff here. She worked better at home, but these people weren’t giving her much of a choice here, were they? It all depended on the lab they’d give her now.
Taking a look around, Entrapta doubted it’d be up to her standards.
”Please follow me,” Dr. Angella said. ”So we can discuss the matter further at my office. This way.”
There were a lot less people here than Entrapta remembered. She saw only a handful of guards, all in their formal Bright Moon gear. There were even less scientists. Dr. Angella was the only one she’d seen so far and the halls were supposed to be teeming with engineers, tech heads and doctors from different fields. That was the picture she’d gotten those few times she’d visited.
Dr. Angella moved with meaning. Her long legs took her towards her office with determination that had Entrapta jogging after her to keep up. She did make for an intimidating leader, Entrapta had to admit. She could remember her being stern before as well. But there had always been a softness to it.
Now Dr. Angella looked to be all sharp edges and frowns.
This place was a nightmare.
Compared to the bright halls of Bright Moon, Dr. Angella’s office was dimly lit. The only window out of the room was behind blinds. The light of the Moonstone outside was shining through, painting lines on the walls. It was the thing that powered the entire facility and it was quite a marvel. Dr. Angella spared it no glances when she sat down in front of its glow. She rested her elbows on her desk, dropped her head against her hands and for a moment she just sat there.
She was barely a silhouette against the window.
Entrapta was slow to lift her goggles. The world lost its purple tint, but didn’t gain much of its color. Instead of sitting in the only other chair of the office, Entrapta looked around. The office seemed pretty normal. There were shelves with books in them, old volumes on history and warfare, it seemed like. Decorative tomes, with beautifully carved covers. There was a First Ones’ data crystal in a glass stand, a beautiful piece of history right there. Shame that it was cracked in two, with tiny pieces missing.
Nearly useless.
A pity.
“Dr. Entrapta, please,” Dr. Angella said, tired. “Sit.”
Entrapta looked at her over her shoulder. She glanced at the crystal, then back at her and made her way to the desk, sitting down.
They sat there in silence for a moment. Entrapta kicked her feet and started to look around the office again. There was a lot of dust here, actually. Not a spec of it outside, but here it looked like nothing had touched the books for a while. There were nails jutting out of the walls, places to hang pictures from, but there were barely any frames. Entrapta could see two on Dr. Angella’s desk. One was skewed just enough that she could see a picture of Dr. Angella holding her hand on the shoulder of a young girl with a diploma of some sort. The other frame had been turned face down.
“I… apologize for the unexpected invite,” Dr. Angella said after a long pause. She lifted her head from her hands and fumbled around the desk until she found the switch for her lamp. A tiny, warm yellow crystal flickered to light and showed more of her face, while painting heavy shadows around them.
Her cheeks had hollowed out considerably compared to the picture Entrapta could see.
Or maybe it was just the shadows.
“I know we’ve… had our differences. And that there’s a reason you prefer solitude. And… and I know it would have been better to wait for your response, but I had a feeling we would have been waiting for a long time.”
“I mean, that’s fair,” Entrapta said. “Never is a really long time. Hah.”
The smile Dr. Angella offered her lacked any joy.
“The time is of the essence,” she said. “There was no point in delaying this. You… We need you here and it takes a lot to admit that. I’m sure you understand.”
She didn’t, really. The animosity between them had always been kind of one sided. It had taken a while for Entrapta to even understand Dr. Angella disapproved of her work methods.
Either way, it didn’t really change things.
“I’ve been working just fine on my own,” she said. She didn’t mean anything bad by it. It was just the truth. Entrapta produced her best works when she was by herself, when there was nothing bothering her. That’s how it had been so far.
Would she have said no to a lab partner? She supposed she wouldn’t have. But Entrapta had learned during her studies that precious few people could stand working with her for long and that robotic assistants worked just as fine and required none of the pretenses organic workmates did.
Was she lonely? Sometimes. But she did enjoy her own company just fine.
“I am aware,” Dr. Angella said, as if admitting a great defeat. “And trust me, you are not our first choice.”
The words were spoken in a way that implied this to be an insult. Entrapta kicked her feet back and forth.
”Well,” she said, just as truthfully. ”I would have rather not come either. I was in the middle of something.”
”You can finish that later!” Dr. Angella said, slamming her palm against the desk. The picture frames rattled.
Entrapta pulled back.
Dr. Angella drew a sharp breath, then looked down, brows knit together. She swallowed thickly, caught up in something.
