Chapter 2
Open the tank! Get me out of here!
~~~
Kaden lifted the lid on the tank, slipped his fingers inside and the blob instantly slid into his hand.
Bit late to think he should have worn gloves.
But there was no agonising pain, no stinging sensation, and more importantly no alarm sounding.
The blob was pleasantly warm, and it felt a little like handling slime but less gooey.
He pushed the lid back into place and the larger blob dropped to the matting inside the tank.
“Kaden!”
Shit! He managed to get his hand into the pocket of his lab coat before he turned to face Harris.
Do not go red! The blob slid out of his fingers.
When he pulled out his hand, he forced himself not to check to see if his skin had sloughed off or turned blue.
He felt okay, his fingers still moved but he had to risk a quick glance. Everything looked fine. Phew.
“I’ve something I want you to see,” Harris said. “Come with me.”
Kaden’s heart pounded with relief that Harris didn’t know what he’d done, and with fear because he shouldn’t have done it.
He was going to be in so much trouble if Harris found out.
Biggest rule was Do. Not. Touch and he’d more than touched.
He’d picked up and moved. That Harris hadn’t said Do not pick up and move wasn’t going to be much of a defence if he got caught.
Kaden followed him into another lab and over to a workstation holding a complicated-looking piece of machinery.
He reached into his pocket and pressed record, relieved his phone was in a different pocket to…
whatever was in the other. It was hard to concentrate on what Harris was saying, and on what Kaden was supposed to be looking at, or to take in how excited Harris was, when all he could think about was what he’d done.
What if he’d killed it? What if it was going to kill him?
He might be spreading some horrible disease or contaminating another lab.
But Max had said the stuff in the tanks wasn’t dangerous.
Alisha had sort of confirmed that. If it had been dangerous, it would have been kept in a controlled environment, wouldn’t it?
But what if no one realised how lethal it was?
Oh fuck. His stomach churned and his mouth lost all moisture.
He really hoped that was down to fear and not because he was about to die.
“We’re hoping this will accelerate the development of stem cells. You know what they are, right?”
Kaden tuned back in again. “Self-replicating cells that can form to grow any part of the human body.”
That won him a huff.
“Stem cells are fragile, difficult to grow and expensive to produce. But they’re the future for treating many chronic and degenerative diseases. Globally, we’re moving away from using animals and more towards organ-on-a-chip technology and AI.”
AI? Kaden had mixed feelings about that. It was causing all sorts of issues in the creative world.
“What are they working on in the tank I was looking at?” Kaden mentally crossed his fingers.
“We’ve been using waste tissue to culture microbes. If there’s no danger, we wait to see if there are any substantive changes and then incinerate the material. Sometimes discoveries happen by chance.”
“Like penicillin.”
“Exactly.”
Harris sat him in front of various pieces of equipment and had people tell him exactly what their job entailed.
They were multitasking on several projects and all of them were excited about their work.
Except each of them made the point that the worst horrors in the world were invisible, and Kaden was even more freaked out by what he’d done.
He’d not put his hand in that pocket again.
Part of him was hoping the blue blob had… dissolved.
When they went to the canteen for lunch, Kaden ate virtually nothing. Harris gave him a puzzled look.
“Are you all right?”
“Disappointed. No fillet steak on offer.”
It was a joke but Harris tsked. “Eat! I’ve paid for it. Don’t waste it.”
Kaden took a bite of one half of his sandwich and while Harris’ attention was elsewhere, he slipped the other half into his pocket.
Shit! He’d not meant to put it in with the blob, but if he took it out again, his new pal might emerge with it, assuming it was still there. Harris turned back to face him and his chance had gone.
He ought to confess.
He really didn’t want to.
Harris had a horrible temper and telling him what he’d done would unleash it.
At least Kaden knew the blob wasn’t dangerous because he’d not dropped down dead.
Yet. Oh God. All he’d done was rescue it before it was thrown into the incinerator.
But he shouldn’t have taken it. Please be gone!
Though if it was, that was somehow more worrying.
His heart thumped painfully. He ought to go to the toilet and check.
As he trailed around after Harris that afternoon, guilt made him more and more miserable.
