Part Four
It’d taken a while, but they’d finally completed the serum. However, they didn’t know if it was too late. According to the projected timeline, people the infection should have already begun causing fatalities. Like in fluffies, the effects were impossible to tell apart from natural causes of death, and could take many forms including cardiac arrest or generalize organ failure. That also meant there was no way to know if they’d succeeded.
Dr. Sandler stared at the filled syringe for a moment, looking lost in thought. Ian could understand the hesitancy; Sunset had been through so much already, and the effects of the serum on tissue samples had been…graphic. Unfortunately, there really wasn’t another option, and they were out of time. They couldn’t afford to take this slow, and just had to pray that she’d survive the full dose.
It was eerie how she didn’t even flinch when the syringe pierced her skin.
…
It…was horrifying. Grotesque gurgling and snapping sounds came from Sunset’s contorting body as the serum rapidly rearranged her physiology. Occasionally, she’d manage a soft peep, but her ravaged vocal chords could only rarely muster the strength. Ian could swear he saw things moving under her blistered skin.
But right now he didn’t have time to be focusing on anything but keeping her alive. Her limbs, and a terrifying amount of other flesh, had rapidly necrosed, and they had to be removed in order to keep her from dying to infection. They’d had to augment the IV nutrients with a feeding tube, which drew some feeble struggles from Sunset, in order to replace the amount of biomass she was losing, either to removed tissue or just flesh sloughing off in random locations.
Ian, as the less qualified of the two, was usually the one preparing the nutrient mix for the feeding tube. It had to be extremely rich in nutrients, easily available, and with precisely the correct ratios. Sadly, this left them with only one source: liquefied fluffy foals. Fortunately, they were surprisingly easy to come by in the area, as it was untouched by fluffy extermination efforts and large herds roamed the woods.
So Ian spent half of each day emptying, cleaning, and pulping foals, telling himself over and over that it was necessary, and that there was no other choice. It didn’t help.
Sunset was gaining weight, shockingly, in spite of it all. She’d been larger than a normal fluffy before, and now she was even bigger. Maybe the size of a small German Shepard. It was hard to judge considering she didn’t have any limbs. Regardless, she was big for a fluffy now, if she could even be called a fluffy anymore.
They’d had a very close call, and only luck had saved them. Ian had been preparing more nutrients while Sandler slept, and had walked into the room to see that somehow Sunset’s face had been almost entirely covered in newly-grown, skinless muscle. Their attempts to remove it were unsuccessful, as it only grew back even more rapidly, so they’d had to resort to a breathing tube to ensure she didn’t suffocate.
…
Sunset floated in warm nothingness. She knew she had to fight her way back somehow, that she couldn’t allow herself to die, but she just didn’t have the energy to try. All she wanted to do was stay here, where the pain and nausea and horrible, gnawing anxiety left her alone. Was that too much to ask for? Didn’t she deserve some rest?
Suddenly, she was ripped back to reality, with a violence she couldn’t comprehend. All the pain, all the suffering she’d undergone was suddenly washed away in a flood. She felt…strong. Barely contained within a soft shell. Euphoric. She realized she was far, far more than her predecessor had ever been. Perfected.
But…there was something else, within the bliss. Icy understanding, knowledge buried in her DNA itself, now freed into her mind. No. No no no no no! NO! I DON’T WANT THIS!
She suddenly understood. Understood why this was all happening. Understood that, no matter what, there was something she must do, and something she’d already done. Tears stung her eyes, but she couldn’t open them. She wished for the torment again, for anything but this. She couldn’t do this! Why? Why hadn’t she been warned?
…
Ian stumbled backwards as something erupted from Sunset’s bloated mass. The glass of the tank, meant to keep rats from possibly killing the semi-comatose fluffy, shattered into brilliant shards as the thing leapt with unnatural speed, bearing Sandler to the ground. Six long legs, ending in razor barbs, dug into the floor and a long, prehensile tail, ending in another similar barb rested its point against her neck.
“Mother?”
Sandler merely croaked in reply.
“You lied to me.”
“I wish I could say I was regret that,” Sandler replied, finally regaining her breath. “But I can’t. You know why I had to lie. You wouldn’t have fought so hard if you’d known. You wouldn’t have survived.”
“I DIDN’T WANT TO SURVIVE! NOT LIKE THIS!”
“It was the only choice. You know why I did it.”
“What?” Ian asked, finally finding his voice. “What did you?”
“She never meant for there to be a cure.”
“WHAT?”
“I’m sorry. There just wasn’t enough time. There was never enough time.”
“How could you do this to me? How could you ever think I’d ever want to survive alone?”
Ian felt suddenly sick. He wretched, and to his horror flecks of blood sprayed from his mouth. He heard a wheeze from Sandler. She didn’t seem to be doing much better.
“I’m sorry, Ian,” she croaked. “I lied to you, too. There was never any chance of a cure. The infection is too deep, it’s practically part of us now. Even if we removed it we’d die soon after.”
Ian struggled to think through the sudden fog in his mind. “What’s going on?”
