Chief Constable McAllister blankly gazed out of the window of the police cruiser as it passed from Glasgow into the adjacent countryside, and the pebble-dashed, semi-detached houses gave way to yellow-green fields and old groves below a mostly cloudless early morning light.
He was on his way to the small village Gartloch just outside the city to begin his investigation into Hamish McGonagall- though, there was still a few minutes before he arrived: time he used to mull.
It was nice to be back out in the cruiser on patrol, in a manner of speaking. Though, he didnât miss getting up this early. Or wearing the stupid high-vis jacket.
The briefing with the Hasbio Administrators happened the previous morning, and it had been less informative than he was expecting. Mostly, it had just reiterated what heâd already been told.
Honestly, it felt like more of a formality, as though someone somewhere needed a meeting for it all to be âofficialâ or something, probably the City Council. Given that it was over in about 30 minutes, it was clear that Hasbio was anxious for things to just be underway.
The dossier the Administrators gave him at the end was far more illuminating, and he preferred reading.
McGonagall was born in Glasgow in 1997. He did well at primary school. It was noted that he was banned from Xbox Live on 3 separate occasions between 2007 and 2013.
At high school, he excelled in the sciences and only received detention once, and moved straight to the University of Glasgow afterward, unsurprisingly to study several biology-related subjects.
He was held in a local jail for a few hours once for drunken misconduct but was only given a warning. 3 years into his studies, he impressed someone at Hasbio with a demonstration of an eye with some kind of programmable âbiochipâ he grew in a lab, and was picked up by the corporation to work in their headquarters in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
He started off as one of the bio-technicians on some of Hasbioâs failed early biotoy projects before he was moved over to the Fluffy project once it showed promise. As Head of Brain and Sensory Organ Development, McGonagall personally designed several pieces of the Fluffy brain-stem, and ran his department without incident over his entire tenure. He was also the co-head of Hasbioâs bionics division.
This was where things got a little more interesting, McAllister thought.
All of the bioengineers at Hasbio were permitted to have personal projects as long they âused appropriate resources and disclosed their workâ- and McGonagall did indeed have his own personal project.
Apparently, the man used copious amounts of test subjects- rodents and leftover unicorn Fluffies from the labâs DNA farm mostly- and he was even reprimanded once for using too much.
According to the dossier, Hasbio is unsure exactly what the nature of his personal research was as the bio-engineers were ânot monitored as closely as they should have beenâ, and McGonagall destroyed his own lab during the PETA Leak Purge.
What they did know, however, was that he was experimenting with and modifying a lot of brain tissue and eyes, and his disclosure reports indicated that he was attempting to link them in some fashion. They couldnât decipher what the point of his genetic modifications were, but with the notes of his that they recovered, Hasbio was under the impression that he was likely trying to create some sort of daisy-chained Cronenbergian Fluffy brain for unknown purposes.
Plainly: Hasbio had chosen lunatics to work in their nightmare laboratory. Only lunatics could create the Fluffy.
The next section of the dossier was tellingly light on detail.
During the Purge, McGonagall stole several âhighly sensitive pieces of biotechnologyâ, which he used to somehow âfight off several squads of heavily armed menâ. Afterwards, he used his skills to disguise his identity and disappear.
That was the entire section. A few sentences, no more, no less.
The whole dossier was missing pieces all over, but the lack of care that went into even trying to hide that fact here made McAllister uncomfortable. It was as though the dossierâs original, intended readers would already have had knowledge of exactly what this meant, and it didnât need to be said exactly what the danger was. He was uncomfortable with this because if the all-powerful Hasbio was this scared of something, then why in the hell would they send a pudgy police chief and his force into the fray?
They werenât all just cannon-fodder, were they?
The last section of the dossier detailed McGonagallâs believed reappearance, and also had the Chief Constableâs orders and potential lead.
Many of the recent stray Fluffies infesting Glasgow were found to have genetic mutations in their brainâs Occipital Lobe and in their Optic Nerves- the exact same kind of modifications that McGonagall had been designing just prior to the Purge.
On its own, this raised several alarms upon discovery, but the true panic-button moment for Hasbio was when a Human corpse was discovered just 5 days ago bearing injuries consistent with the effects of the biotech that McGonagall had stolen years prior.
The investigation into this corpse was handled through-and-through by Hasbio, it never once touched police hands.
