FSE

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Chapter 1

Alec jolted upright in his bed, he looked around confused for a moment, and then realized what was going on.

"Damn alarm clock," he muttered, agitatedly, "that thing scares the fuck out of me every time." The item to which he was referring was a Koal model t-23 alarm clock. It was designed to wake the owner up by emitting a series of high frequency oscillations so that the owner was physically aware of it, but not mentally. The intention was to make it seem the user was waking naturally and totally on their own, but it ended up scaring people because it sent just enough signal for the feelings to be received, but not to be registered right away. Alec groaned, reaching an arm behind his head to scratch his neck. He pivoted to the edge of his bed and stood, slowly making his way to the small bathroom he had in his quarters. Even though he was living in what he considered a hive, he liked it. Axiomn Laboratories was a revolutionary place. It was the world's first prison/job facility that only took in prisoners with an I.Q. of over 150. He took their test and scored a 220, which wasn't surprising, since he graduated from Yale with honors on a full academic scholarship. He had always been smart, making great grades all through school, and one of the few people throughout his entire family to attend an Ivy League college. He got put in here because Axiomn had received his papers and wanted him. Badly. Mainly because his major was in Prokaryote Applications. This meant that anywhere things like bacteria and yeasts and some protists could be applied to anything, he was the one to do it. Recently, Axiomn had been showing particular interests in adding a eukaryotic nucleus to a prokaryotic cell to see what could be done. They managed to make a new way of producing stem cells, but there was a problem with them as with all of the bacterial recombinants. The cells were aggressive, attacking and killing all of the other cells around them, then proceeding to replace them. This ended up killing any of the organisms the cells were injected into, then rebuilding them into grotesque, violent creatures. The production was said to have been stopped, but Alec didn't believe it. He knew that they showed too much interest in that field to just stop. But, that didn't matter because they moved him a different research unit. Their job was to test the usefulness of viruses to the evolution of the populace. They basically had to create a virus that was harmless, which was very hard to do well, but changed the genetic structure of the host. The only current issue was the fact that when it started to do this, it completely unraveled the DNA strand and destroyed the host instead. Alec sighed, stepping into the shower and turning on the water.

Well I have to give them credit,_he thought, _at least we get our own showers. Not that I wouldn't enjoy a little action, but not the prison kind. He quickly soaped himself and rinsed, stepping out of the shower and into the fur dryer. He turned it on and began humming to himself while his fur was getting strewn everywhere. He laughed when he looked at himself in the mirror, looking not entirely unlike an annoyed porcupine. He decided to leave it, as he was running late. Not that they would fire him, because he was more valuable than most of the people on his research team, and also because this was a prison, but he didn't want to get bitched at by the people higher up. Pulling on his shirt and pants, he headed into his kitchen and grabbed his coffee, quickly guzzling the slightly bitter liquid. He turned, and headed towards his door, and into the maze that was Axiomn Laboratories.

"Oh, hey Alec, didn't see you over there." Said Felicia, a Fennec fox.

"Yeah, I've been told that I walk pretty quietly. Say, where's Riley and Duster?" Alec asked slightly concerned.

"Running late, as per usual, they may be geniuses but they don't realize that we all need to be here before we get paid." She said annoyed.

"Eh, whatever. Hey, did you hear that John got let out?" Alec asked.

"No, no I didn't. I thought he wasn't eligible for parole for another four months."

"Yeah, me too, but I guess the system can work in your favor sometimes. But, you know what one getting let go means."

"Unfortunately, yes." She said with a sigh. "This means we get a new inmate who tries to act hardened and seems to think that the same rules and guidelines apply here. So sad."

"Yeah. I heard he's a biochemical engineer, and that he might be placed on our research team." Alec said with a smirk. He loved to mess with Felicia. But this time, he was also being serious. There had been some major talk among the teams and staff and the outcome had been trying to place the new inmate on either of two teams, and Alec's was looking to be the decided one, although no true news had been released. He turned towards the entrance of their lab, just in time to see a shepherd and a mouse walk in. He gave them a "Be careful around Felicia" look and turned back to the table. The tardy pair quietly made their way over to the coat rack and removed their lab coats and tried to put them on as quietly as possible. This would've worked, had Duster not sneezed hard enough to knock himself into the wall. Felicia jumped, startled, but after realizing who it was she began the nagging process. Alec snickered and began his work, carefully examining the DNA structure of the virus to see if there was a way to stop the total deconstruction of host DNA.

Alec's ears flickered at the sound of the third lunch tone, he began putting his tools away and making his way to the cafeteria followed closely by Duster and Riley, who were having an animated conversation about the possibility of random super viral mutation. Alec frowned at the lunch choices. Bleh. Meatloaf. I hate meatloaf. He thought disgusted. After making his way through the line, he noticed a seat open to a fur he hadn't seen before. Alec made his way over to him and introduced himself after sitting.

"Hi, my name's Alec. I'm a Prokaryotic Cell Biologist. I couldn't help but notice that you're new here, right?" He said enthusiastically.

The fur at the table looked up. He was a lion, and he looked to be about early to mid-twenties. Not to mention he was built. Alec found this extremely attractive. "My name's Jeff, and yeah, I'm the Biochemical Engineer." Jeff said calmly.

"Well that's shocking," Alec stated, "usually the new inmates try to act tough. But I guess you're smart enough to realize that here everyone is decent and civilized enough to not attack you for trivial reasons."

"Yeah," Jeff said smiling, "I'd heard of Axiomn before and it didn't take long for me to figure out that people who are being employed and housed comfortably won't be nearly as hostile as regular inmates."

"I hope you don't mind me asking," Alec said, "but what did you get put in for?"

"Oh," Jeff said, "no problem. Well, I made it through college, but I couldn't land a job to save my life. So I decided to ransom some money. I changed and masked all of my digital fingerprints, and hacked into The Pentagon." Alec's eyes widened in interest at the mention of The Pentagon. "I took some launch codes for some of the nukes and H-bombs and deleted the source code in the Pentagon. As you can imagine, they were desperate to get them back, so I told them how much I wanted, and they were willing to pay it. Well, during my negotiations which were happening over the course of a week, my landlord thought I had died, so she called the cops to come and see. They walked in right in the middle of my negotiations and arrested me on the spot." Jeff laughed a little after finishing, apparently basking in the irony of his situation. "How did you get put in here, Alec?"

"I had pirated enough software and movies to equal over 3,000,000 dollars in fines. Since I couldn't pay them all, they put me in here, where my college degree actually gets put to good use." Alec said nonchalantly.

Jeff and Alec continued talking until the end of lunch, where Alec led Jeff back to their lab to introduce him to everyone else. Even though he hadn't been officially placed, it was obvious that Jeff would be in Alec's team.

"So, what are you guys working on in here?" Jeff asked excitedly.

"Well, we've been trying to synthesize a virus that kills other disease cells but leaves the host body intact. But, so far, we've run into a small problem." Alec answered.

"Problem?" Jeff repeated skeptically, "Exactly what problem would that be?"

"Well," Alec began "The virus unravels the double helix of the host DNA along with the disease. So, we've been working for the past month to try and get this problem fixed."

"Ah, I see." Jeff said "Would you care if I took a crack at it?"

"I don't see why not." Alec said "But I doubt you'll be able to get very far."

"Just give me some time," Jeff said patiently "you never know, I might surprise you."