Slowly she reached to right the frame next to her.
“I… I’m sorry, Dr. Entrapta. It has been a… long week. Month.” She was silent for a beat, then added under her breath: ”Decade. But we… I know, that you are a remarkable scientist and we wouldn’t have been able to survive this long against the Horde without your contribution. You have an unparalleled amount of knowledge and knowhow on technologies that are of… foreign origins. And we need your help.”
“I thought this wasn’t about First Ones’ tech,” Entrapta said. If it was, she might have been interested.
“It’s not,” Dr. Angella said. “Not exactly. I’m sure Captain Adora already briefed you on this, but our recon team managed to storm a Horde facility not too long ago and they were able to recover something that the scientists there had been working on. It is a creature of some sort. It’s… anomalous.”
She pulled open a drawer and searched around for a moment, before pulling out a file. She opened it and leafed through the papers. Finding what she was looking for, Dr. Angella handed a grainy picture to Entrapta.
It was of some sort of a scientific facility, filled with rows and rows of vats with green liquid in them. The quality of the picture wasn’t high, but Entrapta could just about see dark lumps floating in the liquid.
“We believe it might be some sort of a biological weapon,” she said. “Or perhaps they’re working on a way to produce more troops to take the place of the fallen. This creature was the only one we were able to recover, but it would seem that it was the only one left living as well.”
Entrapta offered the picture back.
“That’s cool and all,” she said. “Sounds neat. But how am I going to be able to help out? No offence, but this isn’t exactly my area of expertise.” Or interest.
Dr. Angella put the picture back between the folder and leafed through the papers some more. She pulled out a sheet and handed it over to her.
It had readings on it, taken from the creature, it seemed. Readings, that looked very familiar to her.
“But you said it wasn’t First Ones’ tech,” she said slowly.
“I said it’s not that exactly. It’s still Horde technology – “
“But mixed with First Ones’,” Entrapta finished. “Or they’ve borrowed parts of the code. Hmm.” She ran a gloved finger over the numbers. Blood and skin samples, bodily functions, they all had a certain aura of ancient magitech.
“Yes,” Dr. Angella said. “It is a techno-organic creature of some sort. We haven’t been able to study it properly. These are just the first tests we thought to make. Our historians, brilliant as they are, aren’t really on top of the modern applications of the technology. We’d like to see if you could make sense of this.”
Entrapta said nothing. She went through the numbers, running them over in her head. She had to admit, this was interesting. More interesting than she’d thought it was going to be. Something about these numbers didn’t quite add up and that, more than anything, got her gears turning.
There was something to this after all.
Perhaps she could take a look at this. Since she was here. No, the organic part of the whole techno-organic thing wasn’t really her field. Entrapta had dabbled. There had been a handful of projects. But a meld of a modern, living being, with the technology from the ancients? Now that was interesting.
Mixing Frist Ones’ magitech with Etherian stuff was always a risky business. Difficult, but highly rewarding. Add a living organism to the mix and you were spelling disaster. Failing to understand what you were doing was going to leave you with a dead test subject and barely any data.
But the Horde had always been better equipped to deal with this stuff.
“There is… something else too,” Dr. Angella said. “Something that makes this so important to us.”
”Mmmhm.” She ran her tongue over her lips. If these numbers were right, this creature was a near perfect meld. Well. As close to perfection as you could get. Mixing organic matter with magitech was always a losing game for the test subject. It could take years for the ill effects to show, but when they did, they were devastating. Rarely had she seen a test subject with First Ones’ tech permanently fused to it survive a decade. But this one was, according to what she was looking at now, a fully grown, living creature.
But then again, this tech wasn’t strictly First Ones’, was it? The readings were different. Either the Bright Moon staff had measured things wrong, which she wouldn’t put past them, or this was something different.
Could the Horde have cracked the code?
Before her?
“This creature, it strikes a frightening resemblance to Horde Prime. I think we would be out of our minds to not think that there is a connection of some sort. It seems to share his resilience as well. Most of our needles were unable to pierce its skin when we tried to take blood samples.”
“Uhhuh.” Well, even if it turned out the Horde had only managed to make a partial meld, Entrapta would be more than interested in cutting it open and see what had been done. This wasn’t her usual repertoire, but she had the basics down. If she could replicate their meld, she could dig up that old prosthetics project she’d started way back. That ought to warm even the most frigid Bright Moon scientists to her work. And if the tech ended up tearing the creature apart, she could at least gather the data of the failure.
