Kitrah Micar

It took every ounce of willpower she had not to clap her palms overtop her ears. Damnable humans and their dulled senses; did they have to run the alarm sirens at such an ungodly decibel? As if somehow the flashing of the strobe light in the barrack's ceiling wasn't enough all on own to tell anyone within twelve metres or so that the whole world was about to go to shit, the bloody siren was simultaneously trying to pierce her eardrums like a battering ram.

Kitrah Micar had known that most humans were half deaf when she'd signed on for this job, of course. Half the galaxy knew that humans were deficient where their senses were concerned. Not that it had stopped them from spreading across two whole sectors before finally being approached by the Accord. Somehow this unlikely species had managed to compensate for all their genetic shortcomings with a stunningly large arsenal of inventions. Inventions like the ones in this very building whom Kit had been hired on to guard.

Or so she'd assumed when she'd read through the translated document, anyway.

Security Technician; that was her official title at Chimera's Headquarters. It was what was written on all the documents she'd signed. It wasn't until she'd already signed her soul away to the devils themselves that she learned exactly what that was going to mean. The money had been pretty good for a guard position. Kit had just assumed that the research station was parked on some inhospitable hunk of rock and that she was being compensated for the discomfort of having to patrol the grounds through ice storms or constant rain or some such. It wasn't all that unusual for research stations to be built in places that weren't suitable for proper colonization. That part had rung true at least. The world she was on was an acidic hunk of rock on which very little was willing to grow. It might've been a decent candidate for terraforming if the humans had been willing to wait for the process but as they were a relatively short-lived race, patience wasn't exactly their strong suit.

As it was, she hadn't seen the surface even twice since she'd arrived. Chimera research facility was underground, it turned out. Underground, under a very heavy blanket of silence orders and very much under the bottom threshold of what just about anyone would consider moral business. She'd reread her contract four times that first week. She'd even sent it off to a friend who worked the legal department at New Mira, hoping there'd be a loophole by which she could wriggle out of the obligation.

No such luck to be had, of course.

So it was that Kit found herself in the worst possible hard spot, working for an illegal gene-splicing research station where the humans were seeking a way to harness all the things that evolution had deigned they no longer needed. Faster reflexes, strength, keener senses—all of it was on the table to be had here and while a felian like herself considered the pursuit of such things noble, the methods they were using were anything but. The Felian Genetic Consultation Board had spent thousands of years helping her own species maintain the very best of what their feline heritage had to offer but this? This was straight up perversion of natural order. The felian system chose to alter their genes via slow and selective breeding. The humans? Well, it was the worst sort of mixture of cloning, gene-splicing and straight up exposure of their own kind to various concoctions of radiation, toxins and nanites in hopes that some combination of the above would win them a shortcut to their end goal.

Superior fighting forces through illegal experimentation.

Oh, they weren't the first species to try it. There was a shady history in most Accord species' backgrounds that most of them didn't want to admit to, much less discuss in public. That was the key difference though; for most Accord registered species this kind of behaviour was a distant memory—usually after it had backfired spectacularly—not a current day sort of thing.

She'd been here all of two weeks, trying not to let her disgust at the whole facility's existence get too obvious while she wrestled with the moral implications of guarding something that was most definitely not benevolent or even benign. Oh, no. There was nothing benign in this place. Two weeks and she'd already been through two charges and was working on a third.

Security Technician.

Also known as: Executioner.

Her stomach had turned even the second time she'd had to put down one of the subjects. It was her job but it still didn't sit right with her. She wasn't here to guard the test subjects—not even from each other. She was here to guard the rest of the precious facility from the test subjects. All of them—every last one—was some measure of human hybrid. She presumed that these were the successful ones, though the definition of the word left something to be desired. Her first assignment had lasted all of one mission. Some kind of reptile-human cross that when turned loose in a field of targets had immediately attacked its handlers and the half dozen observing scientists. It had taken precious seconds for her to realize that this wasn't supposed to be part of the test—that the screaming voices calling for termination weren't for a termination of the simulation but a termination of the test subject.

The other two handlers hadn't survived the encounter. Kit had only managed to live through that one because she'd been farthest from the subject when he'd been let loose. Her second assignment hadn't gone much better.

It had been only a week since she'd been assigned to the third: A19-3. Kit had followed him through three rounds of testing and he had yet to turn on the staff. He was also the only one she'd seen yet that seemed to have any understanding of the orders given at all. He didn't follow directions well but it was a far cry from the outright disasters she'd seen so far. Still, she'd have been lying if she said she didn't triple-check her rifle at the start of every shift and that she didn't adamantly refuse to let anyone touch her gear. Ever. That assault rifle was the only thing between her and a very messy end. It never left her side.

Right now, she was cradling it like it was her firstborn while she swept the halls, trying to figure out what was going on. Her comm was only feeding static and so she'd left it switched off. The lack of announcements suggested that it wasn't an internal breach—It wasn't that one of the subjects got loose from cages that were hilariously referred to as quarters by the science team—but rather that they'd been breached from without. Who and how and where would remain a mystery for now. Kit had a job. One job, and one job only. To protect the facility from A19-3.

Her stomach roiled against the thought. It was like being assigned to a rabid feral animal that hadn't been fed in three cycles, handed a blaster and told to kill it the moment it flinched. It wasn't a question of “if' it was more a matter of “when'.

There were two other guards already in A19-3's hallway. Their shoulders were hunched and their hands shook. Perimeter guards? Here? Things must have been exceptionally bad if the perimeter guards had been sent this far. Or they'd been sent to make sure the test subjects didn't get out of their quarters—one way or the other. As if a perimeter guard was going to have a fast enough reaction time to handle what would come barrelling out of that door when they opened it. Somehow, it seemed that these two particular humans were smart enough to know not to open the door themselves. Probably the pounding she'd heard as she'd come down the hall. Only an imbecile would open a door that was being assaulted that heavily with a pair of what she knew were probably bare fists on the other side.

“Stand aside.' Kit didn't bother to bark the order twice, sweeping in past the two uniformed men who seemed only too happy to ease back toward the main corridor.

It was the sound of a voice from the other side of the door that stopped her in her tracks. Was someone in there with the human-hybrid?! No, surely not. A19-3 would have torn them apart. Just because he—grudgingly—followed directions in the field did not mean that he would be likely to tolerate another creature in his personal space. Splicing a feral predatory species onto human subjects meant a sharp rise in territorial instincts. They didn't play well with others. Not even each other. Especially each other.

The woman's feline features pulled into a slight frown as she tried to parse the words—in a tongue that she only barely understood herself—that were filtering through the grate over the din of the siren and the relentless strobing of the signal lights. It was a wonder she could make out any of it at all, really. Her ears flickered with uncertainty—more over not being sure she hadn't imagined the whole thing than any confusion over his request to be freed.

In the end it was going to fall to her to make that call. Help wasn't coming if it hadn't already. She was the help. The first of it. And the last. And it—he—had spoken! Aloud. It was more rational thought than she'd seen or heard of from any others here and there'd been stories aplenty for her to measure that by. He could speak! Make demands. Form thoughts of his own, even if they were riddled with a tone that suggested he was half mad and ready to tear down the walls with his fists to get what he wanted.

She'd come down this hallway mentally preparing herself for the task of putting down a rabid animal but now she found herself levelling her energy rifle at the control panel on the wall instead. Kit stroked her index finger over the trigger and a blast of bright blue light washed through the small space, almost enough to drown out the irritating red of the strobes for a split second. It was enough—just barely enough—to short out the door's controls, the portal hissing as the seal broke.