The coronerâs report was censored outright- the first appearance of censor bars in the entire dossier- but what was readable said that the man âwas twisted out of shapeâ and was âwholly exsanguinatedâ.
His name was Abid Aynan, a 29 year old immigrant from Pakistan who, on paper, was a dog care and training assistant who lived in Glasgow. In reality, he was actually working at a technically-illegal-but-ignored Fluffmill just outside the city in Gartloch village. When Hasbio investigated the man further, they found amongst many images in his social media a single (and final) picture he took and sent while at the Fluffmill two days before his body was discovered- the image was not provided, but a censored description was:
â
This image was taken from the inside of the Flullmill by POI-HM-2. The point of view is facing downward into a center-image cage, likely meant for storing milled Fluffies. The cage is empty save from -REDACTED-
An accompanying series of texts in Arabic were sent to and recieved from an unknown encrypted number. Transcription below in English. For other languages, contact Administrator in your department.
*[IMG_0104_20XX-10-12_14.25.22.HEIC]*
*ABID: [I have] not seen this before. What do I do? 14:25*
*UNKNOWN: I Don't know. I'll ask Khan. 14:26*
*ABID: Should I clean the cages today? 14:26*
*UNKNOWN: Khan doesn't know [either]. Just keep it [there] for now. I'll be in tomorrow. 14:29*
*UNKNOWN: Just stack the cages in the back. Did you fill the feeding machine? 14:29*
*UNKNOWN: ? 14:36*
*UNKNOWN: Abid you donkey don't leave the [fucking] feeding machine like last time U+1F92C 14:37*
*UNKNOWN: Abid?? 14:50*
*UNKNOWN: ??? 15:02*
â
McAllister wasnât sure what to make of that ominous transcription. His sense of expendability in this matter was certainly not helped by his orders to investigate this very same Fluffmill.
âWeâve arrived, Chief,â
The driverâs voice broke McAllister from his thoughts.
They were in Gartloch, on a road just behind a few trees below the Fluffmill. Down the street, there were several police vans. It was a raid, and he was here to oversee.
He stepped from the cruiser. For October, it was a fairly warm dawn. Too early for any of the villagers or local stray herds to be up. Maybe they could get this done quickly enough to avoid both.
A light breeze brushed through the trees on the way towards the mill and he walked up with it to meet the gathered officers.âChief Constable,â greeted the team lead from behind his face mask and helmet, âthe teams are in position in front and behind the mill,â
McAllister nodded. He was hoping they hadnât set up fully yet because he used to enjoy the active planning and tactics phase of raids, âRight. Gae us the rundoon then,â
He was shown over to a large van, in the back of which was the control team hovering over a few computer screens. A floor-plan of the Fluffmill was on one of them; it used to be a pet training center long ago, but had been converted for Fluffy-use in conjunction with the nearby lake and forests.
McAllister was handed a headset and sat down with a touch screen tablet which could monitor the cameras on the helmets of the 10 armed officers about to enter the building.
Team A would enter from the car-park next to the building and clear the main floor, while Team B would enter from the hedge on the other side of the building and clear the storage areas where Abidâs image had been taken.
When he was comfortable in his chair, McAllister gave the go ahead. The van went silent, and the footage on the tablet came to life.
Team A breached the building first, collapsing the main door and pouring into a large and mostly empty room with only a receptionistâs desk, and few piles of Fluffy kibble boxes and trash bags. They spread out to clear the adjacent rooms while Team B entered their side through a pair of windows.
McAllister focused on Team Bâs camera from here on.
The room they entered into had off-white tiling on the floor and walls, and a few cages were stacked up opposite the windows. There was a sink and a table in the room too. The team split up then- 3 men on the closed entry door to the room, and 2 on another open doorway. Behind the closed entry door was a hallway that Team A had already reached. The other open doorway lead to a smaller storage room around 5m by 5m in size with more empty cages and boxes. The two men scoured it, peeking carefully around the cages and boxes with their torches, but found nothing.
Within 3 minutes, the building was cleared and the raid was finished. Just like that. McAllister and the control team were confused. Where was the mill equipment? Where were the Fluffies? Where were the mill workers?
A minute later, the Chief Constable and the investigation team were at the property as the raid team took watch.