All knowledge was good knowledge, after all.
Maybe this wasn’t going to be that bad after all. Depending on the circumstances, Entrapta might just be able to get enough material for the next decade at least! And if not, it’d at least be more interesting than looking at some weird animal Dr. Angella had captured or whatever.
“It would be very useful to find out, if there was some… some weapon that we could specifically use against Prime. Or… or if he’s found a way to reproduce more of his soldiers, then we should try to find a way to stop them before they overwhelm us. Perhaps a virus of some sort, that would only affect his people. That is, of course, not your expertise, but just finding a way to disrupt the mechanical parts would be good. Not even mentioning how our troops would benefit from whatever tech they’re using. I’ve actually called Dr. Spinner to accompany us with some extra research.”
Entrapta lifted her head from the numbers. She hadn’t realized Dr. Angella was still talking.
Shoot.
“I’ve – I’ll have to go through these numbers first,” she said, pointing at the paper. “I want to read everything you have on this thing and then take a look at it myself. I want to see how prominent the tech is. Because if it’s really showy, it’ll – “
Before she could finish her musings, the door to Dr. Angella’s office burst open and hit the wall. A girl in sparkling pink boots and a lab coat barged in.
“Mom! Dr. Spinner just – ” The girl from the picture swallowed her words and looked between Dr. Angella and Entrapta. She opened and closed her mouth a few times without a word coming through before she managed to stammer out: “Oh. Uh. Sorry. I didn’t – I didn’t realize you had company.”
Dr. Angella’s shoulders slumped. She crossed her hands on her desk and stared at them.
“Which is exactly why you should’ve knocked, Glimmer,” she said. “Especially, if you’re serious about this internship.”
The lab coat was a bit too big for the girl. She’d rolled the sleeves and the shoulders were drooping lower than they should’ve.
Entrapta liked the look. She offered the girl a wide smile that went mostly unnoticed.
“Yes, mom,” she said, staring at her feet.
That reminded her. There should have been someone here far better qualified for the job than her. It was kind of weird that Dr. Angella had come for Entrapta, when she had a castle full of people she got along better with. Entrapta turned back to Dr. Angella.
“Wouldn’t Dr. Micah be loads better at this whole thing?” she asked, waving her hand. “Organic science and all that creature stuff is more his thing, right? I’m sure he’d be so much better at this than me. Closer too, right?”
Neither of them answered her question. The room was silent. It was like a heavy blanket had been cast over them, a suffocating weight pushing down on Entrapta’s shoulders.
She looked from Dr. Angella’s downturned eyes to the daughter’s suddenly much paler complexion. The girl was holding onto the door handle with a grip that left her knuckles white.
“Unless…” she continued, her voice jumping a little, “I’m actually the perfect person for this. Which would be fine. Really fine, actually. No objections from me.”
Now that she was looking, Dr. Angella looked a lot more tired than she had during their last meeting a few years back. The hollows on her cheeks weren’t just the play of the shadows, the pastiness of her skin wasn’t just the lighting. She had bags under her eyes and her hair had started to get thinner. Less vibrant.
”I’m afraid Micah is…” she started before her voice broke. Dr. Angella cleared her throat, then placed her hands on her desk as if they were going to help give her stability. “Dr. Micah cannot help us anymore. With him, we lost a good chunk of our research staff. I meant it when I said you weren’t our first choice. Since you have been frank with me, Dr. Entrapta, I’m going to be frank with you.” She stared Entrapta right in the eye with intensity that made her uncomfortable. “We would not have called for you had we other choices,” she said, nothing but serious candor in her voice. “We need your help. We may not see eye to eye in everything, but we need you.”
And there it was.
Entrapta slumped down in her chair.
”Okay,” she said.
”Okay?”
”Okay. Fine. Looking at your data, it could be interesting. But. I’m going to need my stuff.” She pushed off the chair and started walking back and forth in front of it. “I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to help you with this, I’m going to be honest. But. I’ll see what I can do. Give it, uh…” She stopped and waved her hand in a so-and-so motion. ”Say a month. If I don’t find out anything good by then, I’m going back to Dryl.”
”That is… more than generous, coming from you,” Dr. Angella said. She sounded relieved. Her posture had slouched at least, and she kind of looked like a popped balloon now, leaning against her chair like her bones had turned to dust. With careful movements, she pushed against the chair and gathered herself up.