He did his best to look interested, but he knew he was being quieter than Harris expected, except ironically, his boyfriend seemed pleased about him being subdued for once.
If he found out what was in Kaden’s pocket, assuming it still was in his pocket, he’d be so angry.
Kaden was taken to meet Harris’ boss, Martin Walker.
He seemed a nice enough guy but all Kaden could think about was what he’d done.
If the blob was dead, maybe he could flush it down the loo.
No one would ever know. Unless it wasn’t dead, it just looked dead, and once it reached the sewer it would grow into some monster that poisoned the entire country’s water supply, then the oceans…
Just like he imagined sea monkeys would do when he was a kid.
He was freaking out. Oh God. His heart was beating too fast, something the pacemaker couldn’t fix. Beating too slowly, which it could, wasn’t likely to be an issue. I’m so stupid. I should never have touched it.
Once they were out of the CEO’s office, Kaden finally excused himself to go to the toilet and locked himself in a stall.
Swallowing hard, he gingerly put his hand in his pocket.
What the hell? Kaden jerked his fingers out.
He couldn’t feel the sandwich at all, just the gooey blob and it was bigger.
Had it eaten the sandwich? He took a deep breath, slid his hand in again and his fingers sank into soft, silky matter that flowed on and off his hand. Oh shit.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “No one’s around.” Who am I talking to?
When he tried again to take it out, the blob shaped itself into a ball on his palm.
Almost tennis ball size now with something dark in the middle of the blue.
A tendril emerged and touched Kaden’s fingers one after the other before pulling back into the ball.
Was it trying to communicate? He stroked it and it rippled, spread out on his palm, then balled up again. Ticklish?
“Can you hear me?” Kaden whispered.
One pale finger-like protrusion emerged to touch his middle finger. Kaden gulped. What the hell? Was that a yes? This little thing understood him? Kaden sucked in a breath. “If you understand me, touch my middle finger once.”
One touch.
“Yes.” Kaden almost sighed the word. “If you touch twice, that means no. Okay? One touch for yes. Two for no.”
His middle finger was touched again. Once.
“Do you want to go back in the tank?”
Two touches. No.
“Are you safe in the tank?”
No.
“Should I tell someone?”
No.
“Do you need somewhere special to live?”
No.
“Do you lay eggs?”
No.
Kaden was relieved because he didn’t want to have to deal with a whole lot of little blue blobs.
“Are you dangerous?” Because of course it was going to tell him if it was. But his finger was touched twice.
“Were the others going to…hurt you?”
Yes.
“Do you want to get out of here?”
Yes.
Back up a step. What the hell am I doing? There was no way this little ball was communicating with him at this level because that meant it had a brain. He decided to do another test and touched his fingers as he counted, “One, two, three, four, five. If I add one and four, what do I get?”
A blue finger touched his little finger.
Wow! Or chance?
“Four divided by two is?”
The correct finger was touched.
Oh God! Not chance.
This was intelligence. Life, albeit not as he knew it. Not a dog, cat, rat or bunny being experimented on, but it was a being that could think, a being that could feel fear. And none of those animals could communicate like this.
Decision time. Kaden went through every scenario he could think of. Apart from returning it to the same tank without anyone seeing, every other possibility meant he’d be in a lot of trouble if he was caught. He put the blob back in his pocket, but it didn’t slide from his palm.
“You have to let go,” he whispered and his fingers came free.
How did the thing even understand him? Am I dreaming?
Kaden went back to the lab where the blob had come from. There was no way this little blue ball could know, but he was moving around as if he were distressed. Kaden had to put his hand in his pocket so that it didn’t look as though he had something alive in there.
“Stop moving,” he muttered.
Thankfully, the blob settled down. Kaden stayed away from the tanks for a while and looked into several microscopes.
When he did wander back to the line of containers, the blobs in the one from which he’d rescued his blob were lined up against the glass, but not moving.
Staring at me. Oh hell, they don’t even have eyes. Do they? What are they plotting?
Put him back! No one would know and Kaden would be able to breathe again without his chest hurting.
He slipped his hand into his pocket but he couldn’t get hold of whatever it was.
It just slithered through his fingers like water.
How could it know what he was thinking of doing?
Unless he could sense he was near the others.