Aside from the kibble boxes, cages, and scraps of old shedded fluff, the place really was empty. Most of the side rooms turned out to just be cupboards, one had an old boiler, and there a bathroom too. The room of interest where Abidâs image had been taken had only the metal sink, a wall-mounted tap with some hoses, and a large metal table.
In the back 5x5 storage room, however, buried beneath everything else, was a cage that had been torn apart, its bars bent and snapped outwards on one side.
McAllister fruitlessly studied it with gloved hands for a while. Obviously, it was the same cage described in the dossier, but what in the hell had been kept inside it? There was no signs of blood or Fluff or⌠well, anything on it, really. It was suspiciously clean, given the rest of the cages had bits of fluff and shit/piss stains all over them.
He slipped it into a large sterile bag for forensics to look at later.
Other than that, the surrounding kibble boxes were expectedly full of kibble. Fuck it, one of the PCs could go through each of them later.
McAllister returned back to Team Bâs entry windows and observed the morning sky. The sun was coming up now, bathing everything in an orange glow.
He sighed. Someone at this Fluffmill mustâve known the raid was coming.
The thing was- how did they get all of their equipment out? McAllister had done raids on Fluffmills before, they always had crazy machines to help churn their way through as many Fluffies as they could: mating stands, teat milkers, color and size sorters, waste cleaners, and all manner of other tools⌠even the dossier had texts from the workers indicating they had at least some of this stuff. It wasnât easy to move over a ton of heavy machinery from a building like this in less than a day.
McAllister pulled off his glasses and rubbed his temples. He was going to have to sit in the camera room back at HQ and watch a few hundred hours of footage and try to find out if any large hauling trucks had come this way and then returned, but a small village like this wouldnât have any CCTV so it would all be guesswork based on traffic coming and going from Glasgow.
Maybe some of the people living here had doorcams? Bah, interviewing the public was always a bitch. One of the PCs could do that, too.
chirp~
He swiveled on the spot towards the sound, but the room was empty still. He couldâve sworn heâd heard-
chirp~chirp~
No, he wasnât mishearing anything. That was a Fluffy chirping- almost inaudible- but from where?
He checked out of the window first, in case there was a few ferals passing by or even some abandoned newborns in the hedge, but he could only hear the chirping when he was inside.
chirp~
It was at the center of the room, but there was nothing. Just floor tiles and a buzzing old lightbulb above.
chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~
There was definitely a Fluffy, or even a few of them, here, chirping away, âSergeant!?â he called down the hall. A few seconds later, a beanpole of a man in a high-vis jacket stepped in, âlisten,â McAllister instructed.
They did just that for a few seconds.
chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~
âYou what?â the Sergeant exclaimed, âsâthat fookinâ fluffies I hear?â
âAye it is- git the inspectors and bring the sledgehammers fae the van. Weâre gonnae tear this room right apart,â
The Sergeant hurried off back down the hall while McAllister continued his analysis of the area. It could just be a few ferals that tunneled under the building or somehow got into the pipes, but he wasnât going to take a chance to miss something.
He got down on his knees and brought his head to the floor.
chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~chirp~
They were under the floor, definitely, and it sounded like there were⌠dozens? At least. Probably more.
As he stood back up, his knees clicked painfully and he stumbled slightly to the side and had to brace himself against the wall. Only, the tile that he pressed against then slid a little into the wall and was followed by a âbeepâ.
All at once, there was a roaring mechanical whir and suddenly, several patches of the floor began to rise up, revealing all the Fluffmill equipment one could imagine, as well as hundreds of tiny little coops all arranged one on top of the other with various pipes and wires snaking through and around them. Each contained anywhere from 1 to 6 Fluffies, many of whom cried out in shock, "Owie! Seeinâ pwace hab huwties fwom bwities!" or they just chirped even louder and faster. Some began to shit and piss out of fear, while others huddled together for safety.
The barrage of noise caused the rest of the investigation team to approach and be equally as shocked as McAllister who could only stare in disbelief from his kneeling position on the floor.
Once all of the Fluffies were finished both explaining that they were, indeed, rather surprised, and then giving each other makie-bettah-hugs, they began to press against the translucent walls of their coops, all shouting out greetings and requests for play and food and hugs at the deafened officers.
âChristâŚâ McAllister uttered. This was going to be a lot of paperwork, even for Hasbioâs Administrators.