Dr. Angella offered her hand over the desk, held it there and looked at Entrapta.
It took her a moment to realize she was looking for a shake. She wiped her gloves against her thighs before reaching to meet her half the way.
Dr. Angella let go and fell back to her chair. She started massaging her temples.
Guess Entrapta was going to be staying, then. She really wished she’d at least packed a change of underwear. She wasn’t really going to be happy borrowing someone else’s. She supposed she was going to have to try to think of this as a prolonged sleepover or something.
Not that she’d ever been to a regular-sized sleepover either.
Well. It was in the name of scientific pursuit, so how bad could it be?
“Yes, Glimmer?” Dr. Angella said. “What was it you needed?”
Oh yeah! The girl with the glitter boots!
”Oh, uh,” she said, jumping a little. She started playing with the sleeves of her coat. ”Dr. Spinner just arrived and she wanted to have a word with you.”
”She did?” Dr. Angella said. She looked absolutely exhausted. “Already? But she was supposed to – No. No, that’s fine. It’s wonderful, actually. I’ll go see her right away.” She didn’t move from her chair. “Ah. Glimmer, dear, could you please take Dr. Entrapta to her new lab?”
“Sure, mom. I can do that.”
Entrapta moved to walk past her, but the girl still hesitated at the door.
“Would you like me to tell Dr. Spinner to wait until dinner?”
Dr. Angella drew a sharp breath through her teeth and clambered up from her chair.
“No, dear, that won’t be necessary. Thank you.”
She strode past them with the same weight in her step she’d carried on her way to the office as well. When she stepped out the door, her looks steeled over and most of the exhaustion disappeared under a mask of determination.
Well. That was good then. For a moment Entrapta had been worried, but it looked like everything was under control over here.
The girl, Glimmer, was staring at her feet with a frown.
“I like your lab coat!” Entrapta said, pointing at it.
In the lighting of the hallway, she could see the faded nametag embroidered to its front. Dr. Micah, it said.
The frown grew deeper and Glimmer said nothing.
Entrapta popped her goggles back down.
*
The lab she was given was pristine. It wasn’t big, but Entrapta didn’t mind that. She worked well in cramped spaces, as long as they were cramped with her stuff. Pristine was the thing she was having trouble with.
She was pretty sure she’d left oily footprints on the floor when she’d arrived.
The equipment was okay. The computers were top of the line, the data pads had all been cleared for her use and she’d been brought tools she could use for the tech stuff. There was one large desk right at the back, with a data feed screen on it, empty shelves for books and equipment for studying samples. Everything that she would need to do her work.
But the problem was that it wasn’t her stuff. This wasn’t her lab; this was some strangers’ room in a strange place. Someone else had worked here before her, then they’d left and now the room was supposed to be hers.
Even the smell was wrong. So, it was basically as good as nothing.
Entrapta had been working at her home lab for most of her life. The last time she’d been forced to use a stranger’s lab had been back at Mystacore when she’d still been a student there, and that had been ages ago.
Well. She supposed she was going to have to get used to it. A month wasn’t that long of a time. It would pass like nothing once she’d get to work.
Entrapta would start by making the room more like what she was used to.
Captain Adora found her half an hour later dragging the desk off the wall and into the middle of the room, where she could pile her papers on while she was working on the floor.
“You really don’t waste time getting things done, huh?” she asked, before moving to the side of the desk and helping her to move it.
Happy with the placement, Entrapta bounced back to where she’d propped the data feed screen and picked it up. She blew a few escaped strands of hair off her face and hauled the screen to the floor next to the desk. When the Captain reached to pick it up, she waved her hand dismissively.
“Preferably not,” Entrapta said and wiped her gloves against her thighs. “Time is limited and I have so much to do. If there was a way I could stop sleeping and use that time for working, I would have found it by now!” She tapped her chin, sure that she was forgetting something. Then it hit her. “Ooh! I’ve been making a list of the stuff I need brought here. Can I give it to you?”
“Uh, sure,” Captain Adora said, looking around the room. “Just, uh, send it to me and I’ll see what I can do.” She looked around. “Where’d Glimmer go? I thought she was going to be here?”
Entrapta shrugged and turned her attention back to the task at hand. She’d made a small spot for the microscopes, centrifuges, gene splicers and all that stuff in one of the corners. She’d have to get a quick reminder on how that stuff worked, but surely there was someone in this building who had used them more than her. For now, all she needed was a change of clothes and maybe a blanket and a pillow for the floor.
