“There we go. Last one.”
Gary lowered the last fluffy from the box into the pen before he could pack up for the day and go home. Today was a fun, but exhausting day… until Chris told him they had to dump all the chemicals they had for the experiments. The drugs they were testing were all complete failures and Dr. Kritzer was not happy with their lack of progress despite the months they spent trying and adjusting every drug.
Kritzer was even more unhappy with the project’s quickly ballooning budget. Kritzer had made it clear to Chris, Gary, and Tom that he wanted to spend as little as possible on the project since Kritzer was using the project to impress some investors for a bigger project later on.
Before Gary could think any further, the door opened and the light peered in from the hallway.
“Hey, Gary.”
Gary turned and looked behind him as Chris stood in the doorway with a blue fluffy in his arms.
“You missed one…” He tossed the fluffy at Gary, who caught it midair.
“Dumbass.”
Gary frowned as the fluffy momentarily squirmed in his grip, before calming down and gaping at him in thanks.
“Tank ou mista! Ou be nyu dad-EEEEE?!!”
Gary immediately drops the fluffy on the floor.
crash
“Owwie!!”
“Why are you so pissed off, Chris?”
Chris was already facing the door about to walk out when he stopped in his steps and turned to face Gary.
“You’d feel the same way if you were in my position, Gary.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Gary crossed his arms as the blue fluffy withered in pain at his feet.
“AFF MANY HEWTIES!! HUHUHUUUUUU!! NEE WUV AN HUGGIES!!”
Chris cast a nigh-deathly glare at Gary as he felt his frustration finally boil over and he felt no alternative than to vent out months of stress on his de facto second in command.
“So you really want to know what’s pissing me off, Gary?”
Gary nodded as he crossed his arms, preparing for the inevitable verbal barrage that was about to come.
“We’ve been experimenting on these fluffies for months and gotten no desirable results! Nothing!”
Gary just stood there and watched as Chris continued on his tirade.
“We’ve tried out the bone strengthener, the fertility enhancer, the neuro-augmentation drug… we even tried cocaine I bought from that shady sophomore who keeps hanging around back!”
Gary was momentarily shocked when he heard the word “Cocaine” emerge from Chris’s lips.
“Did you say… cocaine?”
Chris put his hands to his hips. “What do you think?”
Gary was almost beside himself as he processed that last two seconds in his mind.
“What the hell were you doing buying cocaine from that kid?! More importantly, why were you buying cocaine at all in the first place?!! Kritzer made it perfectly clear we are not to use any kind of unauthorized substances under any circumstances! Illegal street drugs especially!”
“That’s not important right now, Gary! Aside from our large stock of now-useless experimental drugs, our supply of test subjects is running low despite how fast the fuckers breed! And as if all that wasn’t bad enough, we’re burning through the budget so fast trying to get new chemicals and test subjects, I got Doctor Kritzer is breathing down my neck!”
Despite all the pressing issues of the project that Chris had laid bare before Gary’s eyes, all of which he was well aware of anyway, he was still distracted by Chris’s admission to buying hard drugs.
“You never told me why you bought that coke in the first place, Chris.”
“That’s none of your business, Gary!”
Gary was not only doubtful of that particular statement, but he was actually becoming incredibly pissed at Chris’s revelation of having bought crack.
“No it is my goddamn business, Chris! Please for the love of god tell me that you at least bought that coke with your own money!”
Chris just stood there silently. The silence confirmed Gary’s worst fear.
“Oh god… how much, Chris?”
Gary spoke so softly that Chris didn’t hear him and looked at him weird.
“What?”
This time, Gary repeated himself loudly and slowly to make doubly sure Chris heard him this time.
“How… much… did… you… spend… on that coke?!”
Gary took a step closer with every word until he was almost up in Chris’s face.
Chris did not respond.
“TELL ME!!”
Chris’s response was low and quiet, but Gary was close enough to hear him perfectly well.
“20 grand.”
Gary was now beside himself. 20,000 dollars for coke. That took up a good chunk of their 100 thousand dollar budget and Gary now had reason to suspect that Chris was embezzling money from Kritzer.
“What… the… FUCK, CHRIS!!!”
The blue fluffy whom they had both long forgotten about since their argument started, squirmed from Gary’s language.
“PWEASE NU NU-NU WOWDIES! AN STIWW NEE HUGGIES AN WUV FOA WOWSEST HEWTIES!!”
“WE’RE ON THE BRINK OF GETTING SHITCANNED, OUR BUDGET’S ALMOST DRIED UP AND EXPERIMENTAL COMPOUNDS ARE NOW USELESS, AND HERE I LEARN THAT YOU SPENT 20 GRAND ON COKE?!!”
“YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HARD IT IS TO RUN THIS PROJECT, GARY! I DID WHAT I HAD TO DO TO KEEP THIS THING RUNNING!”
“THAT’S IT CHRIS!! IM REPORTING THIS TO KRITZER!!”
Before Gary could even move, he heard a clicking sound as Chris pulled out a handgun, pointing it straight at Gary.
“You’re not doing that, Gary.”
Gary stood shocked as Chris pointed the gun at him.
“I put too much effort into this just for you to throw it away.”
Gary stood with his hands at his side, poised to jump if Chris squeezed the trigger. He thought for a second as he figured out why Chris would go through all this. Chris wasn’t displaying the symptoms of coke use, thus Chris wasn’t actually using the coke on himself. He was using it for something else, but what? Then he remembered the locked door.
“You’ve been using the coke for your own experiments, haven’t you?”
Chris smiled. “Bravo, Gary. Bra-fucking-vo. You finally figured it out after all this time.”
There was a room with a red door on this floor of the building that was always locked. it had a yellow sign with black letters reading: “Hazardous Materials Storage. Extreme Caution Required. Authorized Access Only.” That room was originally used by the Advanced Chemistry professors here at the university, then Kritzer had commandeered it for the project; only he and Chris were allowed in that room.
In all the months they’ve been working on this project, Gary occasionally saw Chris go in there, but had no idea what he did in there. Now he knew Chris was doing secret experiments on fluffies in that room under Kritzer’s nose using a whole slew of nefarious or even outright illegal substances. Gary had only one question on his mind at this point.
“Why are you doing this Chris?”
Chris chuckled.
“Because Kritzer has no idea what he’s doing. He’s hoping to correct the problems of the fluffy genome, but he’s too afraid of bad press if we used hard chemicals and the public found out about it, so he has us using basic high school chemicals instead. This whole project is nothing more than a ‘throw everything at the wall and find out what sticks’ kind of situation.”
That made more sense than Gary wanted to admit. His years of working at the local pharmacy gave him a good idea as to what did to what as far as drugs were concerned. He also interned at a drug rehab to learn about how hard drugs can destroy the body and what worked at treating the damage.
Initially, Gary thought he’d be picked to be Kritzer’s right-hand man thanks to his experience with drugs, but Chris got the job instead, mainly because his uncle was a colleague of Kritzer’s, but he wasn’t without his own qualifications, they just weren’t as impressive as Gary’s.
Now he stood in front of his boss, who was now aiming a gun at him.
“So you’ve embezzled money from the doc to fund your own experiments so you can take the credit from Kritzer and have your own thing going, is that it?!”
“More or less.” Chris said.
“Sadly though, I can’t let this get out so I’m afraid I’ll have to kill you before you can spill the beans to Kritzer or anyone else.”
“You’ll have to go through me first.”
A click of a second gun came with an audience. Jacob.
“Where the hell were you, Jacob?!” Gary asked.
“Doing my rounds, only started hearing your little chat a minute ago.”
Jacob had his handgun pointed at Chris.
“You could’ve just stayed out of it, Connelly.”
“If you shoot him, I will be obliged to respond in kind.”
Chris turned to face Jacob.
“Then you leave me no choice but to get rid of you too. I hope you have a babysitter for that retarded little fuze ball of yours-”
Jacob’s hand instinctively squeezed and a shot rang off, missing Chris’s head by an inch and smacking into the wall, leaving a hole in its wake.
“Don’t you DARE… talk about Al like that.”
“Oh don’t tell me you actually care about that brown fluffy of yours! I’m sure you’ve been tempted to do horrific things to him like every other asshole out there.”
“At least I don’t give into temptation that easily.”
“We’ll see about that when I’m shoving a syringe up his-”
Jacob squeezed his trigger again in anger. This time, the bullet almost grazed the side of Chris’s head."
“Keep talking you prick and the next one is going right between the eyes.” Jacob pulled back the hammer on his revolver.
“You know what?”
Chris squeezed his own trigger. Jacob then felt intense pain in his hand as the bullet from Chris’s gun knocked his revolver out of his hand, sending it clattering to the floor.
“I’m getting tired of this. Say your prayers you little-”
The next thing Chris knew was he was getting tackled from behind by Gary. The two tumbled down to the floor…
“Oh… poopies…”
…on top of the blue fluffy, crushing him. In their fall, a remote fell out of Chris’s pocket and when it fell on its face, a button clicked. In the hallway, away from the commotion, the sound of cages opening echoed inside, followed by many things breaking and crashing… and the lock on the red door shorting out.