“It was going to kill us all anyway. Keep infecting each new generation and cutting their lives short. There wasn’t going to be a way to find a cure, not with each generation dying so young. I had to wipe the slate clean, stop the infection all at once. So…I made Sunset issue the kill command as soon as she was able.”
“No! Why would you?”
Sandler chuckled grimly. “We only had about two weeks left anyway. Irving and I, we knew the truth all along, you see. We had to set everything up, make sure everything happened just right. Make sure you and Sunset were ready. We spent years working to perfect the tools you’d need.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Sorry about this, Ian, but we need both of you.” She suddenly lunged to him, forcing her way past Sunset’s sharp limbs, heedless of the deep gouges in her flesh. Ian tried to dodge backwards, but he was too weak, and he felt something dig into him. A syringe.
Everything went black.
…
He awoke to a painful prodding. Sunset stood over him, her alien form causing him to startle backwards, slamming his head into the wall.
“Don’t do that. We…we both need to live.”
He was confused, memories of the past day foggy. Sunset’s long tail darted towards him, stopping not far away. He saw that the tip of the tail wasn’t a single spike like he’d believed, but ended in three independently moving spikes. Currently they grasped a USB stick.
“Use it. I don’t want to explain. Talking about it is too painful right now.”
Ian plugged it into a computer. There was a video file, labelled “Watch me.” He opened it.
…
"Sorry about this, Ian, but it was the only way. I lied when I said Sunset would be able to control the pathogenic particles. We figured out a long time ago that the only two commands those things took were “kill later” and “kill now.” There was never a chance, you see. We never did manage to figure out a way to stop it.
"We decided it was best for nobody to know. No sense in widespread panic if everyone’s going to die anyway. Let them live their lives in peace before the end. It was the best way.
"I know you probably hate me, and believe me I hate myself too. But we weren’t going to let this turn into generations of suffering in a new dark age. I hope you understand, but from a utilitarian standpoint that was the worse of the two options, and I’ve never been good at philosophizing.
"Sunset…we coded as much of humanity’s knowledge as we could into her genome. We would have preferred to do it directly, but we couldn’t figure out a way to give humans genetic memory within a single generation, and we didn’t have time to try to find another way. She’s our guarantee that all we strove for over these last thousand generations won’t be lost.
"As for you…I’m sorry, but we had limited options. We needed someone we could make subtle changes to over the course of their lifetime, and Irving and I were too old for it to take, and Aaron passed away in the accident. I’m sorry we couldn’t raise you for this. I’m sorry I had to let you think you’d die, too.
“You’ll…notice some changes, I think. The changes we made to you as a child should manifest now after the serum I gave you. We needed you to be stronger, more durable, more able to survive, and distinct enough from human that the contagion would leave you alone. And of course we couldn’t allow you to die from age.”
"Funny. I could’ve been the most famous person in human history for finding the cure to aging, if Hasbio hadn’t fucked it all up and killed us all anyway. Oh well. So it goes, I guess.
"Ian, I want you to understand. You and Sunset are all that’s left. Fluffies spread too far, and we couldn’t find a population that wasn’t already infected. Goddamn cottonfluffs even blew across the oceans and spread it to remote islands. We had no other choice.
"I gave you the knowledge you need, and Sunset knows where to go for equipment. Once the right people realized the truth, there was no end to our funding. I’m sorry about the whole charade, but we had to make sure you were in the right state of mind.
"We need you to do what we couldn’t. Find a cure for this bastard, and let us start over. Don’t let us make the same mistakes we did in the past. Don’t let this all be for nothing.
"Oh, and regarding fluffies, I wouldn’t worry too much about them becoming a problem in the future, at least in terms of overpopulation. We arranged for a certain virus to be released in their population that would reduce their fertility dramatically. Should be enough to keep things under control in our absence.
“I think that’s all I had to say. I just had one last thing for Sunset. I love you. Please, don’t blame yourself for this. There was never anything you could do.”
…
Ian watched the video for the fifth time, not really hearing the words. They were all gone? Just like that? After everything? How…how was he supposed to handle this?
“Ian,” Sunset murmured. “We need to get moving. There’s a lot that needs to be done, and the clock’s already ticking. The equipment will degrade, and if we don’t hurry we might have to do everything from scratch.”
“Sunset?”
“Yes?”
“Shut the fuck up. Everyone I loved is dead, so give me a fucking minute to process this.”
“Sorry. I got used to living with mother, and she didn’t really go in for the whole emotions thing. Only time I saw her cry was when she…never mind. I think I’m more lost than you are. Until a couple of hours ago I couldn’t even form complex sentences, and now all this is relying on me.”
“No, I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to do. They can’t all be gone. Not like this. Not so quickly. Can you understand what this feels like?”
“Before mother left and took me with her, I was a breeder for foals for experiments. I understand.”
Ian couldn’t even respond, he just sat rocking gently, wracked by sobs. Suddenly he chuckled, as if something funny had occurred to him. “Now I understand why fluffies say wan die.”
Dusk (Sequel)
8 Likes
That was an absolute master class in every way I can think.
Well Done