She’d make a lab out of this yet.
“Great! I’ll send the list to you as soon as I can!” Entrapta smiled wide.
Happy with her remodeling for the day, she turned to face the Captain fully.
“Are you going to take me to see the creature?” she asked, bouncing up and down on her feet. “Ooh! Can I see it now? I need to see it!”
She’d gone through the notes Dr. Angella had given her. There was discouragingly little there and she wanted to see the creature herself to draw a more solid picture of the situation.
“That’s what I’m here for,” Captain Adora said, turning her focus from the organized mess Entrapta was creating on the floor. She tapped her fingers against an ID card hanging from the corner of her jacket. “You’re going to be needing one of these. We’ve got all the paperwork done, but the guy making the cards also does security and janitorial work, since… we’re kind of short on staff right now.” She shifted weight from one foot to another. “You’ll be getting them in a few days. But before that, you’ll be needing me to let you in through the doors.
“Uuughhhh! ” Entrapta turned on her feet. “Fine. Fine!”
The vents did look big enough to crawl through, though. Such an oversight. Well. What Bright Moon didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt them.
Captain Adora gave her a visitor’s badge that would get her through most of the doors. The cafeteria, lavatories and training grounds were open for everyone with the badge. The restricted areas, such as the labs themselves needed the real deal, though, making the visitor’s badge basically useless to Entrapta.
“It’s not so bad,” Captain Adora said when she saw Entrapta staring at the badge with a sullen expression. “I’m usually working around that part of the facility anyway. They have me helping with the Light Hope AI program.”
That caught her attention. “The – the Light hope program?” she asked. So they’d finally pulled that one out of ice? She bounced closer, excitement bleeding through. “I could – I can help with that one too!”
“Sorry!” Captain Adora said, lifting her hands up in surrender. Entrapta had accidentally gotten a bit too close and swayed back to give the Captain more room to breathe. “It’s only for people with the highest clearance. But I’m sure Dr. Angella would appreciate your help, if you asked her.”
Oh, if only. But Dr. Angella wanted her on this creature feature. Entrapta tapped her finger against her chin. It wouldn’t hurt to ask, though. She’d read everything she could get her hands on about the ancient AI when it’d been discovered. She’d love nothing more than the chance to sink her tools into its core to see what made it tick!
Dr. Angella wasn’t going to let her, though. She just knew it.
No. It was boring organic stuff for her.
Captain Adora led her through the corridors and thick security doors deeper into the facility. They descended further down underground. Nothing much changed in the décor. There were just less windows and more crystals. Entrapta watched it all through a purple tint.
“They have it in a water tank most of the time,” the Captain explained. “Unless it needs to be taken out for examination. We’re going to have to find a way to clean the tank at some point too, but that’s a problem for the future. Mostly we just keep it under lock and key. It can get… feisty.” She bared her teeth. “Looks… looks really similar to Prime, actually, so it’s kind of… creepy.”
Captain Adora’s words went in through one ear and out through the other. Entrapta wasn’t really interested in the animal anymore. Not after finding out about the AI just next door! Techno-organic chimeras were First Ones’ signature stuff. They could still be found guarding their temples and fallen ships thousands of years after their creators had disappeared. They were pretty common and pretty boring once you pulled them apart.
The First Ones’ AI work, though! Now that was something else.
Something that would have been right up Entrapta’s alley.
And they give her the wild animal with robotic parts attached to it.
She wondered if there was any way she could get Dr. Angella to transfer her to the Light Hope project. Why she hadn’t been put to that one in the first place was a mystery to her.
Captain Adora got ahead of her, hurrying her steps to make it to a thick blast door before Entrapta. It as a wide, tall thing, all metal by the looks of it and so heavy that it needed machinery to open it. Intricate runes had been carved to the surface of the metal. There was a control panel next to it and Captain Adora lifted her ID card to it.
The runes lit up, but Entrapta wasn’t looking at them. Her eyes were on the sword strapped to Captain Adora’s back.
Swords weren’t really in fashion with the Alliance. Not anymore, anyway. After all, you’d have to be really foolhardy to bring one to a gunfight. Horde soldiers rarely relied on melee.
This one clearly wasn’t just any regular old sword, though. It had the markings of the First Ones on it.
Fascinating.
”I like your sword,” she said.
”Huh? Oh, that old thing? Yes, it’s actually part of the AI program, and – ” Captain Adora fell silent. Her mouth clicked shut and she swirled around on her feet to face Entrapta, putting her body between her and the sword. ”You know, maybe I shouldn’t tell you that. It’s kind of classified, actually.”
”Ooh, classified? How classified? I’m working on classified stuff, aren’t I?”
”It’s more classified than that.”
”Oh, boo!”
And Dr. Angella wasn’t going to tell her either, she just knew it already. Hmm.
She’d have to look into it later. See how wide the vents were in that part of the facility.
But first she’d have to play around with this pet project of hers. She’d promised Dr. Angella a month and a month she was going to give. Entrapta would drag herself through it, then ask for a transfer. Easy-peasy.
The door started to open with struggle. It groaned and grumbled under its own weight, slowly revealing the room on the other side. It was taking its sweet time and Entrapta started to tap her foot against the ground.
She wanted to get her hands on that sword…
Ugh. She’d have to focus. One thing at a time.
Entrapta pursed her lips.
This was taking too long.
With the door opened wide enough to fit her, Entrapta squeezed right through.
“Hey!” Captain Adora called after her. But with those broad shoulders of hers, she wasn’t going to be getting through any time soon.
The room behind the door was wide and round. The floor was rough concrete, dense in comparison to the shiny marble outside. It looked like the decorative tiles had been stripped off to reveal the floor underneath. Maybe it had been done to dig the pool in the middle of the room. Maybe they were planning to put the tiles back later.
Entrapta hoped not.
She marched to the edge of the pool and peered in.
The water was dark and dirty. She couldn’t even see the bottom like this. Pieces of algae were floating on the surface, clumped into small clusters. Entrapta looked around until she spotted some sort of a stick with a leather loop on the other end of it resting against the wall not too far off. She nabbed the stick and knelt down on the ground to plunge it into the water.
It was about waist deep. Seemed to grow deeper near the center. The pool wasn’t that wide either. She couldn’t have swum laps around it even if she had wanted to.
Not that she had dreams of getting any of that nasty water on her skin.
Entrapta dropped the stick on the ground and it clattered away.
She couldn’t tell if the creature was in there or not.
Climbing to her feet, she found wet spots on her overalls and tiny little seaweeds sticking to her gloves.
“Eyuch,” she said, studying the little algae closer. Vibrant. Smelly. Slimy. She wiped the greenery on her thighs. “What’s this supposed to be?”
This was even worse than the lab she’d been given! Yes, this room had a little more edge to it. The ground beneath her feet was nice and rough. It made her feel like she wasn’t about to slip and crack her skull on the nearest desk. But the water was everywhere! There were puddles on the ground! The air was moist and stuck to her skin like a layer of film.
“I mean, it’s a bit of a work in progress still,” Captain Adora said, pushing past the door while it was still in the process of opening. “We’ve only had the creature here for about a week now and we’ve had to build everything –”
“But it’s wet!” Entrapta complained. “I can’t work in an environment like this! Everything’s going to get all rusty!” She gasped, slapping her hands on her utility belt. She was going to have to put another layer of protective oil on her tools the moment she was back in the lab.
If they even had the right mixture here.
“Didn’t the doc tell you?” Captain Adora asked. ”It’s an aquatic creature.”
Entrapta gave it a quick thought. If it had been mentioned, she’d quickly forgotten it. She blew a raspberry and waved her hand.
”Who cares! I don’t want to work in here! It’s moist! I don’t like moist!” It fogged up her goggles! She pushed them on her forehead. Everything felt stuffy in here. Too warm. She was going to start sweating more if she worked here and then she was going to have to wash up more often and that was just not the kind of a hassle she needed.
It was already hard enough to have to move into a new place for a month. Now this?
”You don’t have to work here,” the Captain reasoned. ”Just… get the samples you need, set up the recording stuff and then you can do all of your, uh, other stuff in the lab.”
Right. Right, of course. She was right. Entrapta crossed her arms and sighed. That was probably going to be the smartest thing to do in this situation.
She could do that.
She didn’t have to like it, though.
”Well, where is it, then?” Entrapta asked, putting her hands on her hips. She peered back down to the pool, eyes squinted. Should she get the stick again and poke around some more? ”Don’t tell me I have to get into a wetsuit and get down there.”
”No, no, it’s not in there right now. That pool is just there for when you need to take samples or get up close and personal,” the Captain said. She circled around the pool and waved her hand towards the back of the room, where Entrapta could see more equipment, and some sort of a large container. “No, it’s over here.”
She followed after Captain Adora. In her rush to study the pool, she’d failed to pay attention to the bigger tank built to lean against the back wall of the room. It was heavy, heavy enough to crack the floor it was standing on. The thick, welded metal was shaped like a large cube that had gotten a little softer around the edges during its older days.
Entrapta got closer and ran a hand over the surface. Rough. Done in a hurry, it looked like. It was a tall thing, wide too. She leaned back to look at it. It reached well over her head and when she spread her arms, she was still left with maybe half an arm’s length of width.
Not the best quality she could hope for, to be honest. The welding work was shoddy and uneven, the shape of the tank was a little lopsided. The metal used look like it’d come from old scrap that had been repurposed for this.
Well. As long as it held water. Entrapta moved to the side to see more.
There were a set of sturdy metallic stairs welded to the tank’s sides, and Entrapta could see that they were there to reach a lid on top of the tank. She turned to look at the Captain. She was standing back, arms crossed and perfectly content to let Entrapta take everything in. Good. Entrapta hurried to the front of the tank.
There was a single, solid glass panel there. A window into the tank about the width of her shoulders. The Captain moved closer and waved at her to get a better look.
It reached from about knee high to a little over the Captain’s head. Light from the observation room reflected from the glass panel and made it hard to see through to the murky depths on the other side.
Entrapta placed both of her hands on the glass and pressed her face against them. Even like that she could barely see anything there.
She blew a raspberry and pulled back. She knocked her knuckles against the glass, making the whole tank echo.
“This is bad design work,” she said. “The window it basically useless. The stairs look rickety and that’s a safety hazard. Also, did you put this thing together in a day or what? It’s really –”
Something moved in the tank. A dark shape, barely noticeable. Entrapta craned her head. She knocked on the window again.
A loud thump against the tank had her taking a step back.
“Yeah, please don’t knock on the glass,” Captain Adora said. “He gets cranky about it.”
Captain Adora was standing next to a small control panel on the side of the tank. Entrapta could see an assortment of buttons and switches. The Captain cranked a lever down, lowering the lights of the room, then clicked another switch, lighting an array of small crystals on the panel.
Another crystal lit up on the side of the tank, and a moment later rocks similar to it lit up inside as well. The light at the side of the tank was still shining into her eyes. Bad designs all around. But at least now she could actually see a little better what was on the inside.
What she saw left her unimpressed. Even with the lights on, there were still corners in the tank she couldn’t see through the window, blind spots left by the shoddy design. And clearly the creature had now been spooked by the lights and was hiding in one of them.
Useless. No wonder they’d needed her. Entrapta turned away from the tank.
“So, about the AI program,” she stared.
That was when she spotted movement in the corner of her eye. Something dark glided to the front of the tank. A solid, living creature swimming close to the panel. Words died in her mouth and she turned just in time to see it reach the glass.
She’d been expecting an animal. A big fish or something. But the creature sliding closer was a sight to behold. Tall and gangly, it was staring down at her with burning red eyes. It was like a shark wearing the skin of an Etherian, all sharp edges and killing intent. The gills at the side of its head were flared like a pair of ears and they quivered as the creature looked at her with an air of superiority a caged beast shouldn’t have worn when staring at its captor.
Their eyes met and for a moment it was like the world stopped spinning. There was intelligence in those eyes, more than Entrapta would have expected.
The creature was a marvel. There was no denying that.
“Look at that,” Entrapta said slowly, lifting her hand against the window.
The creature flinched, looked at the hand, then back at her eyes. The gills twitched and it narrowed its eyes. The lipless mouth curled enough to show some teeth.
Red! It had red teeth!
Entrapta was smiling from ear to ear.
Fascinating!
“Quite the beast, huh?” Captain Adora said.
Entrapta nearly jumped out of her skin. She’d completely forgotten the Captain was still there. She turned from the tank only for a second, but in the moment their eye contact was broken, the creature pushed off the window with a flip and dove deeper into the tank, disappearing into one of the blind spots. Entrapta pressed her face against the window for a chance to see beyond the corners, but all she managed to do was fog up the glass with her breathing.
”It’s magnificent!” she said. ”Nothing like I’ve ever seen before!”
And it was true. It didn’t look like any techno-organic beast she’d ever seen. Nothing about it screamed traditional First Ones’ tech. It didn’t share the insectoid appearance of the guardian creatures. She’d never seen a fully humanoid meld work as well as this one.
In one word it was fascinating. More than she would have guessed from the description.
Captain Adora pushed off the wall she’d been leaning against. ”I wouldn’t say magnificent exactly,” she said and laughed a little. She pulled at her sleeve, revealing bandages on her arm. ”But a fighter, sure. Claws like steel, that one.”
”Is that so?” Entrapta said and pulled a recorder out of her pocket. She clicked it on. ”Would you say that it possesses strength greater than an average Etherian? Would you say that it has been enhanced? Do you think there’s any way this could be some sort of First Ones’ tech? Ooh, I hope it’s First Ones’ tech!”
Captain Adora lifted her hands and backed away from the recorder.
”I don’t know, doc,” she said. ”My job is just to make sure that you don’t get killed while you examine it. It’s not up to me to know this stuff.”
Said a woman with a weapon made out of First One’s tech. Entrapta poked her tongue out and tapped a finger against the recorder.
The tank behind her bubbled. Entrapta could see the creature moving at the edge of the window, nearly completely out of sight.
She wondered how intelligent that thing was?
Could it hear them?
Would it understand even if it could?
”Look, doc,” Captain Adora said. ”Angella gave you all the info we had on this thing, right?”
“I suppose.” That file had been pretty thin, though. She clicked the recorder off, then right back on. “How long have you had it here? Does this setting work for containing it?”
“A week?” The Captain said it like it was a question. “Like I said, it’s not been that long. Not enough to really get anyone examining it properly. Dr. Spinner wanted to get a look, but she couldn’t get here fast enough.” She scratched the back of her head, looking away. “And doc Angella kind of insisted on getting someone experienced with alien tech to look at it first. Dr. Spinner… she doesn’t really leave much more than a wet splatter when she’s done, you know?”
“I understand.” Dr. Spinner’s work methods were ruthless, but efficient. Entrapta had always admired her, just… from a distance. For her own safety. She tapped the recorder against her chin. She pushed and pulled her lips in thought. “The data she showed me does say that the creature is definitely techno-organic.” She turned back to the tank. Still no sign of the inhabitant. “But to what extent remains to be seen. It’s kind of difficult to tell just by looking. Closer inspection is needed. Hmm.” She had a few ways she could do that, some more viable than others. “The surest answer will come after the autopsy, but that can wait for now.”
For some reason, this made Captain Adora look uncomfortable. She shifted and looked away, grimacing a little.
“I mean,” the Captain said. “Wouldn’t you want to, like, exhaust every other option first? Um. Before cutting him open.”
“Oh?” Entrapta clicked the recorder off and smiled brightly. “Of course! We have so many tests left to make! So many. I’m going to have to make a list. Read up on what we have on Horde technology. I’m not going to be sleeping for a while!” She laughed and the voice echoed from the empty walls of the room. “You don’t want to kill the goose that lays golden eggs!”
Captain Adora sighed and slouched down a little.
“But at some point, when every other question has been asked it’s time to get a scalpel and see if the goose is secreting some special enzymes that turn organic matter into gold. You know, for science!”
It was sometimes hard to tell what people were thinking when she was talking. Entrapta had learnt that most people in the scientific community often did their best to shield their true opinions of her ideas when they were in her presence.
Captain Adora didn’t look like she was trying to hide her horror very well.
Entrapta shifted weight from one foot to another.
“Wouldn’t you want to know?” she asked. “Wouldn’t it keep you up at night? How the goose metabolized grains into gold?”
“I… Well. That’s certainly. One way to look at it. Uh. Would you like for me to show you to your rooms? We have pretty nice housings here for the workers!”
“Oh. Okay.” At least she didn’t seem to hold onto the horror for long. That was better, she supposed, than holding onto it and keeping the words until there’d be someone else to whisper them to.
Captain Adora guided her to the door again, talking about how she could come back here tomorrow and look at the whole thing with fresh eyes or something. Entrapta wasn’t really listening. She was already piling a list of tests she was going to run in her head.
When she turned to give one last look at the room, she saw the creature had moved back to the window of the tank. She could barely make out the dark shape against the glass.
The red eyes shone bright. It was looking at her.
She looked right back until Captain Adora closed the door between them.
What a strange creature.